The Taste of Not Good Enough
El sabor del no soy suficiente
A student describes feeling hijacked by old reactive patterns and a persistent sense of personal limitation, and the teacher guides him toward directly savoring the uncomfortable sensations rather than narrating them, revealing what lies beneath the protective layers of the self.
The Taste of Not Good Enough
A student describes feeling hijacked by old reactive patterns and a persistent sense of personal limitation, and the teacher guides him toward directly savoring the uncomfortable sensations rather than narrating them, revealing what lies beneath the protective layers of the self.
These days I'm feeling more of my usual, limited personal self. I see it, and that's good; I'm not too upset about it. But that's where I am. The question that comes up is this: I'm experiencing old personal patterns, the limitedness, and then someone does something that hurts my feelings or feels disrespectful, and there's this reactivity that wants to hijack me. I see it happening, but I still feel like I'm getting hijacked. I thought maybe if I got your input it would help. I understand the teaching: someone does something, it feels wrong, and I can speak up, no problem. Or I can choose not to say anything. I'm not asking about behavior. I'm good with behavior. But I get all bollixed up in the mind, and I feel like I'm getting hijacked.
From a general description of what you just shared, the key of what I'm hearing is "I feel hijacked." Whenever we experience or describe something as an external force doing something to us, there's the other side. There's a side of: why am I choosing to be taken by this? Why am I engaging with this? That's the hidden agenda. The key is to see what is in it for you. And when I say "for you," it's going to be in service of the personal character.
The addiction to the pattern
It feels that way. It feels like an old pattern, like a really heavy-duty armor. I've seen it throughout my life, and I see it wax and wane, so I know it isn't permanent. But it's such a strong force. If I understand you right, you're saying to just be willing to look at it, even if I feel like I've looked at it over and over. I've looked at it, I see it, and I still feel that way. It feels like I'm locked in somehow.
It's exactly what I've been talking about in this meditation. If you remember how I started, I said that there is an addiction. It's an addiction to an obsession. And that addiction is going to be in service to something.
What I was pointing to in the meditation is this: I understand that you weren't resonating or feeling expansion, but in a sense, this meditation was the opposite of a meditation toward expansion. I've done others in the past that were intentionally leading to a sense of expansion, dissolving the barriers. In this meditation, I was pointing to everything that feels contracted, everything that feels uncomfortable, everything that brings up this stuff, because that's another way to approach it. One way is through self-inquiry and meditation to get more expanded, to have a flavor of that. But there's also going directly into what contracts us.
Totally. You get off the elevator on a lower floor.
Exactly. "I got my revenge." But if you're still wanting to go deeper into what is true, what is real, these layers are going to start coming off and coming up, and you're going to pay the cost of experiencing what that feels like and sitting with it. As these layers come off, you're going to come to this sense of "not good enough." And that is the hardest place to be.
The hidden self-judgment
That, I think, is where I am. You just identified it, because I think there's been a background thought saying, "You should be further along by now. Look at where you were a year ago. What the hell is wrong with you?" I wasn't aware of those thoughts until you started talking. Now I realize it's the disappointment in myself, which is maybe the "not good enough." The deeper you get, the murkier it feels.
And it's all about seeing and feeling. Seeing and feeling, seeing and feeling. By feeling, I mean being able to engage with present attention to the sensations.
Sensations, body sensations?
I'm calling everything sensation now. But it's going to be the actual flavor. Let me use a more abstract sense. What's the flavor of not feeling good enough? The label is "not feeling good enough." The story is "I'm not sufficient as I am," or "life is not okay," or "God has left me," or whatever. Whatever the label, whatever the narrative, there's going to be a feeling, or a flavor. What's the taste, to the awareness that is experiencing it? And it's not about "oh, it tastes like this" followed by more narrative. It's about savoring it.
Savoring what you don't want to taste
Think of it this way: there's a buffet of things, and there's one thing over there we really don't want to taste. We really don't like eating it. So we pile a lot of other food on top of it. But take all that off and go taste it. What's the flavor? Not as an intellectual exercise. Really taste it, like savoring food, when you close your eyes and all of your attention is on the taste buds and the smells.
That's what I mean with "not feeling good enough." And it's probably going to have layers. There will be "not good enough," and then there will be deeper layers where it's really not good enough, where it's burning. So uncomfortable. So unbearable. So terrifying. It feels so small, so much pain. When there are fewer narratives around it, that's because you're savoring it. When you're really savoring it, there's no narrative. It's just the sensation, the flavor of not good enough, of pain or fear, whatever it is for you. That's going to be moving. But when you get close to that, that's the barrier.
Through inquiry and truth and emotional work, we get closer and closer to that. The barrier is to be able to savor it, savor it, savor it, until it's like an acquired taste. Because that layer is also covering something we don't want to see.
What lies beneath the barrier
I'll tell you this as intellectual hypothesis, because you can't really describe what is beyond that. It has to be experienced. But I will tell you conceptually: when you actually savor that fully, and you can open that layer and go past it, there is no "I." That which this sense of "I'm not good enough" is protecting is actually empty. We think that what it's protecting is this "I," but it actually creates it.
That's amazing. I see what you're saying. There's all this hoopla around this imagined thing I've been trying to protect, but I never found it. And the more hoopla there is, the more I want to do hoopla around it.
That's the obsession. We want to preserve the sense that "I" exists. So we go to the noise, the stories, and we engage and get addicted to that storytelling drama. We don't want to look at what's underneath because, first of all, it doesn't taste good. But if we go past it, we discover that the whole thing falls apart.
And maybe these waves that come up are a way of saying, "Oh my gosh, this empty, fake shell is falling apart. I've got to rebuild it." It's almost like the more there's expansion, the more there's going to be contraction. That's what I'm seeing. To be honest, I'm not super upset about this, but I'm losing my patience. I'm irked, but I'm not devastated by it.
You're not devastated because it's very comfortable. It's known.
No, I have been devastated in the past, in terms of the projection that "I'm never going to get it." I don't feel like that at all now. I've been through these experiences of savoring, and I see the expansion. I get it. It's Rumi's poem, "The Guest House." What you're describing: come on in, have a cup of tea. You're the perfect guest. Why are you the perfect guest? Because you're here right now. You're the one I needed. Thank you. I know what that's about, but I don't feel it these days. So I asked you this question, and your answer is really helpful. There's a simplicity to it. I feel less stuck now, less mad at myself, because that's the gig. The judging of myself is part of the gig, and I didn't see the judging until you started to talk.
Yeah, that totally makes sense.
Your descriptions of what the mind does all fit perfectly. The revenge, all of it. "I got you back." Just the smallest-mindedness. After all the seeking, give me a break. That's the last thing I need, and that's exactly what I do.
Self-criticism as the final lock
But the self-criticism is the same thing, right?
I understand. I see it now. But I didn't see it before, and that's my point. It's like the final lock on the door. "I told you you'd never get it," or "You see, you're not as good as so-and-so." But if that self-criticism isn't there, then I can savor it. I'm not going to savor something if I believe I shouldn't be feeling it in the first place.
Archetypes and the self as the master archetype
I'm sure you're familiar with Carl Jung. I really love his work. He discovered what he called archetypes: forces of the psyche that have a kind of character to them. They are entities that are somewhat autonomous, what he called "semi-autonomous." We can get possessed by them. You are the host, and then they take the space. This is what you're talking about with the Rumi poem. But we are letting them in. That's where there's an agenda, because they're in service to something. They empower us to function in certain ways.
One way you can look at an archetype is as a habitual way of responding to a situation that mankind has carried out through millions of years. A way to react, to defend, to get something. Automated paths of behavior of certain kinds, and a lot of them are positive too. The sense of being free is that we can invoke these and behave in certain ways when they're appropriate, but not behave in the inappropriate ways. For example, we can become a father, and that fatherliness is an archetype. But there could also be a way in which we become more vengeful, which would be a negative aspect of an archetype.
All of these, in a sense, "take us," because we are addicted to having a sense of self. Now, Jung talked about the self, and this is the part where I potentially disagree with him. For me, the sense of self is an archetype also. It's the archetype of all archetypes.
Exactly. It allows all the others to blend in.
And if you see through that, then there is no host. No host for characters to possess, for archetypes to inhabit.
They could just come in and have a cup of tea and there's no problem.
What I'm describing here is more the psychological world. I'm talking about the shadow, the kind of work that is often not discussed in spiritual circles. My teacher worked a lot on this aspect. It's very important to be able to engage with it, not just label it as "mine" and try to push it away. You have to really go into it and understand how it works.
That's a great example of integrating the two, working at both levels.
Seeing through it fully
You might have to look at it many times to see through it. It's not like you fully feel it once and it's gone.
It could be gone after feeling it once, or you could feel it many, many times and it won't be gone, or you could feel it many times and then it will be gone. The "being gone" happens when you fully see through it. To fully see through it is to see why it's there, and not intellectually. You understand because you have seen its origin and its purpose.
It's the parable of the prodigal son from the Bible, isn't it?
Yes. And these biblical stories and myths are pointing to something, like the falling from the garden by tasting the fruit of knowledge.
The wound of arrogance
How is this wound, this "not good enough," related to what you said about noticing the deep arrogance during your awakening? I'm trying to connect the two.
They're very related. The insecurity, the sense of not being good enough, is in a sense the shadow side of the arrogance. It's built on this: "My will exists and is separate from divine will." That is a belief that creates an "I" separate from divine will. That is a position of arrogance, and inevitably it creates the sense of not being good enough, because deeply you know that there is no such thing. You're protecting a belief that has no foundation.
I'm not sure I get it.
I know. I'm trying not to say it too logically, so it doesn't become merely a conceptual knowing.
You can even say, "I love to be possessed by anger."
I love to experience it. Or: "I love being the victim of my self-criticizing mind." Just love the taste of that. I don't like the taste of the other thing. That's what I like. That's why it's an addiction, right? It has its highs.
The evolutionary perspective
The evolutionary side is also useful. There is a mechanism that's been in place for a reason, so there's no need to fight it or say it's wrong or bad. This is what the species has reached at this point, in this form, and that's it. Just look at it, but don't make it an issue. There's no mistake here.
Exactly. Evolution makes our experience more complex, and without complexity there wouldn't be as much potential. For example, potential to live in ways that were not possible before. There's more diversity, more possibility. But at the root, something does not evolve. What evolves is the human experience, the capacities of being human, the abilities of being human.
I see what you're saying. But the presence just is.
Yes.
Lucid dreaming and the end of being fooled
It can still be experienced as "I'm lifting my hand and I'm choosing to lift my hand," but it's never really believed to be reality and truth anymore. It's like you can go into a video game or a movie and believe the experience, but not totally. You never lose the sense that it's not totally reality. It's just not possible. It's like a lucid dream, where you're in a dream and you become aware that you're dreaming. You have a sense that you know you're in a dream, that there's another reality, and that you're sleeping. You have this awareness that you're in it. That has been very common for me. In a dream, knowing that you're in a dream, you can direct the dream, but you're never really in the real experience. You know it's a dream.
Awakening is something like that. The sense of being a person still appears, but you never lose; there's almost no ability or possibility to get fooled or believe that that is the reality and truth, and that what you are is a separate self. But you can still enjoy the beauty of experiencing things in that way, and in a sense getting lost in it, but you're never really lost, because there's always this sense that it's just the magic of being and having this experience.
Unconsciously conscious
In the Zen tradition, they have a map called the ox herding pictures. There are ten images, and the last one is when the realized person goes to the village, goes to the market, and lives the life of a human. The description is: awakening is forgotten.
There was no one that awoke, you mean?
Also that. The whole thing is forgotten. You are just living as a human. There isn't a sense of the importance of "I am not this." My teacher used to say: first, you are unconsciously unconscious. Then you're consciously unconscious. Then you're consciously conscious. I would add a fourth step. Unconsciously unconscious: you don't know you're unconscious. Then consciously unconscious: you're aware that you're unconscious. Then you wake up and you're consciously conscious: you're aware that you're conscious. And then you are unconsciously conscious. That's the letting go of the whole thing, just living.
That's the simplicity.