Perception Intensifies When I Practice In Silence

Hi Lujan,

Every time I had the opportunity to talk to you I was always left with the certainty that you really care. 

In Italian, you would say “ci tieni”, which partially translates as “it matters to you”. 
However, it does not express how simple and yet rare it feels. 
It is the certainty that when we are together you care about everything, about us participating, about every whisper.

Your way of being is true, sharp, total. It is accompanied by the impression that nothing is underestimated, nothing is distant, delayed, or suspended.

 Some time ago I asked you several quick, confused, and probably quite violent questions. Even then you spoke calmly for a long time, but eventually, you addressed them all and answered without missing anything I had blathered, leaving me once more speechless. What could I make out of that?

The opportunity you create to experience this is priceless and I wish I can transmit it to you. That’s all I can say. It is a very strong example. So when there is a window for new online sessions I’m just concerned about being there, let’s say to attend it at my best because I can and because I care for.

Coming to my experience, the backs of my hands get warm during the mudra you started teaching us. A spontaneous warmth happens when they reach my hips, especially if I wait for some time before closing the shape. Then it just leaves, making me wonder if my body knows or wants to do something different than my routine. Then I just let this thought fade, but I find myself smiling.

Auditory perception intensifies when I practice in silence. It seems to me that there is something to be heard “further” and “even further” and I lose a bit of track of the ordinary scene around me, so I ridiculously jump the air at the slightest noise.

The hours after meetings are more intense than the ordinary. Sometimes I feel the world around me has “more substance” or “volume”. It’s something undefined, it can come from the trees, the light, or a normal object that suddenly seems to me to have never been quite there.

After the meetings, other sensations come with different quality and they catch my attention with more intensity. They have the distinction of seeming somehow anchored in the body. An example is a state of alertness and uncertainty that fills my lower abdomen as if the next step might not touch the ground, or something is always on the verge of happening without any reason. Then, by putting myself at work or something I love, it eventually vanishes.

The other “localized” state in the body is sadness. I don’t mean that the meetings bring me in any way unpleasant feelings and I find myself very calm right after the sessions. Again, when it comes this sadness is “in the body”. A feeling that is as physical as muscles aching after a workout.

It happens in the upper part of the abdomen, like a space that opens up and from which (or into which) a melancholy that has neither origin nor object flows. I find myself longing for…but no word or image comes to finish my sentence. And then also that just drops.

I’ll be coming to listen to you again on Saturday and the Saturday after. I will come as often and as long as it is possible.

Thank you
Thomas