Is meditation for you and me. It’s the principle of balance. It’s a heightened state of sensory attunement. It’s the clearing of mental tension. No matter how you look at it, it’s your natural state of being.
This little book:
is loaded with lots of simple wisdom. Much of which is right in line with what I’ve been thinking about for quite some time now. The simplest of little dots of color can come together to paint an exquisite painting. When dealing with human sensitivities, Will Johnson has a great little statement to make:
On every part of the body down to the smallest cell tactile sensations can be felt to exist. Even though these sensations are almost unimaginably small in size and are appearing and dissolving with astonishing rapidity, their presence can be distinctly felt.
Yet, so few people ever take the time to feel, amongst casing the thoughts in their heads. If only more people could – stop and smell the roses. It could be that the meaning of life is hidden in that scent just waiting to be discovered.
Sensation and involuntary thought cannot occupy the same space simultaneously.
This idea about thought and sensation not being able to occupy the same space at the same time really struck me as being meaningful. I have witnessed many times people I know getting so caught up in their thoughts that they completely tune out the rest of the world. It’s as if it doesn’t exist. Their conscious activity of thinking so consumes their Being that there is no energy left over to sense anything else.
The following was probably my favorite part of the book:
The first thing that you may notice as you begin to observe your movements through life is how much of the time you spend lost in the inner monologue of your mind. If you pay close attention, you will also come to recognize that when your internal voice is particularly active you have very little conscious awareness of anything else that is occurring: the sensations in your body, the sounds, sights, smell, and tastes that surround and penetrate your. You will further come to realize that the unbridled momentum of the inner monologue is itself dependent on the specific bodily posture or attitude. You may only be able to come to recognize this retrospectively, because when you are lost in your mind, you really are unaware of the rest of sensory reality, (In truth, most of the time when our inner monologue is particularly active we have little awareness of the monologue as well.) In any case, as you become more sensitive and able to monitor what is actually transpiring you will become aware that the internal monologue of the mind is dependent on the condition of explicit holding and tension in the body. This pattern of holding is almost completely opposite from the posture of meditation. The alignment of the body is compromised. There is no real relaxation and very little resilience.
The holding of tension occurs during thought. Thought and tension go hand in hand. Tension hardens the affected areas of the body so as to override the natural sensitivities that would normally be active in a relaxed person.
Take a moment to relax and see what happens and a burst of energy hits you – like a excited dog bark in a nearly silent room. I’ll let you answer the question – is the bark more or less intense?
May you have a wonderful day!
