Active and Passive Senses

 I have noticed at different times that we speak differently of our senses if we are using them actively or passively (sorta).

If we are trying actively to hear we say, I am listening. 

Sight: I'm looking.

Touch: I am feeling. (Although this feels different from looking and listening somehow).

The case with smell and taste is more difficult. I haven't been able to find any words that connote an active sense of 'trying to smell or taste with greater clarity'.

Interestingly, we use touch, sight, and hearing as metaphors for understanding. Even more interestingly, when we feel that we have understood someone we use the passive version of that sense. When we understand we don't say "I am listening/looking." We say "I hear you. I see you. I feel you." 

Hear, not listening. See, not look. Feel, not feeling. (Again, feel seems different here).

In every case, we are talking about certain senses, but seemingly primarily metaphorically. When I understand a client I may say "Oh, I see," or "I really hear you when you say..." 

These are mostly scattered reflections, as I have been enjoying blogging and want to do more of it. But I also in some ways take all this as evidence of the depth of Gendlin's account of the body, and imagine that my friend Keir would render all this in terms of the soul (in the Platonic or Aristotelian sense). There would be something to say about 'kination', or that imagination originates in our bodily sense of understanding. Seeing, hearing, feeling; all of these are ways of expressing understanding.

Understanding is what the body does, not the senses.