Tides of Awareness

Part of my trip to the Philippines included a five day visit to Busuanga Island which is part of Calamian Group of Palawan.  It is a premier destination for scuba diving and island hopping. We chose to stay at a tiny resort in a remote part of the island.

In Busuanga, something in me settled.

At the resort, there was very little to do. I could sit and watch the gentle lapping of water along the shore. I could listen to palm fronds shifting in the breeze. I could take in the distant — yet strangely intimate — silhouettes of nearby islands.

And as the outer landscape softened, something inward softened as well.

It wasn’t that thought disappeared. Rather, thoughts were allowed to come and go without needing to be organized, solved, or followed. Attention rested. And in that resting, something unexpected occurred: the field of perception widened.

It is paradoxical. The less I attended to, the more I seemed to see.

The small waves were repetitive, almost monotonous — yet not one was identical. Their sizes varied slightly. Their placements shifted. The timing changed. Sunlight glinted differently on each surface. What first appeared uniform began revealing endless subtle variations.

There is a similarity here to meditation. When attention narrows — when we restrict it gently — more begins to emerge. New impressions. Fresh thoughts. Fleeting images. It is not that we manufacture them. They arise on their own when we stop interfering.

Awareness feels spacious in such moments. Vast, yet focused. It can remain steady on one shoreline and still take in countless micro-movements within it.

At times the rhythm of the waves induced a trance-like state. Not dramatic. Not mystical. Simply a gentle drifting. A light sleep would overtake me and release me again, as if consciousness were breathing.

Even on the boat rides between islands, awareness took on a heightened texture. The sea was not flat. It had grain, contour, personality. According to how we traversed it, new features revealed themselves. Clouds fractured across the water’s surface. What appeared uniform broke apart into reflections, shadows, glints.

The boatmen knew how to read this landscape. They sliced through the waves at angles that maximized speed and avoided being rolled. At one point we cut sharply across the swell and a rhythmic spray of seawater showered us — refreshing under the equatorial sun. The sea was not something to conquer but something to converse with.

Travel between islands altered perception in another way. Distance distorted. What seemed near was far. What appeared distant was suddenly close at hand. I remember a similar distortion while trekking in the Himalayas — though there it was mountains participating in the illusion, not islands.

It makes me wonder how much of what I take to be “fixed” perception is simply habit.

When the mind quiets — not through effort but through immersion — the world reveals layers that were always present. Subtle differences. Micro-movements. Shifting light. Altered scale.

Consciousness does not need to be forced into deeper states. It seems to settle there naturally when given space.

Perhaps awareness is always this spacious. Perhaps what shifts is not consciousness itself, but our willingness to rest within it.

What I began noticing in all of this was that my awareness seemed to move between two different kinds of attention.

At times attention would narrow. It would settle onto a particular thing — the rhythm of the waves, the shimmer of sunlight on the water, the sound of palm fronds shifting in the wind. This kind of attention has a clarity to it. It highlights details. It sharpens perception.

But alongside this was another form of awareness that felt broader and more diffuse. It was not concentrating on anything in particular. Instead, it held the entire scene — the water, the sky, the islands, the sounds of the beach — all at once in a kind of open field.

These two modes of attention seemed to work together.

Focused attention illuminated particular features of the moment, while diffuse attention held the wider context in which those details appeared. One brought precision; the other brought spaciousness.

Together they created the sense of being awake to the moment.

Sitting by the shoreline, the diffuse field would often dominate. Awareness expanded outward and the scene felt almost panoramic. Thoughts slowed. Time softened.

Then something small would draw the mind inward — the curling of a wave, the flash of sunlight across the water — and attention would narrow again, as if zooming in.

What struck me most was how effortless this shifting was.

There was no need to manage it.

The mind seemed to move naturally between these two modes, almost like breathing. Expanding. Narrowing. Opening again.

Watching the boatmen navigate the water revealed this same principle. They attended to particular waves, adjusting their angle to cut through them efficiently. Yet at the same time they were sensing the broader movement of the sea — the direction of the swells, the spacing between them, the subtle rhythm of the water.

Focused and diffuse awareness working together.

It made me wonder whether this dynamic is quietly shaping how we experience reality all the time.

Focused attention gives us clarity and definition.

Diffuse attention gives us context and spaciousness.

Together they allow the world to appear.

When the spotlight of attention dominates too strongly, experience can feel narrow and pressured. But when awareness opens into its broader field, perception relaxes and new impressions have room to appear. The world regains depth.

Perhaps that is one of the quiet gifts of travel and immersion in unfamiliar landscapes.

Certain environments — oceans, mountains, wide skies — seem to naturally invite this broader mode of attention. They give the mind room to breathe.

And when that happens, consciousness itself feels different.

Not more complicated.

Just more spacious.

And in that spaciousness, something subtle becomes visible.

Not something new exactly.

But the quiet richness of what was already there.

Perhaps walking through the world with this kind of attention is a practice in itself — one that allows place to reveal more of what it quietly holds.

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Below a few more photos in no particular order. Rather I hope it provides an overall impression of these locations both in between as well as on different islands.