Touching Enlightenment Read online

  Beyond this, we sense that the hand has a particular kind of awareness that is quite unique to it. As we perform this same exercise with other parts of our body, we realize that each part likewise has its own very specific and unique awareness profile, if you will, its own personality, its own knowledge, its own living truth. It has its own reason for being, its own relation to the “us” of our conscious awareness, and its own things to communicate in an ongoing way.

  Thus, if we can tune in to it, we find that each part of our body has its own way of being that is alive, intelligent, and fundamentally independent of our conscious mind. For example, people who go barefoot a lot may comment how intelligent the feet are, how much they know, and how much information and vitality they receive from the earth. Such folks are continually receiving information and energy through their feet—or rather their feet are receiving these as aspects of their own awareness—just from walking on the earth and feeling the continual energetic exchange that occurs with each step.

  With each part of the body a whole world opens up and is available for discovery when we begin working with it. With each new discovery, who “we” are grows deeper, more subtle, more complex, more connected, and more open and extended. And more unknown. All of this unfolds from that first experience of numbness, frozenness, and claustrophobia.

  As we continue, we realize that each part of the body is a living force, an individual galaxy unto itself. Each part is, in some real sense, an entity unto itself, an individual with its own intelligence, its own voice, and even its own will. Each is a galaxy floating in ever-changing relationship to the others parts, other galaxies, within the vast, unknown universe of the body.

  This discovery can be startling and even quite unsettling for those of us who think of the body as a unitary entity that somehow belongs to “us,” conforms to our ideas, and is “ours.” By contrast, we now see that the label of “me” and “my body” is an imprecise and finally inaccurate label given to this universe of individual and somehow interrelated worlds, the parts of our bodies, perhaps down even to individual cells. This realization can be disturbing because we realize that the idea of the body as part of a unitary, consistent, definable “me,” at least as far as the body is concerned, has little or nothing to do with the actual situation.

  EIGHTEEN: The Body’s Own Agenda

  As we move through the process of discovery, it begins to dawn on us that the body has an agenda of its own that it wants us to follow. The agenda begins with some region or part of the body coming forward to meet our awareness, alerting us to our holding, and then inviting us into the process of release and relaxation.

  The interesting thing here is that we are not imposing our ego’s agenda on the body. We are not saying, “Okay, I have a back problem, and I’m going to use this bodywork to solve my back problem.” Instead, we are taking our lead from the body. The body says, “We are going to start with the arches of the feet. This is where we are going to begin.” The next day, we will be back at it, with the body calling us once again to the arches of the feet, this time perhaps focusing on the interior of the foot behind the arch. And so it may go for some time. Later, it will be the calves, then next it’s the neck, and then the next day or the next month, it’s the region under the shoulder blades, under the clavicles, within the interior of the chest, along the interior of the spinal column. In other words, the body itself actually gives us the routine. It gives us the protocols and it gives us the journey. And perhaps, somewhere along the way, our back problem is ameliorated or disappears entirely.

  At the time we are following the body’s directive, we usually do not understand why the body work is going in the direction it is. As we explore the body, we do feel very specific invitations and callings, but why it is that these invitations and callings are foremost at this particular moment remains a mystery.

  Thus it is that we are called to let go of what we think we want or think we need, and instead to listen deeply; we are invited to surrender to the invitations to awareness, openness, and letting go that come forward from the body. Through that process, there is a deepening understanding that the body, far from being an object or a tool of our personal ego, is actually calling to us constantly with a primal voice. It commands our attention and engages us in a process that we find extraordinarily compelling even while we do not and cannot fully understand the larger pattern of what is going on.

  At the same time, there are periods in the work when we do see something of what is occurring and why. To give one example, it is quite interesting that when people do this body work thoroughly and deeply, whatever unresolved personal tasks they may have tend to turn up somatically. These tasks may be momentary or ongoing—even tasks of a lifetime.

  It is sometimes amazing how literally these tasks can manifest in the body. People who have difficulty with self-expression may feel at a certain point that they are being strangled because they sense the energy collecting at the throat; they feel unable “to find their own voice.” If we have difficulty “swallowing” our situation, we may find tremendous distress at the mere act of trying to eat or drink. People who are unaware of their emotions may experience their heart as if in a vice grip. Someone who is just beginning to become aware of negative aspects of themselves that they are unable to digest may continually feel that they are about to vomit. Somebody who is going through a reorientation in relation to what they think about themselves, their relationships, or their lives, may feel dizzy, as if they can’t think or even perceive in a clear way. Someone who is avoiding getting their hands dirty with the concrete, earthy aspects of life may have rashes, even eczema, on their hands and arms. In these vivid expressions and even in less dramatic ways, we may be able to see something of what the body is up to in drawing us into a particular somatic territory.

  These tasks are clearly brought forward by the body, always in accordance with its own developmental timetable. Even if we happen to have some clarity about what somatic/emotional development issues are at stake, most of us are in the dark about how the work is going to unfold, what may be required of us, what other dimensions, both smaller and larger, of our lives may be implicated or affected by the work, and what kinds of changes the body is calling for.

  It is important to trust the painful moments of confusion and chaos in the work just as much as—and, perhaps, even more than—the more acceptable moments of peace and clear comprehension. It would be accurate to say that whatever is happening in the work is what the body needs us to feel right at this moment. The periods in the work when we experience a great deal of clarity about what is going on and why are not inherently superior to these others; just like the more difficult moments, they are being offered up by the body because they are what is most needed. Most of the work occurs in the dense, dark clouds of our own unresolved relative truth. We find ourselves called down into the darkness of the body, into an open, uncertain, and unsettling realm of reality that has no particular allegiance to the current standpoint of our conscious ego.

  However, at certain points, so the body seems to judge, it seems important that all our understanding be opened up and our trust renewed. In these moments, the clouds part; suddenly, we see the vast landscape that we are traveling through and glimpse the brilliant and majestic mountains toward which we have been heading all this time, even when we have been most lost and unable to see anything at all. Through this process, there slowly develops a deep confidence and joy in this human body of ours, and in the journey it infallibly enables us to make.

  In what the body offers us, then, in its timing, sequencing, and particular intensity of experience, the body is completely and entirely trustworthy. The body doesn’t just know us flawlessly; the body is—as we shall see—nothing other than our own totality. It is our deeper self calling us home, and it knows exactly how this journey needs to unfold, just what we can handle, how the necessary information can best come through, and in what way the needed transformation can best occur. In a sense, th
en, if we are able to be open to it and listen with clarity, the body is more trustworthy than the therapist who is often having to guess what our problem is and how to best work with it. It is more reliable than pharmaceutical intervention, which is so often random and experimental, injecting foreign and often very disruptive chemicals into our system. Thus, again, if we are able to receive its wisdom, the body is the ultimate teacher, the trusted guide on the journey.

  III: UNDERSTANDING THE PROCESS OF MEDITATING WITH THE BODY

  NINETEEN: The Importance o f Non-conceptual Understanding in the Body Work and Where Concepts Are Needed

  As I have already suggested, the somatic work requires that we be willing to let go of our ideas about the body and enter into the domain of its direct, non-conceptual experience. This is a requirement of doing the body work because we cannot enter the body in an authentic way if we are still trapped in our conceptual versions of it. These need to be surrendered at the door, so to speak, as the price of admission to the somatic mysteries. We also need to let go of our thinking, if only temporarily, in order to be open to what the body itself reveals and to fully profit from what is revealed. Even beyond this, enlightenment or realization involves learning how to live in the body in a non-conceptual way, no longer relying on what we think in order to live our life, but rather on what the body knows and communicates in an immediate and utterly naked way. Given the tremendous importance attached to conceptual thinking in modern Western culture, it will be helpful for us to examine the central and critical role of non-conceptual knowledge in the work. In addition, we need to consider whether conceptual knowledge may have a legitimate, if subordinate, function to perform.

  Within modern Western culture, most people believe that the only valid and reliable knowledge is that which is conceptual. Other kinds of knowledge—feeling, intuition, sensation, images, dreams, visions—are thought to be secondary, as they are only able to yield their meaning and value when they are “interpreted” into a conceptual frame of reference.

  Occasionally, of course, one meets modern Westerners who reject the assumption that conceptual knowledge is the only truly valid kind of knowledge. But even those of us who are of this opinion, when push comes to shove, tend to operate out of what we think about the world. Though we may be of the opinion that conceptual knowing is subordinate, we do not, in fact, function in that way. Especially when feeling discomfort or threat, we habitually fall back into conceptual ways of knowing as our primary reference point, our method of safety and reliable orientation.

  The meditative traditions of Buddhism—the source of the body work described in this book—take a rather different approach. For them, direct experience, unmediated by concepts, is held to be the primary and, by far, most important kind of knowing. Conceptual understanding is considered essential, of course, but seen as strictly secondary. First we have our life; then we think about it and come to conclusions about it. The conclusions are thus always secondary and after the fact. For Buddhism, concepts are not reality itself, but are merely abstract conceptualizations of our experience and therefore greatly reduced versions, only slivers, mere memories of our actual life. I may think that I know my wife of thirty years pretty well, but often what she sees or says or does truly surprises me. What I think about my wife, Lee, is the conceptual abstraction—it’s not her; who she actually is as a person is quite different from my idea, and reveals itself fully only in surprise. The surprises bring me into contact with the real person, and, to receive this real and actual person, I have to be willing to let go of my previous conceptual ideas.

  For Buddhism, concepts—which are memories of past experience—are always superseded by what is occurring now. The conceptual abstractions constantly need correction and reformulation in light of unfolding experience. This is why, in Buddhism, conceptual versions of reality are called “dreams.” Finally, in relation to the actual, immediate, concrete fullness of reality, they have no substance.

  Why, then, do most of us take the conceptualized abstractions, the conclusions we come to, to be reality itself? Because our non-conceptual life is ever unpredictable and open-ended. It can leave us feeling uncertain, insecure, and unprotected. When we are able to “pin things down” and put them in definite and definable terms, we suddenly feel more safe and secure. We know who and what we are—or so we think.

  In taking our conceptual versions as reality itself, we have lost touch with the substance, the reality, the abundance, and the freedom that is always available in the present, preconceptual moment. The process of meditation involves gradually shedding our multitude of opinions-built-upon-opinions of how things are, and becoming more and more aware of the literal, non-conceptual substratum of all our thinking—the substratum which is reality itself.6

  In working with the body, this fundamental principle—that the non-conceptual precedes and is more fundamental and meaningful than the conceptualized version—is critical. In the work, we must take as our ground our literal, direct somatic experience, whatever it may be. That is why, in this book, we have begun with the process of body work rather than with how we may understand it. In the work itself, practice and the experience that arises from it precede conceptual understanding. And even the conceptual understanding we arrive at must be considered never more than provisional and approximate, always subordinate to and in need of correction by what we actually find when we explore the body. There are no “right answers.” Each person’s experience is ultimately going to be different from anyone else’s.

  At the same time, however, once the primacy of the non-conceptual is established in our understanding and, even more important, in our meditation, then it becomes worthwhile to consider the conceptual geography surrounding our somatic explorations. It is not only helpful, but crucial to the body work to have some grasp of the historical and cultural contexts in which the work is being carried out (as in section I) and also a clear understanding of why we do body work, what happens when we do it, and how we may understand what happens in both practical psychological and theoretical terms (the present section).

  This conceptual kind of understanding is important because, as human beings, we are always formulating conceptual maps of our reality. Especially when we approach an area as intensely experiential as somatic meditation, it becomes important to understand what we are doing and why. Without this understanding, we would lack the clarity and trust to fully receive what we are going through. However, when our conceptual understanding is sufficiently broad, clear, and sophisticated, then we can accommodate our discoveries, whatever they may be, and learn in a full and complete way from them.

  An accurate conceptual understanding can also sensitize us to greater subtlety in our forays into the shadows of the soma and actually help us to see more. For more experienced somatic voyagers, what we or anyone else currently thinks about this kind of work can be an agent provocateur, giving us a language to then critique and reformulate from the viewpoint of what we ourselves are discovering, a ground for our own creative expression, which can then be shared and explored with others. In the present section, then, we are examining some of the traditional and modern perspectives on “touching enlightenment with the body.”

  (6) For the scholars among my readers, it may be helpful to mention that a discussion of these issues forms a primary focus of the philosophical work of the great Buddhist master Asanga, the renowned fifth-century CE Yogacarin meditator and thinker so very important to the somatic work of Tibetan yoga. According to Asanga, conceptual thinking represents an abstraction from more primary reality. Asanga calls these conceptual abstractions parikalpita, (“imagined reality”). Because we habitually take them as identical to the reality of which they are abstractions, they are ultimately false. They are ultimately all lies. Asanga says that in order to conceptualize something, there must be some more primary experience that is the basis, the substratum, in Sanskrit, the vastu, in relation to which we are conceptualizing. To create a conceptual abstraction, you have
to have something you are doing this to. This vastu is nothing more than however and whatever is appearing at each given moment. It is ineffable, that is, non-conceptual, experience. It is simply the causes and conditions that are ripening in this moment in appearance. Asanga calls this non-conceptual substratum paratantra, the continuity (tantra, the non-conceptual experience that is continually unfolding as our life) that is ultimately “other” (para)—that is, it resists any attempt to make it part of our conceptual inventory. Can we give a label to this ineffable experience? Yes, we can, but then we have left the domain of paratantra and reentered parikalpita. Asanga describes the mind that is able to abide in the non-conceptual as parinishpanna, “the fully ripened and perfected awareness.” He summarizes it in a simple way: when we see paratantra, the non-conceptual substratum, as it is, without attaching labels or concepts to it, that is parinishpanna, our own full perfection; when we overlay that substratum with concepts, then we are dwelling in parikalpita, not seeing things as they are but as we want to see them, and this is the source of all the confusion and the suffering of samsara (the prison-like existence of the centralized, solid ego). It is important to realize that Asanga is not theorizing here. Like other great Buddhist philosopher-yogins, he is taking his foundation in what he has experienced, over and over, in the course of a lifetime, in Buddhist meditation. As many Western commentators have point out, Asanga’s “philosophy” is actually more of a psychological description of how things work, more of a phenomenology, if you will, than a “philosophy,” at least as we usually think of it. back