A meditation that invites you to stand at an imaginary window and look at the world the way you did as a child — before you learned the names for everything and stopped being amazed. Drawing on Rumi and Shunryu Suzuki's beginner's mind, this practice gently dissolves the habit of knowing and reopens the door to genuine wonder.
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DETAILS
Level: All levels Practice type: Guided imagery, Open awareness Duration: 14:50
WHO IS THIS FOR?
You carry that quiet feeling of "is this all there is?" beneath an otherwise fine life
You've lost touch with wonder and everything feels familiar and flat
You're drawn to beginner's mind but aren't sure how to practise it
You want a meditation that feels more like exploration than discipline
You're curious about Rumi, Suzuki, or the contemplative traditions Steven draws from
BENEFITS
A direct experience of beginner's mind — seeing the ordinary as if for the first time
A shift from the habit of knowing everything to the freedom of not needing to
A sense of spaciousness and aliveness that doesn't require anything to change
A reconnection with the natural curiosity you had as a child
A way of looking at the world that you can carry into your day long after the meditation ends
ABOUT STEVEN WEBB
Steven Webb is a meditation teacher, podcaster, politician, and the host of Inner Peace Meditations. A former mayor of Truro in the county of Cornwall, Steven continues to split his time between politics and the contemplative work he is best known for. After a life-changing accident left him paralysed from the chest down, he found his way to inner peace through mindfulness, Zen philosophy, and the teachings of Alan Watts and Shunryu Suzuki. He now helps others find calm and resilience — especially those who find meditation difficult. Steven lives in Cornwall, England and shares his work at stevenwebb.com. You can also find his podcast on politics and public life, Stillness in the Storms, at https://stillnessinthestorms.com/
KEYWORDS
guided meditation, inner peace, beginner's mind, wonder, inner child, Rumi, Zen, open awareness
Transcripts
Speaker A:
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, and just keep looking for the very first time.
