Version 1: Listening to a Noisy World.
Level 1: Started off this meditation while taking a break at office. Before closing my eyes I realised I was aware of colleagues talking behind me, an extremely loud printer right in front of me, the creaking of un-greased rubber wheels of the office chairs while they were moved around and the occasional phone ringing. All the noises were sporadic and so I found it quite easy to get momentarily distracted by loud noises (especially the industrial grade printer in front of me).
After closing my eyes and starting to look out for the noises I had not been aware of earlier, I noticed that I could hear a lot more sounds from the other end of the floor; much more than I thought possible.
I began the meditation by focussing on sounds directly in front of me, which included the loud printer but also the softer hum of a photocopier and the rustling of papers and plastic. Moving anti-clockwise, I began noticing the sounds of keys being pressed, numbers being dialed, people talking in hushed voices, some footsteps. While turning my attention to the noises coming from the left, the printer ahead of me burst to life again, distracting me, but when the its noise died down, I noticed that I could hear people talking in to phones all the other way at the end of the floor. Alot of hushed discussions, some laughter, some voices on speakerphone and some telephones ringing. I sit in the right hand corner of my office so its natural that most of the action would come from my left. I slowly began turning my attention to the noises coming from behind me - not much there - the creak of some wheels, keyboards being pressed and colleagues talking sporadically. To my right - I couldn't hear a thing cuz I sit next to the wall.
All in all, I'm surprised how many sounds I could hear coming from the other end of the office. I would never have considered the floor to be very noisy but I guess if you pay enough attention, you can realise just how much is actually going on around you.
Level 2: Because I did this meditation in office, where 90% of the noises are erratic, I figured I would need a different way to go about this exercise. I took out my headphones and went on to youtube to find songs that are fairly long and build up slowly using many different instruments. (if anyone is interested, i used the song 'The Sixth Revelation' by Shpongle). I listened to the song once using the level 1 exercise to get an idea of how many different sounds were there - I counted in excess of 12 sounds/instrument riffs, with a maximum of about 10 different layers to the song at its peak.
So I started listening to the song focusing on the level 2 meditation this time, the song starts off with 3 layers, dropping to 2 before picking up again. I find that awareness of 3 layers is attainable regardless of my mental state. But it gets REALLY hard when I try to go for 4 and 5 layer awareness. 4 layers is manageable if I concentrate a little but it begins to drain me mentally. 5 layers was very very hard and I could not hold it for too long before realising that I had lost awareness of one layer of the song (usually after a period of about 1-1.5 mins). One thing I noticed towards the end of my practice was that mental disposition affected the number of layers I could achieve awareness of. I'm not sure I can explain this well in words, but i'll try.. it seemed to me that 'reaching out' for awareness of an additional layer caused me to lose awareness of a previous layer; so the best strategy would be to let the awareness 'come to you'. Only when I followed that maxim was I able to hold awareness of 5 layers.
Therefore my suggested meditation for next time: 'Let the awareness come to you' (for lack of better words). Also, I intend to try the level 2 meditation in a less controlled environment i.e. the real world, not a song. If that is too difficult, given the erratic nature of the sounds, I'm going to try and combine level 1 and 2 by being aware of every sound coming from one area of my surroundings while simply being aware that sounds are originating from other areas. Hopefully that would stop my brain from overloading!
P.S. Sorry for that mega huge post!! I'll try and keep it more concise next time...
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