by Neil Taylor
Stop what you are doing and just notice that you have a body. No, really. Stop what you are doing and just notice that you have a body. Oh, hello. There you are, living in a field of ever-changing sensations. There is a constant flow of energy moving through your body. Yet, we spend so much of our time trapped in our thinking mind that often we don’t even ”know” it. When I teach people to meditate they are often shocked when they realize that they are indeed living in their head, constantly bombarded by thoughts. Although it’s a shock to some, this has been happening all along. It’s like we have been standing under Niagara Falls our entire life and then suddenly we become aware that there is 3,160 tons of water crashing down on us every second. People sometimes ask, “Am I going crazy?” Probably not. Or, as Henepola Gunaratana once put it. “…You are no crazier than you were yesterday. It has always been this way, and you never noticed.” We might find this realization a bit insulting. We might even be a bit embarrassed that we’ve been living in a dream.
But fear not. I assure you this is good news. Living in your head is like living in a 1 bedroom studio apartment. Waking up from the daydreams of discursive thinking is like discovering that there are more rooms in your house. See, I told you, good news. If this metaphor actually happened in real life, what would you do? Perhaps you would visit each of the rooms. You might look around with fresh eyes and take it all in. But after a few seconds your mind starts deciding how you’re going to fill the space and where you are going to put all the furniture. But for a moment or two you would simply be aware of the space. Things would feel open. You could actually do that right now. You can just stop what you are doing and notice that you have a body. And look, the world didn’t fall apart. So you don’t have to worry, your thinking mind is still there when you want to use it. In other words, you can always go back to your room, and you might want to. But now you know there is more space available to you. The claustrophobia of being stuck in your head is no longer something you are condemned to.
The more you start to explore this house, the more familiar you become with it. As you look more closely, its nature begins to reveal itself to you. if you look and feel closely enough, the sensations you are experiencing are always changing. This is not happening because you planned it that way. Your body is breathing all by itself and there are multitudes of other processes happening all without requiring a single thought from you. So you can just be alive without having to manage the situation so closely. Like floating down a river on an inner-tube, you can paddle, you can roll off and take a dip, but you’re not in control of the flow of the river. You’re just along for the ride. You can see that attempting to control the whole situation might be a little bit foolish and might even cause some problems.
When we get more familiar with the body, we might discover that there is some information being transmitted. Sensation is a language, and to learn it we need only to listen. You might notice your posture and discover the way you’re holding yourself isn’t helping the pain in your upper back. You might tune into the sensations of the body and realize that you are holding some emotional stress and decide to take a deep breath and make a cup of tea. You might even notice that many of the sensations in the body are actually quite pleasant. But wait, can’t we just experience the pleasant ones and not the unpleasant ones? Can’t we just smell the roses and not have to smell the dog farts? We might attempt to manage our world that way by ignoring or avoiding what’s not pleasant and grasping onto what is. But that doesn’t really work, does it? It just keeps us in a state of grasping and ignoring. Not really a good way to live. Instead, the Buddhist tradition encourages us to develop equanimity. The great meditation teacher Shinzen Young describes equanimity as “radical non-resistance to the flow of experience.“ A pretty cool description, but of course this takes practice.
As you explore further, you discover that out beyond the body there is even more space. In fact, there is a whole world out there for you to experience and be aware of beyond the borders of your skin. When you tune into awareness things begin to open up. If you look more closely at this world you see that like your body, everything else is always changing too. This might make us feel like there’s nothing to hold onto, because frankly there isn’t. When we see that everything in life is fleeting it breaks our hearts a little, but it also inspires us to be more present, to savor life in every breath. We also see the wisdom in shaping our attitudes towards non-attachment.
Our thinking mind is an incredible phenomenon and we should not demonize it. However, unchecked it can keep us asleep to the world within us and around us. So, once in a while stop and just notice that you have a body. Notice there is a world around you and there is so much space. Let the fleeting nature of it all break your heart a bit and, if you can, enjoy the ride.
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Neil Taylor is a Meditation Teacher. Yoga Teacher and Bodyworker. He teaches Teacher Trainings, Workshops, Public and Private classes. visit www.neiltayloryoga.com for more info. Or email neiltayloryoga@gmail.com