The Edge Before Seeing Through
El borde antes de ver a través
A student notices that a familiar sense of inner resistance has become less obvious during meditation, and the teacher explores what this shift might indicate about the maturing of the search.
The Edge Before Seeing Through
A student notices that a familiar sense of inner resistance has become less obvious during meditation, and the teacher explores what this shift might indicate about the maturing of the search.
Previously in meditations, particularly with you, because you talk about that part of you that's always saying no to existence, I would really find it there. This time it wasn't as obvious as before. Instead of being a steady, subtle "no" throughout, there were just one or two points when a doubt arose and the resistance appeared with it. It doesn't feel like the same kind of underlying resistance. I was curious why it wasn't as obvious as it has been before.
Well, it may be that it's just not present as much. When it's not present, how is your experience when you're not noticing it?
It's just okay.
Could you say there is some flavor of peace or joy, or is it more neutral?
Not strong, no.
The oscillation near an edge
It's possible you're coming close to an edge, and so that dissatisfaction comes and goes more. It only really becomes clear when it is seen fully. In my experience, there was this oscillation. Only when that which is moving is seen fully does the clarity, the freedom from it, come. Even up until then, that oscillation continues. You might be tasting a certain kind of okayness, and then it goes, but it's not very intense.
Is the oscillation different for everyone in timescale, when it comes and goes?
For sure. I think for some people it could be months.
That's somewhat how it comes to me. It's like a roller coaster ride, but spread out quite a bit.
For me it was years. To the point where I just thought that was what life was going to be. Nothing else was available or possible other than that oscillation of dissatisfaction mixed with an okayness, somewhat of a satisfaction but not too deep, back and forth, back and forth. I just assumed that was life, and that's as good as it gets. But actually, I noticed more in hindsight that it was just an edge. It's like a fruit dangling from a tree, about to fall, and the wind comes. At some point the fruit has a sense of, "Well, I guess this is what it is." It doesn't really know what it is to fall and release its seeds, but it's on that edge.
Before, what you describe about the ups and downs, things like anxiety or dissatisfaction with little things in life, would be a lot more obvious than they are now. Now the sense of my resistance or anxiety is a lot more okay. So it feels different from the way it's been before.
There we go. Yes.
Your meditations are the only ones I know of that point to that general resistance. This is the first time I've looked at it in a while, and I'm a little surprised not to see it.
The illusion at the core
That might be a really positive thing. Something may be getting seen through, because the core of it is that it is an illusion. It appears very real. I think it can be expressed in many ways and experienced in many ways at different times and by different people. It will have its own color for you, almost as if there's an intricate personality to it. But ultimately, at the core, you could say it's a "no" to what is. It could be a sense of something missing, something wrong, something not okay. "If only this and this and this were a little bit different, then I would be okay. Then this would be okay."
It feels like what's maybe changed is that before, subconsciously, the mind was always looking for awakening or liberation in the future. Now it's a lot more clear that it's only really available here.
Searching in time versus looking now
That's a really big shift. When we come into this work, the mind takes it as another goal, another objective, something that can happen, an event that is going to happen sometime in the future. And it's up to me to make it happen, to achieve it. I think that's a valuable place to be, because it's better than not being aware of a possibility at all. When one is in that kind of project, one has tasted something enough, heard it, read it, felt it enough that there's a conviction to find it. It's resonated enough. There's a degree of maturity in how we search.
In a sense, the early phase of maturity is to search for it in time and to search for it as something I can achieve, something that will happen to me as it did to others. Then there's a point where what matters is not that we stop searching, but that as the search becomes frustrated, as you do not find what you're looking for through that process (one can travel, go to places, attend retreats), there's going to be a frustration. It's just not happening. It's not being achieved. It's not being found. There is a risk there that one abandons the search in that frustration. But what can also happen is that you begin to look for it now, which is what you've seen: that it's only ever going to be something here and now. That's a different phase of maturity or wisdom in the seeking.
Looking at it now, it really feels like, without trying to sound like there's doing to be done, it's just about being as harmonious as possible here and now. Not as anyone trying to do that. I think you did a talk on resistance, something about not resisting anything inside. That really seemed to hit the mark: just looking at anything that's being resisted right here.
Going into what is, instead of into strategy
Exactly. I spoke to that in the meditation just now. As soon as you notice something, there's an inner reaction to an experience of what's happening now. It could be thoughts, emotions, sensations. There's going to be a reaction to it, a push-pull, trying to change it, fix it, get rid of it, soothe it. We have all these trained strategies. A better approach is to not mess with it and just go into it fully, to taste it fully, and to really have a very intimate gaze with what it is.
When you start to be able to do that, when you're catching the reactivity (which is the resistance) and then the strategy of the mind (the move into thought, into fixing, into changing), and you go right into what it is instead of going into thought and strategy, when that becomes a more regular response, there's a very big shift.
Well, that answers the question that just popped up: that is all that needs to be done, then.
At that stage, yes. And by looking, by engaging (I use the word "tasting" sometimes, because it's not just looking; it's a very intimate touching of whatever it is, whether thoughts, emotions, or sensations), some illusion that's there at the core can be uncovered. By that I mean there's an assumption or a projection of something being there that is real, which is not.
What defines you as you
Are you going to give me a clue what that something is?
It will be whatever it is for you, but it will be the core of your identity. It will be what defines you as you, in a way that you will see is not true. It is what creates the false sense of "I," localized in time, choosing, deciding. But it's very difficult to put words to, because it becomes very much prior to thought. There could be a very clear seeing: "This is what I thought I am, and I'm not." It's as if I always thought I was my hand and suddenly I realize I'm not. There's a hand, it's a part of me, but I'm not the hand. The hand is a metaphor, though, because it's too easy. It's much deeper. It's much closer to what you reference when you say "I."
I'll stay with that.
Good.