With this technique, you focus on what you see in front of you. In other words, you're going to be "meditating" or "practicing mindfulness" with eyes wide open.
You're just working with your awareness. You're training your awareness on one thing and one thing alone.
Steps to Present Sense Mindfulness
The first step is to practice the breathing patterns that you learned in chapter 6. Focus on your breathing until you achieve a sense of relaxation. You do this with your eyes wide open.
You can do this in a room with no other people, but there are objects in the room. You do this with your eyes open. Ideally, you shouldn't do this in any place where there are loud noises or music.
Next, you're going to focus on an object in front of you. It can be a tree, a park bench, it can be a house. It doesn't really matter. What's important is that you put all your focus on that one item alone.
The key is to look at that item. You're not out to enjoy it, you're not out to judge it, you're definitely not out to analyze it. Instead, you're just looking at it. The key here is to see clearly. You're going to basically be looking at all the details.
It's not like you're searching for something. Instead, your job is to just take it all in. It is kind of like taking a very thorough, high resolution snapshot of that item that you've chosen to look at.
Next, once you have determined that you've seen all there is to see about the object, the next step is to pay attention to what that object would smell like, taste like, feel like in terms of texture, and what would it sound like. In other words, you sense it in 3-dimensions. You take it in with all your senses. This enables you to lose your focus on everything else.
When you do this, your mind is being filled with the stimuli of that object and that object alone. You have no space left for stuff you have to worry about at the office. You have no mental resources left for that time when your best friend stabbed you in the back or did something that made you hold a grudge for a long time.
All that stuff gets pushed out. Instead, you're just cramming all the sensory data that you are willfully taking in based on that object that you have chosen in front of you. This enables you to lose focus on everything else and focus on that thing in front of you. This enables you to reset how you normally focus on things in your life.
The reason why you're so stressed out is because you're hanging on for dear life onto so many different things, and they layer on top of each other. And at the end of the day, all this willpower and this mental energy is just basically wasted because you're hanging on to so much stuff.
When you practice this meditative technique, you push a reboot button for your mind and let go of all that stuff that you're clinging to. And instead, you just fill it with this stuff that you take in, and that you flush out.
Eventually, this leads to mental hygiene because you will develop the mental discipline to zero in on an issue or a set of data for however long it takes to produce; let’s say at work or in an argument or even dealing with a relationship, and then let go.
