The Basic Inquiry: How Now?

What am I experiencing now?

• The realm of direct perception through the senses.-- In the environment this is what we can see/hear/touch/smell/taste. The direct perception, NOT the meaning we add to it.
  -- Within us, this is the place of noticing breathing, sensation, feeling and emotion. All feeling and emotion is sensation with distinct flavors and possibly more charge. If you can’t notice it as sensation, in this framework, it’s not a feeling.
• Experience is in the Being realm rather than the Doing realm. To support this we allow…open to…let develop…follow.

What am I doing now? (and how am I doing that?)

• Thinking… in all it’s forms… we label as “doing”. We emphasize learning to distinguish perception/sensation (experience) from thinking (what I make of what I experience directly)
• In the body… those voluntary, although often habitual, physical patterns are explored as doing. Tightening… pushing…stretching…anything that we can participate in or exaggerate.
• From a Buddhist perspective, the three causes of suffering – aversion, clinging, and ignoring – are all in the doing realm.

Having fully noticed what I am experiencing and what I am doing, then I can explore choices…

What else is possible?

• Alternatives, additions, even the outrageous. If you can imagine it, it’s a possibility to recognize.
• A possibility is not a promise. “I can…” does not mean, “I will.”
• A creative alternative does not eliminate the option to engage in the original behavior or choice. Everything stays on the menu.