The Deeper Problem Behind the Impulse to Fix
El problema más profundo detrás del impulso de arreglar
A student asks whether a month-long silent retreat is worthwhile, and the conversation opens into a broader exploration of spiritual ambition, the sense that something is fundamentally wrong, and how we project our core discomfort onto external circumstances.
The Deeper Problem Behind the Impulse to Fix
A student asks whether a month-long silent retreat is worthwhile, and the conversation opens into a broader exploration of spiritual ambition, the sense that something is fundamentally wrong, and how we project our core discomfort onto external circumstances.
I have an opportunity to do a month-long silent meditation retreat in May. There would be a lot of logistics involved, and it would be a significant sacrifice. But I also recognize it's a good opportunity. Having talked to you recently about where I am in the process, I'm just not sure whether it's something I should do. I don't know whether it's going to be that helpful. Does that kind of extended time in silence really help clarify things? I'm sure you've done something like that in your own process.
When it comes to practical recommendations like that, it's often not very clear. Some things I could recommend clearly and straightforwardly, but this one doesn't seem very clear to me. I've never done a month. Is that a full retreat, or are you just in silence for a month?
It's a silent meditation with a group of people in a house in New Mexico. There are teachers, and it's awakening-based, not just vipassana or something. But a month is quite a long time, so I'm trying to figure out whether I should make the sacrifice for it.
Are the teachers people you would recognize as realized?
Yes.
The value of proximity to a realized teacher
Well, that to me is the only interesting part of it, because it has to do with potential induction, that kind of transmission, the physical proximity. But I've never done something like that, so I wouldn't really be able to say. The question that comes up is: what's driving this for you? It seems like it requires quite an ambition, and that could be coming from a deep, true place, or it could not.
For me, it would be coming from the place of wanting an extended period of time. I just did a seven-day retreat and felt it was really helpful in terms of clarifying certain things. But a month is a totally different deal. It would be coming from the same desire to spend time fully clarifying the last pieces of where I get entrenched in self. But it's also a rarefied environment. That's why I'm bringing it up. I understand it's not a clear yes or no.
Obviously something will come from it, because it's a powerful experience. But at the same time, the same applies to being in more conventional life and fully living. The intention one brings to a daily, ordinary life could have a similar or even more powerful effect than retreating. The level of inquiry, attention, openness, curiosity.
I'm about fifty-fifty on it. I get where you're coming from and I feel the same. If I feel fifty-fifty, it's probably not worth the sacrifice of money, time, and everything involved.
Checking for spiritual ambition
What I would check is whether it is or isn't coming from an ambition to get something, a spiritual ambition.
When you say "get something," is that the same as clarifying?
Clarifying is something you could do in any moment. Just check that it's coming from a place where you really want to do it because you want to do it, the way you want to go swim at the beach. It doesn't have to be a pleasurable experience. I've been two years into a really challenging company-building project, but I really wanted to do it. Just make sure you really want to do it and it's not coming from some hidden motivation.
That's helpful. Thank you.
Any part of life can be a meditation: business, relationship, friendship. It all is. And so is a retreat and a month in silence.
It almost feels like life is a meditation right now. It's always meditation. So being silent in a house for a month... I don't think I really need it or really want to do it, not in the way you're describing.
Navigating decisions from uncertainty
To me, that's the key. If you look at it and just have a sense, there always needs to be a sense of "I'm not sure." Any kind of certainty around these things is often the certainty of conditioning. But when it's "I'm not sure, but it doesn't feel like that's what I want to do," or "it does feel like that's what I want to do," that's what we're looking for: a deeper, quieter sense of "this is kind of a no" or "actually, this is kind of a yes." Especially when it's not clear. If there's a really profound excitement and it feels very alive and heartful, that's a clear yes. But otherwise, the knowing of what direction to go is more subtle. You can sit with it, wait a day or two, and see how it feels, or wait until the day you need to decide.
In a way, it's similar to knowing anything at this point in the process. So much seems unknown. How do I even figure out what to do about absolutely anything? It's a similar kind of knowing.
Exactly. That is how it is with everything, the more awake you are. But one still needs to look at how the mind comes in with knowing, with certainty, with the knowing of thought. It's very tempting, because the natural, true uncertainty of everything is a lot to be with, especially at first. Then it reverses. The contraction of the certainty of thought becomes so uncomfortable that it's like, why bother? The unknown is much more free and pleasant. But decisions do need to be made, and that's part of the unknown: making decisions without having certainty.
The sense that something is wrong
When I go into the "I am" state, I get what you mean when you say there is no center, there is no subject-object, it's the same field. I feel that and I understand the pointing. When you stop and think about it, yes, these are just thoughts, just illusions, there is no inside and outside. But even when I orient myself to that higher truth of myself, it just feels like me still.
That doesn't matter. What matters is the sense that something is missing, the dissatisfaction. We don't get clarified by trying to add the satisfaction, adding the love. It's by looking at the sense of dissatisfaction, the sense of something missing, the sense of a lack of love, the sense of a lack of safety, whatever it is in your experience that feels like something's just not right, something is missing, this isn't okay. Whatever expression you would call it, that's where you want to look. Get really close and intimate with it. Let that be your guide and your teacher. The understanding of what that is: only you can discover it.
What I'm offering is a pointing in a direction, because you could develop spiritual powers. They are real, and they could get you things that are real. But that would only take you further away from what I think is much better, which is what I'd call freedom, peace, liberation, well-being. I'm not saying don't develop powers. Often they develop as a byproduct of this work. But not because they are the objective.
I'm not too concerned about powers. But this thing you said about "there's something wrong," that has been running in my head pretty much since I started meditating. Something about my life doesn't make sense. Everyone else is on a different level. There's something wrong. I've been forgotten, or something doesn't add up. Then the mind comes in and wants to figure it out. I feel like that's a core trap, or judgment, or something that just keeps continuing. It gets fed to me whenever something doesn't work out the way I want, or something doesn't make sense. "I'm cursed, something's off, something's blocked."
That whole thing, which you put perfectly because it's in your own words, that whole thing (which will probably come in different words at a different moment), that's exactly what I'm talking about.
Projection and the attempt to fix
There's a whole bunch of things, and some of it has to do with things in life that you can address and improve. But we often try to fix that core sense through doing something in life, worldly stuff or spiritual stuff. That's what I meant with power: spiritual power or worldly power. There's a very deep desire to gain something so that we can fix that feeling. Often we try one way, gain something, and it doesn't fix it. We try another way, gain something, and it doesn't fix it. We try worldly stuff, gain something, and it doesn't fix it. We try spiritual stuff, gain something, and it doesn't fix it. Through trial and error and elimination, we get frustrated and despair grows.
All of that is actually a successful process, if that is happening, because we start to see: none of that's helping, none of it's fixing this. Then we can start to look at what actually is the problem. Because we really only look there when nothing else works.
Thank you. I get the feeling too that even at the root of that is impatience.
Oh, yeah. It's impatience, probably a rage of frustration and pain.
This pattern that something's off, something's different about my life, something's not making sense. That's the real thing I've got to bring to light.
The decision that created the illusion
That's the heart of where the illusion stems from. That's where we lost the garden. What I say might not help right now. You just hear the words, but it might click at another moment. It's because we decided we know what we are. That's my interpretation of biting the apple.
So this impulse to fix, to overcome: in this context, it's unhelpful. But is it helpful in other contexts in life?
It's helpful if the tap is broken and you want to call the plumber. Sure. A million ways. Problem solving, creating, troubleshooting: there are infinite possibilities of goodness, and infinite possibilities of mistakenly doing the wrong thing because we are confusing what the problem is, and then confusing what the solution is. We're projecting that core issue somewhere else, so we're trying to fix that, and it's not really the problem.
But yes, there are problems in life where the ambition to fix them is an awesome thing, if there is wisdom. Meaning: I know that I'm not projecting the issue that is at the core of the illusion of self.
This is the most normal thing. "The problem is the government, the problem is the world, the problem is the politician, the problem is the partner, the problem is the parent, the job, the employer, my mind, my emotions, my body." You could also internalize it. All of that: nope, not it.
Not even my parents?
That was a problem many years ago, not anymore. It really is just a matter of our personality type, whether we decide it's the government or our own mind or our own emotions. I can demonize and be a victim of a government, or a victim of my own mind and my own emotions. That position of victim is the disowning of responsibility and the projection of the true issue, which is: I've decided I am something, and I don't know what I am.
That decision, which happened very early on, we keep reinforcing. And that is the problem.
It is also funny. "I've decided I'm something."
It doesn't seem like "I've decided I know what I am." There is just a subjective experience, a perception of "I am this and I know what I am." There's a kind of reality to it. It just seems real. There's an experience that seems to be what is real. That's what we can look more closely at. It's like a house of cards. There's nothing real to the whole construct, and we can slowly disassemble it, or it can all fall suddenly. As it happens, it's painful and scary.
Patience, perseverance, and celebration
I have put so much energy into this path. It's been beautiful and effort-filled. But it still seems to just escape me. It doesn't hook or click or something.
I would give yourself more credit. Some people spend decades and are way more lost. The other side of that is: why would it be faster for you? I think you've come a long way. You can just be patient and celebrate. Patience, perseverance, and celebration. You're closer than a lot of people who are mostly lost, trying to fix the world, making a mess because they think the world is the problem when it's themselves.
The thought about the thought
I recognized a new pattern in me. I think it comes down to: it's not the first thought, but the thought about the thought. That's when I get tripped up. The judgment about the mind.
Exactly. And just be curious. What is at the root of this? Just get closer to it.
And don't interpret the solution as "I have to want all of this, all of this crap." No, that's not the solution. But it's to look more closely at it, and then a lot can be unpacked and clarified. It can get tricky.
In my case, you're saying it's more likely I'm taking certain ideas for reality?
Your ideas might not be about you; they might be about something else. But the assumption is that once something else is real (for example, "the guy across the room is looking at me in a very hostile way, and he shouldn't do that"), that becomes real. When that is assumed to be real, it implicitly means I am real as the one whom this imagined person is having an opinion about. Then, because that becomes a reality, I react emotionally to it. The emotional reaction is a direct consequence of "the man looking at me with a terrible opinion of me," or whatever I'm imagining. And then the solution to the emotional pain I'm in is for the man to stop doing what he's doing, which I imagined in the first place.
You can come up with any example where it's even harder to debunk the reality of this. For instance, if someone close to you says, "I'm really angry with you because of such and such," and you actually did the thing they're angry about. Then you can have a whole emotional reaction to that, and it could seem like the only solution is for that person to stop being angry.