Emotions and feelings are primarily sensations, and these are sensations of the body. If the body is insensitive, there will be no awareness of these sensations and hence no awareness of feelings. This will preclude the possibility of understanding. So sensitization of the body is required via the dissolution of muscular armor and its tension patterns. But the sensitization of the body is not just for the awareness of sensations and feelings. These are the first to be encountered by the expanding awareness. But the sensitivity, in time, needs to get deeper, and the perceptions need to get finer so that the organism can be aware of the subtler presence of essence itself. Essence is an embodied existence and will be experienced in the body, not somewhere else or abstractly. When some authors write of the refinement of perception, there is more intended than to make the mind sharper and the body more feeling. By awakening the body and refining its sensitivity, the deeper and subtler capacities of perception are awakened and developed. These subtle capacities are organized by the subtle energetic centers, which are to be found in various locations in the body. And these subtle capacities for perception are needed for awareness of essential presence. Essence, as we have seen, is a subtle substance that has physical characteristics. This means that in order to experience essence the physical organism has to become sensitive enough to perceive these physical characteristics, which are usually coexistent with the ordinary physical sensations. The physical characteristics of essential substance are very subtle, in the sense that they are quiet and silent compared to the sensations of the body and its feelings. Usually, they are drowned by the grosser sensations. They might be present, but because the person is attuned only to the grosser, more familiar physical sensations, he might not be aware of their presence. So his awareness will have to become refined enough to be sensitive to the subtler and finer sensations of essence. 

The work on the superego, on expanding the awareness and deepening the sensitivity of the body, involves the activation and freeing the chakra level of energetic functioning. This does not necessarily mean direct work on the physical location of the chakras. It is basically clearing the mind and opening the body, which inevitably involves the clearing of the chakra system. The chakra system is basically the level of emotions, thinking processes, and physiological functioning. Freeing these functions from the unconscious, defending against the superego, and clearing the conflicts in the mind, is itself the work on clearing the chakras. Of course, there are other methods of dealing with this level of work. Some systems work directly on the chakra system and its centers. Others activate the kundalini energy and use it to activate and clear the chakras. Others use yogic physical techniques. Psychotherapy and the body therapies also are attempts in this direction. The chakras do not function properly because of the body armor and its patterns of psychophysical tensions. The work on the superego, especially if coupled with somatic-energetic techniques, such as those that employ breathing, is a powerful and efficient method for clearing this level. It also guards against the fascination and the excitement characteristic of direct work on the chakras. Clearing this level of the personality leads at some point to the regaining of the pure emotional energy, and culminates in the experience of the void.  

So contact involves not only openness and vulnerability, but, also, the presence of a sense of Being. One is open, vulnerable and present. However, the reader might object that this is the condition of the presence of any aspect of Essence. Whenever Being is felt as presence there is necessarily some openness, and a measure of disidentification from ego and its defenses. This is true, but this does not yet make for contact. The presence of a state of Being means the presence of pure consciousness, in any of its absolute forms. This means there is awareness, sensitivity and openness. There is a sensitive consciousness of the other, an empathy and an appreciation of the other’s existence. In these states, one might be very accurate in one’s perception of the other, and observant of his state. There might be tender love, warm kindness or even joyful interaction. But this is not necessarily contact. Consciousness is not necessarily contact, although it can make possible sensitivity and empathy with the other. Although Being is necessary for contact it is certainly not sufficient for contact in its unqualified form. For there to be contact, the Personal Essence has to be present. Contact implies personal contact. It implies a being in contact with another being. 

It is possible to see that the reason you’re suffering is that you’re always filling your self with the activities of the positions you take. When this is happening you cannot experience things freshly, directly, purely. You even experience your body as heavy and sluggish. If you allow emptiness, your body can become light, rather than a hindrance or a boundary for your experience. Your body is your orientation in the physical universe but your experience does not have to be limited by its shape or contour. You are basically an openness and a sensitivity which has no point of view, which is not restricted by any boundary of any kind—emotional, essential, physical or mental. When you allow yourself to be that openness and freedom, you will experience yourself as giving, as a flow of love. The point of view of the ego is what stops love and the true abundance that flows like a fountain. The fountain isn’t thinking of giving or not giving. The fountain is just there, flowing. A point of view, which is automatically a restriction, blocks the heart. The heart cannot pump its essential juices.