Shot Through the Heart, part 2

In her book, “Untie the Strong Woman”, Clarissa Pinkola Estes refers to the senses as “the gateway to God”.

Indeed, without our senses, we would lose our ability to navigate, to perceive, and to connect. Without our senses, we would not know the pleasure and the pain, the beauty and the ugly, the joy and the suffering, and the inner and outer worlds that make being human so very special.

Our senses include sight, seeing, hearing, touching, and tasting. I also include “second sight” as a primary sense no less important and no less available. If you are to point out to me that there is no nucleus in the brain stem or a cranial nerve that points to second sight as a legitimate sense, I would say it is because we are not looking. There is much about the brain, the higher cortices and the brain stem that we still do not know. We study things when there is pathology, right now we are directing our attention to attention deficit disorder, anxiety, panic and depressive disorders when in fact I think in some cases, there is a sensory issue of second sight that is not being addressed.

I have spent many years studying various healing and physical therapy modalities with an interspersed obsession with the brain and its physiology. I believe the nervous system as the great connector between something larger outside of us and what is us in this human body.  I say it that way because who we are in spirit has little to do with our nervous system, who we are and what we are here to do has little do with our nervous system, yet we must learn to manage the nervous system as we must other body systems to walk the path we must.

I believe also that we are evolving into a whole other race of people. There is much DNA that has not been accessed and expressed, but in children now it is. There are children, some call them Indigo’s or Crystal children, children very often who are sensitive to light, touch, sounds, and groups, who thrive in nature,  and who possess deep insight at an early age. I am not making much a case for their existence really in this last comment. I can only attest as a healer for the last 25 years to seeing people awaken to an innate sense of intuition and “other sight”, and that their children are naturally in tune without any training at all.

When working with people with sensory issues, we have to take into consideration that the brain is saying “too much information”. This “too much information” is very uncomfortable for the sensory person if not down right painful. “Too much information” will result in children with tantrums, difficulty paying attention, and acting out inappropriately. For adults, there will be signs of this in someone who needs certain textures, certain tastes, and obsessive qualities. While in children we can manage through deep pressure and other modalities, in adults it is more tricky as we are also dealing with personalities and ego involvement on top of it. As therapists, we help the person by giving input in another way, not as a distraction but as “other” input that helps to balance or disconnect from the other stimulus. Adults very often learn to manage through sensory overload and trying out new diets, workouts, a lot of classes (me), focusing hard at work, overworking, basically providing another input and redirecting attention from the body. Over time this redirect causes us to be unaware, unaware of our bodily needs and our actions. With diminishing awareness, our health and our ability to act and function effectively becomes harder.

This matters a lot now as we are evolving into a new world. A new world where a new wave of people, such as in the 60’s, are starting to become aware not just of their own consciousness but a larger group consciousness and their relationship to it. This larger group consciousness can enhance if not blow our intuition and second sight off the charts. We can become anxious, panicked and disoriented during its evolution. Transition during this time is a sensory issue that needs deep tending individually as well as a tending to within community and the larger group consciousness. The ante has been “upped” exponentially for integration and the nervous system to accommodate.

To heal the world from the many crises that face us, I think we need to welcome the sense of intuition and second sight that is unfolding within all of us.

As an example, today I went for a walk in the neighborhood with a close friend and met a neighbor I had never met. We shook hands and immediately I felt searing pain in my right forearm. My heart started to race and I started to shake inside. I found myself syncing my breath and merging with the other person until I remembered my breath and the feeling of my feet on the earth. All this while having a conversation with the person in front of me. I moved quickly out of the conversation and my friend later asked me if I was okay. Because she is one of my closest friends and a healer in her own right, I said, “I saw the image of a young child, yet a teenager at the same time around her in her field. I felt deep pain radiating up my arm when I shook her hand. My first reaction was to go run and grab my son and pull him close to my chest, to keep him there. My heart started to race and I felt shaky, that is why I moved away.” My friend said, “she lost her son several years ago, he was a young teenager. He drowned while playing by the river”.

So I can hear you say, “why in the hell would I want to welcome that?”

Well that pain you don’t. It is just what I do as a healer that has moments of exquisite connection, pleasurable and painful. And by feeling her, I felt myself. And our connection. She knew she was not alone, and I knew it. We became part of something larger than pleasure or pain.

We all feel each other ANYWAY on subtle levels. Our bodies entrain with each other within several minutes. Just take a movement class over a period of time and you will see that people will start to move and dance in similar fashion. The senses of our body entrain with those around us, suffering or not. But now the senses are being heightened….the disasters of nature, the dissolution of economies… We are not disconnected from each other.  The second sense and intuition that is evolving in each of us is really the sense of connection of who we are, the connection to the larger source, and the connection to the sacred. It is a sense that is inclusive of all the senses and of all beings around us. When we can welcome the connection around us, this second sense, we can evolve. We can know God even as we live.

But to get there, we must manage. The next blog post on this subject will discuss management or sensory integration of “second sight”.