What is sensational truth, and how do I find it?
There, wait....no....over there. A little to the left. Yes. Yes!
Every surge in awareness & consciousness seems to bring with it an equally vast counter-wave of confusion, much like our beloved ocean churns up polluted, buried, twisted detritus with every pulse of generative, life-giving waters.
I wonder, dear reader, what is your lived perception, your unique conception of the truth?
Do you believe truth is as elusive as it is beautiful, generative, and powerful?
Do you believe that truth lives inside you, as you?
Intuition, body connection, the removal of barriers to expression & manifestation: these gifts, in my experience, are held in that oceanic intelligence within us which is concerned with weaving new worlds together through the watery void of raw sensation. This is the form of truth I am exploring here.
The oracular wisdom of our Earth, expressed in human consciousness, through our bodily experience.
Would you like to learn about accessing more of this second kind of truth, through a simple, habitual, alchemical practice which requires zero special knowledge? Keep reading.
Let’s liken truth to the a hot molten core within Earth’s body. Ever-present, ever-burning. Seemingly absolute, in form and function.
Earth, connected to this core, maintains a center. Gravity remains in good working order. The world keeps turning. This truth is easy to continuously feel. The way one wave, or one breath, inevitably follows the next.
One level deeper. Imagine our human consciousness is an incredible fractal of this Earth.
Our psychic and physical core, also burning with our own desire for the continuance of our life. Our own white-hot truth, always present. Our own desire to live, ever propelling us from one moment, one breath, one heartbeat to the next.
Humanity has worked hard to afford ourselves the luxury of exploring the truth of our universe, sometimes forgetting the wisdom of our Earth.
In our amazing collective and personal forays to the fringes and edges of what is possible, we sometimes get thrown off center.
We find ourselves telling and living lies.
We find ourselves with our eyes cast outward, looking for saviors and martyrs, people to blame. We find ourselves disconnected from our core.
The simplest way I have found to re-connect to my center is also the most humbling, deeply unrewarding in the short-term, and excruciatingly difficult to keep up.
Let’s talk about blame and complaint.
Both of these human habits feel very grounding, familiar, and cozy. Comfortable. Engaging in these behaviors, personally & collectively, has the power to remove fear, at least temporarily (it only works for a moment, when I forget that the entire center of my being is a volatile fire bent on pushing me outside of my comfort zones.).
To live on this Earth is to accept the truth and inevitability of terror. The word terror comes from the word terra. The word terra means Earth.
To live life connected to our center, to the feminine, and this Earth…. is to accept the gift of sacred terror.
Not knowing the consequences of each step, and having to continue taking steps however much we lose in the process, however much the ground shakes beneath our very feet, however much our legs take the hint and also begin shaking, undermining our most basic sense of support.
Learning to revel in the shaking, the mystery, the total unknowability, knowing that the longer we are able to stretch our time in moments of unknown, the more possibilities, truths, and pleasures have a chance to slip past the gateways of our ego and open new worlds of oracular truth.
Truth reminds me of flying in an aircraft, or making love.
Knowing that any vistas of sensation I reach, any gorgeous carved canyons of Earth or my lover’s body that I see carved far below me, could be my final resting place.
Surrendering to that truth with passion and valor in the name of soaring, of being transported to new worlds.
I could momentarily escape my deep-felt, most vulnerable terror in these moments by complaining about the turbulence, or blaming the weather. To do so would also be to remove myself a few steps from my powerful felt senses, and miss all the majesty of inhabiting them. Blame and complaint can be like that, for me.
In my experience, blame and complaint is what happens when powerful sensation in the animal body is ignored, locked in chains of fear-based logic. Blame and complaint, a hardened shell around desire which has gone unfulfilled, and unheeded. The detritus which comes up, when old patterns are threatened with change.
When someone blames others, or complains to me, I can be sure that they are not feeling actively present, embodied, or empowered in manifesting their desire through inhabiting their own sensational truth. How do I know? Decades of experience.
The practice of surrendering chains of blame and complaint, some of which reach back for many generations, is the prerequisite for touching the form of truth I am choosing to explore in my writing and life.
Surrendering these ways our egos have of maintaining a delusional, illusory sure-footing on the terrifyingly impermanent, madly-swaying web of life, is surrendering to terror. Terra. Our Earth. The feminine. As such, it is the ultimate way to begin to touch truth.
I have found the practice of denying my rabid, conditioned hunger for blame and complaint takes me far into my body and emotions, moving me past the hardened layers of my fear-based convictions, and into the juicy pulse where pain, pleasure, discomfort, terror, and desire all share the same ecstatic voice. This voice is my Goddess, loudly, wordlessly directing me closer to my truth.
Here is your nitty gritty, practical instruction.
Your reward, for reading this far.
Take the next week to notice EVERY instance of blame and complaint that comes up in your mind.
DO NOT, under any circumstance, voice it in your external world!
You will totally slip up and find yourself complaining, if you are anything like me. If you make the mistake of voicing a complaint, guiltlessly catch it, apologize to your listener, and immediately change the topic.
Note, the things you blame and complain about, denied their usual roles of manufactured importance in your life, will likely grow louder and way more annoying in your mind as you do this. This is a sign that the exercise is working. If you burst into rageful tears, congratulate yourself. You’re really doing it.
This part one, of a very hard-line spiritual practice…..stay tuned for part two. :)
We cannot have one sensation without the others. We cannot thrive on logical truth alone, without uniting it with the sensational, oracular, deeply emotional truth of the body. If one voice is to speak truth, all attempts to speak truth must be uplifted. As in the body, so in a culture. To me, the voice of sensation and the voice of the truth are one.
And now, you have a handy way to cultivate and amplify this voice of sensational in yourself. Don’t be surprised if the commitment to interrupting blame and complaint, in favor of embracing the truth of sensation, pushes you into the fire of your truth and forces you to live with more awareness, listening, and honesty than ever before.
Thank you for reading me,
Thank you for loving me,
Thank you for paying me.