SOUL SALON: SENSUALI-TEA PARTY
Dictionary definition: the enjoyment, expression, or pursuit of physical pleasure.
“He ate the grapes with surprising sensuality”.
The condition of being pleasing or fulfilling to the senses.
”life can dazzle with its sensuality, its color”
The gratification of the senses or the indulgence of appetite.
How do YOU perceive sensuality? What is it for you?
If you were to die, what sensory experiences would you most miss?
What are several of your favorite sensory moments?
What are some of your favorite sensory combinations that delight you?
What has been an experience of supernal beauty for you, that put you in sensual awe? What conditions were present to make that perception possible?
Have you had a sensory experience that put you in touch with a larger dimensional reality?
Read Sappho’s poem I am Wild blossoms of Spring.
These are the standard definitions of sensuality… but isn’t there something more than that embedded in this word/concept? From the holographic overview the senses are actually multi-dimensional receptors.. not just used to collect sensory data that is processed by the brain, but also receiving impulses from beyond the physical body, through the subtle bodies. Let’s look at the channels through which that more dimensional information is retrieved.
Channel 1: Empath/Feeling/Sensing Channel.
This is the primary channel and access route to the emotional body. It can be accessed through conscious merging with an “other” to experience and feel what they are feeling. The hallmarks of this channel are acute sensitivity, openness, vulnerability and depth of feeling.
What is your experience with this channel as it taps into multi-dimensionality?
Channel 2: The kinesthetic adept utilizes the access route of the physical body as its channel. This channel is accessed through physical movement of all kinds. Kinesthetic channels often trance dance, run or move into ecstatic dance states to access this channel of information.
What is your experience with this channel as it taps into multi-dimensionality?
Channel 3: Mental Channel. This is the primary channel and access route of the mental body. This channel is accessed through one pointed mental focus of various sorts. It brings to bear, the small mind in its higher intended function in accessing clarity through a responsively open, yet intensely focused meditational practice.
What is your experience with this channel as it taps into multi-dimensionality?
Channel 4: Olfactory Channel.
This is the primary channel and access route of the astral body. This is the channel that is accessed through smells impacting the limbic brain. The access point to this channel is carried on the breath and in scents of all kinds. Multi-dimensional awareness and remembrance is often carried on this channel.
What is your experience with this channel as it taps into multi-dimensionality?
Channel 5: Gustatory Channel. This is another aspect of the physical body channel, though it is often sub-atomic in nature. This channel is accessed through taste. This is often called the channel of “tasting the divine nectar” and is often a meditative, non physical experience, though sometimes it can be very literal.
What is your experience with this channel as it taps into multi-dimensionality?
Channel 6: Auditory channel.
This is the primary channel of the etheric or spiritual body. This is the intuitive knowing that is received directly through perceiving and following the internal sound and light currents. The hallmark of this channel is a heightened sensitivity to auditory phenomenon, sound and light pulses and frequency shifts internally.
What is your experience with this channel as it taps into multi-dimensionality?
Channel 7: Visual Channel.
This is a combination channel often found as a channel in beings who have had a focus and developed the various channels for many lifetimes. If you “SEE” on the inner planes (being a Seer), images float across ones inner screen, often unbidden or when one is relaxed and not mentally focused.
What is your experience with this channel as it taps into multi-dimensionality?
***Which of these sensory channels is strongest for you? Which weakest?
Share Tasting dark chocolate poem from the Radiance Sutras… then Sacrament.
“The subtle senses begin to pick up where the physical senses leave off. Subtle perception emanates from the subtle or etheric body or what is more well known as the human energy field. Its perceptual centers are called chakras. The subtle body isn’t matter, isn’t a thing, but neither is it pure spirit. It surrounds and interpenetrates the physical body. Your spirit exists with no location in space. The subtle body has a location. Your subtle body perceives the “between” because that is its position energetically between the physical and non-physical. Your subtle body perceives symbols, metaphors, dreams. Subtle impressions often come to us in the form of mental pictures, like describing a feeling in a metaphor like “tiptoeing on thin ice” or a “pressure cooker about to explode”. Dreams and waking metaphors are how your subtle body conveys what it knows to your rational mind. The subtle body is good at perceiving moods, emotions, qualities, meanings, and connections. Compared to your physical senses, its not so good at perceiving hard facts. It can tell you if someone is lying, but can’t discover the exact truth. What is apprehended through the physical senses is vivid and reassuringly real. By comparison, perceiving subtle impressions is like watching paint dry! To perceive subtle body sensory impressions requires being able to hold your attention in clear focus when it appears that “nothing” is happening. Each of the physical senses has a subtle counterpart. Imagination is the subtle sense of sight. It is an inner experience that has the same style as eyesight. What is perceived this way is usually described as “seen”. Inspiration is akin to the sense of hearing. Subtle experience is described in terms of sounds or words that one has “heard”. There are also subtle senses that correspond to taste, touch, smell and temperature. The imagination that arises spontaneously in response to subtle perception are not facts, but they can show us the best way to work with what the mind perceives to be facts. Subtle perception is deeply engaged with perceiving beauty, as the deeper layers of beauty can only be apprehended when we are perceiving analogously to watching paint dry, with deep reverent attention. Attention is selectivity applied to perception. It is an inward decision, usually made unconsciously, about what is worth perceiving and what isn’t. Attention both finds meaning and creates meaning. In the world of the spirit, attention is the equivalent of physical movement. Control of attention is the first skill that an aspiring sensory adept, magician or alchemist must master and perhaps the most important.”
From Cathleen MacCoun On Becoming an Alchemist
