Nothing Is Missing
Nada falta
A student shares an image from her medical work that evokes the anxiety of waiting, and the teacher explores how even in the midst of anxiety, the subtle belief that something is missing can be examined and seen through.
Nothing Is Missing
A student shares an image from her medical work that evokes the anxiety of waiting, and the teacher explores how even in the midst of anxiety, the subtle belief that something is missing can be examined and seen through.
In these meetings, in this space and the way you guide the meditation, I think it's really powerful and different. During the meditation, I think it was when you were talking about the leap of faith, suddenly these words came to me out of nowhere: "Why does anything need to change?" I guess it was intuition, but it brought me to tears. I felt the taste of how unbelievably relaxing that is. It wasn't believing it, but it was just the doubt, just "what if actually nothing has to change."
What I felt was that the space started to open and identification started to loosen. I felt as if all identification was in relation to that idea, like every attachment, one hundred percent. That is exactly the definition of identification.
At the same time, when I look at it from that place, it's "my God, what a relief" and "how mysterious everything is." But then from the mind's point of view, it's "how can I live all the time absolutely not knowing anything, with everything being mysterious?" I know that's just the mind, but I'm grateful and I wanted to share.
That's beautiful. You did it.
I want to ask about something that was said a couple of sessions ago: "Why don't we remember?" That helped me a lot. The energy comes and goes, and in the moment I was very open, and I took those words with me. I hold onto them and repeat them because I spend so much time thinking about the future: "If I do this, I would be better; if I do that, I would be even better," and I'm never fully in the present. Those words came back to me: why can't I remember? Why do I forget again and again that I'm using this strategy of thought to avoid being in the present? It's a structure.
Another Student: I don't remember exactly what happened in that moment, but I think what happens is I'm dipping in and out of the mind. From the point of view of what is not the mind, it seems so strange that you could go back into the mind and forget. One teacher calls that "ignorance": going back into the mind and not remembering what's so obvious, what you've heard so many times, like "be in the moment, it's now." But you go back into this dream of mind and it's a different experience, a different reality. The other thing I've started to trust is that it really doesn't matter that much. The mind doesn't know. The mind doesn't have a clue. So maybe your mind thinks you're in the future, and you're actually not.
The image of delivery
I had an image. I was delivering a baby. My first work in medicine was obstetrics. I put my hand to feel what was happening with the head of the baby inside the mother, and it wasn't the right moment. I had to wait because it wasn't fully open. I said, "Okay, just wait, just wait. I have two options: either the baby comes through the vagina or it's a cesarean." The anxiety was intense enough to tell me to stop thinking and just say, "Okay, that's the image." I don't know what to say about it. It was powerful.
I have a question. You said you had that image, and then afterward I said something. What was it that I said?
It was about trusting that what you are saying is enough. That it's enough to explore the possibilities. And I was thinking about the two options.
Is it the sense that there are two options, you need to make a choice, and one will take you there and the other won't, and you don't know which way?
No, that I have options, one or another, but I have to wait.
Another Student: The anxiety of waiting is very difficult. The anxiety in the moment when you have to wait is really intense.
Something very subtle, very fundamental
What I would add is this. There is something in our experience that is very, very subtle, but very fundamental, very profound. Sometimes we build something really big on it. But the foundation is very subtle and very small. We might recognize it because we build something very big on it, and then it becomes very obvious. But that which is very subtle is: something is missing.
Sometimes the experience is intense and there's suffering, and the only thing that matters is the intensity of the suffering. But other times it's very far in the background, very subtle, and yet our relationship to it is still, in a sense, commanding how we function.
What I'm saying is: trust that what I'm describing is very precise, and trust the possibility that it is not necessary, that there is something you can discover. It's not from believing my words or my description that you will find it. It's a discovery in you, because of a leap of faith and trust.
That leap can happen in many ways. It can come from the accumulation of past experience that convinces you to explore. Or it can be a moment where you hear something, you feel something, and you think, "Okay, I'm going there." But there is a trust needed to explore a possibility.
Even in the anxiety, nothing is missing
The possibility is this: even when there is anxiety, even when you're contracted and the anxiety is intense and you have to process and sit with it and contemplate, "Okay, there is a choice, but I have to wait, I can wait, there are two options," even in that anxiety, even in that struggle, something is not missing.
The normal experience is that especially in such moments, something feels missing. But that is an interpretation. That is the belief. And what I'm proposing is: even and especially there, consider the possibility that something is not missing.
Even in the anxiety, there is something prior to anxiety. One teacher would say, "The only way you can be okay is by not wanting to be okay." I believe he was pointing to this, because when there is anxiety and there is a belief that something's missing, the interpretation will be: the anxiety has to go away for me to be okay. And that creates the desire for the anxiety to be gone. So what he was saying is: you can be free by not wanting the anxiety to be gone, by letting go of the desire for the anxiety to be gone.
An investigation, not a belief
But I'm approaching it in a different way. Notice that there is the belief that something is missing, and consequently what's missing is peace, because there's anxiety. The anxiety is taking something away. What I'm saying is: contemplate the possibility that what you feel is missing is also present when there is anxiety, is also present when there's pain, is also present in everything you can ever experience. Obviously, when there's pain, we prefer there not to be pain. But I'm talking about this really profound, subtle sense that something is missing.
I'm really emphasizing this: do not take this as a new belief system or a new conceptual understanding. It is for you to look at it, investigate it, and trust enough to think, "Okay, maybe this is true. Let me see." Because it has to be a discovery within yourself, by you.
I like that. Thank you.