The Illusion of Contraction
La Ilusión de la Contracción
A question about the disorientation that arises when familiar sources of meaning fall away, and how identification with a subtle sense of subjectivity perpetuates dissatisfaction.
The Illusion of Contraction
A question about the disorientation that arises when familiar sources of meaning fall away, and how identification with a subtle sense of subjectivity perpetuates dissatisfaction.
What I'm noticing is that the less there is to identify with, the more difficult things have been getting recently. I noticed myself going back to seeking in the world for a while, and I realized it was because, when I wasn't doing that, I wasn't sure what to do. Everything has fallen away. Even when I have free time, nothing really feels appealing. There's nothing to hold on to from the sense of self. A sense of fear comes up, so I go back into seeking in the world, and then that doesn't work either.
What do you mean by "seeking in the world"?
Buying things, dating, sex.
What's wrong with that? Those things in themselves aren't seeking.
They're seeking for me because I'm trying to find relief from a certain feeling state, a more depressive state. Things have felt somewhat meaningless. I understand that those things aren't seeking in essence, but the way I was using them felt like seeking.
Are you sure?
How would I know the difference?
You can't always know, but what matters is that you really attune to what you want. If you want to buy clothes or date, that's not necessarily avoidance.
It feels like I'm just not sure what I want right now. Everything feels very open. There doesn't feel like anything to grab onto. It feels like freefall.
Let me put it this way: are you doing something you don't want to do?
I think when I'm doing these things, it feels like avoidance.
I'm just poking a bit to be sure, because this isn't all about just sitting in your room with anger or depression. When we avoid, we are doing something that isn't really what we want to be doing.
That's what it feels like. Not really what I want to be doing. Being with people in short-term dating situations, for example, when what I'd really want is something more long-term. I notice myself going back toward that because there's a sense of, "What do I grab onto?" And if I don't grab onto anything, then there's this falling.
The futility of avoidance
What usually happens is that the things that call you, even if they're avoidance, you pursue them, and then it just becomes more and more frustrating because it's not helping.
That's exactly what I mean. Whatever needs to happen here, that's not it. Seeking in those ways is not what feels like the deepest core of what's happening with me, which is the awakening process and the falling away of all of that. It feels like grabbing onto a life raft in the middle of the ocean.
What I'm less sure about is whether that's a bad thing, even if it's seeking, even if it's a life raft, even if it's avoidance. There are ways in which it can be one step back, two steps forward. There's a phrase: "regression in service of transcendence." So this is how little you can trust thought. All thought is, at most, an approximation. I'm questioning your labeling of that as seeking and as the wrong thing.
Let me put it this way. It feels like what's being asked of me is more letting go and more surrender. And this feels more like the opposite.
Surrender is not a doing
You can't surrender. You will fight until the end.
That's it. I'm just fighting. I'm fighting it tooth and nail, and it hurts. I know I can't fight it, but I can't stop fighting it.
If you are protecting a city that's getting invaded and you still think you have the capacity to fight them off, are you going to surrender?
No, but I know I don't have that capacity. Or, I guess, if I really knew, I wouldn't still be doing it, right? That's the litmus test?
Exactly. There's still an ability to project a way out and to buy it, even if only half-buying it for a moment. You're going to take that path no matter what. You cannot surrender. Surrendering happens when you have no other option. You're not doing it. It's done to you, in a sense.
So it just takes you. You can't go voluntarily.
You can invoke it, you can pray, you can see more, you can look. But doing is not going to bring it about. Any doing is avoidance, not surrendering. Any doing is the opposite of surrender.
So what would be the alternative, without doing?
Surrendering, in the way you're talking about it, is itself a doing, so it's a contradiction. Surrendering is the ending of doing. You're not going to achieve it by doing it.
Maybe it's a fallacy, but I feel like if I could see more deeply, something would let go.
Of course. It's the seeing that brings the surrendering. It's when you see that there is actually nothing you can do, and when you see that everything you're doing is trying to imagine a way out, and that it's false. Seeing is the only thing that cures: seeing truth, seeing what's real, seeing reality.
The false duality
But if it's just about seeing and not about doing, how do you balance the world? The dual and the non-dual. In actual life, that's the part where I'm not sure what to do.
Let's go back to this duality you're talking about.
I'm not talking about hiding in non-duality and not living. I'm talking about life: work, relationships, all of that. There's a seeing that none of those things are doing it. They don't feel satisfying anymore. So then I'm not sure how to move in the world. Does that make sense?
You're saying, "I'm seeing that work and relationships aren't resolving this sense of dissatisfaction. Then why would I do them?"
Exactly. That stuff doesn't have the meaning it did when the sense of self was here. There's part of me that's like, "Right, why am I doing that?"
What can shift is the life force that motivates you. It could be that you stop working and stop having relationships, and that's your true nature. But what more commonly happens is that you do those things for no particular reason, or simply because working is enjoyable and you help others, because relationships are fun and there's beauty there. It's not in order to remove a sense of underlying dissatisfaction. It's just because of the love and beauty and fun of being alive. But there's no duality there. I know other teachers talk about a duality, as if there's a non-dual side and a dual side. I don't see a duality anywhere.
I see what you mean. It's an artificial distinction.
It's a valid framework. I'm constantly operating with the mapping of things being separate. I want to pour water into a cup, and it's not going to go on the floor. But I don't experience a duality there.
The insubstantial subject
When there's a sense of the self being drawn away, what's left feels more like nothing being here. It's not clear how to map onto things.
Nothing being here. You're talking about the subject, right?
Yes.
So you can see that the subject is insubstantial, but there is something here.
Yes, there's a life force. Something is here. But in comparison to the sense of self I've lived with my whole life, it feels like nothing.
When you say "there's nothing here," you can recognize: it seemed like there was a separate, solid thing here, and it's not here. That's more accurate than "nothing is here."
That's better said. That's it.
Now, look even more closely at that subjectivity, because when you're saying "here," you're referring to some sense of subjectivity. You've looked at it, and there's nothing there except the sense of subjectivity itself.
Yes.
There's the self as a really solid construct, like a rock, with a sense of an actual object that is "I." We can see through that. Then it becomes this ephemeral quality, like a cloudiness in the water. That's the subjectivity. But it's still an appearance.
Still thought.
Still a form of appearance, yes. Now, it's not so much about trying to remove that, but about seeing whether you are aware of it. How is that "here"? How are you taking the position that this subjectivity is here, meaning "where I am"? Why isn't it simply: "There's a sense of subjectivity appearing; there's a sense of objects appearing"?
It's a sense of the center, and then everything radiates out from it. I'm taking the position of the subject at the center.
That sense of subjectivity belongs to the body-mind, because you are knowing it. It cannot be you. What is it that knows it? That which knows it, you cannot say is something other than you. You are more the knowing of the subjectivity than the sense of subjectivity itself. It seems more real that what you are is that which knows the sense of subjectivity, rather than the sense of subjectivity appearing.
That leads me back to my original point. If that's the case, then moving in the world becomes confusing.
That's totally irrelevant. This has nothing to do with moving or not moving, working or not working.
This is just seeing.
If you're sitting down, this is there. If you're moving and working, this is there. It makes absolutely no difference.
There's still a sense that the subject has to figure it out or do something.
Seeing, not doing
The direction is seeing. For example, now that you notice this sense of subjectivity, stop taking the position of "I" where that sense of subjectivity appears, and look at what that sense of subjectivity is appearing in opposition to. You might call it "the world," but look at that in your direct experience, in this moment. Look, as in the meditation I was pointing to: where is the division? Where is the line between one and the other? Is there actually any distance? If you move from the subjectivity to what is perceived as objectivity, is there distance?
You're shaking your head as if agreeing that there is none, but you're still believing in the distance. You could look at it and see, "Oh yeah, there's none there," but then two seconds later you operate as if there is. Because if there truly wasn't, you wouldn't be taking that position.
If I really saw there was no distance, the subject wouldn't feel like something I'm stepping into.
You wouldn't be attaching to it. It would be something you could, in a sense, step into. Like assuming a robe, putting on a robe of "I am here now, playing this role." But it's fluid, functional, playful. The subjectivity itself could come and go more and more. The key is the identification: do you believe that is what you are, or not?
Subjectivity is just happening. It's not something I am.
It's a function of the body-mind, but then we believe that's what we are, fully limited by it. The body-mind can operate without the subjectivity. And the subjectivity can come online more or less as needed.
That's more the freedom, right? The freedom is in not having to identify with the sense of subjectivity.
The freedom is that none of it is you. There is nothing you can call "you." And so there's nothing to worry about at the deepest level. When you put on the robe and play the role, yes, there are worries. But at the heart core center, they don't reach. It's like my hand: I will protect my hand. But if I'm at war and I have to cut my hand off to be free, I will do it, and I will be okay without it. That's the experience, metaphorically, of the body and mind.
There's a lot there. That's helpful. I wasn't seeing how identified I was with the subjectivity, because I know there's no distance. It doesn't feel like there's separation. And yet I'm acting as though there is, because the belief is still there on a deeper level.
And that's what's creating the distress, the depressiveness, whatever it is you're trying to run from. It's that positioning. It's going to be inherently dissatisfying. It's an illusion of contraction.
I can feel into that. The more contracted, the more distress. The more the mind gets involved, the more suffering there is.
The more you take a position of being something you're not, the more inherently dissatisfying it is, to say the least.