Going Into the Contraction
Entrar en la contracción
A student describes intense physical discomfort during meditation and asks whether the mechanism that labels experience as pleasant or unpleasant is the same classifying function of mind that creates the sense of a separate self.
Going Into the Contraction
A student describes intense physical discomfort during meditation and asks whether the mechanism that labels experience as pleasant or unpleasant is the same classifying function of mind that creates the sense of a separate self.
During the meditation I was feeling a lot of discomfort in this area, the chest and throat, and as soon as you said we could start finishing, it ended, or started to end. At first I found it hard to follow the instructions because the uncomfortableness took so much of my attention. But I was exploring: is it the same mechanism that separates with maps? "This is me, this is not me. That's a sound, this is something else." What is the mechanism that says, "I don't like this, this isn't comfortable, this is pleasurable"? It seems like some form of classification from the mind.
Yes, it's exactly that. It's the mind labeling. But when we're not used to certain levels of intensity, we haven't learned that being with that is okay.
Two possible explanations for the shift
This connects to the earlier question about putting the body in extreme situations to provoke some dropping of beliefs. There's no guarantee of that. There are people who climb mountains and go through really intense experiences, and no actual true opening happens. But on the other hand, when something is uncomfortable, we have, in a sense, a choice to open up to being something vaster than what is uncomfortable.
There's no guarantee that's going to happen, but where you're describing that you feel a shift when the meditation ends, to me it could be one of two things. Either you're pushing, trying to make something happen, and so there's a contraction. When the meditation ends, you have an opportunity to stop pushing. That's one possibility.
Or it could be that when you're directing your attention to something outside the routine of identification, when you're directing your attention in an expanded sense, the part of you that is body-mind and resisting that is going to act out. Habits are going to try to pull you back, saying, "Don't do this. Just stay in the comfortable zone." The labeling that says, "This is uncomfortable, I don't like this," is also going to reinforce the identification. It will say, "This is not okay. This shouldn't be happening. This should change." It's going to start creating a sense of time, a sense of something you can or can't do, a narrative. All of that is going to keep you identified with a certain mental construct of "I": "I am the one who doesn't like this," for example.
The mind could say, "This is uncomfortable, I don't like this," which is different from believing "I don't like this."
I noticed some of those narratives, like "this should change, this shouldn't be happening." There were even some instances where I saw those narratives and looked straight, straight into the center of that intense, uncomfortable thing. It only happened a few times, but it changed something. It's weird, though. It felt like a resistance, but at the same time, sometimes I was experiencing something totally neutral, without effort, as if the boundaries weren't there. I'm trying to understand the process.
Going fully into the sensation
I can give you two ways to explore that. When things are uncomfortable and you're feeling that contraction, you can explore going right into it, straight into the sensation, into the contraction, into the discomfort. That will override the part of you that believes this shouldn't be happening. There's a sense of "it shouldn't be happening," and you can just go straight into it, choose it fully, feel it fully. Bring all of your attention.
For example, there's a contraction, and then you forget you're the one doing the contraction. All you experience is contraction, and you feel like you're the victim of it. That's what's happening. If we try to fight the contraction and say, "Stop it," we don't even know we're the ones doing it, because we disconnected from the sensation, from the muscle contraction. We lost the memory that we are the ones producing it.
Instead of having a fight with that and creating a narrative around it ("This is because of my parents, because of the government, because of my job, my situation, my partner"), what you can do is go fully into the sensation. We've been doing this since we were so young that we forgot. It gets tighter and tighter. Feel it as fully as you can. By not fighting it, it will start to flow, because the fighting itself creates more friction, adds more contraction. By going fully into it, you'll start to sense, "Oh, actually, I have a feeling that I'm the one doing this." It will start flowing, and you'll be able to release it gradually.
Taking responsibility for the contraction
Over time, you'll have the sense of, "Oh, I'm the one doing that." But it happens in many different ways. It happens emotionally. Someone will have a tendency, when something is difficult, to create a narrative that produces anguish, pain, or sadness. Then they will feel, "This is happening to me because of this situation." So they go out trying to change the situation so they stop feeling that way. But the situation could change and they'd still be doing it. They will find another reason to contract, because they are choosing to contract.
There's a really big step when we realize we are the ones choosing this. At that point, you can no longer blame any part of your reality, anything in the past, or anything in your current circumstances. And that's where you're stuck. It's not something we want to see, because you have to take responsibility. You can no longer blame anything, and you're no longer the victim of anything. It's a really difficult place to be, because you're still feeling like crap.
This happens with addiction, because in a sense this is an addiction. We're addicted to some form of contraction, some form of suffering, some emotion. People addicted to substances go through exactly the same process. They blame their whole reality until they realize they are responsible, and then they have to face things they don't want to face. But that's the only place where there's a chance to change.
So that's what I'm suggesting. One way is to go fully into it: fully into the feeling, fully into the contraction, fully into the identification, the discomfort, that which you are fighting and trying to change and stop. In a sense, that's going to create an acceptance. The acceptance is really already there, but you're going to have this push and pull internally. You need to bring the part of you that's pulling away and fighting to be fully aligned, fully embracing whatever is uncomfortable. Then you can start experiencing it, and something is going to start shifting.
Noticing the space in which contraction appears
The other direction you can explore (and these can be done alternately; you can play with them) is to see that the contraction is happening in a space. This is a more tricky thing to point to, but it's what I've been pointing to in the meditation. Everything is happening inside a space that is infinite and does not have a center. By noticing that more and more, you will start to disidentify from that which is contracting. That's another way to remove the resistance: by bringing your attention to be vaster, you no longer care about the contraction as much.
Imagine if your finger hurts, but you are only the finger, and all you focus on is the finger. It's going to be a really unpleasant experience. But if you start to see that what you are is this whole body, you'll forget about the finger every few minutes, unless it's in extreme pain. It's going to be much easier not to fixate on it.
Similarly, we want to take this step, which is just a shift of attention, to notice that we can, in a sense, step back. In words, it would be to disidentify from the limited, localized mind and realize that we can step back into being awareness. If I am awareness, everything is happening inside of me.