A question from a friend.

I experience joy and expansion. I know it is not ‘my’ expansion and yet it is felt in this body. Can you comment on this?

Reply: The expansion is the result of consciousness revealing itself and not that of the body mind. Given that the body mind has, for so long, been contracted in personal identification, when the contraction releases, even a partial release, it is felt at both the mind and the body level.
At the mind level, the feeling is that of less problems, less confusion and more clarity and at the body level it is felt as peace, transparency, vastness and happiness.
It is important to understand that the body mind feeling of expansion is an interim experience due to the transitional shift from the contracted state to the less contracted state.
In time, if you do not attach yourself to these sensations, and if you do not burden your mind with all sorts of conceptual models, you will find less and less thoughts and feelings burdening you.
All experiences have a mind element to them, and behind the mind is the reality of consciousness. Consciousness is beyond the body mind and yet it is non-dual. Like the dreamer is the reality of the dream. Like the sunshine is the reality of the moonshine. There is no independent reality to the moonshine or to the dream.

Photo by Sasa Gyoker