The Pain of Letting In
El dolor de dejar entrar
A student describes the intense, almost unbearable feeling that arises when contemplating the nondual nature of experience, and the teacher explores how resistance to love creates both pain and the sense of a separate self.
The Pain of Letting In
A student describes the intense, almost unbearable feeling that arises when contemplating the nondual nature of experience, and the teacher explores how resistance to love creates both pain and the sense of a separate self.
I can see through the camera that my wife is glowing. I feel like I'm being skinned alive. I've been thinking about something I read where the author describes how there's no subject and object, and says something like, "The world is not given to you twice." I get this. I'm looking at that plant over there, and there can be an experience of the plant being "over there," but then there's also a subtle sense of my internal plant.
Yes, but that's a reflection in thought. What appears in your thought is not the thing itself.
I know. And when I contemplate something like that, or when you said earlier to someone that the rock is alive, it's like, if I actually let myself feel everything I'm feeling all the time, that statement makes me want to weep. And it's not a weeping of relief. I don't know why, but the experience is one of pain, and it's so strong. Yet I also can't help contemplating things like that, even though I suspect there will be a backlash.
The hot tub
In my experience, that pain is like getting into a hot tub. At first, if it's too fast and too hot, it hurts, so you go slowly. At a certain point, that same heat feels delicious.
I don't know. It's been about a year so far.
Because it's a deeper process. I used the metaphor of heat, but really it's love.
That's what I was wondering. It's like an interpretation, but I can see that it could be love. What I can't see is what I'm interpreting it as that causes the pain.
Resistance as the source of pain
There's a resisting of it that causes the pain.
Okay. Because otherwise it erases me.
Yes. The resisting is what creates the sense of an "I" that I can know. And through that perspective, love is known as pain.
I also feel like, and I know this sounds irrational, but I feel like I have to do what it wants. And what it wants is demanding. I mean, you're going to have to pay all the bills.
Yes, but also make sure it is what you want. They could be different. Whatever it is that wants should also be known as, "That's what I want."
What else could it be? You mean just to know that it's not other than me?
Yes, but also to check that it's not deeply what you don't want, while there's an "it" that wants something.
I don't think it's really like that. It's more like: can I really trust that if I do what I want, everything will be okay? And also, what I want will take effort.
Effort is all included. Stress, effort, pain. I'm not excluding any of that. Going to war is very much a possibility and a universal desire. I'm not saying it always is or should be, but it's not excluded.
Anyway, I mostly just wanted to share a bit because I'm really quiet in the group. Thank you.
Trusting that it will be okay
Let me pick up on something. You said you just want to know that everything's going to be okay, or you want to trust that it is. I think that's how we can discover the deeper sense of okayness or well-being. It could happen that we go in a direction where the outcome is not what we planned for, and then we come out the other side and realize, "I thought that was going to kill me, and it didn't."
Question (second student): I always have the urge to share, but there's fear and resistance. Something you just said caught my interest: that the resistance creates the sense of an "I" that I can know. Does that sound right?
Right.
A lot of my experience is resistance: at work, at home, with kids, my health, the challenges with my wife. I'm wondering how much of that is simply there to create the sense of an "I," like you said, versus being conditioned patterns. Because I experience so much resistance.
Identification and turbulence
It's two sides of the same coin. There's the experience of "I" and the sense that I know what I am. There's always a knowing that I am, and that knowing is unconditioned. It's always so. Then we interpret it. We give it a form, a name, a beginning and end. That interpreted knowing of what I am is what I'm referring to. That's what we call identification.
When identification happens, automatically, as the other side of that coin, there is the experience of resistance. It's both at the same time. It's the same thing. Imagine water flowing. You put your hand in, and the hand says, "Here I am." What that does is create turbulence, which I can call "I," but it's also creating resistance. That resistance is what I call "I." It's the flavor of identification, the feeling tone.
But if you take the hand out, that "I" you thought you were is no more. What can happen then is the realization: I'm the river, metaphorically.
The forecast of dying
Because we are attached to that turbulence, the ending of it is going to be preceded by a forecast. As life moves us in that direction, the forecast is: "I'm dying." The body and the mind are going to react and activate as if the body is actually dying. I think it's very unlikely that this doesn't happen. Pretty generally, you could expect a physical reaction: heart racing, fear.
It could happen that there's a glimpse where that limited "I" disappears and there's bliss. But then terror could come, because there's that sense of simply disappearing.
Exactly. It's so dumb.