Presence And The Body
As I became more grounded in my body, I was able to look even more closely at thinking during my meditation and realised that every time I started to think, it would create this idea of a progression in time. It was like I was moving into the past, going over memories and trying to overlay the present with these memories. When I wasn’t thinking I was just here, and there was no sense of time. Sometimes I didn’t realise that I hadn’t been thinking until the mind cranked up again. It was a blank state that was difficult to describe but felt strangely attractive. I didn’t even know what was attractive about it, but maybe it was because it felt more real. The thinking then started to lose its allure because it was just like something repeating over and over again, and it became quite monotonous and murky — not at all clear.
I started to crave the clarity and presence that I felt when I wasn’t thinking and looked even more deeply into my body. I would use the sensations in my body to neutralise the emotional reactions to thinking, and that would make it easier to bring my attention back to where I was — which was always in my body. My perception of time started to become disjointed as the momentum of thinking slowed down. It became very clear that thinking, time and the body were very closely related, and the longing to be free from the attachment to them all became stronger and stronger. The body was the key…
