Step 2: try to take in all of the outside world at once

Another common beginner-level exercise is to “be mindful of your surroundings”. Let’s call it “external mindfulness”. The obvious way of doing that is to start turning your head this way and that way, trying to take in as many details as possible, all at the same time. Naturally, this will involve a certain level of struggle, because who can keep track of everything? Just like in step 1, thoughts will enter the picture, maybe about how challenging this is, how frustrating it feels to not be able to follow these very basic instructions, maybe confusion about what the hell you’re supposed to be doing, anyway, and what the point of it all is.

What matters about this step

Compared to step 1, there is no difference in objectives or skills you’re supposed to be building. You’re cultivating the same sort of relaxed attention as in the breath-based exercise. That means that scrambling to take in as many details as possible is counterproductive.

Different kinds of observation

Aside from how hard you focus on something, there are other distinctions that can be made. Most of the time, your awareness of the outside world will be somewhat abstract: if you pass by a tree and waste any thought on it at all, usually it’s going to be “well, that’s a tree there” or, perhaps, “oh look, a birch tree”. Rarely does it get more involved than that.

Abstraction is a way of reducing cognitive load: instead of looking at all the details, you can just look at an object and your mind helpfully supplies its pre-made (learned) conclusions about what you’re looking at. As a result, you can recognize a chair as a chair with zero effort (aside from maybe some fringe cases where it might be hard to tell if you’re looking at a chair or a stool, for example).

True observation involves intentionally looking for sensory details. This doesn’t eliminate abstraction: you’ll still look at a chair and recognize that it’s a chair… but you might choose to focus in addition on specific details. For example, you might notice that the chair is red, or white, or brownish, or whatever. That it maybe has rounded edges. That the back rest is rounded, or straight. That its surface is slightly shiny, or matte. And so forth.

If you were to try and shovel as many of these details into your brain as possible, that would, once again, be counter-productive. Instead, you could choose a random thing to look at, in no particular hurry, and pick a random property that you notice about it, and just observe that quality for a moment. Then, you can move on to another.

The same kind of thinking applies to all of your other senses, but it’s easiest with visuals. However, you could totally walk through a busy area and notice all the individual sounds. And each sound has properties, too: it might be loud or quiet, tonal or atonal, high-pitched or low-pitched, harsh, soft… you get the idea.

Widening the focus

Another approach – that is a little harder to grasp at first – is to focus less on any particular aspect of what you’re perceiving, and get more of an overall sense. The way it made the most sense to me when I was starting out was by likening it to peripheral vision. Go ahead and focus on a spot in your field of vision, something not too close if you don’t want to have to strain your eyes. Keeping your focus there, try to be more aware of the fringe areas of your field of vision rather than that spot itself. This can be a bit tricky at first, but once you start getting there, you’ll notice that you’re not really able to see any details from your peripheral vision, it’s a much more vague sense of the things in that area. Your peripheral vision is extremely good at picking up movement, though, so if you do this in a public setting, you might notice that it’s surprisingly easy to see things or people moving while not actually looking at them directly.

What’s the use of this? Well, in the previous section I talked about removing some abstraction and getting closer to the sensory data, by focusing on individual details. Focusing on nothing in particular is the “nuclear” option: if you don’t even focus on any object, there’s no abstraction going on at all! As a beginner you’ll still have some “accidental abstraction“ purely out of habit, but that’s perfectly fine. Some practice, and not worrying too much about habits like that, is all it takes.

Getting rid of abstractions

So, we’re unabstracting… but why?

This is actually a bit of a sneak preview of one of the core principles of mindfulness: not judging, observing impartially. Abstraction are undoubtedly useful (and, in fact, pretty much unavoidable to be able to function), but they can go wrong: sometimes, your mind will create abstractions that are questionable or outright harmful. For a drastic example, someone might have created an abstraction saying that seeing a dog means danger, so they’ll panic when they see a dog.

Now, this is another of those things I won’t be able to prove, but based on my experience, I’m fairly certain that part of the reason it’s so difficult to get rid of a phobia is that you’re stuck in the abstraction: every time you see a dog and you freak out, that “proves” to you that the abstraction is correct, and so you keep reaffirming the abstraction. This is not something you do deliberately, of course, it’s just the natural consequence of not being able to separate the abstraction from the actual thing. Instead, people will get sidetracked “arguing” with the abstraction… meaning they’ll fight the abstraction on its home turf: in the abstract. This has never been effective for me, and I’ve talked to many people who have never had any success with this, either. Staying away from the abstract level and on the experiential side of things is much more likely to open up space for change.

We’ll get back to this in more detail later. For now, what does that mean for external mindfulness? Honestly, bypassing abstractions in these exercises isn’t useful in itself, but it lays a foundation for building the ability to bypass other abstractions in other contexts. It’s one of those things that seem kind of stupid but will make a huge difference later, just like practicing your scales when learning to play an instrument, or drawing lots of straight lines and circles and random curves to improve your drawing skills.

How to do it better

The basic version

The guiding principle is: relaxed, lazy observation. Let your focus wander a bit and let it rest on random things and random qualities of those things. Initially, you’ll find it hard to keep your focus on one thing and quality for extended periods of time, and you don’t want to force it because then you’ll learn to associate struggle and frustration with this exercise.

Instead, keep your attention on that single thing and quality until you start getting a bit restless. Notice that feeling of restlessness and maybe a bit of frustration and some thoughts that creep up along with them. There is nothing wrong at all with these feelings and thoughts, they’re completely natural, so don’t judge them. Just let them happen. Once you’ve done that for a bit, or if you start finding it hard to let the feelings and thoughts happen without judgement, let your attention wander again and then come to rest on another thing and quality. Keep going.

All of the principles from the previous chapter still apply, e.g. on how to deal with other thoughts and feelings or with losing focus, and how much time to put in.

The intermediate version

Remember that exercise with the peripheral vision? It can actually serve as a proxy for building the skill of observing in a less focused way: while observing the world around you, put more of your attention on your peripheral vision than you normally would. This will automatically stop you from focusing on a single thing and creates an interesting different quality of awareness. Looking back, it’s hard for me to tell what had the most impact on my learning, but I think this definitely made a significant difference.

What exactly you’re cultivating by doing this is kind of hard to describe. You just have to do it several times (and remember to do it in a “lazy”, relaxed sort of way: it’s totally fine if you have no idea how to even go about it. Just experiment a little and don’t worry if you’re not getting it. Each time you try, it gets a little more likely that it will click next time), and at some point it will start happening.

Don’t go expecting something particularly magical or mind-bending, though… this is still a very natural, normal type of state, just not one you might habitually get into or recognize. In fact, the same is kind of true for all of mindfulness: I can almost guarantee that you’ve been mindful in the past, but sporadically and not on purpose, most likely without even realizing what you were doing. As you get better at this, you might notice some similarities to things you’ve experienced in the past. Only one way to find out!

Opportunities

What I like about this approach is that you can do it at almost any time when you have nothing else to do: while doing mindless chores, while watching TV, while sitting on the bus or train, while walking around, while taking a shower… the possibilities are almost endless. It’s less of a great fit for any situation in which you need to actually focus, though, so I wouldn’t recommend doing this while driving (though at an intermediate level you might be able to) or while doing your taxes or whatever.