The House of Cards
El Castillo de Naipes
A student describes a recurring pattern of having a breakthrough in meditation, feeling excited for a day or two, then losing it and feeling discouraged. The teacher addresses the difference between effortful practice and recognizing what is always already here.
The House of Cards
A student describes a recurring pattern of having a breakthrough in meditation, feeling excited for a day or two, then losing it and feeling discouraged. The teacher addresses the difference between effortful practice and recognizing what is always already here.
Sometimes I really get what you're saying, or what other teachers I'm engaged with are saying, and I had a feeling recently of it all coming together during a meditation. I've noticed I have a habit of getting really excited about that for a period of maybe one or two days. Then it turns into a bit of a story, and then I don't sleep well, or there's some relationship drama or some issue, and I just feel discouraged, like I actually don't get it. It feels like a stamina thing. If you're playing a sport and you have a really good ten or twenty minutes of play, but then you're exhausted and you can't maintain that level of exertion and flow consistently. I've been struggling with that, and I wondered if you had any thoughts.
It's very common, not only to think we got something and then have it pass. It might have been, as you said, a story, but even if it's not, something similar can happen.
Layers of illusion
In a sense, this work is always going into the same thing: what's here now, what reality is. And it's like a layer, then another layer, then another layer of ideas, stories, illusions. We can find something that works and then think that's the thing that's going to keep working, that it's going to be permanent. But it only worked at that level, at that layer. And then there's a place where nothing is going to work, because it's a relating with what is, and there is no particular thing that "is." If we're dealing with a habit, we can find a way to work with that habit. But at a deeper level, it's no longer about anything we can do.
Doing versus seeing
There's one side of it that has to do with putting energy, attention, and focus into practice. For people who find that hard to do, it's an appropriate practice. But there's another aspect, which is not doing, or what cannot be done. It has to do with what is. To see what is, you can't do it. It's not a doing; it's just seeing what is. It's something that you don't need any practice or method or technique for. A form of attention is a manipulation of what is, and is, in a sense, a distraction.
We can come to realize something that needs no effort for it to be constantly, permanently known as true. We don't need to reconfirm it. We don't need to find a way to it. We don't need to get back to it, because it's always here.
That's a little bit what you said to me earlier, isn't it? Having a realization about surrender and then suddenly trying to practice surrender.
Exactly.
But then can you explain what you mean when you say, as you said a few weeks ago and again today, that it's not like we're helpless and it's happening to us, that it's our choice not to see reality?
The paradox of choice
It's so difficult to talk about. In language it might seem contradictory or paradoxical, which it is, but in a sense I'm speaking to different levels. The part of us that is identified, believing we are limited: I can speak to that. And when I speak to that, I say, "No. Don't believe that you're a victim, that this is all happening to you." It's a reminder. Something deep in you that you're not aware of is choosing this, and it's not out there to punish you. It's you, freely choosing this experience, this way of relating.
I'm speaking as if there were two of you, but it's just this sense of what we tend to believe we are versus what I know to be, let's say, more real. The part of us that is identified cannot surrender. The part that is identified will fight until the end, will find all of the traps and tricks and rationalizations and loops to stay in the dream.
And that story of saying "I can't do it, it's the habit, something is playing against my own will" is also a story.
The foundation of the illusion
Yes. It reinforces the illusion, because one of the foundations of identification is that we're victims, that things happen to us that we don't want, and that we'll be okay if things were different. The fundamental experience of "there's good in the future and it's not here" is someone played a bad trick on me, and I'm trying to get to a better place. "Reality isn't what I want." That's a story. That's a narrative. It serves the purpose of experiencing limitation.
Because you're here, I more freely speak to the part of you that is awakening, which is the part choosing to no longer be identified. I wouldn't necessarily do so with a person in a different context, but I trust that you're here because that part of you is active.
It feels so powerful now, because the part that says it can do something and the part that says it can do nothing are just the same guy.
Piercing the illusions
You could think of this kind of work, meeting in these groups, listening and speaking, as a piercing of illusions. There's a part of you that's here. There's a contract: you're coming here for illusions to be pierced, and I'm here doing what I can to pierce them. It's all voluntary, consensual. What can happen is I say something, it pierces an illusion, and a part of you recoils, while another part of you feels relief, feels good. Sometimes one side is stronger than the other.
But once an illusion is pierced, there's a tipping point where enough illusion has been pierced that you just can't go back. It's a snowball effect, because there are only a couple of ideas that keep all the illusions standing together. It's like a big house of cards. You take a few things from the bottom and it all comes down.
The core illusions
The illusion is that we are separate. The illusion is that this separate entity can, on its own, exert choice and control. And that it is a victim of reality: things happen to us that we don't like, and it's our mission to change what is into what it could be, to make it better.
All of them are playing in me right now.
Creating from wholeness versus fixing from lack
I know it well. I'm talking to myself in a way. But there's an important distinction here. One thing is: what is, is beautiful, and I have a love for co-creating, for dancing with what is toward what I personally feel called to. That could be a different living situation, a change in something, creating music, working, whatever it is, some kind of generative process. But it's coming from a place where nothing is essentially missing now. From there, there is a movement with reality that's very different from: "Something is essentially wrong right now. Something is essentially missing. It'll only be okay when I get the coffee, when I get the house, when I get the job, when I get the partner, when I get rid of the partner."
I can't name the number of things we think, because it's constant and constantly changing. We have our favorite themes, but it's always the same structure: the problem is this thing that's here now; that is an interpretation imposed on reality; when I change it, it's going to be okay. That's the part we're trying to pierce.
But piercing it doesn't mean there's no more dancing with the imagination of the future. It becomes a creative process, a process coming from loving what is now without any resistance or reactivity, a complete embracing of what is. And from there, using all of our vitality, imagination, creativity, generativity, love, and passion to simply enjoy the experience of being here.
And that requires us to be okay with fear and pain, because it's scary and it hurts at times.