Honk if you don’t exist

Bumper sticker: “Honk if you don’t exist”

I saw this bumper sticker today and it made me laugh and reflect on the role of the senses in being present. The bumper sticker is a humorous and poignant reminder, and it also contains a paradox. If you do exist, then you will not hear the honk because it will not be sounded. If you don’t exist, you will hear the honk, then you might exist! In any case, the sound of the car horn honking is a call to be present.

Our five senses can be useful alarm clocks for waking up, for bringing us back to the present moment. Any parts of the lower four functions can be used—with intentionality—to be alarms. Let us limit this post to the instinctive center’s five senses as a gateway to being present. If we use them in this manner, if we raise the level of attention and further divide our attention, they are especially practical assets for perceiving our immediate surroundings with consciousness.

Listen to the ambient sounds around you. Notice the tiny fine details of the things in your immediate view. Feel the cool or warm breeze or your body touching a chair. Smell the fragrances of your food and taste every morsel, one bite at a time. Your senses can bring you to the Real. When you see with your eyes and hear with your ears what is before you, then you have a chance to be present.

We are looking through our eyes—with third eye itself. − The Teacher

When I eat fresh fruit for breakfast, I have an exercise to be present when washing the fruit in the sink. I hold the raspberries or blueberries in my cupped hands and feel the cool water run over my hands. There is a crisp coolness to my moment: me in the kitchen holding fruit and feeling the water. Water washes over the fruit and my hands and I am left with feeling the moment. Nothing else exists. No worries, no yesterday, no tomorrow.

Do your senses help you wake up when directed? What have you experienced?

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Bonaparte Before the Sphinx, Jean-Léon Gérôme