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.  

Five Wisdoms in the Snow

 

Five Wisdoms Fireside

 

Energy and Wisdom

My teacher, Irini Rockwell, has been guiding a group of us through a study, practice and application of the Five Wisdom Energies. As energy is ubiquitous, so must wisdom be. You may ask, how can our world rife with conflict, greed, and division, not to mention outright aggression and suppression of rights for humans, animals and even planet Earth herself be an expression of wisdom?  The main teaching in this teaching (also known as dharma), is that confusion is the wisdom in an obscured form. Feelings of heaviness and being stuck are wisdom yet to be uncovered. Just as the clouds block the sun, the sun is still shining in the sky above the dense cover. 

There are so many ways to apply the teachings of the Five Wisdom Energies in our everyday lives and world. It is a way of understanding ourselves and personalities. It is way of becoming more aware of our emotional lives and ways of communicating. It is a way of relating to others in the myriad of relationships we have. 

I will be sharing more information in this format and linking to teachings from Irini on her website, www.FiveWisdomsInstitute.com.  

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MERCY HOSPITAL

(Poem written in hospital with blood infection - a storm raging through my entire body - two babies at home with their Papa)
January 23, 2002

A room with a view to my soul
I'm time taken-transported
To another place of being
In my small, cubby hole
Room in this Hospital of Mercy
I lay here - considering my
True Being - the price we pay for Being Human
The cost exacted of us as we
Travel along our life's journey
A Pathway of Healing
I reminisce sweetly of another
place -- a different time
Also institutional in its effect
Lightly colored walls, the sound
of hustle and bustle below on
The street - an ambulance
A siren - a human voice - an emotion
A need vocalized
Others in this lifetime and in other's lifetimes doing the
Best they can to Heal -- to
Be true to our own individual humanity
I hear, I feel, I sense a
Community of poems in
Service to Healing -- going about
Their daily business - their
Keenness, their sensitivity
They touch me, unspeaking
They implore me to heal
My Pain, My Desolation, My Loneliness
To embrace my sorrow and fear
And understand these with
A Heart of Compassion and Tolerance
For mis-takes of my past both
of this life and others
Finally, I feel fluid movement
of healing taking place
My femininity, my womanhood
is made whole at home more - It
is embrace with loving kindess
And all round me - the nurses
This hospital room - my friends,
my family, my mother and grandmother
Encircle me in their love - the presence of a Great Mystery

ENCHANTED FOREST

We live in an enchanted forest - it exists, here, now, very close by, within and around
In some place in time, it is still standing, less than an inch from this realm, even closer
Wear your favorite clothes and outfits, dress for this occasion, the celebration, the reunion, life
Don't wait - there isn't more time, or another more perfect time, there is now time
The trees are earth's lungs
They breathe for all of us, all of the time, they never take a break
They transmit life, sitting, still rooting into the ground and extending upward toward the sky
Theirs is a vertical travel
The tiniest twig joins to the deepest root
Like the first touch of another on a newborn
The first breath a babe draws into her lungs
The first out-breath into an expanding kaleidoscope of connection
St. Corona, we beseech you to bless us and keep us safe, and to help us relate to all that we are Feeling, including loneliness and fear and sadness and confusion, during this global pandemic
Help us keep a larger perspective and still have room for relating to our experience, such as it is
Revealing itself and changing, or staying the same
This virus, neither good or bad at its core, it is a life form, in the infinite stream of life forms
A life form that is changing this world, transforming busyness into simplicity confusion into clarity
A reflection of life itself
The animals have gone into council
They are meditating on human's next steps, we can hear and feel their wisdom
Our senses sometimes keep us from the reality around us, other times, our senses touch the reality
Profoundly, fearlessly, immediately
As the animals sit in council, they are meditating on humanity's next steps
Will humanity stay awake from this viral wake-up call
Or, will business as usual resume after this has passed
What are we collectively passing through - a hole or a portal
Does this depend on our perspective
Fear is a heavy anchor capable of pulling us down and centralizing us into our selves of worry
Aliveness and appreciation are also strong and reliable anchors
What is connecting us and radiating out from our centers
Humans are hard-wired to care about one another and animals and the world
It is a biology of kindness
Our society of humanity would not exist without love
Humanity, the council of animals, the council of trees, council of stones all exclaim in a language
That can be heard in the mind of goodness and the heart of genuine possibility
"Do not let yourselves be divided
Only love is real!"