Question on Sensuousness

[syd]

@Vineeto

Now this may not be the situation in your case but your recent reposting (link) of a quote from Claudiu seems to be an example of a misunderstanding I like to straighten out –

Richard: “Sensuousness is the wondrous awareness of the marvel of being here now at this moment in time and this place in space.”
Claudiu: (…) It helped me to think of ‘sensuousness’ as more of a quality or type of ‘me’ being aware, as opposed to being a quality or type of sensing or way or manner in which the senses operate. It’s when ‘I’ am aware of what ‘I’ am seeing in a delighted/ wondrous/ thoroughly enjoying-of-the-senses manner. It doesn’t matter per se if what I am looking at is visually stunning… it’s about how ‘I’ am relating to what ‘I’ am seeing, not about what I am seeing per se.
Of course when I am wondrously aware in such a manner I am naturally drawn to visually appealing things (if what I am seeing is most appealing at the time) (link)

Your reposting of this one particular section is an approval/ a highlighting of what Claudiu wrote. However, I noticed how Richard’s statement is miraculously transmogrified into making sensuousness all about ‘me’ – how “‘I’ am seeing in a delighted/ wondrous/ thoroughly enjoying-of-the-senses manner”. Even though Claudiu says “It doesn’t matter per se if what I am looking at is visually stunning” he nevertheless is “naturally drawn to visually appealing things”, which again emphasises ‘me’, “how ‘I’ am relating to what ‘I’ am seeing, not about what I am seeing per se”.

You could have easily chosen the follow-up section of Claudiu’s post which is more true to the facts and actuality of Richard’s quote –

Claudiu: I suggest to then find a way for yourself to wonder and marvel at that, as it will really ratchet up your enjoyment and appreciation! When being particularly sensuous at one point I was nearly overwhelmed at how delightful it was simply to exist, to the point where I even experienced the act of breathing as a ‘bonus’ of something to be doing to enjoy, on top of the fact that I was simply existing and being alive! (link)

By choosing to highlight the first section, which emphasis ‘me’, your presentation is diametrically opposite to Richard’s statement that “sensuousness is the wondrous awareness of the marvel of being here now at this moment in time and this place in space.” The interpretation is making sensuousness all about ‘me’ rather than emphasising “the wondrous awareness of the marvel of being here now at this moment in time and this place in space”, which is applying one’s attentiveness to the already always existing perfection of “being here now at this moment in time and this place in space.” It is expanding one’s awareness and wondrous attention beyond one’s favourite “visually appealing things” from which self-less awareness – apperceptiveness – can occur.

Richard: Sensuousness is the wondrous awareness of the marvel of being here now at this moment in time and this place in space. Attentiveness is the fascination of the reflective contemplation that this moment is one’s only moment of being alive – and one is never alive at any other time than now. Wherever one is … now … one is always here … now … even if one starts walking over to ‘there’ … now … along the way to ‘there’ … now … one is always here … now … and when one arrives ‘there’ … now … it too is here … now. Thus attentiveness is an attraction to the fact that one is always here – and it is already now – and as one is already here and it is always now then one has arrived before one starts. This delicious wonder fosters the innate condition of naiveté (which is the closest one can get to innocence) the nourishing of which is essential if the charm of it all is to occur. The potent combination of attentiveness – fascinated reflective contemplation – and sensuousness produces apperception, which happens when the mind becomes aware of itself. One is intimately aware that this physical space of this universe is infinite and its time is eternal … thus the infinitude of this very material universe has no beginning and no ending and therefore no middle. There are no edges to this universe, which means that there is no centre, either. We are all coming from nowhere and are not going anywhere for there is nowhere to come from nor anywhere to go to. We are nowhere in particular … which means we are anywhere at all. In the infinitude of the universe one finds oneself to be already here, and as it is always now, one can not get away from this place in space and this moment in time. By being here as-this-body one finds that this moment in time has no duration as in now and then – because the immediate is the ultimate – and that this place in space has no distance as in here and there – for the relative is the absolute.
In other words: One is already here as it is always now.
(…)
Apperceptiveness is sensuous awareness of only what is currently occurring and in precisely the way it is happening now – there is neither tolerance nor intolerance – with no acceptance or prejudice. Apperceptiveness is non-predictive observation in that it is this ability of the mind to regard experience without fault-finding feelings. With this ability, one sees things without assumption or opprobrium … and one is surprised by everything being extraordinarily ordinary. In apperceptiveness everything is in equipoise and one’s interest in things is for them to be exactly as they are in their actual condition. One does not have to estimate or establish … one totally acknowledges with delight. (Richard, Articles, Attentiveness, Sensuousness, Apperceptiveness).

Cheers Vineeto

Thanks a good pointer, @Vineeto, thank you.

By highlighting that quote from Claudiu I did want to bring attention to this unseen-before interpretation of sensuousnesss which emphasizes ‘me’.

When Richard uses ‘sensousness’ he is referring to either experiencing it in a PCE or actual freedom. Basically, for him (and you?), there’s no ‘feeling-being version’ of sensuousness - even though this is what Claudiu and others were talking about in the posts above, viz.:

@claudiu

But in any case the key for me was thinking of ‘me’ being sensuous as a feeling-based thing, it’s what ‘I’ do as a feeling being. Before I got that part, I was trying to ‘pay attention to the senses’ in order to imitate actuality, as I thought it had something to do with sensory perception. But it’s not that, it’s that it has to do with enjoyment and appreciation of the senses – so it’s something ‘I’ do not something the senses do. But I also came at it from a muddled affer/spiritual/buddhistic background which is probably why the distinction was important for me.

@henryyyyyyyyyy

As ‘I’ get out of the way more and more, there is more and more attention being given to experiencing sensuously, there is more and more marveling, there is more and more wonder. They come together.

@henryyyyyyyyyy

For sensuousness to be fully activated and the wonder of it all to become apparent, it’s essential for ‘me’ to get sufficiently out of the way.

Enjoyment, appreciation, wonder, naivete, harmlessness - and all the rest - serve to thin ‘me’ out to where the actual becomes apparent.

And the actual is inherently wonder-ful - ‘I’ no longer have to contribute anything for that the be the experience.

What I take from all of this is that, for a feeling-being - sensousness is not about paying attention to the senses in a dry way whilst retaining ‘my’ modus-operandi. Rather, it automatically involves thinning ‘me’ (with cheerful concurrence) sufficiently enough so that ‘I’ now have the space, so to speak, to be able to simply enjoy & appreciate all that which is unfolding sensately or proprioceptively in this only moment of being alive. I believe this understanding is in line with the yellow-highlighted part of your response above. Or maybe I’m still missing something …