Essence of Senses 👄

Mar 20

Essence of is a monthly editorial deep dive into meaning.

This digital curation of words, imagery, and sound is an invitation to pull the curtain back on the magic, miracles, and mysteries embedded in everyday life.

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Dear friend,

I get lost in my head sometimes.

Often, it’s a past conversation replaying (whether regrettable or romanticized), or a warm, friendly gust of nostalgia that leaves me dreamy. Even more often, it’s some task for the future and the careful computation of a plan to get it done that draws me away from what’s in front of me.

It's actually pretty darn cool that our minds can travel through time. Quite useful even. But there are days when I behave like a full-time time traveler and look up around 5 pm to realize that I've missed far too much of the present.

When I shake out of the stories in my head (or am graciously shaken out of them), I am stunned by how consistently beautiful and special the present moment is—regardless of how ordinary or phenomenal the circumstances.

Each time all of me returns to that moment, to right now, I'm reminded of how much I want to be there. How I would do anything to linger in that presence and watch it unfold into new miracles, like the shifting clouds and descending sun that paint a new picture every other second in the sky each evening.

So I grow confused when I see the ways I run from the present moment. My ~handy dandy~ cell phone is typically the most accessible exit from presence, promising distraction and stimulation and endless rabbit holes that will swallow me whole.

I tend to reach for that easy distraction in moments of spaciousness—because sometimes, the present moment feels too confronting. I run from that discomfort with the way things are, or with the way I am and take refuge in stimulation, tasks, other people, or the maze of my mind.

But these false sanctuaries are sticky places to be; tangled webs that capture our attention and cling to that precious asset.

Thankfully, there are portals back to the present that are always open to us. The quickest and most accessible path I've found is through the body.

So I descend.

I release my awareness from the cramped space in the upper 10% of my body that it’s huddled up in, and I let it drop into the rest of me. I ride an energetic elevator down from my head to my heart. Lower even, growing grounded in my belly, sinking further through the soles of my feet.

Once here, once occupying all of me, my body kindly offers me five ways to deepen. Each sense, a path home.

I'm writing to you as I’m settling back into home after a few weeks in Hawaii. There, I underwent a macro-journey of this traversal from busy mind, through the senses, back to deep presence. Each island is a landscape of sensual wonder and delight. Hawaii has been life-giving medicine for me in the way that it makes presence feel easy.

Pupils dilate and wide eyes fill with tears as I take in the impossibly blue ocean, watching it bounce and roll. The arch of a rainbow lands two doors down from my cabin. Plants grow in curious shapes, offering organic proof that beauty and function can (and perhaps should) co-exist.

Mango and soursop burst onto my tongue and drip down my chin in a seductively primal manner. Flavors so intensely delectable that I have no choice but to close my eyes and say, “mmmmm”.

I taste the salt through my skin as cool waves drape over my shoulders. Bare feet take me through soft sand and over slippery rocks to peer at a family of turtles. My soles are still tender from forest trails littered with ʻōhiʻa tree seeds (think, stepping on legos but a few degrees more torturous). I thank the little devils for making me step slower and notice the silky texture of the fresh air as it travels through my nose, throat, chest, belly and back out the way it came—warmed from my light.

I revisit an old ritual from when I lived here; a hike up a long hill to the forest reserve with a gang of pups that are not quite mine. The wind sweeps the fragrance of the trees across the damp soil, and I wish I could bottle it up and keep it beneath my pillow. It’s the scent of a space where I found refuge. The ease of sanctuary fills my lungs.

The dance of high-up eucalyptus leaves and the crashing waves in the distance blend together. Small birds and desirous coqui frogs harmonize at sunrise. African drums, ukulele strums, and anthems for peace echo through the community. My body dances along.

I let myself be intoxicated by the senses. I lose myself to the flavors, the texture of right now. In that drunken disorientation, the sensations and the objects that triggered them fade away. As I connect to the deep feelings they elicited, the one original sense emerges.

Each sense is a portal of awareness, a way to experience and perceive what is right now. But none can tell the full picture alone. Rather, they can help lead the way to the non-fractured portal of perception within; the part of us that is awareness.

The senses are...sensitive, and can be mishandled. As much as we can use them to be present with what is here now, we can also use them to avoid the same. Binging on indulgent food, overstimulating delicate eyes and ears at the altar of the television, seeking solace in the anatomy of another. The problem lies in looking for wholeness or satisfaction in a fractured thing; in mistaking the physical source of the sensation as the source of felt power.

Popular religion and the sensual delights of this world have had their differences for this reason. As much as I tsk my tongue at the sometimes-intense condemnation of sensual pleasures we see from certain religious authorities, they have a point.

If sensations have become your master, if your agency of choice feels taken away, it’s time to shift your eyes to the awareness within that perceives. Let’s take a page from the Tantrikas’ book and remember to hold a more generative intention as we indulge in the flavors of this life.

As I’ve been pondering this subject of the senses, I’ve been fascinated by the degree to which these portals of perception shape experience.

Bats sense spaces sonically. Bees see the ultraviolet spectrum. Dogs live in a world dominated by scent, with upwards of 100 million more sense receptors in their noses than ours. The abilities and proportional powers of our sense organs drastically shape perception, and therefore the experience of life.

I can’t help but feel lucky for the way I get to experience life in this human body I have been given by God, by my ancestors, with minerals and water borrowed from the Earth.

Even when the sensations are unfavorable—getting stuck behind the garbage truck on my neighborhood walk, slicing my hand while cutting into an overripe avocado, the tightness in my belly sparked by the sound of metal scraping metal. Still, they serve the purpose of bringing me to the now. Still, they're a gift.

I thank my lucky stars that I get to exist on a planet and in a body where I can taste wild blackberries on a warm summer day in California. Where I can peer down into abysmal cliffs and feel my tininess. Where I can feel soft lips pressed to mine. I'm thankful for the awareness that each of these moments of pleasure, pain, or experiences anywhere in between are roads home.

While the sensation fades, the awareness sparked within me lives on in that great big space in the center of my heart.