Learning Through Sensing
By Charlotte Selver
This article is based on two of the newly published tapes from Charlotte Selver's 11-14-77 class at Green Gulch Farm and 7-31-80 class on Monhegan Island.
I feel a great sense of responsibility. We are offering to you a work which in its very character embraces our possibility of coming as deep as possible into contact with what we do or who we meet. We work on being present and giving what we have. Sensory Awareness is not a technique besides other techniques. We do not teach you any special skills. For us what special skill we have isn't quite as important as how we do something. Let me give you an example: When I meet a person I can just look at her or him, but I can also see this person. That means my ability to react can be aroused by what I see or meet or do or whatever, or it can also stay sleeping and stay on the surface. Another example: Let's say a massage therapist comes to our course and she thinks: "This is now a work in which we go further into touching, and that's another kind of skill which I'm interested in." She is mistaken. Everything we do is being in touch or coming in touch, be it massage or speaking or solving a difficult problem or having a great deal of fun. The question is to which degree I am burning for something, so to say. Am I there for this very situation or person and what are the consequences of this encounter?
The more you build on repetition and division of different fields, the more you misunderstand the work which we are doing. Whatever we do embraces the whole universe, if you want so. The question is how we do it. If it is poor, it's poor. You will feel it, and it will guide you to fuller participation. Because in the moment you feel it is not quite satisfying to you, you are already on the way to more contact. So anything which you would feel is not quite it, leads you more to it. This is one of the most wonderful things which we can be grateful for. That's why I say I feel a great deal of responsibility. Sensory Awareness is not in any way that we do an exercise and are either good at it or not, but becoming conscious of our approach to the world and learning from that. It is important to understand that our sessions are not a lesson that is over when the class is over but the beginning of a process. The question is whether this process is permitted to continue. Every moment offers itself in its own way, and the question is how I answer it. In any given situation we can learn how to come more full-hearted and more open into contact, answering in the way we can already answer. If this isn't understood, the work isn't understood. It doesn't matter whether the situation is easy or difficult. Whatever is coming about needs to be met with the possibilities you have at the moment to greet it. Then you can learn. If you are not present nobody can help you. But if you feel it, then the next move would be to allow that which would make more contact possible. However, very often we are too lazy to allow that or we are too vain; or we have to do it correct in the first place, so we insist that this is right no matter what we feel. When you learn to let go of these old patterns and meet what you feel now, perfectly new, you will be grateful to feel where you hold yourself back. When you permit a pure heart and don't reproach yourself in any way, then you can learn through sensing. You will feel, "Here I am not open." And you would then allow little changes. And you would feel then, "It's still not open enough," and you would again allow a change, and then you would feel, "My, it's too open now." Then you would go a little bit back. It's a delightful way of learning.
This is not about modifying or controlling yourself. You are already beautifully created. Only you can live so that the creation which you are is unrecognizable. One doesn't know who you are, and you don't know who you are, because you are so full of habits and what other people have told you. There's a certain relationship which we have to have with our inner functioning. That of respect and that of wonder. When we are quiet enough and positive enough that we can follow these fine indications inside which lead us to more functioning, we will find out what precious abilities we have which we usually don't use. The organism has these innate possibilities of renewing relationships, of balancing out, of healing, of recreating. This is not what we do, but these are properties of the organism since birth - they are inborn, inbuilt. Only we push them down as though they don't exist. We cover them by layers of habits and ideas, and spoil these very beautiful capacities. On top of that we learn new things which drive us even further away from our nature.
You have to come into a state of curiosity and deep interest for that which gradually may emerge out of the sum of many conditionings. It needs no criticism. It needs willingness to allow changes. It needs respect for something which is your nature but which you have not yet permitted it entirely. You may then feel that you don't want to repeat what somebody else told you to be right. You will know that, "this is what I really have to say." "This is what I really have to do." "This is how I connect with another person." "This is how I approach my task."
No matter how difficult it is you can be present for something and learn from that - all day long, from morning 'til evening. Even when you go to the bathroom you can be fully present for what is happening. Each of your cells could be participating in what you happen to do or whom you happen to meet in the moment, if you really understand the organism as a living entity that is you, if you understand that every cell has mind. Every cell is sensitive. You could say you are all mind. You are all intelligent. (Well, not quite yet but maybe soon.) Even your teeth are mind. Even your rectum is mind. Everything's mind. Wouldn't that be a more animated life? Do you realize it's right next door? From one moment to the other it can happen, you can wake up more. You can allow a new connection. You can try again and again. Persistence is very important. Each time you come a little closer. What we do is not important in a way, although it is very important. But it is important that you see it as an example for everything you do. And as such it is important how you do it.