As Many Windows As Stars
Being in the Being Within Us
On a daily basis, what we experience more than anything else in the world are the sensations that come alive within us, in our body and being. I say body and being because the two are actually inseparable. Whether it is a physical sensation or an intuition within, we experience because we feel - we experience through feeling.
Imagine reading about the exquisite scent or a rare flower you have never encountered in real life. No matter how much you read about it, you can never say you experienced that scent. Rather, you perhaps experienced an afternoon relaxed in a chair, your fingers flipping paper leaves as your imagination conjured visions of this flower. That was your experience.
We experience physical sensations only if we are awake to them - meaning, when the being within us is able to feel them. And for the sensations that seem to occur to us from a more intangible origin, such as an intuition, or a feeling of love or longing, we only become aware of these sensations because they come alive inside of our bodies in a felt experiential manner. For this reason, I always like to say that we are not a being with a body, rather we are body-being, with the intelligence of life living through the whole of us, just as it lives throughout the entire planet’s ecosystems.
We are fundamentally feeling-beings. Even the most conceptually-inclined academic or scientist, who lives immersed in theories, never dancing a day in his or her life, remains, irrefutably, a feeling creature. He eats because his body commands him to eat through feeling. She is able to navigate the steps of a stairwell to her office or lab because her body intuits the space between each step. His obsession for concepts and research is fueled by feeling, because it is a feeling that compels this work.
If we are to explore our experience, we need first and foremost to see very clearly that what we call experience is, in its essence, the feelings that come alive within us. Despite all the ways I have attempted to understand how to make sense of this wild existence, life continuously throws me back to grappling with this irreducible simple fact and all that is hidden within it. No matter what confronts me or how I may judge the world, what I experience from one moment to the next is invariably a phenomenon that originates its very specific shape, contour, feel, and tone from within my own psyche, body, and spirit. And so, if I am truly wanting to engage consciously in a process of change, I must begin by deepening my understanding of how my own experience grows and takes shape within the specific psychic-emotional landscape of my own being. This does not preclude me from being simultaneously deeply engaged in the world around me, in whatever activities to which I dedicate my imagination and labor, but it does suggest that even while going about that work, the most transformative revelations are going to come from discovering how my experience of the world is created from within myself. Because it is with this discovery that I may be able to begin to see and understand more deeply how this very same process is at work inside of everyone else I meet.
An impulse, a thought, a feeling. . . arises from inside and immediately embarks on its near-instantaneous passage to the outside world. I imagine that most of us have had those moments when we can feel what someone is about to say before she/he says it. Before the arrival of any word or action, we can witness inner impulses and thoughts streak across a person’s face. It could be a twitch, or a microsecond shift of the eyes. We can see/feel it register in the tautness or suppleness of a person’s muscles. Word and action come only after, even if in milliseconds. This is what is happening presently in 8 billion people across the world. Our insides morph to become the outside. Inner feelings push us into words and deeds, all multiplying into a kaleidoscopic web of interactions that results, collectively, as the present state of our globalized world, with all of its implications and consequences.
And what are we to do about all of this??
While there is so much to discover and so many ways to inquire and explore, I have found it tremendously helpful to return to the simplicity of a few basic principles that seem to be at the heart of all of our experiences, no matter how they may differ in their depth and expressions:
We live because the force of life lives us. Not only does it give us life, it is also intrinsically intelligent.
Among its many expressions, this lifeforce sets into motion a nearly unceasing stream of thought and imagination that arises uniquely in each and every person across each moment of the day. Just as this life force creates us, thought enables us to create our personalized lived experience.
We are awake, and the light of our waking mind illuminates thoughts and images arise within us, transforming immediately into sensations of feeling, and these feelings are our lived experience.
Just recently, a meme came across my social media feed. It said, “Your arms are too short to box with God”. You don’t have to be religious to appreciate both the humor and insight of this statement. And if I were to contextualize it in what I have already written above, it would be to say that the thoughts we experience - the visions, ideas, understanding, no matter how great - are incomparable to the greatness of the life force that moves through us and within us. This is why surrender is such an integral part of so many spiritual traditions, as equally a part of mastering any art or skill. It is also known to be central to overcoming addiction. We are a part of something greater. We are, in fact, made up of something greater, far greater than an individual ego-self. Yet, while our ability to think and imagine is born of this lifeforce and reflective of its creative power, it is also precisely this ability that so often obscures our awareness of this deeper connection.
Whatever we take to be true, our consciousness will bring that thinking to life within us so that we experience it as an external fact, regardless of whatever other evidence the world might present to us.
Tell me if this above statement is not true. I feel confident that most of us have experienced this up-close in our personal lives, just as we can identify its recurrence in stories throughout history. We have all witnessed a friend or family member resist all other possible interpretations of a given situation as they remain unmoving in their fixed belief. And a telling attribute of this observation, one we should note, is how much easier it is to see this dynamic in others than it is to see it in ourselves. We can see that a friend, colleague, or family member has a “particular way” of seeing the world that colors their understanding. Meanwhile, we may see ourselves as endeavoring to understand things in more realistic or honest terms. Sound familiar?
It is often the things we cling to most dearly that obscure us from the experience of a wider vision. Our deepest values, our most cherished beliefs, our hard-won critical analyses based on years of research, and, perhaps above all, the perspectives we have draw from our lived experience in the past, all of these represent manners of thinking that invariably bring certain aspects, characteristics, and qualities into focus while unwittingly excluding all else. This is our lot as human beings. Never can we see the whole picture. Never can we feel the totality of all possible felt experiences so as to make our awareness complete. This observation does not imply that we should therefore distrust everything we think and feel. But, if held in a more gentle manner, this observation can direct us to be less attached to our present convictions. It enables us to speak what we see and feel with honesty AND, simultaneously, say, if not out loud at least inwardly, “I know there is so much more I have yet to see and understand.” In this way we are better able to remain fluid and supple in our engagements with others or in any matter we are exploring.
When we cling to convictions, it is like sealing up the walls of our castle. Our vital exchange with the world becomes compromised. But not clinging to our convictions does not mean we necessarily surrender them and become docile. To use another example, picture the porous nature of our skin’s membrane, how it allows our bodies to breath, to take in oxygen and moisture and to release toxins. It is a breathing skin. It protects us, holds our bodies, organs, arteries, and nervous system in place with astounding vigor and resilience. And yet the body is supremely delicate, vulnerable, and, above all, porous. It is spun-through with as many little windows to the outer world as there are stars we may find in the night sky with our naked eye. This is how the body communes with the world. If it were to seal itself up, we would shortly die, suffocating in our own fluids. And when we are able to let-go and relax, allowing our body to soften, it doesn’t suddenly fall apart. Rather, it/we (this body-being) becomes more attentive to the world around it.
Our body-being has its own life pulsing within, but also has so much more. It/we have the vast field of life pulsing around us and with which our body-being is in constant exchange of elements and sensations. Similarly, when we can soften our grip on our deepest values, our most cherished beliefs, our hard-won critical analyses based on years of research, we might discover that they don’t suddenly slide down and into the mud. They unfold themselves. And what remains in the place of their constructed static form is, instead, a felt presence and life-affirming awareness that is better able to communicate and receive. We discover that, instead of leading with convictions, we can lead with this presence that simultaneously carries the best of our wisdom forward, all while opening its pours to feel and know the next layer of discovery through exchange with the world.
