The Forgetting Trap
La trampa del olvido
A student describes how loving compassion is clearly always present when recognized in meditation, but seems to disappear in ordinary life. The teacher explores how "forgetting" can become a self-reinforcing belief, and how the impulse to disown our true nature is itself a free choice.
The Forgetting Trap
A student describes how loving compassion is clearly always present when recognized in meditation, but seems to disappear in ordinary life. The teacher explores how "forgetting" can become a self-reinforcing belief, and how the impulse to disown our true nature is itself a free choice.
It's clear it's always there when I recognize it, but then it's as if I forget it in ordinary life.
Yes, I see what you're saying very clearly. When you recognize it, it is clear to you that it's always there, but then that recognition is lost, or you feel more disconnected.
Forgetting as belief
This is exactly what I'm talking about. Look at the fact that you forget it, and look at the forgetting itself as a belief.
Forgetting is a useful way to relate to that experience at first, because it puts you in a position of openness and practice, an exploration, an invitation to prayer and meditation. But at a certain point it can become a loop, a trap: "I forget this, I remember it, I only remember it if I practice or meditate." The forgetting can solidify into a belief that remembering is needed.
I'm not invalidating the process of remembering. I'm simply saying it is useful up to a point, after which it can become an obstacle. It can become the belief: "I am capable of forgetting this." And so now I'm forgetting, and now I need to remember.
But what if that loving compassion is present right now?
Touching the experience directly
So, for example, what are we talking about? We're talking about a loving compassion. If you close your eyes for a moment: when I say "this loving compassion" and you refer to what you meant, to what you were talking about in your experience, do you have a sense of that experience?
Yes.
And it's not just the words. The words are pointing to the experience, which you know as loving compassion. So are you needing to remember it in order to know it's there?
No, but it's as if it's a subtle background, and sometimes the doors are open to perceive it. Maybe now they're still open from the meditation.
Those are thoughts. Those are thoughts right now. Are you having the experience that you refer to as loving compassion, in the sense that you know what you're talking about because you can access it? Notice how you were tempted to believe a story that you only have access to it because of a meditation you did previously.
You could also recall the love you felt from a specific person. It would have a different quality, but it would still be the love you knew. As you remember it, you have direct contact with that which you are remembering. It is brought up by a different image, a memory, but the experience itself is happening in this moment.
The experience you had in meditation today: you can currently direct your attention to it, and you know it because you directly experience it right now. Is that correct?
I think so. I have thoughts that say I recognize it, but it's a bit more jumbled, a bit dimmer.
The mind's agenda
Now we're talking about intensity, how strong it is or not. But notice how the mind has an agenda, an intention to convince you that you do not have access to this experience now.
Where is this experience happening? Is it happening two hours ago in the meditation? Is it happening tomorrow? It is happening now, and it is inside of you.
You feel you've lost access to the experience of loving compassion. Ask yourself: how do you know what you're talking about? What experience are you referring to when you say "loving compassion"? What is it like? What are you pointing to? And you will touch loving compassion. Where are you touching it? Here and now, inside of you.
The mind is going to do all sorts of trickery to convince you of beliefs: you don't have access to it here and now, it's over there, it's in the past, you need to do this or that to get there, or you're no longer able to get there. This is what we're working on now: those more subtle beliefs.
The impulse to disown
As you work on those beliefs and really see how there is an agenda, you will notice a desire to disown this loving compassion, to not take responsibility, to have it depend on something or someone, a situation, a place that is not here, not now.
You will have an impulse to disown it. Then the mind will come as a servant of that impulse. The impulse says, "I don't want to take responsibility for this. I want to disown this." And the mind responds, "Well, here are some stories and beliefs to convince you. Why don't you believe that you only have access to it because you just had a meditation?" Then layers and layers of beliefs pile up until you don't even try to connect with and invoke loving compassion, because you know it's not available.
What is our nature
There are aspects of our nature we cannot lose. I can lose this cup of cream and have to find it. But what is our nature? We can only lose it by pretending, by believing that it is not there. That is why this work is called realization, or waking up. It's not achieving something. It's discovering your true nature, waking up to your true nature. Who are you? Seeing who you are is seeing who you are not. As you see who you are not, you discover your true nature. And there are qualities of our true nature that, if we take responsibility for them, we have access to always, because they are our true nature.
Freedom and responsibility
What is the impulse that wants to disown it, that wants to avoid responsibility? It is literally the desire to not have responsibility. We can talk about this in many different ways. There is an aspect that is simply evolutionary: a child is born without the capacity to be responsible and needs to learn responsibility. But at this level, we're talking about spiritual responsibility.
I feel the best description of this is the story of the prodigal son from the Bible. There are two sons. One is responsible and the other is not. One goes out into the world and makes a waste of his life, parties, and destroys himself, then comes back to the father. And the father embraces him.
It is a very paradoxical part of our nature, but the father and the son are one and the same. The son who chose freedom is the only one who can be embraced by the father. The son who never left home, who was obedient and never exercised his freedom, never really chose the father. But the son who left the father's house and then returned chose the father, and that is why the father embraced him and celebrated: "My son who left has returned." The key is that he had left and he returned. He chose. And that is why the father celebrated.
The pull toward non-responsibility is the exploration of our freedom. Ultimately, our freedom includes the freedom to suffer if we choose to. To not take responsibility and to suffer is a choice made in freedom. And then we can still choose to remember our true nature. The problem is that once you recognize it, you can't go back. And so there is this constant postponement: "Just one more day. Tomorrow. Just let me party one more day."
We are pretending not to be enlightened.
I was noticing how the mind wants to turn everything into strategy, like, "Okay, so now I have to recognize that it's there all the time."
All of that is useless. It's there. That's the end. You run out of problems. You're still going to find a way to convince yourself there's a problem and believe that story. It happens every day. But whenever you're struggling or suffering, just wonder: maybe I'm choosing this.
Choosing freely
And not from a place where something over there is choosing it and you are the victim of that choice. I mean: I am choosing this. I wonder why I'm doing this. What am I getting out of this? In this way, you can stop having a conflict with your choices and understand more deeply why you're making them.
We have habits. For example, imagine you have a habit of eating chocolate every morning. Every morning you crave chocolate. And imagine chocolate were even more addictive, because our habits can be deeply addictive. It's hard to just stop eating chocolate. You need to understand why you're choosing it. And it's going to be: "If I don't eat chocolate, I feel anguish." Then, instead of trying to force yourself to stop, you can realize you're choosing it freely. You're choosing to not feel the anguish. So then you can genuinely choose: do I want to eat the chocolate, or do I want to feel the anguish?
At a certain point, if you've eaten the chocolate enough and you start to feel that it's not good, that over months and years it is really making things worse, you might change your mind and start feeling the anguish instead.
That is what we're talking about here. Recognizing this loving compassion, for example, will have real consequences for your life. And so we either face those consequences or keep pretending it's not available.
I hope I don't pretend anymore, because it's amazing. I can't imagine living all the time like that.
Anything is possible.