Understanding Through Sensation
Q: Many of us struggle with rest and relaxation. Can you speak more about how we might quiet the mind in order to be more open and allowing?
Become aware of your body. Very aware, acutely present. Present with the breathing, present with the rise and fall of the abdomen, present from your toes to your temples. You remember a moment when you were incredibly, astoundingly, profoundly and simply present.
It can begin with just one sensation. As you become aware of one sensation, notice that it is moving, notice that it has already changed. Unfolding and dissolving like wave upon wave in the ocean before a new wave of sensation arises. Even though the next sensation appears similar, it is not the same and never repeats the same pattern. It is evergreen, always fresh, and entirely new as a sensation. Start like this, as if the body were an ocean and every sensation were a wave.
Remember, sensation is not emotion. Emotion is often the interpretation of the sensation that gets hung up on our preference of whether the sensation is positive, negative, or neutral. Sensation is immediate and appears prior to emotion. It is the raw data of the nervous system processing our living being, such as hot and cold, pressure, breathing, tingling etc. I always have to explain this because many people have not made that distinction.
Engage in the observation of sensations in the body without elaboration, without preference, without resistance or identification. Let them come and go with presence. Notice when you enter an arena where thoughts are no longer as vocal, discursive, or analysing. Perhaps there is a little mental chatter, but we cannot have both discursive thought and complete awareness of sensation at the same time; the more we listen and attune ourselves to the subtle movement of bodily sensation as it is, the less noise is broadcast.
This is very simple, so simple that you might miss its profundity. When you are fully aware of the sensations of the body, you attune the mind to the very now moment where they are arising, and move out of the secondary worrisome realm of the old conversation playing out with yourself in the mind. You come home to the here and the now. You are no longer lost.
The arena of the mind is our only avenue for experiencing each moment. So in fact, all that we can experience is thus within the field of the mind isn’t it? Is there any experience you can have outside of it? Because sensations in the body are processed and made apparent to us as perceptions in the mind, we can say that the body is an extension of the mind. Or, to put it simply, the body, as we experience it, exists in the mind. The reverse is also true: the mind is in the body. When we put the mind in the body and allow sensations to arise like ripples on a river, our thoughts become the feeling of sensations. As a result, neurotic loops and mind-wanderings relax into the body. In short, by attuning to the body, we can awaken clarity in the mind.
From here, we can return to the mind-field and notice that when we view thoughts as sensations, our thoughts become non-conceptual. They are without definition, without shape. We might notice the subtle arising of sensation before there is a valid thought. Likewise, we might notice their subtle subsiding and moment of dissolution. This can create a great loosening of the grip that discursive thinking has over us, allowing us to experience freedom from attachment to thoughts.
When the body is the mind, the mind expands.
If I am aware of my toes, does the awareness travel down to the toes, or do the toes travel to the awareness?
Does your awareness reside inside this room, or does this room reside within your awareness?
Awareness doesn't move. Eyes open or eyes closed, it is the same. It is stillness. The contents of the mind move, but the container does not move. That which we are aware of appears to move, but that which is aware of it is ever now as it always was. Read that again.
When the mind becomes like the body, the mind becomes non-conceptual. When the body becomes like the mind, the mind and the body become transient objects arising to awareness. Just presence. That is the ultimate state of rest.
Excerpt from Walking the Forest Path: Volume 1, available in early 2025.
