Deep Diving Into Experience

Life is an experience we are having right now. This experience consists of three fundamental elements: thinking, that which thinking classifies as a multitude of patterns of sensorial experiences grouped into the categories of body and the world surrounding the body, and finally, whatever is aware of thinking and sensorial experiences. Those three elements can usefully describe our experience at this moment.

You may be sitting in your home reading this with a cup of coffee. What you call your home and the cup of coffee is just a collection of sensorial experiences your mind is recognising and labelling as your home. What you are calling those warm feelings in your tummy are sensorial experiences your mind is recognising and labelling as warm feelings. Your mind may be thinking, "This is a nice cup of coffee". Your mind recognises this as a thought. But you are whatever is aware of all this. Whatever is aware of all this must be present because you would not be aware of anything if it were not.

Can anyone tell you differently? A psychologist may say to you all sorts of things about your mind and body, or another person may give you their opinions too, or a scientist may come up with the latest theory. But the only thing you can go by to be sure of what is going on is your direct experience. How can anyone else tell you about what you are directly experiencing? They cannot. Time and again, when asked to examine their direct experience of being alive, all people agree that it comes down to these fundamental elements.

Of course, we can intellectually break them down and classify them into further subgroups. We can classify sensations and physical bodily sensations, emotions, and senses of colour and form from objects around the body. We can classify thinking into negative and positive thinking, imagination and rationality. But these are all subcategories of the three fundamental categories. In all cases, our sense of psychological safety comes from some combination of these three elements of what you are experiencing right now.

It is the deep exploration of our experience of this moment that we find indestructible wholeness.