"So tell me more about your heightened senses. That fascinates me. Has meditation further enhanced your senses?" a man from Missoula, Montana asked on a dating site.
My Reply:
A hard question. I need to think about it. Because I have lived with heightened senses all my life, I take it for granted. Like everything, there are positives and negatives.
Positives
Deeply pleasurable, sensual and ecstatic experiences bring joy and pleasure to my life.
Mini-orgasms. Smelling beautiful, fragrant roses. "OH! Smell THIS one!" I cried, running from rose to rose at the Portland, Oregon Rose Garden. After an hour, I had olfactory overload and smelled nothing.
Other hikers stride past gorgeous vistas and flowers. My attention is snagged by beauty. Can't resist taking a photo. Then jog to catch up with my pack bouncing on my back.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but great sex. As a musician, I have a rhythmic body and hands. Men say I'm the best lover they ever had. The mind is the best sex organ. Enough said.
Soaring music, touching a baby's soft hand, laughter with friends, taste, touch, smell, sight. "We all need more low-level ecstasy in our lives," I wrote in my profile. An understatement.
My adult child Claire shares my intensity, high energy and high tolerance for pain. Last year I drove to Seattle to give Claire birthday presents. During lunch we had a fascinating conversation about coping techniques.
Negatives
"My intensity is too much for some people," Claire said. Ditto.
Coping techniques: we both do yoga, exercise, meditate, breathe deeply and... wait for it... fidget to expel overflowing energy. I'm a foot wiggler. Sleeping with Claire is like sleeping with a tornado. Humor helps.
Mediation grounds and centers me. It slows me down, always a good thing. Sleep is wonderful because it resets my nervous system, and heals tiny muscle tears and soreness from weightlifting, jogging and hiking.
Like Claire, I'm an agonizer. I feel the atmosphere about me too acutely: the stealthiest shifts in wind direction, ozone level, barometric pressure. Sometimes it's almost too much to bear.
But we both enjoy our high energy, intelligence, searching minds, sensuality and humor. This makes us who we are and immeasurably enriches our lives.
p.s.
There are many aspects of heightened senses and intensity. Perception shifts depending on how you look at it, like an intricately patterned gourd.
All my life I have felt different from other people, like I don’t fit in, like I don’t belong on this planet. It is a huge relief to have friends who love me for who I am. I suppose this is true for everyone. Don’t we long to be loved despite our quirks and warts?
Overriding everything is my lifelong optimism, ebullience and enthusiasm. I see the humor in life. One of my redeeming qualities.
Hiking makes me feel happy and grounded. At one with nature.
I wouldn’t know a grudge if it mugged me,” I wrote in my profile. This is true. I believe grudge-holding only hurts the person holding the grudge.
Enough. Your question triggered intense self-reflection. Yikes.
Heightened feelings sometimes hurt my psyche. I often think about how I don't like feeling so much in just one second, you know. Sometimes I want to wall myself off and be a normal person. Become the person I was before I was into meditation. Meditation has totally exposed me to the world around me. It's scary. And only physical activity allows me to distract myself without losing my meditation and concentration. Then I turn my attention to my body, muscles, and pain. I even signed up for Pure Body Pilates with a real Pilates instructor so I can constantly feel the support, hear the person's voice, and stop being full of thoughts. It relaxes me. What can you say about your ways?
Sounds like intense feelings, not heightened senses.
Deeply pleasurable, sensual and ecstatic experiences bring joy and pleasure to my life.
I think it just falls to whether someone takes time to get the pleasure (or pain) out of every moment, every smell, every sight, every sound, every touch or waft of warm breeze on our skin, etc., while some are too busy to notice. It doesn't take much concentration to notice fully what's going on around ourselves, just time and focus.
As someone who makes my living off of people's emotions and feelings, it seems all it takes is to suggest to people to clear their minds of all other matters, and focus on what is going on at that moment. Seems to do the trick for most folks.
We only live once, so we might as well get as much pleasure out of it as possible.
But you make it all seem so poetic. I have always thought I had heightened senses and sometimes to extremes. Led in paths once that do not exist or are only make believe, I am aware of the realities of it even as I became a shattered watcher of events. I remember the time while working on a furnace with others my inner voice said "if you do not move now that SOB will stab you through the eye with a 6 inch screwdriver." That was when I moved and also when he slipped and his hand ended up where my head was. I'm not blinded and I lived to another day.
Very recently a co-worker told me that Midwest had called and Tony finished fixing my truck. I can go pick it up now. OK, but everyone I work with knows I do not have a truck. I have a car. So, I went and picked it up so extremely happy that I live in my reality and not that of others.
Glad you were not blinded. You have strong intuition and observational skills. That's great.
Nothing wrong with a poetic, descriptive writing style.
Thanks for sharing. Never participated in Yoga or Meditation. I’m confident it brings happiness, joy and a heightened awareness etc., for those whom participate on a regularly basis or why do they do ? I did enjoy the nature walks and a handful of Volksmarches that I participated in Germany while stationed there. Which, now based on reading your post and reminiscing back, I can only submit to myself, why am in not doing that now? Hmmmm, we have a 50 mile, bike or walking trail from Williamsburg to Richmond that I have not taken advantage of. I can attest to the running I had to do for about 22 years in the US Army , I disliked very much; a dreading you might say, but i always a feeling of Euphoria afterwards. It kinda got the blood flowing and senses stimulated and provided much pleasure upon completion…I must re- contemplate my past experience and current existence on this great rock that we all share and get motivated to do something that I will benefit from and perhaps enjoy… Walking here we come… Thanks for your story you shared ….Delbert.
You say you dont belong on this planet... As an observation i would disagree... You seem most alive when you are in the outdoors.. Being part of and one with nature ... It is the "others" that dont belong... They create artificial environments, surrounding themselves with a sterle existence, never understanding why they feel incomplete.... Diving is when i feel the most "alive".... Weightless in a liquid environment from which all life came.... Hike/dive alone.... The "others" are a distraction
Good point.
Hiking makes me feel happy and grounded, at one with nature.
Thanks for your insightful reply.