The End of the Shift
El Fin del Cambio
A reflection on how the movement between contraction and expansion eventually dissolves when what we seek is recognized as always already present.
The End of the Shift
A reflection on how the movement between contraction and expansion eventually dissolves when what we seek is recognized as always already present.
In a sense, this is an invitation to drop the belief that we are controlling. That is one way to put it. You could also frame it as simply dropping the attempt at controlling. But without the belief that we are controlling, something rests. I have heard it described as attention moving back and resting at its source. That is one way to describe it. It is as if something other than the body-mind starts to become the foreground, and that can be experienced as attention moving out of thought. It is also this that always allows everything.
What is already the case
Many of the things I am talking about, these pointings toward directing certain changes or shifts in attention, perception, and thought, are in a sense describing something that is already the case. It then becomes obvious as already the case. Something is already aware of what is prior to thought. We can point to a practice or an exercise through which you have a sense that a shift occurs and you become aware of what is prior. But it was already there.
So it is a bit paradoxical, because we can talk about attention moving out of thought on its own, or through our own will, or happening spontaneously, that sense of movement of attention. Yet what is actually occurring is something recognizing what was already prior to that movement. It is experienced as a shift, as a movement. But over time, if in the meditation you allow and become absorbed, there will be a shift in sensations and perception. In a sense, though, it is like the image of the vase and the two faces. You can look at it one way, then look at it the other way. There is a sense that the foreground is the vase, or the foreground is the faces. But actually, both were always there.
Foreground and background as illusion
That movement of something going into foreground and background is, in a sense, also part of what we could call the illusion, something that is not real. In the metaphor of that image, what is real is that there is paper with an image that can be interpreted in different ways. But once that real becomes obvious, once it is clear that it was always the case, then the movement becomes secondary. The movement of "now I am in absorption" or "now the awareness": that becomes the background.
At first it can feel like there has been a shift, like you have tasted something and now you have lost it. Then you feel you have to do this or that to get it back. We can also become addicted to those tastes, those shifts. But that addiction will be broken when we realize there is no such shift, because it was always the case.
When spiritual experience ends
Then we can no longer have the intensity of the release, what you could call a spiritual experience, the taste of presence. When everything is known or tasted as presence, or buddha nature, or emptiness, then in a very real way everything that seemed valuable about spiritual work ends. Now there is nothing to shift away from or into.
That is the part of this work that we really cannot want. It just happens. What we do want is the initial experience of shifting out of the belief in being a body-mind, because there is a huge relief that comes from that. There are very real changes in the body-mind; there can be very pleasant sensations. But the ending of that movement in and out is less something you can want. It just happens. It will be known as preferred, but it is not something you can really want. You cannot even imagine it. In my case, it actually took months before I was able to conceptualize anything around it. It was just this bewildering sense of "what happened?" So strange. I had been around teachers and listening to teachers and very close to one of them for twenty-five years, and I could never have imagined it.
The no-practice practice
Going a little further into this conversation around the movement of attention automatically going out of thought: there is nobody doing that. There is a stage where this becomes more of the practice, what you could call the no-practice practice, or natural meditation. You just do nothing and it starts going on its own. The absorption that I was describing in the meditation, the one that felt very powerful, you could start to recognize that it is always the case.
What shifts is actually the belief in what I am: from a thing to no belief, or sometimes more subtly, from being body-mind to consciousness or spaciousness, which becomes a more subtle object. But when that shift happens, our perception and our sense of experience shifts, like looking at the vase and suddenly seeing the faces. There is something else here, but it was always there. You were always looking at it.
The cycle of contraction and expansion
The key is to recognize that it is a lot closer than it seems. When those shifts happen, at first it feels enormous and hard to reach. Then you want to get it again, and that wanting creates the contraction. You start 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. Then that cycle becomes the addiction, the thing you do, the identity: "I am the one who does this, and this is going to get me where I want, which is more expansion." But you still need to contract. For some people it is subtle. For me it was very intense: contraction, expansion, contraction.
The end of grasping
The belief that seeking is something real, something substantial, is what activates the whole structure, the whole sense of contraction. Something completely ends when you realize that what you are looking for is always already here. It always was. You cannot grasp anymore. Then there are preferences, yes. There is a movement of "I want more of this or more of that." But it is not coming from that contraction. It is coming from a different place.
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 a 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 is 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 a word.
Looking for the truth in every moment
Just keep in mind that this is always the case. So you do not look for the experience of the shift in perception or the contraction. You look for the truth of it in every moment. When you want to, when you remember, when you feel that something was true and more real and you want more of it, then notice the temptation to remember a shift in experience, a contraction and expansion, a change in perception. Notice the temptation to look for a similar shift in the future.
Instead, notice that temptation. If you have not yet seen that this is always the case, bring it as the next step to look at. Look at the possibility that this is the nature of your reality all the time, and then ask: is there actually anything resisting now? You will immediately come upon the experience of resistance, what you call resistance. So you look at the resistance and see what it is made of. It is going to be sensations, thoughts, an experience which is fully known without resistance, effortlessly. Then you are going to lose all the objects of contraction and resistance. They will dissolve. It is as though you are trying to grab them and you cannot, because you can see through them. There is no resistance there. What we have been grasping onto starts to dissolve. It is like trying to grasp water.
The root is identification
The root of that is identification. What is happening is that the "I" has no object to identify with. The absorption, the shift, is to see that the "I" is always that emptiness, and always has been. In the movement of identification, it is experienced as a movement. But once the change in identification happens, that movement ends.
Now, when I say "change in identification," it is not that you stop identifying with the body-mind or the image of the separate self and then identify with something else. It is more like a cessation of identification, because there is nothing else with which to identify. We can talk about it in different ways. One of them is a change in identification, because we can identify with very specific, contracted thoughts, and we can identify with much more spacious thoughts. In a sense, that is an improvement. But ultimately, what I am pointing to is the emptiness, which is the ending of identification. You simply cannot call anything "I."
The stages of identification
There is, more often than not, a stepwise process in the change of identification. You can be deeply identified with a really defined mental structure, and then you move out of identification with thought into sensations, for example the body. Now the identification in mind is not just the image of a body; it includes a deeper relationship with the body and its sensations. That is already an expansion, an opening up, a freeing of identification from purely thought to body-mind.
Then that can move even beyond the confines of body-mind into a more spacious subjectivity that starts to include what is beyond the body: sensation, perception, sound. If you touch the couch, the couch no longer feels like "other." The same goes for the universe at that level. But all of that is still an object. You could say it is the one object of the universe, but there is still an identification with a subjectivity or a spaciousness that is a subtle object.
Once that becomes your ground, there is a lot of freedom compared to the contraction and identification with thought. It can feel like a subtle object that includes you being part of everything, and you being in everything. But there is still a subjectivity versus objectivity, versus the world, versus the universe as object.
Everything in the same space
This is very tricky to talk about. For example, you could recognize that your thoughts, your sensations, and everything you experience in the experience of the world (sound, sight) are all happening in the same space. So now there is no dividing of perception into "I" and "other," no dividing of sound into "I" and "other." The sound of my voice is not "me" while the sound of somebody else's is "other." There is a subjectivity that includes all of that as the object appearing within it.
There is a lot of this language in contemporary Advaita: the universe is appearing within consciousness; you are that consciousness; the universe appears, your body and mind appear within that consciousness; consciousness is primary, the universe is secondary. That is pointing to something, but as language, it is still duality.
Nirvana and samsara are the same
When that spacious identification becomes your ground, meaning most of the time during your day, the question is: what is your experience of self? If it is the self that is the image in the mind of "I" in time, that is one level of identification. If, instead, there is a subjectivity and then the body-mind and world appearing within it, that is a freer self, a freer identification. Beyond even that, there is nothing at all. Though saying "you are nothing at all" already does not quite work, because being nothing is already something. You cannot put words to it. The word I relate to most is emptiness: emptiness as the nature of everything, including self. Then there is no longer a tension between the experience of subjectivity and objectivity and what I am.
Another way to describe it, in a sense more Buddhist language, is that nirvana and samsara are the same. Samsara is the appearance of the world, the nonstop movement where there is inherent suffering, the illusion that is the suffering we live in within manifestation. Nirvana is that ending of it, where what is known is what is prior to that: always peaceful, always empty, without form. But you can still remain going back and forth, wanting nirvana, pushing away from samsara, until you see they are the same. There are not two.
Choosing silence
When you discover that you can always turn toward silence, toward that stillness, and thought dies down, that is not avoidance. You are simply choosing reality. It is always there. Even in the midst of thought, even while speaking, it is present. Now let your curiosity look into whether it is also everywhere. The more you look into it, the more you cannot locate it. Just bathe in it. Absorb it, and let it go where it goes.
If "attention" is even the right word, simply choose it. Choose it over and over. You see that it is everywhere, in everything, all the time, in every place. Then there is nothing to avoid, because it is in the thoughts as well. Keep choosing it until you see that. Let it spread to different locations: sensation, sounds, thoughts, the experience of space. The more you tune into it, the larger it grows, the more aware it seems to become. Keep doing that.