Sensitivity: The Big Picture
Along with heightened sensitivity comes a broad, panoramic viewpoint. The upgraded sensation is amazing when it comes to the heightened senses of the pleasure side of things.
Yet, to every right side there is a left. As you drop the beat to a more complete and robust world, you will also experience some of the challenges and discomforts of life in a more real way. Sensitivity is comprehensive. Many people try to only enjoy the pleasures and comforts of subtle awareness and block out the discomfort. This is, perhaps, why substance abuse is so rampant.
As awareness itself opens up the moment, you begin to see deeper. Knowing that seeing deeper has a right and left side of comfort and discomfort, people often choose to stay less aware as ignorance is bliss. On a basic level, a sensitive person feels more excitement and pleasure because he is more conscious. This consciousness causes him to feel, to a greater extent, the challenges and discomfort of the world. His inner sensitivity triggers feelings of compassion to those in pain, the sick, the needy, and the less fortunate; he develops a drive to help make the world a better place, and he is moved to act upon this, and make a positive impact.
This is what Shlomo Hamelech taught us in Koheles: yosif daas yosif machov, the more you develop this intelligence of subtle awareness, the greater the challenges that come along with it.
Nevertheless, we find that even as Hashem offered Shlomo the choice of royalty, riches, long life, or chochmah, he still chose chochmah with the machov that this intelligence and subtle awareness comes along with. He chose daas over anything else in the world, for within lies the true richness of life; long days and royalty would be worthless without this. He knew this to be the greatest gift of all.
The subtleties of life’s sensations and pleasures are all the more available and pleasurable to you when you are willing to experience awareness in its totality of the right and left side. As mentioned above, this might include the sensation of the left side, as well, like a challenge, hardship, or pain. As there is no selective numbing, both sides will be equely impacted. In the end, however, you’ll experience love, joy, and gratitude on a whole new level, and you’ll be capable of truly praising Hashem with Hallel and hoda’ah, through light and dark.
