Direct experience vs. analysis in embodied traditions

For those of us who are engaged in spiritual inquiry, self inquiry, exploration of expansive states of consciousness, or even artistic and creative practices, we know that it's not really a place for analysis, those analytical capabilities of our mind, which are very useful to us in almost all of the other domains of our life, including in more personal areas like psychology and therapy, when it comes to the domain of those areas of the soul, or consciousness, or even creativity, or those areas of considering and enquiring into our divine or sacredness, it does not serve us well, the very those very frames of analysis. They don't serve us well.

One of the great philosophers that I really like, J Krishnamurti, called it analysis paralysis. He said that when we bring the intellect and its tools of analysis, into the domain of self-inquiry, it paralyzes us, we start spinning within that analysis, and we think that we are doing a lot of things, but actually we are, we are really not going anywhere. But we are paralyzed and standing and ruminating in the same spot. It's not to say that analysis is not useful. As I said, it is very useful in almost all of the other domains, but not when it comes to the domain of the soul, and its expressions of creativity, and emotion and sensation.

There is a beautiful word in Sanskrit called anubhava, which means direct experience. For me analysis is awhat can act as a barrier to the wisdom that opens up through direct experience. In many archetypal ritual traditions, there is an importance given to this power of direct experience, It is where we have to relinquish this analysis and we must be open to the nature of knowledge, or wisdom that is held in these traditions. In other words, the very nature of knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom, in these ritual ceremonial or archetypal traditions is, is different to what our mind considers knowledge, or what is usually considered as knowledge. So, there is no point in bringing the tools which we use to encounter those forms of knowledge into base domains.

Rather, it serves us better, to be a little humble, and to be open to what the invitation is within these traditions to attend to and how we can attend to the wisdom that an intelligence of these traditions themselves and unknowable or direct experience which means that it is our direct experience, that is a very subjective, intimate, direct experience in our own bodies that will unfold the intelligence and knowledge of those traditions of these archetypal traditions. It is what will reveal to us the nature and the movement of our soul, the nature and movement of our expansive consciousness. And indeed, its expressivity in fact, that experiencing becomes the doing because of course, something only becomes an experience when it becomes an embodied expression. And that is why embodied traditions like dance are very important and very central to many of these traditions.

The invitation of these tradition is to make that experience part of your beingness How do we do this? We do this by expressing as the experience is unfolding, the only way we can encounter it is by experiencing and expressing which in the end is the same thing. The being is the doing. And through that being and doing, we are revealed, or we taste or we receive that particular intelligence that is held in these traditions.

Because they are, it's not the same knowledge and the same intelligence as that which is held by the mind, this is a very difficult challenge for the mind because the mind assumes that it's got the last word on knowledge and information. And that analysis is the most valuable tool of arriving at intelligence. And like, like I said, that works in most other domains, but not here. So what I find is that even people who have been doing my programs for a long time will find themselves in this analysis, paralysis space. And it often happens with one particular area where I don't think we recognize that very much as analysis. And that is the area of comparison.

In fact, J Krishnamurti used to get very irritated with comparisons. When I have watched his interviews, I have witnessed how when somebody starts comparing what he's doing with another culture, another tradition, he will usually dismiss that discussion. And sometimes I have heard him say once, I don't read anything else, which was really funny, because, of course, he does read a lot of other things. But what he was trying to do there was to stop this comparison, because that really takes us out of the experience. And it takes us out of what is the particular quality of intelligence that is being held in this practice? And we start going again into the analysis of is this like something else? Is it not what how is it different and we are immediately out of anubhava and direct experience, once again into the mind.

It also means the mind is trying to make things familiar. This is another habit of the mind. It does not like the unfamiliar, what it tries to do is to make everything familiar by comparing it to something that has already been or something that it already knows or something that is already known, and thereby kind of flatten it out. There is no mystery, the mind doesn't like mystery. The minds main aim is to solve the mystery by making it familiar. Whereas a body lead archetypal tradition is all about how to experience mystery and its intelligence without needing to flatten it, or even to bring it into something that's familiar and thereby completely losing the essence of what that is our soul, that expansive consciousness, even our creativity is best left as a mystery. But that doesn't mean that they don't have very powerful ways of expressing and informing us and guiding us and being purposeful in our lives. But that expression that embodied expression of mystery means relinquishing our love of analysis.