The View from the Mountaintop

(While I'm on vacation — from teaching and blogging — I hope you enjoy this piece from my website archives.)



Have you ever become so engrossed in a book that you completely lost track of time and eventually looked up from your reading to realize that you’re a little achy from sitting for god knows how long in an uncomfortable position?  Or have you ever zoned out into auto-pilot mode while driving home from work and somehow gotten to your destination without any recollection of the trip?

Lately, under the influence of Missy Vineyard’s excellent new AT book, How You Stand, How You Move, How You Live, I’ve been contemplating this kind of situation, in which my awareness shrinks, leaving me with only a partial picture of my experience.

What constitutes complete awareness?  I distinguish at least three aspects of any moment of experience which my awareness may encompass: my Self, my activity, and my environment.  While recognizing that my awareness exhibits a fluid, delicately shifting balance among these three aspects of experience, my goal is to neglect none of them and favor none of them above the others.