Attention and Sensation, Continued

I’d like to try something with you. 

Try this: Put your forefinger on the tip of your nose. You feel something - what we would call sensation - resulting from this contact. The longer you hold it, the more you may note it. Pay attention to the tip of your nose and the sensation that is there from this contact. It feels different when you take your finger away. Then try again. There’s a tingling. Pay attention; you’ll notice. Take your finger away. It’s different. Maybe something remains. That difference is what, for the moment, we will call “sensation.” There is a sensation on the tip of your nose when you do that. It can be light, barely touching it.  Now put your attention to the exclusion of everything else, just for a minute, on the tip of your nose.  Try to be aware of that sensation, nothing else: not to me, the room, or anything else for one minute. 

Starting - Now.

Do you see what I mean? What did you find? What did you notice?

Response:  I still felt a sensation.

TF: almost. Does anyone else have that same thing? (Some say “yes.”)

Response: It was difficult to maintain.

TF: Why was it difficult? Because my attention isn’t as good as I thought it was. I should be able to pay attention to one thing for one minute. I feel that. I’m going off all the time, thinking about something or something else happening. I hear someone cough and I’m gone. My attention is fractured. I have to bring it back. It gets taken and I have to bring it back. This is the first evidence of what we need. 

I need to be able to be aware of the sensation, not only of the tip of my nose - the tip of my nose is not important - but of my whole body. My body is alive. It is full of energy, energy in movement. All the time, different kinds of energy, different qualities, all these in movement. I can be aware of this. I’m aware of the sensation in my body. Not one evoked by the outside but present all the time in me. That energy is not available to me in my usual state, but when I become aware of it - the sensation of being alive - it becomes available to me. I feel I have no energy, but I have an enormous reservoir of energy in my body if I would be aware of the sensation of it, like a sort of tingling everywhere in my body, maybe from my toes right to the top of my forehead, the back of my neck, and the top of my head, - everywhere in my body. I could already be a different man. However, this requires very good attention.