The Incessant Motion of the I
El movimiento incesante del yo
A student shares a growing recognition that their constant drive to do and fix may be masking deeper feelings, prompting the teacher to explore the mechanics of the narrative self and its restless pursuit of peace.
The Incessant Motion of the I
A student shares a growing recognition that their constant drive to do and fix may be masking deeper feelings, prompting the teacher to explore the mechanics of the narrative self and its restless pursuit of peace.
What I've been noticing about myself is that I'm starting to see some patterns in my life. There's this constant sense of doing, of needing to do something. I think it's about fixing something, doing something good with something. But I'm starting to realize that maybe it's just masking something: masking a need, masking feelings, trying to transform something that may be coming up for me into something else. A kind of distraction.
That's a really big deal, noticing that. Let me say a few words to give a bit more of a framework so that you can grasp what might be going on, the implications, the motives of that energy, and why it's doing what it's doing.
Seeing the totality of what the mind is doing
The more we see the totality of what the mind is doing, the more we can be free from it. There are many different approaches, but one of them is very traditional: keep seeing, and keep making an effort to push back on what you see. For example, if you see a habit of incessant movement or compulsive thinking, you try, using willpower and determination, to create space, to hold back, to create distance with willful energy. That is useful, but I don't find it useful entirely. It needs another way of addressing it, which is to really understand what's happening. Not just understanding from an intellectual perspective, but understanding in the seeing itself, seeing what it is.
The constructed I
What I was describing in the meditation is the sense of "I." The "I" points to something. We can use the "I" as a way of communicating, but when the "I" is an actual experience of a subject, a known subject, that's the story. It's all of the memory, the character, the line in time: where we came from, where we're going, how we are, what we are. All of that is known in the construction of the "I." This is what's traditionally called the ego, but I'm describing it with different words, because "ego" is a concept, and then we have concepts associated with it, and I don't want to go there. I'd rather see in real time what's happening. It's this constant movement of images, thoughts, and a narrative in time.
As you pointed out, this helps you. And this is not just personal; it's humanity. It helps us contain some energies that are difficult, which I would briefly qualify as fear and pain. You can unpack that as all kinds of sensations, fears, and pains.
The engine of doing
But this energy of the "I" cannot function if we're not constantly energizing it. So we need to go into the modality of time and doing. Where am I going? Where am I coming from? What am I trying to get to? We follow what we experience as desires. It's an anxious drive, an anxious need, which I call limited desires, as distinct from what I refer to as the universal desire.
When desire is coming from the narrative, there is an understanding of what I'm doing and why. It's very rational. Even if it's not entirely rational, emotionally there's a certain logic to it. This can be addressed in psychology, and that can help clarify the mechanics. It's really important to do.
The movie we forget we're watching
But parallel to that work, we need to see the whole thing itself as something we can step back from. When we sit to watch a movie, we go into it and forget we're sitting. In those moments we are completely immersed in the reality of the movie. With our minds, we create this narrative of "I" and get completely immersed, and then we're just functioning according to whatever the directives of that narrative imply. I have to do this, I have to do that, for this reason and that reason, and that's going to get me to this. There's this chasing of a sense that something is finally, at some point, going to release when I get there, that I will arrive at the thing I think I want.
What we're really chasing
Whenever I work with somebody in a guided way and ask them to really inquire, "What are you chasing? What do you really want?", it always comes down to peace. Even if it starts with "I want to make more money," when you keep asking, "And what for? What for the money? What for the relationship? What for this problem solved?", the answer is always: I just want to rest. I just want peace. I want to be out of this incessant motion.
That is possible. It's just not possible within that movie, within that world of the "I" and time. That world is the opposite of what we're looking for.
The trap of strategic stillness
And this doesn't mean we stop doing things, because that's again another strategy of the "I." "Oh, now I'm just going to sit and not do anything." But who's deciding that? What's that going to achieve? It's the same thing: a plan of this "I" that's going to, in the future, get to peace. "If I sit four hours a day..." Some monks do three years, three months, three days in a cave. And there are quite a lot of stories about them coming out feeling great, and then a month later being back to where they were when they started. Nothing changes, because there isn't a true seeing through of this mechanism.
My mind is just blown. I think you just described exactly what my mind is doing. It's trying to plan: "Okay, I need to stop this. I've got to recognize these patterns, stop doing them, do nothing." That's exactly what you're describing.
It might come across as something special, but actually I'm just describing the human mind.
Yes. Just another map.