The Voice in the Head and the Art of Not Knowing
La voz en la cabeza y el arte de no saber
A student asks how to distinguish genuine desire from habitual mental chatter, leading to an exploration of resistance, the nature of thought, and why not having an answer can itself be the right direction.
The Voice in the Head and the Art of Not Knowing
A student asks how to distinguish genuine desire from habitual mental chatter, leading to an exploration of resistance, the nature of thought, and why not having an answer can itself be the right direction.
There is a voice that has no sound whatsoever, but it keeps running all the time, constantly. Is that the same as listening to the silence? It feels similar: no sound, but there is an inner voice that keeps saying something, suggesting, reflecting, being triggered by events. It keeps going on and on. I have the awareness to draw my attention away from this voice or thought in the background and try to focus on whatever I'm doing, or to shift my attention to the sensations in the body. It has no sound, but it is like telling stories in the background. And it can be a resistance. If I make a mistake, it will keep on and on saying, "Oh, what a failure," and things like that. I was just wondering if that is the same as what you were saying about listening to resistance and listening to desire.
I'm not sure I understand you fully. You're trying to understand the difference between listening to a desire that comes from resistance and a desire that is deeper, right?
I cannot tell what is the superficial, egoic desire or what is the true desire. I don't really know what I want at this point. Because of this nature of thought, I am aware that whatever thought comes up, any suggestion, any logic, it is not sound. It is always making things up. It is totally not true, not something I would follow. So how do I then listen to desire and find out what I really want, when all thoughts are just empty? They come and go. I don't know how to listen to resistance because resistance is also a thought. It's all stories in the head.
Resistance is not just thought
Resistance is not exactly just thought. It is believing certain thoughts. The difference is not about thoughts themselves, because you could have a thought that is one hundred percent aligned with what you deeply want right now. For example, coffee. To make it simple. I'm not talking about huge choices. It could be just coffee.
The thought "I want coffee" could be perfectly aligned. You could be in a cafeteria and say, "I want a coffee, I want an espresso with milk," one hundred percent aligned with your deepest desire in this moment. And you express it as a person wanting a coffee. None of that has, in this hypothetical moment, any resistance, any ignorance, any identification. It is the expression of the deepest desire.
Now, same situation, hypothetically everything exactly the same, and it can be completely out of alignment, driven by resistance. Because you actually wanted tea, or you wanted to go for a walk, or you wanted to call your mother. The thoughts we have don't determine one or the other. It is prior to thought. And that is why looking at our thinking helps us become able to distinguish the difference.
An art, not a formula
So to your question: what is the difference? It is a bit of an art to develop this knowing, and it is a constant exploration. We can become better at the artistic, creative process of listening more deeply. This is an infinite progress. We get better and better if we explore.
Now, the desire that comes from resistance is going to be habitual. One of the characteristics is that it is going to be habitual, tied to the past, something very known, related to our upbringing, our conditioning, to what we know as our normal reality. The deeper desire is often, not always, but often in friction with that. It is always more new, always more creative.
Even the example of coffee: you could have a routine of coffee, so it is a habit. But every time you come to it with a love for it, that is different from something being avoided by it.
At the deepest place, the difference is this: desire that is of resistance is going to try to avoid something. It is an attempt at controlling and avoiding.
Thoughts don't drive what happens
But the thing about thoughts is that, regardless of whether they come from truth or from the ego, they don't turn into action. They don't turn into events. They are not the driver of what is happening.
All thoughts are just thoughts. There is no answer in them.
So what is happening is not really a decision that I make. It is just life happening. Whatever I'm doing is not really something I can decide or control.
Yes and no. If you observe thoughts more deeply, life will happen more deeply.
That is really hard to understand. Observe more deeply. This is what I have been doing. I try to stay simple with the sensations in the body and stay in the place where it is not what the mind says. It is not avoidance. I am not trying to avoid the story in the head. I am trying to stay focused in my body, or, if I am driving, to stay fully focused on driving. And if I am not doing things, I stay with sensation rather than being taken away into the mind running with a story. Is that how I observe more deeply?
Don't do it while you're driving. Focus on the driving. But other than that, yes. However, what I hear is that you are trying to push away thoughts in order to focus on sensation. And that is not going to work.
Watching thoughts without pushing them away
I know. It has been a while and it is getting intense. I try to leave thoughts alone, but it doesn't work. I try to watch them, but then I just keep going back into the story.
Going into the story is okay. The difference is to know you are looking at a story, versus being in it and thinking it is reality.
When I am fully taken by a thought, it becomes very uncomfortable very quickly. The body reacts and resists. But if I am not taken by the thought, the thought just runs by itself and passes. It doesn't have any reaction.
Keep doing this switch. Thoughts are happening and you are completely immersed in them as if they were reality. Then nothing changes, nothing happens, but suddenly, instantaneously, you are looking at thoughts. Nothing changes. This is a change without change. Suddenly, in an instant, that which used to be reality is now seen to be thought. You don't need thought to stop. You don't need to control it. You don't need to push it away. Just notice that it is thought and look at it as if you are watching television. It is a movie.
Paying attention to sensation helps this switch happen more often. Just keep doing that. That is exactly listening more deeply.
I got it. That is really clear. Thank you so much.
Does resistance mean you're on the wrong track?
It struck me when you said there are some thoughts that are deeply aligned with what we truly want. I was wondering: if you feel resistance, does that mean every time you feel it, something is defending or trying to protect something that is not true? Is resistance an indication of being on the wrong track, of not seeing something, of trying to pursue or protect something that is untrue?
No, it is the opposite. When you are experiencing resistance, you are going in the right direction.
Can I give you an example? There is something playing inside of me around having enough time to rest and not being in overdrive. I have a very active personality. A little earlier I was with my neighbor. She is very sweet, I love her, but she talks a lot. I just wanted to go home, and I had this session starting, and then this super strong resistance came up about talking to her. I love her so much, but it was super strong, and I felt like I really needed to find a way to say goodbye and go. This kind of resistance can happen constantly throughout the day. Every time I am doing something, it feels like I just need to get out of the situation. So if we take it really practically: what is my deepest desire in this moment? On one hand, I am happy to talk to her, and it is nice. But then there is this feeling that there is something else a little later that I will not manage to catch up with. I am not completely getting this thing about following what I truly want. I have no idea what I want.
The problem is that I cannot answer for you what you want. But we are working with the question of how to guide or ignite this process. And you are already in the process. You are already exploring. You are noticing resistance. You are having the questions, the questions without answers. Because I, for example, don't live with an answer to the question of what I want. I have no answer.
Something can get unlocked
What I do know is that something can get unlocked. Something can get freed up, and it can make a really big difference. In the example of talking to your neighbor, you feel a known sensation of discomfort that you are calling resistance, or "I don't want to be in this conversation," or "I have to go." It might be a knowing that you need to end the conversation. It has a certain kind of discomfort or contraction as the experience, but it does not mean that anything wrong is happening or anything unaligned is happening.
However, if you start to notice a habit, if whenever you are in certain kinds of conversations you feel that way, then you can look more deeply at what is happening.
I am so happy I asked this question because I feel like you are already spot on. When you say, first of all, there is a looking for an answer, I feel like that is a bit of the trick. Something wants an answer, and just by asking the question it is already enough. And also, accepting that if something is repetitive, I can go inside and look a little further.
The surfing metaphor
That is why the metaphor of surfing is good. If you are surfing and you ask yourself, "Which way do I want to go, right or left?", you are likely going to fall. It is more about a certain kind of not knowing. There is no answer, but you feel, and you take a risk. You take a risk and you are still on the board, or you take a risk and you are off the board.
And this is also why the other thing you said is so helpful: just not believing that anything is wrong because there is a strong sensation of discomfort. If you start surfing and suddenly you destabilize and then you say, "Oh my God, this is really wrong, it shouldn't be happening," you are more likely to fall. But if you just let it be, that changes everything. I can really relate to this with what happened with my neighbor. First, I wanted to know what I should do: should I stay with her, or should I just go? And then there was this feeling of, "I am feeling this super strong resistance again, and I don't want to feel this, so something is wrong."
All of that, the word "wrong," that is the desire of the superficial mind.
It is not so clear in the moment. But now that you are saying it, going back into that experience, I can see there was this feeling of "something is wrong," and I have it quite systematically. As soon as the resistance arises, there is this reaction: "This shouldn't be here. This means something. What does it mean? What should I do now?" And you are debunking this right now. If I don't know, I can just go a little bit deeper, and eventually I would just know.
That's it.