Unconventional philosopher talks about how to make life (and travel) more mindful.
Jumping for joy / Photo Gene
Let’s say you have 20 minutes. You sit down in the middle of a room and tune into the silence. You’re aware of the slightest sounds.
Then…you start speaking your first name out loud.
You play with the different sounds of the word that is your name. Lengthen the vowels. Stress the syllables. Maybe even imagine the word as if it hovers in the air in front of you.
After a while, you might get the feeling you are being “called.” Who is doing the calling? A very existential question. Your voice begins to appear as an “other,” almost a double. Who is this person, you ask?
This is the first experiment that philosopher Roger-Pol Droit describes in his book: Astonish Yourself: 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life
I recently came across an article on Droit, written by Richard Handler, exploring his unconvential ways of stepping outside the mundane.
As a philosopher, Droit is very much under the influence of Eastern philosophy. His intention is to “provoke tiny moments of awareness.” These tiny moments can take a few minutes, a few hours or the rest of your life.
Other experiments mentioned in the article: Peel an apple in your head. Imagine your imminent death. Telephone someone at random. Try to feel eternal. Watch somebody sleeping. Shower with your eyes closed. Become music. Try to measure experience.
All these tasks are meant to provoke a change in the way you see reality.
In fact, the life that we see before us is so obvious, so seemingly boring, that it escapes comprehension almost all the time. That’s the point of the increasing emphasis on what is often called mindfulness, which is sifting through our culture, be it in our gyms and yoga studios, or in psychological journals and certain TV cop shows.
As a traveler, you may think that you’re already challenging your reality. Anytime you step into a new culture, you’re forced to re-evaluate yourself, to hone your awareness.
But as any meditator knows, being mindful is hard work. Thoughts continue to invade your psyche whether you want them to or not. Says Handler:
Paying attention to what’s in front of us takes patience and fortitude. Just try counting to 10, or eating a single raisin, and see if you don’t get distracted by your fitful “monkey mind.”
The good news? It get’s easier with practice.
Similarly, if you were to attempt all 101 of Droit’s experiments in his book, I suspect stepping outside of the mundane would become second nature.
What other ways of experimental travel have you tried? Share your thoughts in the comments!
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4 Comments... join the discussion!
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@Carlo – definitely the pace feels sped up. But I suppose that’s not the only issue. When the pace is too quick, people tend to make judgements without questioning or considering the impact of their decisions on themselves and others.
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I totally agree that it’s time to slow down. Sometimes I feel that I’m on Super Warped Speed. It’s no wonder that I’ve made some major mistakes. I working on patience; it’s not a virtue for me (right now). I’m definitely going to do my best to slow down and be in the present moment or the now as Eckhart Tolle says in his book A New Earth. Perhaps I’ll read his other book The Power of Now since I have a tendency to be and plan for the future. This is not a bad thing, but sometimes I feel as if life is passing me by and that I’m living it to my fullest. Time to change that. I’ll do what I have to do to accomplish this feat.
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Ah yes, the Power of Now…I try to pick it back up every couple of months and re-read a just a section, because as you guys have already noted, we just continue to move faster and faster everyday (how many websites can I look at in one day?).
So we need a constant reminder to slow down, be present, and understand that to a certain extent, all that goes on out there is illusion–what is important is what is inside of you, and staying stable within that as the craziness flies around outside of us. Sounds like “Astonish Yourself” can be helpful in this by forcing you to focus on the present by doing what we think of as typically mundane things in a different way.
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