I met a woman, in my dreams last night.
Her senses are scrambled.
She touches through her eyes.
She sees through her nose.
She tastes and smells through her skin.
She listens through her mouth.
She speaks through her ears.

Speaking isn’t a sense. I know.
But this was her dream.
I only happened to walk into it.

“What a fine mess you are in,” I say.
“Or is this a path to enlightenment?
“Or a punishment? Some sad karma?” 
Mainly, she remains mute, confused.
As would I, in such a confounding scramble.

I ask her if I could walk a mile in her shoes.
“My shoes?” she cries. “Do you mean to say that I still have feet?”
Just what she didn’t need, someone else in her shoes.
“Are they still at the bottom of my legs?” she asks.

Under the circumstances, it was an unkind thing to say.

Swapping sensual responsibilities has its strengths.
Imagine listening through your mouth,
Drawing in another’s words with your breath.
Savoring them, absorbing them, digesting them.
You would actually have to listen.
Rather than think of some clever retort.

Suppose you speak through your ears.
That requires special talent well beyond small talk.
I don’t even know how it can be done.
My dream offered nothing on this.
Maybe, intently listening is a form of speaking.
Silence does speak volumes as others chatter on.

Putting your senses to work in areas
For which they were not trained
Sounds like a grueling, but potentially rewarding, exercise.
Sort of like the blind man whose other senses
Compensate by growing intensely acute.

Perhaps all senses ought to be rotated once in a while,
Like the tires on your car.
We grow lazy, only hearing through our ears,
Seeing through our eyes, speaking/tasting through our mouths, 
feeling through our skin, smelling through our noses.

Shake them up, I say!
And when, again, we grow too comfortable,
Rotate them once more!
Keep the fine treads of our senses staying sharp.

Perhaps if we employ all our senses to share the load —
Let the eyes do the speaking, let the ears do the seeing,
Let the skin replace taste and smell …

Soon, all our sensations grow muscle and power.
Newer sensations arise, previously unknown sensations.
Next thing you know, the heart and brain
Want to engage in this circus of sensations, too.
And, then, won’t things get interesting?

We are fully present in processing our environment
We are fully engaged in evaluating, understanding, inhabiting.

Deep immersion, full immersion, absorption and immersion.

Life gets more interesting because we will be, well … living.
No longer just data-processing and consumption machines.
We are higher beings. At one, for once, with the various universes.

The woman in my dream knows none of this just yet.
She is still trying to …
Touch through her eyes.
See through her nose.
Taste and smell through her skin.
Listen through her mouth.
Speak through her ears.
Find her footing.

I try to tell the woman in my dream that it will get better.
But her face is blank. She betrays no thoughts.
The woman in my dream moves on, back to the shadows.
She seems neither excited nor saddened.

I gather it will take some time.
Perhaps she will come back on another night
And show me what she has learned.

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