The Only Choice We Make
La Única Elección que Hacemos
A question about how to contact the sense of awareness that encompasses everything, not only during meditation but in the midst of ordinary activities like cooking or working.
The Only Choice We Make
A question about how to contact the sense of awareness that encompasses everything, not only during meditation but in the midst of ordinary activities like cooking or working.
I was wondering if you could say something about contacting this sense of encompassing the universe while you're working or doing other activities besides meditating. For example, while making breakfast or walking around.
The moments of taking time to meditate will be the most important at first, because while you're working or engaged in habitual activities, you'll very easily contract into your habitual ways of functioning.
Inquiry through physical activity
But when you're working, especially when you're doing something physical, one way you can inquire is to look at the sense of who is doing what is happening. When there's movement, when there's action, you can bring a really subtle attention to that which is doing. It's actually the universe that is acting, but we create a subtle interpretation that the acting and the doing is happening in a localized place, that the choosing is localized.
This is what high-performance sports, or any kind of physical activity performed at a high level, can get us in touch with. When you are experiencing something that takes you to the edge of your ability to create the sense of choosing, that is what is called the state of flow. It is when you suspend the interpretation "I am making every single choice," where "the I" is localized.
Following the meditation where I was saying the universe contains us, the statement "we contain the universe" brings in that paradox. You have to hold both of them as true and both of them as false. But then you look at which one you are habitually functioning through. What is the perspective that is your normal?
If you're doing something physical, you can start to realize that the state of flow doesn't need high performance. It's available always. It's just that bringing ourselves to a limit helps challenge the interpretation.
That limit being like a physical limit, as in sports?
It's a limit of our mental capacity. It has to do with the limit of the body, but specifically it is the limit of our mental capacity to maintain a localized sense of a chooser while performing at high capacity, because those can't work together.
This is just one way of exploring it. You can explore it by moving slowly as you cook. What I'm saying is that when we do something of high performance, that is how we normally tap into this, and it can become addictive. That's why athletes do this. That's why people who do high-risk sports do it. One of the main reasons is that it helps us tap into the true nature of self that is beyond the limited. But this is accessible at any moment if you pay attention.
The hand experiment
You can explore this just by moving your hand. Move your hand back and forth, but without keeping a rhythm. If you keep a rhythm, you stay with the rhythm. But if you work with the choice of moving the hand, asking "when is it going to go back, when am I going to choose moving it in the opposite direction," and if you sit with that and really pay attention, you will start to see that the choice isn't coming from anything localized. You will start to notice that in a sense you are a witness of the doing, a witness of the choosing, at the same time that you are the chooser and the mover. That is another paradox, and being both of those takes us out of the sense of localization, the sense of separation.
As you're doing what you're doing, there could be a layer of "I'm lifting the hand, I'm eating, every single movement is being done by a localized chooser." If you look at that, you might be able to get glimpses that it's all happening and you're witnessing it. There is something witnessing it that is completely still, purely observing everything you're doing, everything that is happening. That is the perspective that leans into the vaster being, the universe.
The way to put it in words: it is both and neither. The freedom is in not being attached to either perspective.
Flow as the removal of friction
A musician will experience this. Anything that brings us into a state of flow is actually removing the interpretation that produces the "no flow," the friction, the resistance. That is why one of the most traditional practices of meditation is observing the breath, because the breath taps into this two-sided nature. It can be something we feel we control, and it can be something we feel is autonomous. It is outside of thinking, and it is the body. Looking at what is choosing and where the choosing is happening, you will notice the same sense of it being very elusive.
So what you're saying about the benefit of starting with a simple activity like meditation, specifically a meditation that focuses on the breath, is that it allows you to play with that paradox, to explore the "both and neither." And then, as you cultivate a more refined sense of it, you can transfer that awareness to activities that are more complex, like planning a vacation or something.
Yes, because it's really about debunking the belief. It's about debunking the interpretation. You debunk it at deeper levels because it is something that happens as a habitual form of processing, and usually it's very hard to see through when we begin.
From breath to self-inquiry
There's a practice of sitting and meditating. Observing the breath takes us out of the world of thinking, and that is the first step: to notice what is thought. Usually we don't have the subtlety of attention to recognize what is thought and what is not thought, so observing the breath helps pull us out of being immersed in thought. But then a practice like self-inquiry, or what I was pointing to in today's meditation, goes directly at the sense of what we are. There is a sense of separation, localization, and a sense of a chooser, an agent. All of these are real senses. There is a function that is real, that has a sense of separation, that has a sense of doership. But it is not what we are. It's a part of us, like the hand.
As you're saying, once you can see through that, even in moments during meditation, you can also look at it in other activities. If you do have an activity that brings you into a state of flow, do that as well. For example, dancing. Dancing is one way in which many people normally tap into this. There is the sense that the music is dancing you. When you're really enjoying it, you're not calculating, not controlling every movement. But it's not so much about developing a sense of flow; it's about debunking that sense of "no flow."
I think dancing is a really good example because I've had moments of flow, moments of not thinking, just following the music, following the moment. And my understanding is that I could only get there by practicing moves, learning the building blocks of how to construct a sequence. In the beginning, that was not an experience of flow. It was awkward trial and error, embarrassment, projections about how I was coming across to others. I like that metaphor because it illustrates how it's always a bit of a process.
Awkwardness already contains flow
What I'm pointing to is that the awkwardness and the trial and error also contain flow. The flow includes that. The challenge is that we interpret it as "not flow" because we compare it with another thing that we call flow.
When you get good enough at something that you start to experience flow, you can look more deeply and see what's happening: there isn't an ability to think that you are doing something and at the same time perform well. Those are in opposition. If you're in a flow playing music with a band and the second you start thinking "I'm doing this, I'm going to do that," with a lot of mental involvement, the proficiency is going to stop.
What makes or breaks the flow is actually the interpretation "I'm doing this." I have to be very specific: it is the sense that the choosing is coming from something separate, limited, that "I am," localized in a specific place. That then becomes all of what I am. The function is real, but it is a function, like the hand, like the heart. We interpret it as located and separate, then we identify with that, and we lose that deeper beingness, that deeper sense of self that is vaster and more unknown.
The completely still witness
There is something right now, as you're doing what you're doing, as you're eating, as you're listening, that is completely still. It is effortlessly witnessing, experiencing everything, even while there is an experience more contained within it: "This part of me is doing that, a choice is happening, the choice is appearing, these thoughts are coming and going." There is a fluidity to everything. And then there is something that is completely still.
The more we start to recognize that, the more it becomes something that cannot go away, because it is always present. It is not something we can gain and lose. It is more fundamental than anything that comes and goes. That can become so obvious that nothing can obscure it, not even sitting at a computer on a really stressful day while you're coding.
And closer in time, as you achieve that stability and permanence of realization, when you are sitting...
It's not in such a time. It's now. Because what you just did is make it a thing you can get to in a mental world, which is the future. It's now or never. Always. The mind is going to come in and try to crack the code, figure it out, make a plan. What I'm talking about contains the mind. It's outside of that world. It's always here. Never anywhere else.
I have two thoughts. One is that I want to take you up on your invitation to experience and realize that and just not let it go. Maybe I just achieved enlightenment, and that's that. My second thought is: if at any given moment from now until this body ceases to function, my feeling of a separate self, this smaller individual entity in a stressful workday coding, if I start to experience that, is that just telling me that the illusion has returned?
Contraction cannot experience contraction
Only if that's all you experience. It returns only if the only thing you experience is stress, contraction, limitation, separateness. In fact, that never happens. It's a belief that that's all you're experiencing. It only "comes in" when you believe it comes in, because whenever that's happening, you can ask yourself: what is experiencing this right now?
That which is experiencing stress, contraction, and limitation cannot be stress, contraction, and limitation. Contraction cannot experience contraction. Something other than contraction can experience contraction. Something other than thought can experience thought. That's a tricky one. Most people believe that thought experiences thought. We confound consciousness with thought, and so we reduce the nature of our awareness to a mental thing. That is the first veil to break.
This is why I keep referring back to the basic practice of observing breath and observing thought, because it starts to create a separation between consciousness and thought, between awareness and thought. We start to get glimpses: what I am that is aware of thought is not a thought.
The fist metaphor
When you're working, stressed, contracted, if there is a sense of something missing, a sense of suffering, it's because you're believing that contraction is all that you are and all that is happening.
If we make a fist with our hand and keep holding it, it starts to get really uncomfortable. We start to identify with that sensation: "I am that contraction." Life becomes the process of how to soften the contraction, to have moments of release. But as soon as I stop contracting, the sensation of contraction disappears. The discomfort disappears. And with that, my sense of self disappears, because I was identified with that contraction. So it becomes this push and pull: contraction, release, contraction, release.
The way out is through recognizing that something disappears when the contraction is released, and then we can recognize: I'm not the hand. It's a part of me. It can release and it can contract, and I'm still here no matter what. But we started this contraction when we were very, very young, so we don't remember what it was like without it.
Practicing this non-identification with the hand (whether contracted or open, and I'm using the hand as a metaphor) allows us to bring that awareness into other realms of our lives. If you think of the hand as representing a full-time job, or parenting, or managing relationships, you can still in moments have that hand clenched and perform the duties required of you. But because you're not identifying with the sensation of being clenched, there's a freedom there.
Following that metaphor: if what you want to do in this moment in your life is to weightlift, your hand is going to go through an uncomfortable process, but you might be enjoying the weightlifting. The suffering comes from identification with that limited part, which is the one that's in life, moving, changing, processing. Specifically, the suffering comes from "that is all that I am, and I am not anything other than that."
Self-inquiry and the nature of objects
Self-inquiry is "What am I? Who am I? Where am I?" These are different ways of investigating the sense of self, the "I," going toward that source and really investigating experientially what it is. There is a mechanism called identification, which is the sense of "I," of "what I am." Identification can only happen with an object, something that is stable over time. The reality is that there are no objects and nothing is stable over time. You could bring all the physicists in the room and nobody could prove me wrong.
There are no objects in the universe, and nothing is stable. It's all changing, all moving. What we call objects (for example, a cup) have a relative stability. A cup is more stable compared to air or water. The body has a relative stability, and so we identify with it. But the only thing that can create objects is thought. It creates concepts. When you see this, you see a cup, and it's the concept of a cup. Then you can detach it from the actual mysterious energy that this is.
Even physicists thought those were objects up until about a hundred years ago. Then they were able to see deeply inside and realize there are no objects. Not even atoms. The whole paradigm of atoms as the fundamental objects of the universe collapsed. They looked at the nucleus of an atom and realized there's nothing there. It's empty. It's probabilities of energies. A "particle" is just collapsing that probability and asking, "Where could it be right now?"
Everything is a flow of energy, the whole universe. Nothing stable. Fluid. Movement. And then the mind creates a concept. It creates a concept of what I am. It can detach from the unstable flow and create something that seems stable, because it's a concept, a thought, an idea. But if you sit and look at that sense of "I," it's going to be bouncing around, moving, shifting, because the mind is trying to create a solid object that is "I, here."
Fabrication of the self
You have to look really closely to notice this. There's a whole practice in meditation called noting, and it can bring you to see how that "I" is constantly being fabricated and located. It is a mental process. Seeing that can detach you: something is observing this process of identifying with a concept.
It can be quite scary at first to notice this, that what we think we are, which seems solid, seems stable, is only stabilized by thought consistently reinforcing the concept in our awareness. This has been seen very recently, in the last five to ten years, in neuroscience studies with fMRI. They know what parts of the brain activate to do this, and in some people it's not happening, either because they are experienced meditators or because they are on psychedelics.
Just keep noticing: mind, and then what's observing it? Something is here prior to all of that.
I think it's about practice. You said it can be scary at first, and my first thought was that I actually feel the opposite. I would like to be in that place more often.
But that's you imagining something. That's an imagination of a place or a state. What we're talking about is here already.
Okay, let me try to say what I mean. I did a retreat called Luminous Awareness. There were a few different instructions, but one was: cultivate stability of awareness, focus on the breath, and then shift to indiscriminate awareness, the stream of experience, whatever that is, sounds or whatever. Once you have some stability with that, think of everything you're experiencing in that stream as the foreground. Then become aware of the background, which is whatever is experiencing that stream.
What's the background? Yes.
The instruction was to shift your attention so that roughly eighty percent of your awareness is on the entity experiencing. Your awareness of that entity becomes the foreground, and the stream of experience becomes the background. Almost before the instruction to switch was given, I understood where it was going, and it happened for me. It felt really powerful, almost like a magic trick.
What the glimpse reveals
You're getting a glimpse into the functioning of the mind and the nature of awareness.
A glimpse, yes. And so I think the sentiment I described earlier was wanting to cultivate more than a glimpse.
What matters there is: what did the glimpse show you? We don't need to glimpse constantly in that sense. When there is a shift like that, something is revealed. Then we can get attached to the process of it being revealed and miss what was revealed. We make the experiential shift into the object of what we're looking for, and we miss what was actually revealed. So if you could put into words what was revealed, what did you see?
I could sense a calm, abiding awareness.
And if you put it in words of what it says about your nature, what was seen?
The thing that comes to mind is that it's easeful.
Perfect. Now, is that knowing dependent on what you're experiencing? Because if I recall your description correctly, it had to do with a separation from what you're experiencing and then a kind of reversal. So the question is: what you saw, what is now revealed (that there is something easeful about your nature), does that depend on what you're experiencing?
I suppose it depends on the extent to which I identify with what I'm experiencing.
Identification, not experience, is the variable
Exactly. The sense of easefulness doesn't depend on what you're experiencing. It depends on whether you believe you are something of what you're experiencing. It has to do with identification. It doesn't have to do with what you're experiencing. It has more to do with your interpretation of what you experience, and specifically with identification.
You start to see that the road to that freedom is now. It's always now, and it's always available. In a sense, it's a choice. It's really the only choice we make: to identify, or not.