Inner Work

For the week of August 4, 2014

Sensitive Energy in Body, Mind, and Heart

(Energy Practice: Part 4)

The sensitive energy mediates all our sensory perceptions. In the past few weeks, we have worked on the sensitive energy in our body, which we can call sensation. Now we include the sensitive energy in our thoughts and emotions, which together with sensation provides a more complete wholeness.

Our thoughts relate us to time and our emotions to values. Clearly, we would be far less than human without our thoughts and emotions. However, with both thoughts and emotions our ordinary mode of experience runs on autopilot, on the automatic energy. Our thoughts think themselves and our emotions emote reactively. In this mode, we hardly exist, incorrectly assuming that we are those self-generated thoughts and reactive emotions.

The sensitive energy, being the next energy up the scale from the automatic, can lift us out of such identification, out of the half-asleep functioning that impoverishes our life. The sensitive energy puts us in contact with our body and does the same with our other parts. The sensitive energy in our mind puts us in contact with our thoughts, so that we recognize thoughts as they occur, we know their meaning, and we see our thoughts as thoughts. We are not underneath them, subject to them, lost in them, as we are when on autopilot. The sensitive energy in our emotions puts us in contact with our emotions, so that we know that we are feeling, we know what we are feeling, and we see our emotions as emotions. We are not just lost in and driven by them, as we are when on autopilot.

With sensitive contact with our thoughts, we can just allow our thoughts to think themselves, without believing in them, without believing that they necessarily represent our views, without needing to do what our thoughts tell us to do. We just know our thoughts and let them be. Resisting unwanted or troubling thoughts just gives them more energy and prolongs them. Instead we give our thinking mind free reign and let thoughts subside on their own. Then our thoughts do not trouble us.

All this becomes possible when we pay attention to our thoughts and thereby raise the sensitive energy in our mind. We just watch our thoughts, moment-to-moment. We watch them come and go, change and change again. We know them as thoughts, as just thoughts. Because we see our thoughts, we realize that we are not our thoughts. We let them arise and we let them vanish. We realize that our thoughts do not speak for us, nor control us. We do not need to act on them.

The sensitive energy in our mind, brought by our ongoing attention to our thoughts, enables us to know our thoughts as thoughts. We do not get lost in the content of our thoughts. Rather we see the process of automatic thinking, how one thought leads to another, on and on. The sensitive energy also enables us to drive our thoughts in a particular direction, for example, to consider some issue or problem, or to make a plan. This is intentional, sensitive thinking. Only then can we say that we are thinking, otherwise our thoughts are thinking themselves. We could even say that when we are thinking our thoughts are made of sensitive energy. Sensitive contact with our thoughts broadens our presence by bringing our mental capacity back into the fold of our being.

Paying attention to our emotions raises sensitive energy that enables our contact with our emotions. If we then allow ourselves to feel whatever we are feeling, to accept our feelings without rejecting them, then our discordant, troubling, and difficult emotions have more of a chance to subside on their own, as long as we do not nurture or get behind them. Like thoughts, resisting our difficult emotions just gives them more energy and prolongs them. And also like thoughts, our emotions need not dictate our actions. Sensitive contact with our emotions gives us more freedom to choose our actions, rather than automatically reacting or falling under the spell of some emotion. We feel what we feel without feeding it. Resisting our difficult emotions, trying to ignore them, trying to sweep them under an inner rug, trying to drown them in alcohol or unnecessary eating, just gives them more life. Full awareness through sensitive contact with our actual emotions helps heal the difficult ones and helps prevent us from acting on them in ways we might later regret. But more than that, sensitive contact with our emotions broadens our presence by bringing our emotions back into the fold of our being. Letting our difficult emotions fall away on their own, in the light of sensitive awareness, makes room for more positive emotions, like the natural joy of living.

Whole body sensing can lead to whole presence contact, wherein we sense our whole presence, including our head and our chest. We do not try to have more sensitive energy in our head or chest than in other parts. We work to develop a smooth and equal supply of sensitive energy in all our parts, a sensitive presence of the whole. But the sensitive energy in our head becomes sensitive energy in our mind, helping enable us to sense our thoughts, to know our thoughts as thoughts. And the sensitive energy in our chest becomes sensitive energy in our emotional center, helping enable us to sense our emotions, to feel our feelings as feelings. In this holistic approach, we sense our body, we know our thoughts, and we feel our feelings. In doing so, we begin to make our three parts into one whole, we begin to be more ourselves. We begin to be more.

For this week, practice awakening the sensitive energy in your body, your mind, and your heart, and all three together.

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