Would you mind indulging me for just a second? Take a breath, close your eyes and listen. Listen to the street, footsteps on the pavement, glasses clinking, your own inhalation, anything that is around you. Listen and be still. Now, feel your hands and drop into your body. Without your sight, what bubbles up for you? What is it like to have 360 degrees of stimulus? How is the energy behind you different from that in front of you? After a few minutes, open your eyes and see what is surprising and how quickly the mind reacts to vision. How quickly do you make stories out of the objects that you see? While the above exercise may seem overplayed, it is one I cherish and do routinely. Not only is it a great meditation but it makes one painfully aware of how ocularcentric our bodies and minds have become. It’s probably no surprise to you when I say that we live in a visual culture. We rely immensely on the objects we can see for reason, and clarity. Without them, the world could seem chaotic or overwhelming. Especially in western cultures, we ground
