The Fear Barrier and What Knows It
La barrera del miedo y lo que la conoce
A question about how fearful thoughts can feel overwhelmingly real, and whether the awareness that seems to observe them is itself just another thought.
The Fear Barrier and What Knows It
A question about how fearful thoughts can feel overwhelmingly real, and whether the awareness that seems to observe them is itself just another thought.
I would like to ask something about thought. For example, a thought comes up saying "someone is trying to kill me." The content of the thought suggests a "me," and the implication is fear, as if it comes from a fear sensation somewhere. Because of these thoughts, and because of forgetting that it's only a thought and believing it, the sensation becomes vivid. The body sensations all feel very real, like a hi-fi system.
These are just objective thoughts, but it also feels like "I am seeing the thought." And that "I am seeing the thought" is another thought. There isn't actually a "me" seeing the thought. It's just thought upon thought, dancing in a logical flow. The mind makes it into a logical process: there's the original thought that someone is trying to kill me, and then another thought arises saying "I'm seeing the thought." But in reality, there is no "me" seeing the thought.
So this sensation of "I am seeing the thought, I'm aware of the thought" is itself another thought. There is no "me" seeing the thought, and the whole thing is just thought having thought in a logical sequence. My understanding at this point is that I'm not actually aware of the thought. Somehow, the thought reports itself. The content, the objective thought, comes up and knows what it is saying.
I am still somewhat identified with being a body, being my thoughts. But I'm starting to realize I'm not just a thought, I'm not just a body. Everything that is appearing, the sounds, the objects I cannot identify, all of these objects appearing, they themselves know themselves. There isn't actually someone seeing all these objects. I feel a little stuck at this point, but I think I'm making progress. Perhaps all these thoughts that feel so real are magically aware of themselves. The awareness of these thoughts is just a sensation, and that is what makes it feel so real, like a "me."
The fear barrier
Let me speak to that. I'm going to say a few things based on a certain intuition around what you're describing, because a lot of it is very personal, very specific to what's happening for you.
In this work, there are often phases. They are mysterious, but in general, there are phases where we come to a kind of edge, and fear is the block. It feels like being stuck. You could call it a fear barrier.
Depending on our personality, body, and mind, it takes different forms. For you, it's this scary thought, but it's all about death. The thing we ultimately need to face is the fear of death.
When we get close to an edge, the body-mind mechanism for resisting, contracting, and pulling away gets intensified. The ego, the body-mind, starts screaming with intensity, saying: "No, no, no, listen to me. Don't go there. Be afraid. Death! Listen to me. I'll keep you safe this way. You won't die."
Discerning risk
What matters here is discernment. We need to take a risk, but it needs to be a discerning risk. It's not a risk where we're actually risking our life. It's an internal risk, a willingness to go internally to a place we don't dare, or haven't dared to go yet.
Part of the way the body-mind mechanism intensifies is through the conditioning that happened early in life: pain and fear. That conditioning gives a certain narrative and color to the experience. There's going to be a pain we haven't yet been able to touch and be okay with, and a lot of fear around it, because as children with a young mind, that sensation was interpreted as death.
A parent getting angry, for example. That is known very viscerally, because we are so dependent on our caretakers that the body-mind is programmed genetically to optimize for survival. The biological machine activates all of its mechanisms for survival. This is really well known today: different parts of the brain get activated, the reptilian brain, the mammalian brain, the emotional centers. Through these we control our environment, we control social dynamics so that we belong, are accepted, and survive.
Breaking through conditioning
At some point, we need to challenge and break through all of this. Otherwise, we remain in a pattern of belief and emotional mechanisms that were useful in that early time but no longer serve us.
Bringing up really intense fear, for example, is a way the system controls us. What happens is a habitual loop. You could think of the conditioning as an addiction to a certain way of thinking and feeling.
You are right that the thought is just a thought. "I am seeing the thought" is another thought. But as you do that, you are getting closer to seeing just what is, seeing thought as thought as thought. There is a tool that is valuable as a tool and can then be dropped: the sense of the observer.
Yes. The awareness.
You could call it the awareness, the witness, the observer. There's actually no such thing, but it's through this process of what is called neti neti ("not this, not that") that we discover what is here, what is looking.
You are looking at fear. You are looking at thoughts. You are looking at beliefs. You are looking at the sensations that are uncomfortable, that seem real. And you keep looking, and you know that because you can see it, it is not that which knows.
Questioning the looker
Now I'm getting to this point. I'm questioning this looking itself. It's not an action. That's what I'm questioning. I'm questioning the awareness.
Yes. The point is to see the nature of that which knows.
The looking has two aspects. One is a certain kind of beingness that is prior to any experience and prior to time. Because it knows time, it is prior to time. Because it knows space, it is prior to space. It cannot begin and it cannot end. But this needs to be seen. This is the seeing of the beingness, the "I am-ness."
The other aspect is to see that because all of what is known is known, it is not the knowing. There is an emptiness to this I am-ness. That emptiness is free. It has no beginning, no end, and it is free.
That is the direction for contemplation. And then, to actually sit, as we do in the beginning of the group, and keep looking, and keep looking. A thought arises, then there's another thought, and a thought about the thought. Just keep seeing it.
All content, all knowing of objects, is a mixture of emptiness and our own interpretation. It's all interpretation colored by conditioning and background. I realize that this knowing of what is happening is not reliable. It doesn't actually tell me what I'm seeing.
As you say, this looking, this "I'm looking, I'm looking," and the question of what is prior to time, before it all starts, with no beginning and no end: that is the point where I get stuck. I cannot experience it. I feel like it has no beginning and no end, but I don't really know this.
Honest contemplation
What matters is that you are honest that you don't experience it, and that you simply contemplate it. Look at it really closely and keep looking.
If you know time and you know space, where is time? Where is space? Using the tool of the witness, you could say that time and space are appearing to you, within you. So something needs to be prior. Something needs to be outside of time and space to know time and space.