In Presence

My experience with sensation and the thinker.

First, when I switch my attention to sensation, it’s like there’s a burst of sensations one after another. There are the pressures of my butt and my arm on the chair; the skin over my eyebrow might itch; there is a sound in my ears that I might refer to as a constant high frequency hiss; there are temperature variations to each different sensation, though not all of them. Sometimes there are scents, but rarely do I notice tastes. There are dozens of others that pop up to attract my attention, then disperse as others appear. All the sensations are “me and mine” …my body-centric sensations.

Second, I notice sensations external to my body. These can be the sounds of motor cars, people walking and talking on the sidewalk, the furnace starting and stopping, the changes in the quality of light in one part of the room in which I’m sitting compared to another part of the room…and of course I can sense a temperature increase as the afternoon sun, right now, shines through the window.

Third, I decide to stop naming all these sensations and rather than noticing each separate sensation as unique, there arises a lack of differentiation between the sensations of “myself” and sensations external to “me”. There are just all these sensations floating around with no attachment to “my ownership” of them. They are just different types of vibration, without the naming of each form.

I might use the word orchestral to describe the developing reception of these sensations. There’s no longer the increase in frequency of these different sensations arising as at the very beginning of this experience. I might say that instead of all these popcorns popping, these polka dots of sensation arising, there is just a broad horizontal swath of sensation. More importantly, there is less and less of the “me” that’s giving attention to these sensations. There is less the observer and more the observed.

There is still a centre point of sensing. However, it decreases in density and location as that horizontal band of sensation I previously experienced gets wider and more vertical or higher or northward…into space. It is a three dimensional band of sensation and once more there is less of me, the thinker, the observer.

Then, there is a sensitivity to space…spaciousness… that is absent of sensations rooted in the physical world…,but it’s still something that can be experienced that is definitively different from the sensations produced by the body and the immediate environment to the body. My “me” …the thinker…is more thoroughly dispersed.

And what happens when I recall my attention from sensation? From this dispersion of myself?
“Me” again appears. The thinker…encaged and running on the mouse’s wheel.
Again. Again. Again.