Lonely Awareness?

Posted on March 8, 2008
Filed Under Awareness, Spirituality |

Martial arts are a great practice, they taught me a greater sensitivity to my body; I learnt to feel muscles I didn’t even realize I had. If you practice martial arts for long enough, eventually this new sensitivity gets ingrained into every action of your body, you gain a higher physical self-awareness which manifests in the way you walk and in the way you move. At a certain point you begin to notice such movement in other people, especially those who have never practiced any body awareness; their movements carry a degree of clumsiness.

Over the past decade or so, I have spent a great deal of time exploring the innards of my mind. I figure if I can’t know myself then I can’t really know anyone else. The mind carries within it many hidden currents, our whole thinking process is influenced by thoughts and emotions we don’t even realize we have. Learning our own mind then, gives us an increased sensitivity to these hidden currents, and just as with the body - the mind is malleable - so we aren’t stuck with what we have.

Yet there is a problem I have faced pretty much constantly throughout the years. With martial arts, it’s extremely difficult to describe to another person about the physical body-sensitivity you gain. Without having experienced it, there isn’t really any common point of reference. Of course we can make metaphors or analogies, but they are extremely dependent upon the other persons mental ability to grasp them. I have had this same problem with learning about the mind.

To use a metaphor, the process of discovering how your mind works is a lot like being born with numb hands. At some point - years later, awareness starts to seep into your hands and you start to feel what they are reporting to you. You begin to experience the world in an entirely different way. Of course you want to share this wonderful experience with the people around you - but you discover that everyone is asking ‘But what are hands?’

It’s that issue of a common point of reference; when you haven’t experienced a thing it’s very easy to assume it doesn’t exist. And this is the problem I have had within all areas of my life, when it comes to talking with people about certain subjects - in my experience, it seems many people don’t want to talk about ‘hands’ when they don’t even know what they are. The range of reactions to such things varies from indifference, to confusion, to ridicule to outright hostility. But regardless of reaction the common theme is that many people simply ‘don’t want to hear it’.

The net result of this used to be something that greatly bothered me, but nowadays isn’t the great problem it once was. There are very few people with whom it is possible to discuss anything of ‘meaning’, and because of the lack of common reference points it leads to quick and regular misunderstandings. I have heard so many stories from people on journeys of self discovery who then find themselves facing exactly this issue with their friends and family.

Here is where the Internet has been of unparalleled value, it has allowed for individuals on such journeys to connect with each other. It’s helped strip down the isolation that can be felt when one begins to see reality in a very different manner to those around them.

As for the ‘real world’, from time to time I still come across people that are open enough to talk with about these things. Yet relatively speaking they seem to be few and far between. Maybe there is some form of message within that fact?

Comments

4 Responses to “Lonely Awareness?”

john on March 8th, 2008 9:22 pm

Great article that has relevance in my life at this moment.

It is a learning experience in it self not being able to share experiences with your friends and loved ones.

you can point at the door a hundred times but in the end people have to walk through it by them selves.

peace/j
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Marcus on March 9th, 2008 8:45 am

Yeah totally. I am coming to the idea that it’s simply best to let people live their lives and stop trying to conflict with their view on reality.

Though that’s not always possible, as sometimes integrating these experiences into ones life causes others to start asking all sorts of questions. But maybe that should be seen as an opportunity of sorts.

What do you think?
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Brian on March 16th, 2008 5:41 am

Yes a good conversation, what a rare thing to find these days! When I do stumble onto one, it always seems like some sort of divine alignment. You know some of the most amazing people I have ever talked to are bums and cab drivers. I can’t talk to most of my ‘friends’ that troubles me many times. They are obsessed in the material, hyper-media world and shit like LOST. They are good people at heart, but they just don’t even “get” a lot the stuff I am interested in. You can see it happen in people’s eyes during a conversation. As soon as something they were never ‘taught’ they will get uneasy and try to change subject or just drift off into space. It really is quite sad. My ‘friends’ were the smartest people in school, yet spiritually are infants. They are atheists, that believe that science can answer all questions. Yet I tried to explain sacred geometry to them, and hit a brick wall. This material world takes too much spiritual energy from people. The “job” takes so much energy that most won’t have time for spirituality anymore. Another way energy is taken is in how people are many times forced to work on things they morally/spiritually object to. I mean I know someone who is working on an ad campaign to sell acid reflex medicine to babies- WTF? I have witnessed this spiritual loss in a few close friends. This is why still at this point, I refuse to hold a regular ‘job’. This puts me in that “crackpot outsider” category among most people. I mean they can’t even ask me ‘What do you do’, so there is nothing to talk about! I don’t want to go through that change that everyone else has, and I don’t want to be like everyone else. Its not that i don’t work, but its all freelance and under the radar. It also doesn’t pay very well, and afford me any luxuries of a “real job”. I am content being poor, yet everyone else wants to force me to get a real job! This is the dilemma I am in right now, i want to do what is right but the challenges are tough.

Thank you for your wisdom and I am quite happy I found your blog. Keep up the great work!
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Marcus on March 17th, 2008 12:24 pm

Thanks for the comments.

It’s interesting you point out how ‘bums’ and cab drivers seem to have the most interesting things to say. I have noticed the samething. As you point out - these people seem to have more energy to think and consider things. The ‘jobs’ so many others get hooked into leave little room for thinking about anything other than the job itself.

It’s a tradegy how this effects parents with their kids. Both parents out working and the kids being raised by child minders. All this does is cause more and more problems. What long term effects does this have on those kids?

I like your approach to work; gotta be one of the best ways by far.
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