The Bucking Horse and the Cart of Stuff
El caballo desbocado y el carro de cosas
A student describes the intense resistance that arose during a breathing exercise, likening it to a bucking horse in the chest. The conversation moves through coping mechanisms, religious metaphor, and the nature of well-being, then shifts to a second student's question about the gravitational pull of self-images and identification.
The Bucking Horse and the Cart of Stuff
A student describes the intense resistance that arose during a breathing exercise, likening it to a bucking horse in the chest. The conversation moves through coping mechanisms, religious metaphor, and the nature of well-being, then shifts to a second student's question about the gravitational pull of self-images and identification.
I'm used to the recordings, so these live sessions are more potent. There's a feeling of being on the spot, of having to engage. I was having racing thoughts about what I would share with you, even during the breathing exercise. As you were talking about the breath becoming aware of itself, I had this image pop into my mind of a bucking horse. There's a bucking energy in the chest, the whole torso, wanting to escape. As I stayed with it and just kept not running away, it was a really powerful exercise. I also had the thought that I've been controlling or hijacking my breath my whole life. As I listened to you, it was relaxing and going back to its own natural rhythm.
It's a really good practice, and I would confirm: you were probably controlling your breath your whole life. I think we all did that, or do that.
There was just a resistance I couldn't believe. At one point you said "trust," and it just hit me. The fighting of it is so strange. You're pointing to being, to trust, to warmth, and then there's this bucking horse inside. It's so strange. But thank you for calming it. It's amazing to see that as you do trust, it does calm down.
The coping becomes the bigger problem
It's like we've learned mechanisms to cope. And then the coping becomes the bigger problem than what we're coping with, because at some point we are able to deal with what we were originally trying to cope with. Then the coping mechanisms themselves become the thing to work with, the thing to start letting go of.
For me it was alcohol. The focus began to be on alcohol and controlling that and what it might be doing. But I think that's what you're saying: all the focus shifted to that coping mechanism of alcohol and other substances.
Exactly. It's all a form of addiction. Some of us don't have those very explicit coping mechanisms. They might be more thought-based, and in a sense they can be harder to notice because they're not as explicit as a substance. And usually it's a combination.
That makes me think of how, going into the meditation, I had a self-image of myself sitting here. Is that the kind of thing you're talking about?
Not exactly. I'm referring to ways of functioning, ways of thinking about the world: what my mission is, what the point of being here is. A lot of the drive that drives the world is this coping. That's why there's such a mess. But the thing is, for you to see this is a huge celebration, a huge breakthrough. It gives you the opportunity to see where there's a door.
The breath?
Well, all of it. Just notice everything you've described. You start to see what's going on, because we start living walking with crutches, and then we forget we're walking with crutches. At some point we see somebody walking without them, and it's like, "Why can't I do that?" Well, you actually can. But then there's a process, like rehabilitation. Physical therapy. Metaphorically, that's what all of these practices are about.
The glory is already here
I was raised Mormon. There's a scripture that keeps coming to mind about a pre-mortal battle before the earth was created, between Jesus and the devil, over who would save mankind. Jesus said, "I will do it, I will sacrifice myself, and the glory be God's." And Satan said, "No, I will do it, and the glory be mine." That keeps popping into my mind. It's like the glory is already here, but then the ego says, "The glory is mine," hijacking the system.
That's very poignant, because it does have to do with wanting to make it personal. Wanting to make it about me: "I'm the one who found the problem and solved it. I'm the one who is the problem and is out to fix the problem." There's a creating of a problem and a mission to fix it. It's this whole self-involvement. In religions they address that with these really powerful, scary myths, but in a dimension it's true, it's real.
It's also natural. It's part of the evolution of the human psyche. That battle, that struggle, is natural. We evolve into it, through it, and out of it. I'm making a statement of a position. Others might not agree with me, but I think it's a natural and necessary process.
That makes me think of when you talk about the prodigal son. The choosing of the father. I think that might be what you're talking about: why that process is there. There's a seeing and a choosing of the father.
Freedom and its consequences
It requires a responsibility, because it's all about freedom. In a sense I could say that freedom is the highest value. And it's the freedom, within the language of Christianity, to go against God. You're free to do so; it just has consequences. It's not so much that God will punish you. It's more that it will create distress and disharmony, because God would represent reality, what is true. Which is mysterious. What is real and what is true: you cannot put it in a book.
But when we think we know what it is, that represents Satan. It represents the "I" that knows, where it's about me. That creates a constellation of a very small, limited entity that believes and thinks it has a power that originates in itself, separate from God. And that's false. It's simply not real. Operating from that falseness creates distress. To weave it into the Christian narrative, that would be the original sin.
Yes, and it's the default. The fall of man, the repentance, the sacrifice. It's all so beautifully woven into the way you talk about it. It's such a mess. That's where the fear and pain come in. That little entity has caused so much trouble, and then you feel the opportunity to maybe drop it, and it just blocks in your chest and doesn't want to leave. That's how it feels.
We're very attached to that. That's why we end up in these groups: because something in us just wants to stop. And as you refer to the prodigal son, it's just a choice. What happens is that he squanders all of the inheritance, has a pretty rough time, everything goes wrong. Then he goes back home and is welcomed with a party.
If you take that as a metaphor, as a narrative of one way of interpreting this work, this path, it operates on different levels. There's a micro level and a macro level. What you've spoken about today is that micro level. You notice something, and you just want to get home. You want to stop with all of the coping. And it requires a responsibility: you can't have it both ways. You can't indulge in substances as a way to not feel and then avoid the consequences. The responsibility is to learn how to be with what you feel.
Trust in the mystery
When I say "trust," it's trust in the mystery of it. But I can also offer a kind of guarantee: it's a better way. It's not a guarantee about the outcome or how it's going to play out. I can't speak to that. But I'm here to say very emphatically: it's a better way. And then the way itself is a complex, mysterious thing.
Right now I guess it's just a lot of fear and pain. Maybe that is the repentance process. You just have to sit with the shame and embarrassment, or whatever it is, of thinking you knew better than God.
That's part of how it begins. But then you can also start to discover that what you fear is well-being.
That's ridiculous.
When I speak about feeling pain, I don't want it to become a thing, as though that's the end goal. It's not. We stop running so that we can sit through it, so that we can realize it's not the end. It's quite okay when we're able to sit with fear and pain. And then that opens. The door, which I believe is a birthright of being, is well-being. "Well-being" is just a word, of course, but it's something much more than you can imagine, and also simple. It's not a fantastic experience. It's peace. And it's you, so it can't come and go.
We love adventures and journeys, some of us at least.
To the point where it can be so risky, like risking death, messing with your health. And many go that way, it seems.
I know that for myself.
The gravitational pull of self-images
During the meditation just now, I seem to be interested in something. I notice this constant gravitational pull toward certain thoughts, images of myself, my body, my face. Sometimes they're not even my face; it's someone else's face, but they seem to fall in the same category of identification, or whatever you want to call it. I understand the theory. I know you could tell me more about how it starts. But I don't understand it. There's a curiosity, a wanting to really understand the actual mechanics, because it feels pretty constant, day to day. It's like something that limits my fluidity, as if I were going through life carrying a cart filled with unnecessary stuff.
I don't know what the question is exactly. I'm just expressing this. I notice this curiosity and realize I don't really understand the mechanism of what's going on.
And the mechanism you're referring to: is that identification itself, or the images of self?
More the identification. Not necessarily why it started, but why does it continue to happen? Why is the pull so strong?
Two kinds of curiosity
First of all, there's curiosity, which is of different natures. There is a curiosity that is a longing for awakening, for freedom, to be oneself. And then there's a curiosity that often comes in through the back door, which is a wanting to have a mental map of how things are, how they work, how it's going to go. I'm not saying that your curiosity is either of these; it might be a mix of both. But what matters here is that first curiosity.
There's a level at which understanding the mechanism isn't that important, because you're expressing the sense of being in a kind of cage and wanting to drop it. When you say you're walking around with these images and this mechanism, is that something of how you experience it?
More or less. I don't know if I experience it like that every day. It was more of an intuition that I could be more fluid. I think what I'm trying to say is that it's more the first curiosity. I'm tired of the second kind.
You said you're carrying a cart full of stuff, and I think the key might be there, because there's a rejection.
I didn't mean "stuff" as in bad things, just unnecessary things.
But "unnecessary," right? You know it's unnecessary.
I'm not sure.
The assumption that it should be different
I understand that when you said that, you just meant stuff. But then there's an assumption that it should be different, that it's blocking you, making you clumsy.
Yes, it makes things clumsy.
And maybe it's also adding spice.
In the sense that I choose it for that reason?
I can't say why you choose it. But the assumption that it's something that should be different, I think that's creating a subtle rift. You're describing knowing these images, knowing this process, your experience of it. And what's the problem with it? The problem is that you feel if it wasn't there, you would flow more. So there's a strategy: "I need to understand it so that I can do something with it, stop it, let go of this cart with stuff, and then I will be less hindered."
Now I see. That's like the second kind of curiosity you were referring to. So maybe there's both, but there's also an interest in seeing it for what it is.
That's the one. And that interest should not have any desire in it for the identification to go away, or stop, or end.
Right.
If it does, it's the second kind of curiosity.
That's hard to hear.
You could just play with it. It's a part of what is happening. I'm pushing back on the notion that something would be freer if that changed. That's not where freedom is. That's a conditioning. You're intuitively sensing and knowing the freedom, but it's not arrived at by changing something.