The Substance That Contains Everything
La sustancia que contiene todo
A student describes a meditative experience of perceiving one substance that seems to contain all thoughts, emotions, and sensations, and asks about the intense difficulty of sustaining attention on it.
The Substance That Contains Everything
A student describes a meditative experience of perceiving one substance that seems to contain all thoughts, emotions, and sensations, and asks about the intense difficulty of sustaining attention on it.
I want to share something short. It has to do with what sometimes happens in the meditations. Just now, it was as if I reached a point where the feeling was that I looked at one thing, and that one thing is a substance that contains everything: the thoughts, the emotions, the feelings, the sensations. But the feeling is usually so intense that it's very hard to keep my gaze on it. It's not a difficult feeling exactly. It's as if it's one thing that contains everything, because it's made out of the same substance. I'm trying to put something into words, but I'm not sure what it is.
My sense is that what you're doing is a good practice, and it strengthens a capacity to stay present and focused. At the same time, you're describing something where there's an effort, and it's hard to maintain that attention. As if it's hard to look.
Yes, it does feel that way.
The observer and the observed
There are two sides to this. One is to keep doing that, keep exploring it, and bring everything into that kind of one-dimensional looking. But then, from there, while you are in that focusing, notice that there is something within which that itself is happening. Notice specifically the sense of an "I," a center that is focusing on something else, something you're calling "the substance."
It's strange, because the feeling is that the center, the sense of "I," starts to be less of a center if I can keep my gaze on it. There's a contraction that begins to expand.
That's right. But also notice how much of that is thought. You're describing a feeling, a sense of something in a center expanding. What is observing that?
Two practices, one beyond practice
In the meditation I was actually pointing to these two things you're describing. One is the practice of observing thought and disidentifying from thought. Then there is something else: the space where that practice is happening. The sense is that if we observe thought long enough and disidentify enough, something is going to change, shift, and something is going to be attained, achieved, or released. But that is not going to happen. It is still a very valid and useful practice, but what can happen is that we recognize that the whole experience is happening within something vaster. That is what is pointed to as consciousness.
In a more traditional setting, it was pointed to as "the kingdom of heaven," but it is outside of anything you can describe or anything you can experience. Even what you're describing now, the sense of something being one substance, still involves a focusing, a subject observing a substance, and the subject is the substance. That tension is still part of the experiencing. It is a valid and useful tension, but there is something else where that tension is happening.
You could say these are two valid, even required, practices. One is what more conventional meditation is about: calming the mind. But really, it is about observing the mind and disidentifying from the mind. Then there is the non-practice, which is to recognize that something is already there. What you're longing for, what you're looking for, cannot be attained. It already is.
The trap of attainment
When we do this practice of focus, attention, and presence, it creates some space for a more transparent observation of that which is beyond the practice. In some cases, for some people, this recognition happens without any practice at all. There was so much torment at the level of experience that what is beyond it was recognized spontaneously.
But once you are doing this work, you are in practice. The trick, or the trap, for people who are already consciously doing this work is that there can be a sense of something to be attained or achieved through practice. And something is attained or achieved, but it is almost like the preparation for something to be realized that cannot be accomplished through practice. It cannot be done through anything. It happens, because it is the seeing that something already is. What you are really looking for already is. What you are trying to become, you already are.
As someone once put it: it takes as much time as it takes for you to realize that no time is needed.
Why it's not easy to see
I want to add one more thing. The question comes up: why is it not easy to see? The answer that arises is this: there is a wanting to be something that we know. There is a desire to be that which you know yourself to be, the one that is experiencing and having a journey. In that sense, you are that as well. But what you truly are is what that whole narrative is made of. In a sense, it is the end of the narrative, because you no longer believe it to be absolutely true. That is why the word often used is "waking up." And in a sense, we don't want to wake up. There is a part of us that doesn't want to wake up, that wants to keep experiencing the journey.