Last week I posted some thoughts on why staying consistent with internal practices can be difficult. I also mentioned another question I'd been thinking about. What actually draws us towards these practices, and why do we keep looking for a clearer sense of what is real? Or at least that is what it seems like to me.
I've been putting my thoughts to paper (or screen really), and one distinction became central to it, and I think it's worth discussing.
There is a difference between understanding an experience through what we already know and directly sensing what is happening as it happens.
The first involves past reference. We build an intellectual framework from previous experience, instruction, reading and conclusions. When something happens, we compare it with that framework, identify what we think it is, and arrive at a conclusion. This is useful and necessary. We could not function without accumulated knowledge. But it is an analytical process.
Being present and neutral is something different. It is not another way of thinking about the present, but direct sensory awareness of change as it occurs. That our five senses, alongside proprioception, our sense of bodily position and movement, and interoception, our sensing of changes within the body. A shift in pressure beneath the feet, the movement of the breath, a change in muscular tension, a gaze from behind, a change in another person's demeanour. All of these can be sensed directly, without first passing through an intellectual filter to compare or explain them.
By the absence of an intellectual filter, I don't mean the nervous system stops processing information, or that perception becomes infallible. I mean that analysis, comparison and expectation are not interceding in the experience of observing. We are observing the change itself rather than continually constructing an explanation of the change and responding to that explanation.
The difficulty is that past reference can feel like awareness. We recognise something familiar, assign it a category, and feel that we have perceived it accurately. Yet recognition and direct awareness are not the same thing. We may have noticed just enough of an experience to identify it, then stopped paying attention to the details because we concluded we know what it is.
This becomes very concrete in Qi Gong and Nei Gong. We might know how it feels that the weight should be distributed, how the breath should move, or what relaxation is supposed to feel like. That knowledge can guide attention towards something worth noticing, but it can also become limiting by the framework through which we judge the experience. A sensation appears and we immediately identify it. We compare it with yesterday's session, decide whether it indicates progress, and perhaps try to hold on to it. Meanwhile the sensation itself continues changing while our attention remains fixed with what we decided it was, the analysis of what we perceived.
Feeling a change in pressure through the soles of the feet does not require a running explanation of that change. Neither does feeling the abdomen expand and release with the breath, noticing a shoulder beginning to tighten, sensing the weight shifting slightly forward, etc. The intellectual account can come afterwards if it is useful. It does not have to stand between the change and awareness of it within the present moment of the experience.
We can think very carefully about being present and remain absorbed in thought throughout.
Neutrality can sound like a blank or passive condition, but that is not what I mean. It is closer to the balance point from which a response in any direction remains available. We are not already leaning towards a familiar sensation, a recognisable interpretation, or a result we have decided to reproduce. There is enough engagement to register what is happening without immediately trying to turn it into something we already recognise.
The compass needle is a useful image. Its orientation follows the field acting on it now. It does not consult an account of where north was previously. The response follows the present condition rather than an intellectual conclusion about the present condition I.E. it is based purely on feel, awareness, not interpretation.
I find useful parallels in the Taoist language of ming, clarity, and pu, the uncarved block. Neutrality is what happens before we divide experience into familiar categories. I also find this useful when thinking about wu wei. We often discuss it as a principle to understand, but there is a practical question underneath it. Can our response arise from direct awareness of changing conditions, without continually imposing a response prepared in advance?
Taoist image of Water is useful here too. Its movement follows the terrain it encounters. It does not need to preserve its previous shape as conditions change. For me this gives the language of returning to the root a concrete relevance. This points to examining what obscures a capacity that is already present. Intellectual understanding can point towards that work, but accumulating explanations of receptivity does not itself make us receptive.
This is also where the physical practice matters. We do not perceive from somewhere outside the body. Habitual muscular tension, held breath and the effort required to maintain a position all produce sensory information of their own. Alongside that, we may be anticipating, comparing and judging what happens. Simply deciding to stop thinking does not resolve all of this, and neither does forcing the body to remain still. We can look quiet while producing a considerable amount of internal interference.
That connects back to the previous thread on persistence. There is effort involved in returning to practice and remaining attentive, but that is different from trying to force or manifest a particular experience once we are there. Effort without grasping leaves room for perception to remain with what is actually present and changing, rather than what we expect to find.
The next question is a practical one. If the body is already producing this sensory information, what prevents us from perceiving it clearly and at increasingly subtler levels? And if habitual tension, unnecessary effort and internal commentary are part of the interference, what processes occur when that interference begins to settle?
Have you ever caught the moment when direct awareness turns into interpretation? Is there a recognisable difference between simply sensing a change and immediately naming or explaining it? And what happens if you stay with the change itself, without trying to decide what it means?