The Sensation You've Been Running From
La sensación de la que has estado huyendo
A student describes intense cycles of bodily contraction, resistance, and feeling trapped, and the teacher explores how these experiences originate in a core sensation we spend our lives avoiding.
The Sensation You've Been Running From
A student describes intense cycles of bodily contraction, resistance, and feeling trapped, and the teacher explores how these experiences originate in a core sensation we spend our lives avoiding.
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 the 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, a wanting to reduce the intensity. When I looked at it, it's just this squeezing feeling, and it feels very hard to just let it be the case alongside other body sensations, thoughts, sounds, sights. Everything else moves through, but when that stuff comes up, there's an intensity that solidifies, and then a wanting to avoid, a moving into some kind of experience-avoidance. It feels very sticky.
Two perspectives that are the same
What comes to mind is to look at this from a paradoxical perspective. There are two perspectives that are really the same, but they will sound contradictory, even mutually exclusive.
One: all of that is happening, 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 to the other extreme, where you are the creator of that. You are the director, writer, and actor responsible for it all. So you have total freedom and creativity. Those two perspectives are a bit of a mindfuck if you try to hold them both.
Not really. Not for me. It feels very much the case. Both.
So then you were describing it from the perspective of "this is happening to me and it sucks." Right?
Yeah, from the person.
You are the creator of the trap
So then lean into the other side: that it's your movie, your job, your responsibility. You can start to see where that contraction you're describing is happening and how it's happening. Not by thinking about it or analyzing it, but by looking very deeply in the moment of the experience. That contraction, the feeling of "this is happening to me, I'm being put through a meat grinder," that whole description: 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. If that makes sense.
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 the fact that I am calling for this, seducing myself into this, wanting to be in and explore this, in a sense.
You mean 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?
That's the sense of it. There is a freedom in creating the experience of being trapped. Think about it: if you're the creator, how would you create the 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. What is it? How is it being created by me?
The origin of the "no"
Look at the core of that "no." Where is that? Where is it coming from?
It's a reaction in the body, it feels like.
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.
Think of it this way. You do this for a few days, maybe months, maybe actually years. The real experience is that it's years. It's pretty much as old as you are, especially post-birth, just truck after truck after truck. And then the experience becomes: "There's this involuntary thing happening." But the source of it was "I don't want this." That "I don't want this" is the contraction. But then it's experienced as something happening to you, something involuntary.
Two levels of contraction
This is happening at two levels. One is at a very core sense of self. The other is at the level of body and 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 deeper level, and then the body-mind will start to follow.
It's only once you see at the core that this was initiated by a sense of self that the reversal begins. It's like: I've been doing this. I decided to do this, and I was doing it intentionally. I began and initiated that, 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 with my hand; it doesn't work very well. 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 undo 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 follow in reverse. From getting to that deepest, most intimate place (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, there's a shift where we no longer need the body-mind to be fully released, because 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 you still say no to
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 you're still saying no to. So whenever that one is somewhat at a distance, you're fully in what you're describing now. But as soon as that deeper sensation is triggered, you're choosing 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 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, or sensation (there's no way of describing it universally) that could be more or less localized. But there's going to be a quality of experience where it's "yes" to everything, except that.
So it's a contraction. There's a sense of contraction after that.
The contraction is the response to that. It's the mechanism to avoid the sensation.
Oh, right. So the sensation is the primary thing, and the contraction is secondary.
It's a strategy to numb, to avoid, to not experience. Imagine 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're going to clench up: "No, I don't want this."
It's like a nails-on-a-chalkboard type of sensation.
Touching the fire directly
And so we think the strategy is to get better at shutting our eyes or not seeing what we're being shown. But the way out is to fully see it, fully see what we're saying no to. And I want to clarify: this is not about a certain experience in life. It's not about the thing that triggers this. It doesn't mean "I need to put myself in that situation." For example, it doesn't mean that if I have an abusive partner, I need to stay with that partner. No. There's something deeper that is the original creator of a dynamic that then becomes problematic.
If I am able to be with that core sensation (which has several triggers), I can then avoid the behaviors, mechanisms, and decisions that are problematic. All the problematic behaviors and mechanisms are the ways in which we avoid that sensation. The coping mechanisms are useful at first, but as life goes on, 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 that relationship is: when the sensation comes up, the goal would be to stay present with it? To stay open to it? Is that what would be helpful in that space? I get what you're saying at a very visceral level, but I'm just not sure, if I were there again, what to do. Is the goal to just sit on my hands and experience it and not go into all the secondary stuff?
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 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 (just making something up), don't do that. Sit on your hands, in a sense. Close your eyes and breathe into it. But if what you tend to do is just sit down, that might itself be the way you avoid, versus "I 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. And what is it that is being avoided? At the core of what is being avoided, there is a sensation.
Right. And once I figure out what the mechanism of avoidance is and 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. And "touching it" 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? And just to be clear, I'm not talking about a real fire or about physical pain that seems like you might be having a heart attack. I'm talking about something deeper, at the feeling, energetic, emotional level. You can really put your attention (like a hand) right into that. Don't think about it. Touch it fully. What is its nature? Know it intimately: that which you've been running away from and trying to avoid, that thing everything you do is in service of cutting off and not feeling.
It feels like it comes up at different intensities in different situations too. That's how it is, right?
The mechanisms begin to fall away
As it appears, depending on the trigger and the life situation, you become able to touch that more directly. And all of the mechanisms based on the sense of self will start dropping, because they exist in service of avoiding that sensation. At the core, that sensation is ultimately a consequence of the belief in a separate self.
How can the core of a sensation be a belief?
It's created by it. It's a consequence of it. The sensation, at its core, is a consequence of the belief in a separate self.
Oh, I see. Thank you. That's really clear.