LOOKOUT EXPERIMENTS AND GAMES

This page develops Going On The Lookout from Chapter One.

In Going On The Lookout, i described how we sometimes spontaneously experience panoramic seeing, looking into the distance with a landscape or seascape – so go somewhere with a view and do it. If you live somewhere where you can see a clear view of the stars at night, watch them all.

Another ideal situation, is to lie down in the centre of a clearing in the woods, look at a clear sky, and watch the leaves on the trees moving all around the peripheries.

If it's winter or raining... the same principle can be applied to lying down and looking at the blank and boring ceiling.

The peripheries are of special importance. For a horse with 350° sidewards vision, most movements will start within this area – but with our maximum sidewards vision of 210°, new objects often come in from behind and are seen first at the peripheries.

If its summer and you are in the countryside you will find everything including panoraming easier and better, but here it's more difficult to find unmoving, boring, monotonous focal points as a helpful step into it.

1. Stretch out your arms to the sides, turn your hands inwards, and wiggle your fingers, then slowly move them upward, then down – trace out and recognise the shape of your field of vision, the whole oval shape.

Locate 4, 5, or even 6 focal points around the periphery. Look straight ahead and go round the peripheral points one after the other, build them up until you can be conscious of them all at the same time.

Lamps and candles and their reflections in windows are optimal peripheral focal points, find two or three sources of light and then add two or three more pin-point objects.

If you want to do a meditation with candles – instead of staring at one candle, experiment with two on both sides, or four on the diagonals.

2. In the city, with lots of human activity, there might be an almost instant way for people to get started. It will create and remind you of 'the feeling' panoramic awareness has.

Almost all human movement happens horizontally. Stand on a street corner, or sit in a pedestrian zone. Look upwards where nothing's moving, find the corner of a building, a chimney pot or signpost to focus on, but then notice the people, push-bikes and cars which are passing by in the bottom half of your field of vision. Notice when new objects come into your field of vision – follow them till they are out of sight.

Then hang your head and focus on a crack in the pavement – or your knees if you're sitting – and 'massage' the upper half of your field of vision.

If you can find a monotonous boring pillar, half a meter across about two meters in front of you, blocking the central perpendicular area, focus on it and watch everything else.

If it's raining or mid-winter, the same ideas can be applied to sitting in cars.

3. Put your hands together, as in prayer, and hold them up in front of your eyes; you will get a feeling of how it is to see without any central focus point... (seeing like an insect).

If you are indoors, or there's no wind outside.
Find a blank sheet of A4, fold it in half (for some stability), and hold it 4'' or 10cms. away from your eyes. Focus your eyes on it, but concentrate on and look at the interesting things happening all around it.

Move it farther away, step by step, until it's a relaxed arm's length away. Keep focusing on it, but concentrating on everything happening all around it.

4. An idea for daily use, is while you're waiting for a computer screen to load – instead of focusing directly on it (and impatiently daydreaming), focus to the side and wait and watch for the change at the side. Learn to trust your panoramic vision.

Extra Lookout Games discusses a number of secondary ways to stimulate panoramic seeing. They are good to play around with once you can do it, but i think they may confuse the beginner.

The important point seems to be: short regular periods of stimulation will act as a catalyst: they are the best way to tell your subconscious "it's time to remember".

Please continue with The Simple Sense of Now

Back to Chapter One : Welcome To The Panorama
Back to THE PANORAMA SENSES Priority Pages