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Happiness, 6.04 (V) Week 6, Video 4 - Flying Into The Present

[MUSIC] Hello there my disinterestedly interested friends, welcome back. In the last video, I discussed how mindfulness is like trying to be a fly on the wall of your head. And how this attempt of distancing yourself from your gate. Your goals and actions, action tendencies, thought and emotions is likely to make you feel calmer. And also give you more response flexibility, by improving your ability to pay attention, or to notice subtle things. One thing you might be wondering is, if mindfulness involves taking the position of an observer, then it seems that mindfulness equals not being totally involved in whatever is going on. But rather, distancing yourself from it, right? No. Wrong. The reason is that although the idea of stepping outside of your gate might seem like you're putting a distance between yourself and what's going on in your head. The reality is that, and you'll only discover this by the way if you actually start practicing mindfulness rather than merely thinking about it. What you're attempting to do is to get an intimate touch with the reality of the moment on a moment-to-moment basis rather than trying to change what's going on, which is what takes you away from the moment. Think about what happens normally, that is when you're not being a fly on the wall or you're not being mindful. You're caught up in the web of the gates. This usually means that you are thrown around various parts of the web. The boss shouting at you takes you to a previous time that he might have shouted at you and to other bosses who have shouted at you. That leaves you to think of your parents who used to shout at you, which in turn leads you to think about how you are never gonna succeed in life, which leads you to all the lofty dreams that you might have had when you were a child and so on. So, in other words, as a fly stuck in the web, in the gate web, you'd be lurching wildly from the present, your boss shouting, to the past, your ex-bosses and your parents shouting, back to the present, I'm never gonna succeed, to the future, lofty dreams for the future, etc. As you can see from this example, being a fly in the gate web involves a lot of time travel. By contrast, as a fly in the wall of your head, you're firmly routed in the present. You're observing what's going on right now in your head. Your gate may be doing the time traveling, but you are in the present and if you manage to stay in the present, which means that you don't fly off the wall and into the web but manage to hold onto the wall. You will discover that your gate too, comes to the present. And when this happens a third consequence follows. In the previous video, I discussed consequences of being a fly in the wall. First, you feel calmer. And second, you develop this thing called response flexibility because of your ability to mitigate this attentional blink. The third consequence which follows from the gate settling to the present when you're a fly on the wall is that you'll get more in touch with your senses. That is you spend less time in your head, in the gate of your mind and more time in your body. You're thinking more through your senses than you otherwise would. For example, you would feel as if you're able to see or hear things more clearly than you otherwise could or ever have actually sometimes. As you listen to this, you feel right now life is quite interesting and that you don't need to spend all this time in your head imagining new and non-existent realities. Life would be rich and bountiful and even mysterious and awe inspiring right now. If you experience a particularly intense moment of present awareness you may even feel as if your seeing the world with totally new eyes or hearing sounds with totally new ears and so on. Even the ordinary would become extraordinary. Again, I wanna emphasize that all of this is something that you only realized and experience, if you actually did a mindfulness exercise, rather than merely think about it. So, we are gonna do a mindfulness exercise soon, but just to give you a glimpse into how seeing with new eyes might feel, and how even the ordinary becomes extraordinary. Let me show you a really neat video made by somebody called Dietrich Ludwig called Seeing. Here watch. » What defines extraordinary? What should it describe? The elite? The astounding? What about the ordinary? The mundane and common? But while all the parts of our world fall in between the extremes. Could extraordinarily be defined by them? Of course, you see the ordinary as the part of our world that is somehow the most extraordinary. That the part of our world where beauty is interlaced into each detail and character is found in every nook and every cranny. [MUSIC] It's the part of our world that can knock our socks off. [MUSIC] Leave us with tears in our eyes. It's part of our world that can change minds and influence world leaders. It's the part that's coming to us all. It's there for us. It's all there everyday for everyone of us. But we walk by. So many of us just walk by everyday. Never knowing. And never caring. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] But some do. Some see the detail And the beauty The character, and the harmony. They see every perfection and imperfection. They see the sum of the parts. And they see it become greater than the whole. They see everything, everything become beautiful. Everything become extraordinary. Show someone Show someone first the ordinary and then show them the extraordinary. And see if either one of you can tell the difference. [MUSIC] » Hopefully, you enjoyed that video, and hopefully also, that it gave you some insight into what it means, what it could feel like, or what the experience could be like to look at life with new eyes. Eyes that don't see things filtered through the gate of the mind. Removing this filter or the gate of the mind as several people have commented, is the same thing as getting more in touch with reality as it is, rather than distorting it with the mind. Two things capture this idea really succinctly and I'll leave you with these things to end this video. Bye for now and see you soon. [MUSIC]


[MUSIC] Hello there my disinterestedly interested friends, welcome back. In the last video, I discussed how mindfulness is like trying to be a fly on the wall of your head. And how this attempt of distancing yourself from your gate. Your goals and actions, action tendencies, thought and emotions is likely to make you feel calmer. And also give you more response flexibility, by improving your ability to pay attention, or to notice subtle things. One thing you might be wondering is, if mindfulness involves taking the position of an observer, then it seems that mindfulness equals not being totally involved in whatever is going on. But rather, distancing yourself from it, right? No. Wrong. The reason is that although the idea of stepping outside of your gate might seem like you're putting a distance between yourself and what's going on in your head. The reality is that, and you'll only discover this by the way if you actually start practicing mindfulness rather than merely thinking about it. What you're attempting to do is to get an intimate touch with the reality of the moment on a moment-to-moment basis rather than trying to change what's going on, which is what takes you away from the moment. Think about what happens normally, that is when you're not being a fly on the wall or you're not being mindful. You're caught up in the web of the gates. This usually means that you are thrown around various parts of the web. The boss shouting at you takes you to a previous time that he might have shouted at you and to other bosses who have shouted at you. That leaves you to think of your parents who used to shout at you, which in turn leads you to think about how you are never gonna succeed in life, which leads you to all the lofty dreams that you might have had when you were a child and so on. So, in other words, as a fly stuck in the web, in the gate web, you'd be lurching wildly from the present, your boss shouting, to the past, your ex-bosses and your parents shouting, back to the present, I'm never gonna succeed, to the future, lofty dreams for the future, etc. As you can see from this example, being a fly in the gate web involves a lot of time travel. By contrast, as a fly in the wall of your head, you're firmly routed in the present. You're observing what's going on right now in your head. Your gate may be doing the time traveling, but you are in the present and if you manage to stay in the present, which means that you don't fly off the wall and into the web but manage to hold onto the wall. You will discover that your gate too, comes to the present. And when this happens a third consequence follows. In the previous video, I discussed consequences of being a fly in the wall. First, you feel calmer. And second, you develop this thing called response flexibility because of your ability to mitigate this attentional blink. The third consequence which follows from the gate settling to the present when you're a fly on the wall is that you'll get more in touch with your senses. That is you spend less time in your head, in the gate of your mind and more time in your body. You're thinking more through your senses than you otherwise would. For example, you would feel as if you're able to see or hear things more clearly than you otherwise could or ever have actually sometimes. As you listen to this, you feel right now life is quite interesting and that you don't need to spend all this time in your head imagining new and non-existent realities. Life would be rich and bountiful and even mysterious and awe inspiring right now. If you experience a particularly intense moment of present awareness you may even feel as if your seeing the world with totally new eyes or hearing sounds with totally new ears and so on. Even the ordinary would become extraordinary. Again, I wanna emphasize that all of this is something that you only realized and experience, if you actually did a mindfulness exercise, rather than merely think about it. So, we are gonna do a mindfulness exercise soon, but just to give you a glimpse into how seeing with new eyes might feel, and how even the ordinary becomes extraordinary. Let me show you a really neat video made by somebody called Dietrich Ludwig called Seeing. Here watch. » What defines extraordinary? What should it describe? The elite? The astounding? What about the ordinary? The mundane and common? But while all the parts of our world fall in between the extremes. Could extraordinarily be defined by them? Of course, you see the ordinary as the part of our world that is somehow the most extraordinary. That the part of our world where beauty is interlaced into each detail and character is found in every nook and every cranny. [MUSIC] It's the part of our world that can knock our socks off. [MUSIC] Leave us with tears in our eyes. It's part of our world that can change minds and influence world leaders. It's the part that's coming to us all. It's there for us. It's all there everyday for everyone of us. But we walk by. So many of us just walk by everyday. Never knowing. And never caring. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] But some do. Some see the detail And the beauty The character, and the harmony. They see every perfection and imperfection. They see the sum of the parts. And they see it become greater than the whole. They see everything, everything become beautiful. Everything become extraordinary. Show someone Show someone first the ordinary and then show them the extraordinary. And see if either one of you can tell the difference. [MUSIC] » Hopefully, you enjoyed that video, and hopefully also, that it gave you some insight into what it means, what it could feel like, or what the experience could be like to look at life with new eyes. Eyes that don't see things filtered through the gate of the mind. Removing this filter or the gate of the mind as several people have commented, is the same thing as getting more in touch with reality as it is, rather than distorting it with the mind. Two things capture this idea really succinctly and I'll leave you with these things to end this video. Bye for now and see you soon. [MUSIC]