This week in my JOL3 practice, I'm deconstructing the senses.
Yesterday when I started this I wasn't quite sure what that meant. I thought perhaps I was supposed to be deconstructing the sensations in my body. So in my early morning meditation today, I did just that largely in my Tan Tien. I felt this big block of numbness that I often felt and start to feel the different layers of anxiety keeping that numbness intact.
But later, when I did 30 minutes of standing meditation, I actually started deconstructing sound, hearing, and began to realize what an important practice this is.
Hearing is such a complex sense for me because I spend so much time listening to the sound of my own voice. I forget to listen to the sounds outside me, I forget to listen to the sound of my breathing. I forget to pay attention to the data that tells me that I'm alive.
And then there's the inner ear, the most important component of balance. If I'm not listening then I'm not exercising the inner ear, and before I know it my life is off balance, everything goes off track.
Deconstructing the senses means looking at how there are so many levels to hearing, what I hear, how I hear, that there is no such thing really as a unified hearing or purpose to hearing. Yes i need to hear my inner voice, but I also need to hear the pauses between words, the length of my breath, the world outside.
"Are you listening to me." This is an instruction I hear from myself again and again and again.
This week I use it as support for my practice.
