The Silence You Cannot Lose
El Silencio Que No Puedes Perder
A student describes entering deep states of stillness in meditation but struggling with anxiety and contraction when engaging with life. The teacher challenges the assumption that silence and life are separate, urging the student to find peace not by withdrawing but by moving toward what they fear.
The Silence You Cannot Lose
A student describes entering deep states of stillness in meditation but struggling with anxiety and contraction when engaging with life. The teacher challenges the assumption that silence and life are separate, urging the student to find peace not by withdrawing but by moving toward what they fear.
When I'm sitting in meditation, I can focus attention on stillness. Usually it's a kind of downward motion, very focused in the center, and the mind just goes quiet. Everything settles. I experimented with staying there for about two weeks. It was empty; there were thoughts, but they were so light, just in the background. Then I noticed tension in my head and chest, and I got a sense that maybe I was ignoring something deeper. So I stopped and went back to being with sensation in the body, and everything from those two weeks that I had missed just exploded. It was so intense. That seemed to confirm there was some subtle escaping of experience, even though it was really amazing and pleasant.
Yes.
So what I've been doing is starting meditation with that focused settling, and then shifting into what you were guiding today: no focus anywhere, attention just disappears, and it's just whatever's happening. It feels like a psychedelic experience. Every time I did psychedelics, there would be such a deep knowing that this is reality, this is just how it is all the time, with no mind in the way of experiencing. When I have this in meditation, it's that same intensity. Everything so intimate, every sensation so full and close. I could say there's no "me," but even that doesn't feel right. It's more that there's no me trying to do anything. And then terror comes up, and I'm just with the terror, and that's part of this full sensation.
I mentioned to you a couple of weeks ago that I have really intense chest tension, a lot of heart palpitations. When I'm in this space, it gets to be more freed but very intense. I don't even know what my question is. Maybe staying there is a better practice than trying to hold that most of the day. Is that what you would recommend? Do you have any thoughts about what might be happening?
I'm not sure I'm hearing a question, which you said yourself. I can comment on the experiences you're sharing, but I don't feel that compelled to do so either. I'm more curious what it is that you want. Is the question around the experience you shared a few weeks ago about the heart, and whether to stay with it or not?
A couple weeks ago the question was about what to do with the heart thing. We talked about how it's partly about going into life. That's what I've been exploring these past couple weeks, and it's been good, but it gets very confusing. The ego tries to run life, and there's a very fine line between what I enjoy doing and what becomes the mind co-opting things to achieve something. Then it turns into anxiety, and then I notice that, and then I stop and I'm with the sensation.
The cost of states
You said the ego co-opts life when you try to go into it. Is it possible that you're recognizing that approach isn't working out? What I've been hearing is that you're learning to get into states, but all states have a cost. What I point to here is not states. Even the contraction in your heart is a state, and in a sense, it doesn't matter. Whatever will bring that to release is probably found in life. A contraction in the heart is often a fear of life, a fear of loving.
It also seems like it's the root of my identity. When I do inquiry, it gets so intense.
The root of identity, let's put it this way: if you fear life and you choose the fear of life, that creates identity. That is identity. So you can't undo identity and still obey the fear of life. And you can't ignore the fear of life and live without facing the illusions of identity.
That's why last time we spoke, I felt so strongly, and I feel it again now, that the direction for you is life. Learn what you fear and go toward what you love, which is probably what you fear. I think that's the only way you will be released from the struggle you're in.
I have a sense that you have a very sophisticated and able mind, and that has many advantages. But in this work, it can get a little tricky: not the mind itself, but approaching this through the mind, with the mind, developing strategies and achieving states. All of that is useful if we bring it to the end and realize we don't actually get what we want that way. There is a dissatisfaction that is deeper, at the heart level, and that won't be fixed by practices or entering states.
It's definitely not my intention to go for states. It's really just about what allows me to relax the self. That's all I'm attempting, what I think we're all here trying to do.
Relaxing the self is still changing a state
That's your perspective of what everyone is trying to do. I wouldn't generalize that so quickly. Relaxing the self is actually an attempt to change a state: the state of contraction, the appearance of the contracted self. What if that never happens? What if the contraction never releases? What would you do? How would you live this life as fully as possible if that contracted state always remains the same? Then what you're aiming for isn't a change of state.
I don't want to make it a mental thing, but I have such a deep longing for self-realization over anything else. That longing took priority over whatever this body-mind wanted to do in life, so I focused everything on it. I'm okay going back into life, and I do.
How is self-realization in some way in opposition to life?
It's not that it is. It's just where my attention goes.
But how is your attention even able to go into something called "self-realization" as opposed to life? That distinction is conceptual.
That's literally everything my teachers have taught me. The main teaching from that lineage is: where is your attention? Is it on silence, on emptiness, or is it on the mind?
That's one thing. The mind and silence, we can talk about that. But life versus realization?
It's just how it appears. When I have my attention on silence and emptiness, my body has no interest in doing anything. It really requires my mind to say, "Oh, I should go hang out with people. I should make a living." When I'm in silence, I don't care.
The belief that silence is absent in life
You have a conceptual image of what realization is that's in some form in opposition to life.
I don't. My concept is that it's one thing, that life happens seamlessly, no separation of silence or doing. But that's not what's happening in my experience.
You contradict yourself. You just said there is no distinction between life and silence.
I'm saying my concept is that there isn't a distinction. I understand conceptually there's no distinction. But my experience is that I don't have a calling. Sometimes I do, sometimes I want to go do something, but mostly not.
The consequence you're describing comes from believing that life and silence are two. Because of that belief, which you conceptually know is false but don't experience as false, there is something operating underneath. You can't remove a belief with another belief. If you have a belief that life and silence are separate, you can't remove it with a belief that they are the same. You have to see the falseness in that belief, and you won't see it if you only focus on the silence. Because what you're focusing on is also conceptual. There is no absence of silence in life. There is no absence of silence in anything.
That's what you said last time, and that's what I've been trying to bring into daily experience. It's been good, except for the times when it goes into a lot of anxiety.
You're going into anxiety because you're pushing and creating states. You're confusing a state of a calm mind with silence. That's not the silence I speak of, and that's not the silence the great teachers speak of.
When I say silence, I don't mean quiet. I don't mean absence of noise. I just mean emptiness.
Same thing. There is no absence of emptiness in life, in the busyness of life, in the busyness of thought, in going out, seeing friends, working. There is no absence of emptiness or silence in any of that.
I don't think there is either. I agree there must be a belief somewhere subconsciously that I don't have access to.
It's not that you think it is or believe it is; it's just not your experience. If you believe the teaching that the emptiness and silence you long for is not absent in life, then why are you putting energy into something that isn't aligned with that? If you're cultivating a state of emptiness and opposing the movement into life, you're reinforcing the belief that they are two and that silence and emptiness are absent in life. Go and find it in life. Go and see that it is in life.
I think that's what's been happening. I'm just in the throes of it, and it's uncomfortable.
And you can look for it in the discomfort. Look for it in the anxiety. That's where you can find the silence and the emptiness you're looking for: in the pain, in the fear, in the anxiety, in the discomfort. That's what needs to be clarified.
In the anxiety is when I just stop. Because it's all generated by thought identification. I stop identifying with thoughts and just notice that I'm identifying with thoughts.
You stop what? Is anxiety a problem, or are you not doing something because of the anxiety? These are questions for you, not for you to answer to me.
I don't stop doing. The anxiety is there, and I stop feeding those thoughts, and then I'm resting, and then I can go back to doing, sometimes in the midst of it.
Don't stop: find silence in the struggle
I feel very strongly that this is the direction for you. The true silence, the true emptiness, is always everywhere present. It's always here now. Anything you do that's based on that being more accessible in some state is going to reinforce the belief that it's not present. A lot of teachers teach the calming of the mind, but that's not what I point to.
The main teaching from that lineage is: stop. Stop following thought, then recognize what's always here, what doesn't come and go, which is this silence, this emptiness. I've discovered it is always here if I stop, no matter what's happening: in the midst of anxiety, in the midst of discomfort, in the midst of doing. And then that's kind of the end of the teaching. Just live that way. Just stop whenever you need to.
You're saying "stop." What does that mean? I think you're interpreting it in a particular way.
Stop identifying with thought.
But if you're still struggling?
In those moments, there's no struggling. And then it happens again, and then stopping happens again. That's the teaching, and that's what I've found to be true. But what I've discovered is that there seems to be an extra teaching that isn't really in that lineage: that the self actually drops, which seems to be what you point to. Then there's no need to stop. Some teachers say "be vigilant until your last breath," and that's always confused me, because why would you have to always be vigilant if the self drops?
I won't comment on that. I don't say "be vigilant." I don't say "stop" either. But I can work with the teaching of "stop" and give you a continuation of it, which is what you just pointed to. Now, don't stop. Look for the silence and the peace without the stopping part.
As a practice, stopping and meditating and observing works to a degree, to a certain stage. But there is still an illusion. When you said I point to the self dropping, what I point to is the belief in illusion ending. And I know that's what the great teachers point to, each in their own language. What I say, what anyone says, is all very much problematic. It might be useful for the people hearing it, but it can't be generalized. There isn't a one-size-fits-all teaching that takes you all the way, because it's all words.
So "stop" needs to be complemented with "don't stop." You've been able to find the silence and the peace if you stop. Now look for it if you don't. What happens? Because there's illusion there. There is identification there.
When you say "look for it," it's probably another way of describing what they call vigilance, a kind of awareness, a checking.
You said there is no struggle in the times that you do that. So I'm saying look for it where there is struggle. If there really were no struggle at all, I don't think you would be here asking questions.
I'm here because the struggle starts up again. Every time I stop, it stops. Then it starts up again because mind identification starts up again. The question is how to release the mind identification that keeps restarting.
Stop stopping. Whatever has become that practice, whatever it is you do, try an experiment. Stop doing the stopping. Continue. Keep going into whatever the stopping saves you from, until what you find when you stop is clear everywhere.
When the struggle reappears, there is illusion. There is belief in something that's not real. That's what you need to find. You need to see it and hear it. And you might not want to. In that case, you don't have to. You can take all the time you want.
That's what I want to do. So I guess what you're saying sounds to me like fully feeling the sensations, going into the discomfort fully.
Seeing how you choose the struggle
I'm going to flip it around now because of what you just said. Look for how you don't want to see that. See if you can recognize how you don't want to see it, how you do want to be in struggle and illusion. Don't trust your conviction that you're so committed to seeing.
There's obviously the part that's afraid to die. That's the fear.
The part that's afraid to die is not other than you.
Right.
When you can fully see that... You know the metaphor of the fist? There's a contraction. At first we recognize it and address it as this thing happening to our hand. It comes and goes, and we figure out some way to manage when it comes and goes, but it keeps coming back. Until you realize it's you. Then you can see it's you, and then you forget, and then you see it again. But ultimately you see it's been you all along.
So when you say, "Yes, I see the part of me that doesn't want to see," there's still a flavor of it being something separate from you, something with its own will that does this contraction of not wanting to see. But once you see it's you choosing that, you attached, you preferring, then you can ask: what do I really want? Do I want to keep the contraction? That's when the disidentification starts happening, which paradoxically is the freedom to just release.
I'm hoping the disidentification has already been happening.
It comes and goes. I'm talking about when it's back. When it's back, it's not something that happened on its own. It's you. It's you choosing.
I feel the resistance, and I feel the resistance to the resistance.
That's where you can make a lot of progress: in seeing why you choose the resistance, what's in it for you, and where you can see it as you.
There's a practice of neti neti, disidentification: "It's all appearing, it's not you." But the mind can do a tricky thing where there is identification, and it becomes "the ego doing it" or "identification appearing and happening," as though it's separate.
I've been exploring different ways of meeting the resistance. I noticed that feeling it and surrendering to it, letting it envelop me, would work temporarily, but it kept coming back. So I thought there must still be some resistance if it keeps returning. Now I'm more intimately examining the sensation, getting really, really close so it's not separate at all, and then it starts to dissolve.
You're still addressing a lot of what's happening as another entity. You're taking a position where it's happening to you. A way through that is to look at how you are choosing it, creating it, wanting it, and then ask why.
It always comes back to safety. Protection.
Then you can look at those fears and see if you want to face them.
I think the facing them is what I was describing. When I feel that fear, that's me trying to face it.
Facing fear means acting, not just feeling
Feeling the fear isn't necessarily facing it. Facing the fear is doing what the fear is saying not to do. And it's usually in life. It's not sitting in a room with fear. Sometimes it is. Sometimes we go into life to avoid fear and pain, getting busy to avoid it, and we need to learn to sit with it and be still. Sometimes it's the other way around.
It got so confusing with a lot of teachers saying just focus on the internal and everything external will fall into place.
There's no such thing as internal and external. The reality of that distinction is conceptual. You're dancing at a conceptual line: life versus emptiness, external activity versus internal sensing and feeling and sitting still. The only place there is an "internal" and an "external" is at the boundary of the idea of what you are. That's the identification.
It's just so much easier to focus on sensation.
To a degree. But then it's like walking around on crutches. It worked for a bit, but...
I agree with you, and it's happening more naturally, too. I'm engaging more with the life things that scare me, doing them anyway. I'm also noticing less of the chronic fatigue symptoms, which was part of why I wasn't doing much in life. It feels like whatever was creating the fatigue, that lifting is shifting into this opposite anxiety energy. I'm managing that before it goes into control and overdoing. It's like finding the effortlessness in the effort.
When you end up in control, in what you call overdoing it, just look at what's happening. You don't necessarily need to stop that. The illusion of control gets really activated. So instead of retreating from that activation, recognize that when the sense of control gets very activated, it's because there's fear and pain. You might find that in life. It's really just what's happening.
There's so much fear intertwined with any doing. Fear of it not going the way you want it to go. Fear of dying.
The only way you're going to get what you want is through that fear. Going for what you want, risking dying, risking pain. Then you will taste the peace you're looking for. For some people, it's the other way around. I don't think that's the case for you.
It's been such a long journey. I've really done all aspects already. I was fully in life for most of my life before the spiritual path, and after my first awakenings, I just did everything freely. Then when all the trauma came up, I went back into a shell, hiding, clearing out all the trauma. This is me starting to come back into life. I know how to be fully engaged. Personality-wise, I tend to go toward danger, toward intense experiences.
Don't assume you know how to do life the way you did before. Who you are now is different. Don't assume you'll get stuck in the same places, but also don't assume you'll have the same ease. Things are different now. The process will be to see that there are not two ways, in the sense of going in to heal and going out to do. That separation is, I think, your next illusion to observe. But you can only really see through it in the flow of life, the doing, the facing of fears and pains in a new, deeper way, for which you've developed the capacity.
In a sense, there's the journey inward and the journey outward. Tantra can be considered the journey outward, into life fully. But then there's yoga, the union, where there are not two directions.
Those are the two things I've studied most. Yoga is my thing. When I get these kundalini energetics, I feel that connection to life energy moving. It's happening more. But there's still this wanting to know, when I'm in life, what my one-pointed attention should be on. Is it on peace while I'm doing? Is it nothing?
There is no technique for living
One-pointed attention is a practice, a technique. It's not a way to live. How to live is really up to you. There isn't a right way in the sense of a method, a technique, something to pay attention to. What I can offer is the clarification of all the ways in which we can get lost. For example, I can clarify that it's not a technique or a way to approach life that's going to work.
I generalize things: for example, going for what you truly, deeply want in the deepest sense. That will involve a constant movement of not knowing, listening, exploring, facing fear, and feeling pain. But something can happen, which you know about: that sense of separation, outside and inside, life and not-life, all of that can really come crashing down. That's what I think we all truly want.
That's freedom. That's definitely what I want.
But my really strong recommendation is: what you call life, what you call external, that's the direction now. Go into those fears, into those pains, risk. Things will become more clear.
When you say "go into," do you mean feeling-wise or action-wise?
More action-wise. Move toward what you want, even if there's fear of pain.
That's what I've been doing these past two weeks.
Once you really go for it, your longing for safety, which you talked about, is what activates the reactivity and resistance. That's normal. When you see that you're always safe, you will taste that freedom. But you only find that safety when you're in the middle of what you're afraid of, where you sense the most absence of it, and you realize you're still safe.
I've noticed something shifting naturally in interactions with people that are challenging. But there's also the question of how much you give to healthy boundaries. Sometimes people are genuinely not safe to be around, and it's okay to have a boundary. But then there's also what you said about the part that doesn't want things to be happening. Maybe there's deep acceptance that something is happening, but still an energetic of "no, this shouldn't be here."
Two kinds of safety
There are two types of safety. One is what you addressed: people doing shitty things, toxic dynamics, risks to the body. That's where we learn to navigate, to say no, to address situations as they come. But the safety I'm talking about is deeper. It's not of that kind. It's a safety where in that moment something deeper gets activated, and you really feel you're not okay. Something is really not okay. That's what you can start to see.
The longing for safety is just a consequence of feeling that peace is absent. So safety isn't a thing in itself. It's a consequence of the illusion that peace is absent.
It's really hard to separate the two. In the moment, the nervous system is activated and feeling unsafe, which on the body-mind level is natural. I can't separate that from a sense of deeper safety.
At the deeper level, if you're longing for safety in that moment, you are identified with a lack of safety of the body-mind.
I think that's really hard for me to determine, because all there is in that moment is sensation. And then there might be a thought of "no, that's not okay."
But if this were clear, you wouldn't be talking about safety. Just assume that when that gets activated, it's activating in two ways: at the body-mind level and at a deeper level. Just assume it's activated in both. Because when it's not, it would be a non-issue.
When you say non-issue, what do you mean?
A non-issue is this: you're in distress in a relationship or some situation, and very explicitly you're fine. At the deepest level (and I don't mean far away in the distance; I mean in the foreground, very real) you are completely fine. The sense of distress is at a distance. It's superficial. The body-mind being activated is like a glitch in the distance.
So the more prominent experience is that you're fine.
Yes.
I feel like that's what I've been noticing has been slowly shifting. There's more of that fineness. And it doesn't linger as much after the interaction.
Exactly. And that's the practice: go into life, do what you want, experience that, and clarify the sense of that absence of safety.
Do you experience a talking-to-yourself dynamic?
Not really. I have thoughts; imagination is quite active at times, and planning. But as a dialogue, I can talk to myself intentionally, but it's not a real activity. It's silly and fun, but not what it used to be. When I have thoughts, they're more planning and imagination. And then there's obviously what I call the mind map, which is also all thought: the functioning of location, direction, people, language, talking, working. But the activity of thought in a more normal state is either planning or imagination.
Do you have processing thought? Like if something scary happened and you had a nervous system reaction, is there processing afterward?
It's often quite clear what happened, so I don't have a lot of processing. The energy that gets activated moves pretty quickly, because there isn't usually a lot of complexity that needs to be clarified. Usually what I found is that complexity is really complication. Where I do have more thinking is around challenges in my work or some situation I'm trying to see from different angles. But that's more like imagination, creativity, trying to learn something from it. It's a very light and creative process, not churning.
So there might be reflection.
I call it contemplation. It's very intentional. If I'm not intentionally doing it, it's not happening.
And otherwise it's mostly quiet.
Yes. But again, the quietness that's very present all the time has nothing to do with the amount of thought appearing. Referring to the amount of thought appearing, yes, it's often very quiet.
I notice that there's a difference between thought that's in the background, quiet like a sound or anything else, and then noticing I'm identified with thought.
Yes. Inner dialogue is a really clear sign. You can have inner dialogue, but when it's clear, it has this silly, fun quality, versus anything real to it. When it's a real dialogue, it's a kind of churning.
The inner narrative and what it may be hiding
When I notice the churning, I usually find some fear behind it that I'm avoiding. Then I give attention to that fear.
The one thing to be careful about is if you're deactivating the fear through an ability to change your state via a practice, instead of doing what you want to do that scares you.
Most of these thoughts aren't doing-related. A lot of it has been around trying to do this correctly. The way I'm talking to you now is how I talk to myself. "Did I fully meet this? Did I do it right?" It's a constant narrative about how to do this better.
I'm referring to the doing of what you want to do. You quickly said, "Oh, it's not doing-based." I think that's too quick for you to know what it's about. What you explain to me afterward may not be what it's really about. Maybe that's the way you're distracting yourself.
Let me say it differently. Maybe there's something you're not doing that you want to do, something you should be doing at the level of a deeper longing of the heart in life, and it's scary. So you choose a different goal, which is to do this work. Then that becomes what the fear is about, as you describe. You work with the fear when it gets activated, you deactivate it, but there's something stuck, and the heart is contracted.
I'm sure that's also true. I think they're both true, because this is just the state of my mind. It's always going, whether in rest, in bed, in meditation. I'm not going to be doing all day for my whole life, so part of it is what you said about avoiding doing, and part of it is just what the mind does. When I'm doing what I love (and I have moments of that, and it feels great), it's not like I suddenly stop talking to myself.
No, but it won't matter if you talk to yourself. And the talking will stop after you see there's nobody you're talking to.
That's what I want to see most clearly. I think it's both, because moving into life alone is not going to change this underlying mechanism of who I take myself to be.
I don't think you know that, and I would challenge that. But I do have to go now.
I'm sorry it went on so long.
That's how it is. I still recommend the path of life. Even if it seems like familiar territory to you, it's never the same river.
When I go there, everything is up for debate again: housing, career, community, everything. I don't have answers. My mind can't produce all those answers, which takes me back to needing to surrender for any answer to come.
Thank you all.