The Effort of Practice and the Freedom of Not Knowing
El esfuerzo de la práctica y la libertad de no saber
A conversation about the exhausting quality of noting practice, the illusion of being in control of one's transformation, and how habitual emotions like anger often mask something deeper.
The Effort of Practice and the Freedom of Not Knowing
A conversation about the exhausting quality of noting practice, the illusion of being in control of one's transformation, and how habitual emotions like anger often mask something deeper.
I haven't done the noting practice in a long time, and I didn't do it just now because I fell asleep. But I wanted to ask you: why does it feel as if you were doing a physical effort? You end up tired. Can't the same meditation be done in an effortless way?
I don't really know the physiology of it, but I would suspect it involves a very strong kind of rewiring in the mind. It's like using your neurons in an unusual way. We are used to thinking in narrative, in stories, about everything that's not about what's actually happening, not about reality. Now you're asking the mind to go the other way, and you're using your mind to do that, so it requires a lot of willpower and effort.
If you think of it as a muscle, it can become very easeful over time through practice. It also becomes easeful because of the habit-forming nature of the practice, and because you create a bit of a withdrawal from this mind addiction. Once you go through the withdrawal, it becomes more peaceful by nature. If I'm going for a walk and I do a bit of noting, I find it very peaceful, but that's twenty years later. I'm not saying it's going to take twenty years; I'm just comparing the two extremes in my case. When I started that practice twenty years ago, and even though I didn't do it regularly for a long time, it was excruciatingly effortful, painful, stressful. It would bring up a lot of anxiety for me.
That itself you can note: "anxiety, anxiety, anxiety," or "discomfort, discomfort," "frustration," "tiredness, tiredness," "sleepiness, sleepiness." Whatever arises is something you can note.
The illusion of being in control
Can you say something more about how all these techniques can create an illusion that you are in control of your transformation? In a sense you are in control, because you can decide to do it. But the actual result, what happens or doesn't happen, is not up to you. They may all be helpful in some way, but they ultimately don't work for what I used to think they worked for, which is to cause transformation.
I would suggest you take everything halfway. Everything has another side, and you're talking about seeing that other side. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
For example, the sense that all these practices don't guarantee or produce a transformation: I would say that's correct. But you do your part and let mystery do its part. That's where people talk about grace. In Zen they say you make yourself accident-prone, because waking up is an accident, and by doing this work you make yourself accident-prone. There are many ways to point to this.
You do your part, because if you don't, you fall on the other side, which is: "Well, if it's just grace, then I'll just wait for grace." But grace doesn't do anything unless you do something. So I recommend doing practices and doing your part.
What chooses, and from where
What you're describing is something more subtle, which has to do with the illusion that you are choosing, that you are doing something. The illusion is not that choosing happens. Choosing does happen, and it comes from us. The confusion arises when we think we know what "I" am.
If you operate from the belief that you are only a person, only a body, only a mind, then choosing will be limited to that capacity. It will be limited to what your body-mind can conceive of and operate from. The choosing will be experienced as "I am choosing this," but it will be very conditioned: conditioned by the body, by DNA, by the entire past history of the universe, and by the mind, conditioned partly by DNA, partly by this life.
Now, if what you conceive of as "I" (that which chooses) becomes more unknowable, if it comes from a sense of "I don't know what I am," then the choosing comes from a deeper place. If I were to put names to it (though you really can't), I would say it comes from mystery, consciousness, freedom, love. But this is only possible through non-identification with mind. Only when mind is seen as mind, and recognized as separate from that which is here, that which is choosing.
Otherwise, mind doesn't truly choose, but it contracts the options and possibilities to only what the mind knows, understands, and wants. That is not freedom. That is where suffering is, because there is a contraction, a limitation in movement.
So what's the point of choosing, or of doing, if it doesn't lead me to where I want to get?
Do the work of seeing what you are and what you're not. Then the choosing will come from that freer place. What you are, you cannot see. You can realize what you are, but it's not going to be conceptual, not mental, not knowable. The more you realize that, the more the choosing will come from a deeper place.
There are many ways to point to how that is experienced. The freest form of choosing is when you only do, at any moment, what God wants. You have to express it as a paradox: ultimate freedom is when you have no freedom, when you are obeying at every moment. That paradox points to the same thing.
It all depends on what you conceive of as that which chooses. If you conceive of it as known, as a body and mind, then the choosing will be conditioned. But even to observe where choice comes from can be very disorienting. You can start to see that there is a lot less freedom in the choosing than one thinks one has. And the more you see that, the more the choosing actually becomes free. But the freedom is in the seeing itself: seeing the habit, seeing where choosing originates from.
When emotions become compulsive
I want to share that the meditation was wonderful. I also want to add something about what happens in the body with emotions and thoughts. When an emotion is compulsive, it comes with thoughts, our hormones change, and we are thrown off balance. It's not easy for the body to stop that anxiety and anguish. So much happens. This practice of meditation is really important and beautiful.
When emotions get like that, you can go down to basic counting. But even if that's too hard, try noting, because it requires a lot more of your focus and energy to get out of the emotion.
It depends on what's happening, but it's important to be able to see the relative superficiality of emotions. Emotions can be interpreted as evidence of something. If you are afraid, you can interpret the sensation of fear as evidence that there is real danger. If you are feeling anguish or anxiety, you can interpret that sensation as evidence that whatever narrative is creating it must be true. That reinforces the conditioning and the habitual pattern.
So it's important to not give it real value, to basically remove any attribution of reality to the emotion, and just notice: it's there, that's what's happening, that's what's here. "Not paying attention" in this sense means: I was attributing real value to it, and I remove that.
I agree with that. But sometimes the emotion is like a deep structure. It stays in the body, the contraction, and you repeat the same pattern over and over. It becomes, for example, anger, and that emotion belongs so deeply to your body that sometimes, even though you know the approach, it persists. How long does it stay in the body? How long do you repeat the same pattern? I'm adding something to what you're saying, because I agree with it, and at the same time there is this depth to it.
What anger is helping you not feel
In that case, if it's a habitual thing, if you notice the neurotic nature of it but it keeps coming back and it's deep, I would suggest that there is something else you're feeling. The anger is helping you not feel something else.
Obviously, it depends moment by moment on what the anger is, where it's coming from, what the situation is. But if you notice a habit, a contracted and neurotic place that you keep falling into, the anger is helping you not feel something underneath.
The way out is not just to feel more anger, but to see what's underneath it, what it's helping you not feel. It could be fear, it could be pain, it could be sadness. If you recognize and discover that deeper layer, it's the same energy, but now you are touching it more directly. There still might be anger, but something else will clarify. You will get in touch with fear, or pain, or sadness, which is what the anger was covering all along.