Connection.

In the Western world we are taught about our five senses – touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight. All of course are relevant and necessary. However, if we look at those five senses they are all concerned with how we sense the things that come into us from the outside world.

We touch a surface.

We hear a sound.

We see a tree.

We smell a scent.

We taste a flavour.

The five senses allow us to experience and interpret sensations that we have received from outside of our body.

But what about sensing what is happening internally – happening inside our own body?

In the modern Western world and culture there is no “sense” to describe being aware of our internal sensations.

For us to be truly connected as well as experiencing the outside world, we in the Western world need to understand that to be able to sense and be aware of what is going on within us is the key to connection with the whole.

In his book “New Self, New World”, Phillip Shepherd coins the term “spatioception” a name which he based on the word “proprioception”, a sense that tells you where your body is in space. Spatioception tells you where the space is in your body.

Everyone is born with this sense. 

When something untoward happens – an argument, a loss, or even just running late for a meeting, everyone knows that feeling of tension within the body, a contraction, a feeling of the closing up of the spaces within the body. Not a nice feeling.

Contrast this with the sensation you feel when you are at peace. You are sitting beside a slow, flowing river with nature surrounding you. You breath deep and relax. At that moment you have expanded. You have increased the space within you.

By practising the use of the sense of spatioception you become aware of the space within you,  whether you are expanded or contracted. This awareness then brings about the ability for you to change your internal state. If you are feeling contracted the new awareness can now be used to consciously move to expansion.

Expansion feels so much better than contraction. By consciously moving to the state of spaciousness, you are also moving effortlessly into being present. By being present you are then connecting with you, with the environment around you and with the energies and frequencies of  The Universe. You truly are being. 

Being is the place which leads to the sense of knowing.

In the book “Original Wisdom: Stories of an Ancient Way of Knowing” author Robert Wolffe spent time with an aboriginal tribe the Sng’oi in Malaysia.

Wolffe visited the tribe many times, spending some months with them. Wolffe spent a lot of time with a tribe member named Ahmeed. Ahmeed would take Wolffe for long seemingly to Wolffe, aimless walks in the jungle that adjoined the village. It was toward the end of another one of these walks that Wolffe had a profound and life-changing experience.

“My perception opened further. I no longer saw water—what I felt with my whole being was a leaf-with-water-in-it, attached to a plant that grew in soil surrounded by uncounted other plants, all part of the same blanket of living things covering the soil, which was also part of a larger living skin around the earth. And nothing was separate; all was one, the same thing: water—leaf—plant—trees—soil—animals—earth—air—sunlight and little wisps of wind. The all-ness was everywhere, and I was part of it. 

I cannot explain what went on inside me, but I knew that I had learned something unbelievably wonderful. I felt more alive than I had ever felt before. 

All of me was filled with being. 

What this other sense is, I do not know. For me it is very real. I think of it as a sense of knowing. It probably is a quality we all have to a greater or lesser degree. For me it works when I can get out of my mind, when I can experience without having to understand, or name, or position, or judge, or categorize.”

Wolff, Robert. Original Wisdom (pp. 157-158). Inner Traditions/Bear & Company. 

Note the words Wolffe uses to describe his experience:-

“..what I felt with my whole being…”

“I cannot explain what went on inside me,…”

“All of me was filled with being.”

“I think of it as a sense of knowing.”

His description relates to internal feelings, to a different sense …. to being ….to knowing.

This is what The Awakening can help you find, that deeper connection to the being and knowing that we all have within us and which in turn leads to the deeper connection with all that is.