Ross Edwards: Coach, Author, FounderThis short text is an extract from Chapter 12 of my upcoming book, The Boundless Body, published with Collective Ink Books. Here I describe the ultimate fruition of the body awareness work I teach in the book.
Eventually, after years of practice, there will be little difference between meditation and non-meditation; your new vantage point will be your boundless body, and you will see that all perception arises within it. To begin with, we must protect our meditation practice like a kindling fire. After we stoke and feed it for enough time, it becomes a powerful bonfire, consuming everything in its midst. Your boundless body will literally consume everything, leaving no scrap of body outside it. In Tibetan, the open, bright, lucid nature of our mind is called Kuntuzangpo, which roughly translates as “all good, all complete”. Our deepest nature is inherently all-encompassing and delicious. How often are you aware of it?
I like to think of this as attentional yoga: by repeatedly stretching our body awareness outwards in all directions, we become used to feeling our entire body rather than our habitual body or self-contraction, and our body awareness remains more supple in all situations. Our body lens widens and takes in more, with less resistance and more openness. We embody The Painting of All That Is, not in unconscious slumber, but with full consciousness.
You can also think of it as metabolisation. In doing this work, you will deeply feel areas of your body, in all directions, that may have been present for years, but which you have hidden from or unwittingly ignored. Some of this material may be painful, dense, stubborn, and identity laden. By feeling through and beyond all boundaries, out to the furthest reaches of our felt experience, we are metabolising or digesting everything that we have stored in the body. You are like a snake that is shedding its old contracting, limiting layer of skin to occupy a greater self, a greater space. Over time, you will notice this produces purification and further discloses the fullness and depth of your body. You will also be able to prevent new somatic boundaries being created. This will deepen your ability to live as your endless light body rather than as your self-contraction.
Non-dual awareness enables you to watch emotions and sensations dissolve into this vast, panoramic awareness moment to moment. Our body sensations all arise within the ocean of our own experience. When they arise, they seem to arise and form out of nowhere, gradually condensing into Threshold, Subtle and Physical sensations, building up to a crest or full intensity. When they are dying down, the process runs in reverse. The sensation breaks up, becomes lighter, and then starts to dissolve into pure awareness, spreading out endlessly into our boundless body. Noticing this frees you even further from their grip while helping you establish residency in your own fullness. In fact, a single sensation is always both arising and passing at the same time, in all moments. Remember: they are made of kalapas, and we can watch the continual play of arising and passing taking place in our boundless body, like whirlpools and currents in a lake.
Whenever an emotion comes up, decontract and open up, taking it in as part of the panorama of your entire felt experience. Whenever you feel you want to be elsewhere, open up and realise that all concepts of elsewhere are part of your conceptual mind, and are within you. Whenever you feel bored or restless, decontract your attention and take in the entire ocean. Avoid getting caught in the choppy waves of humanness; rest in the boundless, indestructible ocean. You have always been swimming in your own fullness, even if it has felt decidedly limited at times.
We can continue to do any practice – from basic body awareness to habitual body to mindfulness of thought to seeing through, to witnessing mind – and they will be enhanced by our connection to the boundless body, the ultimate perspective or view underlying all our work.