The Illusion of Pulling Away
La ilusión de apartarse
A student asks about the one who resists difficult feelings, and the teacher explores how resistance is itself an illusion. A second student then raises the experience of a nagging desire to change something even when everything feels okay.
The Illusion of Pulling Away
A student asks about the one who resists difficult feelings, and the teacher explores how resistance is itself an illusion. A second student then raises the experience of a nagging desire to change something even when everything feels okay.
In this context, what about the one that resists the difficult feelings? Because that's like another agent in the same sense. What is it that resists?
It depends on what we call resistance. The body-mind will resist in natural ways: contractions, fear in a threatening situation, tension, an attempt to avoid pain. That is a form of resistance you could say is natural. But are you talking about something else?
Yes, the resistance to emotional pain.
In a sense it's the same. It's just the fear of it. But ultimately you can't resist. And when I say "ultimately," I mean more truthfully what is happening now. If you look for the resistance, it's just another mix of sensations, thoughts, and emotions.
But then what is that sense or feeling of something pulling away and not fully meeting the pain or whatever is difficult?
The resistance is thought
It's an illusion. It's thought. More precisely, it's a belief in thought as more than thought.
What would the illusion be in this case?
The illusion is that there's somebody pulling away, somebody that can pull away, that is pulling away. It's all imagination.
If it's imagination, why does pulling away seem to pacify or lighten the experience a little bit?
It fills the experience with thought and numbs other aspects of experience. It shifts attention. It's like a looking away, but all you're doing is looking at thought instead of sensation, or looking more at thought instead of sensation. The pulling away from sensation as something real, and the thought you're pulling into as something real: that's the illusion.
In the meditation, everything was okay. Everything was in the right place. But then, sometimes (or maybe all the time, which feels strange because everything feels okay), there's a nagging desire to change something. I don't know what. It came up a few times. It feels like an old habit, but it's not very comfortable. There was just okayness with everything, and then out of nowhere: "I have to change something here."
Okayness and unrest coexisting
I think you nailed part of it with the sense that it's an old habit. It can happen that as we see more of reality, as we live more in truth, we can be in a phase where both things are happening: a more constant in-touchness with reality, which is that okayness, and at the same time something more attached to the illusion. Part of it just becomes undone on its own. Ultimately everything does happen on its own, but there's also a possibility to see more at the subtler levels what's happening.
That longing for something to change, that desire for something to be different. I notice you say it's not clear what it is or what it's about. The mind hasn't attached a narrative, and you haven't bought into one. That's a sign of seeing through the beliefs, because what would normally happen is a narrative would form around what needs to be done, solved, or fixed.
Unrest without narrative
But when we remove the narrative, something remains. It's like an unrest, a deep, subtle sensation of unrest. At the source of that is still a belief in separation, but at a much more subtle level. It's trickier to untangle, but it will happen on its own. I'm just nudging in the direction of staying open to seeing more subtle aspects of that, and also noticing how in life it can manifest in certain lifestyle choices that might be stemming from that unrest.
Well, now it feels like addiction arises from it.
Yes, addiction, and certain preferences that aren't real or deep. Addiction is a preference that's not real or deep. But it could be anything. If I try to remember how that appeared for me, it would be, for example, "I don't like cold weather." I still don't, but it used to be a big problem. There was this preference that was out of place, and it was hiding some form of resistance, which in turn was hiding a certain identification with certain body-mind states.
It almost feels like when I'm not sitting and meditating, it's not quite as obvious. But it can arise anytime. It doesn't arise with a desire. It's more like the unrest arises, and then some desire, anything, could come along to do something different or to change, whatever that may be.
Distinguishing types of desire
Yes, desire is tricky because there are different kinds. There are desires that are harmonious, aligned, deep, not coming from that unrest. And then there's desire that comes from the unrest, which is an attempt to fix it, and which is actually what keeps it going. As we deepen in this, you can start distinguishing which desires are neurotic or based on the sense of separation, versus desire which is the life force, the universal desire. The latter is very much stemming from the body-mind in the sense that it's the core of it: what the body loves, which is very unique.
That distinction is building better here. Is there a grey area in the middle?
It's grey in that it's tricky to see in the middle, but ultimately, once all of that is free and is seen, that middle doesn't matter too much. It becomes a creative place where things can be explored. It becomes playful.