the feeling sense...
Through our senses there are so many rich ways we take in experiences...our sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch...pure experience. Then most of us take that pure experience to that great clearing house...the mind...oh, the mind. Our mind processes the experience...because we have given it permission to do so...and let’s us know if it is good or bad, right or wrong.
The mind tells us a whole story about the experience, with good guys and bad guys. It has case files on everyone and everything and acts as judge and jury. The magenta sunset is narrated, judged and deemed beautiful. The snippy comment becomes a whole story we keep hitting replay on as to why the snippy person is wrong and that we need to do something about it, warn the other villagers about them. And by the time the mind is done giving us its opinion (of which it has many) the experience and its direct communication to us has been missed.
They say when one sense is lost that others become heightened…such as blind person hears more acutely. But we don’t have to wait for our senses to be damaged to intensify the others. Centering practices such as meditation can help by quieting the mind and returning us to the present moment, experiencing someone or something as it is.
And what is ‘as it is’?
There is yet another sense we all have...one that has been for the most part ignored, downplayed and avoided...our feeling sense. Our capacity to feel may be our most important sense...the one that connects to soul...the one that can be in conversation with soul...and the Divine. When I teach meditation, just as I teach about the breath, body and thoughts...I teach the importance of being with our rising feelings...some of our truest teachers...trusting them...and feeling them all the way through.
When we explore the material in our dreams we have the opportunity, in a given moment, to pause, and to feel what is there for us…to perhaps take a step closer to a feeling …of hurt...pain...joy...love...sadness.
There is a potency and a purity in this feeling sense...a being en-souled. We don’t go to story, we don’t gather data about it...we take a breath and feel it. I hurt...I feel sad...I feel joy. For that moment we are intensely alive and connected to soul...we feel as soul feels.
(Emotional Rhythm by Neeraj Parswal)
Mary Jo Heyen is a Natural Dreamwork Practitioner working with clients throughout the country and abroad in person, phone or Skype. Learn more about her work with dreams at www.maryjoheyen.com or www.thenaturaldream.com