We are always imposing barriers to inquiry. What will keep us asking questions and exploring?
“Inquiry and analysis follow no model, and there are several directions that lead toward a more comprehensive knowledge… If we begin at a level that is too abstract, we may come under the influence of theoretical constructs that lack transforming power. But if we look at our own experience to see how patterns we rely on are established, insight is directly available.†LOK p.287.
We always direct our attention outward, hungry to grab everything that appears. And many times this only brings tension and dissatisfaction. Our inner environment is forgotten most of the time. It is disconnected from the events that happen all around us. We forget that we have a body until it starts hurting.
With the deep wish to work with all barriers, specially the inner ones, and the trust in the true transformation, we can begin to explore this vast unknown body. Sometimes it feels like pulling an elephant with a silk rope. But gentleness, patience, and interest are good allies.
Techniques of relaxations and meditation have given me the capability to explore this rich and fulfilling inner environment. I made many discoveries making my body awareness ever increasing: each tiny sensation, the many inner connections, the feeling tones, how awareness and breathing dissolves tension, the space of the chest, and the fainting borders of the skin.
I also realized that when I direct my awareness inward, the fixation on external objects is released, and the resulting tension dissolved. And the more I am aware of my inner space more I can perceive the external world. Many possibilities open up.
With a more comprehensive knowledge I can exercise mind and body to their fullness and develop a positive, freer way of being. I embraced this transformative knowledge with all my heart.
Hi Eliana:
Thankyou for your share. I love and re-read the following you wrote:
“With the deep wish to work with all barriers, specially the inner ones, and the trust in the true transformation, we can begin to explore this vast unknown body. Sometimes it feels like pulling an elephant with a silk rope. But gentleness, patience, and interest are good allies.”
Soudi
Good morning, Eliana,
Reading your account of how you explore you inner landscape is a revelation. As you can tell if you read my post on the “joy of inquiry”, I don’t have much of that native intimacy with my own embodiment. Even after periods of intensive practice, years ago, the unfolding of awareness for me was more in the neighborhood of understanding purposes, becoming open to my dreams, and developing the intention to explore those dreams. I look at the next two years as an opportunity to move away from my predominant reliance on mind and to explore the depths of practice, a practice that I hear reverberating in the inquiries of several fellow TSK students, such as yourself.
(A homeless man on a New York street corner, when asked by a man in a tuxedo, carrying a violin case, and clearly in a great hurry “how can I get to Carnegie Hall?” responded:
“Practice, practice, practice.)
–Michael
Hi Eliana,
Heartfelt and beautiflly expressed. :-)
David