How can I perceive in a sensorial fashion that I am not the body?

We all experience moments of happiness which are accompanied by a perception of expansion and relaxation. Before this body perception, we were in a state of timelessness, an unadulterated, causeless joy of which the physical sensation is simply the ultimate consequence. This joy perceives itself. At that moment, we were not a limited body in space, not a person. We knew ourselves in the immediacy of the moment. We all know this felicity without cause. When we explore deeply what we call our body, we discover that its very substance is this joy. So we no longer have the need or the taste or even the possibility of finding happiness in external objects.

How is this deep exploration accomplished?

Do not reject the body sensations and emotions that present themselves to you. Let them blossom fully in your awareness without any goal or any interference from the will. Progressively, the potential energy imprisoned in muscular tensions liberates itself, the dynamism of the psychosomatic structure exhausts itself, and the return toward fundamental stability takes place. This purification of body sensation is a great art. It requires patience, determination and courage. It finds its expression at the level of sensation through a gradual expansion of the body into the surrounding space and a simultaneous penetration of the somatic structure by that space. That space is not experienced as a simple absence of objects. When the attention frees itself from perceptions that hold it in thrall, it discovers itself as that self-luminous space which is the true substance of the body. At this moment, the duality between body and space is abolished. The body is expanded to the size of the universe and contains all things tangible and intangible in its heart. Nothing is external to it. We all have this body of joy, this awakened body, this body of universal welcoming. We are all complete, with no missing parts. Only explore your kingdom and take possession of it knowingly. Do not live any longer in that wretched shack of a limited body.

I have brief glimpses of this realm in moments of stillness, then I go to work and find myself in an environment which is neither royal nor peaceful and my serenity immediately disappears. How can I keep my equanimity permanently?

Everything that appears in awareness is nothing other than awareness, your co-workers, clients, superiors, absolutely everything, including the premises, the furniture and the equipment. First understand this intellectually, then verify that this is so. There comes a moment where this feeling of intimacy, this benevolent space around you no longer goes away; you find yourself at home everywhere, even in the packed waiting room of a train station. You only go out of it when you go into the past or the future. Do not stay in that hovel. This immensity awaits you right here, at this very moment. Already being acquainted with its presence and once having tasted the harmony underlying appearances, let the perceptions of the external world and your body sensations unfold freely in your welcoming awareness until the moment that the background of plenitude reveals itself spontaneously.

This reversal of perspective is analogous to that which allows the sudden recognition of an angelic face in a tree in one of those early twentieth century prints that so delight children. At first we only see the tree, then informed by a caption under the picture that an angel is hiding there, we begin a meticulous examination of the foliage until we finally see the angel which had always been right there before our eyes. What is important is to know that there is an angel, where it is hiding and to have once experienced the process by which the tree progressively loses its form to the point where the lines of which appearance is composed begin to appear as such and then recompose to confide the secret of the image to us. Once the way is paved, subsequent reversals of perspective are easier and easier until we see the angel and the tree simultaneously, so to speak. In the same way, once our true nature has been recognized, the remaining distinctions between ignorance and awakening become progressively blurred and yield to the fundamental suchness of being.

- excerpt from Eternity Now by Francis Lucille

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