The Doorway of What You Resist
La puerta de aquello que resistes
A student describes the powerful bodily sensations that arise in meditation, including itching, twitching, and impulses to avoid, and explores why certain minor discomforts feel more unbearable than intense emotions like rage.
The Doorway of What You Resist
A student describes the powerful bodily sensations that arise in meditation, including itching, twitching, and impulses to avoid, and explores why certain minor discomforts feel more unbearable than intense emotions like rage.
I've been feeling, especially today, that the body is doing the work. Especially if I take a few days off from meditation, even if not, there's all this yawning that happens, and twitching, and the sensations of seeking and resistance are just so powerful. The thoughts are very secondary.
That sounds great, actually. Yawning and twitching is a really good sign that it's happening at a deep, deep body level.
It feels like there's this process that people call "energetics." I don't love the word because of my scientific background, but it's that: a rewiring of whatever's going on.
You don't have to remove any science. What moves through the nervous system is exactly that.
The pointer that reveals resistance
Something you said earlier to another student really struck me: "What if you're going to feel this for the rest of time?" That is such a provocative pointer for me. If this never stops, then asking that question reveals whatever resistance is beneath it. It's like, "Oh, that would be terrible because..." and then the thing underneath becomes visible.
Exactly. And then you see precisely what you don't want to relate with.
Right. And it's a feeling. It's also remarkable to me that it's usually not a thought; it's usually driven from here, from the body. And what's remarkable is what I can feel and what I can't. High levels of anger I can be present for, but I'll get these little itches and they're so annoying I can't stand them. I need to scratch the itch. Well, why is that? You can feel complete rage for minutes upon minutes, but this itch needs to be scratched right now?
Tamed and untamed emotion
Exactly that. In our personality, our psychology, we become very able to move into what you can call tamed emotion: what you've learned to, in a sense, control. It's a way to move emotional energy in a way that you are comfortable with. And then there are the other kinds, where you are not comfortable. That's where the learning is: how to move into those. The itching is going to arouse something that belongs to the untamed. It's the surface of it, obviously.
What I always highlight as the core are two words: fear and pain. Those are the ones that, as we go deeper, become the untamed. It's a deeper kind of pain, a deeper kind of fear. But we can journey through all of it. Shame, anxiety, guilt, doubt.
Doubt. I hate doubt. I've got a lot of doubt. And what others are describing, being present for these things, is very exhausting for me.
And what is exhausting is the level of energy we put into control.
Yeah, fighting it. This discussion is actually hard, which is fine.
Of course. And ask yourself, because you have an experience that's going to be easy to encounter regularly (the itching): what is the emotion that the itching arouses? Not as an intellectual process. Just when you're sitting and experiencing it and you need to scratch it, look at the texture, the energy of that which you needed to stop. What is it that has that kind of unbearableness? See if you can touch that and sit with that.
The impulse beneath the itch
I can tell you that. I've done this. When I have extreme forms of rage, the image that used to come to me is wanting to pull down a bookshelf. I don't actually do that, but the impulse is vivid. And what I've learned from paying attention to that, and to other things like procrastination, is that there's an impulse in the body to do a physical thing, to turn toward something else. In my mind, I think that should be reducible to more fundamental sensations. I feel like it's tension, but I'm not even sure about that. Oftentimes with the itch, there's another kind of impulse: an impulse to avoid. It's very bodily. I can't really say more than that. I just try to pay attention to it. I don't like that feeling.
As a suggestion, see if there's any form of fear.
I think there's definitely fear of...
Don't look at "fear of what." That's going to send you into thinking about it and understanding it. Go into the sensation. Not now, just take it as an experiment. At most, just a label: what if it's some form of fear? As we become intimate with it, it has less narrative or story. It becomes more and more pure sensation.
I see that. And I know you say not now, but I see it right now. This whole meditation, it's been there. Like a terror.
Resistance as doorway
Yes. And one more thing to take with you: consider that what you're resisting is the doorway for you now.
I think I missed a word. The doorway?
Consider that what you're resisting is a doorway, and that everything else is a way to stay stuck, to stay in the known.
That's a tough assignment.
I'm just saying: consider what if what I'm saying is accurate.
I will. Sounds like a good inquiry.