Our Real Body

Among the things in this world that seem real, our body is at or near the most real. Yet, so much of the time we are hardly aware of it. In one sense, in common sense, things that exist are real whether we are aware of them or not. Still, quantum theory relegates things to a fuzzy kind of reality, until they are observed. Maybe something similar to that holds for us. When we are aware of our body, its reality is unmistakable, front and center. When we are distracted, our body recedes into a fuzzy background.

The practice of sensing makes our body vivid, while making us vivid too. Sensing is being contact with the sensitive energy in our body, the energy that mediates our direct experience of our body. At first, we practice sensing in order to be in contact with our body. Later, we realize the benefits of working to accumulate and be in contact with the sensitive energy itself. The more sensitive energy in us, the more vivid our body, the more vivid all our senses, and the more vivid our life.

Sensing can be approached by opening, by an interested and steady attention to the body, which allows sensation to arise naturally. Our attention operates on and with the conscious energy. Bringing that energy into contact with the automatic energy in our body blends the two energies, generating the middle energy, the sensitive energy, the fine vibrational medium that presents our body to us.

We can also sense more actively: attention to our body coupled with the intention that sensation appear. We look for the sensitive energy while willing it to arise and strengthen.

Yet a third way is to breathe active elements from the air, by willing the energy from the air to enter us and then directing that energy to spread throughout our body, thereby powerfully enhancing our experience of our body. The energy from the air builds up the sensitive energy by blending with it.

However we come to it, a body with sensation is a body that is more alive to its occupant, and thus more real. Furthermore, a body full of sensitive energy serves as a platform that stabilizes the conscious energy, enabling us to abide in consciousness.

Certain activities make our body real, at least temporarily: exercise, playing music, sex, engaging in sports, eating a delicious meal, gardening, dancing, physical labor, yoga, tai chi, Gurdjieff movements, and so on. These are wonderful and indicative of the wide range of ways to experience our body. Sensing shows us a different way of experiencing our body in any situation. And though sensing is temporary at first, as we continue working with it, especially if we work on sensing during our day as we go about our life, it starts to persist in us. Sensation then connects us with our body more of the time. And because our body is always in this moment, sensing brings us into the moment, the only place of reality. We live our life in a more real way.

As you continue this work of sensing, it grows stronger and stronger within you, not only when you are actively sensing but also at other times when you are not intentionally engaged in sensing, to the point where eventually it starts to form a stable and dynamic body of sensation, effectively a second body. So, sensing not only makes our physical body vivid and real; it also creates a sensation body and makes that real.

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