The Wall You Were Trained to Avoid
El muro que te entrenaron para evitar
A student describes the disorienting gap between the clarity felt during guided explorations and the powerful pull of conditioned identity, and asks how to navigate that tension.
The Wall You Were Trained to Avoid
A student describes the disorienting gap between the clarity felt during guided explorations and the powerful pull of conditioned identity, and asks how to navigate that tension.
These explorations stump me every time. When I hear them facilitated, I can feel the clarity, the genuineness. It's so convincing, as if this is more real than almost anything you could say. Maybe it is more real, I don't know.
There's such a contrast between that and where my mind wants to go with it. It creates this cognitive dissonance. I keep thinking: who am I? Where am I? What am I? When am I? Here I am. What do you mean? And then: what the hell is this that says "here I am"?
Intellectually, I think I have a lot of clarity. Not a ton, but a lot. It's so clear that whatever has a beginning is going to have an end, and if it has a beginning and an end, then poof. That would include the one that just said "here I am," the one that believes this identity is it, this concept of "I'm a this and you're a that." It's so deeply imprinted.
And yet, on the other hand, when I dare to act in my life out of a place of not knowing what I am, out of that openness, out of something that isn't the "I know" mind (I can't find the words right now), I don't feel the separation so strongly. That is what brings the most happiness. That is what brings the most expansion.
So experientially, this seems like the way to go, but the conditioning is so powerful. And I heard you say to me once, "That wall, go there." That was a big moment for me, because I've been so conditioned my whole life to go anywhere but there. The door closes and I'm out. So that speaks to me as well. But the actual, honest-to-God experience leaves me with a sense of being lost.
Don't expect it to feel familiar
You're saying it all, in your way, describing how you're experiencing that dance. And peppered across everything you're saying, it is confusing, and it must be confusing. It will be in complete opposition to the conditioning. It will be a complete shock to everything you know to be true. That is just how it is. Don't expect it to be different.
But when you said something like, "That seems more real than where I was at," that is the kind of thing for you to trust.
Two kinds of confirmation
That recognition is experiential, in the moment. And then there's another kind of validation, a confirmation from life itself. You say that when you are living from that place, there's more happiness, more well-being. We could imagine a scenario where this path leads to knowing what we are but makes life more painful and difficult. Then why would you want it? But it happens to be the opposite.
It can bring challenges during a process of transition, and that's why it's hard, because there are certain obstacles of fear and pain. It's very rare for those not to be part of the process. I just assume it will be that way for pretty much anybody. There might be a case where for someone it's not, and then that's great. But in general, it's going to bring about a process of going directly into those walls, into the fear, into the pain.
Fears that are part of the illusion, and fears that are part of life
That is where we can really liberate the source of that fear and pain, because there are fears and pains that are part of the illusion and some that are part of life. The ones that are part of the illusion can be fully clarified, and when we do that, they completely vanish. The ones that are part of life, we can clear what makes them really hard. The resistance, the part that says "I don't want to face this, I don't want to experience this," can completely dissolve.
You're describing pretty much that whole process. So I would say: don't assume you need to know. In your sharing, there's a bit of an assumption, a presentation of "I don't get it, but you do."
That was exactly what came up while you were speaking: the word trust. I realized that for me, trust has really been the guiding light. The conditioning is going to tell me that I need to see results, that I need to feel a certain way. And I think the less I pay attention to that conditioning, the more joyful it becomes.