Researching Your Life
Has anyone else found that this time at home is like a microscope on your habits - both the good and not so great ones? For me it’s one of the beauties of this time, that I can come into greater intimacy with the things I do everyday. It’s an opportunity to research - choosing a slice of life and bringing attention and curiosity to see what wants to be revealed. (For me last week, it was social media scrolling).
The Buddha called this ehipassiko. The practice of “coming and seeing for yourself”. Like all wise teachers he knew there was and is no substitute for direct experience. Our human mind loooooves to grab onto dogma and constructs - right/wrong, good/bad, should/shouldn’t etc. Ehipassiko is about getting beneath these, discovering the more nuanced reality, and allowing it to transform us from within.
Applying ehipassiko is how I built my entire erotic life. Like most, I started with powerful mental and emotional constructs - ideas of what I liked and disliked, what was good or bad for me. There were so many thoughts and feelings I believed to be true, which I later discovered were obscuring the natural intelligence of my body. Really, I had no idea what was driving me - as I’ve learned is the case for all of us. The unconscious is so powerful.
The process of research - using a time bound container, exploring a specific question, sharing my findings - allowed me to penetrate areas that would have been far too charged to touch otherwise. It gave me a way in. Anxieties and repulsions that spoke loudly were reaveled to be backed up erotic energy. Long stuck habits softened their grip through ongoing approving attention. Bit by bit, research allows us to develop this intimacy with the expressions of our unconscious, expressions that otherwise harden into fixed ideas and actions.
Have you felt the calling of your erotic, your desire or your self expression. Ehipassiko. Get curious. This is your opportunity to create a simple container and research. Equally so, if you’re eating a lot of cookies, shutting out your partner, avoiding your workout, or (like me) scrolling endlessly through social media apps... Ehipassiko. Get curious. This is your opportunity to research.
The beauty of ehipassiko is that even when you’re not eligible for a gold star for doing the “right” thing, it’s still research; because it isn’t about performance, acquisition or achievement, it’s about discovery. Attention and curiosity are available no matter what. The action of reaching for the cookie, the resentment, the social media scroll is as potent a moment to explore as the moment of speaking the truth, expressing a desire or opening your turn on. Truth is available everywhere, when we’re willing to listen.