The Crack in the Belief
La Grieta en la Creencia
A student describes how, during meditation, the sense that "something is wrong" began to shift when they entertained the possibility that beauty might be hidden within a difficult experience. The teacher explores how deep-seated beliefs of wrongness act as veils, and how even a small opening of curiosity can begin to dissolve them.
The Crack in the Belief
A student describes how, during meditation, the sense that "something is wrong" began to shift when they entertained the possibility that beauty might be hidden within a difficult experience. The teacher explores how deep-seated beliefs of wrongness act as veils, and how even a small opening of curiosity can begin to dissolve them.
There was something funny, because what you were describing to the previous student was very close to what I was feeling throughout the meditation. At one point you said, "There's something wrong," and I recognized that: the sense that something is wrong. I was doing what you suggested, trying to focus on the core sensation. You said to trust that it's a doorway. But in a way, that pointer wasn't quite enough for me. You were also talking about beauty, and I thought, well, maybe this is trust. I asked myself: what if it's possible that I see no beauty here, but what if there is beauty? What if I haven't seen it clearly? And that started to open something, or at least I began seeing it differently, tasting it in a different way.
That's exactly what I'm talking about. I often use that phrase: "What if?" It's the benefit of the doubt. That sense of things being not okay, deeply wrong, is a belief. But it isn't recognized as a belief when it's happening. It feels like an experience. The belief projects an interpretation of wrongness onto the experience. It acts as a veil: "What is happening is wrong." Everything I see is then tainted with that sense of wrongness.
The "what if" as a crack in belief
When I say "trust that it's a doorway," I often frame it as: what if it's not wrong? What if it's okay? What if it's a doorway? You can't just fully drop deep beliefs all at once. You need a very small crack, and it's easier to consider a "what if" than to convince yourself that something is actually beautiful when, for you, it's the most horrible thing. That's too far, too much. But a crack in the belief, a recognition that the experience stems from a belief: that's why the question "What if you're not seeing something?" can be so powerful.
Trusting your own experience
The trust is always in your own experience. For example, when you meet a teacher who says something that moves you, something resonates. There could then be trust in the teacher. But what you're actually trusting is that something happened in you: you tasted something new or different that felt right or good. That can then extend into trusting the teacher and the relationship. But ultimately, you have to trust your own experience.
So I can say, "What if that is a doorway?" or "Trust that there's something there you're not seeing." If you immediately say no, the door is closed. But if you do the experiment, if you explore it when it's really intense, if you focus and sit with it and become still and intimate with what feels absolutely horrible, with the big "not-okayness," and you ask, "What if I'm not seeing something? What if I touch this more directly, more deeply, and discover something of value here?" Then you might find some sense of more freedom or love that you had not yet known. You could have a tiny glimpse, which is what I think you're describing. Something was a little different.
The veil of separation
That little crack is a crack in how you're relating to something. There is actually a separation happening, and it's starting to break. The sense of not-okayness is itself a separation: a pulling away from reality into an imagined reality, because you're too terrified. It's too much. And that's what this whole process is ultimately about. The dropping of identification is absolute, total, complete intimacy with experience, which includes all of the difficult experiences: intense, painful, scary.
Yes, what changed is that it stopped being so, I don't know, horrible in a sense. The quality changed. But it started with noticing that wrongness, the sense that something's wrong, and a curiosity about it. "What is this? Wait, is it even a thing?"
That's exactly it. The curiosity itself brings you into a more intimate relationship with what's there. And it's actually a part of you.
Yes, the one you find horrible. Ultimately it's an energetic. It's life. It's heart, though that's not quite the right word.
The core belief beneath identification
You said "not okay." That sense of something being essentially wrong: it's the core belief and sensation that drives identification. There has to be somebody who knows what this is in order to declare that it is wrong. It's the core arrogance that is separation, that is identification. "I know what I am, and what I am knows this is not how it should be. I know better. I know how it should be, and it's not like this."
Judgment from love versus judgment from wrongness
It sounds like such a radical trust: the idea that you can't judge anything in experience at this fundamental level. But it's subtle, because there are different kinds of judging. One thing is the sense that this is, at a fundamental level, deeply not right, not okay. That is quite different from recognizing this as divine creation and still taking a position where you want to change much of it. You can change things from a place where the starting point is complete love and acceptance for what is. Then you can ask: how do we make this better? How do we improve the quality of experience for all sentient beings? But not starting from the assumption that something is fundamentally wrong, because then everything you do begins from that distortion.
That is the base arrogance, because it's the boldest judgment you can make about reality: that something is basically wrong. And in my experience, that is the core of identification. It feels like everybody carries that belief, unless perhaps you're liberated.
Trust as experiment
I think this is the true meaning of faith. Not faith in a scripture or blind belief in dogmas. It's easier today to use the word "trust," because "faith" has been put to so many bad uses historically. Trust this mystery. Trust this. And not blindly, but as an experiment. What happens if you trust? What do you discover? What happens if you trust enough to taste that experience you have repeatedly, the one you avoid? What happens if you fully go into it, taste it fully, and make friends with it?