EXPERIMENTS and COMBINATIONS

Rough Notes and Explorations

How does it feel "to be" without a mirror to check ourselves in, and then a self confirming selfie?

Our panoramic sense of the world, AND an awareness of how it feels to see, hear, smell, and taste the body from the inside, are both undeveloped dimensions of knowing ourselves, of feeling real and 'I am this'.

They both add balance, and depth to our sense of self-identity. They both reduce the insecurity which leads to all our present day cultural problems (see Chapter 3).

I can only imagine that combining focusing, panoraming, and inner body awareness, would establish a wonderful creative working relationship between the world inside every being and the world outside.

I can't help wondering what would have developed if i had continued my childhood body awareness routines. They were so pure and naive, so devoid of any clever abstract ideas.

Listening, seeing, smelling, and tasting, all activate body awareness in individual and specific ways – they bring out new possibilities which we don't have with our brain guided awareness or our tactile awareness.

We can taste as 5-6 week old embryos in the womb. It takes months till we can see and hear. And we start smelling when the breathing starts, at birth. I find this a useful idea when building up to whole body awareness.

First we need to develop the sense of taste.

The sense of taste in our own body is very vague compared to food. I believe the differences and contrasts you notice in your mouth area are the parameters of our body-taste.

The roof of the mouth is salty, underneath the tongue is sweeter, roof of the mouth and inside the scalp are nutty (appropriate?), and downwards in the throat is watery, vaguely like rhubarb.

The lips are sometimes salty but sometimes rich... first i thought cherries, then raspberries... then i thought it's red... blood? Am i tasting blood there? – but it's definitely red! Then i tasted between my lips and teeth and thought its yellow almost a tinge of pineapple – I'd love to be guided by a child's drawing of the colours they can taste. (see Questions for Children) – Top of mouth is salty, (maybe silver) but under tongue is sweet, maybe blue.

From the area down in the gums between the lips and teeth, sidewards to in between the jawbones, it's rich, strong, seems to be always changing, sometimes vaguely like prunes... brown... Sometimes there's so much tension in this area between the jawbones that it's not possible to taste there, it just feels warm. Trying to taste will relax the tension. Trying to taste is an effective way of relaxing any stiffness in the mouth.

Tasting inside my own body, i notice bones are more salty, flesh is sweeter, i don't now if this ties in with the taste of blood and maybe calcium in the bones, i really don't know.

After eating i can taste the food down my esophagus and spreading out across my stomach area – like an upturned 'T' shape. I find the taste of what i've eaten – if it's mild like tomatoes on toast – it takes a while till the feeling permeates my entire central body upper legs and upper arms. If i eat something like boiled eggs, then my whole body quickly feels eggy.

For several hours after a rich balanced meal, the taste of that meal digests throughout the whole body. This is an important experience for inner-body awareness. Taste your body an hour after meals.

When the body is fizzing just under the skin. From here on, there are two possibilities – to do with digesting and converting smells, and i believe animals can choose which they use.

One option is clear to me and relatively easy to feel. Especially if you smell-in quickly and out slowly, the out-smell feels as though it seeps outwards through the pores of the skin. It makes me wonder if, at these times, i am actually giving off scent.

Animals when defending territory and in sexual foreplay are able to produce scent. I don't know how they do this from a scientific point of view, and i can't justify this sensation of producing scent, i can only suggest you try it, it's easier to do than the meltdown.

The Meltdown
For animals like the hedgehog the sense of smell is so central to their life that they certainly never consider breathing in terms of an oxygen CO2 exchange, but as a smell exchange.

My felt-reality is that the in-smell fills me up to just under my skin, and i examine and digest it, and the out-smell is from the belly and it's warm, like exhaust fumes, as a result of digestion in the smell-exchange.

The in-breath feels like the warm center is pulling in new energy stuff, and the out-breath is pushing out stale energy stuff, and this push and pull are what keeps the combustion firing.

My breathing exercise of 'filling up and emptying out', becomes filling up with new smell, tasting, savouring, digesting, absorbing… and then, combusting and letting out and emptying out the old stale smell, the exhaust fumes.

And because smelling the out-smell, the exhaust fumes, is generally not important for survival – all a hedgehog focusses on and thinks is: smelling-in, savouring, digesting, combusting.

The best attitude is to smell in new scent, and simply enjoy the scent during the out breath.

When i am aware of just smelling-in, savouring and digesting. The warmth of combustion happens occassionally by itself.

How do birds stay warm over winter? I'm wondering how important smell might be. How does this all fit with for example: the yogic practice of internal heating?

And that's as far as i know or can guess, and i wish i'd have known about all this 50 years ago. And i hope somebody else spends a few of their next 50 years developing it.

One way to do this, is to ask your body "what's the truth?"

This fits with so many common ideas of "your body knows the truth" or "listening to your body".

Recently, as an extension to the attitude of listening-out, waiting for anything new and asking myself "what's the next sound going to be?" I started waiting for the next thought: "what's the next thought going to be?" And usually after a period of silence, the next thought is "how on earth is that happening?" – when i wait for them, they don't come... Again, try it out yourself, it seems to be a sort of trick you can play on your brain.

A special note is that combining the sense of body taste with panoramic seeing gives me a strong sense of oneness. This is an important connection.

I am becoming more and more convinced that panoraming alone leads to a sensation of wholeness... the oneness feeling comes by combining this with the inner body senses of taste and smell.

The incredibly important point for me is that tasting, listening, x-ray visualisation, a sense of light, recreate that feeling i had when i was a child.

I know i'm onto something here, i'm not quite sure what, but it all develops so naturally that i can't help wanting to know what happens next.

This stimulates the lower brain... and experts in the field of the lower brain could please tell me more on this... Sometimes you may feel the humming, vibrating in your belly, but i don't know the next step on that route.

Continued from Prayer. The daily prayers i repeat.

Dear God who is everywhere,
forgive me for thinking about myself.
Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory,
please be aware of my condition.

I often, usually want and need to repeat just one of these phrases, rather than as a continuous prayer.
Dear God who is everywhere, please let your spirit come to me today, please fill me and surround me. Forgive my mistakes and pride, as i forgive others. Lead me not into temptation, (lead me not into desire for the things which cause desire), deliver me from evil, (from pride and judgements).

Please let your spirit come to us today, please fill us and surround us. Forgive our weakness and pride. Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory.

And this. Each phrase and sub-phrase is recited internally, on repeat, to allow each feeling time to work.
Dear Spirit which is everywhere, please be aware of the light and energy around me through me and inside me. Dear Spirit which is everywhere, please be aware of the sounds around me through me and inside me. Dear Spirit which is everywhere, please be aware of the tastes inside and outside me (on my skin). Dear Spirit which is everywhere, please be aware of the smells inside and around me.

And again
Dear Spirit which is everywhere,
Please forgive me for thinking about myself
Please be aware of my condition.

Back to Chapter Seven : Creative Dozing
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