I just had a conversation with someone who is taking a Vortex Healing class and said she experienced only space in her chest area.
It made me realize that the way I experience my physical body may not be how it is for everyone. At some level, I know that. And at another level, it’s not something I am aware of or think about.
HOW I EXPERIENCE MY PHYSICAL BODY
So how do I experience my physical body?
For me, it’s mainly capacity. Everything is capacity and this capacity forms itself into the content of experience, the world as it appears to me, and this includes how this body appears in my sense fields – the shapes and colors, the sensations, the movement, and so on.
I can also say that this body is space. It’s space and this space sometimes takes the form of sensations. The sensations happen within and as awake space.
And I can say this body is consciousness. It’s happening within and as consciousness, just like the rest of the world appears to me.
HOW CAN WE EXPLORE THIS FOR OURSELVES?
This experience of my body and anything physical came with the initial awakening shift when I was fifteen and sixteen.
And I keep exploring it.
I explore what I most fundamentally am in my own experience, and find what I can call capacity for the world as it appears to me, and what the world to me happens within and as. (Headless experiments.)
I do inquiry on my experience of this body and any sense of being this body. I notice the sensations. Visual impressions. I notice the mental representations associated with these. I notice the sensations are sensations. I notice the mental representations are mental representations. And what’s left is this capacity and awake space taking all these forms. (Traditional Buddhist inquiry and modern versions like the Living Inquiries / Kiloby Inquiries.)
Through this, I also notice how any sense of solidity is created. It’s created in the same way as much else, through associating physical sensations with certain mental representations. The sensations lend a sense of solidity and reality to the thoughts, and the thoughts lend a sense of meaning to the sensations. And, in this case, this meaning is physical solidity. Here too, when this is seen and explored and we get familiar with this terrain, the “glue” that holds the sensations and thoughts together softens. We see through how the mind creates its own experience of the world. And what’s left is capacity and awake space taking all of these forms.