The Art of Touch

Your perception of reality is shaped by competing versions of your ego, and each time one of them wins - you lose

“I like the wheel image and the way you show how each part can trap us if we cling to it. What I keep coming back to, though, is the contact patch, the bit where awareness actually meets the ground of a situation. Wheels only move through that small space of grip and slip, and that’s where the pulse is felt. Without that, the idea that “it doesn’t matter where awareness goes” risks feeling too smooth, almost like drifting off. How do you see the art of touch at that point of contact?”

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(Note: I would recommend reading my post Wheel of Suffering for context before reading my response to this reader.)

This is a question I had to sit with for a while.

Not because it is complex. But because it is elegant in its simplicity.

That point of contact - where awareness meets whatever level of experience is unfolding - whether mental, emotional, physical or spiritual - is, in fact, the only reality there is.

It is real only insofar as it is happening.

You can think of awareness as a TV screen on which various forms of content can play.

There is fictional content - like films and TV dramas. They are like thoughts of a narrative nature (and the emotions they evoke) - which includes imagining scenarios of hope or fear, memories of the past, projections of the future, ruminating on what someone said and how it made you feel and self-talk. This forms the majority of what our attention is focused on.

There is non-fictional content - like documentaries and reality shows. They are like thoughts of a pragmatic nature - such as planning events, prioritizing to-do lists, time-management, dealing with practical affairs or even abstract reasoning and creative thinking. This is informational and related to our survival and well-being.

There is live content - like news reports, sports events and concerts. This is mindful awareness of the somatic experience of the present moment, including the immediate physical surroundings and what is transpiring within it - what we causally refer to as ‘being present’. This content may be exciting or dull - but a key feature is the immediate and unrepeatable nature of it.

And finally there is static content - a fireplace, or rain falling through trees and other unchanging nature scenes - on repeat for hours. This is like the meditative state of absorption in one’s own consciousness. Most people rarely ever ‘watch’ these channels preferring to use them as an ambient backdrop. But when one does, one feels immersed in a deepening sense of calm, timelessness and stillness.

Our minds are perpetually ‘channel surfing’ the diversity of programming that is available to us. Most people are more drawn to the fictional genre. Some orient more towards the non-fictional. A few tend to focus on the live content. Whereas, only a handful ever watch static content.

Yet, the screen is not the content.

What we are is not circumscribed by any of this programming. We are that which provides the capacity for the programming to appear in the first place.

The screen remains unaffected regardless of what programming appears upon it. It has the capacity to display all this diverse content unconditionally. It does not distinguish or discriminate between content. There is no superior or inferior - no preference. Whatever channel appears - that is what is displayed - seamlessly and effortlessly.

However, there is another device that is linked to the TV - the remote control.

And it is the remote control’s job to surf the channels. The screen may have no preference for what is displayed upon it - but the remote control does.

That remote control is the “I”-mechanism of the mind. It is the power of intent, of will, of preference, of agency, of choice that appears to dictate what channel will appear on the screen of awareness. While this remote control cannot control how the content will unfold, it does appear to have the ability to determine what kind of content to focus on.

Of course, for most people this I-mechanism is not a unified and coherent entity. In fact, there are many competing versions of this “I” within a single person. Inner conflict is the experience of these various versions struggling for power.

So, to expand the analogy of the TV in the most accurate way - imagine there are multiple remote controls for the same television, all jockeying for control over the channels.

The most dominant remote for most people is the one that shows a preference for fictional narrative content. It’s the one that switches the channel back to the drama the first opportunity it gets.

The second remote, that is focused on practical non-fictional content related to ‘surviving and thriving’, is forever attempting to regain control from the first because it is founded on the belief that the practical is the real basis for our existence.

The third remote attempts, often in futility, to orient mindfully towards the ‘live content’ happening in the physical environment because it believes the present content to be more “real” since it is unfolding now.

And finally, the fourth remote is sporadically successful in shifting the channel to the ‘static content’, if only for brief intervals, because it believes reality lies in the transcendent dimension of timelessness, stillness and constancy.

All four remote controls have a few things in common:

• They are all I-mechanisms based upon control through identification.

• They each assert a subliminal worldview about what reality is:

  • Remote one believes reality to be narrative.

  • Remote two believes it to be practical.

  • Remote three believes it to be somatic.

  • Remote four believes it to be transcendent.

• They each are driven to control the screen of awareness in order to validate their own worldview as superior and the only truth.

• None can truly capture the essence of the screen - since the screen is undefinable by any of the content that appears upon it.

I invite you to watch these competing control mechanisms within your own mind.

Watch how when you are lost in thought of a narrative nature, some other urge within you arises reminding you that you are neglecting practical matters. Or when you are engaged in some practical activity like planning for an event, a pang of guilt arises in your chest reminding you that you are forgetting to remain present to your immediate surroundings. Or how, perhaps, in the middle of reading some spiritual text you feel this yearning bubble up to ‘dwell in pure awareness’ - and you vow to do so more diligently.

Notice how each of these urges competes for control over attention.

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You have asked:

“How do you see the art of touch at that point of contact?”

The point of contact, in the frame of my analogy, is what happens to be appearing on the TV screen right now.

The art of touch then relates to the following:

From what do you derive your sense of reality?

Is it from the form in which the content arrives or is it in the fact of its presence?

Do you believe the experience of stillness and spaciousness is “more real” than the experience of being lost in a childhood memory?

Do you believe that the somatic experience of watching a sunset is “more real” than the mental act of planning next week’s shopping list?

If you answer ‘yes’ to any of these questions, then your sense of reality is identified with the forms in which reality appears. It means your reality is controlled by one or more of the many I-mechanisms that, like the TV remote controls, are attempting to orient you to a certain version of reality by asserting it to be “more real” than the others.

The teenage girl lost in fantasies of ‘true love’, the businessman preoccupied with the minutiae of his practical deals, the mindfulness practitioner attempting to remain present to her surroundings, and the ascetic who remains fixedly absorbed in a state of meditative transcendence - are in the end all victims of the I-mechanism in its various incarnations. For each confuses their own preferred brand of conscious experience as reality. And thus have lost touch with the immediacy of whatever appears in the moment.

However, if your sense of reality does not reflect such a hierarchy of conscious experience. If it holds the fantasy of the future on par with the mindful awareness of the present. If it does not discriminate between the profound stillness which descends when attention is absorbed in meditation and the practical attention that involves planning out of a shopping list…

Then, your sense of reality is not dominated by form. Rather it intuitively orients to the essence of what-is as the only determinant of reality. It is then more fully in touch with reality as it happens, rather than as it should be happening.

It does not succumb to the worldview of any of the I-mechanisms that are operational - nor can it resist them - for all resistance is simply the experience of one I-mechanism pushing up against another.

This doesn’t mean the control mechanisms go away. This doesn’t mean the remote controls stop jockeying for dominance. How these I-mechanisms operate within each of us is entirely unique. (They are what are referred to as Vasanas in ancient Hindu scripture.) Yet, these dynamics of control do not hold sway over us because there is nothing within us that is seeking reality in that behaviour.

We recognize that everything that occurs only has a momentary reality. We are not fixated on the wheel, the spokes or the hub - and this allows us to contact the ground of experience itself.

So, when the fiction plays on the screen - it feels real only in that moment. And when the non-fiction plays on the screen - it feels real only in that moment.

And whether there is a mindfulness of the present as we are washing dishes in warm water or we are deeply absorbed in the expansive emptiness of meditation - none are felt to be real the moment they have passed and are no longer what is.

They each only hold a relative reality, never absolute.

“How do you see the art of touch at that point of contact?” translates in the context of this analogy to:

“What is the art of channel surfing?”

The art is not to become stuck on any channel long enough to believe it to be true.

The art is not to become hypnotized by the I-mechanisms operational at every level of our being - the mental, the emotional, the physical and the spiritual - that act as the gatekeepers to “reality”.

The art is not to fear being lost in thought.

Not to crave being absorbed in transcendence.

Not to cherish being present to the physical.

Not to avoid the dull and mundane practical thoughts.

The art is to know thyself as the ultimate context within which the entire breadth and depth of conscious experience unfolds like content upon a screen.

So, when you are reminiscing on a memory of a past relationship, there is no voice that can seduce you by saying: “You should be more mindful.”

Or when you are absorbed in meditation, the voice that says: “You really need to be working on saving more money”, does not have the capacity to cause you guilt.

For the I-mechanism needs a medium in which to survive. And that medium is what it calls reality.

The moment you believe this version - you are I-dentified. Bound to that realm of reality.

That which you are requires no medium, yet thrives in the midst of them all.

For it is the foundation of all that exists.

Touch can appear as warm soap suds on your hands, as the pang of nostalgia in your chest, as the anxiety of an unpaid bill, or as the still eternity of meditation.

Yet, touch itself is none of these.

It is the space in which they arise and pass.

Just as the wheel only rolls through its patch of contact with the ground, awareness only lives through this moment of contact with reality.

To sense this truth as the backdrop of all experience, without needing it to take any particular form - that is the art of touch.