This is a hearing practice that takes hearing further. 

Start by taking a moment to ground yourself and gathering your attention. And then when you're ready, turning your attention to hearing all the sounds coming in at the ears in this moment. And as you did with the previous practice, a sense of the ears being like a microphone, open to sounds coming and going, near and far. And in this exercise, what I'd like to invite you to do is to extend the hearing practice by bringing in the idea of a sound engineer and a mixing desk.

Imagine you're a sound engineer using a mixing desk. What I mean by that is you can turn up some sounds, so they're in the foreground and turn down others so they fade into the background. So you can choose which of the sounds you choose to foreground, which you choose to place in the background. Your mixing desk also has filters. You can change your experience by adjusting different attitudes.

For example, you can bring a childlike curiosity. See if you can approach sound with a sense of I've never heard this before. I wonder what this is. Or friendliness, adding a sense of warmth to hearing, being playful with these different filters, childlike curiosity, friendliness, but any number of filters potentially. What I'd like to invite you to do next is to widen your awareness.

Open more channels on your mixing desk to create a wider awareness of hearing, including all sounds, both foreground and background, in your field of hearing. And notice how experiences of hearing are continually created and recreated. Perhaps recognizing the moment a sound is registered. Noticing if the sound is pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Becoming aware of its qualities.

How loud is it? Where is it located in space? Near, far, up, down, left, right? Front, back? What's the pitch of the sound?

And, of course, watching how quickly and automatically your mind gives each sound a name, sometimes even a story. And each time the mind does that, again, a chance to with curiosity, with kindness, but also a certain firmness, noticing the mind doing that and coming back to hearing. Now in the final part of this practice, see if you can stand back, take a wider perspective, and track each link in the chain as your mind does the work of hearing. And throughout your day, commit to using your senses to their potential, to really hearing, or as we've done with the other senses, seeing or feeling. And when you do this, what can you learn?