Always a New Sea of Sensation

Without looking to the mind for an answer, can you just notice what is here right now? Does the sea of sensation and energy and presence that is here right now really make up some thing called a body or a person? Or does it make up a sea of sensation, energy, and presence? We are used to letting the mind tell us what is so, just as we get used to having the news on television tell us what is happening. And yet when it comes to our own experience, we can go directly to the source.

What is the sensation in your arms right now? Can you even really put it into words or is it something beyond words? And what about the space around your arms? Does your sensing really stop where the skin stops, or is there some kind of impression of the whole area around your physical arms in awareness right now? Where is the awareness that senses your arms located? Is it in your head, or is it in your head and your arms?

Questions like these are not meant to lead you anywhere but right where you are already. There is no particular need for a profound experience of bliss or cosmic light, when every experience including the most ordinary is so mysterious. And if you happen to have an experience of bliss, then you can check it out also. But for now, why not check out what is here already?

The wonderful thing about this simple form of inquiry is that you are never done. There is always a new sea of sensation, energy, and presence unfolding into each moment's experience. Even thoughts and feelings are just a flow of internal sensations: voices, pictures, and emotional energies that ebb and flow. How do you know what you are sensing right now? How do you know what you are thinking or feeling right now? What is it that registers all of the movement, color, sound, pressure, texture, language, contrast, and space that is happening right now as you read these words?

There is a wonderful relief in asking the questions and not having to formulate an answer in your mind. The questions are like an invitation to fully taste and savor the exquisite flavors of all of these qualities. Life doesn't need a conclusion to be alive.