The Mystery That Was Always Here
El Misterio Que Siempre Estuvo Aquí
A student asks how to maintain awareness of a quiet, spacious presence during busy times. The teacher explores how thought obscures what is always already present, the dark nights of the spiritual path, and the discovery of a satisfaction that precedes all experience.
The Mystery That Was Always Here
A student asks how to maintain awareness of a quiet, spacious presence during busy times. The teacher explores how thought obscures what is always already present, the dark nights of the spiritual path, and the discovery of a satisfaction that precedes all experience.
Someone mentioned the idea of keeping awareness of this quiet place during busy times, and you said it's something that's always there. Can you say more about that?
I understand the effort of the mind trying to grab onto that, to make it an object: "I felt it when the mind was quiet, and now I need to feel it every moment." But there is something that seems to happen at some point where it simply becomes obvious all the time. Before that, it isn't obvious. We overlook it. We look for it in the wrong place. We look for it in thought.
That's why I've often spoken about how we don't realize how much of what we are paying attention to is thought. We think we're paying attention to reality, but it's just more subtle forms of thought. It does help to clarify that more and more, and that is a progressive exercise.
The mind we never noticed
Most people who begin to meditate will say, "My mind just goes really crazy when I sit. It doesn't stop." The obvious reality is: no, it's always doing that. You're just sitting now to look at it for the first time. When we're busy in movement, we don't realize the mind is busy. When we get still, it becomes more obvious. So for the beginner meditator, the experience is, "Wow, that's my mind, busy all the time." That is the first surface seeing of how busy the mind is. A lot of people would actually argue that they're not thinking, because they don't recognize certain activity as thought. There's a big learning needed there.
But even once we've meditated for many years, we often still think that just the inner dialogue is the thinking, or just the inner dialogue along with images about the future. A really simple, powerful way to see what thought actually is: What can you tell me about right now without using memory?
Should I answer now?
Try.
Well, nothing. Because words are also based in memory. Even whatever I say is just a concept. It's a projection. I'm drawing from the past to understand what this is.
Are we on a planet? What is a planet? How do you know what that is? Are we people? There's a thing here. What is that? If you were dropped into this reality right now without memory, what would you be experiencing?
The coolest acid trip.
You would be experiencing exactly what you're experiencing right now, minus the interpretation: the knowing of what everything is, where it's coming from, where it's going, what you are, what you're doing, and why. All of that is thought.
Interpretation we mistake for reality
I'm not saying all of that is stupid and should be thrown out the window. It's practical when it's practical, and that's the big caveat. A lot of it is not practical. A lot of it was useful when we were young because we needed to cope, and then we're still interpreting reality based on what was useful decades ago. The bigger problem is that we don't realize we're interpreting reality. We think that interpretation is what is. And so what we're constantly trying to do is keep this interpretation steady, stable, and running.
Even if you just try, as often as you can, to ask yourself, "What is this right now if I don't use memory? What am I experiencing?" That could open up a little window of mystery. From there, relate to what is, and let memory be a very distant informant that you occasionally consult, one who is constantly telling you what this is and what to do. You simply say, "I will only consult you when it's really necessary."
The raw aliveness beneath interpretation
Life is a magical mystery tour. I remember the first time I had a big shift into presence. I was touching my finger like this for about twenty minutes, asking, "What is this?" It was as if I was touching something for the first time. It was fascinating, strange, and mysterious. It was literally as if I was on psychedelics, and I had never tried psychedelics. When I later tried them, I thought, "Oh yes, but the other thing is better." Presence is far better than psychedelics.
It's really that kind of mystery. Anything could be that: just the texture of a sheet. The mystery of it, the raw aliveness of experience, is so much more real than the interpretation. The interpretation becomes so dry and boring that it's only accessed when it's practically useful.
Chasing conditions for what is already here
When we have that taste, it often gets attached to particular experiences. For me, it used to be swimming in a tropical ocean. When I wasn't near one, I missed it. Or playing the piano. That was an important pursuit for a while, until eventually, being in Canada far from a tropical ocean, there was no difference. The same magical mystery of experience was present everywhere.
At first, even if I had understood or been told or read that what I tasted in the tropical ocean or in music-making was not dependent on those conditions, I still couldn't see it. It was so attached to those experiences that I couldn't see the possibility of it being non-dependent. That's a belief. I had a really stubborn, deep, powerful belief that what I would taste once in a while was not present now, and would only be available when certain conditions were met. And then I was chasing those conditions.
This is absolutely false, completely, one hundred percent of the time.
Which doesn't mean I stopped living with a creative sense of co-creating the best experience possible. I say "co-creating" because there isn't really a personal, individual aspect to it. It's like a craft, a dance, because it's fun and beautiful and an adventure. But nothing is missing anymore, and it never was. That was the most shocking part: I was in disbelief to see that the most deeply satisfying thing had always been present. It was always right here, not even "in front of me."
The belief that blocks it
What blocks the obviousness of this is a belief that certain things give it, certain activities, certain objects. I think the first belief is: "It's not here. It's not now." And then there's a belief about where it is. Often, if you shoot down the belief that it's a particular experience, one can become nihilistic or depressed, because the belief that "it's not here" hasn't been challenged.
This happens in a lot of contemporary teachings today, where there's a pointing to seeking as the problem: "The problem is that you're seeking for something." I'm careful not to say that, because the problem is that you're seeking in the wrong place. The search itself is good and worth it.
Isn't part of the confusion also the belief that it's a feeling or an experience? Because you keep looking there. When you're feeling bad, having pain or whatever, you think it can't be here because you're feeling bad. But you're only looking at the level of experience or feelings.
Exactly. I thought it had to do with taming emotions, taming thoughts, developing the emotional experience. It was completely mind-blowing and shocking to realize that it has nothing to do with what emotions or thoughts are happening.
That's why it's looking in the wrong place. First of all, it's looking in time, in the future. That's the first error. Then it's looking in experiences, relationships, or situations one can achieve through money or other means. Some people experience it with sex, some with psychedelics, and that becomes the way to it. Or even meditation. I realized that for me, meditation had become addictive. It had been useful and practical and had served its purpose, but I was using meditation to create a state and to change unpleasant states into pleasant ones. I thought I just needed to keep doing that more often until I finally got there. That's addiction.
The dark night of the senses
The dark night of the senses is when that stops working. You realize it's not in the meditation, not in the tropical ocean, not in any experience or state you can get to. But you haven't yet realized where it is, who it is, what it is. That attachment to experiences has to fall first.
When the dark night of the senses approaches, there is a kind of grayness. But it's not nihilistic and it's not depressive, because those are also states we were creating as a way of defending. We were creating a state of depression, creating a state of nihilism as a way to mitigate and control experiences. When even depression, even nihilism, is no longer appealing, and the positive states we can fabricate are no longer appealing: that's the dark night of the senses. For me, personally, it lasted several years.
The dark night of the soul
The dark night of the soul is much harder, but it is also a much bigger breakthrough. It is basically seeing that what I thought I was isn't there at all and never was. The first glimpse I had of that lasted about four or five seconds. I was in terror, and I was looking at what was terrifying, and I realized it was my own thinking. I saw something in the structure of my mind: a self-creating, fear-mongering, deeply anxious form of thinking. For much of my life it was calm, but whenever things got a little tricky, it would erupt. I just saw the nature of obsessive, fear-based thinking.
Then it was as if those stories of seeing your whole life flash before you in a car crash became literal. Completely unintentional, I saw from when I was a very young child, in about ten seconds, all of my life. I saw the narrative. This narrative of what I am had been there from the beginning: nonstop, uninterrupted thinking. "I am this, I am that." The whole narrative flashed and then disappeared.
I was in my office working. I looked around and thought, "Wow. I'm gone. All of what I thought I was is gone." Then it started coming back. But after that, I had seen that it wasn't real. It was still active, though. Looking back, I can see the progression of how things shifted. It was basically a matter of learning how to not operate from that narrative. The dark night of the soul was when it was completely, thoroughly blown out.
The collapse of separation
It had to do with God as well. I was never religious, but through this work, I started having experiences that became, for me, "That's what they speak of when they speak of God." But it was always a presence experienced as "out there." Then, in that night (which actually was in the night), that presence became very palpable, very intense, and started approaching me. I was very ashamed. I ended up on my knees, crying in shame. And then that which was looking at me, that which I was ashamed to be seen by, I saw that it was my own self.
Then the looking and the being seen stopped. It was as if they came so close together that there was no longer a "looking" and a "being looked at," no "experiencing" and "being experienced." It went from absolute terror to bliss in an instant. It was the dissolution of what I thought I was, and it's hard to explain how total it was, how much deeper than I had imagined, how false what I thought I was had been.
I know this is not personal, not just about me. It's the reality of everything, the nature of the human mind. One beautiful way it has been described: that which is seeing and hearing in all of us right now is the same one consciousness, the same reality. Whenever you taste that, whether because of someone's words, or presence, or a book, or a certain situation, know that it's you. You are touching something in yourself. It's not being given from the outside.
I was going to add that we're also choosing that.
Yes. We choose that, and we choose to ignore it as well.
Why we turn away
Considering that we are choosing not to see this can give you the curiosity to ask why, and to see what we gain from the refusal. When I say "let's ask ourselves why we choose that," I'm not saying we should focus on continuing to choose it. I'm saying we should see the motivation, so that we can even change our mind. If we don't see the reason we choose something that brings us suffering, it is much harder to choose something different.
So if we often choose something that connects us to the truth, but we don't investigate those times when we're not choosing it, and why, is it possible that we fall back asleep?
Yes. What matters is having an internal honesty with ourselves, not telling ourselves stories about how we feel. I call it internal integrity. If I pretend I'm having a great time while ignoring that I'm chronically angry, depressed, or sad, that doesn't serve anything. So first, that honesty. And then seeing: one thing is pain (if there is pain, there is pain, that's not the issue), but where is there suffering? That is the doorway to seeing what we are choosing, what we are believing, because that is what creates the suffering.
The best way to work with this is to be honest with ourselves about what truly and deeply costs us, and to talk about it with someone who can mirror it back. If you ask yourself, "What is missing right now?" for some of us the sensation that something is missing is very intense and constant (or was), and for others it is more subtle, coming and going. As long as we are genuinely well and enjoying ourselves, there isn't much to do. That's wonderful, as long as it isn't a story we're telling ourselves. That's where internal integrity matters.
What is always here
The aim of all this is to recognize, to discover, that there is something present (which is not really a "something") that is always here now. It brings a permanent, constant satisfaction at a level so profound it is incomprehensible, and nothing interests us more. It is like a nectar so sweet that whatever comes tomorrow is a bonus. There's no rush. And that's also why when unpleasant, painful, or frightening things come, they don't affect it. It is prior to experience, good or bad.
I offer all of this as words describing something. But you can take it as a "what if." If this is so, what would change? What would you do differently? What would you look at in another way? How would you relate to your experience? What would you stop doing? What would you do more? What would you risk?