The Chaos Before the New Way of Being
El caos antes de la nueva forma de ser
A student describes the confusion and exhaustion that arose during meditation when the usual sense of self began to break down, and the teacher explains why this disorganization is actually a sign of deepening.
The Chaos Before the New Way of Being
A student describes the confusion and exhaustion that arose during meditation when the usual sense of self began to break down, and the teacher explains why this disorganization is actually a sign of deepening.
What happened at the beginning of the meditation was that I was truly confused about the gap: who is the one experiencing, what is experiencing? With images and thoughts, I became restless. It was exhausting, because I kept asking, "Which is the one that is being put in order here?"
Then, thank God, you began to speak about the body, about the ego, about the "I am" and the moment. Before that point I was really exhausted. I know the different parts separately, but while you were talking, something happened. It was a difficult time. After that, though, order started to come. I grew calmer.
When images came, I could not find any difference between them. The mind was saying things all the time, the body started to believe the mind, and then the emotions started doing what the mind said. That was the whole cycle. I smiled several times at what you were saying, because I truly understood that it was like a difficult integration of people living in the same house: mind, consciousness, body. It was crazy.
I also saw myself in this theater, not taking good or bad decisions, but simply being present in the moment, waiting like someone standing in the sea, watching the waves, trusting that I have that possibility of discernment, of knowing what to do. But this confused moment really does happen in my life. It's very present at different points: that feeling of "I cannot do it, I don't know where to go." So it was a very good example to have this experience.
The meditation was very deep. What I experience with your voice, your presence, is that I can be in front of things I have never faced before.
That's really great news. That's a big deal.
The guardians at the gates
These are the guardians at the gates. We spend most of our life functioning in a certain way. Our whole body, our mind, is trained, conditioned to function in that way. It has been the way we manage to survive, but it is a form of managing a situation.
What I'm pointing to here, and what others point to in this kind of work, is that a different way of being is possible, a different way to exist, even to function. But the functioning takes time, because these are very different ways. It is as if we are on one boat and we have learned how that boat works, how to travel and surf the waves. Then we need to transition to a whole new boat with whole new mechanisms, and the two are not really compatible. So there is a transition that can be quite difficult. That is why there are so many symbols and metaphors that historically point to this.
Dante's mountain
Consider Dante's Divine Comedy. The section of Purgatory is a mountain you must climb, and at every section there is a door. You have to be ready to pass to the next one. In a sense, there are tests and trials. As you go up toward heaven in that metaphor, you purge. Think of it this way: coming fully into the present requires us to experience what is actually happening in the present, the things we have not been able to face. That is why fear and pain arise in their different manifestations.
When you were speaking about your experience in the meditation, I could really see this: the disorganization, the "what am I, who am I," the confusion. To me, that is what happens when there is a deepening into the present moment and things start to break down.
When breaking down is breaking through
It is a really positive thing. It can be a negative thing if we are not ready in our psyche, if we are not strong enough. In that case, there has to be some work to strengthen the egoic center. But in general, there is a kind of breaking down of a normal way of functioning that is distressing. What you described in the meditation sounded a lot like that: an undoing of a habitual form of being, of experiencing, of organizing experience. Your psyche's way of organizing starts to break down. It is distressing, but it is the way through. It is the transition to the new boat, and then things can be reorganized.
I would really recommend that you keep going in that direction, even when things feel chaotic. It will feel like something bad is happening, like this is not good. We have this plan that if we meditate, things are going to feel better and better. But that is the strategy of the old boat, the mechanism we have been using: "If I just improve…" There is other work of self-improvement, and it is useful to work on our psychology, to work on everything that determines the current way of being. But it is only going to go so far.
If we want something completely different, there is a bit of a leap, a big transition. That transition can happen slowly or suddenly, in different ways, but it is always going to have this really distressing quality, because the sense of self, the sense of who and what I am, dissolves into "I have no idea."
Before freedom, chaos
There is a sense of an ultimate place, an ultimate beingness, where that "I don't know" is free, is loving, is beautiful. But before it is experienced as free, loving, and beautiful, it is experienced as chaos, disorder, death, fear, and pain. What I am offering is this: if you keep facing that fear and pain, that disorganization of the sense of who and what you are, something can be discovered. It is not so much that you acquire or change and become a thing you imagine. All of that goes away, and you discover something that is present already. I prefer to say it is more of a discovery of what is already here. But that transition is often not pleasant or fun, and not that many people talk about it in spiritual circles. There is a lot of conversation about the pleasant side effects, and that is what gets people interested.
Yes, it's a new step. I have taken different steps before, but I was a different me then. It was another moment of my life. This is different, and I'm happy in this chaos. I say, "Okay, this is it."
The flavor of beingness
That is really important, because it is also a sign that the destructuring is not too much for you. When you say, "I'm here, and this is what's happening, and I'm facing it," that is the flavor of beingness. There is something that is observing all of the chaos. At first you believe you are this familiar structure. Then that structure becomes chaos, and you feel that you are now chaos. But then you start to observe the chaos, and a separation appears. Identification begins to shift toward something that is not what it used to be. That is really what we are looking for: that separation, that shift in identification.
Thank you.