A sensuous existence

After so many years of existing as a floating head, filtering every moment through a scattered and critical mind, it feels so sweet to be on this journey of return to the essence of my childhood: playing in the world with all my senses, using my body, my nervous system, to attune to the world and experience existence in all its shades, all its splendour, all its complexity; living in utter, dumbfounded awe at the strangeness of inhabiting this earth as a human creature…

As I look out of my window this very moment, I see a hummingbird visiting each of the gentle purple fronds of lacy phacelia that I planted for the pollinators (and because they’re a beautiful, alien flower). I relate to that hummingbird, buzzing around at the speed of light, tasting the sweet nectar of so many flowers, the way I have buzzed around, gorging on the human platter of experiences… people I have known, places I have stayed, beatnik inspired adventures, jobs that have carried me through to the next phase, visions shared with a thumping heart on bonfire edges. The hummingbird pollinates flowers, we pollinate hearts and minds with the procreative eros of our curious human spirit.

Despite my erratic earth-flight thus far, and despite a decade of determined truth-seeking, learning and healing, I now return to a simpler place, feeling as if I know nothing at all. Feeling as if only now, I am at the beginning. Where raging words once rang between my ears, and political poetry poured from me casually, there is a quiet left; a humble innocence. I still carry grand visions with me, but I’ve begun to realize that the road to their manifestation is walked through everyday, embodied acts. Through mindful participation with the present moment.

The wisdom we need finds us when we move molasses-like, rather than time-sped. The way we show up in the world, moment to moment- even, and perhaps especially, in the radical act of living simply and contentedly- holds more weight than a popcorn machine of ideas or manic midnight dreaming. They both have their place, their gifts, but the grand visions mean nothing if we cannot become the living ecology that is capable of nurturing what wishes to be born through us.

The world of the body, the felt sense, is not impressed by what you think you know or how busy you’ve been. It speaks in a language far beyond words, asking us to meet the moment with humility, willingness and present awareness. This attunement allows us to feel the energy and information it carries moving and interplaying between our own field and the environment immediate to us. It brings us into this peculiar marriage between animal instinct and divine providence. With a bridge drawn between heaven and earth, through our present, embodied experience, we may dance across the sky and create with more levity.

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I still daydream of re-wilded, collaborative, village-like agrarian societies, but mostly, I go and spend my afternoons with the plants that surround me rather than in my head dreaming thirty steps ahead. I walk into the garden with no plan and touch plants, prune plants, taste plants. I play some easy music while I become absorbed in the tedious task of garbling herbs- the post harvest process of cleaning, sorting and separating plant parts to finish with the purest medicine. I spend the afternoon slowly harvesting ingredients and cooking dinner for two friends, even though I know I don’t have to, that they don’t expect it. I enjoy it. I am absorbed in the world of my senses, and in this space, the mind takes leave and allows me a romantic date with the world.

As a bodywork practitioner, my tactile sense is one I use often, and is my preferred way to take in my surroundings or get to know someone. I can pick up information from another and tap into a space that feels more unified with a simple touch. I’m still new in my practice, but already, I am feeling put off by preordained sequences and time constraints. I wonder what it would be like to touch with no plans, no agenda; to see what unfolds in the space of utter curiosity and caring response- no clock in my face. In that way, the entire session becomes a wordless conversation, an intimate exploration shared, a chance for my fingertips to convey the message that all of our tense tissues long to hear, “I know, I see you, you’re safe”.

When I wake, I step outside and feel the grass tickle my feet to remind myself I am in this body, and this body is carried by the earth. I feel the breeze, I feel my breath, I hear the symphony of small birds. Against all odds, I am alive. This groaning morning body, still transitioning into the waking world, is gifted a moment to remember where it is and where it comes from. It is these small rituals and ways that carry me. Like gardening barefoot because it feels infinitely better and more connected. Some part of me loves to see the filth beneath my toenails, as if it’s some microcosmic statement of revolt against humanities domestication. Some minute reminder of a wilder way.

I lay on the dock with friends who serenade me with their beautiful voices. Their toes wiggle while they play and I feel an urge to reach out and grab them, to put an arm on their leg, around their waist. Not because I want anything, not because I mean much by it, but because this feels natural to me, and the cold, awkward fear of touch and all it has become- trauma or desperate craving for so many- feels backwards and inhuman. We have even forgotten that we’re allowed to place our hands on our own skin. When I’m sore, I spend some evening time massaging my legs, my hips, my shoulders. How rare it has become to show ourselves the same love we extend to everyone else…

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We are a people who have largely lost touch with the felt sense- with the full, sensual, responsive and expressive experience of being embodied. For so long, I did not encompass my body. Even now, I struggle at times to stay within my form and not tune out. We all do it, but the highly sensitive ones (hi, I see you) know just how easy it can be to slip into a distant fog in order to survive a world so loud, in a body that lives in a state of constant overwhelm because it feels all the input, all at once, like electricity coursing through nerves. Some days I need to touch my feet to remind myself they’re still there. Some days, being in the body does not feel safe at all. I’m learning to thank my nervous system for protecting me, and to focus on cultivating the safety it needs to live embodied rather than trying to get there through shame and force (spoiler, it never works).

Cultivating this safety has become the most important part of my healing- all else follows. Because being embodied is not a luxury or some poetic, abstract experience, it is how we come back to truth, and know it for ourselves. It is how we become active participants in life, rather than spectators. It is a birthright. It is our way of communing with the living world and realizing, through direct experience, that we are one with all of creation; that the willow tree, red-headed sapsucker, climbing peas, pinned ears and pheromones we inhale are all speaking to us, and waiting for us to wake up and realize that we, too, can speak back with our awareness.

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How easy it is to forget, with a dominant language that divides everything into subject/object. A language, reflecting a worldview, in which everything is a thing. How easy it is to create walls of numbness in order to survive our reality, otherwise how could we possible go on consuming the living world that sustains us? How easy it is to continue playing the old, comfortable program, lest we, as very serious adults, have to show up in the world with the playful, experimental, humble and innocent energy of a child, admitting that we don’t have it all figured out. Instead, we do as Ram Dass says, “I’ll pretend you are who you say you are if you pretend I am who I say I am”. And how exhausting it is to uphold a rigid and curated image when your true, soulful essence lays buried beneath the steel bunker of your persona, pounding raw fists against the ceiling, hoping you will feel the anxious thumping and open the door.

I know there’s a meeting place between the functions of the mind in driving forth change and the softness of a body that lives sensually, without bracing, in the present moment…. though I still haven’t mastered this balance, not even close. I know near to nothing when it comes to navigating the red tape and social formalities of our constructed societies- I reel from the sounds of zoning application, grant writing, fundraising, political campaigning, tax credit, bottom line, viable business plan, diversifying investments, niche marketing, elevator pitch, and most of all, from the sentence we hear or are internally haunted by, one that is more often delusion or death sentence than anything else: “that’s not realistic”.

It’s another one of those human absurdities, which these days, seem to swarm around us inescapably in high numbers, like a cloud of noseeums. The very things we consider realistic are human constructs that are entirely made up and slowly killing us, and our longing to live in accordance with our true human nature, guided by the most basic, observable and perceivable laws that govern our universe, is dismissively labelled unrealistic, wistful, dreamy, and some might even say, most ironically, out of touch. Who is really out of touch here? Consider these words, that again point to the power of our embodied connection and direct, sensual, relational way of knowing the earth.

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It’s 8:28pm and I’m garbling herbs that I’ve dried from the garden with a playlist made specially for the occasion. The evening air is warmed, as is the evening light pouring through the lace curtains. My mind is here with me, processing the sensation of crumbling leaves and petals between calloused finger tips. Everything seems just fine. I think, I could be good like this. Living simply with the plants and the satisfying handiwork that fills a day; with messy sentences and fresh cream from the udder and firewood to split. Mindless. Sensual. Tiresome yet satisfying.

But the truth is, I can’t, I wouldn’t be. Not now, in a time of culminating tensions. I’m unsettled. There is much work to do in the world. There are deep fissures in the collective, traumas that make it impossible to live peacefully in the body and enjoy the simple sensual delight of processing flower petals. Though I dream of a time when we can all inhabit our bodies in peace, right now, the earth is alerting those who dare to feel that she is in pain, that the collective is in pain. We can all feel it, but once again, the highly sensitive ones have been the canaries in the coal mine, struggling to survive a society and earth-divorced culture that is not only unaccommodating to their needs, but in truth, is harmful to us all. For this reason, for the fact of our unity, I know that I may never be free to step away from the madhouse, to exist quietly on the margins, until we are all free to make that choice.

Maybe that’s where I stand now, having gotten a taste for the homesteading lifestyle I had romanticized for so long, and realizing that I won’t be able to settle into it fully, to hide in the woods for the rest of my life, at this time of our history. Even so, as I have written, the wider work and largest visions must be grounded in our nervous systems, by tree roots and soil microbiota, before they stand a chance of taking root and growing vertically. The sensual, embodied, everyday acts- however mundane- are not only a part of the revolutionary story, but a necessary component in it.

Tend to yourself and love your bodies, dear people, for there is work yet to do and we will need a loving house to hold us…

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“May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness;

May all be free from sorrow and the causes of sorrow;

May all never be separated from the sacred happiness which is sorrowless;

And may all live in equanimity, without too much attachment and too much aversion,

And live believing in the equality of all that lives.”