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.
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April 3, 2025
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March 22, 2025One of the outstanding observable characteristics of humans is how they assemble a thinker. Do you know this about yourself?
Thoughts come and go. No matter. You observe something. A thought arises in response. This is not thinking. This is thought. When thought follows along after attention, like the pen follows the hand, recording the movements of the attention, this could be called mentation. No thinker is required. The best poetry is this.
Thinking is a self-referential process. Your thinker is an assemblage held together by habit and a sense of identity. I am thinking easily becomes I am the thinker. Thinking has one thought following another, requiring limited or no input from the rest of the universe. It’s isolated within the mental sphere, coheres around an idea of an identity, proceeds by way of association and follows the well worn grooves of past thinking, sustained by specific muscular contractions..
Sit comfortably. Relax the body, releasing all the muscular tensions not required for sitting. Take your time. This has many layers. Then bring attention into sensation, all the sensations of sitting and breathing. Observe if there is part of you that is withheld. Agree to fully engage in attending to sensations and breathing. Agree to have nothing else to consider or attend to. Thoughts come and go? No matter.
Notice when you withdraw from engaging with sensation. Does this coincide with forming a thinker? Can you observe the assembling of the thinker as it occurs, the transfer of attention to a center in seeming control, becoming the thinker, a center that limits and screens engagement? When you have seen this many times, returning each time to simple attention on sensation, you have learned to engage in the real world. -
September 11, 2022
Work on self is utterly dependent on observation of self, not just the big events of anger and fear but also the small flutterings of sensation that lie beneath my actions, words, thoughts and gestures. Ambitious people on the spiritual path overlook this fact. They are so busy trying to do the ‘work’ that they do not know they are not reliable enough to have a connection to it.
I must become reliable. What does this mean? I must see exactly what is going on in me and be able to shift it, even the most minute reactions, in real time. Failing this, I must be able to account for all my uneasiness…the residual disturbances of sensation…after the fact of making them, and correct them. Cleaning up the mess in aisle 6 as it were.
This knowing of self in not analytical. It is perceiving in real time. The why of it is an indulgence, a backward look. What is wanted is the ability to dance among my own phenomena, using them or dismissing them as they arise.
Attention, attention attention. I have no other genuine tool for transforming me.Tags: attention, observation, reliable, sensation, work on self
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November 14, 2019
Have you noticed how little we depend on sensing? The headbrain is the tireless translator of my experience. I have replacement thoughts for just about everything I experience in my senses.
I see the vastness of the sky filled with stars and I think about how far away the stars are, that the light I see was emitted billions of years ago by stars now long dead. The sensing lasts only a moment, if at all, and then it is replaced by thinking. Instant translation to the mental sphere. My ancestors had far less ‘knowledge’ of these things but they had a much greater possibility of being in relationship with the heavens.
Perhaps you think this is not important, that what matters are the facts? Perhaps you think that realism is based in knowing the facts? In my view, this is an enormously limited understanding of our capacity to know and the potential of knowing through sensing.
My observation is this: sensing engages me in a relationship with what is sensed and that relationship does not arise from thinking. In my sensing, I can relate to phenomena outside of my limited location in time and space. And the extraordinary added benefit to entering into sensation, penetrating it with attention and holding it without mental translation, is that it also opens up the realm of feeling…higher emotions as they are sometimes called. Thinking rarely provides this bridge to feeling unless it first engages sensation.
Try this at home. Watch an insect or small animal. Sense in yourself how it moves. Notice that it very often responds to your attention if you do not get caught in your thinking.
How does sensing engage feeling? In my view, sensations have parallel feelings. The sensation of lowering the head may invoke humility. The sensation of remorse may invoke compassion. The sensation of beauty may invoke ecstasy. Can I learn to fill my senses with these sensations? In my experience, learning means to not let thinking interfere. This is a skill that opens many doors.
Tags: feeling, knowing, relationship, sensation, sense, thinking
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May 27, 2019
I attended a concert in which two splendidly trained musicians played cello concerti by Beethoven and Grieg. It was enlightening to experience the difference in the compositions.
The Beethoven communicated extraordinary order. What do I mean by order? There was a delightful balance between the two instruments, a dialogue in which one unfolded and revealed the other, coherence in the melody lines, evolution of the theme and reprise where it was needed. The concerto unveiled the intimate connection between order and beauty. In classical Indian philosophy, this is sattva (goodness, constructiveness, harmony).
By order I do not mean the squared off, static nature of modern office buildings but rather the dynamic balancing and rebalancing of the elements which characterize living systems and real creative endeavour. Beauty requires order but not all order is beautiful.
The Grieg composition was emotional and incoherent. Ideas were begun and abandoned without development. The two instruments were at odds with each other. The pace was feverish and every line seemed to end in higher volume. In Sanskrit, it would be categorized as tamas (darkness, destructive, chaotic).
Perhaps this is a commentary on the possible range of the human condition?
Do I give too much importance to emotion, by which I tend to mean passion? This rarely amounts to feeling; more often it reflects an intensity of sensation. The ‘higher emotions’ of clarity, order and beauty are perhaps too subtle to attract and hold my attention yet these are the ones most open to possible discovery and transformation. To apprehend these qualities, I must have order in myself. For this, certain music may be helpful.
Tags: beauty, clarity, emotion, feeling, music, order, sensation
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July 27, 2017
Our intentions rarely have the force to proceed. Why is that? If they do have force, it’s because they serve our vanity.
Intentions are just thoughts, are they not? To have effect, they need to be connected to the unconscious forces that actually motivate me.
My doctor shocked me yesterday, telling me I should lose some weight or my health will suffer. He seemed very stern with me so I was worried when I left his office. Of course, I could not have known that he was in a bad mood after his wife had run up the credit cards. His demands seemed rational at the time. I formed a vague intention to exercise more and eat less, but not much changed until that hot new girl joined accounting.
I see my reflection in the window, how unpleasingly rotund I have become. She will never pay any attention to me. So now I resolve to take the doctor’s orders seriously. My intentions are reinforced every time I see myself in a mirror. I have a motive, although I tell everyone “I’m just following doctor’s orders” when I grandly turn down a second piece of cake at dinner. And I believe it too.
Since I am a member of a work group, I recognize that my infatuation and resulting motive have given me an opportunity to observe self. I observe that I am quite ridiculous. I have a self-image that is 29 years out of date. I pull in my stomach when I go to accounting. I remember how I did not like to be seen in public with my aunt who was very fat. I see that I have many little programs that revolve around my judgments of fat people…pulling back from physical contact…my aunt used to sweat a lot and I recoiled when she hugged me.
Ok, this prejudice is something I was not conscious of before. I can work with that, first by simply noticing the physical sensations when they arise. But why am I overweight?
I observe that I have an addiction to certain types of food at certain times. I have rationalized these addictions as habits designed to maintain blood sugar and energy levels. Perhaps, but let’s see. Over time, I observe that these presumed motives do not explain anything. It seems that at certain times of the day, I am uncomfortable if I do not have a particular sensation of fullness, even if I have eaten a good meal. Why is this? I don’t know and don’t need to know. I observe the craving for that sensation when it arises and I let it go.
Meanwhile, the girl in accounting has been fired. My doctor is surprisingly friendly and supportive at my next check-up as he unconsciously tries to undo the effects of our last visit together. I have begun to lose a little weight.
But more usefully, I have also begun to notice how suspect my motives are. They are a soup of unexamined impressions and unconscious desires. I dress them up as rational intentions but the motive power is almost always elsewhere, in habitualized sensations and self-images that are often completely irrational. My intentions are mostly a confusing thicket of vain ideas about myself. This realization, as it grows, has unintended consequences. I am not moved to do what I used to do; my once-avid participation in certain activities is now uninteresting and my friends don’t seem to know what to do or say around me anymore.
Perhaps at this point I will begin to encounter intent. This is a verb, not a noun. Intending is not a word-formula holding onto some desire or benefit of personal interest to me. To tend is to care for something. One of the early meanings of tending is to move in a particular direction. Perhaps intending is to choose to face in a particular direction. To have intent is to hold and care for a point on the compass without wavering. Why? Because it is fulfilling in itself.
Intentions are in the realm of the mind, under the influence of our vanity and our habits. Intent is in the field of the will, under the magnetic influence of something larger than me. I wish for intent.
Tags: habits, intending, intent, intention, motive, observation, sensation, will
