Our Senses: Tentacles to the Outer World

 Our body is one big sense perception. 

 

Our senses help us connect, experience, and make associations with our world.   They arise from space and our first perception is known as true perception.  It is unbiased as it is spontaneous and direct.  Our sense perceptions have an earthly nature as they ground us to our lives on earth.  From our senses, we may experience passion and energetic connection which then inspire us to respond or react depending on the degree of present awareness.  They also stimulate emotions as they are potent reminders of memories and connections that we carry within us, either positive or negative.  We have all experienced a piece of music that moves us to tears or a scene in nature that is majestic and awe inspiring.  The same can be said for things that produce an experience that is draining or a negative association that we would prefer to avoid.

 

The practice with sense perceptions is being on the spot with our senses.  Noticing through practice and intention the world before we layer on concept or fill the experience with comparisons, narrative, or preferences.  When we come upon a beautiful sunrise or hear a musical composition or feel the touch of another’s hand on ours, that is the first true perception.  We may then have the habit to layer more on the experience we are having, which is fleeting and gone in the next moment.  True perception receives the world with all the senses open and awakened.  There is a unity of outer and inner worlds coming to a point in which we make genuine contact before our analytical or discursive mind (ego) jumps in to figure it all out.  

 

Awareness brings true perception.  

 

We may experience blockages at first when beginning to notice the outer world through our perceptions.  That may be because of some form of anxiety we have when contacting genuinely the present moment.  Can we have unbiased perception and also experience energetic exchange? This is the question I contemplate and return to over and over. 

Maybe Crazy Wisdom Does Exist

My kid brother and I come from the same mother.  We grew in the same space. In repeated split-second reminders, I still expect to see your name appear on my cell phone.  We just reached the milestone of a year since you died.  

 

Today I found myself crying in the arms of my future self in the shower.  What does that mean? It means this. I feel a heavy weight on me, a sadness that needs to be held, shared, given away.  And, in that moment, the only person that I can truly depend on is myself, actually, the future version of myself.  When she appears, I feel held, completely supported by her intelligent knowing.  A wisdom of stability seeps into my mind and my body actually feels supported.

The most interesting thing to realize, to find words to express what is happening, is that I feel true love.  

 

My next thought is there is this comfort I feel around death.  As the dying process is actively happening, I am the most genuine version of myself.  I felt that in the nine months of my brother’s sickness and death.  The true self that I usually cover over, and hide was able to show up and be there for him.  In my day to day, I present a watered-down version of my authenticity, one that is more reserved, equanimous, steady.  Yet it is artificial and has an unpleasant odor.  I don’t really trust myself in those times even if I feel like I have everything under control.  It is really a big self-deception, which feels like nothingness.  Rather in death, I feel there is the meaning of life. The state of being alive and of dying both seem empty of the heavy of the pressure I have put on myself to just hide my truest self.  My self has been waiting for the actor to see that it has all been an illusion, a wild fabrication of some pretend version of reality.  Jimmy held up a mirror for me last year.  The first trip to the emergency room from his bed his eyes and heart sought mine and he said, “Jeannie, I am going to die from this.  I know it.”  I felt the truth of his words and I let them penetrate me; then, I began to assure him that we do not know that and let’s take it a step at a time.  He appreciated this calm measured approach because he wanted to live so badly!  

 

The genuine being that acts from the heart, responds without hesitation, sends energy to dead animals on the side of the road, and rubs the feet of her dying brother while trying to study the energies of the universe.  This being does not need a credential or any credit because it does not even exist.  The presence of being is enough, one changing moment after the next. I felt the time I was able to spend with Jimmy during all his stays in the hospital and rehab and at home, was authentic.  It was sad and draining, and wacky, and real.  I made sure I did not turn away from him or the truth he kept reflecting to all of us, especially his daughters and me.  He wanted to live but he knew that his time was very limited, and he kept radiating the truth of impermanent and the endurance of love.  He made the last nine months of his life matter, deeply, unabashedly, sometimes hilariously, and definitely full of a father’s love that if I can use this metaphor, was like the event horizon of a black hole. His girls were swirling in that devotion and magnetic force of nature of Jimmy.

 

What if I could be this authentic in life? In my day to today living, interactions, relationships? Reading the audience and apply which version of me shows up is skillful as the crazy version full of crazy wisdom perhaps the world is not ready for.