9 November

Here’s something I learned a few years ago, that changed my life. An experiment anybody can try. Did you know your body is set up so it automatically follows your attention? Your attention leads, your body follows. So try this - ‘release’ your attention from your body *completely*, out into the world, into whatever you’re doing. And while it’s out there, say while you’re talking to somebody, *at the same time* feel your body following your attention out into space. (The simultaneous bit is important, don’t ‘go down’ into your body to feel it, feel it from within that attention, out in the world.) You should feel your entire body, from toe to top of head, releasing out into space, against what we usually see as gravity, all ‘weight’ being removed as your body elastically releases upwards, and outwards into what you’re doing. Your attention is not ‘you’, you can release it out into space, away from your ‘body’, and your body will always follow it, automatically. Our existential frameworks are wrong, our bodies literally are sucked into the world by our attention - released. Whereas normally we try to effort those bodies into what we do, by taking our attention off what we’re doing and to go inside to ‘make movements’. This also means you can always pay maximum attention to everything you do, and start to become much more aware of the details of things, because you no longer have to deal with your body in any way, or with gravity. It will follow your attention, all by itself. One of the greatest pleasures you will ever feel is that complete removal of what we call weight, and also feeling that body releasing upwards and outwards, all pressure coming off your joints and breathing apparatus etc. It will also vastly improve your performance in sport or any other activity, as you let the body’s enormous elastic potential energy finally do what it’s there for - to fling you into activity, like an arrow being released from a bow, even just standing or talking, but also running, walking etc. Just sitting there now, try it, and feel all of that, it’s one of life’s miracles. It can take a lot of practice, we’re deeply habituated to trying to make movements, or alternatively to letting our body just slump underneath us, because we (wrongly) think we have to fight against gravity. Like this fella in his armchair. It’s an illusion, perhaps the biggest illusion of our lives.