BREATHE You are here

There is something to feeling. Vipassana meditation teaches observation of sensations. This started as something to do because I had never done it before. This is often incentive for me. I think I am a hedonist by nature and new experiences offer me the desired jolt. But then this observation became a part of me like a nose on a face. (Except in stories by Gogol.) That is why it is so interesting that there is no turning back from seeking my essential joy in life, in a deeper capacity, now that food no longer exists as that constant buffer.

I notice all sorts of things since I started feeling deeper. I feel pain, and hurt and longing more intensely in my body. It is not that situations seem bigger, or that I am more in tune. It is that I feel them. Along with this, is what I am feeling this morning. There is an inscrutable joy, and a thrill that I am in the midst of something marvelous. But there is no particular explanation other than the completion of my long neglected shaving of my legs. It was like magic to watch the hairs slide off my leg while the razor cleared the field of skin to smoothness. There, and then not there. Like magic.

This joy. It is nothing specific. But everything around me has this presence to it, as though all is layered in golddust. I feel pleasure over the sensation of cold from the chill in the room on my bare arms and the goosebumps forming on my arms. I feel the urge to squeeze down into my heart to resist the cold and breathe in little gasps and instead, keep my heart open. And there is the possibility of resolving all this by simply putting on a sweater. But I want it there. It makes me feel my body.

I want the feeling. I want to feel. I want to feel my tailbone underneath me as I sit propped with hips above knees on one rolled mat on top of another. To feel the weight of me beneath me is somehow pleasurable. And there is music, a cd I bought, that is floating in my ears and serenading my fingers, who respond by typing faster and faster on the keys. All of the emotion and feeling has to fall out, leap out of me. This is what feeling is all about.

The Crest of Wanting

There is an ache to wanting. It starts in my throat, and I feel this sweeping motion moving through me. It is like a wave that comes over me, and then instead of release, it sinks back down again. So this is what makes it "wanting" and not "completion." The wave lifts and sinks and lifts and sinks. It gets me riled in the same way you can get a dog worked up by running around and around until they begin to jump up and down, nip at you. They are expecting something.

What's next? That is what they are expecting. That you will throw the ball, roll on the floor with them, shake things up. And this is the same aspect that keeps this wanting a frustrated, unclaimed passion that hints at bursting, but sinks just before the final moment.

And what do I do then without release? Find something else that interests me. Let my fingers fly on the keys. Press my feet into the ground and lift my arms and shake my body around. Open up my mind and let beauty and excitement and something live or maybe creepy pour out. It is a good feeling to be excited and know that I have a pulse. I prefer excitement to staring blankly without the joy or the effort. But sometimes, there is so much of it in me, and so little idea of what to do with it all.