Seeing Isn't Doing
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A meditation group explores the difference between seeing strategies and trying to change them, the physical symptoms that can accompany deep practice, and how pivotal decisions seem to arrive on their own rather than being made.
Seeing Isn't Doing
A meditation group explores the difference between seeing strategies and trying to change them, the physical symptoms that can accompany deep practice, and how pivotal decisions seem to arrive on their own rather than being made.
Sometimes I feel like I'm just throwing words at things I don't fully understand. These are feelings that are hard for me to put into words.
You're just seeing the strategies. Keep seeing the strategies. That's all. And if you think there's nothing you can do, notice that seeing isn't a doing.
Question (second student): Can you repeat that last thing?
She was describing how she sees the strategies: "How do I change things? If I do this, if I go on retreat, if I get close to this sensation, then things will get better." Just keep seeing those strategies. And to the sense that there's nothing you can do, I say: seeing isn't doing.
The discovery of being
Question (second student): It was something new for me. It may not matter that it was new, but there was a moment when I arrived at the sensation and could see it in the mind. The state was the breathing. At some point I couldn't touch my hands to my body because there was a kind of interference. What I want to say is that it put me in the body. Not touching the body from the outside; I was the body. I was in the body. And no thoughts. The word that came before was: wait. Just wait. Because I was feeling so many things. And the feeling was: wait, don't move, stay. It was a very different place. I had never been there before. I couldn't open my eyes because I didn't want to see the usual things. I don't know what happened, but it was so different. And I felt very good. Nothing to think. Nothing to feel. I felt very good. A deep message from my unconscious.
A very wise instinct. Instead of vipassana: wait. What I was sensing as you shared is the discovery of being.
Question (second student): I feel the same. Thank you.
Waves of energy and vulnerability
Question (third student): Listening to other people, and feeling it during the meditation, it was like going straight to the gold, pulling away everything that covers it. It felt like a great journey. And then I was listening to the previous student speak, and all of a sudden I noticed this commonality. I felt a vulnerability. I wanted to cover it up. It was scary. Here and there I felt sensations and there was peace.
While I was listening, I felt this physical sensation, a little wave. Sometimes that happens when I meditate. I don't feel that I'm physically moving, but I feel like I'm on a wave of energy. It feels physical, but I know it isn't. It's as though I were in the ocean and not doing anything.
But then, all of a sudden, I got something almost like a spasm in the head. And I panicked. I thought, "Oh my God, is something happening?" I wondered if it's just the physical body readjusting. Should I panic? Am I creating drama?
Yes, panic. Panic.
Question (third student): Both of you unanimously agree on that.
What do you think? We have a doctor in the room.
Physical symptoms and discernment
Always with physical symptoms, if they're intense or they repeat, it's good to get them checked. That's up to you to evaluate: if something seems like a purely physical issue, it's always important to get medical attention. But I can also say that this work does produce symptoms that are physical. We don't discard the value of medicine. So, not for you to panic, but for you to check with yourself. If that was very strong physically, or if it repeats, do a self-check about whether you should see a doctor.
On the other side: when the activity of the mind starts to slow down, the absolute physical sense of solidity starts to dissolve. That's when the wavy, oceanic movement you describe becomes very natural, because the nature of reality is much more like that than the fixed solidity the mind makes it seem.
Question (third student): It was so clear and simple, and now it just vanished.
That's basically the part of the mind that makes form very real and solid kicking back in; now it's fully online. But just for you to know: when things start to get all wavy, it's normal. It's natural. It's actually closer to reality.
When the body speaks louder than medicine
Question (third student): Do you mind if I share something about you? You went to the hospital many times, where it was actually energetic and you didn't know that. You ended up in the emergency room a few times.
Question (fourth student): One time I felt it was kind of my decision. I wanted to take you to the hospital, but then there was an intuition not to. Thank God. But you also had some understanding of what was going on by that time. In the beginning, you didn't, right?
Right. In the first year or two that I worked with my teacher, I started having symptoms, and he sent me to a doctor. I had a full medical check, an echocardiogram, because I was having very intense physical reactions. Over the years I learned these were energetic, but they presented as very real, very physical pain.
Question (third student): How did you connect that it was energetic? What made you realize that?
It was over time. The body is energy. There isn't a real separation. The thing to realize is: which physical symptoms are purely physical in nature, and which belong to the process of waking up?
Question (third student): But at some point you got it. You didn't need to deal with the physical symptoms because the body wasn't the origin.
It's not that at one point I got it and then I didn't have to see a doctor. What happened is that at first it all seemed only physical, and more serious than it actually was. Then, by having medical checks over time, I started to see that even when the sensations were very difficult physically, the doctors couldn't find anything, couldn't help with anything. But obviously, I still check. If I have a physical situation, it might be a heart attack, and I need to be open to that possibility. It's not that now I consider every physical symptom a spiritual event.
Question (third student): But those specific symptoms you would consider energetic.
Yes. But those symptoms always change. It's not always the same ones.
The day in Mexico
Question (fourth student): When we were in Mexico, he was so sick. Nauseous, about to throw up. His body was hot, and only in the belly. I was thinking, "Oh my God, what is this? Maybe he has dengue, or malaria, or who knows what." And then he starts shaking his body. I'm panicking. But then I realized he was kind of voluntarily shaking, and then he was smiling, and then he was dancing. Okay. Whatever. I'm going for dinner.
It was a whole day. I was in bed, very ill, vomiting, feeling as unwell as I've ever felt. It only seemed physical. I had no sense of it being anything energetic. But in the dialogue with her, I kept saying, "I don't think it's a flu." There was almost a millimeter of difference, just very slightly not like a normal illness. But it was only physical: exhaustion, nausea, sweating, my whole body hurting. Then I started shaking my arm where it hurt, and the pain started to go away. I tried the other arm, then the legs. I started to move and shake. It was spontaneous. Then I started to feel waves of bliss. I stood up and started dancing.
Question (fourth student): His belly was boiling hot to the touch, and then afterward it was completely normal. It was really wild. We'd also had a super intense day. We did a little ritual about the land we were buying for retreats. We saw whales in the middle of the ritual. Then we signed the papers. And then we took the slowest taxi ride in history while he was needing to throw up. It all felt not quite like a normal illness.
Question (third student): And that was just a few months ago?
That was in February. But my point is that even then, I couldn't detect that it wasn't physical. It wasn't obvious. It seemed really just physical. And it happened to me many years ago that I did go to the hospital. It was so bad. I went many times, and by the third or fourth day, they basically kicked me out.
Question (fourth student): Because they thought he wanted drugs.
I was in so much pain, screaming. After three days of tests, they told me, "There is nothing wrong with you. You're lying to us. We'll call the police to remove you if you don't leave." I came home desperate, because I was in so much physical pain. But there was a kind of surrendering, because now doctors couldn't help me. I lay down and there was this moment of, "Okay, I'm just going to go into this." Then there were just waves of energy. It was basically a kundalini awakening. I have to thank them. Thank God they didn't give me morphine.
Question (third student): It makes me wonder how many times we miss this, the various layers of it. I just want to say, while we were speaking, I got a sudden insight. I was saying how I was listening to the earlier student, and then I felt something I didn't want to feel. That's exactly what it was: I felt vulnerable. And you sounded so vulnerable. You spoke in a way that I don't usually allow myself to speak. It was as if I was listening to a part of myself. And then all of a sudden, the physical reaction in my head: "Oh my God, this is hard." There was this connection that just came while we were speaking.
I think that's an important connection.
Question (third student): This was all about letting go of the strategies. And the insight was that the power of my strategies, the effort I put into projecting a certain persona, is very painful. Physically, even.
If that keeps happening, get some form of check. But that kind of thing could be just a muscular contraction, a reaction, because the whole body and mind are connected. That's why yoga has been such a central part of spiritual work in India.
Question (fourth student): It is physical. You were vomiting. Your body temperature was high. It's just that you didn't have dengue. And that other time, you weren't poisoned.
The pain that preceded the path
It started when I was a teenager. I was playing piano and I would feel nausea, then pass out. I would go kind of unconscious while sitting and have visions. Then I'd come back. It was always when I was playing piano, for some reason. I told my mother, she took me to the doctor, I described things to him, and he had no idea what to make of it.
Then it started to get worse and worse. I became suicidal. I met my teacher right around the time I was planning how to kill myself. I remember one night, I was in the most horrible, dark, painful state, physically unbearable, and my mental state was just as terrible. I felt that my teacher was what I would try instead of suicide. I went to see him and started doing the meditations, and everything I had been going through started to come up intensely. I would describe it to him, and he would say, "That's normal. That's normal. That's normal."
And one day he told me, "I'm not sure why I'm going to tell you this, but it's coming through very strongly. I'm sorry, but for some reason I have a strong sense that for you, there's going to be a lot of physical pain."
Question (fourth student): But don't get scared, because that was very particular to him.
Yes, that was very particular to me. If you have some physical symptoms, I would think that's normal.
Decisions that arrive on their own
What happened that night of the darkness, it was a decision made by your being, by the universe. If you look at decisions, the more you see the process, the intention, the thought process, the more you see that all of that is something that appears and happens. It feels like decisions are already made and you just discover what they are.
That night, the clarity of direction just appeared.
I asked because it connects to what we were discussing. For me with our teacher, it was the same. One day something happened. My family was against it. I thought I was going to a cult. I was afraid. And the decision, it was just like you're saying: it came.
And the more we observe, the more we see. With meticulous clarity, the choosing comes from a deeper place. And that waiting we spoke about is a part of this. "Waiting" is a word, but it's really this observing.