Essential Zen

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During my afternoon nap and after leaving Dreaming, I decided to enter meditation and perform a body scan. In chat, cancer was mentioned, and at one time I had lung cancer. Often times I'll take the body scan meditation into internal organs, and found a new method this afternoon to perform a scan to check around...

In reflexology there are points on the bottom of the feet, the palms of the hands and points on the face which relate to every part of the body, particularly organs and other goodies we are composed of. While performing the body scan today, I chose to enter an organ in the body via certain reflexology points, as opposed to when I'm scanning my body and come across the physical location of, let's say the liver, then scanning it.

This was most interesting. My take-away for today was in 'seeing' how everything is inter-related. Every-thing is connected. I could move from one organ to another, seeing how they all worked together, or back to the reflexology point and choose another.

I also got a birds-eye view of disease, or the results of dis-ease. Very difficult to explain this.

I'm going to continue to work with this, see what happens, then work with some of my clients who are open minded and are willing to give it a try. Teaching is a marvelous way of learning, and I want to see what I can change within, then, see if I can 'teach' another to do this, and if we can get any results.

Perhaps the words 'change,' and 'results,' above, are not the right words to use, but oh well. We'll see what happens. I'm working on a huge mind/body awareness project and it would be interesting to see if this can be included.

K

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Have been thinking about this and the body scan, how attention needs to reside in sensation and not thought. Thought is a marvelous tool, yet not what is going on here.

We all understand what it means to think what can be called a picture thought, a verbal thought, or an abstract thought. If you can imagine an apple, what you’re seeing in your mind’s eye can be called a picture thought. When you think about what you said to a friend yesterday, your focus is on what can be called a verbal thought. When you add 420 to 815, your focus is on what can be called an abstract thought. Thoughts are symbolic representations in the mind.

Sensation can be felt directly without the need for thought. When you feel a cold wind on your face, attention is directed to sensation directly. No thought is necessary. This ‘body scan’ works best when no thought is present in awareness. Learning the distinction between a thought and a sensation within the body…and that you can rest attention in sensation is key.

Directing attention to sensation and not to thought or mental pictures…yes.