The Wall at the Edge of Seeking
Beingness, the Wall, and Surrender into Feeling
October 11, 2023
dialogue

The Wall at the Edge of Seeking

El muro en el borde de la búsqueda

A student describes reaching a point of hopelessness in their spiritual search, feeling they have hit a wall they cannot pass through, and the teacher reframes this loss of hope as the falling away of an escape mechanism.

The Wall at the Edge of Seeking

A student describes reaching a point of hopelessness in their spiritual search, feeling they have hit a wall they cannot pass through, and the teacher reframes this loss of hope as the falling away of an escape mechanism.

That whole conversation got me in tears. I don't know where to start. I think I feel that I have wanted, for so long, mainly two things: love and freedom, with an idea of what love and freedom are. The right relationship to grow with, or freedom in the sense of this work, of realizing my true nature. But I feel like I've reached a point where it's the opposite. I no longer have anything to seek, because finally, when I approach what feels like opening my heart, I'm so scared. It's as if, in the past little while, I had touched something, and then realized: no, I really don't want that. As if I lost hope.

I feel like I lost hope on everything. But in a sense, in a good way, because it's not that nothing makes sense. It's that nothing is what I thought it was.

Yes.

And I really feel that. There is also this other part: in the self-inquiry process, for the first time there is this sense that there really is something I cannot know. You know the movie The Truman Show?

Yes.

He sails and sails and sails until he gets to the end of it, and there is a wall, and he finds the door. I feel like I just found the wall. I go in circles, all of it in circles around awareness, around how everything I ever perceive, phenomenally or not, is all through awareness. But the reality of what everything is made of is untouchable. There is no way I can reach it. That's the wall.

And I also feel like I lost hope there too. There is no getting there. So those are the two things. I feel like I lost hope, and I don't know what to do now. Because then you ask, "What does the universe want to be doing as you?" and the only thing I feel is just to keep this heart open. But it seems like there is nothing to do. It's not about looking for the relationship. It's not about self-inquiry. There is nothing that is doing.

The universe wants to be, not to do**

The question is: what does the universe want as you, not what does it want to do?

That's my whole point. Maybe I have always added that "to do."

Yes. It's about creativity. Because hope is about fixing. It's about time and the future and getting somewhere because something is broken or missing. Hope is, and this is a delicate thing to say because it's not applicable to every person at every moment, but hope is a toxic thing. What you are losing is the escape mechanism.

I get it. It's as if there was always something else to try, always something else to look for. And this is not about life and its infinite possibilities. It's about this "something else."

Projected in time, but literally here now

Even when you're talking about awareness and you get into a looping thing where you can't touch it and you hit the wall, it's still because you're trying to do something. You're trying to get somewhere. There's a hope that something will shift. But it's projected in time, and it literally is now. It's here now.

How is it possible that we know? I know there is something rather than nothing. I know the experience of it. We know the perfume, the beauty of it. And yet somehow it's as if I am fixated on saving someone.

Yes, exactly. Saving that someone you've created in your imagination.

Could I not?

It's up to you. You can. You're free. And we do that because we find it beautiful.

The beauty beneath the suffering

This is the thing. For the longest time I thought it was because of all the suffering, but the reality is that it's out of beauty. It's so strange. I can't tell you that I'm suffering right now, but I do feel hopeless, stuck at that wall.

I think it's just a matter of trusting, taking time to trust more deeply. And to trust what? To trust the unknowable. The now. To trust your own knowing, your own recognition. You're in between two worlds.

Waiting without hope

It was very strange. All these years, you said before that it doesn't mean we don't have anything to do or that we cannot do anything. It's as if all that energy I've been using, I've been doing and doing: meditate, inquire, go here, go there. And it's as if I had landed in a desert. It seems like, which is ridiculous, what I have to do is wait. But somehow I have told myself, while doing this work, that waiting is a bad state. Waiting is not something you should be doing. Waiting is ignorance. But it seems to be the only thing that is there right now. Wait. And just wait without hope, like the poem. Wait without hope.

That poem came to mind as soon as you started speaking. "Wait" points to hesitating when you are about to jump into a doing to get somewhere. But it's an internal doing, not the movement of the body, not acting and functioning in the world. It's a doing that's psychological.

Where it gets confused is that in the world, much of the movement is obvious. It doesn't stop. My work continues. I might go to Paris, maybe Mexico. But there are other things that are less clear. Do I push to look for a relationship again? Do I not? That one is less clear. Do I do something about it?

It's closer. What you're looking for is closer.

Thank you.

You're welcome.