A student shares a vivid sequence of images that arose during meditation, describing a journey through a dark tunnel, an encounter with spaciousness, and the discovery that habitual mental patterns could be contained in miniature boxes. The teacher reflects on how the unconscious reveals a personal myth, and highlights the shift from conceptual knowledge to direct sensation.
A student shares a vivid sequence of images that arose during meditation, describing a journey through a dark tunnel, an encounter with spaciousness, and the discovery that habitual mental patterns could be contained in miniature boxes. The teacher reflects on how the unconscious reveals a personal myth, and highlights the shift from conceptual knowledge to direct sensation.
I will try to do my best with the language. I have images, so I will relate them.
It started when you talked about the rabbit hole. I went into the tunnel, very dark, and then on one side I saw myself in a space, a cave. There was thinking, thinking, thinking, talking, moving the hands, using the mind very heavily, on and on. Then another space, and again myself. This time I saw myself frightened, not terribly so, but unsettled. I didn't know where I was.
I came out of the tunnel, thank God, and it was a beautiful day with a fantastic view. There was the sea, and two hands came to me, one on the right and one on the left, a man and a woman. I saw only the hands. They took me and sat me down to see the view. I was there smelling, feeling, really open in my body.
Then I heard your voice continuing, and you took me to different places. I heard voices and saw little vendors, little stores like the ones you find at the beach, selling things. In one of them I saw little boxes containing the things I had visualized in the tunnel: myself, moving, captured in miniature. It was so funny. I was so happy to find them so small. I either bought them or they were given to me, I don't know. I took them back to the place with the view.
For a while I saw that the figures inside the boxes continued doing the same thing, and it was okay. But at one moment they grew and grew, very big, and I said, "Oh no, it is too much." So I put the lid on. The boxes had a door, and I closed it.
After that, I took the little boxes with me, these two versions of myself, and started walking. Then when you began speaking about sensation, not of the body as a concept, but sensation itself, that was the first time I can say I got a little bit outside my body. It was so beautiful, because I felt something around my body that I had never felt before. As a medical doctor, I know all the parts of the body and could give a very long description. But this time it was a completely different sensation, one I had never had.
The unconscious revealing itself
So that is my little film. I think it is better for me to speak about myself through images, discovering things this way, rather than using the mind. I appreciate this process. I felt that the two hands were the two of you guiding me. This is my sharing for everyone. Thank you, and I am open to whatever anyone wants to say.
That is a beautiful vision. Really beautiful.
Sometimes I don't want to create anything deliberately. I want to perceive from the unconscious, to let whatever is coming simply arrive.
I don't want to say too much about it because it is so beautiful on its own. It really felt like the unconscious revealing your personal myth, your personal journey. It is just really beautiful.
I want to add one small thing. These images about this part of myself, I experience this in daily life too, and the timing was perfect. Sometimes I feel so trapped by these ideas, by this part of me, and I have asked myself, "What do I do with this part that I cannot relate to?" And the answer came just from the meditation.
Shifting past the mind into direct sensation
Thank you. I just wanted to comment on your experience of sensation. It is very clear that you shifted past the mind, because only the mind, as you said, being a medical doctor, knows the biology and the anatomy. Direct, raw sensation doesn't have a boundary. It is experienced as spacious, without very clear lines.
Yes. Thank you. Yes.