Our Practices
Foundational practices for embodying and expressing The Experience of We
Developing Meta-Awareness Together
A quick start guide
You're in a conversation with someone you care about. They're telling you something important.
And then, somewhere in the middle of it, you catch yourself. You notice that you're not really listening. You're scanning for what to say next. Your attention is narrow, tight, focused on building your response rather than receiving what's being said.
That moment of catching yourself? That's meta-awareness.
Not the listening. Not the drifting. The noticing that you drifted. The awareness that turns back on itself and sees what it's doing. It's the difference between looking through a window and suddenly noticing that you're looking through a window. The view doesn't change, but something fundamental shifts. You can see the glass now. And because you can see it, you can choose to clean it, open it, or look through a different one.
Most of the time, we are lost in the process of experiencing without ever seeing the process itself. We pay attention without noticing how we're paying attention. We listen without seeing the quality of our listening. We have patterns of awareness that shape everything we perceive, and we can't see them because we're inside them. Meta-awareness is what makes those patterns visible. And what we can see, we can work with.
One practice to try
Think of a person in your life who’s open to experimentation, and invite them into trying something new with you.
The awareness check-in
During your next conversation together, try this simple practice. It takes seconds, not minutes.
Pause internally. In the middle of the conversation, without stopping the flow, ask yourself one question: Where is my attention right now?
Notice the quality. Is your awareness open or contracted? Relaxed or tense? Wide or tunneled? You're not evaluating. You're just observing the instrument you're observing with.
Name what you’re noticing if it helps. If you catch something useful, share it: "Hold on. I just noticed I'm listening for what's wrong instead of just listening. Let me soften." Or: "I realize I left for a moment. I'm back."
Return to presence. If attention has wandered, bring it back. No drama. The catching is the practice, not the wandering.
That's it. One internal check-in per conversation. The fact that you noticed where attention was is the capacity you're building. Over time, these small moments of self-observation become a quiet background awareness that transforms how you show up.
The full guide, Developing Meta-Awareness Together, has several practices for building this capacity
Noticing where attention is
Observing the quality of awareness
Developing real-time meta-awareness during interaction
Supporting each other's meta-awareness as a shared practice
And more
It also explores the recursive nature of awareness observing itself; how meta-awareness builds on presence, interoception, awareness, and mindfulness; and how to work with the common challenges: feeling too abstract, getting tangled in meta-levels, disrupting flow, or using self-observation to avoid genuine engagement.
Meta-awareness is the doorway to everything that follows. When we can see how our awareness is functioning, we can take responsibility for our consciousness itself. We stop being subject to patterns we can't see. And we begin to show up in our relationships not just with good intentions, but with genuine clarity about how we're actually being present.
If this resonates, we recommend trying …
