The dance of thought & perception
Inspired by the latest exploration of 'authentic resonance' with Aspasia Karageorge & Daniel Garner (video included)
photo by Ryo Yoshitake
A friend of my teenage daughter is coming to stay with us.
While thinking what to offer the two of them for meals this week,
I happened to be taking a plate of food from the microwave.
I happened to be clumsily
spilling food from the plate
onto the stove and floor.
Then I could see it all:
My daughter and her friend,
wide-eyed, horrified,
seeing their dinner
on the kitchen floor.
Our thoughts and perceptions
are in a continual dance.
A thought follows a percept
follows a thought follows
a percept follows a thought
follows another thought and
another thought and
Sometimes we lose the plot.
We lose perception altogether.
All we see is our story,
immediate real world surroundings
become dulled to the senses.
Perhaps we can still cross the street
without getting run over,
but this does not mean
we “see where we’re going.”
Likewise, with our eyes glued to “news feeds”
(think/feel a while on that phrase!)
we do not “see where we’re going” these days
(except for the part that we see on our "news feeds")
When you listen to the auditory echo
of the words you read on the screen,
do you also hear their rhythm, rhyme,
reem, raym, rhoom and rohm?
Sound and meaning
sometimes come out of balance,
but the imbalance can rebalance
our inner navigation.
Perhaps we can remember
sometimes to…
(please now
close your eyes
and listen
for 3
full
breaths)
No insights need come
when you make the deliberate turn
back to perception.
Even if all words do not fall away,
you have refreshed the mind
with time to actually think,
the real kind of thinking,
the kind where
thoughts don’t
make a
sound.
Thoughts that make sounds
make it harder to hear birds sing.
Without hearing birdsong,
we can’t do anything
we’d be proud
to call
thinking.
Just check and see
in your next conversation:
Thinking with words
is the opposite of listening.
To think in step with the speaker,
enter their mind with your ear,
hear
the silent sound
of the search
for the words
before they are spoken
aloud.
Listen to
the sound the air makes
just four inches
to the left
of your left ear.
This kind of listening is
a fresh slate for your thinking.
Moshe Feldenkrais liked to say,
“New thoughts lead to new actions.”
Did he get it backwards?
Thank God I know that the mess on the floor is here and now,
and my daughter’s friend doesn’t arrive until tomorrow.
This meditation on thought and perception came directly in the wake of my latest conversation with
and Daniel Garner of