When I first met my partner Eric, he confided to me that he felt like an animal. He meant that his experience of living seemed similar to what he imagined an animal's experience of living might be.
I can't know Eric's experience, nor can I know an animal's. But over the past few months I have been feeling more and more that my body is responding to stimuli without the involvement of my conscious mind. For example, when a loud noise occurs, my body will flinch before my mind has a chance to conceptualize the noise. Perhaps this has always happened, but my experience of this kind of thing used to be quite different. My experience of a loud noise used to be: hearing the noise, tensing my body and mind against the noise, and thinking angry thoughts about the noise. Now my experience is: hearing the noise, noticing my body flinch ... then moving on without much of a thought.
Similarly, I am enjoying pleasant sights, sounds, and smells immediately in my body. They trigger ripples of tingly sensation. Previously, I'd view a pleasant sight, mentally recognize it and conceptualize it as something I generally consider pleasant, and think, "Oh, that is a pleasant sight." But not much actual pleasure would be experienced. I received most of my pleasure in life through story, and through very intense sense stimulation such as eating or massage.
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