Attention & Focus · “You Become What You Hold”
Panoramic Awareness Glimpse
To open attention from a narrow front-facing focus into a 360-degree ‘panoramic’ field — front, sides, and behind — then let that open field become aware of itself, dissolving the sense of looking out from a small point behind the eyes.
In 5 lines: Notice your view is already wide. Let awareness (not the eyes) expand to the edges of the room, then around to the sides and behind you — a 360° field, inside and out at once. Then ask: “Am I aware of the field, or is the field aware of my thoughts and feelings?” Smile, breathe, rest as the open field. Re-open whenever attention tightens.
What it is
The Panoramic Awareness Glimpse is a distinct Loch Kelly practice that works through the spatial breadth of attention rather than through unhooking from thought or dropping into the body.
Here you deliberately widen awareness in a full circle — first noticing how vision is already open and panoramic, then expanding to the sides, then to the space behind you, until you feel a 360-degree field of awareness.
Then comes Kelly’s signature reversal: instead of you looking out at the field, you let the open field itself be the awareness — and you inquire, “Am I aware of the field, or is the field aware of my thoughts, sensations, and feelings?” The narrow “looker behind the eyes” relaxes into an all-around openness.
It operationalizes attention (The Inner Creates the Outer), self-knowing awareness (Life Is a Dream), and present-moment openness (Everything Happens in the Now).
The Method
A faithful rendering of Kelly’s Panoramic Awareness glimpse:
- Notice your view is already open. With eyes open (or closed and sensed), notice that your visual field is panoramic, not a narrow tunnel — it already includes a wide arc without effort.
- Expand to the edges of the room. Let awareness widen outward until it reaches the walls / edges of the space around you. Don’t strain the eyes; let awareness, not the eyeballs, do the spreading.
- Move awareness in a full circle. Let the open field move from the front of your body, around to the sides, and then behind you — so you sense space and awareness 360 degrees around, including the area you cannot see.
- Feel awareness equally inside and out. Let the spacious awareness be present both outside and within the body at once — a balanced field, not centred behind the eyes.
- Turn the field back on itself (the inquiry). Now let the field become the knower. Ask: “Am I aware of the field of awareness, or is the field aware of my thoughts, sensations, and feelings?” Don’t answer with thinking — let the felt shift reveal that awareness is the open field, not a point inside it.
- Smile, breathe, and rest. Breathe in, let a small smile come, and feel spacious awareness and aliveness equally all around and within. Rest here for a few breaths.
- Return and re-glimpse. Come back to thoughts, feelings, body, and activity from this open field; re-open panoramically whenever attention narrows and tightens. (Sourcing note: “panoramic awareness,” the 360° front-sides-behind sweep, and the “Am I aware of the field, or is the field aware of.?” inquiry are Kelly’s published instructions, attributed; steps paraphrase his guided practice rather than reproducing it verbatim.)
Source & Lineage
Loch Kelly (b. 1959) developed “effortless mindfulness” from Tibetan Dzogchen and Mahamudra pointing-out instructions and Kashmir Shaivism, in plain Western language.
The panoramic, “all-around” quality directly echoes Dzogchen open, sky-like (rigpa) awareness and the “vast expanse” imagery of the Great Perfection, and the peripheral-vision opening resembles Shaivite “gazing into space” practices.
Published in The Way of Effortless Mindfulness (2019) and his guided libraries. → (Loch Kelly); kin to and Dzogchen.
The Traditions' versions
Dzogchen sky-gazing / open presence — resting awareness as the vast, edgeless expanse; the panoramic glimpse is a softened, indoor version.
- Open monitoring meditation — broadening from a single object to receptive, choiceless awareness of the whole field (a defined meditation family in the research literature).
- Mingyur’s awareness of awareness — letting awareness know itself rather than fixing on content.
- Soft / peripheral gaze (Taoist, martial arts, Shaivism) — relaxing focal vision into wide peripheral seeing to quiet the grasping mind.
- Tolle’s “awareness behind you” / inner space — sensing the spacious awareness in which perception happens.
Common refinements
Straining the eyes to “see” 360°. You can’t visually see behind you — and shouldn’t try. Let awareness (a felt sense of space), not the eyeballs, extend around and behind.
- Treating it as visualization. Don’t picture a room map; feel the actual open space and the awareness that includes it.
- Skipping the turn-back inquiry. The widening alone is just relaxed attention; the shift Kelly is pointing to comes when the field becomes the knower (step 5).
- Forcing a big experience. The open field is ordinary and already here; subtlety is correct.
- Refinement: use it as a reset in tense, screen-narrowed moments — three breaths of panoramic opening before re-engaging.