Live as if you are living on Mars
Rest-and-Digest: Cultivate Witness Consciousness, Inner Balance and Mindful Reflection. Be a Martian.
Along with all the healing and growth, give yourself time for integration - a fancy word for “allowing it to settle”.
The opposite of fight-or-flight is rest-and-digest.
We rest-and-digest this week.
If I send you up to Mars, that’s exciting.
You’ll be the first person to go to Mars; you’ll check out what’s happening on Mars.
Wherever I put you, something is going on.
Not much, but something.
You’d take notes and experience,
you got to be the first person on Mars.
TO BE OR NOT TO BE
Rephrased, TO LIVE OR TO SURVIVE.
When we merely survive, we navigate through life in a state of constant restlessness and anxiety, scarcely pausing to experience True Being — savouring joy and gratitude in the present moment.
We miss the Now because we live like a slingshot:
We find ourselves pulled back into the past. We are catapulted into the future, lugging the baggage of our past experiences with us.
While the key is to catch ourselves in the present moment.
Grab ourselves and pull ourselves back.
Back to the Now.
An Awareness (or Lack Thereof) Exercise
In our imaginary conversation, you ask me “Well, thank you for stating the obvious albeit through a metaphor, but how do I do that?!”.
The first point to acknowledge is you are you and I am me. Therefore, whatever works for your Now, may not work for my Now, and vice versa.
The second point to give a go is how I connect to my Now. Try it, have fun, and connect to the little kid inside of you. Hell, twist it and turn it to fit you.
Close your eyes — by yourself or in the company of a friend.
WHAT IS AROUND YOU?
In a nutshell, what do you remember around you right now?
What do you remember incorrectly?
What do you not remember at all?
What haven’t you noticed because you were too busy with the past or the future (pick your fighter, am I right?) that you did not even notice what is around you?
I am literally asking you to close your eyes and tell me what surrounds you, where it is, whether it is tilted or not, and what colour it is.
The more details, the merrier awareness (or awareness of the lack of awareness.)
That’s it.
From the comfort of my home to a bustling cafe, from a serene park to a busy street — I’ve done it everywhere.
Once I missed a giant yellow pump in the middle of the street. An occurrence so random, prominent and colourful that I should have easily noticed it. I did not notice it.
A third point to remember is to be compassionate. When I did notice the giant yellow pump, I laughed.
I could have been agitated at myself (Katrin, it was not your first time doing this exercise! How could you have NOT noticed it?! How could you have not paid attention to your surroundings so much that you didn’t see A GIANT YELLOW PUMP?).
I chose not to. I laughed. I laughed like a child. I embraced a Martian-like sense of wonder.
Lastly, the author of The Untethered Soul, The Surrounder Experiment and Living Untethered, Michael A. Singer proposes more techniques for accessing and soothing our Inner Disturbance.
I fondly refer to this exercise as The Martian.
Live like a Martian
“We have successfully landed on Mars. Do you copy?”
“Affirmative.”
We are experiencing Mars first-hand.
It is the first time we have landed on Mars.
It is the first time we feel the Martial soil.
It is the first time we lay eyes on its red-hued shapes and forms.
It is the first time that we say ‘Hey, it looks like we are on a giant and beautiful orange!”.
It is the first time and we savour it.
“Prerating to return to Earth, do you copy?”
“Affirmative.”
Well, you get to be the person on the Planet Earth who’s experiencing what you’re experiencing for the first time.
WITNESS CONSCIOUSNESS
On Planet Earth, you have two tasks — whether you have been to Mars or not.
Task one has two words— Witness Consciousness.
“Witness” - On Mars, there is you (the witness, or the subject) and there is Mars (everything around you, or the object that you witness).
“Consciousness” comes in two shapes:
Shape 1: On the way to Mars, a button beeps and you react. You understand that this sound is external to you.
You are not the button, obviously right?
Shape 2: On Mars, you and your fellow astronaut capture the essence of this planet in front of you. A siren blares. You panic and your thoughts are flooded with crisis scenarios.
Crisisscenarios,crisisscenarios, crisisscenarios.
But you are these crisis scenarious.
You are not your emotions, but you are strongly consumed by them.
You are not your thoughts but you are drowning in them.
In a nutshell, you do not understand that emotions and thoughts are external to you. They are intangible “objects” but you subjectify them.
In contrast, when there is an actual tangible object a.k.a. the button, your brain is not struggling to identify that you are not the button.
Your task on Earth is to cultivate this Witness Consciousness — witnessing your emotions and thoughts as external to you the same way that you can externalise your alarm clock, let’s say.
Before you dive into that, complete task two, Astronaut!
Task two: Clear the static.
You take a moment
and you see whether you can be there
= in this Witness Consciousness -
and what you will find is that you can’t.
Then I want you to see why and it won’t take you long because you’re going to see I’m here,
I’m here, I’m experiencing it, but there’s something else here.
There’s static.
There’s the noise of my mind. It’s worrying about things — thinking I look silly.
To clear the static, we must cultivate the art of Witnessing.
Of Being Witnesses.
Witnesses of Mars.
Witnesses of life.
Witnesses of emotions.
Witnesses of thoughts.
Witnesses of our own Being.
Until the next NASA meeting,
Katrin