Contemplative Currents Podcast

About Contemplative Currents Podcast

Gentle reminders, mindful contemplations for those seeking to explore the depth and essence of our being, the glorious Mystery that we are. seyekuyinu.substack.com (https://seyekuyinu.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Seye Kuyinu

Category

religion & spirituality · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

23 Dec 2024

Latest episode

26 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

71 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   26 Sept 2026

   It Hides In Everything

   IT hides in everything. In unfulfilled expectations and heartbreak. You know that ache beneath the ache beneath the ache? You know that movement? The reaching, the part of you that still wants to be met, held and understood. That longing is IT. IT hides in the whisking of matcha, my small circular wrist motion seductively suggesting that IT’s there. Last week, I looked at the green powder disappearing into water and the froth gathering along the edges of the bowl. There was the life moving the hand, the attention watching the movement, the pleasure of making something and then offering it to strangers. IT was hiding in there. IT hides in arguments. Particularly in disagreements. You and I standing across each other defending our positions, saying the same thing in different words but not even knowing we are saying the same thing. We both want to be understood. We both want the other to cross the invisible distance and meet eachother where we are. And yet we don’t notice how underneath our opposing statement and warm fuming breathes, we are signaling the ‘see me, hear me, come closer’. Ah! It was a wink wink nudge nudge that IT was there. IT hides in my desperation. In my grasping and bargaining, when I am convinced something outside me must change so I will finally finally eventually be okay. Spoiler alert: that deceptive nudge was always there like a bug added while the human was being built. That bug has been the yearning for wholeness. You know what’s weird? The yearning for wholeness is literally happening within Wholeness itself. And IT is the wholeness too. IT hides in the baby! Shhhhh! Wait for the baby to cry. You’d see it then. Notice how this baby has no theology or language or words for ‘mother, hunger, burp me’ and yet it reaches thorugh fake tears and piercing sounds. Something is missing, the baby signals! Hold me! Feed me! Make this separation disappear! IT hides in bodies and in sex. Ah! Even in this! Don’t you see IT? The unbearable wish to disappear into the other where the border between one and the other disappears so IT can be known. But sometimes IT is overlooked. And that happens even with grief. It hides in grief. Hey, did you know that the reason grief hurts so much is because love has nowhere obvious to go. Grief is love encountering a form it can no longer touch. IT is that too! Oh, how IT hides in jealousy. I know how ugly jealousy can be. But look at it too, and see that jealousy is the fear that love is scarce. Isn’t it wild to realize that’s what it is? Being in an ocean and thinking water is a scarce commodity. That someone else receiving it means less remains for me. Like thinking because a candle borrows the fire from another lit candle, the fire is now less! Oh!! Even there, beneath possession and comparison, something is searching for what cannot be taken away. It just doesn’t know IT yet. IT hides in anger. Underneath my clenched jaw and my raised nigerian-accented voice, I find there’s something guarding itself, guarding a boundary, a wound, a longing to matter, a desire for the world to be different from what it is, for change to happen, damn it! But IT creates change! But IT hides while it creates the only thing that ever happens: change! IT hides in boredom. The restless hand reaching for your phone, pre-programmed to hit that Instagram icon. Oh, look how your thumb scrolls even though it knows not what it has seen. The opening and closing of apps, the vague subtle undetectable sense that somewhere, somehow, something interesting must be happening. Look! Look at it! Did you see it yet? See, even boredom is searching! It’s searching for IT. And in ambition too! You, who are looking for title and next position and next big business idea and next accomplishment and next this and next that! Don’t you see it? It’s not the success you want. Maybe what you want is to have a positive answer to the question, “Will I be enough when I get there?” Oh, you know where else it hides? In prayer! In folded hands and whispered petitions, in my beads passing through my fingers and the mantra that curls and winds itself in the inner secret chambers of my prayers. It hides in the person asking God for an answer, unaware maybe and perhaps, that the desire to find God is already occurring in God. Ah! It hides in doubt too. Most especially doubt. But the way doubt is, doubt is a sneaky sneaky camoflaging snake. You know how? Okay, see this: the person that says, “I do not know if any of this is true,” is still turned toward truth. See! You see what I mean? Doubt itself is contained in the sacred and so I can apologize to doubt for accusing it of cowardise. It was just trying to refuse to settle for counterfeit. So then doubt dresses as IT. Okay, how about science too? Does IT hide in science? Yes! Look at that damn scientist leaning over the microscope curious about what ‘this is?’. Isn’t it just laughable that IT camoflaged itself as mytochondric diatomasis ** insert some scientific latin name for something a scientist will look at under a microscope ** IT hides in philosophy asking, What does it mean? And religion that asks, Who made this? IT hides in the mystic who’s asking, Who is asking? In fact, we totally wake up when we laugh so freaking hard realizing that IT was in the question “Who is asking?”. I am laughing so hard typing this and IT hides in my laughter too. IT hides in the child who keeps saying why. IT hid in my grandmother, picking the egusi shells(melon seeds) saying nothing at all. Music too! IT HIDES SO PERFECTLY IN MUSIC. Ah! THe way IT hides is incredible. In fact, notice how when the music notes catches beneath your ribs and you hum, you totally get hypnotized so deeply that you don’t see IT. Remember when you listened to an a cappella harmony and one voice bends beneath another and several separate sounds somehow become one sound without losing their distinction and you just shook your head sideways like “Chai!! did you hear that??”. And the goosebumps just raised just to ‘praise the lord’? Oh, how even in us we recognize this IT but don’t know it. Oh, all the symbolisms in a capella. The many, yet one, distinct, yet inseparable. Oh, IT hides in trees turning toward sunlight and in the next breath after a deep laughter. Yeah, you were too distracted by the joke you didn’t catch it. IT hides in the bad news too. Sadly, yet somehow joyously. Especially when IT demonstrates itself in the first bit of silence after the news. IT hides in our leaving and in our returning too. In our wanting to stay and in our wanting to be free. IT hides in the most ridiculous things! Like yesterday, when I scrolled through Facebook Marketplace looking for a replacement for my air purifier. Little did I know that my search was a search for IT. Oh, I didn’t know at that time. Follow almost any desire far enough and you’d see the object of desire begins to disappear. Oh, you gotta see it for yourself! You have to! Okay, look at the air purifier one as an example. Why do I want the purifier? So the air will be clean. Why do I want clean air? So my home feels better. Why do I want my home to feel better? So I feel comfortable. Why comfort? Peace. Why peace? My gosh, how the air purifier was a symbol of Wholeness, of IT, of the Unspeakable. How you, my secret lover, the Jibaro and Jibarajera, the Seeker are also the Sought, my fascination is yours too. Oh, see how IT hides. We acquire one thing and then IT attaches itself to something else. I laugh so hard when I am awake to this hide and seek! In giggles, I want to scream in frustrated excitement, ‘just stop!’ But I can’t stop IT. Maybe because IT is too big to be in one thing. Maybe it’s because IT is not a thing at all. IT could not be a thing. A thing has edges. A thing begins somewhere and ends somewhere. A thing stands apart from another thing. Whatever this IT is has never presented an edge. IT could not be a pronoun, though I keep calling it “IT”. Some may call it “HIM”. IT could not be a noun because a noun would turn it into an object. IT could not even be a verb because IT is not a ‘what is happening’ alone. IT is not action. IT is not inaction. IT is not presence, if by presence we mean the opposite of absence. IT is not silence, because noise does not disturb it. IT is not stillness, because movement does not leave it. Oh, the Zen Buddhists would call IT emptiness, the Christian mystics would call IT fullness. Oh, what a sneaky sneaky little Sneaker. IT is not emptiness, because everything appears IN IT. IT is not fullness, because nothing has been added. IT is not oneness, because even “one” still has the possibility of two. Oh, don’t even say IT is God. IT cannot be God if by God we are talking of a being somewhere else watching all this happen. IT is not consciousness, if consciousness becomes another concept I carry around in my head. IT is not love even though love seems to come unbearably close. Maybe a sort of manifestation of IT. IT is not mystery, though mystery is one of the words I use for approaching IT. Every single word places a fence around what has no boundary. You see why that’s a problem? How can we solve this though? Okay, let me try this: What do you call what becomes the lover and the beloved, then aches across the imagined distance between them? What do you call what becomes the seeker, the seeking and the thing sought?What do you call what becomes the question and then spends a lifetime searching for its own answer? And even sets up panels as Richard Dwakins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris against all the concept warping apologetics? What do you call what opens its eyes as a newborn baby, forgets itself in a name, gathers a history, falls in love, gets frightened of a job loss, builds a life, loses pieces of itself, grows older, complains of backache from sleeping on the wrong side of the bed, and one evening sometime soon, looks at a sunset and becomes quiet for reasons it cannot explain? Tell me! Find the words. I will wait! Really, tell me, what do you call what becomes billions of faces without becoming divided? What do you call what looks through my eyes and yours without belonging to either of us? What do you call what becomes the wave without ever ceasing to be the sea? Okay, those are even too easy questions to answer. What is incredibly difficult to answer is how IT is only THIS VERY THING THAT’S EXPERIENCED AND EXPERIENCING. IT is the matcha, the movement of the hands, the baby crying, the prayer itself, the doubt, the heartbreak, the search for my airpurifier. Nothing whatsoever needs to be peeled away to reveal it. There is no like hidden chamber behind this very ordinary life that somehow the veil of the sacred will then so magically be lifted. Maybe that’s why I miss it all the time. We sometimes expect revelation to happen with the neon sign that says ‘revelation’. We wait for the ‘trumpet to sound’ so we can finally be ‘raptured’. When that delusion ends, we wait for enlightenment. Or we wait for God. And we wait for some kind of experience that will so suddenly finally remove all of our doubt. Shhhhh! Look! Don’t you see that the spoon is touching the bowl? The rain is gathering against the window and someone is laughiing so hard they can’ t breathe. Someone is whispering, “Please stay.” Someone else is saying, “I have to go.” And this IT, whatever this IT is, refuses none of it. IT becomes none of IT because becoming would imply that IT was something else before. IT contains none of it because there is no container separate from what appears. IT hides in everything. No. That is not quite right either. To hide, there must be somewhere else to hide. Maybe IT does not hide in everything. Maybe everything is how it shows itself. No wonder, no freaking wonder, my heartbreak doesn’t conceal IT, the Seeker was never even on the way to finding IT, the baby could NEVER reach toward IT. There has only ever been this strange, intimate, unnameable fact. What poetry! I remember here a passage in the Christian gospels where Jesus said to the disciples, “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. Then the righteous will answer him, ‘when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ Before I called it life, or God, or Consciousness, or Love, or Me, the Self(and quickly preface a ‘capital S’ for Self), or King before I called it anything, IT was all there is. And all of these are just too many words for NOTHING. I have not been writing as frequently as I thought I would. At this time, Life has called me to be more present with other things. But if you’re new here, Contemplative Currents is to be a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you’d like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are (https://a.co/d/03uHbYI), is enough. I’m grateful for your support in whatever capacity. Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com (https://seyekuyinu.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

2. 

   17 Sept 2026

   On uncertainty, our addiction to solid ground, and what remains when even ‘God’ is no longer an answer

   In 2017, I jumped out of a plane. I won’t be doing that again. What I remember most clearly about the beginning of the jump was my incessant need to grab onto something. Anything! My hands kept searching for something to hold, soemthing that would promise me stability and then right before I jumped, I remember gripping the doorframe of the plane so freaking tightly that my legs, now dangled 10,000 feet above the ground, felt numb. Every instinct in me was screaming HOLD ON! This, minus the constant under-my-breath chants of ‘why the f**k did i sign up for this’. I also remember wanting to make absolutely sure that the tandem instructor behind me was properly secured. I wanted to feel the harness connecting us. I wanted those straps to be tight. I wanted the tightness to be so evident that I could hear his own heartbeat. I wanted to know, beyond doubt, that there was something holding me to this person who presumably knew how to fall out of the sky without dying. I mean, Security! Today, I still recognize that instinct within me. Whenever the structures beneath my feet begin to shift, I reach for something to hold on to. I reach for an explanation, a person, a plan, a philosophy, God. Something. Anything! Anything that tells me where the ground is, so I can be held. And the thing is, this would have been unremarkable except for the one uncomfortable fact: there is no damn ground that I know of that has ever promised to remain where I found it. And we know it. You know it! You know people who have died, you see how our bodies change, how relationships change, how governments change. Or even how our beliefs change. The person you were ten years ago believed things with complete sincerity that the person reading this no longer believes. Right? There were things you once feared that never happened and there were things you never thought to fear that did happen. You have been wrong about people. Wrong about yourself. Wrong about what would make you happy. Sometimes beautifully wrong. And still, we keep reaching for certainty. And I know why! Do you know why? It’s because uncertainty feels like jumping out of a plane!To be fair, ‘ground’ is useful and it has its utility! Those straps on the tandem instructor were useful on my jump. Our plans are useful too. A belief that gets you out of bed on a Tuesday when nothing else will is useful. See, a person with a broken leg needs a crutch. I am not bashing crutches. Psychological ground is not the problem. The problem is when we forget that we built this ground. When the crutch becomes the leg, when I start to believe the ground was always there, promised to me, mine, then there’s a problem. We want to know. I want to know. Like, when will I finally become rich? Or, did I make the right decisions? Is this the right path? And when certainty fails us, many of us who try to cultivate a life rooted in spirituality, reach for a deeper certainty. We start to use phrases like “God’s got me.” Or “Everything happens for a reason”. Or even “The universe is unfolding exactly as it should.” or “All things work together for good.” But is it? Is it really? I even sometimes use the phrase “awarness is untouched by experience.” Yes, I have written that here on my Substack several times. Lately I have become interested in what happens if I refuse to stop there. And I am not saying any of these phrases and positions are false. I do not know they are false(because once again, nothing is certain). But I have notied what the mind sometimes does with these positions and statements. It turns them into a new type of ground and then suddenly, the spiritual life, which was supposed to free us from our need to control reality becomes another way to control reality. What if I surrender my need for certainty, and then surrender my certainty about surrender? I know I’m going meta here, but maybe we could treat that as a contemplative prompt also. What if I trust the Universe or God without turning God into my explanation for what happens next? What if “God’s got me” does not mean I know what being held will look like? Don’t we all know that being held might even still include loss. It could still include incredible pain. Like, what are we talking about? It could still include incredible disappointment. Being held might include years in which I cannot see the holding at all. And if my idea of God requires life to unfold in a particular way, perhaps I am still negotiating with life. Perhaps I have said, “I surrender,” while sneakily slipping the universe a list of acceptable outcomes. And it’s laughable, isn’t it? How the ego will apparently attend all the retreats, do all the fasting and praying, quote Eckhart Tolle, Neville Goddard and all the favorite spiritual teacher. It will will surrender everything and then use surrender to make sure everything is going to be okay. Oh, we persistent creatures! The incredible paradox is this: if I become comfortable with uncertainty, then uncertainty has become another kind of certainty. I know! I know! I know this feels like an attempt to split hairs but hear me out. But let’s check this out: Look at me! I know how to live without knowing. I have mastered mystery! Ah! And there we go again, that’s another holding on to something. Perhaps uncertainty is not something we are supposed to become comfortable with. Perhaps there is no final psychological position from which life stops frightening us. Perhaps, there’s no enlightened posture from which change stops hurting, no philosophy that turns the unknown into the known. Perhaps uncertainty gets to remain uncertain. Even our relationship with it. Yes, you read that right, even our relationship with uncertainty. Some mornings, I will meet it with openness. Other mornings I will grip the side of the plane. And both are okay. Both belong! Perhaps the only practice is the capacity to remain available. You see, there is a temptation in spiritual spaces to explain mystery too quickly. Like for instance, when something terrible happens, we say it’s God’s plan. When someone dies, we say they are in a better place. When a door of opportunity closes, we say another will open. But maybe we keep it at PERHAPS. I am not dismissing any of those possibilities. I am questioning our urgency to know. Why must the mystery immediately become a message? Why must pain immediately come with some deep meaning? Why must uncertainty immediately be converted into trust? Why are we so uncomfortable allowing the unanswered thing to remain unanswered? Could it be because an unanswered life requires something different from us? OUR DAMN ATTENTION? If I already know what something means, I will stop looking. If I already know where God is, I will stop listening. If I already know how my life is supposed to unfold, everything that contradicts the plan becomes an interruption. But if I do not know? Then suddenly I have to look, I have to listen, I have to be here. What we forget so often is that wonder does not begin with an answer. Wonder begins when the answer is totally, totally absent and, for the time being, we suspend the need to give langugage to it. That is the actual formular for wonder(feel free to quote me and attribute my name on this one). The first time I saw the mountains I just stared in sheer wonder. I can image how it is, for a child to see the moon for the first time. I bet in that time, there is just this enormous luminous thing hanging in the darkness, right before the child says ‘Mommy, what is that?’. So, let us Look. That just might be one of the purest spiritual instructions, actually. Just look! Look. Looking doesn’t give us any form of certainty. We just look, because we are here. Look because this is happening. Look because, against all the damn odds that you will never be able to calculate, there is something rather than nothing and you have found yourself conscious inside of it. This this! Whatever this is! Our hunger for certainty has cost us our capacity for amazement. We explain away so so quickly. We call it God, destiny, ppurpose, trauma, calling, healing, whatever words we want. We place a word over the actual mystery mistaking the words we have for having understood it. For instance, the notion of ‘God’. The word “God” does not contain God. No wonder, Meister Eckhart, in his contemplations said, “I pray to God to rid me of God”. The word “love” does not explain what happens when someone looks at you and your entire inner world shifts. The word “death” does not tell us anything whatsoever about death. The word “consciousness” does not explain why there is an experience occurring right now from what seems like ‘behind the eyes’. We name things partly because language lets us live together. But naming is not knowing. Spiritual maturity is remembering the difference. I still use the word, “God”, I still talk about “Awareness”. I will keep saying it. Only I hold the words differently. More like a prayer. Not in the way I used to think about prayer which for most of my life was like a contract. A contract wants assurance. But a prayer says “I am here”. That’s all it is. Simple straightforward: prayer is presence.Faith, at its strangest and most alive, begins somewhere around there. It is not certainty about God, not certain about what God will do. Not certainty that everything will turn out according to some hidden architecture that will one day make perfect sense. In fact, maybe it just never wilL! Well, with all this rant over, I will say that I do not know what happens next, or why anything happens. I can say these: * I do not know whether every wound becomes wisdom. * I do not know whether every loss contains a gift. * I do not know whether life owes me an explanation. * I do not even know whether my ideas about surrender are another elaborate attempt to make myself safe. And even this, I do not know. Strangely, when I allow myself to reach that point without immediately building another philosophy underneath it, it’s pretty damn interesting what happens. Presence happens, I notice the room, I notice sounds outside the window. Oh, I notice a body. There’s movement in it! Oh my gosh, this is what it is to be PRESENT. I am left with all of curiosity that requires no explanation, answers or resolution. See, the thing here is, the concepts we hold about anything is super thin. For instance, the belief that "God's got me" is a sentence, and a sentence is about two inches deep. But the room you’re in, the sound outside the window, this breath going in and the one coming out? That is not two inches deep. That is so freaking bottomless. When I find myself trading the explanation for the thing itself, I do not lose God. I lose the word, and what is left is so much bigger than the word ever was. It turns out the concept was the small thing. The living IN REALITY was the large thing. I had them backwards. We almost always have them backwards. So, what is this? What will happen? Who am I without the answer? Who is God when I stop requiring God to explain the world? There is a kind of awe available only when I stop pretending I know what I am looking at. And this is exactly where I find myself now. Not learning how to conquer uncertainty. Not trying to become comfortable with it. Not replacing worldly certainty with spiritual certainty. I am just here noticing how quickly my hands reach for something when the door of the plane opens. They reached for the door this past weekend. Something happened that I did not think was possible. In fact, I still don’t have a shelf to put it on, so I watched myself go straight for the doorframe, grip it, explain it, make it make sense, quickly, before I could allow it to stay a strange experience(this is a story for another Long Walk). For now I will only say that my allegoric plane door opened, and I did the exact thing I’ve been ranting about: I gripped it. And so, sometimes, when I remember, I loosen my grip. I loosen it knowing full well that I may fall. I will fall. I have no final sentence about ‘God’ that makes the whole world safe again, and I have stopped waiting for one. I honestly think it’s lazy. Ultimately, it’s because for one terrifying and beautiful and unexplainable moment, I am here. It is so so freaking wild! I am here! I am! Wow! It is incredible to recognize the wildness of this recognition. Oh, the plane door is wide open. I do not know. I still do not know. And the sky, IT IS GYNORMOUS! Ah, You’d Love These Related Reading: Hey! If you’re new here and you missed any of the previous posts, I’m personally recommending these ones for you. This one, I wrote because of the recognition of this incredible mystery that we exist within. More modern philosophical conversations call it Consciousness. The ancients called it In Him. I say, I don’t freaking know but it’s apparent. I wrote this one to demonstrate the mechanism of suffering within us. The pull of want and don’t want. Oh, it is amazing to see how we experience these. How do we approach this visitor, fear, that comes visiting? Rumi says, let it. I echo the same thing in my own words. Same with the one below. I wrote this one at a time when I needed to go into solitude. I hope you enjoy these! I have not been writing as frequently as I thought I would. At this time, Life has called me to be more present with other things. But if you’re new here, Contemplative Currents is to be a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you’d like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are (https://a.co/d/03uHbYI), is enough. I’m grateful for your support in whatever capacity. Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com (https://seyekuyinu.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

3. 

   11 Sept 2026

   Where Does Attention Come From?

   I have been super inspired by the works of G.I Gurdjieff’s brought to my attention by Cynthia Bourgeault’s Wisdom School and recent book, Mystical Courage (https://www.amazon.com/Mystical-Courage-Commentaries-Contemplative-Exercises-ebook/dp/B095HKB2FP/ref=sr_1_4?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.b0gk_4hdn50tbzTcLH3pYNUdFOTTzynhVvygEnhj0GW2Fqh7sa69OvZdKKlWnd4Yr1tujD_WZeq-ccghZR3ZCw._TV-Yw2GAWXxnMXCwfbFDlS1wqhVQ-Bsma40fCfNK-s&dib_tag=se&qid=1789153640&refinements=p_lbr_one_browse-bin%3ACynthia+Bourgeault&s=digital-text&sr=1-4). Alongside it, Brian O'Connor's Awareness Games: Playing with Your Mind to Create Joy (https://www.amazon.com/Awareness-Games-Playing-Your-Create/dp/0692628630/) deserves mention: several of its exercises radically shifted my perception and helped me understand the true seed of contemplation (pun intended, with a nod to Thomas Merton's Seeds of Contemplation). The inspiration is part of what birthed this Contemplative Currents substack. For today, I’m pulling a very short exercise. To go deeper, I’d recommend listening to the audio version; I’ve paced it for ten minutes in total. If you have the time and space, wonderful. And please let me know how it lands when you try it. One thing I’d say to anyone new to these practices: a consistent practice opens you to a clarity in which the mind gives way to seeing with the heart. That seeing is often described as non-dual. I hesitate to call it a state, though, since it is the ground from which every state of mind arises. I offer this as I offer myself— a taster! I hope you enjoy this one. * So let’s start with you reading this entire post once and then come back again. For this first round, do absolutely nothing deliberately. I know! Don’t meditate or regulate your breath or try to become peaceful. Just do absolutely nothing! Only thing I ask is to notice the room. Now, pay attention to how everything you see is appearing effortlessly. Sounds, sensations, even your thoughts…they just pop in and pop out! And the weird thing is you’re not manufacturing any part of these. It’s just happening like that! Stay there for a bit. Stay! * Now find an actual object near you. Something simple that you can hold or at least see. Take a look at it and for the next copuple of minutes, don’t give it a name. If it’s a chair for instance, don’t see it as a chair. See its color, its shape, its texture, its light. Then with a slight internal tilt, I want you to imagine what it is before you knew what it is. If you never knew it was a chair(if the object is a chair), what would it be? See it for the first time. But don’t overanalyze and don’t actually come to a final answer. * Now if you can, close your eyes. Yes, I know, how can you read this with your eyes closed? Well, maybe listen to the audio :P Okay, close your eyes, listen for the most distant sound you can hear. Then now to the nearest. Then notice your breathing. Then your body. Then your thought. Now notice this amazing discovery: the distant sound, the breath, your body, your thought all appear in the same place. In an actual experience. Now, I want you to notice, “Where exactly is the boundary between me and what is appearing?” Okay, don’t philosophize. Just notice. * Now, you can open your eyes. I want us to perform another tiny experiment. Notice you are here. Right? Listen to the words ‘I am here’. Remove ‘here’. That remains “I am”. Hold it! Now remove “am”. Don’t replace it with another word. Stay here for a bit. * Now, we are halfway done. Let’s take it another angle. Notice how you thought I was creating an experience for you. Notice again how I have produced no experience whatsoever. I supplied words. Your mind produced expectations, your body produced sensations. The room supplied the sounds, your memory somehow choked up meanings, your attention selected objects. And all of these happened without your consent. It then seems there has been a PRESENTNESS that existed before the outline of experience. What is that, that is present? Sit with it. * Now we will change directions completely. If you can, stand up. Come on! Just do it! Yes, I know you are still wondering if I’m talking to you. Yes, you! Stand up! :) For the next minute, become unreasonable. Shake your arms, move your hsoulders, dance really badly, make one ridiculous facial expression. See, I know you’re reading this alone so do it! And if someone is there, I guess this is where they will begin to question your sanity. But do it! SERIOUSLY! * Now, stop. Feel what remains in the body. Notice your heart rate, your breathing, the warmth, the tingling, whatever is present. Now, if you can, say this out “This is what being alive feels like right now.” Not what life should feel like. This! Yes, this this. * NOw, feel free to sit down. There is something else I want you to notice. You may have spent years asking profound questions. Yes, I know. If you read this, you have asked these questions or questions around these topics: Awareness. Suffering. God. Self. Wholeness. Love. Surrender. For the next minute, abandon every one of them. Ask instead: “What question is my life asking me right now?” Do not search for any type of impressive answer. Just stay noticing the noticing. If something comes, fine. If nothing, fine. * Now let’s add an interesting part. This one is imaginative but please indulge. Think of yourself at ten years old. Do not analyze. THis is a light imaginative exercise. Let the ‘you’ at 10 years old stand in front of you. At this point, he(I will use this pronoun for now) doesn’t know your career, accomplishments, disappointments, what you’ve worked with or what worked out. He only knows he became you. Look at him/her. Then tell him one thing you learned about being alive that nobody had taught him yet. Say it out loud. Give him the answer you wish someone had given you. Wait with him in this. * Now, let the child disappear. Let the questions you had disappear and look around your room again. Nothing spectacular needs to happen. Here is the surprising part about this exercise that you can pay subtle attention to. You exercised the pulling and directing of sight, hearing, feeling, imagination, thought and its interpretative utility. Notice in all of this, that attention moved into the object being directed. Where does attention come from? Well, welcome back from the silence, Seye. I have not been writing as frequently as I thought I would. At this time, Life has called me to be more present with other things. But if you’re new here, Contemplative Currents is to be a free (bi-weekly) newsletter that aims to shed light into our daily experiences as opportunities for contemplation of this glorious Mystery. If you’d like to support my work, please consider subscribing and/or sharing this free Substack. If you’re looking to monetarily support, buying my book, This Glorious Dance: Thoughts & Contemplations About Who We Are (https://a.co/d/03uHbYI), is enough. I’m grateful for your support in whatever capacity. Thanks for reading Contemplative Currents! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit seyekuyinu.substack.com (https://seyekuyinu.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

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