The second, and highly overlooked, skill to develop in spirituality is to make sure you are grounded in the physical. This means becoming better acquainted with your physical body.
Your body is your vessel. We hear and see the phrase, "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience." The phrase is true, but it minimizes the importance of that human experience. Being human gives us power because we can do something spiritual beings actually cannot do. Directly work with and transform the energy around us. And that means even writing on a piece of paper. Because the physical world is made of matter which is dense, slowly moving energy.
But to connect the physical to the spiritual we are told about developing or finding our “clair senses" or psychic awareness. Well those come from our physical senses. Connecting with our physical body and becoming more aware of our senses allows us to be more sensitive to the liminal and subtle world.
Meditation doesn't grant you psychic awareness. It takes work and practice over time to develop your physical senses into finely tuned instruments. You will have one or two senses that are naturally stronger than the others but that doesn't mean you can't exercise, like a muscle, the rest to get them caught up.
But where does intuition come into play? Intuition, healthy strong understandable intuition, is when you have harnessed your physical senses and their preternatural abilities. It is all of them working physically and spiritually in harmony to create that 6th sense of Knowing.
Sadly, we don’t get taught that anywhere. If we explore the world as it is, the first two senses we rely on are sight and hearing. They are actually overworked in my own opinion. And because of that people getting into spirituality either say, “I want/don’t want to see/hear things.” Those just happen to be the two everyone seems to gravitate towards most strongly.
The physical senses have a kind of hierarchy. At the bottom of that ranking is actually sight. And touch is at the very top. Let me explain in more detail.
Touch is the Primary Physical Sense
When we touch things we get an instant signal to our minds the second our physical body and some other form of matter make contact.
Hearing, Tasting, and Smelling are the Secondary Senses
For any of these senses to be activated something must first TOUCH a receptor on our physical bodies.
Hearing is when a sound wave touches the structures within our ears and then a signal is sent to our brain.
Smell is when particular molecules arrange themselves and touch specific receptors in our noses creating a signal that blends each molecule's information creating the overall smell we perceive.
Taste is when matter touches the taste buds on our tongues which are more receptive structures on our bodies. Just like the other two, once activated a signal is sent to our brain telling us what we are tasting.
Sight is the Tertiary Sense
In order for us to “see” physically, light must first touch a form of matter, reflect off of it, and then touch the receptors in our eyes. This reconstructs the image in our brains. Because of this, we are always seeing an after image as a representation of what is physically around us.
What needs to be understood about the hierarchy of senses ultimately is that without Touch none of the other senses would work at all.
And then of course there are those who do not have one or more of the senses either from birth or accidents. But what has been documented about this is that typically one or more of their other senses compensates. And even then, for example, a person who is blind from birth will still touch objects to create a mental image.
Now of course, with that being said, there is paralysis which limits the sense of Touch. While specific nerve endings are impaired in paralysis, for that person to be able to hear, see, etc, they still have some access to the sense of touch. It is just a different understanding of the sense.
And that’s the main point of this entire post. We have become too dependent on sight and hearing. We are slowly but progressively losing our connection to our other senses. For you to develop spiritually you do need to establish those connections.
When we are aware of each of our senses we begin to pick up on signals coming from all around us. This is receiving communication from all that exists. What exists physically, again, is just slowly moving energy. It is all in a constant state of vibration and pushing out different signals. Wind, while ephemeral, is a massive collection of different microscopic pieces of matter. Smell molecules, dust, and pollen are a few examples but also we can glean waves of energy from the wind. Heat and the lack of heat (cold) are also carried by wind.
When you or someone you know has had a major injury, like a broken bone, there is a shift in the body’s makeup. We often hear people say, “Oh the weather is about to change, I can feel it in…whatever broken or injured area of the body....” They are not lying or making it up. They are literally feeling it because the body is cued into picking up signals from the natural world. When the weather is about to change, the world around us begins to shift with wind speeds, air pressure changes, humidity, and so many variable signals.
Our body picks up on these changes and begins to shift as well. It is the way our body begins to adapt to our environment to help us survive the coming changes. A person who has had a major injury is experiencing the subtle adaptation of their body shift around a piece that either has lost its connection to the energetic signals or never had one, as is the case in a person who has a replaced (knee, hip, etc) body part.
Going even further, there are people with Synesthesia. This is a condition where two or more senses are experienced at the same time from a single signal. One of the most common examples of this is when people say they can see sounds as colors. For some people, this may sound really cool and sure it can be fun or pleasurable. Some of the people who have this condition can also call it a hindrance. It can blur the world in strange ways causing challenges to being able to drive or cook for themselves safely. Synesthesia is neither good or bad really. It is up to the perception of the person who has it. BUT people who have it and find it a hindrance can train themselves to lessen the impact from Synesthesia.
A synesthete is automatically going to have a stronger connection to their physical senses though. They simply perceive the world in a different and unique way. Let’s use the example of hearing sounds creating colors to be seen.
A synesthete in connection and control of their senses notices that another person has a putrid green color appearing every time they speak. What the person is saying isn’t necessarily wrong or nasty. In fact the tone is very relaxed and sweet. They even have a good crowd of people listening to them. But the synesthete doesn’t like the color they are seeing so they decided it is best to avoid that person. A few weeks go by and the synesthete is watching the news when they see that same person being arrested for fraud, extortion, and exploitation. That person said all the right things but they had ulterior motives. The synesthete wasn’t fooled because they noticed something off and trusted the signals their senses related to them.
Basically, a synesthete can do physically what intuitive people do. When aligned with your physical senses you gain a deep “knowing” that you can never fully explain. You smell a random smell that reminds you of a dead relative while nothing has changed around you. That is your body reacting to an energy signal closely related to that person and producing a “ghost” or “psychic” awareness of that energy. Clair senses are really just listening to the signals your brain is producing.
You hate the smell of…let’s say bananas. Someone comes up to talk to you and suddenly you smell bananas. The person does not actually smell like bananas. Your body picked up on something energetically about them and tapped into your subconscious to deliver a signal that you would recognize. From this signal, if you are conscious of it, you realize there might be something about this person that will clash with you energetically. This isn’t judgment by the way, it is called discernment. That is “clair senses” in a nutshell. The deeper you make the connections with your body and senses the more you will receive these signals. The more you receive these signals and learn to understand them the more intuitive you become.
Spend some time with each physical sense you have access to and learn how you receive signals from the environment around you. I would even say to focus on a different sense each week. Get connected to your body and let yourself be surprised by the amount of information you actually missed out on daily by focusing on one or two senses for so long. Going back to Ritual, develop some exercises that can help you to keep in touch with each sense in an ongoing process of personal development. And now would be a good time to start journaling your experiences. Write about what changes you witnessed in how you perceived the world.
As always, I do hope you found this information helpful and inspiring. I want to say two last quick things. First, read my posts slowly. I don’t mean the individual post, I mean don’t go from this post immediately to the next. Give yourself some time between each post to try out what I related to you. None of what I am saying will create overnight changes, but with patience and consistency (rituals) you will experience subtle shifts. Finally, yes I am going to call back to previous posts often. There is a steady progression designed into the information the order it is released in.
Thank you and I will see you next time!
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