Observance: Listening to the language of your soul

One of the most powerful resources we have on our journey towards becoming conscious and living a soul-led life, lives in our capacity to notice and really see what is happening before us. To be mindful. When we’re able to do that, we begin to have agency over our lives through our choices and actions. What we do, what we say, who we spend time with, how we spend our time doing, becomes one of choice, based on inner guidance rather than habit, reactivity, and externally assumed agendas.

Over the last couple of decades in particular, understanding mindfulness, as a state, and a practice has come into massive popularity in the Western culture. Tara Brach, Jack Kornfield, Thich Nhat Hanh, are only a few of the wonderful teachers of mindfulness who offer great wisdom and care here. However as the word ‘mindfulness’ itself has made its way into daily life, I feel it’s lost its power and meaning. The commodification of what is essentially a spiritual practice has made it diluted and twisted and left me both dull and resistant not to the practice, but to the word itself. So to maintain its true essence, I’ve preferred to examine the experience of being mindful and attentive through the lens of OBSERVANCE.

I’m very conscious that this may just be nit-picking, that this is merely a case of tomayto - tomarto. However, when Thomas Moore speaks of observance, he describes it as a way of seeing based in ritual, and to mean a practice to “watch out for … to keep and honor”, I appreciate the unique, poetic and sacred quality that viewing our experiences from this vantage takes.

Observance in this sense is core to ensuring our ordinary lives are lived soulfully not just consciously, and can bring us into deeper connection with our inner and outer experiences. When we can be in all of our experiences with this attitude of observance – the challenging ones, the pleasurable ones, and the mundane moments of daily living, without pushing or insisting on immediate answers, our lives have the potential for mean more.

Observance is therefore the quality of soulful attention we place on those experiences.

This means your attentive, mindfulness, meditative practices remain, but deepen undramatically to be rooted in the sacred, symbolic, and soulful.

In a sense this conversation is a pre-cursor to, or at least a parallel conversation to an earlier blog, The Passage, where I talk about going through challenging experiences to be transformed by it. Here, the act of being in observance of the experience is what facilitates the deeper enquiry and the passage through it. Being in observance also gives you a hint for which direction to go, as old wounds heal and you need to be creatively guidance toward the new way to move into your world.

In a moment I’ll offer simple and progressive examples that illustrate how we might begin to practice observance, but before that here are some overarching tips  to hold in mind as you practice and experiment.

Deepening into Observance

For my own practice, the essential difference between being mindful in the commonly understood sense, and being in observance is that not only do we see and sense with our 5 senses, but with also with our inner sense, our inner eyes, our intuition as well as our ears that are tuned to deep inner listening. It is through this lens we can get to know the language of our soul.

I can offer an image of having ‘eyes within your heart …, or your solar plexus or … deep inside your brain’ to help connect to this different way of seeing. Or the quality of attentive and patient listening that learns to distinguish your soul’s voice from the usual chatter. You may develop your way of imagining this soul sense. But however you come to it, being open to the symbolic and imaginative is key.

And then, as you become practiced, you begin to drop in soul inquiry that asks some of the questions (e.g. as outlined in the Passage), such as “What can the thing/situation/emotion I’m observing tell me?”, “What is being revealed to me in this moment?” And then continue to pay attention in the same way described above. Not just to what is being revealed to you in your external world, but viewing this symbolically through soul’s eye, your inner imaginings, inner listening, and being open to what arises, no matter how random, weird, or incongruous the message may seem.

Try these simple traditional contemplative practices with the additional lens of observance from soul.

Noticing:

Tracking and scanning to notice and name your experience through your senses.

This implies that you notice and observe, with the practice of not getting caught up and drawn into the experience. And if you do get hooked in, you notice that too!

Begin by, noticing and naming what you see, hear, smell, taste, and feel on your skin.

Notice and name what is happening in your immediate environment.

Note and name your inner experiences including the sensations of your body, the quality of your breath, the emotional experience, the quality, flavour of your thoughts, your energetic experience.

Now, practice observance …. inner viewing, inner listening, through your inner senses to explore your soul vision. Notice and name what arises

Savouring:

I’m currently completing Polyvagal training, and a lovely practice to help learn and integrate the experience of being in safety and connection (ventral vagal) is savouring; a very brief, 20-30 second (2-3 breath) dip into what you’re noticing.

Stretching the noticing out.

By nature this relates to bringing to mind a pleasant image of when you’ve experience equanimity. Something like cuddling with a beloved pet, a magical moment in nature, being on stage and dancing,  the moment you laid eyes on your newborn …. and spending those seconds re-experiencing that in your body-mind. Rick Hanson similarly talks about ‘taking in the good’ as a way to orient your system to what is working in the moment (rather than recalling a moment).

Experiment with stretching the noticing out … first through your everyday senses, then in observance of what impressions and images arises when you allow you inner senses to savour as well.

Deepening

While noticing and savouring are practices for when you’re fully awake and move consciously through your day, observance helps take still practices like mindfulness, meditation, and daydreaming into greater depth of imagination and soul.

As the mind goes quiet, allow your self to drop lower, and deeper inside yourself. Take your time. Freely explore the images, impressions, glimmers of soul awareness that rise up. As these practices can take you into deeper states of consciousness, be sure to set a timer, and protect your physical and energetic space to ensure you wont be disturbed and startled.

Make a habit of writing down or drawing or talking through your experiences afterward, to savour the words or images, else they can quickly dissipate into ether.

Here as with all the practices of soulful observance, don’t worry too much about making sense of anything, or at least resist immediately trying to understand ”why”.

Remember, the soul’s language doest not answer things in direct overt way. Allow the impressions, images and deeper insights to rest in your awareness. And invite the question into the image, and once more … observe.