Savor the freedom from ‘narrow-minded’ preconceptions, taking this freedom to be the result of a new focus on Great Space. Experience the insight that the mind is not a rigid and continuous thing, but only an arbitrary setting. See if you can retain the new setting—which admits more of the quality of Great Space.
The ‘Feel of the Field’ is a fascinating practice with which to engage. It just opens and opens, the depth of expansion can sometimes take your breath away, or even leave you gasping. For instance, with a loved one sometimes I might give a foot massage, gently squeezing and plying tight muscles to sooth and loosen, and I can hear the sighs of pleasure and appreciation. She tells me blissful sensations are felt extending from the foot upwards throughout her entire body.
The other day she gifted me with her loving caresses beginning on the back, which then proceeded all over the body. That was when I became aware of that ‘field‘, it’s quality of ever renewing pleasure, and expanding points of contact. While enjoying the moving sensuality of my embodiment – of the tactile field – I also observed how the field arose and expanded, or more specifically, how my focus on the field expanded encompassing more and more, as well as an open availability.
The field also included the irregular sound of waves crashing on the shore emanating from a sound machine across the room. The auditory and tactile field seemed to join and harmonize – felt pleasure rising with the crescendo of thundering surf. I became two sense fields melding in concert, but the field encompassed more.
As the pleasure of touch washed over me in waves, there were receding, rippling memories of me as a little boy – of my mother, and sometimes my grandmother, caressing me when I was sick or had a toothache. Their soothing touch, like the movement of a feather over my skin; gentle, loving, and very tender. I ‘embodied‘ those memories of ‘the feel’ of being caressed with the feel of the experience now, in the moment.
I felt the full near-ecstatic, sensual, vibrating, energized tuning-fork body, the ‘Iam’ and ‘Iam here’ identity and position, the raw, imploding awareness at the center of ‘my‘ galaxy, but it also extended beyond my cosmic longitudes and latitudes as far out as I could feel, as deeply as I could encompass – an incomprehensibly vast field, within which ‘goings-on’ arose, and some of which I identified with and located, and other objects and datum just floated away. As if drifting lightly on an astral plane, I remained tethered by the pervasive feel of pleasure, the euphoric and enraptured field movement.
And then it was over, the end… like moments, pleasing and painful, plans and intentions, and people…
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
The field vanished, an extraordinary memory, filed away. We move on eyes wide open. Gravity has already begun to exert a pull on that peak experience, recalling it, desiring more of it, the pull would be difficult to resist comparing a subsequent experience with this one, who’s pattern is indelibly burned into my identity. The resulting feeling would always be that there’s something missing – but that living moment had already turned to dust. And that’s the cycle that sets the gravitational tug. Which is why I try my best not to ask for caresses. They are always a precious gift, new and in the moment. The humble moment… let it be, and let it go…
David
