The Texture of Reality
The infinite richness of experience vs the Cliffs Notes of interpretation
As you read these words, you're feeling the texture of this moment. The pressure of your body against the chair, the quality of the light streaming through a window, the rhythmic in and out of the breath, maybe some vague background sounds.
There's a whole symphony of sensation happening that you're probably not in the habit of noticing. But that symphony is always present, even if you’re not always noticing the music.
"The texture of Reality" is a phrase that sounds lofty and abstract, but it's actually quite ordinary. You're feeling exactly that right now. Experience is a non-conceptual event. It’s always felt. In fact, it's the only thing you've ever felt. The only reason you might not be noticing that fact is that your attention is in the habit of favoring the mind's interpretations of experience over the raw, textural sensation of it.
There are times when we do notice the texture of the present moment: slowly easing into a warm bath, tasting the soup that’s cooking on the stove to see if it needs salt, feeling the summer heat hit your skin as you step outside of an air conditioned building.
We can also notice how a mental interpretation of those sensations almost immediately arises and proceeds to simplify, censor, and “dumb down” the energetic information of the moment. The sensation of the warm bath might become "This water feels just right." The subtle and complex taste of the soup becomes, "This soup needs more salt." The summer heat penetrating the skin becomes, "It's such a hot day today."
Peter used to say that yoga is sensitivity training. In this case, it's about becoming sensitive to the raw, textural energy that continually appears in experience.
Notice how the sensations of your experience appear unbidden. They’re just here, spontaneously and effortlessly. No need to go looking for them, and you couldn't shut them off if you tried. Notice how unresolvable, rich, and nuanced experience always is. How you can never quite pin it down as any definitive 'thing' because it’s continually shifting and changing.
The mind grossly oversimplifies this endless cascade of raw sensorial data with labels, descriptions, and narratives, none of which can ever come close to fully capturing the actuality of what’s being felt experientially.
Mental interpretations function like Cliffs Notes versions of actual experience. Reading A Tale of Two Cities from cover to cover treats us to far more richness than its summary ever could. Reality and our interpretations work the same way.
This kind of noticing is more potent than it might seem because it can gradually free us from mistaking our mental summaries for the real thing. We return to what's actually here and to what we’ve been feeling all along: the felt immediacy of Reality Itself.
I regularly lead or co-lead (with my friend John Astin) weekly Zoom discussions exploring Peter Brown's teachings on the Yoga of Radiant Presence. These sessions focus on directly investigating the nature of experience through practical inquiry and shared exploration. Feel free to message me if you're interested in joining us.
Beautifully stated, Dena. Profound simplicity.
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