Let the Lightness Be Your Practice
Deja que la ligereza sea tu práctica
A student describes brief glimpses of spacious awareness and asks whether the joy and happiness now arising in their life might be pulling them away from serious practice.
Let the Lightness Be Your Practice
A student describes brief glimpses of spacious awareness and asks whether the joy and happiness now arising in their life might be pulling them away from serious practice.
Last summer I had a couple of very short experiences while sitting by the water. In the first, I realized I was the space and I was the buildings in front of me. It felt very familiar, similar to how I felt when I was a child. The other experience was also by the water. I realized I was the space that the imprints were happening on. My stomach started rumbling, and it was as if I became that for a moment. The visuals and the sounds were being imprinted within me, as me. Then it went away. It was beautiful. It wasn't profound or life-altering, but perhaps a glimpse.
Those are glimpses. You could call them tastes, and you could call it remembering, as you said: "This is how it was when I was a child." That is actually quite rare. It's not a normal thing. People do have those experiences, but it's quite rare to recognize them as something important, because in a sense everyone is already awake. The issue is the recognition of that wakefulness and the effect of that recognition.
It matters not just to have these tastes, but to recognize their importance. They don't have to be grandiose experiences. What they need to do is spark your interest and help you recognize that there is something important there. It is actually the most important thing, because otherwise you're chasing after dreams.
The positive tone of a glimpse
In those moments you described, I'm assuming there was a positive tone to the experience. Not an emotional experience exactly, but a positive affect. Sometimes, when the expansion is sudden and dramatic, there can be fear. But often, with the sense of "I am the buildings, I am the sound of the stomach rumbling," there is a very peaceful beauty. That taste is what matters. My offering right now is to say: that's it. That's the door. That's you starting to touch and get close to what you really want.
Ultimately it's up to you, but I'm suggesting that what you're looking for in life is through that door, and that door is the experience of now. What you can start to recognize is that those shifts don't come and go in time. They are simply a shift in how you're interpreting what's happening now.
It is always present. Every sensation: I am that. But there is an overlay of misinterpretation. What can happen is that overlay dissipates for a moment, and we think something happened. But actually something stopped, which was the overlay.
I recognized it immediately from Advaita teachings. It wasn't even "Oh my God, it's happening!" It was just, "No, this is how it is. This is just normal."
It's the taste of natural being. It is popularly referred to as "to be as children." But then we forget, and the journey is to remember.
I feel like I'm at a meta stage now. I've let go of the slave driver that needs this to be perfect, that needs to really effort and push. That part used to say, "You haven't had these realizations yet because you're not trying hard enough." I'm letting go of the self-judgment around that, and it feels softer. I've been doing a lot of emotional clearing, particularly the last couple of months, and it's bringing me into a state of much more consistent joy, happiness, and gratitude. I feel so grateful and happy in a way I haven't consistently felt in my life.
But then I also feel like being in that happiness is almost taking away from the practice, because I've been so used to suffering and depression, and the slave driver coming out saying I'm not working hard enough. That suffering helped me go deeper into inquiry, to feel the fear and sadness. I've alchemized a decent portion of that. I can feel the lightness in my body. But am I just getting lazy now? Am I being taken away from the practice?
Make the joy your practice
Those are just thoughts. Make the joy and the lightness your practice. If you're in lightness and in joy, you're in practice.
Even when my mind is still active?
The mind is irrelevant. Your body could be dying of cancer and you could be in lightness. I speak from people who have said this, not from my own experience, but I trust they were speaking their truth. The mind could be a racing horse and you could be in joy and in lightness. This I speak for myself.
I intentionally brought my mind to places where it was really accelerated, because I couldn't understand something I had recognized. It was so mind-boggling. I was doing all these things to explore its origin. It was really hard to understand. It took me months until I remembered the phrase "the peace that passes understanding."
At first I was calling it silence. Then I was trying to understand where this silence came from and what it was, and it was, in a sense, extremely loud. Everything now was the silence. Then I started calling it peace, and I wondered whether it depended on my thoughts being calm, because I could wake up and sit on the couch for hours with no thoughts at all. So I started to bring myself to a stormy mind. I managed to stress my mind out, accelerate it, and the silence was still so loud. Then I realized: "The peace that passes understanding." I was pacing around my apartment trying to grasp at this silence, this peace, telling myself it's not a silence, it's a peace, but I can't understand it. Then I remembered that phrase and thought, "Is this that?"
Now I can be sure. It does not depend on the mind being quiet. It does not depend on the body being unstressed. I have pushed my body many times since then to levels of stress, and I've had pains. Completely unaffected. This well-being, this peace, this silence, is a joyful love for being.
Where is the lightness right now?
So I would say: let that be your practice, the joy and the lightness. And when it appears that this lightness is gone, what's the practice? It's the practice of lightness. Where do you find it here, now? Look for it here, now. Where is the lightness that appears to have gone?
You could have a very creative exploration with this. Your teacher is your own experience. You might then develop some ways of practicing. Maybe it's dancing. Maybe it's not some technique you've learned. The teaching then becomes your own taste of that. You've tasted it. My offering is to point to something, but once you taste it, my job is to point to the fact that you've tasted it. Now it's you.
That feels right. I've been meditating for ten years, maybe more, and when I sit I still often feel like I can't hold the no-thought state for longer than a minute, even after being super consistent and doing retreats. It's like, am I doing something wrong?
Forget about no thoughts
Forget about no thoughts. The problem is judging progress by the absence of thoughts, because the mind will create thoughts. It's important to recognize the experience of no thoughts, but that's not the endpoint. Recognize that what you've tasted in the lightness when there are no thoughts is also present when there are thoughts. It is the thoughts. It's in the thoughts. It's what the thoughts are made of. The direction is no longer to fight thoughts. What's important is to be able to look at all the storm of thought and go, "You, there."
So focus more on the joy and the love and the happiness I'm feeling, and don't worry so much about holding the "I am" as consistently as possible? I used to have a watch that would buzz every five minutes to remind me to be in the "I am." With all this happiness coming up, I'm forgetting it more. I'm not naturally prioritizing it as much, even though I want to.
I have a sense that this is a healthy shift. It doesn't mean you throw out everything you've been doing. It's just that it's no longer the priority. You might feel drawn to a particular practice or a particular focus at times.
But more importantly, recognize that the lightness is here. Let the thoughts come. Notice them. See thoughts as thoughts. That is always important: to see things as they are. What are they? These are thoughts. This is also a thought. These are sensations. These are emotions.
This doesn't need to become a formal noting practice where you constantly label what's happening. I'm simply saying that if you were asked at any moment, you would be able to recognize what the thoughts are, to recognize what is thought. If I ask you now, "What is sound? What of what you're experiencing is sound?" it's instant. You know. It's the same with thought. If at any point you're confused about what is happening, whether it's thought or not, that needs to be more deeply clarified.
Thoughts are like sounds
When it becomes so instant and obvious that at any time you can know where the thought is without needing to push anything away, it's just like sounds. You don't need sounds to stop in order to be light and at peace. If you actually needed quiet to feel at peace, you'd be running away from everything creating sound, fighting everything creating sound. It's the same with thoughts. Once you don't need to be without thoughts, thoughts naturally start to dissipate.
The deeper guiding principle in this practice is: you've tasted what you've called lightness and joy. Have that be the practice and the teaching for you. What I want to clarify is this: trust, or explore the possibility, that it's always here. It's not tomorrow. It's not this afternoon. It's not in two minutes after you do a practice. You look for it in this experience right now, because all of the "tomorrow," all of the "in two minutes," all of that is thought. There is no time. There's only this.
Then I have to add: there is time. It's in thoughts, like unicorns.
You've done enough to start listening to yourself
Your initial question, about where you are: you're far enough that you shouldn't worry about it. You've done enough work that you can now start listening to yourself. What to listen to is that lightness, that well-being you've tasted. You know it. It's just going to become more and more clear that it's you, and it's always everywhere, all the time. But it doesn't become this constantly intense thing. It becomes really quiet, subtle, and always there.
Big experiences happen when we have a big shift, but the point is not to keep having big shifts. It's to realize what you've tasted and then see that it's here always, in everything. That can be clarified, but it's a very subtle looking and recognizing, a slow refining, a clearing of the way in which we suddenly misinterpret what's happening and suddenly believe some narrative or story.
It's just that I've been distracted from the looking by all the happiness, because it was really the suffering that pulled me into inquiry. Letting go of the slave driver was a big thing recently, because that's a lot of my childhood conditioning. But now I'm shifting the looking toward the positive sensations, the visceral energy of happiness that's naturally emerging for no reason. Doing an inquiry around that, or just experiencing it.
Yes. And whenever you feel waves of contraction and suffering come, you have the tools to work with them, and you can refine those and learn new ones. But the idea that joy is a distraction from practice: throw that out. The practice is to be in joy, or whatever we call it. For some people it's more of a joy and a laugh; for others it's a peace and well-being. They have different flavors depending on our makeup. But it's this sense of "I'm okay, and I love life."
Relationships as a mirror
You can also recognize how you are with others. That can be a mirror. If people feel you as loving and reflect you as loving, especially in close relationships, then that's also meaningful. I'm not saying this about you specifically; I don't know you well enough. But it does happen that people can develop this sense of "I'm okay," while people around them are getting hurt all the time. The well-being isn't really that deep or real; they're still in very difficult patterning. So that is always a good mirror. How are people responding to you? Are they enjoying being with you? That kind of thing is always worth noticing.
Thank you.
You're very welcome. You've done enough work that you can now start listening to yourself.