Life on this planet is replete with oppositions: light and dark, day and night, cold and hot, good and bad, joy and sorrow. Some are abstract notions, others sensory experiences, but the list is endless. Duality is expressed in virtually everything we perceive through our five senses, starting with yin and yang or female and male principles. These polarities seem to be excellent and all embracing teachers in life on earth, though not always welcome by the analytical part of me that struggles with this design and wants to know what it all means. All I know is that I would not exist without these dualities. They seem to create me, and I in turn create my life through and with them. This can be a cooperative task if I accept both aspects of the polarities – the sour with the sweet, the harsh with the gentle, and even the love with the fear – without denying or resisting one part. I need all of them and would not be able to experience one without the other. These experiences teach me about the harmonious and balanced obvious, though it seems often hidden in everything I see, touch, smell, hear or taste. I am learning to sense, appreciate and be in awe of the wisdom in this perception.
Meister Eckhart, the 14th century German philosopher and mystic, tells this story:
Someone asked a good man “Why do you love God?”
“I do not know, because of God”.
“Why do you love the truth?”
“Because of the truth.”
“Why do you love justice?”
“Because of justice.”
“Why do you love goodness?”
“Because of goodness.”
“Why are you living?”
“My word, I do not know! But I am happy to be alive!”
Here, all separation transmutes into a grand acceptance and trust in a divine plan, including everything, without the need to understand. Whenever I intend that, then my life becomes utterly simple. You can try this expansion exercise with me. Every time I struggle with these (most often incomprehensible) opposing forces, I simply expand my “kinesphere.” The kinesphere is a term from Alexander Technique language that refers to the area immediately surrounding our bodies, the air we continually move through. It can also refer to the energy field that emanates from everything that is alive, a radiating life force. Some people can see it with their natural eyes, others can intuitively “see” it, or kinesthetically sense and perceive it through their own energy field.
I would like to invite you to experiment with your kinesthetic sense of your own kinesphere. Sense your own organs, bones, or muscles radiating inward and outward until you become aware of a kind of pulsing, an aliveness that wants to awaken in you. This wakefulness is not something you have to try to create, it already exists in you. All you need do is stimulate the memory and bring it out of hiding, numbness, or sleep. Just focus on one organ, bone or muscle at a time; sense its texture, softness or hardness inside and out. Discover its purpose and the role it plays in relationship to its neighbors. How does it exchange information? What does it weigh? How is its weight supported or distributed through the entire body? What is its method of communicating its state of ease or dis-ease to you? As you are willing to get to know the different functions your body supplies, you will also discover their natural and powerful life force.
Now your nervous system sends your new intention to the brain and floods it with the deep memory of wholeness, and your radiating life-force joins with and includes your surroundings, your room you are in, other people, the town you live in … expanding indefinitely to include all of planetary life. This happens every moment of our life anyway, so you might as well acknowledge it and use your expanded consciousness to embrace, empower and direct your energy field and celebrate your own and everyone’s life. Remember we are all, with every living being on this planet, in this together.
If you do this often, you will experience life through your senses and not solely through your intellect. Life will start to make sense kinesthetically and our poor brain will no longer be given the sole job to “figure it out.” It will not be able to anyway, for the mystery is too vast. So many of the studies in academic and scientific institutions lead to a dead end because they attempt to make sense of life without involving the senses! Does that make any sense? ☺
Come and visit our Unergi School and join us in a “Self Healing Journey” for more sensory experiences like this and try the kinesphere expansion exercise often. You will “understand” through your senses what so many spiritual teachers have practiced and talked about: the ability to move beyond our limited perceptions, embrace ourselves, accept and love everyone just as they are with our own and others’ love and fear.