The Center Between Closing Down and Getting Ahead
El centro entre cerrarse y adelantarse
A question about the compulsive thinking that arises when we have feelings for someone, and how it creates a barrier to actual intimacy.
The Center Between Closing Down and Getting Ahead
A question about the compulsive thinking that arises when we have feelings for someone, and how it creates a barrier to actual intimacy.
I was interested in what was said earlier about intimacy. At the moment, I'm preoccupied with someone, thinking about them a lot, and I think it's actually creating a barrier, a thought barrier. It's like a compulsion, and it's annoying. I just want to get on with my life, but the thoughts keep ticking along. I was wondering if you have any ideas about that.
There's something very sweet about what you're sharing. My sense is that you have feelings for somebody, and it's very sweet.
Yeah, but I think I'm also creating my own deal. I'm getting ahead of myself with it.
That's natural. It's very natural for us, when we like somebody, to try to know what it is, what's happening, or what's going to happen.
Two ways of managing uncertainty
On one side, we can go to a place of not opening up, because it's a form of avoiding what we're afraid of, which is intimacy. On the other side, if we do let ourselves get ahead of ourselves, we can go to a place of making the story very known: what it is, what's happening, what could happen, what will happen. So in a sense, there are two ways in which we try to manage the uncertainty.
If you can think of a more balanced, middle place: we don't become balanced by force. We become balanced by seeing our tendency to go to one side or the other. And by seeing, "Okay, now I'm here," that seeing already grounds us.
If we see when we close down, it grounds us in openness. If we see how we get ahead of ourselves, we see what's actually happening, which is just the fear of uncertainty, the fear that comes from not knowing what will happen. And that grounds us in reality, which is: it's very unknown. It's very mysterious. A relationship, another person, is full of unknowns, and ultimately there's a very real fear of pain. The more we can see the way we're trying to cope with that, the more we are able to be open, to hold our heart open, and to hold the fear and pain that may come.
Sensation and reflection
So it's really in that center, in that more grounded place, that we are simply more in touch with the sensations. When I was talking in the meditation about the breath, the breath has sensations all over, right? If we receive the instruction to pay attention to the breath, or we decide to do it on our own, two things are going to happen. One is all the raw sensations: the body moving, sensations on the skin, the air coming through the throat. The other is what I was describing as the reflection in the mind, which is going to be all kinds of images: my chest is moving, air is coming through my nose, I am breathing, there's this body that I am. All of that is the reflection in thinking, the mind interpreting reality. But the sensations of the body come first. Then on top of that, there's a layer of interpretation and mapping.
What usually happens is we're so used to paying attention to the reflection, to paying attention almost only to that, that we think it's more real than the sensation. We start to lose touch with the reality that is actually felt. We lose the clarity of what is what, what is sensation and what is thought. It becomes a mix, and then the thought becomes more real. It almost takes the position of primary reality: the thought comes first and the sensation comes after. It gets inverted.
How this applies to relationship
I'm saying all of this because it's related to what happens in a relationship. There's going to be a lot of reflection, a lot of thoughts about me, about the other, the past, who this person is, who I am, all my history, all of the future, the possibilities. All of that is just reflection. You're describing this, seeing it as a barrier, describing the compulsion. So you're aware that there's thinking. But all of that is happening because there are sensations underneath, and the thinking is helping you put aside or cover up those sensations.
When the sensations become intense, stronger than I am comfortable with, we tend to go into the reflection. It's like a pressure valve release.
Fear and pain as the root
To summarize, there's going to be fear and pain. I'm using those two words to point to all kinds of sensations. Shame could be a form of pain, anxiety a form of fear, sadness a form of pain. I'm simplifying. But what matters is that we can actually fully get in touch with the sensations.
When we come to this centered place I'm describing, we can see the two tendencies: the tendency to avoid the risk of intimacy, and the tendency to overdo it, to get closer, to have a lot of fantasy. We always go from one to the other depending on the situation. If there's a lot of promise and positive feedback from the other person, we go toward fantasy. If there's struggle, pain, or conflict, we close down. These are the ways in which we manage the intensity of sensation.
The more we can, as with the breath, just fully touch that sensation, the less we'll be driven by the mind's activity. If you notice a lot of thinking, do that same exercise I was pointing to with the breath: be curious about what's happening at the feeling level. What are the emotions? Emotions are going to be a form of thought as well. Then, what are the feelings? The feelings are going to be experienced more directly in the body. It might at first just be a tension. As you get more in touch with the energies in the body, the mind will calm down, because you're only activating the mind in that way to help you not touch the sensations.
Where the deepest work happens
This is quite a mix of psychological work, emotional work, and spiritual work, but it's all integrated, all one. It's actually where the deepest work happens, because our nature is loving. The love wants to pour out, and the struggle we have is all of our ways of trying to control that because of being hurt. What I'm describing is not specific to you. I'm speaking very generally; I'm describing my understanding of human nature.
That which knows is not touched
One of the things that can help is noticing that ultimately, in everything you experience, there's something in you that is not touched by the experience. Not touched in the sense that it's not damaged, not affected. When you feel pain, there's pain, but that which is experiencing the pain is not pain. That is why you can know pain, why you can know when pain is happening. Right now, you're having thoughts, and that which knows you're having thoughts is not itself thoughts. When there's worry, and you recognize the worry or anxiety, that which recognizes the worry isn't in worry. It's not worried.
This is very subtle. It's very simple to describe logically, and it's quite irrefutable logically. But it's so simple that it's hard to see how deep it goes. If we are in terror, we're very aware we're in terror. It's hard to say, "Oh, I didn't realize I was in terror." When there's terror, you're aware. If you're shaken by fear or crying from pain, you're very aware of it.
But consider: if that which is aware of the pain were itself the pain, you wouldn't know pain. There has to be something that is not pain to look at pain and know it as pain. There has to be something that is not fear to perceive fear and know it as fear. That which knows fear, that which knows pain, that which knows thinking, the experience of the body, sound: that which knows isn't any of those things.
Freedom through allowing
But I know that I can do something with knowing that part that doesn't have fear, doesn't have pain, because it sees what's going on. I'm trying to catch your message.
The message is this: when you know that, you can come closer to fear and closer to pain, and touch them more directly. There will be a freedom from them. We try to find freedom by pushing fear and pain away, by avoiding them so that we are free. But the freedom actually only exists in the other direction. When fear can come and we can fully touch it, when there's no longer any need to push it away, when we can fully let fear come, fully let pain come, then all of our structures, strategies, and mechanisms to manage and control fear and pain become completely unnecessary.