The Fist and the Sensation
El puño y la sensación
The teacher reflects on how the experience of effort changes when identity is no longer bound up with contraction, using the metaphor of a clenched fist to illustrate the difference between being tension and simply experiencing it.
The Fist and the Sensation
The teacher reflects on how the experience of effort changes when identity is no longer bound up with contraction, using the metaphor of a clenched fist to illustrate the difference between being tension and simply experiencing it.
It's different from the experience of efforting. In the past, it felt like I was doing a lot of effort. Now there is still an efforting at one level, but at a deeper level, there isn't any. And I don't see how there could ever be again, because there wasn't before either.
The fist you think you are
The way I've described it in the past is this: if I make a fist and I think I am the fist, I'm going to feel like I am tension, like I am in discomfort. But if I relate to the experience of the contraction without believing I am the fist, it's just an interesting sensation. It can actually be quite beautiful. "What a beautiful sensation of contraction." It's like putting your hand in hot water that doesn't burn: intense, vivid, and there's a beauty to the experience.
When identity is at stake
But if I think that's what I am, and if I think that the ending of that sensation is the ending of me, then it's a completely different relationship. Because as soon as the contraction stops, the sensation stops. The point of it is not the contraction as in "there's an effort," but the sensation itself.