Finding Peace And Harmony!

Let's close our eyes and let's sit comfortably without force,

Without pressure of sitting in a particular way.

Just a natural posture that the body settles into.

And imagine that you are born just now.

We're starting off with a thought experiment.

And don't think too much into the technicality of this suggestion of imagining that we are just born.

All I'm trying to suggest with this ask is this pausing of everything that we have learned after we were born.

For instance,

When we were born,

We could see,

We could hear,

We could sense.

We probably didn't know how to think,

Conceptualize,

Articulate.

And that is the piece I want us to pause with this thought experiment.

In order to force ourselves to recognize,

Not recognize out of being cornered,

But recognize out of our own experience.

Although this is an imagination,

I'm not asking you to imagine something that you have not experienced.

We might not remember it,

But we have experienced it.

Being born,

Being fresh off the boat,

If you may.

And even when we see babies,

We see their eyes moving,

They're responding to certain sounds.

It invokes something in us,

Something familiar.

Sure,

They cannot conceptualize things like you and I can about the worldly matters that we have become accustomed to over the past decades.

But that does not mean that our life was any less complete without being able to conceptualize.

And that's an important insight to have.

Babies are complete in their experience.

One of the faculties is going to evolve,

Surely.

But that doesn't make them any less real,

Less complete than with this power and ability of conceptualizing,

Imagining,

Projecting.

If there is pain or hunger,

They are experienced as sensations.

Being full,

Being satiated is also experienced by a newborn.

And when you pause this,

In a contemplation like this,

When you pause this obsession of conceptualizing,

Of thinking,

We realize that our experience is still complete.

My words are heard and understood without any effort.

There is a flow of sensations in your body,

Which is also experienced.

If you need to move,

You need to adjust your posture,

That also happens.

But as a newborn,

We are much more in tune with our bodies.

That's why any discomfort results in a cry.

And then the role of the mother and the father is to decode the cry,

Finding the reason.

As we come out of this thought experiment,

I want to emphasize how out of touch with our bodies we have become.

If you listen to some nutritionists,

They will tell us about how most of us mistake thirst with hunger.

So we end up eating when we should have been drinking water.

And this is advertised so matter-of-factly.

But can we imagine how out of touch we are with the sensations of our body in decoding and understanding what we are feeling and what it means to us.

Having said that,

When I say we have lost touch,

We have lost touch with lower amplitude of sensations.

However,

If we are put in an amplified sensations,

We will quickly say something,

Do something about it.

For example,

If we are in pain,

It will quickly grab our attention.

If the weather gets hotter or colder,

Let's say you get wet in the rain,

No,

No,

No,

No,

That's not something you can just tune out.

You will do something about it.

They start making their presence felt in our bodies.

But most of the time,

The harmless looking low frequency,

Low amplitude sensations go unnoticed.

I am sure we know people who are constantly fidgeting,

Shaking certain parts of their bodies,

Holding their shoulders or their hips or their legs in a certain way that make them tight,

Stiff,

Tense.

And they don't even realize it.

Maybe some of us do it.

And even with the amplified sensations,

Our aim is always to go back to the neutral,

Quote unquote neutral.

So if we experience slightest pain,

We pop a pill.

We get quite restless,

Quite agitated when it gets too hot or too cold.

I am not saying there is something wrong with any of these three things and their actions that I mentioned.

What I am trying to point out is our tendency is to numb,

Numb this sensation.

Because the moment there is sensation,

We can't focus,

Be involved in our thinking,

In our conceptualizing.

So we have to numb it down,

Not to experience it,

To put it below the threshold.

So today,

I want to take us on a journey.

Journey to understand and become familiar with our own sensations,

With our own bodies.

By becoming experientially acclimated to what I mean by sensation.

Not the Oxford dictionary of sensation.

Not sensation of pain or sensation of something,

But just sensation.

And I want to take us on a journey to understand what is sensation.

Meaning of the word sensation.

Not sensation of pain or sensation of something,

But just sensation.

Before we go into this explorative journey of sensations of bodies,

Let's become clear of the two ways that we experience our bodies.

That nobody ever pointed out to us,

Nobody even told us.

But as we go ahead,

You will realize that these two ways of experiencing the body are quite different.

And each serves a very different purpose in our lives.

The first way of experiencing the body is the visual perception of the body.

And the second way of perceiving,

Of experiencing the body is the sensation based experience of the body.

To simplify it even a little further,

The first way is the external experience of the body.

And the second way is the internal experience of the body.

If someone were to walk in this room and look at you,

They will see your hands touching,

Your body touching the floor,

Your back touching the wall or the chair.

But they won't be able to feel the sensations in your body.

They won't be able to feel your body.

Even if they come and touch you,

More than feeling your body,

They feel their body.

It's like touching a wall.

We are feeling the sensations in our body that we call the touch of the wall.

We are feeling the sensations in our body that we call the touch of the wall.

So this is the external experience which is very 4K,

If you may.

It's a very crisp experience of the body.

Everything is sharp.

Precise.

Contours and everything are just precise.

It's a very high resolution rendering of the experience of body.

And even when we look at our bodies,

We see clear shapes.

That's the visual perception.

That's the external experience of the body.

Now the second is the internal experience of the body.

What you experience your body as from inside,

So to speak.

Someone who is looking at from outside cannot experience it.

And that's what makes it very intimate.

Our bodies are very intimate to us.

Visual perception of the body is quite similar.

Our bodies are very similar to most other bodies.

But our experience,

The internal experience of our bodies is very intimate.

Nobody else can experience it.

Your hands touching each other.

The touch of the clothes on your body.

Your back resting against a chair,

Against a wall.

The breath touching your nose.

This is what I call sensation.

The fuzzy,

Pulsating feeling that we get.

Like right now if you paid attention to your experience of your left foot with eyes closed.

It's like small electrical pulse.

Neutral,

Pleasant,

Maybe unpleasant but mostly neutral.

Like your experience of your eyelids,

The eyes behind the eyelids.

A slight movement,

Pulsation,

Fuzzy feeling.

Like right now,

Pick up your,

With your eyes closed,

A pen.

Pick up your,

With your eyes closed of course,

Pick up your right hand and put it on your left forearm.

And notice.

Notice the touch.

Notice a new set of sensations that appear.

Even the movement of your right hand is perceived as sensations.

Moving through air,

Which is again another sensation.

These are just sensations with different amplitudes,

Different feelings.

Like the sensation of sitting on the floor is experienced as a very heavy sensation in your hips,

In your butt.

Dense.

Not painful per se,

But just dense,

Heavy.

But the movement of your hand is very subtle,

Much subtler than the sensation in your butt,

In your back.

The amplified version of this would be a toothache.

If someone was to look at your teeth from the outside,

They would not be able to feel that pain that you're going through.

That pain is none other than a specific configuration of sensations.

That we have learned to conceptualize as pain and even provide a number from 1 to 10.

Again,

This should be a sign that you are experiencing pain.

A number from 1 to 10.

Again,

This should be a sign that when we go to a doctor and they ask us on a scale of 1 to 10,

How much is this pain?

It demonstrates that there is no way they can feel our pain,

Feel our sensations.

And why am I telling you,

Why is it so special?

What I'm telling you,

Why is it so special?

Why am I emphasizing this importance of this internal experience of the body?

The internal experience,

The world of sensations is a rich experience that we have more or less cut off from our experience as a culture.

Because we don't understand that that is a way to communicate.

That is the way nature communicates.

That is the way nature communicates,

The rest of the world communicates with us.

When there is pain,

There is something that needs to be told about something that needs to be fixed.

Imagine if one of your teeth was rotting and there was no pain.

How would this information be communicated that you need to pay attention?

Right?

And pain is only a loud example.

The stiffness and tightness before it becomes pain can be sensed and relaxed.

But if we are not in touch with our bodies,

It's a very uphill task.

Intuition can be sensed as sensations in our body.

What to do,

What not to do.

Whether to marry this person or not.

Whether to take this job or not.

To buy this house or not.

Is communicated through sensations.

Gut feeling.

When we are in unsafe areas,

The spidey sense that we get,

It also uses the same apparatus of sensations to communicate with us.

Creativity,

The muse striking us,

It doesn't strike us through thoughts,

It strikes us very softly in our sensations.

It's like a dance.

If you have done a partner dance.

Like tango.

If you have done a dance with your partner.

If you have done a partner dance.

Like tango.

There's a slight tug that the leader gives to the follower.

And he or she understands that this is what the next move is going to be.

It's ever so slight and subtle.

So with our eyes closed,

We have this unique opportunity of completely cutting off the visual perception of the body and staying true to our experience of sensations.

Unfortunately,

There is no way to turn off sensations and just stay with the visual field.

Although we do experience that once in a while when we get a sleepy foot syndrome.

That feels uncomfortable,

Unnatural.

But this is quite natural.

The internal experience of our bodies is a tool which dictates,

To be honest,

I would go as far as to say dictates the quality of our lives.

Whether we are at peace,

Happy,

Relaxed,

In harmony with our surroundings,

Our relationships is experienced in our bodies.

It's a very subtle experience.

And in this culture,

We only pay attention to loud sensations.

Whereas the real juice of life is in this warm,

Fuzzy pulsation.

The communication that happens between our surroundings,

Between nature and us.

It will tell you things.

Like I can share my experience.

In winters when I go to the grocery store and I go past the berries section.

I don't feel like grabbing any berries or any fruits.

My body just does not gravitate towards that section.

But in summer,

I can't control myself.

I have to just pick up fruits,

Berries.

At work,

It might help us.

It has definitely helped me to notice problems that haven't become problems yet.

Like the pain in our bodies hasn't become pain yet.

It's just stiffness.

It's just tightness.

Whether it's safe to go here or not is also sensed.

So hopefully,

I've been able to get the point across that the external and internal experience,

Both,

Are a part of our experience.

They are separate.

They have values.

Together,

They have value.

You can't sense a tiger 500 yards from us.

You need the visual field.

You need the conceptual field as well.

But we also need the sensations,

The internal experience.

That is also a way nature communicates subtle things with us that matter to us.

Not all communication of love is loud.

Sometimes it's that faint touch.

Thank you.