The Sensation Beneath the Contraction
La sensación bajo la contracción
A student describes the cycle of intense body sensations, reactive thoughts, and a feeling of being trapped, and the teacher explores how avoidance strategies mask a core sensation that can be met directly.
The Sensation Beneath the Contraction
A student describes the cycle of intense body sensations, reactive thoughts, and a feeling of being trapped, and the teacher explores how avoidance strategies mask a core sensation that can be met directly.
This was such a good exercise for me during the meditation, because I was experiencing those intense body sensations, which then trigger thoughts, which then trigger more body sensations. It's so difficult. There's this resistance that shows up for me when there's a combination of fatigue, irritation, and a sense of having to go play a role. I'm in this role at work where I can't escape, and I feel like I have to be a certain way. Then it feels like I'm trapped. I had this image of being put through a meat grinder. It just feels so tight. Then there's this reaction, and it's not me that's reacting. I can't even say what it is that's reacting. It's just a reacting and a wanting to reduce the intensity. When I looked at it, it's just a squeezing feeling that feels very hard to just let be. Other body sensations, thoughts, sounds, sights, everything moves through. But when that stuff comes up, there's an intensity that feels solidifying, and then a wanting to avoid, a moving into some kind of experience-avoidance. It feels very sticky.
What comes to mind is to look at this from a paradoxical perspective. There are two perspectives that are in a sense the same, but they will sound really contradictory, even mutually exclusive.
One is: all of that is happening and it's just appearing, and you have nothing to do with it. From that perspective, there's just the knowing of it, the seeing of it, the experience itself. In a sense, there's nothing to do, nothing you can do, nothing that needs to be done.
Then simultaneously, you flip it to the other extreme, where you are the creator of that. You are the director, writer, actor responsible for it all. And so you have total freedom and creativity. Those two perspectives are a mindfuck if you try to hold them both.
Not really. Not for me. It feels very much the case. Both.
The creator perspective
So then you were describing it from the perspective of "this is happening to me and it sucks." If you lean into the other side, that it's your movie, your job, your responsibility, then you can start to see where the contraction you're describing is happening, and how.
This isn't something to think about and analyze. It's something to look at very deeply in the moment of the experience. That kind of contraction, the feeling of "this is happening to me, I'm being put through a meat grinder," you are in the middle of that imagination. Something in you is seducing something in you to buy into it. And something in you is calling something in you to seduce you into it.
Seduce me into the reaction to it? Into the importance of it?
The whole experience of it, the reaction to it. That appearance of "this is happening to me" requires an ignoring of "I am calling for this, seducing myself into this, wanting to be in and exploring this."
There's something that wants to experience this, or there's something that's buying in, and the contraction is based on that buying in. Is that what you're saying?
The freedom in creating entrapment
That's the sense of it. There is a freedom in choosing to feel trapped. It's the freedom of creating the experience of being trapped. But if you're the creator of it, how are you able to create the experience of feeling trapped? How would a creator create an experience of feeling trapped? You really want to know it. You really want to experience that. How are you going to do it? It's impossible unless you create the ability to deny and forget that you're the creator.
When you say "creating it," though, it feels like what happens is there's freedom at the bottom of it, and then there's this huge "no," this huge reaction. So when you say I'm creating it, that's where I get confused. How is it being created by me?
Look at the core of that "no." Where is it? Where is it coming from?
It's a reaction in the body.
The automated contraction
Right, it's a reaction in the body. And so it feels like there's an autonomous thing, "the body," that's reacting and contracting and saying no.
You do this for a few days, maybe months, maybe years. The real experience is that it's years. It's pretty much as old as you are, especially post-birth, just accumulating layer upon layer. And then the experience is that there's this involuntary thing happening. But the source of it was "I don't want this," and the "I don't want this" is the contraction. Then it's experienced as something happening to you, something involuntary.
This is happening at two levels. One is at a very core sense of self. The other is at the level of the body-mind: sensations and thoughts. It's going to be actual, in the mechanism of the body-mind. But what comes first is at the sense of self, because that can be released at the sense of self, at the deeper level, and then the body-mind will start to follow, will start to learn.
It's only once it is seen at the core that this was initiated by a sense of self that you recognize: I've been doing this. I decided to do this. I began and initiated it, and then it became so habitual that I didn't have to intentionally do it anymore. It became an automated contraction, and then I forgot about it. It became numb, and I went about life. At some point it starts to feel like something's wrong. It doesn't work very well. It's really uncomfortable. Then you start fighting the habitual mechanism of this contraction, and it feels like "this is just happening to me, I can't stop it."
But if you go deeper and deeper, you're going to realize, "Oh, that's me. I can do that." Then it's going to go automated again, and it's going to feel like it's happening to you. Then, "Oh no, actually I can see it." And then it starts to reverse. From you getting to that deepest, most intimate level, which is what I was talking about in the meditation: if we go to the core, direct, most intimate experience of that struggle, it's like, "Oh, I'm doing this. I am creating this." And there we have the freedom to simply let go.
In fact, at that point we no longer need the body-mind to be fully released. There's a shift where, at the deeper level, there's a release, and then the body-mind can start to follow.
That release feels like it's there so much of the time. Right now there's no sense of self. There's total freedom of sight, sounds, sensations, all of it. It's like it's part of the environment. But when this happens, it's the total opposite of that.
The deeper sensation
That's perfect, because what's happening is exactly what I'm describing. You find yourself there again, and you think, "That's happening to me," and you have to re-remember. But what's happening is that there's still a deeper place where a very core sensation appears that you say no to. There's a very core thing at the heart of it, a sensation that you're still saying no to. Whenever that one is somewhat at a distance, you're fully in what you're describing now. But as soon as there's a triggering of that deeper sensation, you're choosing the contraction again.
So to work with that at the level of sense of self would be what?
I would work on it at the level of the sensation. The illusion of self at that level will be seen through on its own when you are able to see through the resistance to a sensation, the rejection of a sensation. There's going to be some flavor of feeling, emotion, energy, sensation. It could be more or less localized, but there's going to be a quality of experience where everything is a yes, except that one thing.
So it's a contraction. There's this sense of contraction in response to that sensation.
Right. The contraction is the response. It's the mechanism to avoid the sensation. It's a strategy to numb, to avoid, to not experience. It's like your eyes are being pinned open and you're being shown something you don't want to see. You can't look away. What do you do? You clench up. "No, I don't want this."
It's like a nails-on-a-chalkboard type of sensation.
Fully seeing what we say no to
And so we think the strategy is to get better at shutting our eyes, at not seeing what we're being shown. But the way out is to fully see what we're saying no to.
I want to clarify this because it could be misunderstood. It's not about a certain experience in life. It's not about the thing that triggers this, as if you need to put yourself in that situation. For example, it's not that if you have an abusive partner, you need to stay with that partner. No. There's something deeper that is the original creator of a dynamic that's then problematic. If you are able to be with that sensation, which has several triggers, you can then avoid the behaviors, mechanisms, and decisions that are problematic. All of the problematic behaviors and mechanisms are the ways in which we avoid that sensation.
The behaviors and all that are a secondary thing.
The coping mechanisms become problematic over time. They're useful at first, but then they become the problem. Then we think we need to change the coping mechanism or modify the behavior, and it's not going to work. It might be useful to a degree, but the only core solution is to have a completely direct, raw, intimate relationship with that core sensation.
Just so I'm clear on what the relationship is. When the sensation comes up, would the goal be to stay present with it, to stay open to it? I get what you're saying at a very visceral level, but I'm just not sure, if I was there again, what to do. Is the goal to just sit on my hands, experience it, and not go into all the secondary stuff?
Working with layers of avoidance
It's going to be a whole bunch of layers. Depending on where you're at, if all you're experiencing is the contraction and all the behavioral mechanisms of avoidance, then the task or the challenge would be to go fully into the experience of that contraction. For example, if you tend to go for a run when that's happening, don't do that. Sit on your hands, in a sense. Close your eyes and breathe into it. But if, for example, what you tend to do is just sit down, because that might be the way you avoid, then the direction would be the opposite: you need to go out and go for a run.
What I'm trying to say is that the direction is really personal. It's based on your intuition of: how is this a mechanism of avoidance? You can feel into it. What is being avoided? At the core of what is being avoided is a sensation.
Once I figure out, okay, that's the mechanism of avoidance, and then the sensation is there, the goal is to just experience the sensation as much as possible?
Definitely. To the point where you're not even having thoughts about it. You're just touching it. "Touching" in the sense that, metaphorically, if you're in front of something like a hot fire, and the instinct is to stand back because it's too hot, the direction is to bring your hand right into it. What is the experience of burning?
To be clear, I'm not talking about a real fire. I'm speaking of inner sensations. I'm also not talking about physical pain where you might be having a heart attack and need to call an ambulance. I'm talking about something at the feeling, energetic, emotional level. You can really put your attention, like a hand, right into that. Not think about it, but touch it fully. What is its nature? Know it intimately, that which you've been running away from, trying to avoid, thinking that everything you do is just to resolve this by getting it away, not feeling it. As if all of your life is in service to cutting that off.
It feels like it comes up at different intensities in different situations. That's how it is, right?
The dropping of mechanisms
As it comes, as it appears, depending on triggers and life situations, you're able to touch that more directly. All of the mechanisms based on the sense of self will start dropping, because they exist in service of avoiding that.
In fact, the core of that sensation is ultimately the belief in a separate self.
How can the core of a sensation be a belief?
It's a consequence of it. The sensation, at its core, is a consequence of the belief in a separate self.
Oh, the sensation at the core is a consequence of the belief in a separate self. Okay. Thank you. That's really clear.