The Understanding, Not the Experience
La comprensión, no la experiencia
A student describes powerful moments of expanded awareness and freedom from identification with the body, and the teacher clarifies the difference between chasing the experience and letting the understanding lead.
The Understanding, Not the Experience
A student describes powerful moments of expanded awareness and freedom from identification with the body, and the teacher clarifies the difference between chasing the experience and letting the understanding lead.
I think I understand what you're saying, but I'm not sure how to work with it.
You're trying to reproduce an experience that comes as a consequence of realizing.
The difference between realization and release
Imagine what it felt like as a very young child to count to ten for the first time, and everybody cheered. It felt amazing. But now you count to ten and nothing happens. There is no celebration, no experience of joy. That is the difference between the realization and the release that comes with it. What happens often is that we ignore what was actually seen and try to reproduce the experience of that learning, that seeing. We confuse the experience with the realization.
There is also, in some of these moments, the sense that "this could be all the time, this could be permanent." But perhaps there is a confusion. It's not the experience that would be permanent.
Right, that's exactly where I get caught. Another experience I wanted to share: I think it was after the last group session. I was watching a movie with my partner, and there was a moment where I abstracted from the story of the movie, as if I widened my focus outward. It was as if my body was inside of me. I wasn't the body. I was as much the images on the computer as everything around me. And those images were as if perceived by themselves. They didn't need the perceptions of the body to exist. I was that as well. The amazing thing was this sense of freedom from the body, and this sense that this disidentification could be there all the time.
That's great. So now, look for that understanding, not the experience. Let the understanding lead, not the experience. Forget about the experience. What I mean is: forget about the memory of that experience, but look in your current experience with that understanding.
Bringing understanding to this moment
What you described was very precise and true. So it's simply a matter of bringing that understanding to your current experience and continuing to clarify both the experience and the understanding. You can sit with it, go into the forest and sit with it, cook with it, until it becomes obvious. And it is obvious in those moments. But then, don't go back to the memory of the experience. Let the memory and the experience go. Keep the understanding, and keep looking with it as a sword cutting through this moment. It is true now.
I think that's helpful.
The addictive cycle of expansion and contraction
What happens then is that resistances arise. There is something we don't want to see, or a part of us that doesn't want to see it now, that would rather have the glimpse, the experience of release, and then go back to the illusion. There is an attachment to that movement of release, contraction, release, contraction. Because in that cycle, there remains something that persists through the contraction and the release, something we can identify with. So there is still a subtly addictive process of glimpsing, releasing, expanding, contracting, over and over, because there is still a sense of something that expands and contracts. It's a thing, and "that's me."
It's more difficult when I'm feeling nothing, or when I'm feeling uncomfortable, to do what you're suggesting.
Just include the discomfort. Include the feeling of nothing. Include it as part of what is happening now. Don't get focused on it. It's part of sensation, perception, thought.
The pull of seeking energy
What you just said connects to something I've been thinking about. There's this quality of seeking, this sense of "not yet," of being pulled somewhere else. Something that says, "Come over here, we need to go there." That pulling feeling.
Very much. And to that I say, that's why in the meditation I mentioned that it's a rich journey and maybe we want to go slowly. There is no rush. There is nowhere to get to. The journey is the goal, and the goal is the journey. I think that comes from Buddhism.
But the seeking energy is also a good thing to spot, I suppose.
The only thing we can really talk about is when something isn't how you want it to be. That's where something can be done. But even on this journeyless journey, we notice there's seeking and there's resistance, and sometimes it falls away and it's wonderful, and sometimes it comes back. And we realize that part of us is choosing that. When we're consciously aware of that, when we're consciously choosing it, there's something there: a savoring of the process, of the moment. And it's completely valid. It's divine creation.
No rush, no other destination
I sometimes reminisce on how this unfolded for me, and I also see how many years of work it involved. A teacher and friend of mine, when a big shift happened for me more recently, said something like, "This was your destiny, and you were running as hard as you could from it." And it really rang true. I was mostly trying to avoid this as much as I could. It was, in a sense, a deep choice. I was going to say conscious, but it was also unconscious. And yet, would I do it differently? No. I would go back and live it all exactly how it was: slowly and progressively, then suddenly, all of it. Take as many lives as you want on this journey.
It feels like that same resistance is reflected in actual life as well, in what's going on day to day. It's showing me this other resistance, so that I'm seeing both of those things very obviously and uncomfortably at the same time.
What we are is already at peace. And not knowing that is also part of the fun. It's a different fun than knowing it, but it's also fun. One teacher puts it simply: just stop. It's up to you. It's your choice. If you have a problem with it, stop. I think that really helps bring up the sense that, well, I'm actually choosing this.
Yes, all of that. It feels like all of that is there: the knowing it and the choosing it. But it's good.
Yes, it's flavorful.
And what was said earlier about feeling envy, that's true for me as well. I was also thinking earlier in this session about how I can find it quite difficult to articulate something I want to say. So I'm really glad that others here say things that are true for me too. Everything is being absorbed, and I'm grateful for all of it.
That's really beautiful. And envy is a powerful spice, making up all sorts of cocktails and dishes.