Step 1: Sensation

Lose your mind, and come to your senses."

--Fritz Perls

Step One in the Awareness Cycle, Sensation, is where we tune into raw, simple, immediate sensation.

What do we mean by Sensations?

Sensations are what we see, hear, smell, taste, touch-feel, and what we experience inside in our muscles and guts.

• Sensations are not ideas

• Sensations are not concepts

• Sensations are not stories

• Sensations are not thoughts

• Sensation clue us into our body, what is happening in the animal that we are.

• Sensations are the beginning signs of what we need.

• Our thoughts tells us misleading stories, images of who we should be, and what we should do, regardless of what’s in our bodies, our guts, and our cells.

• Thoughts can mislead us, because they are disconnected from our organic needs. They are instructions for wearing social masks, not for knowing who we are deeply.

• If we are to know what we really need at any given moment, we need to disregard thoughts and pay attention to the primary experience of Sensations. Our minds can lie to us, our body experience is always plain and immediate.

So, keep letting go of all of that garbage that clogs up the Now, and bathe in Sensations, in sheer vivid immediate experience. Each time that Mind (or Ego) wants to blab about big concepts, ideas, or narratives, return to Sensation.

If you are like most people, you will flit back and forth between the Sensations, and the stream of thoughts, mental images, and impulses. Mind loves complexity and stories, and is super-judgey about Sensation-awareness being a waste of time.

There is a time for stories, plans, and actions, but not when you’re practicing Sensation.

So, Pause, and pay attention throughout the day to what sensations you are experiencing.

Some Sensation Stucknesses:

There-And-Then Vs. Here-And-Now: Your mind space and time-travels, taking you to other times, past or imaginary future, or to other places. This pulls you out of the Here-And-Now that is anchored in awareness of Sensation.

Numb Vs. Over-Sensitive: You are either only dimly-aware of your Sensations, or you are bombarded by their intensity.

Clinging To The Feel-Goods and Resisting the Feel-Bads: You try to be in touch only with pleasant Sensations, and blunt or avoid awareness of the difficult Sensations.

Sensation's Deeper Meanings

Becoming a child again:

• Sensation is our most-innocent, pristine, vulnerable level of consciousness, free of more-complex phenomena like thoughts, judgements, and feelings.

• So, to practice at the Sensation stage is to become like a child again. Watch infants and toddlers, as they open their eyes and other senses on the world’s abundant cornucopia of stimuli for the very first time. In the Christian tradition it might be considered entering the Kingdom of Heaven, a kind of return to the innocence of Eden. In Buddhism, we call it Beginner’s Mind.

• Menschitude means we are fresh to the world, able to enjoy and experience all that is happening, as we do in our youth. Even an old Mensch feels youthful, playful, happily alive. When you allow Sensations to be pristinely felt, you are growing your capacity for this youthful aspect of Menschiness.

Sensation and Learning to Love:

• The traditional definitions of Mensch always include integrity, honor, righteousness, and ethics. Here, in Sensation, we begin to cultivate the seeds of these moral characteristics of Menschitude by freshly-experiencing the basic building blocks of their common foundation, Love.

• Practicing Sensation games helps us to learn to fall in love with the world all over again, just as we first fell in love with it as infants and toddlers. Basic, innocent, vulnerable contact with all that we see, hear, taste, touch, and smell reminds us how much we love this life in all its forms.

• So, when you are practicing Sensation, think of it as newly-in-love with the world. When we remember how to love the world, we begin to want to treat all elements of the world with respect, honor, and care. This way, ethics and morality begin not as abstract concepts, obligations, or shoulds. Rather, they begin as our basic loving connection to this beautiful world. Contemplate this as you practice Sensation.