The Pull of the Familiar
La atracción de lo familiar
A student shares about physical tension arising in meditation, which opens into a wider exploration of how the compulsion to "become" something or "fix" ourselves perpetuates suffering, and how seeing through the illusion of a solid self is different from replacing one identity with another.
The Pull of the Familiar
A student shares about physical tension arising in meditation, which opens into a wider exploration of how the compulsion to "become" something or "fix" ourselves perpetuates suffering, and how seeing through the illusion of a solid self is different from replacing one identity with another.
There are certain ways I've been noticing the body, since I've been paying attention to it for some time. Lately there's this habitual clenching in the small muscles of my face. My face can get so tired, and sometimes I get headaches during meditation or just in daily life. Recently it's my jaw that has a hard time. It doesn't seem to be only because I'm watching it; it seems like some kind of holding. There's nothing wrong with that, and I do try to consciously relax it. I'm just curious about the physical tensing that can happen, that can cause pain. I wondered if you could speak to the way the body can react to this inquiry.
You bring up a good question. It's a very complex subject in a sense. The simple approach is that the body will do what it does, and there is a tendency to overly focus on that kind of thing.
That's where you find a lot of the more conventional bodywork and healing work, which is very valuable. I've done a lot of it, and it's been extremely helpful. But there was a tendency in me, and I think it's a common one: it's very easy to hold a notion that once that resolves, then I will arrive. There was a subtle belief in me, an attachment or a strategy: "If I can heal this, or undo this, or shift this in the body, in the mind, in my habits, then I will have this thing. I will arrive at awakening." That's what I was referring to in the meditation as "the promise."
Waking up versus growing up
That's why I try to be very clear about posing waking up as something very different from growing up. I find it's important to keep highlighting that distinction.
Tensions in the body will always be there as long as there is a body. Thoughts that are neurotic will always arise as long as there is a mind. What can shift is the identification. In a sense, none of that really matters. The neurotic thoughts can be seen as just thoughts. The tensions in the body can be seen as just tensions. There is no agenda attached to them, no desiring.
In a general sense, that is actually what makes the neurotic behavior lessen, what makes the tension in the body lessen over time. It does help, and it is invaluable at some point, to do therapy, to do bodywork, to do healing work. But it must be clear that none of it is ever going to get you to where you really want to go, which is here, now.
That does resonate. I can see how often, and for how long, I have thought about life in general in terms of a process, a becoming, and then applied that same lens to awakening. I'm seeing through that more and more. I can see what you're pointing to: that the divine is in the discomfort, in whatever's happening right here. As you were speaking, I just felt, "Oh my gosh, that's so free." It's so free that there can be neurosis. It's so free that there can be tension. It's really beautiful.
And there is an added advantage: there's a freedom in it being okay if there is neurosis, okay if there is tension. On top of that, because there is an openness and an allowing, the neurosis does not become action as much. It does not become the focus as much. Because there is an allowing for it to be what it is, it starts to dissolve. But it's not by trying to dissolve it that it dissolves. Trying to remove it is a rejection of it. Trying to push neurosis away is a rejection of neurosis. By being with it, seeing it, understanding it, and in a sense not giving it too much importance, there is an openness to it.
Freedom from becoming
There's a phrase that my teacher once said to me, and I've heard him say it a few times. It was very powerful for me: "the freedom from becoming." You used the word "becoming," and I just remembered it. In a sense, this is the freedom from becoming.
That is so beautiful. Thank you.
And then the process of living, of growing, of the "growing up," of the becoming, then becomes the play, the exploration, the fun, the free living, and not the clenching and contracting into trying to get somewhere.
Thank you. I feel very moved.
---
Something clicked for me last week around this idea that trying to get out of suffering is what's actually keeping us in it. Trying to get out of it is really resisting it, not actually looking at it directly. Something about that just started making more sense to me.
Slightly before that realization, I had a kind of vision. It was like a dream, but I was half in, half out. An image came to me: I had crawled in between very narrow cliffs and found myself in a cave. It was dark and small, and I realized I had gotten stuck. The water level was rising from the ground, and I thought, "Oh my God, I can't get out." I was almost preparing for my death, feeling like I was going to drown. The water kept getting higher and higher until there was just a sliver of space left between the water and the roof of the cave. There were a lot of feelings coming up, and I was held in that space for a while. Then I noticed the water started going down. The relief was enormous.
The external world and my situations recently have really been taking me to my edge. But what I've come to understand is that it's not about the challenges in my life meaning I'm doing something wrong. It's not that I've got to get my frequency right, or visualize for longer, or find a strategy. These situations are coming because of the energy they draw out of me, the emotions being drawn out. In a sense, it's like squeezing the deep patterns from me. I had this huge reframe: the challenges are not because I'm doing a bad job or being karmically punished, which is where my mind wants to go. They're an opportunity to get in deeper touch with very primal fears that would otherwise have been lying dormant in my system.
Through that, I felt this huge weight lift off me. The last couple of days I've been feeling so much joy and trust. There are probably more levels to go, but there's this overwhelming sense of peace, even an excitement for life. I'm living life the way I want to live, and I can just trust that. Trying to get out of any negative situation is actually fighting it. You miss the juice that the external circumstances are bringing up in you.
Resistance is the suffering
That's beautiful. Do you mind if I comment on something you said? You said that trying to remove or get out of the suffering is what keeps you in it, that it's more resistance. I would say even more specifically: trying to get out of the suffering is the suffering. The resistance to what is, is the suffering.
That's a good reframe.
A lot of what comes from that is what we address in this whole conversation on identification, which you could rephrase as "the making of an I," the making of I as opposed to not-I. When you speak about a certain way of experiencing where you interpret that you did something wrong, that you need to do it better, that you're being punished, all of that requires a really reinforced I. It takes the energy of creating a very specific, solid I: the I that is doing something wrong, the I that can do something wrong. It starts to build that I-ness with a story of doing something right and wrong, of having to do something, of being punished.
The trust and the openness start to deflate that. It becomes less and less of a big story around "I doing this and that." The shifts you're describing involve moving in a direction where there is less pulling into, less constructing of, this I that is doing something right and wrong.
I like that. I want to take responsibility, but for so much of my life I've felt like I don't really know what to do, and I keep trying to figure out what to do.
The honesty of not knowing
There's a very big difference between taking responsibility and self-punishment or self-criticism. Being honest with yourself, saying "I don't know what to do," is a much more responsible position than pretending you do when you don't. Or pretending that you should know. You're owning the reality of what is. You're stepping into a more real, more honest, more transparent perspective. That's a lot more responsible than pretending you know or pretending you have clarity.
With that openness and honesty, you will learn a lot faster. People who become masters of their craft don't become masters because they decide very early on that they know. They are voracious learners, always from a place of not knowing, from a place of curiosity, from a love of learning. That requires a position of not knowing.
It feels a lot more simple.
It is a lot simpler. That's the childlike nature of our essence: that we really don't know, we really are curious, and we really do love learning. It's fun. It feels good to explore and learn and figure things out. We're always beginners, because there's always more. You said there are probably more levels. Think of there being infinite levels. The sense of "I've reached some place of knowing" is only in relationship to a comparison. In an absolute sense, there is always going to be more to learn, in any form of knowing. Thank God.
The reality of what I speak from is actually an absolute not-knowing. It's this very stark knowing that I don't know. And it's very obvious. So it's easier to see the illusion of knowing, the false knowing.
There's this quote I really like: "Everything you're experiencing is preparing you for what you asked for." So it's like, okay, I asked to see my deepest parts, I asked to integrate, to reach a higher stage of realization, and then life gives me these challenges, and I'm like, "God, what am I doing wrong?"
The dance of life and waking up
That is part of the process, very much. The more you expand, the more you will hit the boundaries of the apparent limitation in the body, in the mind, in your capacities. That's a very real thing: energetics moving. That's the part which is the dance of life, the dance of living a process of deepening. And then there is what I speak to around the waking up, which doesn't require any of that to happen.
I see. So it's not about the waking up. It's not about the emotional experiences.
It's not about the emotions. It's not about the healing, or the body shifting in any way, or your life becoming any specific way.
But it does feel like that is in support of it, right?
Both aspects are mutually supportive. What can happen is that we get too distracted in one or the other. You can't really get distracted in actual awakening, but you can get distracted in the pursuit of awakening. And you can get distracted in the pursuit of healing or growing with a sense that you will arrive at something. The way we can get lost in either is with the notion that we'll get somewhere tomorrow. Whereas true awakening is seeing that you already are, that this is it, that it always has been. At the deepest level, what you're looking for is already given.
I still feel like I'm missing something.
What I'm saying is just words, and there is a massive difference between the words and the knowing of it. Everything you've described is in service to that as well, because you are dropping illusions. As we drop illusions, we come closer to dropping the master and the creator of illusions, which is the illusion of I.
The illusion that I can somehow change my life, or that I can...
It's the illusion that you are this person you take yourself to be. That person can walk around and change things, can change her life. And that's great, that's fun. But what I'm talking about is the illusion that you are that person.
But I am the field.
Replacing one identity with another
That's just you, identified, trying to replace the object you're identified with. "If I'm not the object of this person, I must be the object 'field.'" That is just another mental image. It's still operating the function of identification: "I am something, and I know what it is." It's really incisive.
So you just have to be it, basically.
You can start to see more and more how the compulsion to identify operates.
But how do I, I mean, I've probably heard this a million times, but if you don't have something to put your mind on, to remind yourself to step out of the identification...
You don't step out of it. You just see the unreality of what you're identifying with.
Looking at what you think you are
When I say your name, you have a concept, a construct of what that is. All of what makes that is a bunch of thoughts: complex, really convincing thoughts. It's going to be memories, images, narratives, and it's going to be very realistically attached to the sensations of the body. But then, what is the body? The more you look at it, it's sensations, always-changing experience that comes and goes. None of it is stable. Same with the thoughts.
The more you start looking at that, you'll see that what you call yourself is not a thing. It's just a collection of moving sensations and thoughts, none of it having any actual essence as an entity. The only thing that has the essence of an entity is the idea of an entity.
The more you see that (aside from being pretty shaken by it), the more you will be unable to believe you are that.
The flipbook cartoon
You know how, in a book of empty white pages, you could draw a little cartoon, and at every page you move it slightly, and then you flip the pages and it looks like an animated cartoon? We probably all did this in school. It's how cartoons are made. You experience this being, this cartoon, that is operating and living and doing its thing. But you know it's just carbon from a pencil on paper. The actual entity of it isn't there.
When I say your name, it's like that cartoon. It's just a constant appearance of sensations and thoughts, with the concept of a name attached to it and the belief "this is what I am." The more you start to see that, the more you look at it closely, you'll see there isn't any entity there. That which I call "I" is not a thing.
That's something you can actually contemplate. Take a moment to sit and look: what is this person that I think I am? What is it made of? You look inward, at the appearance of a subjectivity, and you will see a lot of images and sensations in the body.
I feel an attachment there.
And we are attached to that. That's exactly what it is: the attachment to what we're identified with. It's like when a child finds out Santa Claus is really their parents. Bye-bye, Santa. Santa's gone.
But it's interesting, because I described it quite literally and you got quite moved. You see it. That's a very clear sign.
I feel the pull. It feels like a default.
It is a default. But the fact that you resonated so deeply, that I could see it, means you see it. It's not something far away for you.
Is that it?
That's the beginning of seeing that illusion. Seven billion people, most of whom, if they heard what we just talked about, would think it was completely crazy or nonsensical. But you saw something, and you were moved. That's a lot.
It feels very clear, like a clearness.
The captain and the mast
Just tie yourself to that. Let that be your North Star.
There's a story from Homer's Odyssey that my teacher used to tell. A boat is crossing the sea, and there's an island where the sirens live. The sirens are these beautiful mythical beings, and their song is so captivating, so alluring, that it's impossible not to try to get close to them. All of the explorers would crash into the rocks and be destroyed. But in the story, the captain ties himself to the mast of the boat so that he can't turn the ship to follow the call of the sirens.
That points to the understanding that the call of the siren is a really powerful temptation. It's so alluring. But there's a clarity that that's not it, that's not where you want to go. I have a sense that's what you're describing: you feel the pull, and you see very clearly that it's not it.
What you can do is simply say to yourself, "I want to see. I want to remain in the place of seeing, of truth." The true inquiry is literally this: it's battling these forces to see what is truly real, and not falling into the temptation of the illusion of what I am attached to.
Thank you.
You're welcome.