Excerpt 03 — “Intro to Flat-scanning”

“We train our minds to be intelligent. But sometimes, we need them to be dumb again.

To just scan. Flat. Quiet. Receiving.”

The students settle deeper. Elias’s breathing slows. He feels the shift—not just in sight, but in presence. The pressure to see dissolves. The ravine begins to feel alive, not because anything changed—but because he stopped naming it.

In that moment, a single jay cries out from somewhere high in the canopy. One sharp note. Then silence again.

And this time, Elias hears its absence.

He shifts his gaze the way Marin taught—but he also listens.

And as the wind stirs the trees, he begins to notice sounds he had been filtering out,

but now he couldn’t ignore:

The rhythmic ticking of a beetle on bark. The distant hum of water.

Tiny, patient signals of life, always present—but now undeniable.“