Let's close our eyes.
It can be broken down into a few realms of experience if you may.
The first one is sense perceptions.
What we see,
Taste,
Touch,
Smell or hear.
This is what we comprise of as the external experience but sense perceptions.
The next is the realm of thoughts.
So we experience our thoughts and I'm including thoughts,
Images,
Everything in this realm.
Thoughts can be auditory or images or both.
The next is the realm of feelings.
All of us feel things.
We feel sadness,
Anger,
We feel expansive,
We feel gloomy,
Happy,
Peppy,
Disoriented.
And then the last realm of experience that we have is how we feel our body.
The realm of bodily sensations.
This is different than the sense of touch because even if you don't touch anywhere you can still sense your body.
You can feel the sensations of your body.
You can take your attention to the nose and you will feel the sensations of your nose.
To your internal experience of your body.
To the last three realms,
The realm of thoughts,
Feelings and bodily sensations is the internal realm and the sense perception is the external realm of experience.
Then there is a certain realm that we cannot describe much.
Like if you were to describe your perceptions you can write a thesis about it.
If you start describing your thoughts,
Again another thesis.
If you describe your feelings,
Maybe five more theses.
Bodily sensations,
The same thing.
There's a lot that can be described but this realm that cannot be described includes intuition.
Sometimes when we are entering into a space that is not safe for us,
We have this spidey sense.
It might have some bodily sensations with it but that sense itself originates in a very different realm.
Same is true about humor.
When we listen to a joke,
We hear words that fall into our external experience.
Those words get interpreted individually but then there is meaning.
There is something to those words that is not in the words.
Again,
It starts getting abstract here because you can't explain it but once you see it you'll get it.
When you love someone,
You can have a feeling of connection.
You can use the words in a loving way but the love itself cannot be described.
Like humor,
You cannot describe humor.
Humor is humor.
It's a self-evident,
Self-explanatory word.
Just like love,
Just like beauty,
You can find things that are beautiful but where does the beauty lie and what is beauty?
Can you describe it?
Same is true about intelligence and truth but not the intelligence and truth that we know of in common parlance.
I'm not talking about facts.
I'm talking about the intelligence,
The innate intelligence that we have.
The truth about ourselves,
About life.
That's what spiritual seekers seek,
The truth.
Like right now,
I'm trying to speak the truth using words that are descriptions of other things but eventually should convey,
They should touch your heart where you get it.
That's the self-evidence,
The self-explanatory part of this realm.
As a culture,
We are lost only in a few realms most of our days and most of our lives.
We're either lost in thinking or feeling and because of our education,
Our exposure,
We value thinking.
We value feeling over everything else.
I think we value feeling over even thinking if I were to make a guess.
But in order to lead a full human experience,
It is important to be aware of all these different realms,
To participate equally in all these realms.
We could have thinking jobs but we can still be an artist.
We can still use our hearts.
We can be aware of our bodily sensations to see what our body is trying to tell us,
Whether it needs rest,
Nourishment.
We do listen to our body when there is pain after it crosses a certain threshold of course.
Try to skip coffee in the morning and see how you listen to your body.
But then once you have coffee,
We are back to our thinking and feeling game.
Even the simple act of perception of seeing can really take us places.
That's why we have art in our lives.
The visual perception that is so diverse,
So meticulous.
To be with seeing without thinking is an art.
To watch a sunset without talking to yourself,
Without comparing this sunset to any other thing,
Any other sunset.
And to fully be present with seeing is an art.
To listen without commenting,
Without agreeing,
Disagreeing,
Dismissing,
Putting it in a category is an art.
Sometimes words,
Most of the times words,
Trigger a lot of feelings within us.
To be able to hold what we hear and what we feel without getting carried away with what we feel is an art.
When we are engulfed with bodily sensations,
Let's say for kicks you decide to do a polar plunge or get into an ice bath,
You will hear your bodily sensations screaming.
That will hit a default panic mode in us.
We can't think straight,
We can't feel,
All we can do is just be with our bodily sensations.
But we get carried away in the fear and desperation of getting out.
But if we can stay with those bodily sensations while feeling everything and being okay,
As long as it's safe,
That's an art.
Being able to sprint,
Being able to lift heavy weights without paying attention to the doubts and fears coming up is an art.
It all begins with isolating,
Isolating these different realms and being with them individually and together without preferring one over the other.
When we are sick,
The bodily sensations is the most important.
When we are healthy,
Thinking and feeling,
When we can't see properly then suddenly we miss our eyesight.
And I'm sure all of us have experienced some or the other flavor where when we were restricted to do certain things,
That particular sense or realm of experience became very predominant.
So this full human experience,
The full art of living is to be equally present,
Equally aware of these different realms,
Internal and external.
And that innate intelligence in you will guide your attention to be with one or all as per the context.
We need to be open to living a life like this.
Actually,
We need to be open to even considering to live a life like this.
The life of thinking and feeling is a very isolatory life.
Most of what we think is to chop things up.
Thinking does,
Thinking never unites.
Very rarely does thinking unite.
It is always interested in breaking things down,
Relating to this cause,
That effect,
Going on a expedition to find the root cause.
And feeling is all about feeling me.
What's important to me.
I'm not saying thinking and feeling don't have their place.
Don't get me wrong.
But uninvestigated thinking and uninvestigated feelings are very isolatory.
And verify this for yourself.
Don't take my word.
Become aware of what you think on an hourly basis and see how much of it was about uniting,
About unifying,
About happiness,
About leading a life of harmony,
About connection,
About belonging.
How many of your feelings are about isolation,
Protection,
Fear,
Justifying,
Defending versus relating,
Creating,
Sharing,
Giving,
Receiving.
Is there a wonder then we feel more isolated,
We feel more alone,
Sad,
Depressed.
We can start exploring our full human experience.
Include our sense perceptions.
Stay with our sense perceptions fully.
Stay with our feelings fully without thinking.
Stay with our thoughts fully without feeling.
And sometimes with feeling.
And more importantly,
Stay with our experience of this indescribable realm of truth,
Beauty,
Love,
Intelligence,
Intuition.
The triggers of internal and external realms is the medium that is used to convey the indescribable realm.
So humor needs sense perception if you're reading it or listening to it.
But you can feel the humor,
You can feel the truth,
Not as a feeling,
But something deeper than a feeling.
And then suddenly you will realize that you're a lot more connected with your surroundings,
Your environment,
The people,
Your work,
Your relationships,
And not just lost in your thinking and being isolated in your feelings.
Unfortunately,
There's no pill for it.
It's a skill.
It's the art.
This human experience we have been endowed with is available for all of us along with the freedom to live it fully or partially.
And this freedom does not come with any consequences of sorts.
This is total freedom.
You can live whichever way you want.
I just want to share what I can observe and I'm sure you can observe that too.
The choices themselves might have repercussions like the one I just described about being lost in thinking and feeling,
But it doesn't make it a bad choice.
It's just a choice made without knowing the full spectrum of our human experience.
Thank you.
