The Tension You Want to Get Rid Of
La tensión de la que quieres deshacerte
A student describes a moment of opening in the chest during meditation, followed by even greater tightness, and asks how to work with the cycle of wanting relief and resisting what is present.
The Tension You Want to Get Rid Of
A student describes a moment of opening in the chest during meditation, followed by even greater tightness, and asks how to work with the cycle of wanting relief and resisting what is present.
A couple of sessions ago, I felt this lifting in my chest. I have chest tightness and pains from my anxiety, and during one of the meditations I felt this lifting. Now I want more of that, of course, but in reality I actually feel like it's even tighter. I don't know if I'm more connected to it, or if something moved and my body is fighting it, or if I'm just more aware of it because before I was trying to block it.
It can be many things, but I think you're touching on them. When we start to relate to something more deeply, there is a tug of war, because it activates our resistances more deeply. When there is a contraction, it is something we have been doing for many years: trying not to feel something, trying not to relate to something.
There might be a spontaneous moment of opening in a meditation. This space here can create that, because of the intention and the group presence. But then what can happen is that you are left without a crutch you used to have to help you manage something. Now what you've been managing through that contraction, you will need to relate to and face more directly.
The automatic nature of contraction
Without that crutch, you will go toward the underlying feeling with more intensity at times. And much of this is going to be automatic, because it is like how we learned to ride a bike: it becomes an automatic mechanism. It has also become an automatic way to relate to a feeling, by contracting and blocking it.
The process of engaging and feeling more deeply what we are struggling to feel takes time. Very naturally, you want that process to be like lifting and opening, always an expansive thing. But in reality it is a lot more bumpy. If you are wanting that tension to go away, you are reinforcing it, because the tension is just a symptom of something that is harder for you to feel more deeply. That might be an emptiness or a spaciousness that is sometimes a bit scary. It could be an emotion, pain, sadness. But there is going to be a process of sitting with feelings you have been unfamiliar with.
When a good experience becomes a trap
When we have experiences like the one you described, usually what happens is that it validates the process. It validates the experience, the work you're doing. It's good in that sense: it's going to feel like, "Okay, this feels good. I'm going to continue this path." But if that path means trying to have that experience repeat, it engages a kind of addictive process of wanting to have experiences. It's not about producing something like you remember happening in the past.
So that is very different from: "Now I have a little more intimacy and understanding of this tension. I'm familiar with it, and I might even be more uncomfortable about it because I'm closer to it." Before, you probably didn't even notice you had this tension. Then you started noticing it and thought it might be new. It's just that it was so numb you weren't even aware of it. The closer you get to things, the more intense they can feel.
Savoring versus rejecting
Ultimately it is about feeling what's actually happening now, even if it's just tension. The process would be to not try to have the tension go away. To engage with reality fully is to savor even that tension, because that's the way through it. It's not to try to get rid of it. It is to accept it so fully, to taste it, to savor it. I use those words because they invoke a certain quality of openness, a certain "yes" in the relationship, a certain open intention. Versus wanting the tension to go away, which carries a negative intention: on some level, there is a choice that this should not be. If you're wanting that openness to happen again, you are rejecting the tension.
When I say the tension is a symptom of something, I don't mean for you to try to get rid of the tension so that you face what's underneath. That can get too intellectual. What I mean is for you to be aware that it's about going deeper into the tension, through the tension. Through it, you will meet what the tension is suppressing. But you don't face that by rejecting the tension.
The image of the contracted baby
Think of it as a baby that's contracted. You want that baby to be able to open up and feel what it's feeling, but the baby is afraid, so it's tight. What you want is to create that gentleness and acceptance so the baby can feel it's okay to feel what it's feeling. Then the tension is going to release, and then the baby is going to cry, or express whatever it's feeling. That's a guideline for how to relate to what you're going through, rather than trying to force the tension to release, or chasing a positive experience like the one that happened in the past.
The focus is not to try to get rid of it, but to be more curious about it. To be more curious, and to notice any sense of "this shouldn't be happening." Notice that that is a belief. It's actually a choice: "This tension shouldn't be happening. I shouldn't be tense. Things would be better if I weren't like this." Notice that those are thoughts. If you engage with them, that's when you start believing they are true.
Can you be with this for the rest of your life?
One more thing I would offer as a mental guideline: the intention of "Can I be okay if this tension is present for the rest of my life?" That question puts you in a position of dissonance with the need for it to go away. It puts you against the wall to make a choice, which is a full engagement, a full relating to it without rejection. Otherwise there could always be the hidden agenda: "I'm relating to this so that it goes away." That could be a hidden agenda you're not speaking to yourself. But if you call that out by using the question, "Can I be with this if it stays the same for the rest of my life and never goes away?"
That's definitely a question.
Just play with that question, because it's going to take you on a journey of relating with that situation and that experience. It's going to be like a rabbit hole, because it will also bring to the surface the resistances, the "why not," the reasons you want it to go away. That question can bring you into a more and more deeply connected relationship to the whole experience. The surface is the tension in your chest, but I can guarantee you that's the rabbit hole: as you relate to it, it's going to open things up.
It is always about noticing that it's not about getting somewhere in the future where that experience unwinds and you feel better. That's all about getting something in the future, and that could never happen. Trying to get somewhere in the future only reinforces the pattern of getting somewhere in the future. And it is an impossibility to get somewhere in the future.
So it's a matter of welcoming the curiosity and exploration down the rabbit hole, whatever that is all about.
Yes, which is to relate. To relate more intimately with reality, with what's happening now. To try to get to an experience that's different in the future is to reject what's happening now. We can only create a movement in a direction that's wise by fully relating, without rejection, to the present reality.
Almost like developing a different relationship with it, and exploring how that can move things.
Completely. It is a completely different relationship. And what I can offer as the carrot is: there are gains from this, but they're not gains somewhere in the future. It is to discover something that's already present now, that you already know, and to see it for what it is.
The kingdom that begins with trouble
This is what Christ talked about when he spoke of the kingdom, the kingdom of heaven. He said, "First you will be troubled." He said, "Those who seek shall not stop seeking. And when they find, they will be troubled, and then they will reign over the all." Very grand words, and they are real and grand. It's about that intimacy with what is. At first it's a shock, and that can grow even bigger as you develop the capacity to relate to reality more deeply.
So it's a deeper intimacy with myself.
Yes, and it's with your heart, with your feeling, with what you long for, with what you desire. Your true longing, your true desires. Not the ones we've adopted to avoid something we don't want.
How does my mind relate to these feelings? Is it trying to identify them as something? It's like my brain is trying to label it every time I connect with it. "It could be this, this, this. Oh, it's a symptom of this. This is physiological." Do I need to stop?
The mind's loop of control
No, you can't stop that. Your mind is trying to control. It wants to know it and understand it so it can control it. That's the loop. And that controlling is also creating that tension. But the way through it is not by trying to stop, because again, that is more forcing for something not to be.
The mind is just going to do what it's doing, which is try to control part of your experience. You are accessing thinking and asking the mind to give you a way to control this. The mind is going to say, "Well, this is such and such, and because of this, here is the cause." And even the thought "maybe you should stop the mind" is more thought. It's trying to formulate a solution to the thinking, but it's still a strategy to stop thinking so that the problem stops. It's all pushing against something so that it ceases.
That is habitual thinking that becomes a loop. We can change that way of relating, but it takes time because the brain has created neural pathways that sustain this kind of looping.
Okay, so that's my mind.
That's the mind. And also look at and see what's the nature of all that thought process. It's all about resistance and control: trying to problem-solve and troubleshoot something so that you can get rid of it.
This is very different from when you feel something that is new or unknown to you, and you formulate some thinking or labeling to say, "This is kind of like sadness," or "This is kind of like an emptiness that I'm afraid of." That's very different, because there the mind is helping put a name on something so you can relate to it. There isn't a nature of control in that. It's just trying to relate to something more accurately.
So, noticing versus reacting.
Notice how your mind is going to try to troubleshoot and solve the problem. Because the more you see it, the more you can see that nothing else is happening. It's all trying to stop. It's all resistance.
The spoon against concrete
Even in our conversation right now, all the effort is: "I need to get this so I can stop it. I need to figure it out. I need to find a solution so I can stop." There's always this really deep agenda of "get rid of this; I'm tired of it."
See, even just seeing that is relaxing you. That laughter: something is letting go, a relaxation. But I can also imagine you're seeing the madness of it. It's so much effort, all just trying to stop. That's what the mind does if we engage with it in that way. It's just going to do that more and more and more.
The mind is very malleable. You say, "My brain is trying to do this," but you don't actually know what your brain is doing. All you know is the way you're interacting with your thoughts. You're going to your mind and asking it for something, asking, "Help me get rid of this."
So it's almost like I just need to let the mind do its thing.
Regarding the mind, just notice that that's all it's doing, and also that it doesn't work. It's not getting you anywhere. All it is, is a way to avoid something.
It's almost like acknowledging it's there, but also acknowledging that there are other things there that I haven't explored.
Regarding your mind, the one important thing is to notice what you're trying to do with it. Notice that it's like you're trying to dig a hole through concrete with a spoon. You're there spending your day scratching, scratching, scratching, and then one day you realize this is not going anywhere. Your hands are numb, the spoon is all bent, and then you stop. But the spoon is still going, "I want to scratch the concrete," because it has that habit. The mind is just going to keep going, even when you realize what's going on. It will keep spinning in its wheel, telling you how to problem-solve, how to get rid of a sensation or a tension or a feeling.
You just have to recognize: that's not working. That's not going to work. And in a sense, ignore that activity and go straight to what the experience is, that which you're trying to get rid of through mental troubleshooting.
So it's just a shift of savoring the sensation.
It's literally that choice I was repeating over and over. You can savor it or you can reject it. That choice is, in a sense, present at every moment. We're making it with whatever life is being at that moment. By savoring, I mean fully, openly relating to, intimately touching without rejection, what is. In the "not," we will be activating the mind, tensing, struggling, fighting with what is. We will be creating a whole collection of habits and ways of functioning that are suboptimal.
And this isn't something personal to you. This is human evolution. It's nothing for you to take personally. Humans are just starting to learn how to relate with reality.
Thank you.
You're welcome.