The Ups and Downs Are Not the Whole of You
Los Altibajos No Son la Totalidad de Ti
A student shares the raw, confusing experience of emotional highs and lows in practice, and the teacher points to something that remains untouched by either state.
The Ups and Downs Are Not the Whole of You
A student shares the raw, confusing experience of emotional highs and lows in practice, and the teacher points to something that remains untouched by either state.
I just want to thank you for having these sessions for all of us. I really look forward to these gatherings, and I appreciate the space.
A lot of what you say can be so piercing. My mind goes off on tangents whenever something really speaks to me, and it's hard to stay present when certain words trigger so much. Since starting this weekly meditation, it has been eye-opening and challenging. It makes me question so many things, and that rabbit hole you speak of is so true. Just trying to be more aware of what's happening in myself, peeling away those layers of stories. I don't quite know 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 felt like, "This is it. I'm feeling great. I'm happy. I'm doing things I haven't done before. 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 an ongoing journey. Enjoy it now, because it's going to go really deep again."
And in those moments when you're down and being triggered, you think, "This isn't me." I notice all these things coming up. Before, I would just react: "What's going on?" I can watch my brain trying to get defensive. "I need to solve this now. 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 really suffering in those moments, trying to resolve it. Then I can also see myself saying, "That's not me." But when I say that it's not me, that itself is part of me trying to resolve the situation. It's really confusing.
What you're describing is so natural in the process that I would be surprised if anybody here doesn't relate.
Two pillars of the work
There are two aspects here. A lot of that struggle, the up and down you're talking about, can be worked on, and it's very important to do that because it can make a real difference. That includes all kinds of practices: therapy, bodywork, and more esoteric approaches to working on the experience, the mind, how we process things, how we learn and adapt and understand. Doing all of that work helps stabilize things and also gives us a better map for relating to and navigating not only our bodies and minds, but the world. That's an ongoing process. We can consistently get better at it and move toward an experience more like the one we would prefer.
But then there's another side, which is equally important. These two sides are complementary; they're both pillars of this work. The second side is what we might call spirituality. I talk about both back and forth here, and they're quite mixed in, so it might not always be straightforward to notice which is which.
The profound insight hidden in "this isn't me"
When you say, "That is not me," and then you see that this is also an attempt to stop something or control something, you start to touch on the problem that spirituality addresses. I think your experience is coming from a profound insight: a sense of alienation, of "What is this? This isn't me." One aspect of that can be addressed through working on body, mind, and the world. But the other aspect, the really important one, is this: there is truth to that question. That isn't you.
Now, this is not something for you to believe and carry with you 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 of trying to get out of something, to control or change or stop or improve it. If you look more closely and keep that question going, 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 have a sense that a down is coming, and when you're actually down, there is something that stays the same. Something completely untouched by being up or being down. And "untouched" here does not mean cold, distanced, or detached. That's not what I'm pointing to. 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. You could say it's happening inside of it (not exactly, but it's a way to point to it).
Normally the experience is: "I am inside of this body, which is me. The reality out there is the world, made of matter. Matter is the reality. This body is a part of that, and what I am is limited and confined by this body." That feels absolutely true and real. And now, all that I am is going up and down in 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, let's say, inside of you.
Trust as experimentation, not belief
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. If it's a blind belief, you will make it into another idea, and it's going to be problematic. But if you trust what I'm saying enough to even experiment with it a little, you'll start to see: "Maybe this is true. Maybe this is the way it is." If you start to look at your experience more closely, it will confirm itself. It will start to become, in a sense, obvious to you in your own experience, not as a blind, trusting belief in an interpretation of what I'm saying.