The Cage and What Lies Beyond
La jaula y lo que hay más allá
A wide-ranging dialogue exploring how thoughts sustain the belief in separation, the process of deconstructing the sense of self, and why we resist giving up what we claim to want freedom from.
The Cage and What Lies Beyond
A wide-ranging dialogue exploring how thoughts sustain the belief in separation, the process of deconstructing the sense of self, and why we resist giving up what we claim to want freedom from.
Do you think that thoughts are like a mirror that reflects our held beliefs?
I'm not sure I understand the question. What do you mean by a mirror that reflects our held beliefs? Thoughts are that which can be believed. You can't believe anything other than a thought.
The idea comes from when we were discussing that there's resistance to thoughts. A thought triggers resistance. And that resistance links to what we believe as true. So in a sense, thoughts are positive, not negative. They bring things up.
Positive in what sense? Do you mean that they're useful?
Because a thought triggers resistance, and that allows us to see through the resistance.
Obstacles as opportunities
Yes. You could always think of every obstacle as an opportunity. If you are struggling with thought, it is a point of opportunity.
Yes, that's what I think.
If you get taken by thought and you struggle with it, there's a resistance. It's uncomfortable. It's unpleasant. Then yes, there is something to uncover. Because when we're free, even free at a level, whatever we are free from can no longer affect us.
There could come a point where all of the negative thinking is completely insignificant, to the point where whether it's there or not, it means nothing. It affects you in no way. It's like clouds on a sunny day. You don't notice them. Whereas in the past, there was a stormy day, and it was scary and depressive. But at a certain point, the same intensity of negative thinking could just be like clouds on a sunny day. They're there, but you're not believing them.
The loop of belief and feeling
What appears as a feeling that seems real is actually more of the effect of believing thoughts, and its effect in our biology, in our body-mind. That is often tricky because it makes things appear more real. There's a certain kind of confirmation: "Because I feel this way, something must be wrong." But the feeling is created by the belief that something is wrong. Then the feeling confirms the belief, the belief creates more feeling, and so on.
There needs to be a period where you're detoxing, in a sense. You don't believe that anymore, but you're still going to have the thoughts and still going to have the emotions. It's going to take a while until the clouds clear. And then when they come back, because you're not believing them, you're not creating the negativity in the body-mind.
I totally get it, because there was a point where I felt free from thoughts. I could clearly see that it was just interpretation in the mind, and I could feel that the interpretation was not going to run my life. But after that point of clear seeing, there was still falling back into the pattern. So at this point I'm just developing more certainty in the seeing of it. There is a seeing through all the interpretation and mind chatter, and I'm feeling more confident now.
The only certainty
There's only one certainty possible, and it can be known more and more certainly. It is that there is something prior. You could call that consciousness, beingness, what you are. There's language around it, but it's the only certainty.
Yes. The certainty of seeing is there. It's just there. And I don't even try to describe what it is.
It's indescribable.
How does disidentification with the mind relate to unity and non-separation?
Separation exists only in the mind
Separation and non-unity exist only in the mind. By not believing in it, you can know unity. It's a hard belief to debunk. I totally give you that. But it is that simple. It's hard, but it's simple. It's like asking how you get to the peak of Everest: you just walk all the way up.
You could point to separation with one concept, one word: "separation." But the reality of it is complex in the sense that it's a whole collection of beliefs. It's a worldview, a long narrative about what the core of that is, who's at the center, where I came from, where I'm going. You could chip away at that. One path is to very slowly and gradually chip away. Then there are others that are more direct. It's a bit of an art, because it depends on the person: not only where they're at, but also what they want. Some people are on this edge of "I'm either going to jump off a cliff or I'm going to wake up," and the sensation is just so unbearable. For others, it's a gentler journey. It is ultimately just a belief, but you could experience the process as: "That's a belief. I've got rid of that one. There's another one. There's another one."
Is self-inquiry the best way to take that belief apart?
The belief in a separate self
It ultimately is the belief in self. And by "self," I have to be a little technical. By self, I mean that which is separate: something that originates on its own, has its own origin, and has its own separate will and agency.
That can be unpacked. There's quite a bit in what I just said. Think of it like a table with a bunch of legs. You go at one of the legs with self-inquiry, then you go at another leg, then another one. Maybe you go at all of them slowly, a little bit here and there. But at some point you don't need all the legs to go down; at some point it's enough that the whole thing collapses.
Some teachers, for example, all they talk about is the sense of agency. They're going at one leg. Eighty percent of the teaching is: "You're not the doer. You have no control. Absolutely no control. There is no doer." That's going at one of the things that keeps the belief in self alive.
Because the only thing that can be separate is the idea of something that I am that is not something else. What is separation? Is there something that is not something else? It's that simple.
Emptiness all the way down
There is absolutely no separation between this phone, this case, and myself. Every scientist who is somewhat serious will say there is no separation. And I'm talking about what we consider as objects. This is only a hundred-year-old understanding. It's nothing. Our whole body-mind, our genes, have millions of years of conditioning that this is a separate thing. Yet we know there is absolutely no separation. In fact, we know that everything is empty.
The word "atom" comes from Greek. It was a genius breakthrough: the idea that the world is composed of tiny things. But they were conceived as irreducible. You couldn't go deeper than the atom. It was the smallest building block, and you couldn't go further. Then they realized there are actually subatomic particles. Then they realized those particles aren't really particles. They appear to be, but they're empty. They're energy, empty energy that probabilistically has a certain effect on its surroundings. It's all empty. And that's just what we experience as the manifestation of reality and matter.
Now look at the sense of self, the sense of what you are. In a sense, it's the same thing. From very early on, there is the creation of a thought that is an image of what I am. Then we build a big narrative around it, and it appears to be very real. But it can be deconstructed, which is self-inquiry, to a point where you can see there is nothing there that you can call "I." There is beingness, there is awareness, but there is nothing there that is what I am, that I can know as a thing.
It's only a belief, and it has certain qualities. There's the quality of agency: the belief that my will originates in myself, that I am the source of that will, separate from the rest, separate from the world, separate from the universe. And that's just the agency aspect.
Would you say that we are the field? What you were describing is called the Higgs field. Once quarks attach to it, they intertwine and form particles, then atoms. Stripping all that out, what's pervasive anywhere, everywhere, even in space, even in vacuum, is the Higgs field.
I understand what you're saying, but that's just theory. It's science explaining. No, I would not say that's what we are. If it works as a metaphor for you for a bit, it might work for a bit. But anything you say "that's what we are" about, that's not it.
What you give up
You said something earlier about an "either/or." We either identify with these thoughts and beliefs, or we don't. But if we don't, if our reality is that we're not that, then we give up something. I'd love to hear more about that.
Yes. You give up what you know, and you gain the immensity of the unknowable. But there is a giving up. I highly recommend giving it up, but I also highly recommend taking your time and doing it at your own pace. And if that is a million lives, have fun.
But I want to understand what I'm giving up, because I'm so used to being in it that I don't even realize what I'd be letting go of.
It's hard to be clear, because you'll be giving up what you think you hate, but what you crave and are addicted to.
My mind is going all over the place. I can't even grasp it. It's so big.
You give up suffering.
Well, that's a no-brainer.
The addiction to suffering
It seems like a no-brainer, but we think we don't want suffering.
That's the subtext I'm missing. I identify with the subtext, so it's hard to see. It's wonderful and refreshing to hear you say it so clearly.
Once you know there's something better, it's hard to go back. But it's like a bird leaving a cage it grew up in. It's going to fly around for a minute and then go right back into the cage, even with the door open. It takes a while to settle the question: "Is this better? Really? Not so sure."
Because of the addiction to the old drama.
That's the familiar. But there's also a kind of fun to it. It's hard to explain, but the drama of the roller coaster experience of suffering has its own pull.
Boredom as the mind's trick
I notice this in meditation and in general. When I try to go back to what's prior, I get so bored. It's so boring. But what I understand beyond my experience is that this is the fullest, greatest, the only thing that could be fulfilling. Yet in that moment, it's like, "How boring. I want to go back to my thoughts."
I'll say something about that. The boredom is the way you're using your mind to create what you call boredom in order to go right back into the cage. Boredom is not reality. Then you very intelligently say, "Well, I go to the present and it's boring, so what's the point? Let's go back to thought." But that's not really the present. That's not really what we're talking about. It might be that you come to an edge and that activates more thought activity. It makes it look like what's beyond is boredom. "Why would I do that? Come back here." That's the bird in the cage saying, "It's just danger out there. I'm comfortable in my cage." But it's not danger. It's beautiful aliveness. The boredom is not reality. It's just another layer to see through.