The Sense of Smell

We perceive over 10000 different odors and an seemingly infinite number of combinations.  And with each breath we smell the  scent combinations of whatever is around us.  Though we don’t notice all the smells, we are making decisions about them all the time.  Decisions beyond like and dislike.  We assess the health and safety of all that is near to us with our sense of smell.

Before we taste, we smell. If something smells bad, we won’t taste it.

Our smell sense links directly to memory.  We love familiar smells.  We immediately know our blood relatives through smell and feel at home with the smells of our culture.

Smell takes us on adventures.  If we smell something we love, we will follow the smell to its source.  If we don’t like a smell, we will move away from it as far as necessary. Because smell comes with breath, it tells us good smells are about life and bad smells are about death.  We seek life and avoid death and smell is our guide.

Likewise, smells soothe us and stimulate us and offer a healing action for our bodies and souls.  Those who have lost their sense of smell feel life has been taken away from them.



The soul’s sense of smell tells us about the health of an idea, the complexity of a mood, and the safety of an intention.

When you reflect on your inner life build your awareness with metaphors of odor and smell. I suggest you spend a few minutes everyday recording perceptions, thoughts, feelings, intentions and actions and then put a scent metaphor next to each one.

As I write this I am thinking about the childhood associations with Ivory Soap.  Something about the scent of Ivory awakens a sense of clean - of being about 3 years old in the bathtub and getting scrubbed, feeling/smelling new and fresh.  Why would that memory/metaphor appear as I write this post?

Well, I want you to be inspired to seek in your inner life a fresh, clean, newness through this exercise.  Does that smell good to you?

But look at the soul experiences that don’t smell good to you, too.  Look at the ones that feel like perfume covering up stink. What about the one’s that have no smell - did they ever have life?

Sometimes as I am doing research on an aspect of the Inner Year, or working with a painful memory from my childhood, or working with a client on a critical questions, I smell a faint odor that gives me a sense that something is almost near enough to taste or see or touch.  These “soul smells” pull me forward.  I become like a bloodhound following a scent of thoughts, of feelings or of intentions.

If you practice this “smell” attention, you will find you have a nose for what’s right for you!

The Sense of Word

The Sense of Word


I was with my grandson for a month, a very vocal month.  For a couple of weeks, as he turned six months old, he was delighting in the sounds he could make. From grunts to squeals he was learning how to master the range of his voicebox.  On the last day he was sitting on his father’s lap and we let our friend’s dogs in.  They came up to the baby, sniffed, licked and walked away.  Edon wanted more.  He stretched out his arms and called out to the dogs.  He didn’t use a real word but it was a distinct sound with a distinct desire behind it.  Language as a conveyor of personal reality was being born.  Edon was not just making sounds and finding his voice, he was speaking and gesturing. And blessedly, I perceived this first attempt at language.

Words, language and gestures bear meanings but are not the meaning.  They are form but not substance.  In most cases, they carry merely parts of the meaning but not the whole. 

With the sense of word, language and gesture, we perceive the sounds of vowels and consonants. We notice syllables. And we notice intention. We actively shape our words. We choose our words and we perceive the choosing of words.

My mother tongue is English.  My words are American, a combination of Long Island and South Florida dialects.  I also use jargon words, esoteric words, slang, etc stemming from my studies and my interests. I am female. And it is important to know that most of my choice of words and my pleasure in perceiving certain words is loaded with the emotional and intellectual shadings of my biography - my joys and sorrows.

Because most of us confuse words with meaning and are not aware that the perception of words is distinct from the perception of meaning, we get into states of misunderstanding, confusion and distraction in our learning, our relationships and our communications.


Sometimes people don’t know what my words or gestures mean. They have either a different personal history with the word or a different language all together. An Italian or a Chinese perceives my words and could parrot them, but his sense of my meaning is lost in the simple perception of language. And then there is the struggle with spouses, lovers, parent, children and others so familiar and dear, that sometimes don’t hear the words, let alone care about the personal meaning they bear.


But what is really scary is sometimes I don’t know what my words mean to me or I use the wrong words for the meaning I want to convey. A word I was working with as I thought about this little essay was “money.” Money is a word I perceive and load with lots of emotional meanings and little thought.
I can define words in isolation but put them in a string of words, a sentence, and put the sentence in a context of even more complex meaning and I must work to perceive the meaning of the word in the context of many words.

Most words have several meanings.  One word with many subtle meanings is the word “love.”  I perceive the word and a million possible meanings appear.  How do I perceive the exact meaning in the moment?  Not by perceiving the word.  (Next week I will share about the thought sense which allows us to perceive meaning even when the meaning conflicts with the words being used!)

This week notice words.  And notice body words or gestures.  Notice how you use the word or react to the word and ignore or miss the meaning. And notice how your perception of the word is tied to your biography with the word.  (I could write pages about my biography with the money words!)

Here is a great article on language and thinking that was in the New York Times Sunday Magazine last week. It’s a great read.

Does Your Language Shape How You Think?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine

Here is the website to create a word cloud out of any written document. http://www.wordle.net/ A word cloud works with the sense of word.  It is fun to play with.

The Sense of Well-Being

Once we incarnate into our sense of touch, through which we experience the resistance of something else and the reality of our own boundary, and we find ourselves thrown back into our own center, we move to the perception of “the existence within” our skin. What exists within our skin is our life, our biological organization and the functions that keep us alive. This new sense is called our life sense or our sense of well-being. We don’t pay too much attention to this sense until something is not well within. With touch we perceive “is,” our being is because I experience my limits and boundaries. With well-being we perceive “is not,” I am alert to an absence in my “isness.”

When something is not right, lacking, or overwhelming, our sense of well-being alerts us with feelings of hunger, thirst, exhaustion or dis-ease. As infants and children we depend on others to fill our bellies, quench our thirst, put us to bed, and calm and comfort our dis-ease. Curiously this sense tells us that what resists our touch can also care and provide for us.

Before I go into the soul perceptions of well-being, I want to quickly point out that touch wakes us up to space and well-being wakes us up to time. When our sense of well-being grabs our attention we begin to endure. Duration is the body’s perception of time - how long can I bear this suffering, the absence of my well-being.

Now to the sense that let’s the soul know it is suffering...

Begin with questioning your ability to endure suffering. Your own suffering and the suffering of others? Are you struggling right now with the suffering of the planet, with the Gulf oil spill?

Is it easy for you to repress your suffering? Repressed suffering lives below consciousness and never finds relief. (I know for myself, I learned to endure and put on a happy face at an early age. Eventually, I lost all sense of what was unendurable, found myself seeking relationships that demanded I hunger, thirst, and exhaust myself, etc. It’s a whole story of a very unhealthy sense of well-being. I’ve been in soul recovery for years. I know now it is up to me to notice when my cup is empty and fill it with kindness myself. When it overflows, I can share my kindness with others. There are so many great lessons living in the awareness of well-being.

When your soul is hungry, what is it hungry for? How do you feed your soul? Who else feeds your soul? Think of comfort foods for the soul - a poem, a painting, a string quartet, a long walk, a good movie, telling your truth. Make a list. You might want to make a bunch of little cards with suggestions for soul snacks or soul feasts and keep them in a bowl. When your soul feels hunger rumblings, go to the bowl and pull a card. Enjoy the nourishment.

When your soul is thirsty, dry, parched - do you know this feeling? Where do you go? Where are the sweet waters your soul drinks from? Does the smile of a loved one or a stranger quench your loneliness?

Souls need rest. Do you overwhelm your soul with too much self-help, too much seriousness, too much demand to develop? How do you imagine taking a soul nap? What lullaby would sing your soul into a gentle sleep? If you just close your eyes.

And if your soul knows dis-ease, pain, illness where do you seek healing? When your soul gets inflamed what cools you down? Or if your soul gets chilled, what blankets your thoughts and feelings with warmth?

In your sense journal, make lists of how your soul experiences a lack of well being, when it feels it is losing its liveliness and life. Then make lists of all the wonderful things that restore your soul’s health and wealth. These lists will be an endless source of personal care and wisdom, recipes for delicious soul feasts, juices for a juicy sense of self, soft pillows on which to lay your soul down and all kinds of therapeutic relief and restoration.

If you need a summer conversation for soothing or stimulating, I might have what you are seeking. Read more...

Understanding and Being Understood

I am visiting England and having a beautiful time. Dear friends and beautiful gardens provide me with amazing conversations with human spirits and nature spirits.

Today is the festival of Pentecost or Whitsun which reminds us of the sacred event fifty days after the Easter when the Holy Spirit ignites the twin tongues of fire within the souls of each one present and suddenly everyone can be understood by everyone in “the language of their birth.”

This is generally interpreted as the speaking in tongues but if we penetrate the esoteric and evolved meaning we find a very profound and liberating possibility that has nothing to do with where one was born and what their mother tongue is.  Actually, it never had to do with the languages of locations.

In the possibility of Whitsun, it is where you are “coming from” in the moment that is understood.  If every moment you are born anew and this birth is understood by all those around you, you will receive the love that surpasses all understanding.  If you find in your heart the ability to experience the constant birthing anew of the individual in front of you then you will give the love that surpasses all understanding. Through this love you experience the “fulness of Spirit.”

Whitsun or Pentecost occurred almost 2000 years ago. How close are we to understanding and being understood by those who are dear to us, let alone those who are strangers or perceived enemies? Do we have any sense of a love that surpasses understanding? Do we experience the fulness of Spirit - the full incarnation of the inner divinity?  These are not rhetorical questions and when considered deeply they ask us if we really want to feel, know, be penetrated with, this understanding, this love, this fulness? Could our hearts bear it?

Supporting the opening our hearts and the maturing the noble capacities of our human souls is the intention behind the Inner Year emails and teleseminars.

Much of the Inner Year focuses on the awakening of our individuality. Pentecost is the festival that celebrates the connection of one individuality to another.  This festival nurtures and celebrates how the inner I moves out to meet the I of the other.  It is the once a year attention to community. It’s the party of the year.

Yet, to really know communion with others we must know the community that makes up our sense of self.  Yesterday I was having a significantly healing conversation with a kind and thoughtful friend.  He was confronting me about some of my inner challenges.  He was saying “You are…” I was struggling with feelings of being understood but misjudged.  I defended myself and counter attacked even tho’ I felt he was touching a truth.  In a moment of inspired Whitsun wisdom, I realized that the truth was about a part of me, but not all of me.  I asked him if he could restate his insight and begin with “I see a part of you, Lynn, that is ….” He did and I immediately felt understood and loved. My complexity of good and weak parts, bad and wonderful parts, creative and stuck parts was being acknowledged by my friend and by me. My defenses rolled away and I could love all of me including the not-so-thrilling part he was pointing to and the conversation became compassionate transformative.

So what are all the languages of my parts? What are the languages of your parts?

Last night as I was falling asleep, I began to look at all the languages I am speaking in my own being and not understanding. The languages of my moods, the languages of my fears, the languages of my longings, the languages of my needs for love, sex and romance, the languages of my senses, the languages of my gut and my nervous system, the ancient languages of my biography, the languages of my traumas and my healings, the languages of my aging and on and on. Each part of me has a language and only a few do I speak well, listen to or understand.

Perhaps this polyglot challenge causes my love of this festival.  I shine in the Whitsun promise that I will be given the grace of knowing my own languages and in knowing my own come to know the languages of all other human souls - the twin tongues of self and other. But I also wonder what are the archetypes of this understanding and how can I apply them practically.


Today I will be giving a workshop on Stimulating and Soothing, the Art of Creative Self-Management, at the Steiner School is York, England.  As I was preparing my outline, I reflected on the many twin tongues of fire living in the wisdom of our humanity.  Soothing and stimulating are twin tongues.  If we understand the mysteries of soothing and stimulating, we can speak the languages that will soothe and stimulate our own and each other’s souls.  In the workshop I will focus on the soothing and stimulating of our temperaments and our senses.  I feel the possibility of a “fulness of awareness” here.  Knowing the languages of the temperaments is the foundation of understanding ourselves and others.  Knowing the soothing and stimulating languages of the senses helps us find the right perceptions of all things.

I will be offering a teleseminar on the languages and conversations of the four temperaments in June.  I will send out the information after I return to the States next weekend.  Over the summer I will be sending out 12 weekly emails on the Twelve Senses, sharing the way these sensory tongues shape our consciousness. I will offer teleseminars on the mysteries of Intimacy and the mysteries of Balance beginning in July.  I hope you will join me as we learn these challenging languages spoken in our souls.

Whitsun is often celebrated with flowers.  Here in England, spring flowers are everywhere.  Let flowers speak to your soul today.

with Whitsun wonder and love,

Lynn

Anxiety and the Twelve Senses

We live in the age of anxiety and our challenge is the transformation of personal anxiety into personal confidence.

Anxiety arises out of a feeling of a gap. A gap is a break in continuity that asks for restoration. It is a hole or interval between you and what you desire that must be bridged. It is a lack of harmony or fit that requires alteration and adjustment.

Gaps occur in our relationship to our bodies, in our relationship to the world, and in our relationship to others. All these relationships are known through our perceptions. If our perceptions are distorted or our organs of perceptions are damaged restoration, bridging, alteration and adjustment appear difficult or impossible. Life becomes threatening. Anxiety increases.

Even confidence in our relationship to God or Spirit asks us to be "grounded" in our earthly perceptions first. Without this healthy and essential earthly life, our spiritual lives live over a gap in human experience.

Consequenttly, a very important way of managing, resolving or eliminating all forms of anxiety is to attend to our perceptions and our organs of perception.

From the perspective of inner development, we can look at twelve senses, twelve organs of perception:

4 senses give us our perception of our embodied self, the world within our skin:
the sense of touch or boundary,
the sense of well-being including our sense of hunger, thirst, exhaustion and pain,
the sense of self-movement and contraction and expansion, and
the sense of balance and uprightness.

4 senses give us our perception of the world beyond our skin:
smell,
taste,
vision and
warmth

and
4 senses give us our perception of what lives within the souls of others:
hearing,
the sense of word and gesture,
the sense of thought, idea and ideal, and
the sense of divine individuality in the other.

All twelve senses weave together to shape our soul and the sense of “I am.” Each one is a treasure of experience and information. But each sense is also fragile.

If any of these twelve senses is skewed with too much sensitivity or to little sensitivity, if any as been traumatized, if any has been inflated, depleted, overwhelmed or ignored, we experience distorted and unsafe perceptions of our meaning, our purpose and our significance. We do not find our perceptions harmonious. We become anxious.

THE TWELVE SENSES
an Inner Year program

Over four 60-minute teleseminars, I will offer a creative understanding of the twelve senses. This is not a boring course. It is filled with liberating “aha’s” and healing insights.

I love the senses - they make sense of every thing. When we have a conscious relationship - a real sense of our senses, we can gracefully master life. Anxiety becomes a “wake-up” feeling, instead of a threat. We do not get stuck in anxious feelings but find ourselves moving through a more dynamic process of growing confidence in all our relationships.

Through the Twelve Senses, we learn how to sustain and deepen the feelings:

I am calmly contained within myself.
I meet my needs for nourishment and restoration.
I move gracefully and purposefully in the right direction.
I am elegantly balanced in all matters.

I breathe in life.
I taste the richness of life.
I see life with clarity and focus
I feel the warmth of life

I hear the voices of other souls.
I recognize the words and gestures of other souls.
I discern the thoughts of other souls.
I love the divine essence within other souls.

These are statements free of anxiety. They are declarations of growing confidence. Knowledge of the twelve senses and understanding of the challenges living in our twelve senses give us ways to move from anxiety to confidence.

The Twelve Senses teleseminar will introduce you to each of the twelve senses and help you grasp the myriad ways the senses interact with each other.

In the fullness of summer, we will experience the fullness of our senses.

Join me for this sensuous and sensible study.

The Twelve Senses
an Inner Year program

*four 60 minute sessions
*sessions will be recorded and available to download for 30 days
*emailed handouts and notes

Sundays at 7:30PM Eastern, 4:30PM Pacific -
July 12,19,26, August 2

$47

Register here.

If you have any questions, email or call me.