The Insight Hidden in "This Isn't Me"
La Percepción Oculta en "Este No Soy Yo"
A student shares the raw ups and downs of beginning a meditation practice, and the teacher highlights two complementary dimensions of the work: one that stabilizes our experience, and one that addresses a deeper question about who we truly are.
The Insight Hidden in "This Isn't Me"
A student shares the raw ups and downs of beginning a meditation practice, and the teacher highlights two complementary dimensions of the work: one that stabilizes our experience, and one that addresses a deeper question about who we truly are.
I just want to thank you for having these sessions for all of us. I really look forward to these gatherings and appreciate the space. A lot of what you say can be so piercing. Sometimes something really speaks to me and my mind goes off on tangents. It's hard to be in the present when certain words trigger so much.
Starting this weekly meditation has been eye-opening and challenging. It makes me question so many things, and that rabbit hole you speak of metaphorically is so true. Just trying to be more aware of what's happening in myself, peeling away those layers of stories. I don't know exactly what I'm trying to say, but it feels so raw and vulnerable at times. Then there's the other side of the coin, where all of a sudden you experience so much joy in certain moments. I guess that's part of the peeling-away process.
A week or two ago, I was feeling great, happy, doing things I hadn't done before, thinking, "This is working for me." And then there's this little voice in the back of your head saying, "Just enjoy it for what it is, because it's going to go down again. This is just an ongoing journey. Enjoy it now, because it's going to go really deep again."
And in those moments when you're down there and you're being triggered, you think, "This isn't me." I notice all these things coming up. Before, it would have been total confusion: "What's going on?" Now I can watch my brain trying to get defensive, trying to solve it immediately. "Why is this happening to me? What did I do wrong? What do I need to do to stop this feeling? Why am I being so triggered?"
My mind is trying to solve the problem, and I can see myself suffering in those moments, trying to resolve it. And then I can also see myself saying, "That's not me." But when I say it's not me, that itself is part of me trying to resolve the situation. It's really confusing.
Two pillars of the work
What you're describing is so natural in this process that I would be surprised if anyone here doesn't relate.
There are two aspects to this. One is that a lot of the struggle, the ups and downs you're talking about, can be worked on, and it's very important to do so because it can make a real difference. That includes all kinds of practices. The most common is therapy, but there's also bodywork and more esoteric ways of approaching how we process experience, how we learn, adapt, and understand. All of that work helps stabilize things and gives us a better map for relating to and navigating our bodies, our minds, and the world. It's an ongoing process we can consistently get better at, gradually moving toward an experience more like the one we'd prefer.
But then there's another side, which is equally important, and the two are complementary. They're like two pillars of this work. That other side is what we might call spirituality. I talk about both back and forth here, and they're quite mixed in, so it may not always be straightforward for you to tell which is which.
The profound insight in the question
When you say, "That is not me," and then you see that this statement is also an attempt to stop or control something, you start to touch on the problem that spirituality addresses. I think your observation comes from a profound insight, a sense of alienation: "What is this? This isn't me." One aspect of that can be addressed through working on body, mind, and the world. But there's another aspect that is really important: there is truth to that question. That genuinely isn't you.
This isn't something for you to believe and carry around as a belief. Rather, I want to validate that doubt, that question, that inquiry. There is a profound insight in that moment, even if it's coming from a place where you're trying to get out of something, control it, change it, or stop it. If you look more closely and keep that question alive, it can completely balance out a lot of that up and down.
What stays the same
When you're up and feeling great and you sense that a down is coming, notice this: whether you're up or you're down, something stays the same. Something is completely untouched by being up or being down. And I don't mean untouched in the sense of cold, distanced, or detached. I'm pointing to something much vaster than the experience of being up or being down. Being up and being down is just a small part of that which stays the same. It's happening, you could say, inside of it. That's not precisely right, but it's a way to point to it.
Normally the experience is: "I am inside this body, which is me. Reality is out there, which is the world, made of matter. Matter is what's real, this body is part of that, and what I am is limited and confined by this body." That feels absolutely true and real. And now this totality of what I am goes up and down through states and experiences, and my job is to stay as up as I can. If I'm doing that, I'm doing well. If I'm not, I'm not doing well.
But all of what I just described is an interpretation. That interpretation itself, plus the experience you're interpreting, is all happening inside of you.
Trust and experimentation
This is what I was talking about in the meditation: the leap of faith and the invitation to trust. It has to do with trusting what I'm saying enough to experiment with it. If it becomes a blind belief, you'll turn it into another idea, and that will be problematic. But if you trust it enough to even experiment a little, you'll start to see: maybe this is true, maybe this is how it is. If you start to look at your experience more closely, it will be confirming. It will start to become obvious to you in your own experience, not as a blind belief in some interpretation of what I'm saying.
I don't know if I have that mastery yet, because whenever I'm going through something, there's no grounding for me.
I understand that. That's why I'm saying it's important for you to do the work we've talked about, including therapy and other approaches.
But I want to highlight this other aspect as well. What I'm saying, I expect it at best to trickle in the back of your mind, like a seed that starts to open up questions. It's not something for you to fully grasp now. It could be a conversation that, over a year of touching on it, starts to trickle in and create little "aha" moments. I just wanted to highlight that there are two sides, and one side alone won't work. They complement each other.