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The Big Idea: Our bodies provide a constant stream of vital data through our senses, yet we often shut it off in service of chasing outcomes.
Key Highlights:
- The depth of the "hidden" senses, including proprioception (placement in space) and balance.
- The danger of only noticing "outliers" (extreme pain or joy) while missing the nuanced details of daily life.
- The "One Thing at a Time" rule: Learning to isolate senses to build stronger awareness.
Mindfulness Minute: Perform a 60-second "body scan." Isolate one sense—what is the exact light level in the room, or the specific texture of the food you are eating?
Memorable Quote: "The present moment is so full of information that it's very easy to get overwhelmed by it."
Creators and Guests
What is A Mason's Work?
In this show we discuss the practical applications of masonic symbolism and how the working tools can be used to better yourself, your family, your lodge, and your community. We help good freemasons become better men through honest self development. We talk quite a bit about mental health and men's issues related to emotional and intellectual growth as well.
[00:00] So today, I want to talk about the senses.
[00:05] And I recognize that this may, for some of you, sound like the topic of a well-articulated
[00:12] kindergarten class, but there's a ton of depth in exploring and understanding the senses.
[00:19] The senses you have, the senses that you have that you don't know about, because there's
[00:24] very likely several of those, and how that information should be used to facilitate a
[00:31] much more effective process.
[00:34] So again, as you've probably heard, I'm a process guy.
[00:37] The entire content of this week's episodes and a significant portion of last week's are
[00:42] about process and understanding how processes work.
[00:46] And a big part of crafting processes that work and the processes that matter is understanding
[00:53] what data you have at your disposal to make the process refinement work.
[01:00] And sense data is, from a human experience perspective, sense data is one of your primary
[01:07] sort of daily drivers of what's going on.
[01:10] In fact, it's so vital to understand what it is you're feeling and seeing and hearing and
[01:17] tasting and all that kind of stuff.
[01:19] Um, it's so important that you learn how to do this again, uh, that I'm giving this an
[01:25] episode and we may end up having to turn this into several episodes because, um, we have
[01:31] often as a society told folks to ignore what they see or hear or feel, uh, in service to
[01:39] that outcome achievement.
[01:41] Uh, and so we talked about this again, uh, as a recurring thread through a lot of our episodes,
[01:46] don't, don't focus on outcomes, focus on process.
[01:51] So, um, what are the senses you have available to you, right?
[01:55] The easy and obvious ones, the five sentences.
[01:57] So what is traditionally the five senses, uh, you know, sight, uh, sound, sight, hearing,
[02:04] I guess sound is in a sense, but, um, you get, um, uh, tasting, feeling, uh, all that kind
[02:09] of stuff, uh, you get a smell, uh, and you get, uh, the rest of the things.
[02:16] There's, um, a bunch of nuance here because touch is like 10 different senses by itself.
[02:22] Uh, the sense of hot, the sense of cold, um, the sense of pressure, uh, all of those kinds
[02:28] of things.
[02:28] There's a tons of nuance in touch.
[02:32] Uh, there is a lot of nuance in, um, appropriate perception.
[02:37] Uh, you know, the understanding of where objects are in space and time, there's a ton of depth
[02:42] in, um, uh, things like balance, um, and, and feeling a sense of balance.
[02:48] Uh, every one of these senses is essentially feeding your conscious mind information at
[02:55] all times.
[02:56] And what has likely happened if you were a regular human being is that you have shut most
[03:02] of that off.
[03:02] Um, you don't, you only notice the outliers.
[03:06] You only notice the extreme, the places where, um, you know, it is a place of discomfort or
[03:13] joy.
[03:14] Um, and so when you only focus on the extremes, you miss a lot of the nuanced details.
[03:20] Your body's actually providing you a ton of insight and wisdom right now that you could
[03:26] be using to craft a better experience right now.
[03:29] Uh, so what does that mean?
[03:32] That means, um, uh, you know, and I don't know where you are, what you're doing.
[03:36] Uh, if you're, if you're driving most certainly, uh, don't try and do this kind of mental, uh,
[03:42] body scan.
[03:43] But, um, if you're sitting in a comfortable position or laying down or wherever you are
[03:47] doing the podcast thing, um, take a moment to kind of mentally scan through your senses.
[03:54] What am I seeing?
[03:57] What is the light level in the room?
[04:00] What are the colors I'm seeing?
[04:02] What are the textures I'm seeing?
[04:04] How can I look at the textures around me?
[04:07] And can I imagine what they feel like?
[04:11] Um, what am I hearing?
[04:12] What are the words that are being said?
[04:14] What's the space between words like?
[04:17] What is the experiences I'm having, uh, with the background noise and the other things going
[04:22] on in my life?
[04:23] This mindfulness practice where you stop and recalibrate your instrumentation so that you
[04:33] can get better sense data, because again, most of us are used to ignoring the meters and
[04:38] knobs and dials here in the console.
[04:41] Um, you're, you're going to be able to, as you enhance your understanding of these things
[04:47] and your feeling of these things, understand that there's information that we are, uh, vital
[04:52] information that we often ignore because we just have looked at that, you know, indicator
[04:57] in some time, uh, little things, uh, that really can go a long way.
[05:04] Um, uh, and we'll go back to, you know, again, my favorite, uh, kind of analogy area.
[05:10] And that is, uh, you know, health, um, when you don't pay attention to the texture of the
[05:18] food you eat, the crunchiness or, uh, the slipperiness or the creaminess or whatever it
[05:26] is, um, when that all goes by, because you're busy stuffing other stuff into your eyeballs,
[05:32] like watching, you know, YouTube or, uh, a television show or something like that.
[05:37] And you miss all of the experience of the eating because you're, you've sort of turned that
[05:45] sense off and turned on another, you know, other senses that have more, uh, you know,
[05:50] attention grabbing stuff.
[05:52] You miss the entire process of the food that you just ate.
[05:57] So the kind of initial guidance here for those trying to figure this stuff out is, uh, it's
[06:03] a rule that we have actually in Pennsylvania Freemasonry.
[06:06] When it comes to training folks, how to do stuff.
[06:08] And it is one thing at a time.
[06:11] We never do multiple, uh, simultaneous motions if we can avoid it in our ritual.
[06:16] Um, and the same thing is true when it comes to doing a body scan and understanding what's
[06:20] going on with you.
[06:22] Slow down and try and sense one thing at a time.
[06:27] Now, this is impossible, right?
[06:28] Because you're going to become simultaneously breathing and seeing or breathing and hearing
[06:32] or, uh, moving, or you'll have temperature or whatever.
[06:35] Um, and, and all of that's going to be happening all in the present moment.
[06:38] The present moment is so full of information, um, that it's, it's very easy to get overwhelmed
[06:44] by it.
[06:45] But if you focus on one part at a time, one little bit, you should be able to start to
[06:51] cultivate a stronger awareness.
[06:53] And that stronger awareness turns into a more informed process over time.
[06:58] Uh, and it will create better outcomes for you long-term.
[07:01] Um, so invest in the senses.
[07:03] I think you'll find that there's a lot there.
[07:05] Almost a start there.
[07:05] Beyond that, anytime there's a little bit more to get a home chunk of everything..
[07:06] study of はい.
[07:06] Absolutely.
[07:07] Believe in that it will come into certain things, isn't it it?
[07:08] Unless there's interested you know,社 and