Coming to Our Senses

“Slow down and taste and smell and hear, and let your senses come alive. If you want a royal road to mysticism, sit down quietly and listen to all the sounds around you. You do not focus on any one sound; you try to hear them all. Oh, you’ll see the miracles that happen to you when your senses come unclogged.” — Anthony de Mello, Awareness

The world wants us to focus on it. It calls to us constantly. Sure, those notifications on our phones and smart watches and other electronics are designed to capture our attention. Our to-do lists grow relentlessly longer. The demand for our attention has never been greater.

There’s nothing wrong with letting it all drift away.

Unclogging our senses brings us to them. Focus intently on a task at hand, or nothing at all. Recognize what matters when we get out and listen to nature, or our own voice. Walking is the great sifter of souls, shaking the nagging little things away. Why don’t we walk more?

We think we’re too busy.

We have so much noise in our lives that we don’t hear our own voice. We must sift it all away and find what really speaks to us. What is a better use of our time than listening to our own calling and taking meaningful action towards change? We can’t set our compass if we don’t step out into the world and find out where we are right now.