The Addiction to Expansion
La adicción a la expansión
A student describes a powerful yet familiar shift in perception, and the teacher explores how the cycle of contraction and expansion can itself become a trap.
The Addiction to Expansion
A student describes a powerful yet familiar shift in perception, and the teacher explores how the cycle of contraction and expansion can itself become a trap.
It felt very powerful and very familiar at the same time.
The key is to recognize that it's a lot closer than it seems. When those shifts happen, at first it feels enormous, so hard to get to. Then you want to get it again, and that wanting becomes the very thing that creates contraction. You begin seeking the expansion, but you first need to contract in order to experience the expansion again. So you learn how to contract and expand, contract and expand, and then that cycle becomes the addiction. It becomes "a thing that I do," which is "I," and that's the thing that's going to get me where I want, which is more of the expansion. But you still need to contract.
It can be subtle. For some people it's more subtle. For me it was intense: contraction, expansion, contraction.
Yes, but there's that pulling I was talking about last week. "Yes, yes, but what about this?" That kind of seeking energy, always.
The belief that seeking is real
The belief that the seeking is a real thing, something substantial, is what activates the whole structure. The whole sense of contraction arises from it. Because something completely ends when you realize that what you're looking for is always already here. It always was.
You can't grasp anymore. There are still preferences, still movements of "I want more of this or more of that." But those movements aren't coming from that contraction. They're coming from a different place.
Absorption is already the case
That absorption is already the case right now, always. We detect it through shifts in perception, and then you realize the shift in perception is just a consequence of the contraction. When you no longer have contraction, you can still start to recognize the absorption. The absorption is always there. Your experience right now is completely without any resistance. Everything that's appearing is appearing without any resistance. Everything is known without any effort. And that which knows is always knowing. It is a different kind of knowing than when we use the word in ordinary speech.
That was powerful. I think that moment was the "no resistance."