Knowing is not the same as feeling. Being routinely aware of that has made a wonderful difference in how I live. I can know a tree and all its traits. I can know that it is rooted in front of me. But feeling its presence is a dramatically different way of experiencing the tree.
The same is true of people. I can know that they are walking toward me, I can see their appearance, I can know a lot about their identity and history. But to feel their presence is another kind of awareness. I can look around the circle of people gathered in my Sangha and I can see them sitting quietly. I can even be aware of them in a sensory and knowing way. But it is such a deeper exerience to feel their presence.
Being able to feel the presence of someone or something is how I feel deeply connected with them. Feeling the presence of anything allows me to experience union with them. My awareness of my presence is joined with the awareness of their presence, and it occurs on a feeling level, not just a knowing level. In that instant of feeling, I am connected with them in an experience of oneness.
Many times my mind is distracting from feeling. Mind can easily block and be an obstacle to wonder. Wonder for me is in the realm of feeling. Knowing can sometimes keep me from feeling the presence of someone or something. My thoughts can distract my awareness and restrict how I can be open to feeling. Thoughts can even result in revulsion or avoidance.
Knowing can also be a doorway to feeling when knowing takes away the limits of time. Mind can take away the constraint of time and see an individual not just as they are now but as they have been many years from now. Stripping away the constraint of time allows me to see someone in their timeless entirety, in the timeless youth they continue to carry within them.
I have been learning how to change my way of being aware. I am learning how to enter the realm of formless perception. I have learned how to let go of the mind constraints I have such a natural tendency to put on peope and things. Knowing is such a limiting way of experiencing the world, and relying on what I feel has dismissed much of the tension I have felt about the people and things around me.
It is almost like I have discovered another sense by relying on what I feel, not so much on what I know.