Some suitable place marker will come in handy, since you'll be asked to put the workbook aside to do the exercises. You will also need a glass of water, and a pen and paper.

After completing the first set of exercises, please take a break. There is a review section that can be read at a later time, to jog your memory about the experiences you have already practiced before you go on to the second set. That set is to be done on the following day, or a later day during the week. These pauses in the process are designed to help you learn.

Since the purpose of these exercises is to help you to focus without distractions on experiences with your five senses, it is best if there are no unnecessary distractions around. Usually, not having any audio speakers on at the time will suffice in this regard. You can think of this as making your living quarters into a "private monastery" for awhile, or a "gymnasium." (When people work on the awareness game with me in person, I call the room "the gym.")

I would also suggest explaining what you are doing to any others who may live there with you. See if you can arrange to have the space free of disturbances for all these exercises.

These exercises are designed to tune-up your ability to experience life directly with your five senses. When doing them, let your thinking be as quiet as possible. The less you are thinking about these exercises while you are doing them, the more you can just tune-in to the raw sensory experiences of them. The exercises are a method for catching on to knowing by direct experience of the senses alone.

During the next few minutes, I'd like to address what you have in your field of vision there, and then we will go on to explorations with the other natural senses.

As you have been reading along here, page after page, the focus of your vision has been engaged with the words printed on these pages, and your attention has been mainly occupied with the meanings of these words. In contrast with this, I'd like you to notice what you can also see, without moving your head, beyond this page of the book--straight ahead at the far end of the room that is before you, the way you are facing now (or, beneath the book, if it is flat).

I expect you can acknowledge that that wall, that window, that surface, or whatever is over there beyond this book, is also vaguely in your field of vision. It is vaguely in the background when you are reading here. In fact, you can shuttle back and forth a few times from reading here to focusing over there, and see what I mean.

When you look at the far perspective, then this page becomes vaguely in the background of your field of vision. When you look at this page, the far perspective becomes vaguely in the background of your field of vision. Shuttle again, please, if you need to, to verify this.

When you focus on one thing, the other things move into the background. So while you are involved in reading, many other things are out there around you in your field of vision, only they are out of focus.

And that's fine. I am only pointing a few things out. While you are reading, paying attention to the meanings of words, it is practical and comfortable to let the rest of the world be out of focus. In just the same way, what you can presently see of your own body there is probably also out of focus. That's okay, too, but, for the fun of it, I'd like to point out that you can probably actually see your nose, eyebrows, and cheeks, as well as your arms, and legs--all in the background. Please check it out.

Obviously, you can see these visible parts of your body at almost any hour of the day. But we do not ordinarily pay any attention to seeing them (unless we are standing before a mirror). These constantly visible parts of the body are not ordinarily in focus in your field of vision. And that's fine, too. These are just observations.

Now, I'd like to ask you to notice what you can actually see (in addition to the meanings of the words) of this book page right here before your eyes. Please look at this page, itself, very closely for fifteen seconds, and see it, in clear detail.

If you shift your focus from "meanings" to "obvious visible reality," you can see the molecules of the paper, itself, taking shape in fibers, and the color and texture, and the darkness of the print. You can see the letters that make up the words whose meanings you have been reading. You can see the shape of each letter, the style of the type font. You may be able to see the reflection of light on the page, or shadow. You see simple actual details of the page that were "invisible" a short while ago in the unfocused background. Seeing these details is normally unnecessary for understanding the meanings in a book. They are not ordinarily tuned in. And that is all right.

But they can be tuned in. That is what I wish you to see at this point. I'd like for you to "get" the experience that the specific details here, and around, and over there in your field of vision that are blurry in the background can be brought to the foreground into focus.

And, even with details as close as these--right here before your eyes--the specific details in your field of vision can be out of focus. I expect you can observe that as a fact.

In the ordinary state of human consciousness--although absolutely expedient, to be sure--most of our field of vision is usually out of focus in this way. And we usually go around preoccupied with some small part of the field, forgetting about all the rest.

Let's go back now to your body there, and explore within your body with your sense of touch. Try to be patient and stay with each of these exercises for a legitimate ten or fifteen seconds from now on, so you can really experience them clearly. Right now (whether in shoes or not), either your feet are on the ground (or the surface), or they aren't. You can feel that from within with your sense of touch .

It's very subtle, yet the contact is barely perceptible if you intentionally focus on it. It's okay to wiggle your feet to bring it into high relief if you had any difficulty feeling that.

That is tangible, is it not? You can tell with your sense of touch if your feet are on the ground or not.

Your body is also being held down to the surface by gravity. Some of this can usually be felt in the feet. If you are sitting down or reclining, you can feel other places in your body where it is being held down to the surface by gravity.

Again, these simple experiences are within your field of sensing. You can choose (as in doing these exercises) to be in touch with them. And yet they are ordinarily tuned out. If both your feet are on the ground (or any surface), lift one of them up so that you can feel the perceptible difference between the two of them.

I hope that is clear. If you are sitting, please feel that you are sitting, in your seat

In these exercises, when you bring something that is not in focus into focus on purpose in this way, it is "an awareness" of it. An awareness is any time that you know something, in focus, directly, by shifting it from background to foreground with the intentional use of one of your senses.

Feeling if your feet are on the ground or they aren't is a model for every other exercise in this book, as we go on exploring all aspects of the visible, audible, smellable, tasteable, and feelable world that we are living in. It is one small integer of the totality of life that can be brought into light in your experience--an integer of "objective consciousness."

This and every other exercise that is presented here ought to face your own test of reality. Is it simple? Is it obvious? Is it apparent when examined directly by your own ordinary senses?

When an experience is simple, obvious, and apparent, there is nothing that has to be believed. (Believing means you don't know.)

The whole idea of the awareness game is to teach you to trust and verify your own direct experiences in this way. The rest of the training, therefor, does not become a long list of conceptual ideas about life that are supposed to be believed, but rather a collection of simple awarenesses that you will have experienced and verified or not on your own, first hand. Either your feet are on the ground, or they aren't. (Even all the examinations of human behavior that follow in Part Two, are posed in that same way. Either the behavior we are studying is there, or it isn't.) Your own experience will tell.

Now, if it is comfortable to do so, please lift both feet off the surface and feel what that feels like with your sense of touch.

Silly, yeah? It's just another awareness. But I hope you can see that, with your sense of touch, you can definitely feel if your feet are on the ground or they aren't. It's a softer feeling if a foot is in the space. And you can actually feel yourself being held down by gravity. It is obvious and apparent as a direct experience.

During the course of the day, these basic configurations of your body are going on as regularly as your breathing. And, like the breathing, they are not ordinarily in focus in your sense of touch. They occur "in shadows," one might say--perceivable, yet unperceived. Yet, they can be perceived. You can have momentary awarenesses of them.

Some athletic arts trainers call getting in touch with this experience of feeling one's body being held down by gravity "being grounded." One can make actual contact with the ground being there. One can feel the tangible contact with being on the ground. It's a good reminder, when remembered, to get the mind cleared out, and get in focus. (And it actually turns out that one cannot so easily trip, or misstep, or be pushed over by an opponent in this posture.)

[As simple as this is, remembering during the day to feel being grounded, and to have grounded footfalls as you walk, is a good little exercise to practice. In the ordinary state of human consciousness, lost in our thoughts, distracted by our internal processes, it is like we are helium balloons floating through the room, drifting around without being in focus wherever the breezes of events blow us. At such times, making tangible contact with the ground this way can be a steadying influence. It can provide a person with "an anchor" that enables them to feel rooted and coherent. (When one remembers, it is a kind of "wake up" or "alarm clock," as Gurdjieff called such reminders.)

Try it again, please, if you'd like. Feel the contact of your body with the ground. See if you can feel this steadying "rootedness."

Let's turn now, for awhile, to the sense of hearing. Right now, as you are reading here, you are living in a sea of sounds. Please put this workbook aside for a minute, and listen closely to each sound that you can hear in the sea of sounds around you.

If you were lucky during the course of a minute, you may have heard a plane fly over, or a car drive by, or children playing in a neighbor's yard calling out, a dog barking, a bird, a curtain blowing in the wind, or other such serendipitous sounds as may have come from the world outside where you are. Meanwhile, you may have noticed some sounds within your living quarters that happen intermittantly around you without usually being noticed. You may have noticed some sounds of your own making, breathing, moving, touching something.

Every sound you actually hear like this is another example of "an awareness." Doing the sea of sounds exercise brings interesting sounds out of the shadows, so to speak. This "brightens up" the environment in an auditory sense. It evokes the arena of life around us in high relief. It brings a person more "in tune with" the true nature of reality. It gives another glimpse of how humans are not ordinarily in touch with the full richness of life.

If you actually listened to all the sounds that are sounding intermittantly around you there for a whole minute, you have done something very unusual. Usually people only hear sounds that stand out for them at any given time, such sounds as we are attracted to in the moment--a loud sound, for instance, or what another person says, or whatever sound we are preoccupied with. Even a radio can be "tuned out," while we are listening to someone in the room speaking (or are otherwise preoccupied). Or a person can tune out another person's voice while listening to the radio. Most audible sounds are not clearly heard because of our limited focus in these ways. It is very rare for a person to pause and pay close attention to all the sounds that are audible, or to listen precisely to any of them. If we are hearing at all, we usually hear one thing that stands out, and all the rest of the sea of sounds is out of focus, blurred in the background.

Perhaps, if you heard a car, or some kids, or a plane outside, or some interesting sound indoors, you can picture yourself-- before you reached this exercise- -sitting there reading along while such sounds were regularly going on without you.

Do you see what I mean? The sea of sounds is always going on "without you." And this, over-all, is what I wish you could catch-on to here: a clear view of you sitting there while sights and touches and sounds are going on and on without you.

They are "in a realm of shadows," and you have the capacity to bring them "into light."

You may have heard a somewhat awesome silence during the exercise, punctuated only here and there by sounds. There may have been so few sounds that it tried your patience to do the whole exercise. In different places, and at different times during the day, the sea of sounds around a given person changes very greatly, of course. Yet it is always here with us to hear for what it is at any time.

I ask you then to do a little homework, please. And jot down "sea of sounds" on a piece of paper. [Remember when you finish these exercises to put this note somewhere along your known trail, where you are bound to find it at a later time. And when you do find it again, pause for another minute, please, and see what your experience of the sea of sounds around you is like at that time.]

Now, please give yourself another minute, to see if you can have two awarenesses at the same time. And just keep in touch with feeling your body being in contact with the ground while at the same time hearing whatever is sounding in the sea of sounds. (or shuttle back and forth between the ground and sounds).

Now, I'd like you to try an old-time gestalt group exercise, called, "I know it like I know the palm of my own right hand." Please don't peek until you are instructed to at the very end of the exercise.

We have that saying, "I know it like the palm of my right hand," (or left is just as good!). A person saying that usually suggests that he or she is very highly familiar with the subject at hand. They wish to put all doubts of that to rest.

Without looking, I'd like for you to see what you can remember about the particular appearance of the palm of your right (or left) hand, that you have been carrying along with you there all the days of your life. As follows, please:

See what you can remember about the color, or colors that can be seen in the palm of your hand. Please press into it, and take a little while in trying to remember as clearly as you can.

Now please see what you remember of the lines in the palm of that hand. Are they deeply graved, or delicate? Do these lines have the same color as the rest of the palm, or a distinct color of their own? What picture do these lines make?

Now, please recall as clearly as you can, the texture of the palm of your hand. Is the texture rough or smooth? Is it shiny or dull? Does the fingerprint pattern extend all the way over the whole palm, or is it only in the pads of the fingertips? What is the texture of that palm?

Now please try to recall if there are any other little marks on the palm of that hand--any cuts, bruises, marks, freckles, etc.

To the best of your ability (and still without looking) take fifteen seconds and try to put together a clear picture of the palm of your hand in your mind: the color or colors, the texture, the lines, any other visible marks . . .

And now, please, look at the palm of your hand.

So, how well did you know the proverbial palm of your hand? Again, this is a part of our field of vision that is ordinarily tuned-out as we go about our business every day. But it is another vivid example of the fact that our sense of vision, with our hands right there every day, doesn't usually take in the little world of details in the palms of our hands. One doesn't even usually see their hands! That old saying may usually be a bluff! And my point is just that it is possible to bring this into sharp focus as you have just done, and see that there is more to be seen that has been overlooked.

For one minute, please look around you near where you are now. Let your eyes pause for five or ten seconds on one place or thing after another. And just as you did at the end of the palm of the hand exercise, let the raw detail that is visible in each of those things, "jump out at you," so to speak.

Jesus said, "You have eyes and you don't see. You have ears and you don't hear." And just as most people have only a dim picture of the specific details of the palm of their hand, most people have a similarly dim picture of the whole world of visible objects that lies around them--the world they think they see, but do not really examine very closely at all.

Some Zen teachers call it experiencing the "suchness." You look at a place in the wall and let it come into focus, and you can see the "wallness." You can see the texture and color and shadow and whatever is visible there. You look at the carpet and see that it actually has colors, textures, and other visible features that you have not noticed as you walk over it. You see the very "rugness." You look at a lamp, and it comes into "lampness." You see the very nature of it, hues of colors, what it is actually made out of, perhaps some dust on part of it, a shadow or reflection on its surface, a slight tilt of the shade, a scratch, a thumbprint. You see the suchness of it in the simple reality that it actually presents.

Now, I'd like to ask you to spend another minute, attempting a more difficult exercise.

Try being in touch with the tangible feeling of contact of your body with the ground, and at the same time, look from one object around you to another and let the suchness jump out for you in focus, and at the same time, hear the sea of sounds in clarity.

(Or else, shuttle between the ground, sight, and sound, in focus.)

You may have found that in some given moments during that minute you were able to "collect" three awarenesses at the same time -- making contact with the world with your senses of touch, sight, and hearing all at once. Could you experience "settling in" to the experiencing of them collectively? Or perhaps it will take more practice to be able to do that, and you shuttled from one to the other, which is fine.

Did you keep saying "ground," "sight," "sound" over and over in your mind? If you did that, try the exercise again without thinking any words.

These pure, direct experiences that you have been having--seeing, hearing, and feeling--are each awarenesses. The idea of "suchness" applies to the other senses as well as to the sights when we come into focus and see.

If you will look around you in the room, you will probably see that there are many objects of different sizes, colors, and shapes around you. As you are patiently looking around at them, please try to get a sense in your mind of how hard or soft they are, and how relatively heavy they are. "Press" them, and "heft" them in your mind.

Although it's whimsical, if this is not too violent for your nature, I'd like for you to imagine a few of those things hurtling around in the air for awhile, and then imagine the impact of them striking your body in mid flight.

I am only trying to give you some "hits" of the poignant reality that things in the world are hard. They have density, and impact. And even in our imagination, we can get a slight verisimilitude of that impact.

In a group exercise, I can ask one of the participants to be noticing what they feel (and I promise the person they will not be hurt). And then I can approach that person very rapidly across the circle, stopping just short of bumping right into them. And I ask, "Could you feel that?" And they can. And by verisimilitude, so can all the others in the circle. What each one can feel is their own body reacting to the "impact."

And if there is a place where you can walk right up to a wall where you are now, please set aside the workbook and take the time to do that and come back. Approach the wall rapidly, stopping just short. And attempt to feel whatever you can of the impact of the wall upon your body.

Now, having all but touched this hard physical world around us, we will go all the way ahead and make contact with more of the feeling of it directly. (You are already familiar with some of this--through your feet, and through your seat.) Now I would like to ask you to please have awarenesses of all the experiences that can be felt of this book, through your hands with your sense of touch.

Reach out now with either hand to touch several objects and surfaces that are within reach, and simply feel the suchness of them in this way.

With one hand, touch something that is fabric, and with the other hand, touch something that is ceramic or plastic. And compare the feelings of them. And how hard are they?

Is there something there with dust on it? Can you feel the dust? How hard is it?

Is the feeling of the dust gone, after you have rubbed it off?

Splash a little water from that glass you have with you there on your forearm. Without drying it off yet, feel that.

Was that hard, or was it soft? Exhale your breath on both wet and dry places of the skin there on your arm. And compare the feelings.

Caress your arm, pat your arm, poke your arm, slap your arm, and pinch your arm. And observe very acutely what each of those contacts feels like.

What's hard? What's soft? Please go around the room, finding interesting objects. And sensitively feel the surfaces of these things. Notice their degrees of hardness or softness. And in some cases, while you're at it, heft them with one hand to actually feel their density. And then come back.

All the things that you can touch have some distinctive textural qualities. They have some discernable degree of hardness or softness. They have temperature--warm, neutral, cold. And they have density that can be hefted. I hope you have located some interesting samples to explore in this way. Take more time for this, if you'd like.

See if you can predict from a distance--by the same verisimilitude of above--if an object is warm or cold, before you take hold of it. Try out several things that way.

You have some degree of "sense" of the heft and temperature of things that you have learned during your life. But I trust you are finding that this verisimilitude in the mind is not quite as vivid as the actual doing it.

I am calling your attention to two phenomena here: the vividness of actual contact with the sense of touch feeling and hefting things, and yet, on the other hand, the surprisingly vivid verisimilitude that we are able to come up with in our minds

I wish for you to notice both the degree of difference, and the degree of similarity of these two phenomena. Practice with several objects, imagining what they feel like and their temperature, compared with what you then actually feel.

It is because of the similarity of verisimilitude and actuality that we are able to be complacent, and voluntarily accept the former for the latter as the days are going by. Because of this verisimilitude that we have of reality, we don't bother to make contact with real life itself. We settle for a verisimilitude of life and think in our minds that we are in contact with reality.

Now, I would like for you to focus your attention from the inside at your face and hands and any other exposed areas of skin, and see whether you can tell by feeling for it from within if there is any movement in the air around you.

Can you feel, with those same areas of skin, what the temperature of the air around you is like? Cool? Neutral? Warm?

Can you possibly feel whether the temperature seems at all different between two separate areas of your skin (such as face and hand)?

Whether you could tell or not, it is good practice to be feeling for it this way. It is more getting acquainted with the actual world you live in through simple awarenesses, more "reaching out" to be in touch with reality.

Now, I would like for you to please get in touch with the space around you. I mean the ordinary atmosphere-filled space that flows around you everywhere--in between the walls and the things that are there. Please take your time and see where that space is around you.

People usually forget about the space. We tend to be preoccupied mainly by the things in the world. We seldom give much experiential cognizance to the space around and between things.

Here, you have seen that it is possible to do so. One can shift one's focus from the "collective heap" of things in space, to the "collective heap" of space around the things, and back and forth. Please do that a few times.

In this game, you will find that it is good to know that this space is actually there. You will learn (when you remember) to recognize this space as a familiar entity, like the things that lie around within it.

Now, I'd like to ask you to put both your hands out into that space. Take your time, and feel very closely what it feels like with your palms and fingers.

Things in the world are hard. The space is very, very soft. This will be increasingly relevant as you continue in this training. The things that do come into your space are actually hard, and they can have great impact on your body, even in the verisimilitude of it. We will be observing this in many ways later on.

Now I'd like to ask you to again approach that wall that you approached earlier, patiently feeling your body moving through the soft space as you go towards it. And then place your hands on the wall and feel what you can feel of it. And come back.

That is good. Thank you. Did you remember to feel the softness of the space you were moving through again, on the way back? Although these exercises may seem trivial, each of these simple awarenesses is helping in piecing together an experiential composite of the world that you are living in, in focus. The things are hard, the space is soft, the things have density and impact. And the space is all receiving.

Put one hand down firmly on a hard surface and feel that, while feeling the soft space with the other hand.

There you've got the yin and yang of it all in your very grasp. First you put the space. And then you put the stuff. And there you've got a whole universe. And the stuff is hard. And the space is very, very soft.

Now, I would like to invite you to feel the ground you are resting on, hear the sea of sounds, see the suchness of visible objects, and have a drink of that glass of water, feeling, smelling, and tasting it as you pour it into your space. Here's to you!

I'd like to highlight some of the basic characteristics of the first set of exercises that you have done.

What you experience--when your vision, hearing, and sense of touch are brought into focus--is obvious and apparent. There is no trick to it. The suchness of the world is real. The actual natural world is more vivid than what we ordinarily see.

It isn't hard to have awarenesses like these. The experience is subtle, yet once a person catches on, it is altogether obvious. There is nothing you have to believe. In an awareness, one makes contact with just exactly what is there. When you have an awareness with your sense of touch, it is tangible. When you have an awareness with your sight or hearing, it is clear and vivid, in focus.

An awareness is merely an awakened experience in the present moment. It is a coming-into-focus that can briefly transform a part of the ordinary world of shadows that we live in into light and insight.

You can understand now why it is said that one can only have an awareness in the present. You can extend your thinking and versimilitude of life into the past, and even into the future. But you can only have real awarenesses of life in the here and now.

And you can just begin to see, in these various experiences of awarenesses, that we are talking about two worlds. One is a world of shadows, and the other is a world of light. Can you see that we are also talking about two yous living in two different lives? One of those is you living in the life that is in shadows. And the other is you in the life that is becoming more and more in the light.

Having awarenesses is a way of engaging directly with life again and again, transforming its abstractness-by-default into the brightened minute clarity that is our birthright. You could call this "waking things up in awareness one thing at a time." The whole process of living can be studied this way, and worked with directly. This includes the study of the emotions, intellect, ego and personality in your own everyday ways of behaving, and the everyday ways of behaving of other people that you know--which allows for "play" with these.

During most of any day while you are doing whatever you do, you are not really focusing-in your five senses to anything. You have just enough dim alertness in low-level awareness, or "sleep" to get through the day without really making sharp experiential contact with anything!

For example, you can walk from room to room in your house and not really see, feel, or hear the suchness of anything along the way. You manage to get through the doors without bumping, but only by a dim versimilitude that you free to move through the space. When you once put those decorations on the table there, those books there, those paintings on the walls, you examined them closely and experienced them being there. And since that time, they have faded more and more into the woodwork, and you hardly remember to really see them any more as you pass. If a lamp fell on the floor, you would notice it. But as it gathers dust, you don't see it. Even as you reach in under the shade to turn the switch on, you don't really see the lamp. Do you see what I mean?

You might be somewhat cognizant of preparing supper, yet without really getting focused, without really seeing and feeling the food you are handling. You pick up a pan, but you don't see the pan; you don't see or feel the suchness of it. Your mind is on other things.

Humans can always get absorbed in their thinking, for instance, at any given time. And while thinking takes up the mind, one does not do much focused use of the senses in this way. Humans get by on their verisimilitude of life. Most of the time, while we are doing the many things we do, we are preoccupied with many other things that we are thinking about. We live in a state of thinking about life--experiencing very little directly--instead of living in life itself, first hand.

A veritable kingdom of beauty and delicate suchness always lies right here at hand! And we go on with our daily activities completely unaware of it . . . exiles, even in our own homes.

We manage to keep busy all day and get many complicated things done, yet without really seeing or feeling the tools we are manually occupied with or the materials in our hands. We are preoccupied with the utility of things, while forgetting the actual existence of the things, themselves. [There is an old Hawaiian song where a kahuna sings, "Wake up the (canoe-carving) tool in the morning, and put it to sleep at night."]

We hang around with people never hearing the sound and subtle tones of their voices because we are preoccupied with the meanings of the words they are saying (which often are defensive or manipulative). We may rarely pay attention to the expressions on their faces. They may be upset or hurting before our very eyes, and we don't notice. We are wondering what they mean! The catch in their voice is lost. It's just that it doesn't ordinarily occur to us to listen and see this way, instead of just being preoccupied with meanings.

We get by with the consciousness we have. One can survive, and even "succeed" without awarenesses. One can live in a world of unfocused verisimilitude and it seems like all there is, because we are so used to it for so many years.

However, having awarenesses of these sights and sounds doesn't take any extra time. It doesn't have to slow us down. Awareness happens while things are going on at their usual speed. This practice isn't like having to take an hour off during your busy life and go to the gym to work out. Your ordinary life is already the gym! Keep going! And have awarenesses along the way. Either your life is without awarenesses or with awarenesses. It won't hold you up, or take any longer, or make anything any harder than it is.

Homo sapiens has been created with five quite amazing and interesting senses: sight, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling (or sensing touch). These five ordinary senses provide our bodies with all the information that we have of the changing physical world around us.

Other higher animals have these senses, as well--often with a much higher degree of acuity than we are capable of. For instance, there are certain snakes that smell stereoscopically from the tips of their forked tongues. Contemporary "dinosaurs" like eagles and hawks have eyesight that puts modern humans to shame. Yet we seem to have been endowed with these five sensory capacities according to our actual physical necessities to survive as species on Earth--to water and feed ourselves wholesomely, to take care of ourselves and keep warm, and have children and take care of them--and, in our case, do all the rest of the things that we actually do in our lives as "human orangutans" walking around over the surface of this planet.

And yet our senses have become as if atrophied. As we are growing up, the experiencing fades out. The mind becomes more and more preoccupied with the meanings of things, turning them into events: "scenarios," issues, problems, upsets, and opportunities--thinking, thinking, thinking. And we hang out "in our head," forgetting these living, sensitive bodies that are in here with us at all times.

If you are interested in playing the awareness game, it is necessary to take your five ordinary human senses to a higher level in both perceptivity and purpose. Modern humans have forgotten how to do this since our ancestors' primitive days out in the wild country. The purpose is to be more in touch with the world as it is again.

In these exercises, you become a primitive homo sapiens again. Certainly, people today don't ordinarily do this sort of thing. They would argue, perhaps, that the five senses suffice as they are. And they do. They might feel awkward or embarrassed about it. Some people might even regard this with outright indignation and disdain --"touchy-feely," as they say. Nevertheless, in order to play the awareness game, you will have to learn to be able to "turn up the rheostat," so to speak, and refine the brightness and clarity of sight, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling your sense of touch.

The most fundamental disadvantage of the ordinary human condition is that our otherwise natural ability to calmly and clearly experience with these senses has fallen into greater and greater disuse as we have been growing up. This natural ability has become as if atrophied by default, from lack of use. And this has drawn all of us in the human race farther and farther out of contact with the real world.

The main purpose of these exercises is to help you to prepare your body to bring these brightened experiences of your senses into your life more and more easily and more and more often.