On Sensation
“We can speak and think only of what exists. And what exists is uncreated and imperishable for it is whole and unchanging and complete. It was not or nor shall be different since it is now, all at once, one and continuous.”
Parmenides
We are irresistibly captivated by the ghostly appearances of the objective world, hypnotized by the intricate patterns of its narratives, and persistently driven to seek outwardly for what is lacking within ourselves. Without ever questioning this assumption, we accept that fulfillment must involve some kind of change—of becoming, of moving away from what is.
So completely entangled in the turmoil of this self-centered drama we call “my life”, we never truly stop to examine the very nature of what we’re trying so hard to escape, modify, or transcend—or to uncover what compels us to act in such neurotic ways.
We often downplay or dismiss sensations as mere biological instruments, a part of our human machinery, existing solely to serve the body-mind organism, its impulses, its instincts, its desires. Psychologically, we perceive the senses as tools of the separate self, or me, or the ego. Yet, the self—just like the world—has no true independent existence; it arises and vanishes exclusively within the senses.
We may hold all sorts of ideas about what the senses are and what stands on either side of them. But experientially, our senses are not the clear windows to reality we often assume them to be—they are reality itself, in the most absolute sense. How else could another reality manifest if not as perception? Senses are not just vehicles to our personal fulfillment; they are the fullness, the wholeness, the completeness we seek. Both desire and its object are stories arising within sensation. Both the lover and the beloved, the seeker and the sought, are appearances within sensation.
We may feel the need for practices to step back from the world of form, awaken from the dream of separation and incompleteness, and reconnect with a more refined space within us—one with greater clarity and less agitation. However, there is an important subtlety: if we approach such techniques as a means to acquire something we believe we lack, or to reach a different, more sacred realm than the one already present—already sacred—we misunderstand their purpose.
What if we’ve been wrong all along? What if life has never been about something to pursue, earn, conquer, or access through effort? What if what we’ve been searching for has always been here, constantly available—our birthright? Because, that is what I’m here to tell you: the beloved we’ve been chasing outwardly has been waiting all this time in the one place we least dared to look—right here, within the intimate simplicity of our very presence.
We can sense it in the feeling of our feet touching the ground, the gentle pulse in our chest, the song of every bird in the sky, and every manifestation of existence. All we need is to recognize its presence and redirect our attention to it. Reality isn’t difficult to find—we are it. But do we ever give it a chance? Do we let it in, without the compulsive need to change it, to transform it, to make it as we wish.
Just take a look for yourself: the whole creation, including yourself, appears and dissolves as sensation. There is truly nothing apart from it—no inner world, no outer world. There is no past and no future. All there is, is this. You are not directing it in any way. What you think you are is just an appearance in that ever-changing flow of reality. That flow of reality never depart from itself, it never become something else, it always remain itself.
And sensation is the mystery in which it all happens. By being with anything that arises, we are with the whole. We are the whole. Every perception is an invitation to rediscover this miracle. It whispers to us in every rustling leaf, in the golden glow of sunlight on our skin, and in the stillness between two words.
When we truly see this, the search for any hypothetical otherness dissolves like mist under the morning sun. What remains is the quiet knowing that all we have been seeking, all we have longed for, has always been here—in the simplicity of being, in the sacredness of this very moment that has no outside or inside, that is everything, eternally.
Nothing is separate. Take away a single blade of grass, and the whole universe collapses. How can we be separate from anything? All is one. All is scared. All is complete, just as it is.
IMF, The Cosmic Tree, 9 December 2024
