Guided, a window, a poem, and no answers. Music underneath
Rumi said sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Fifteen minutes at a window, not understanding anything on purpose.
About 15 minutes with Steven Webb's calm voice.
You stand at a window with everything you know and everything you never will on the other side of the glass. The magic did not go anywhere. You learned the names of things and mistook that for knowing them. Your eyes catch a sliver of the light that exists and your ears a fraction of the sound. That is worth stopping for.
Treat me to a coffee, keep the podcast free, and get my Weekly Calm every Sunday. It is all on stevenwebb.uk
Thank you for sitting with me.
Steven
Who this is for
That quiet question underneath a life that looks perfectly fine. Is this all there is.
You are not going to answer it here. Rumi said sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment, and this is fifteen minutes of doing exactly that. Not understanding anything, deliberately.
For anybody who has stopped being surprised by things.
What happens in this meditation
The body goes first, forehead down to the feet, nothing to brace for.
Then a short piece about that question and why it is a doorway rather than a fault, and a small poem.
Then the practice. You stand at a large window with everything you know and everything you never will on the other side of the glass. You look without naming anything. The window opens, and what comes through is space with no edges.
The magic did not go anywhere. You learned the names of things and mistook that for knowing them.
How to get the most from it
Fifteen minutes, and about the first four are talking, so give it a minute before deciding.
When you open your eyes at the end, look at the first thing you see as though you have not seen it before. Not this version, not in this light. That is where the practice actually lands.
It goes with the Stillness in the Storms episode Is This All There Is, if you want the same thing said conversationally.
Questions people ask
I cannot picture the window. Does that matter?
No. Feel it instead, as a sense that there is something out there past what you know. The window is only a way in.
Is this meant to be unsettling?
It can be for a minute. Not knowing feels like a wall before it feels like a window, and the meditation gives it time to turn over.
Do I need to have heard the podcast episode first?
No. This stands on its own and I say so at the start.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
inner-child · joy · visualisation · mindfulness
Read the transcript
Hi, I'm Steven Webb. Welcome to the Window of Wonder. So find
yourself a comfortable position. You can sit or lie down,
whatever feels right for you. And when you're ready, just gently
close your eyes or just soften your gaze just a few feet in front
of you. Now, I'm not going to ask you to do anything special with
your breathing. Your body knows how to breathe. It's been doing
it for your whole life without you getting involved. So just become
aware of your breath, that's all. Notice the breath as it comes
in. Notice as it goes out. You don't need to change it, slow it
down, or make it deeper. And as you're settling in, I want you
to know that this moment already has everything it needs.
You don't need to create anything, don't need to fix anything.
You don't need to be anywhere other than just right here. This
moment is already complete. So we'll also invite the body to relax.
And I say invite because the body knows how to relax. Just as
it knows how to breathe. It does it every night when you fall
asleep. And you're simply just giving it permission. You can start
with the muscles around your forehead as well. Just notice them
and then allow them to soften. And then just coming down through
your face and your jaw, your eyes, nose, your neck and your shoulders.
Even things like your mouth and your elbows and your hands, fingers.
So allow them all to relax as it continues down through your body,
through your chest and your belly. Let your belly soften. And
your bum and your legs, right down to your ankles and your feet.
Nothing to grasp for. And now you're here. You're breathing. You're
at rest. Breathing in calm, breathing out. Relax. And before
we go deeper, I want to share something with you. Won't take long,
but I think it's important. There's a question that most of us
carry somewhere inside. And it usually whispers rather than shouts.
And the question is, is this all there is? Maybe you felt it,
that quiet ache beneath the life that looks perfectly fine. Or
sometimes it's just ticking along, that sense that something
is missing, even when nothing is actually wrong. We tend to push
that question away. We may feel guilty thinking it. But what
if that question isn't a sign of failure? What if it's actually
a doorway? 800 years ago, the poet Rumi wrote six words that I
keep coming back to. And he said, sell your cleverness and buy
bewilderment. Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.
And we spend so much of our time trying to know, trying to understand,
trying to figure everything out. Rumi is gently suggesting that
the magic of being alive isn't found in the answers. It's found
in the wondering, in the not knowing. In the wide open space of
bewilderment. So as we settle in deeper, here's a little poem that
captures what I mean. I thought I knew the sky until I saw
it for the first time. I thought I knew my breath until I
felt it move without me. I thought I knew the world until I
stopped and let the world know me. Sell your cleverness. Stand empty
and see what rushes in. And that is what this meditation is about.
Not trying to know, not trying to understand. Just opening. Just
being bewildered again. And the way you were when you were very,
very young. Very small. And let's go there now, with your eyes
still closed or almost closed. I want you to imagine something.
You are standing in front of a window. It's a large window. And
on the other side of it is everything. Everything you've ever
seen and everything you've never seen. Everything you know and
everything you will never know. It's all there, just beyond
the glass. I think as we explore deeper into the universe,
the unknown doesn't shrink, it grows its wonder. So stand at your
window now and just look. You don't need to understand what you
see. You don't need to name it or explain it. You don't need to
make sense of it. Just let yourself look the way a child looks
at something for the very first time. If you're finding it
hard to visualize something, just know it in your heart and your
body. That there's something mysterious out there. That there's
a wonder out there beyond your knowledge, beyond your knowing. Like
the excitement of a child going somewhere for the very first
time. Do you remember what that was like? To see something you
have no word for, no category, no label. Just pure seeing, pure
wonder. A butterfly landing on a leaf. A raindrop sliding down a
window. The colour of the sky just before the sun disappears. Before
you filed them away. When the world was made entirely of magic.
The magic didn't go anywhere. You just stopped looking for it.
You grew up and you learned the names of things. And you thought
that knowing the name meant you knew the thing. Knowing that
tree is called a tree tells you almost nothing about the tree.
How it breathes, how it speaks to other trees. That's the mystery,
that's the bewilderment. And it's right in front of you every
single day. So as you stand at the window, let yourself feel the
enormity of what you don't know. Your eyes can only see a tiny
sliver of what light exists. Your ears can only hear a fraction
of the sound. You are sensing the universe through the smallest
of openings. And yet, even through that tiny opening, look how
beautiful it is. Look how extraordinary it all is. Now imagine
the window begins to open slowly. And as it opens, you can
feel a sense of space so large that it has no edges. This is the
not knowing. And it doesn't feel frightening. It feels exciting,
it feels alive. As Shunryu Suzuki would say, beginner's mind.
There are many possibilities. Let your mind be that now. Empty
of what you think you know. Open to everything. Ready for anything.
Right here. Breathing, aware, open. Willing to be amazed. Nobody
knows why you are aware. Right now, in this moment, in this body,
that's not a problem to solve. That is a wonder to feel. Let yourself
rest in the wonder now. Don't try to hold it or understand it.
Just let it be here, like a child lying on the grass, staring
up at the sky, not asking what the clouds are made of, just watching,
just being. Just amazed that any of it exists at all. And as Rumi
said, sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. So let all that
cleverness go now. And just stay here for a little longer. Breathing.
Resting in this mystery. Feeling how vast this moment really
is when you stop trying to shrink it into something you can
understand. And now, gently, let's begin to come back. I'm going
to count from five down to one. With each number, let yourself
return slowly to the room, to your body, to your day, but carry
this feeling with you, this bewilderment, this openness. It doesn't
have to end when the meditation does. You can look at
the world through these eyes all day long, as if it's the first
time you've ever seen it. So, 5. Beginning to notice your body
again. 4. Beginning to be aware of the space around you. 3.
Starting to feel your fingers and your toes. 2. Taking a slightly
deeper breath now and feeling yourself settling back into the present,
into this room, into this moment. 1. When you're ready, just
gently open your eyes. Look at the first thing you see as if you'd
never seen it before, because you haven't. Not this version, not
in this light, not in this moment. Welcome back and thank you
for being here with me. Thank you. I'm Steven Webb. And just a
reminder that this meditation was part of a podcast on Stillness
in the Storms that answers the question in a more conversational
way. And all of these meditations are brought to you by
people donating a coffee. Head over to stevenwebb.com for the other
podcast, Stillness in the Storms and a way you can reach out
to me and support. Until next time, stay curious, stay bewildered,
