The Pull of the Sirens
El canto de las sirenas
A student shares a recent shift in understanding about resistance and suffering, and the teacher points toward the deeper illusion of identification.
The Pull of the Sirens
A student shares a recent shift in understanding about resistance and suffering, and the teacher points toward the deeper illusion of identification.
Something clicked for me last week, thinking about this idea that trying to get out of the suffering is what's actually keeping us in it. Trying to get out of it is really resisting it and not actually looking at it directly.
Slightly before that, I had this vision. It was like a dream, but I was half in and half out. This image came to me where I had crawled 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, and I thought, "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 thin gap left between the water and the roof of the cave. Obviously a lot of feelings were coming up, and I was held in that space for a while. Then I noticed the water starting to go down. The relief was enormous.
The external situations in my life recently have really been taking me to my edge. But what I've come to understand is that it's not about the challenges themselves. It's not that I'm doing something wrong, or 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 to the surface. In a sense, it's like squeezing the vasanas out. I had this huge reframe: the challenges are not because I'm doing a bad job and being karmically punished, which is where my mind wants to go. It's an opportunity to get in deeper touch with the very primal fears that would otherwise have been lying dormant in my system.
Through that realization, 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 feel like I'm living the way I want to live, and I can just trust that. I can stop trying to figure out how to make it better. Trying to get out of any negative situation is actually fighting it, and you miss the juice that the external circumstances are bringing up in you.
That's beautiful. Do you mind if I comment on something you said? You said that trying to remove or get out of 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.
The making of "I"
A lot of what follows from that is addressed 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 interpreting 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 who is doing something wrong, who can do something wrong. It starts to build that I-ness, complete with a story of doing something right and wrong, of having to do something, of being punished.
The trust and openness you describe 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. I keep trying to figure out what to do.
Responsibility versus self-punishment
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 that I should know.
Exactly. 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. And from that openness and honesty, you will learn a lot faster.
The person who becomes a master of their craft doesn't become a master 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. It's 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 is fun. It feels good to explore and learn and figure things out. And we're always beginners, because there are always more levels.
You said there are probably more levels. Think of there being infinite levels. Any 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. Thank God.
The reality I speak from is actually an absolute not-knowing. It's a very stark knowing that I don't know. And it's very obvious. So it becomes 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 and 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 the matter of waking up
That is very much part of the process. The more you expand, the more you will hit the boundaries of apparent limitation in the body, in the mind, in your capacities. That's a very real thing: energetics moving. That's the dance of life, the dance of living a process of deepening.
And then there is what I speak to around waking up, which doesn't require any of that to happen.
I see. 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, and it always has been. At the deepest level, what you're looking for is already given.
I still feel like I'm missing something.
Yes, because 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 creator of illusions: the illusion of I.
The illusion that I can somehow change my life, or that I can…
It's the illusion that you are who you think you are. Because that person can walk around and change things, can change their 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.
Identification with a subtler object
That's just identification trying to replace one object with another. "If I'm not the object of this person, I must be the object 'field.'" But that's 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, this tendency.
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 do that? I've probably heard this a million times, but if you don't have something to put your mind on, to remind yourself…
Remind yourself of what?
To step out of the identification.
You don't step out of it. You see the unreality of what you're identifying with.
The cartoon on the page
When I say your name, you have a concept, a construct of what that is. All of what makes that construct is a bunch of thoughts: complex, really convincing thoughts. It's going to be a bunch of memories, images, narratives, and it's going to be very realistically attached to the sensations of the body, which is also part of that identity. But then, what is the body? The more you look at it, it's sensations. It's 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. And the more you see that, aside from being pretty shaken by it, the more you will be unable to believe you are that.
You know how you could take a book of empty white pages, draw a little cartoon, and on every page have it move slightly, and then flip the pages so it looks like an action 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.
Your identity is like that cartoon. It's just a constant appearance of sensations and thoughts, with a name attached to it and a belief that "this is what I am." The more you look at it closely, you'll see there isn't any entity there. That which you call "I" is not a thing.
That's something you can actually contemplate. Take a moment to sit and look: what is this person I think I am? What is it made of? In a sense, you look inward. You look at that appearance of subjectivity, and you will see a lot of images and sensations in the body.
I feel an attachment there.
We are attached to that. That's exactly what it is: attachment to what we're identified with. It's like when a child finds out Santa 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 it's not something far away for you. You see it.
Is that it?
Tying yourself to the mast
That's the beginning of seeing that illusion. Billions of people, if they heard what we just talked about, would find it completely absurd or crazy. But you saw something and you were moved. That's a lot.
It feels very clear. Like a clearness.
Tie yourself to that. Let that be your North Star.
There's a story, I think from Homer's Iliad. A boat is crossing the sea and there's an island where the sirens live. The sirens are beautiful mythical beings, and their song is incredibly alluring, so captivating that it's impossible not to try to get close to them. All the explorers would crash into the rocks and be destroyed. But in the Iliad, 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 the truth.
So what you can do is say to yourself, "I want to see. I want to remain in the place of seeing, of truth." The true inquiry is exactly that: it's battling these forces to see what is truly real, and not falling into the temptation of the illusion of what you are attached to.
Thank you.
You're welcome.