Inner  Frontier
Fourth Way Spiritual Practice

 

Inner Work


For the week of September 1, 2008

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More Body, Vivid Body

Sensing your body means intentionally placing your attention in part or all of your body and opening to the sensitive energy there, which brings you into vivid, direct contact with your body. Gradually the energy accumulates and grows more vibrant. This ancient spiritual practice can be traced back at least as far as the Buddha, for example in the Satipathana Sutta where he discusses mindfulness of the body in the body.

The impact of sensing on our spiritual path manifests in obvious and subtle ways. It trains our perceptions to enter an arena beyond the thrall of self-generated, automatic thinking and reactive emotions. It gives us a place in the here and now of our life and forms the basis of our presence. It lifts us closer to freedom from attachment, destructive emotions, and self-centeredness. It brings us the natural joy of having a body and being alive. And it provides an inner platform for deepening our practice beyond sensation into the higher worlds.

So, although our spiritual work may include more profound practices like prayer, meditation on pure consciousness, or opening beyond the silence, we nevertheless maintain our work on sensation as the enabling foundation for all the rest. To build a better inner future, we sense more now.

For this week, please work to increase your contact with bodily sensation:

  • If you can sense a finger, work on sensing two.
  • If you can sense a hand, work on sensing the whole arm.
  • If you can sense an arm, work on sensing both arms.
  • If you can sense both arms, work on sensing all four limbs.
  • If you can sense all four limbs, work on sensing the whole body.
  • If you can sense your whole body, work on sensing it more evenly, more strongly, more frequently, and for longer.

We aim to live in our body of sensation.


     

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