The Eye of the Storm
El Ojo de la Tormenta
A student describes feeling lost, agitated, and unable to articulate the very place where she gets hooked into suffering. The teacher reframes this sense of lostness as a meaningful dissolution of the comforting illusion of progress.
The Eye of the Storm
A student describes feeling lost, agitated, and unable to articulate the very place where she gets hooked into suffering. The teacher reframes this sense of lostness as a meaningful dissolution of the comforting illusion of progress.
It's so hard to talk about this. I feel like I'm in the eye of the storm. There's been a lot of resistance, a lot of agitation coming up, and then this thought: "This is the stuff I can't get." That's what arises. I can feel that this is the place where I get hooked, where I suffer. I can't even find the words. My mind goes blank trying to think about it.
I've been grappling with this for the last week or so, wrestling with an issue that felt very real. Every time I tried to deal with it, it would elude me, and I could tell that the movement toward making it real was the cause of the pain. And yet I don't know what to do with it. Even trying to talk about this now, I feel like I'm blanking out. I was so clear before, and now I'm lost.
And yet, I also feel really clear that the movement "out there" isn't going to save me, and that whatever I'm seeing is in me too. I can see that. But then old conditioning makes me pretend it's out there.
Losing the map of progress
Feeling lost is a good thing. Not as a general rule; sometimes feeling lost requires guidance to find your way through. But my sense with you is different.
There's a place where, in a similar fashion, when we start moving out of the pattern of looking for what we're looking for in thought and time and in the mind, we begin to go deep. At the same time, we've noticed a progression. We've seen enough evidence that this is the right path. Something starts to feel like, "Yes, it's definitely this way." That can give us a sense of moving in a direction that's the right direction.
But that's also an interpretation. That's also a comforting map. And at some point, that illusion has to go too.
Nowhere to get to
When that happens, we tend to feel lost, as though nothing is really changing and we're circling the same issues. But it's actually a good place, to lose the sense that "I'm progressing toward something." There literally is nowhere to get to, and that can be quite a shock to recognize.
I feel tongue-tied. I don't know what else to say.