There’s an idea I’ve been playing around with for the past few weeks that I’d like to share with you. It might sound simple, or even trite, but it’s been adding a lot of free “happiness points” to my life so I thought I’d share it.
It sort of stems from a lot of the “spirituality” books I’ve been reading, and a bit from the meditation courses and lectures on the Waking Up app.
If you’re practising non-dual meditation (the sort that the Waking Up app teaches), the “steps” are roughly as follows:
- You close your eyes and focus your attention on something like your breath
- Great, now that you’ve focused your attention on something like your breath, you expand your awareness of sensations other than your breath – the feel of the ground under you, the feel of your clothing on your body etc
- Great, now that you’ve done that, you recognise all of these sensations as “appearances in consciousness” – the shirt you’re wearing is sending signals to the touch receptors on your skin, which signals to your brain, and you “experience” those signals as “appearances” in your general awareness, and you interpret them as “I’m wearing a piece of clothing on my chest”.
- When you have a thought, you realise that “wait a minute, this thought that I’m having is ALSO just an appearance in consciousness”. If you try and trace the thought back to its origin, you find… nothing. Just like the feel of the wind on your skin, or the sound of a police siren in the background, the thought simply “arises within consciousness” and then passes away.
- Okay cool, so now you “look for who’s looking”, you try and identify Who is actually doing all this meditating and all this noticing of appearances in consciousness. And when you “look for who’s looking”, you realise… there’s nothing to find. The feeling of being a person, the feeling of being an “I” that’s doing the meditating… that too is just an appearance in consciousness. This is the “move” or the “step” that I’ve yet to actually experience for myself, but apparently once you “look for the looker” and you realise there’s nothing to find, then you become enlightened or something and you feel one with everything or something like that.
This isn’t a newsletter about meditation or enlightenment (not yet anyway hehe), so of course, there’s going to be a more worldly “hack” that I’m going to share.
Here goes – everything we experience is simply an appearance in consciousness.
There’s some sort of deep spiritual Truth there apparently, but I haven’t yet reached that level… instead, I use this insight to make myself happier and more grateful each day.
Here’s how.
A couple of years ago, during my book launch period, I needed to fly from Sydney to London, and I found a Singapore Airlines flight where their First Class Suites were available for a hefty but not insane price. I decided: “you know what, I’m going to treat myself” and bought a ticket (see I told you I wasn’t spiritually enlightened).
I’d never flown First Class before, and I was intent on savouring the entire experience. I had a whole “room” all to myself, and it had a chair in it, and you could recline on the chair and stretch your legs out! They even had a bed in the suite, but I didn’t use it because I wanted to properly savour the experience without sleeping through it.
So I spent the flight reclining on this sofa chair thing, doing some work on my laptop. I think I watched a movie too. The usual stuff.
That was like 2 years ago (end of 2023). But a couple of weeks ago, I was reclining on my couch in my living room, with my laptop on my lap, doing some work. I’d done a Waking Up meditation that morning that was all about “recognising that literally everything is an appearance in consciousness”.
It got me thinking: I’m currently lying on the couch, typing stuff on my laptop. The sensations of the couch behind me, and the sensations of my laptop slightly heating my groin area – all these sensations are just appearances in consciousness. Cool.
But… wait a minute. 2 years ago, the first and (so far) last time in my life that I’ve flown First Class… I spent that entire flight lying on the couch, typing stuff on my laptop. I had the sensations of the aeroplane chair behind me, and the sensations of my laptop slightly heating my groin area… all those sensations were also just appearances in consciousness.
Wait a minute… chilling on the couch in my living room… feels EXACTLY the same as chilling on the stupidly expensive 1A seat in the Singapore Airlines First Class Suites… both are just appearances in consciousness, but they’re appearances in consciousness that feel EXACTLY THE SAME. And I paid a few grand for the First Class experience, and quite enjoyed it… could I do the same for the day-to-day experience of lying on my living room couch?
I tried it out. While typing away on my laptop in my living room, I imagined that I was back on that Singapore Airlines flight… and noticed another REALLY COOL thing – that actually, the experience of lying on my couch, is actually BETTER than the experience of being on an expensive First Class flight!
Why? Well, my sofa at home is more comfortable than the chairs they’ve got on aeroplanes. I can get up whenever I want, wander over to the kitchen and make myself a nice coffee with the Aeropress. Can’t do that on an aeroplane. Whenever I want, I can wander into the bathroom, sit myself on the toilet and scroll Instagram for as long as I want, without an air hostess knocking on the door and asking if everything’s okay. Can’t do that on an aeroplane, not even when flying First Class. When I’m at home, I can pop down to the local coffee shop to grab a matcha latte. Can’t do that on Singapore Airlines – all they have is coffee.
The experience of flying First Class on Singapore Airlines, which costs several thousand dollars (if not more), is (a) just a series of appearances in consciousness, and (b) those appearances in consciousness are actually LESS PLEASANT than the experience of living my day to day life.
And yet… how often do we feel good about expensive experiences, and how seldom do we feel grateful for the experience we have in our own home?
I’ve been applying this insight in other areas too:
- If I close my eyes, lying in my bathtub at home feels (almost) identical to lying in a natural hot spring onsen in a fancy hotel in Japan.
- If I close my eyes, having a shower at home feels identical to having a shower in the fanciest spa in the world.
- If I close my eyes, drying myself after said shower feels identical to drying myself on the poolside of the fanciest resort in the world.
You get the idea.
I’m sure there’s some deeper spiritual meaning here that I’m missing (if you know what it is, please feel free to reply to this email) but over the past few weeks since realising this, I’ve gotten a lot of pleasure from comparing the sensations of my day-to-day life with much-more-fancy-and-expensive experiences that I’ve had on trips and holidays, and realised: “huh, day to day life is actually really awesome”.
Maybe you’ve gotten to the end of this email and you’re rolling your eyes because this is really obvious, and of course you remember to be grateful for the experience of your day to day life many many times each day.
But in case you’re anything like me, and you sometimes forget to appreciate the simple pleasures of day-to-day life, maybe this little “appearances in consciousness” hack might be useful.
Next time you’re having a shower, or lying in bed, or just chilling on the sofa with your laptop, try this: close your eyes for a moment and notice the sensations. Then ask yourself – “when have I paid good money to have an experience that feels similar to this?”
Maybe lying in bed feels like lying on that expensive mongoose-albatross-feather hotel mattress from your last holiday. Maybe your morning shower feels like that fancy spa treatment you treated yourself to last year. Maybe sitting in your garden with a cup of coffee feels just as good as sitting in that overpriced café you went to in Paris.
For me, I’ve found that this little mental shift has made me way more grateful for the stuff I get to experience every single day, for free, at home. Without having to pay exorbitant sums for a First Class Singapore Airlines flight (although if anyone who works at a fancy airline is reading this, I’m sure YOUR aircraft’s seats are MUCH better than my sofa at home).
Have a great week!
Ali xx
