The Forgetting Trap
La Trampa del Olvido
A student describes how loving compassion is clearly always present when recognized in meditation, but seems to be forgotten 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 be forgotten 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, very clearly. I see what you're saying. 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.
The 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 frame it at first, because it puts you in a position of openness, practice, exploration, an invitation to prayer, an invitation to 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 solidifies into a belief that remembering is needed.
I'm not invalidating the process of correct remembering. I'm just saying it is useful up to a point where 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 experience is present now?
Touching the experience directly
For example, what are we talking about? We're talking about loving compassion. If you close your eyes for a moment: when I say "loving compassion" and you refer to what you meant, what you're talking about in your experience, do you have a sense of what you're talking about, the experience of it?
Yes.
And it's not just the words. The words are pointing to an experience which you know as loving compassion, correct?
Yes.
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 the experience? And notice how you were tempted to believe a story that you only have access to it because of a meditation you did previously.
Yeah.
Now, if you think of the love you felt from someone specific, that will refer to a knowing of the experience of love you were describing.
What do you mean? In the meditation, the experience was a love from everywhere. It wasn't particular.
Exactly. And I was saying you could change that and remember love specifically from one person. It's going to have a different quality, but it's going to be the same love you knew in meditation. As you remember it, you have direct contact with what you're remembering. It is brought up by a different image, a memory, but the experience itself you are having in this moment.
The experience you had in today's meditation: 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 little dimmer. But maybe that's just thoughts too.
The mind's agenda
Now we're talking about intensity, how strong it is. But notice how the mind has an agenda, an intention to convince you that you do not have access to this experience now.
So this experience: where is it happening? Is it happening two hours ago in the meditation? Is it happening tomorrow? It is happening now, and it's inside of you, correct?
Yeah.
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 is it that you're 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: that you don't have access to it here and now, that it's over there, that it's in the past, that you need to do this or that to get there, or that you're no longer able to get there because you're no longer in the right conditions.
Working on subtle beliefs
This is what we're doing now: working on those more subtle beliefs. As you work on them, you will really see how you have an agenda. There is going to be 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 that. Then the mind will come as a servant of your 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 of that. Why don't you believe that you only have access to it because you just had a meditation?" Then layers and layers of beliefs accumulate until you don't even try to connect with and invoke loving compassion, because you "know" it's not available.
What we cannot lose
There are aspects of our nature we cannot lose. I can lose this cup and have to find it. But what is our nature? We can only lose it by pretending, by believing that it's not. 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? To discover who you are is to see 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, we have access to always, because they are our true nature.
The impulse to disown
What is the impulse that wants to disown it, that wants to not take responsibility? It is literally the desire to not have responsibility. We can talk about that in many different ways. There's 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, it's more a matter of spiritual responsibility.
I feel the best description of this is actually from the Bible, the story of the prodigal son. There are two sons: one who is responsible and the other who is not. One goes out into the world and wastes everything, lives and parties and destroys himself, and then comes back to the father. The father embraces him.
It's 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 stayed out of obedience, never really chose the father. The son who left the father's house and then returned chose the father. 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, so he chose. And that is why I celebrate.
Freedom and suffering
The pull toward non-responsibility is the exploration of our freedom. Ultimately, our freedom includes the freedom to suffer if we choose. 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 in the end is that once you recognize it, you can't go back. And so there is this constant postponement: "Just one more day. Just one more day. Tomorrow. Just let me party one more day." This is what is meant when teachers say 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."
But 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.
Choosing suffering
But whenever you're struggling or suffering, just wonder: maybe I'm choosing this. Not from a place where something over there is choosing it and you're 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?
Then you can stop having a conflict with your choices and understand more deeply why you're making them. We have habits. For example, suppose you have a habit of eating chocolate every morning. Every morning you crave chocolate. Our habits can be really addictive, and it's hard to just stop. You need to understand why you're choosing that. It's going to be: "Well, if I don't eat chocolate, I feel anguish." So instead of trying to force yourself not to eat the chocolate, you can realize you're choosing it freely. You're choosing to not feel the anguish. Then you can 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 that you start to feel it's not good, and over months and years it's really making things worse, you might change your mind and start feeling the anguish instead.
That's what we're talking about here. Recognizing, for example, this loving compassion will have real consequences for your life. To recognize that it is always you means you would have to 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.
Well, anything is possible. Thank you for coming and sharing.
Thank you very much.