The Sense That Something Is Wrong
La sensación de que algo está mal
A student raises the persistent feeling that something is fundamentally wrong, and the conversation expands into the difference between pain and suffering, the role of identity, and what it means to take risks in relationships and life.
The Sense That Something Is Wrong
A student raises the persistent feeling that something is fundamentally wrong, and the conversation expands into the difference between pain and suffering, the role of identity, and what it means to take risks in relationships and life.
I think what I was noticing in the meditation is that I can't let go of the belief that something's wrong. With me, I don't know. The logic seems right. If I feel restless almost all the time, or uncomfortable, why wouldn't I believe that something's wrong? I know you say "fundamentally wrong," and maybe that's the point.
You mean that being restless is evidence that something's wrong?
Yeah, logically it seems right.
Maybe the belief that something is wrong is what's making you restless.
Well, then that's what's wrong.
Belief as a free choice
No, because it ends when you realize it's a choice, and that's freedom.
You have to think of it as hypothetical. Not as a belief in what I'm saying, but trusting what I'm saying enough to question your understanding or your belief, without turning what I'm saying into another narrative or another belief.
What you can look at is: why would you be interested in the mechanism, the experience of something being fundamentally wrong with you? I challenge the position that not having a pleasant experience is evidence that something is wrong. I'm proposing that it is a choice.
Your mind is likely going to say, "Well, because I'm choosing that, then it's evidence that something is wrong. Why would I choose something uncomfortable?" You can turn that into yet another version of "something is wrong with me, that I am choosing suffering." But I'm telling you, that's where it stops, because it's a free choice. Trust what I'm saying enough to question it.
The path through that would be asking, "Why do I want this?" instead of taking the position that there's something wrong, that you are a victim of this wrongness. By "victim," I mean it's happening to you. It was given to you that way. You were created in a way where you have something essentially wrong. That is a position of being a victim.
Two options
The other option is that you are choosing it. Two options: either it's happening to you by a power greater than you, against which you are powerless, or you are the creator of it.
I'm not telling you to believe me. I'm telling you to explore that possibility. You have to discover it on your own. One way to explore it is to look in your experience very deeply, very intimately. Why would you be choosing this? Why would you choose it freely? What is the choosing gaining, exactly, by believing that something is wrong?
The uncomfortable experience is the same thing. Even if the experience is discomfort, frustration, pain, physical pain, grief because of the death of a loved one, there are these two options. It has to do with how you relate. It could be an external experience, something happening in life, or it could be internal sensations, emotions, thoughts. We can even have a thought and then have a problem because we had that thought. "If I think of a pink elephant, something's wrong with me," and then all we do is think of a pink elephant, depending on what we're choosing to have a problem with in the moment.
Creativity versus repetition
But I'm not saying nothing is a problem. I'm saying that's the difference between creativity and repetition. What is happening right now, I work with it completely and fully. I can't even say "accept it," because it simply is what is. And then I dance with reality, or I choose to have a problem with it: a kind of problem where something is fundamentally or essentially not okay with what is. That is no longer a creative process. That's the process of repetition. You will have the same experience, the same kinds of experiences, because it's a form of relating that is being chosen.
So it's either powerlessness or responsibility.
Thanks.
My pleasure. I hope it helps.
I'm really interested in this: my hand, not my hand's business. I've been taking a meditation course that ended a couple of days ago called "Thirty-Two Parts of the Body." It's a classic Buddhist meditation that isn't tremendously well known. Basically, the way people knew about the body back then was through examining cadavers, so the meditation divides the body into parts: head hair, body hair, nails, teeth, skin, and then it goes into internal organs and fluids. There are different ways of practicing with that. One way is meditating on other people's bodies, recognizing that other people also have all of these body parts. It's a way to tap into the similarity between us. I'm interested in the relationship between this sort of physical "I" and what I've perceived you to be pointing to today and in previous meditations: the "I" being an illusion, or an identification, or a story.
The map and the hand
The "I" being an illusion has to do with when we think we know what "I" is.
Take the hand, for example. Obviously, we know a lot about the hand from anatomy, biology, physics. But experientially, when we relate to our hand, we carry much more knowing of it than is real. We know all of this from biology, anatomy, and physics, but we forget that all of that is a map. It consists of ways to explain scientifically and functionally. We live our day relating to the map of the hand, relating to the conceptual, mental experience of the hand. That can be useful and practical, but there are, in a sense, two worlds of the hand: the direct experience of the hand and the experience of the hand through knowledge, memory, and thought.
The experience of the hand through thought is useful and practical at times. But when we assume that the map is the reality of the hand, we forget the actual experience of the hand.
This is only a metaphor, a way to explore something, an easy experiment of just observing the sensation of the hand. But it transfers: to a relationship with a person, to the rest of the body, to life, and even to the sense of "I." That last one is the more challenging one to observe.
The experience of "I" versus the belief of "I"
There is an experience of being, and then there is the belief of what "I" is, what I am. When I say that the "I" is illusory, I mean those beliefs. When you refer to "I" in your experience and you think you know what you are, you're addressing and referring to beliefs. The true, direct experience of "I" is mysterious. And this is not a difficult thing to notice.
This connects to what I was talking about earlier. When we relate to our current experience and have a problem with it, it's because we chose to "know" what I am. And by "problem," I have to be specific. If there are issues in life, things that are actual right now and need to be addressed, I'm not talking about that kind of problem. I'm talking about a very deep sense that something is wrong, that something is missing.
Dukkha
For people who have done enough insight work, they will realize this sense is almost permanently there: the underlying sense that something's wrong. In Buddhism, since you're doing some Buddhist practices, it's called dukkha. That's how they refer to this. It's a fundamental sense of dissatisfaction. It's translated as "suffering," but in Sanskrit you can describe it more precisely as a sense that something's just not right, something's not okay, and it's in me, it's in life. There's always something that's fundamentally not okay. That's the reason we meditate.
This works the same way as with the hand. When I know what my hand is and I relate to the mental knowing of the hand, I forget the hand. When I know what I am, I lose touch with being.
It's a difficult situation both ways, because there's a satisfaction in knowing what I am. But in that knowing, the cost is dukkha, a dissatisfaction, because I'm losing touch with something that is more essentially what I am. And because of that dissatisfaction, we try to get close to what I truly am. But in getting close, I have to let go of what I think and believe I am, and we don't want to do that either. We want both. This is the back-and-forth we experience in this work.
So it will be experienced as loss, even as death. It's easier to explore this in relating to a hand, because you graduate from that exploration to something more challenging. The real game is the knowing of what I am. When you say "I," what is it referring to?
Mystery.
Yes, but you could also answer that because you learned it's the right answer, and then it's still knowing that you are mystery. In that case, it's still a map.
It is tricky.
When you truly know it, you will know, because there is no more dukkha. But you can also suppress and repress that experience. You can pretend that everything's okay when it's not.
I had a thought. We have our hand, the physical matter. There's the experience of our hand, which has to do with the rest of our body and cognition. And there's the idea of our hand. If I fall and break a finger, on some level it's common to say there's something wrong. But on some level, that's also a map, a perception. Just because you hurt your finger doesn't mean there's something wrong per se.
Pain versus suffering
That's the distinction I'm trying to make. Clearly there is something wrong if you break your finger, so you do what you need to do. That's functional. It has to do with proper use of thinking, proper use of maps. But it doesn't mean that something is fundamentally wrong with life, with reality.
There will be physical pain. The distinction is that there will be physical pain and possibly some emotionality, but not suffering. Emotional pain as well; that's fine, that's natural. But there is something that gets added, and you don't need to break a finger in order to add it. You could be sitting, everything okay in life, and still be in the experience of dukkha.
When you say "the proper use of maps," you basically mean acknowledging the pain that is inherent in life (you might break a finger, you might experience the death of a loved one) but orienting your mind so that you're not adding dukkha?
That's one aspect, because when we add this narrative that something is deeply, fundamentally not okay, the way we think, the way we use the map, becomes dysfunctional. One way of defining "dysfunctional" is neuroticism, and a definition of neuroticism is not seeing reality. In Buddhism, what did the Buddha say about how to know if something is the right thing? Only if it works, if it's functional, if it's practical. If it's adding unnecessary suffering, it's impractical. If it's being unkind to somebody else, it's impractical.
The projection that "I will be okay"
Another way in which we experience dukkha is the sense that I will be okay: something now is not okay, but it will be okay when something happens or I get somewhere. The solution is always projected elsewhere.
But in some cases, like a broken finger, the healing really is in the future.
That's the distinction again. The healing of the finger is in the future. That's not dukkha. But if I am not okay until my hand heals, that's dukkha. If something is not okay in life right now until my hand heals, that is dukkha. It's your relationship to it.
It's hard to describe and pinpoint, but it's a sense that something is fundamentally wrong or not okay, whether with me or with life. The experience of now: something is missing. And what's missing, if I put it in words (you cannot truly put it in words), is mystery. What's in the way is knowing, beliefs.
This is becoming a very general conversation, which makes it hard to clarify because it's abstract. You used the example of an injury to the hand, but if you spoke about what your actual experience is now, we could clarify. Or what's normally your experience, maybe not now but in two hours or yesterday, what's recurring. You don't have to. It's just an invitation.
I really like the distinction between dukkha and pain because they're very different. I think sometimes it's easy for spiritual narratives to suggest, or it can be easy to interpret them as saying, that you can rise above anything and it's all in your head. But the reality is, breaking your finger hurts. We're all going to die. And there's going to be a lot of pain along the way.
I guess that is the first noble truth. I think it's a pretty accurate map. It's still a map. Who knows, maybe one of us doesn't die.
Trauma and identity
What you're talking about is true even with really intense suffering, like trauma, like terrible things happening to you. It's really the same process of how you create an identity.
Can you say more?
If something really undesirable happened to me when I was a child, children can't really handle those feelings. So what we do over time is construct a narrative: it happened to me, it was terrible, this person is responsible for it. What we really need to do is say, "I wanted something different to happen." For instance, "I wanted my father to care for me more and protect me more." But because that would mean having to feel all my feelings about the fact that he didn't, what I've done instead is tell myself that what he did threatened my identity, threatened how I want to see myself: as somebody who matters, somebody who's valuable. So it still comes back to the "I," whether it's about "I'm a musician" or something that really, really was painful.
And you might see, in working with people with trauma, that there's a really strong identity in being the victim of that. A big part of the process is to get into that, but also get past it.
Yes, because the identity is created in equal and opposite proportion to how much you can handle feeling what you felt. If you hurt your finger and it's just a small identity issue (you don't like having to feel bad feelings), it won't be as hard as if you carry some secret belief like "I am Superman, I never get hurt, I am invulnerable." That kind of identity will create more suffering. Or the one you're talking about: "I don't want to die."
I actually remember hurting my finger when I was younger. I broke a finger and it was very painful. I went to put it under ice and felt terror. It was no longer just pain; it was terror. It was the noticing that the body will end. I was putting ice on a sprained or broken finger in terror.
I remember when I was a kid, I was trying to cut through a wax candle, a pretty thick one. The knife slipped and I cut through a significant chunk of my finger. It was gushing out, and I remember just staring at it. I had enough sense to go to the bathroom and run it under water, but I was shocked at the fact that that could happen. I didn't really feel upset or alarmed. I remember feeling shock, surprise, almost curiosity, like, "Wow, I didn't know this could happen." At some point, a few moments later, I felt an ache, the pain of it, maybe when the shock subsided. But I don't think I constructed a story around it. I mostly felt curious and surprised. I can't say I've had that level of equanimity with, for example, personal relationships. But I get the sense that's what you're pointing to in terms of deeper suffering and ultimately...
What is actually present now?
Not necessarily traumas. What I'm pointing to is: what in your experience today, yesterday, the day before, if anything, is there a sense of something missing? And what is it about? We've talked about your situation with work, and you just mentioned relationships. I'm wondering where there is something more personal, more intimate that you could be sharing or asking about. It might feel more vulnerable. It might feel more risky.
I think one of my... it's funny, because I don't particularly feel like something's really missing or really wrong in this moment. There have been moments in my life where I have. But what I do feel is a fear around whether the relationship I'm in is the right one, and whether the career path I'm imagining and slowly putting together is the right one. When I really sit with that from a place of okayness and acceptance, I think, "It's here now and it's working and this is it. It's right now. And if that changes, it'll become apparent, and that's okay."
I also noticed something. My partner and I yesterday had planned to do some relationship processing that was sort of past due from a week or two ago. But then neither of us really felt those issues present, and we were wondering whether we should talk about it or not. I became aware that unless something really feels present and needs to be addressed in the moment, it can turn into what you're describing, where you're just indulging a sense that there's something wrong. In choosing to discuss it, you might reify it. What we ended up doing was just having a good night, dancing, having fun. When you decide things are actually good and you're having fun, that becomes self-fulfilling. So it was interesting to get together expecting heavy emotional work and realize there was nothing wrong. We didn't need to do that in that moment.
I've been playing with that, playing with my perception of whether there's something wrong in this relationship or whether I'm just bracing myself because of stories I have. I think part of the art of being in relationship is discerning what is dukkha and what is just the normal difficulty and pain of relating.
To me, I'm hearing that there isn't much. Everything's good.
It is good. Part of my ambivalence comes from it not being a total Disney fairytale, not all high dopamine and new-relationship energy.
Are you fully satisfied?
Satisfaction and fear of commitment
This is the thing. I'm sinking into this realization that, yes, mostly. Furthermore, our capacity to build on what is here feels very strong, in contrast with some other relationships I've had. The example from last night is realizing we have a choice, discussing that, and then choosing the thing that feels good. There's a lot of creative potential in that. It feels like, if our partnership were an architecture firm, we have a lot of tools at our disposal and we can create and plan and imagine beautiful things.
There's something also kind of scary about that. When something feels functional and when you have access to that choice you were talking about earlier, I don't know. I think I have a fear around things actually working out, because then it means commitment to that decision. And sometimes, like now, I wonder: why is that scary? It seems actually kind of great. I guess the fear is that in making this choice, I'm passing up something more perfect that doesn't actually exist, that isn't actually available to me. That's the option I'm weighing against.
Take bigger risks
So that's anxiety. Last time we spoke a lot about risk-taking. I would suggest that for you, the way forward is to take more risks, take bigger risks. You will go deeper into your experience and discover more. There will be deeper movement, deeper fear, deeper love, deeper challenges. And it doesn't mean you will lose that experience you're describing, of realizing things are okay.
When we develop, we often go through challenges and then arrive at a stability. But then something is going to break this stability, and it's a good thing. We get in touch with deeper energies, deeper desire, and then move our life into a vaster space, a vaster unknown. That's going to bring up something far more palpable, like fear or challenges. Right now it seems like you've gone through some challenges and you're stabilizing, and you're moving into and planning a bigger movement with your work. So I say, follow your deepest desires. Take big risks. Trust your heart.
What I hear you saying is essentially: if you trust your heart, take risks, open to the mystery as a kind of policy throughout your life, that will give way to deepening and expansion of experience, which will surface a new set of challenges, fears, anxieties, and growth. At each stage you just work with those, practice with them, and the cycle repeats. You might have periods of stabilization, you might have periods of intense challenge, but over the course of life you keep growing. And you might just touch something deep. You might not, but you might, where you have a sense of, "Oh, this is what I've been having a hard time getting in touch with."
Whatever it is, I don't think I can describe it to you. I'm just saying you might, in that process, come in touch with something.
Interesting. Thank you for the dialogue.
You're very welcome. I hope it helps.