Two super easy exercises to “deepen your perception” without meditating
Meditating, when you don’t know what you’re looking for, seems boring, absurd and useless. You just sit doing nothing, nothing happens, and you think it’s fake.
It’s almost impossible to explain what “enlightenment” means (which is the “goal” of meditation), when you never experienced it. It’s too vague and broad. It’s rare to find someone who can explain it simply, with common language. And even more rare to find someone who explains how to practice getting there easily and “practically”. But I think (humbly) that I found some two very easy exercises to get a feeling of what it’s like, so I wanted to share it in case that helps anybody. But first, what is really “enlightenment”, can we try to define it?
What is “enlightenment”?
Basically, from my understanding at least (I’m no expert though), and from what I’ve read, enlightenment is mainly an expansion of perception. Once you manage to do it regularly, you simply start to naturally see things from a certain “distance”. That is relaxing, and brings some form of “peace”. That’s why it’s great and can help a lot. If you ever had that famous, kind of cheesy and cliché thought “how small you are compared to the universe”, with a sense of wonder, while looking at the stars, it’s that kind of feeling a little bit.
Exercises
Here are my two exercises, one is based on time perception, the other one on space perception. After a while you can combine both for a more “dramatic” effect on your consciousness. But you will see the effect is easy to get, and pretty straightforward I believe. It might or might not work for everybody, I’m not sure (just tried on myself until now haha), so please don’t hesitate to comment if that worked or didn’t work for you, would love to hear some feedbacks.
1-Time perception
Ok let’s start with the first one. Recall a memory of your childhood or teenage years. Around 10 or 12 years old for instance. Just try something far away in time. Try to remember a particular holiday for instance, or any moment that you remember well. Just focus 2 seconds on a particular memory, what you were doing, with who, and where.
Once you get one, try to go a little bit further than usual. You see, usually, when we remember something, we remember the “outside” and superficial characteristics of the memory, like where we were, and what happened. But now, try to simply remember your “inner world” during that memory. I mean try to remember not only how you felt in that moment, but more generally who you were as a person during that time, more broadly. Put yourself really “in the shoes” of that person that used to be you.
For instance, were you generally at that time in life happy, sad, anxious, confident, hopeful, funny etc… Try to remember what you knew about the world too, compared to what you know now. What were your main focus and dreams, and worries. It’s not natural to do it, but you will see it’s not that difficult if you focus just a few seconds or minutes. Those feelings are there, you just need to remember them.
If you manage to get that weird feeling, hard to describe, of “displacement” of you consciousness (that means you kind of “exchange” your current personality with the one you had at that age, just for a brief moment), then you will understand what it’s like to “expand” your consciousness. You just access another consciousness, the one you had when you were younger. It’s you, but a you very different from now.
You can basically “travel” in time anywhere doing that. It’s easy because those feelings are stored somewhere. It’s just that you don’t think about it in your day to day life.
If you feel uneasy doing that, that’s good. If you feel nostalgic, happy or even ashamed, that’s good too. You just managed to put yourself “outside” of your current perception. Let’s try the second exercise now.
2-Space perception
Ok, focus now on where you are at that time, reading those lines. Now try to mentally zoom out of yourself, and imagine yourself from above, seeing yourself, your body, your clothes, you position on the couch or chair or bed, holding the computer, phone or ipad. Observe yourself mentally from above (needs a little bit of imagination, but not really hard to do normally). What do you look like? Like a little random human reading something, in a funny position (relaxed, tensed or whatever…), alone in a room, or at work...
Now let’s try to go further. Zoom out of the building you are, place yourself just above the building (or park or whatever where you are now). Imagine the other people walking in the street outside, or sitting in their homes around you. Imagine them with all their individual consciousness, focused on their world from their inner perception. If you want, try to briefly imagine their inner dialogue, what can they be thinking about? You don’t need to do it long though, just imagine it briefly. It’s just to remember that other people exist around you, all having a very particular perception of the world, I mean from their own heads.
Now zoom out even more, and try to figure yourself the entire city you live in. Try to very briefly imagine the millions of people living there, doing their things, having their vast and complexe life, networks of friends, childhood, dreams and fears etc… Don’t focus too much, just imagine it and remember it’s actually not imaginary, but it’s actually real. There are indeed lots of people in your building doing their things, people in the streets walking to their goals, and millions of similar people living in your city.
Don’t go too far to imagine the whole world, because it will become too abstract. Just try to realize that even just a single city has so many different people doing their things in it, being the center of their own little universe.
Now, just briefly, think about the people on the other side (literally) of the planet right now, and more precisely think about the time of the day or night it is for them. Just picture yourself that if it’s noon for you, it’s midnight for many people on the other side of the earth. And of course, if it’s midnight for you, then it’s noon for them. Just imagine that it’s like you live in two different universes in a sense. Some people are sleeping, some others are going to work.
You see, it’s not very difficult, it’s just that we rarely think like that. It’s not natural or instinctive. We generally just think about what we perceive right now around us.
Conclusion
I’m not claiming those two exercises will suddenly open a “third eye” on your forehead, or allow yourself to become an enlightened superior being (I don’t really believe those things exist to be honest, could be wrong though ^^). By the way, if you ever believe that you are a superior enlightened being, you probably are not haha. “Enlightenment” is not supposed to make you feel superior I think, nor inferior. It just puts you “at ease”. It won’t give you an understanding of the “meaning of life”, or the purpose of your life (if there is any, not sure either haha), but it will make you happy to be alive.
Why those exercises are useful?
I’m no expert, but I think those exercises are useful, because they show in an easy, practical and straightforward way, what it’s like to change, or “expand”, your perception. You’ll see that it’s nothing “magical” or hard to do. Just something easy to do regularly, to get different perspectives. If you can do it naturally almost “all the time”, then you could probably say that you are somewhat “enlightened” I would guess, just a supposition. It’s not a medal, an ultimate goal or level of existence or anything, that just means you are not stuck “in your head” anymore, stuck in your time and place, but you see “the whole picture” in a sense (your whole life, the world, your real place in time and space, not as the center, but just as “in it” for a moment). If that makes sense haha, I’m not even sure.
In our day to day life, we perceive things through our eyes, body, smell, immediate thoughts. But when we think about other places or times, and we can really “feel” those different places and times, we suddenly perceive things that are not available to our “normal” or usual perception (about our current time and place).
How to know if you are enlightened?
I believe it’s actually easy and straightforward, contrary to how some “meditation gurus” sometimes tend to present it. If you feel at ease, surprisingly happy to just be alive, for no apparent reason, then I think that’s it. But I’m no expert I stress out, just read a few books like The Buddha Teachings by Thích Nhất Hạnh, I’m not a monk or an enlightened person in any way haha. It’s just that the Buddha, or famous buddhist “teachers”, constantly insist on the fact that enlightenment is not something that is supposed to be hard or far to get. It’s something that is supposed to be precisely easy and immediate. And you’re not supposed to never feel bad either. It’s the idea to not try hard precisely that will get you there, from my understanding.
Tell me in the comments if that makes sense, if those two exercises worked or not at all.
Have a good day :)
