The Fear Barrier and What Lies Prior
La barrera del miedo y lo que está antes
A student describes the disorienting experience of thoughts about fear and death feeling intensely real, and questions whether the awareness that seems to observe these thoughts is itself just another thought. The teacher addresses the fear barrier that arises in this work and points toward what is prior to all experience.
The Fear Barrier and What Lies Prior
A student describes the disorienting experience of thoughts about fear and death feeling intensely real, and questions whether the awareness that seems to observe these thoughts is itself just another thought. The teacher addresses the fear barrier that arises in this work and points toward what is prior to all experience.
I would like to ask something about thought. For example, a thought comes up saying "someone is trying to kill me." The content of that thought suggests a "me," and obviously the implication is fear, as if it comes from a fear sensation somewhere. Because of these thoughts, and because there is a forgetting that it is only a thought, a believed thought, the sensation becomes vivid. The body sensations all feel very real, like a hi-fi system.
And these are just objective thoughts, yet it also feels like "I am seeing the thought." But that "I am seeing the thought" is itself another thought. There is no actual "me" seeing the thought. It is just thought appearing after thought, dancing in a logical flow. The mind makes it into a logical process: there is the original thought that someone is trying to kill me, and then another thought arises saying I am seeing the thought. But in reality there is no "me" seeing the thought.
So this sensation that feels like "I am aware of the thought" is itself another thought. There is no "me" seeing the thought. The whole thing is just thought having thought in a logical sequence. My understanding at this point is that I am not actually aware of the thought. Somehow the thought reports itself; the objective thought comes up and knows what it is saying.
And I am still somewhat thinking I am the body, I am the thought. But I am beginning to realize I am not just a thought, not just a body. Everything is also appearing: the sounds, any object I can identify. All these objects appearing seem to know themselves. There is not actually someone seeing all these objects. I feel a little stuck at this point, but I think I am making progress in terms of realizing that 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 am going to say a few things based on a certain intuition around what you are describing, because a lot of it is very personal, specific to what is happening for you.
In this work, there are often phases, mysterious ones, but in general there are these phases where we come to a kind of edge, and fear is the block. It feels like a fear barrier.
Depending on our personality, body, and mind, it will take different forms. For you, it is, for example, this scary thought. But it is 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, will start 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 the internal risk
What matters here is the discernment that we need to take a risk, but it needs to be a discerning risk. It is not a risk where we are actually risking our life. It is an internal risk, a willingness to go internally to a place we don't dare, or haven't yet dared, to go.
Part of the way the body-mind mechanism intensifies is through what I mentioned earlier about conditioning that happened early in life: pain and fear. That conditioning gives a certain narrative and color to the experience. There is going to be a pain we haven't yet been able to touch and be okay with, and there is going to be a lot of fear around it. Because as children, with a young mind, that sensation was interpreted as death.
A parent getting angry, for instance. That is known very viscerally because we are so dependent on our caretakers. 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: how different parts of the brain get activated, the reptilian brain, the mammalian brain, the emotional centers. In that way we learn to control the environment, control social dynamics, so that we belong, are accepted, and survive.
All of this is what at some point we need to, in a sense, challenge and break through. 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 to control ourselves. What happens is there is a habitual conditioning. You could think of it as an addiction to a way of thinking and feeling.
Thought seeing thought
You are right that the thought is just a thought, and that any "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 which is valuable as a tool and can then be dropped: the sense of the observer. You could call it the awareness, the witness, the observer. There is actually no such thing, but it is through this process, what is called neti neti (not this, not that), as the answer to the question: 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. You keep looking, and you know that because each thing you see is seen, it is not that which knows.
Yes, I am getting to this point. I am questioning this looking. This looking, "I'm looking at this," is not an action. That is what I am questioning. I am at this point questioning the awareness itself.
What is prior
Yes. The task 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. It is prior to time, because it knows time. It is prior to space, because it knows space. It cannot begin, and it cannot end. But this needs to be seen. This is the seeing of the beingness, the "I amness."
The other aspect is to see that because all of what is known is known, the knowing is not any of those things. There is an emptiness to this "I amness." That emptiness is free. It has no beginning, no end, and it is free. I am describing it in my words, but that is the direction for contemplation.
Then, to actually sit, as we do at the beginning of the group, and keep looking. A thought arises, then another thought, then 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 is all interpretations shaped by conditioning and background. I realize that this knowing of what is happening, the knowing of objects, is not reliable. It is not actually what it tells me I am seeing.
And as you say, this looking: I am looking, I am looking, and the question is about what is prior to time, before all of that, with no beginning and no end. Is that the point where I get stuck? I feel like it has no beginning and no end, but I don't really know this.
What matters is that you are honest that you don't yet experience that, and that you simply contemplate it. Look at it really closely, and keep looking.
If you know time, and you know space, where are they? Using the tool of the witness, you could say time and space are appearing to you, within you. Something needs to be prior. Something needs to be outside of time and space to know time and space.