Learn to say how it feels

He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and of the lions on the beach.
— Ernest Hemingway

Many teachers of our time attribute consciousness—energy not just matter—to all the creations that exist in God’s marvelous world. Many teachers from ancient times espoused this philosophy, too.

How does it feel when you sit next to a sprawling oak tree? How does it feel when you lie in the hot sand at the beach, listening to waves splashing on the shore? How does it feel in your kitchen in the morning? How does it feel when you’re with your best friend? Or your spouse?

How does it feel to go into a store filled with beautiful objects, stuffy salesclerks, and signs that scream: DO NOT TOUCH?

Many of us are survivors. We learned the art of leaving our bodies early on, perhaps in our childhood or maybe later, as a way of coping with situations that didn’t feel good and that didn’t feel right to us. We learned to deny how a situation felt—and often how it felt to be with certain people—in order to cope with situations we found ourselves in that we didn’t have the tools or the power to escape. We trained ourselves to ignore how things felt because either we told ourselves we had no choice, or we truly didn’t have a say in the matter.

We don’t have to survive anymore. That time is past. Now, it’s time to live.

Come back into your body. Stretch your senses, so that they fill up all of you—your sense of taste, smell, touch, sight, and sound, and your intuitive senses, too. How do you feel emotionally? If you can’t put words to it, just describe it as best as you can. Then go to the next level. Tune into the feelings and moods of the world around you, but not so much that you take these feelings on as yours. Tune in just enough to recognize how the energy of each situation feels to you.

Don’t judge your responses and feelings as either good or bad. And you don’t have to do anything to control how it feels—to you or anyone else. Just allow yourself to experience and recognize how it feels to be you.

Part of speaking the language of letting go means learning to delight and revel in all our senses, including our inner knowing.

Learn to say with trust and confidence, This is how I feel.

God, help me come fully to life.

From the book: More Language of Letting Go

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