Scanning With Higher Resolution

In a previous meditation called Body Map, we suggested that you sense and visualize your physical body in cross section somewhat like it would be represented in a CT scan. Now let’s go for a more subtle perception of the body. Our bodies aren’t just bags of meat and bone. There is life in there.  As living beings, we are more process than thing. When we die, the processes of life stop and our body becomes just a thing.  Let’s look beyond the thingness of this miracle that is your living body.

Take a little quiet time to observe the processes in your body.

Notice the movement. Attend to your breathing. Air flows in and out of your lungs as long as your living continues. Be grateful for that. Take as long as you like to just observe the process: The flow of air through your nostrils or mouth, the rising and falling of your chest and abdomen, the rising and falling of the urge to inhale or exhale.

Your heart beats day and night and your blood is always flowing. Do you notice? Be very quiet and listen for the beating of your heart. Can you feel it there in your chest? With each beat, your heart moves blood throughout your body. Can you feel the pulsing? Or tingling, or maybe warmth? Perhaps you feel it in your hands. Can you feel it in your feet? Anywhere else?

Your digestive track is working too. Notice what you notice. Is there gurgling? Movement? Sensation of hunger or fullness? Try to observe those sensations without getting caught up in the interpretation. If you feel hunger, what is it like to just sit with that for a while without responding to it?

While these large scale physical actions of breathing, blood pumping and digestion are going on, much smaller scale activities are occurring in your cells. Molecules are being formed and broken apart. Peptides and proteins are being constructed and deconstructed. Sugars are being processed and turned into energy, or fat. Nerves are firing with electricity. Fluids are being secreted. Waste is being moved along. Heat is being adjusted. Blood pressure is being regulated.

This is a lot of process. This is life energy in action. It is complex and many layered. It is all normally beyond awareness. But what if it were not? Tune in to those frequencies and see what you get. Open your mind to the possibility that you can feel all that life going on in you. Your body is radiating heat. Your cellular activity is giving off energy as chemical bonds are broken. Atoms and molecules are shaking, moving, joining together, and breaking apart. Your body is a happening place. What can you sense of this?

All this and perhaps something more has been called kundalini, prana, chi and ki. It flows and swirls throughout the body. It pulses and radiates, or ebbs and stagnates. We vibrate with it when we are alive, and it subsides when we die. Some people sense it more easily than others, but if you don’t look you won’t see. Observe yourself. Note what you can sense of this life force. Perhaps you can feel it. Maybe you will see it. Maybe it is color. Maybe you sense it in some metaphorical way.

Awareness of your aliveness reveals the majesty and preciousness of your existence. Appreciate the magnificence of the processes. Know that you are more than you can ever know.

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