Letting Go of the Need to Know
Soltar la necesidad de saber
A student describes intense relational trauma resurfacing and asks how to meet overwhelming emotion more fully. The teacher points to the deeper obstacle: an attachment to knowing, understanding, and explaining, which must be surrendered before the raw tenderness beneath it can blossom.
Letting Go of the Need to Know
A student describes intense relational trauma resurfacing and asks how to meet overwhelming emotion more fully. The teacher points to the deeper obstacle: an attachment to knowing, understanding, and explaining, which must be surrendered before the raw tenderness beneath it can blossom.
I came on wanting to ask about how to better meet intense emotion, because a lot has been coming up very intensely. After we spoke about going toward life, it was as if intelligence just knew what that meant and began doing it on its own. I've been hitting hard against all the relational trauma I was trying to sidestep.
I volunteer at a healing center, and a lot of that pain was being pushed under. I was aware it was being pushed under, but I thought it was okay. Then it was simply no longer okay, and that was not my choice. It all came up and led to a dramatic exit from that place. So much of it mirrors dynamics from my childhood. It's been very intense these past couple of days: a lot of emotion, a lot of looping through the same stories, and then trying to come back to the body to feel. I know the looping is trying to avoid the intensity. But when I go back into feeling, it seems like endless fear and pain. There's always this question of whether I'm meeting it right. It doesn't feel like a quick movement of being present with it so it can release. It's drawn out, very intense, and it feels like there must be a really strong resistance.
Then in our meditation today, I dropped to a very deep place, much deeper than any of that. I met this feeling of, "Oh my God, not this." I pulled back, then kept creeping back in, doing that dance of pulling away and returning. It felt good, in a way. It's in the lower belly, an ongoing contraction there.
Then when someone else was sharing, I just started crying and crying. There was such a deep resonance with whatever this resistance is: resistance to this self, to this death. Maybe it's a fear of fully letting go, and the pain that comes because I want it so badly. I don't really have more words than that. It's a very intense sadness that keeps coming. I don't know what the question is, unless it's simply how to meet it more fully.
Sadness is a really good direction. When you're with sadness, that's often something deep.
But you brought up the fear and pain, and the question of how you're meeting it and whether you're meeting it in the best way. For that, I would recommend working with a trauma therapist. That can really help clarify in the moment how to walk through it and work with it. That was very helpful for me, and it's a strong recommendation.
I do EMDR every week with a therapist. It's been the same stuff for years, working on the same relational trauma. This is why I keep asking, "What am I missing?" It's always the same stories and the same emotional patterns. I'm not getting to the root of it.
The narratives we're attached to
Part of what I want to share with you is this: look at what narratives you're really wanting to remain. If something keeps repeating, there are narratives we're attached to.
But I also want to say it sounds like you're moving in a really good direction, going back into difficult feelings and meeting that sensation where you felt "not this" in meditation. That's a good sign. There is that dance you described, the back and forth toward it and away from it.
Surrendering the attachment to knowing
The key to all of this, in a sense, is that it's a process of humbling. A humility in all of our knowing and our attachment to knowing. You said you really want to surrender. What needs to be surrendered is the knowing. That's what the struggling and the fighting is: our attachment to knowing. I know it well.
It's also a certain kind of knowing around the understanding of that pain, where it's from, what it's about. That also needs to be seen through, and that will be the surrender.
When I say fear and pain, there's a fear that can be a kind of cycling. And then there's a deeper fear that's more like despair, helplessness, a sense of powerlessness: "I can't, I just can't." That's the humbling.
I think the crossroads you're in is this being churned and a bringing of humility, but it's a universal thing. It's not you specifically. It's coming to a point where a very deep attachment to knowing becomes an obstacle, and then the sensations of that pain can be met more directly. Not managed by the knowing of what it is, or the knowing of how to manage it, or the knowing of how to approach it or deal with it. And be really gentle with yourself when you're there.
The tenderness beneath the protection
I'm feeling it really strongly as you're talking about it. There's such a deep resonance. I can feel it start to open, and it's very, very tender, very soft. Like: this is who I am. This is that innocence, the innocence of a child, of just not knowing. I can feel how so much was built to protect and keep that safe. The knowing was an attempt to keep that safe and out of harm's way. It was attached to relational trauma: I built all these walls of protection and knowing to keep everyone out.
Even now, as you come to this really tender, vulnerable place, which you described very beautifully, notice the temptation to explain it and understand it a little more than necessary. I know what you're talking about. The invitation is to be just still and quiet with that. A burning, vulnerable rawness. You can realize there's something very sweet there. A bittersweetness, possibly. That childlike openness and innocence.
As you become more settled with that, you'll be able to see that it doesn't need protection. As a child, it did. And you've done a great job at that. Now it's just time for that to blossom again and come forward: the qualities of heart.
You can very gently notice the temptation of thought and the mind to grasp at knowing, understanding, and explaining. And you can bring a kind understanding that of course you would want that. The knowing was the safe place. But now it's no longer necessary. It was a needed stepping stone.
The essence of being in the heart center is that it harmonizes. It's not just love or affection. It's harmonizing the kingdom: aligning with truth and well-being, caring, gentleness. That's my sense of what you're sharing.
Thank you so much. It's really very hopeful. I can feel the parts that want to contract again, that don't want to stay in this openness.
You don't even need to fight that. Just understand that of course that's all you had, and it was necessary, and it was helpful. But it's not needed anymore. You can caringly, gently, lovingly say goodbye to that safe place of knowing.
Even this knowing wants to know. Like, "Why is this in my lower belly and not in my heart?"
Exactly. Just let it move mysteriously through the infinite spaces. Just trust. This is how I would interpret the true meaning of the word faith. It's not faith in dogma or words. It's a deep trust and a letting go of that knowing, the knowing of the mind.
It just feels so raw. Like, "But what am I going to do if I don't think about everything?"
Relating to the mind differently
You can have fun with the mind doing that. The mind is going to think. It's like the heart is going to pump. The mind is going to create thoughts. Relate to them in a different way, and then the mind will change the way it functions and responds. It doesn't change by us trying to manipulate it. You'll find a way to move and live where you're not hooked to that kind of knowing. Eventually, because there's no guarantee, but eventually it will bring more harmony.
I've always had this longing for allowing life to move me, hoping that it would reveal itself how that's going to happen.
It's always happening, and you will be recognizing it more and more. It's already happening.
When my attention is on this area, it's just flowering, and it's so tender. I feel so dumb. It feels so good to be dumb.
A lot less work, right? All the time knowing takes a lot of effort, and a lot of effort in self-delusion, because we don't really know.
It's all just nonsense. This particular character's identity was so wrapped up in that, in being so intelligent.
I relate. Thank you.