The body is so amazing. It is the doorway to so much—far, far beyond physical health, though the body is amazing in that area too.
There's a phenomenon called the energy body or the inner body, or it can be called the feeling-body. The name doesn't matter, of course, but the phenomenon behind it does.
To access this mysterious phenomenon, we simply direct our attention to the energy in the body as-a-whole. We don't think about it, we just feel it: the overall energy field of the body.
As we do this, over time the feeling of the energy-body becomes more vivid. We become aware of the energy of the body almost at a cellular level. The cells seem to come alive, or more accurately, we become much more aware of their already-existing aliveness.
It does something else. It tends to pull us out of the stories and thoughts of the mind, and into the much more mysterious-though-ordinary realm of the unadorned present.
Many spiritual masters have talked about the importance of being in "the present," of being in "the now," of "being here."
In one sense that's the easiest thing in the world because we're always seemingly just right here. In another sense it's the hardest thing in the world because we humans tend to be completely captivated by our thoughts, stories, beliefs, judgments.
With rare exceptions, that's where we hang out all the time. And the thing is, when we're hanging out with our thoughts and stories and judgments, we're not in the present. It looks like we're in the present, but instead we're actually off with our thought-stream about the past or the future.
It's our greatest addiction by far. Compared to it, addiction to heroin, crack, speed, smoking, alcohol, etc. is nothing.
Bringing our awareness into the energy-body tends to vaporize our fascination with our thoughts, and tends to bring us strongly into the present, especially as we continue to allow our awareness there.
What we do is just feel the energy of the body. We don't focus on any particular area of the body, but rather just feel the overall energy field. In doing so, of course we become aware of our breathing and various sensations taking place in the body as we walk and sit and so forth, but we don't concentrate on them. We just become aware of them in the overall context or feeling of the body's energy field.
It is impossible to over-estimate the effect this has. Not only does it ground us in the present, where all spiritual journeys begin, but it also makes it very clear that the spiritual life does not involve getting away from the body somehow.
Feeling our energy-body makes it clear that our spiritual life is here-now, grounded in this moment, and not somewhere else or in some other realm. The ungraspable is right here, hidden in the ordinary, hidden in this little moment. And feeling our inner body is one of the best doorways there is to becoming aware of that.
One of the greatest qualities of feeling the energy-body is that it's always available. There is no activity or task whatever where we cannot simultaneously be aware of the feeling-body at the same time.
This is true even when we're doing mental or intellectual work, which is increasingly so as we inhabit the information age. Many spiritual doorways are quite easy to be aware of when we're sitting quietly or doing physical labor, but become much more difficult to stay present to if we're doing mental work.
This is not true of the feeling-body. Under all circumstances, physical, mental and emotional, it's relatively easy to have some awareness on the inner body as we go about our business.
And that's the key, actually—to keep some of our awareness on the energy-body in each moment, no matter what activity we're involved in.
And as the energy-body becomes more apparent, a sense of compassionate presence naturally begins to arise. Something in our heart begins to open.
Then it becomes like walking into the surf. We become increasingly aware of this infinite ocean of presence and heart that we're swimming in at each moment.
—jim sloman, 5/31/01 for May 31
|
