The Choice Hidden in Every Struggle
La elección oculta en cada lucha
A student describes the difficulty of looking directly at emotional experience during meditation, and the teacher explores how all struggle, even spiritual effort, may be something we are actively choosing rather than something happening to us.
The Choice Hidden in Every Struggle
A student describes the difficulty of looking directly at emotional experience during meditation, and the teacher explores how all struggle, even spiritual effort, may be something we are actively choosing rather than something happening to us.
In my experience, all these different things come in to keep me from looking at it directly. Imagining kicks in: "What do I have to do to make this emotion different?" Then there's the story of identity, that something about me is not good enough, and so on. There's also another strategy it uses, which is just to go into unconsciousness. There was dullness during meditation too, and it was worse because the past few days I haven't gotten as much sleep.
One of the ways in which you can get closer to this is very hard to talk about. The wording sometimes, in order to address it, has to be expressed as something that's happening to you, or coming from outside toward you, even if it's from the mind. So it gets expressed as "the mind is doing this," and it's doing this in my experience, and it's out of my control. You experience it as something you're battling with. You're trying to see it more closely, to see it more directly.
I'm pointing to that in the meditation as well, because I'm bringing attention to a part of our experience. But the minute you do that, it becomes objectified as something that has an energy and almost an agency of its own, something you're battling with.
The progressive path and its opposite
That's one way to work with it, because it isolates it as something you can at least look into directly. In this sense, you can approach things progressively: you work on calming the mind, which you can do through practice, and that clears some room and space for you to look at something more subtle, and so on. That's a valid approach.
But there's another aspect that flips all of that upside down. It is to consider, contemplate, and see the possibility (which I would state to be true, though it shouldn't be taken as a belief) that all of that is pointless. What you're actually looking for is already here, even when you're sleepy, even when the mind is doing what is uncomfortable.
That's the hardest thing to talk about, point to, or recognize. Some practice can be given for it to become more and more obvious over time, but the seeing of what is ultimate requires no process, no progress, no time.
Reframing struggle as something chosen
One way I point to this: if I remember correctly, you referred to it as "it," and you think of it as this part of the experience or the mind, the activity that's difficult to see and difficult to stay awake for. Think of it as something you are choosing.
If the mind is active and you're trying to get to a different kind of state, there's this push-pull with the experience. You're trying to get to something that releases you from that naturally. In this part of the experience, what's happening is a sense of "Now I'm actively meditating, I'm actively inquiring, I'm actively trying to recognize something of this spiritual work that others talk about." And in that process, there is an attempt to change the way we relate to our experience.
That's a very valid process. But what I'm ultimately pointing to is that all of that push and pull is actually something we are choosing and creating. It carries an energy of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, two sides of the same thing. By engaging in this dynamic (something is dissatisfying, but then there's a release and it becomes satisfying, and then it's dissatisfying again), it becomes the perfect addiction.
Only a choice is required
To see that requires nothing other than a choice. We can choose to be on a path of meditation and spiritual work that could be infinite, infinitely arriving at nowhere, because it could be infinitely changing something, developing in some way that never actually arrives.
The last thing you were talking about was that the only thing required is just the choice.
Yes. Consider it as levels of depth, or think of it as intimacy. The closer you get to your true nature (which cannot be created or achieved or attained, because it already is), the more everything either flows effortlessly or is seen as chosen.
That's a bit of a paradox. But when there is a struggle with what is, consider that to be part of something you're choosing. Then ask: what is the gain here? What is actually satisfying about this discomfort, about this struggle? Because it has two sides. It's an addictive process.
The nobility trap
Through our subjective experience, there will be a nobility to it, a sense of honor in feeling "I'm doing the right thing." For example, meditating. But we could be doing it in a way that engages an addictive process of satisfaction, dissatisfaction, satisfaction, dissatisfaction, with a sense of infinite progress. It's an infinite progress that is like a curve getting closer and closer to the goal but actually never able to touch it.
Subtle victimhood
Ultimately, what I'm pointing to is the identification with a position that is not of ultimate responsibility. We become victims of our experience in a very subtle way. What I'm pointing to is that we're not. But that isn't something to be believed. We realize we're not victims simply with the choice: to see that anytime there is suffering, it is being chosen.
That's a very dangerous statement, because the mind can use it as a form of masochism. It could feed a part of the mind that says, "Oh, I'm suffering now, but I'm choosing this. That's because I'm..." and then all the self-negative talk follows. But what I'm talking about is that this response itself is part of the same thing. It's being chosen. It's being energized and engaged with actively.
It's not because of our parents. It's not because of any life circumstance. Nothing happening today, nor anything in the past, is the cause. It is right now, actively being energized, and it is completely within our free choice.
Hold it as a "what if"
Everything I'm saying now, which I'm stating as fact or as truth: take it as a "what if." When you're there and it doesn't feel like what I'm saying is true or obvious, don't take it as a truth to battle with. Just consider it as a possibility. What if I'm actually choosing this? Why would I be choosing this? Feel into the experience. Where is there a juicy gain in that suffering, in that tension, in that contraction?
I can tell you that ultimately it's the feeling of a sense of self. But that's just an intellectual statement until it is seen.