The Acquired Taste of What Is Real
El Gusto Adquirido por lo que es Real
A student describes the unsettling sensation of beliefs falling away, and a second student asks why identification with thought produces anguish. The teacher explores how trust, direct experience, and a changed relationship with discomfort gradually reveal what is truly valuable.
The Acquired Taste of What Is Real
A student describes the unsettling sensation of beliefs falling away, and a second student asks why identification with thought produces anguish. The teacher explores how trust, direct experience, and a changed relationship with discomfort gradually reveal what is truly valuable.
There are times, quite many times, when there is totally no holding of belief. Then this moment of scary sensation rises in the body. I can describe it like a falling-down sensation, like the body disappearing or something. Basically it's just scary, and the mind keeps saying, "I don't like this. I don't like seeing reality." This has been happening repeatedly these days. I acknowledge I don't actually like the truth. Describing it makes no sense, but there was this experience of tasting something. I think it's very encouraging to taste what it's like.
And then, speaking about trust, there is a usefulness in temporary trusting. For you to taste that, you trusted me. It's not about believing me blindly. It's about having a choice between what you already know and a new proposal. What you can trust is the suggestion, the new proposal from me: try something different. Then see in your experience how it goes.
The invitation is still there. You are recognizing that you don't like it. You are recognizing that something in you says, "No, I don't want this." And you also recognize that you are tasting something. My suggestion is that this is a really big step, but there is more.
The acquired taste
Think of it as an acquired taste. A child who eats sushi or a McDonald's burger will always choose the burger. Over time, with maturing, metaphorically, there is going to be a preference for the sushi. Something changed. The sushi did not change. The burger did not change. Something changes where what appeared to be distasteful, unwanted, and unpleasant, which itself does not change, becomes valuable, precious, delicious.
It is that tasting, that touching, that relating which creates the change. The change has to do with disidentification from thought, because thought creates a filter where something that can be delicious is interpreted as unpleasant. The overlay on the experience is the unpleasantness.
So now something is appearing that is distasteful, that you've described as a dropping or a falling. There is a pulling away. There is a struggle with that. And this is a really good thing. Don't try to resolve this struggle. Go to it more and more when it appears. What it's going to do is slowly, and sometimes not so slowly, pull you out of thought. Because what you're tasting is beyond thought, prior to thought. It is getting you to break the shell of the thought-world and touch something directly. Do you notice this?
Yes. This time, the calling, the passion for the truth, is so much greater than the urge to run away. In the past I had experiences of trying to run away. I would focus on work and totally turn away from meetings like this. That happened a couple of times over the past couple of years. But this time there is more and more love for this. Just sitting on a chair feels more and more peaceful compared to before, when it felt very boring. The boredom sensation has disappeared. I don't have an issue with boredom anymore.
Now I am more and more naturally peaceful, sinking in, totally soaking into the emotions, even fear. The fear sensation can be intense, but I feel like it's no problem anymore. There isn't too much running-away energy. There is more of a going-toward energy. The mind's protective mechanism has become a reminder for me to just stay very still with whatever is there.
To me it's very clear that you are learning what is valuable, bringing closer this love for truth, love for reality. The more you taste it, the more it's like the metaphor of the burger: you eat it, it tastes good in the moment, then it doesn't feel good. Somebody tells you, "Try eating something else." At first you try it and it doesn't feel good, but then you feel good after you eat it. Over time you start to realize: this is not good, that is good. It creates a positive relationship with that which at first was unpleasant, like sitting down.
The inner teacher
Then it becomes like a force that, if we navigate it well, starts to have its own life, its own energy. It starts to guide you internally, so you need less and less of somebody saying, "Try this, not that." It becomes your own instinct, your own inner teacher.
Yes. I really feel lucky. You cleared a lot of confusion for me. I was holding a lot of ideas.
I'm glad. That's great.
I think we talked a little bit about this last time, but I'm curious about this mechanism. Why is there suffering when there is identification? Just now in the meditation, and I see it a lot in my daily life, I was feeling a kind of heavy anguish. I was seeing these thoughts, especially about the world, about space, my house, and I could see I was having a hard time seeing them as thoughts. That increased the anguish. It is a heavy anguish. Sometimes it comes with thoughts about specific places, sometimes about the past. I think it's what you say about confusing thought for reality. But why does it directly correlate to this anguish or sense of heaviness?
Why identification hurts
It's unpleasant and it creates unnecessary struggle, suffering, anguish, because when you believe thought to be real, it implies knowing what you are. Knowing what you are means believing that you are some kind of thought. The only thing you can believe is a thought.
When you believe you are something made of thought, you are contracting what you are into something small. That contraction is unpleasant. And then what you believe yourself to be is something unstable and temporary. Thoughts come and go. They are always in flow. So you are contracting into something that is also unstable, and you cannot make it stable. That is distressing.
When you have thoughts about, say, the space you're in, and you believe the thoughts about it are more real than the experience being interpreted by thought, that implies a "you." It implies a subject that you know the identity of. It defines a subject in a space. And that is going to be unnecessarily unpleasant. If there is a world or a space "out there," there is something in it, and that is going to create something unpleasant.
I'm just trying to understand the "why."
It is what I've described. You believe yourself to be something you're not. That will not feel good. You believe yourself to be something smaller than you are, and temporary. Something that comes and goes, which is thoughts. A part of you knows that it's temporary. You see it. You see that it's temporary. You cannot control thought and make it stable. Try to imagine a circle. Close your eyes and spend two minutes trying to make a circle in your imagination completely, absolutely still and stable. It's the simplest exercise, and you'll see it's impossible.
The trap of trying to fix thought
And why this struggle? I feel this inner struggle of trying to see the thought as thought, and I don't. It's as if there's a rejection of this heavy feeling, and then I'm trying to see through it. I don't know how to say it.
You're trying to change thoughts. It's not about changing the world of thought. What's needed is simply to see, "Oh, these are thoughts." It's the difference between seeing a door and the name "door," the idea "door," the concept "door." It doesn't mean the idea or concept of a door has to go away. It's just noticing they are not the same thing. The description of a painting is not the painting. The description of the taste of an apple is not the taste.
But I think the struggle is something like, "I should be seeing the reality of thought. If I were seeing it, I wouldn't be feeling this heaviness." There's a struggle in that. I should see it. How come I don't see it for what it is?
And what's the problem with the heaviness?
It's uncomfortable. I'm tired of it. I guess I've felt the contrast of not having the heaviness.
Maybe what's happening is you're trying to fix it by some belief that there's something in thought you need to see that you're not seeing. What's actually needed is a relationship with the heaviness. Touching the heaviness might be the apple that needs tasting.
Sitting through thought into the body
That resonates. I was trying to do it in the meditation. It was like an energetic sensation that starts to be really, really intense and expands and gets more uncomfortable.
That, to me, sounds exactly like what's needed. Not anything about thought. In fact, that this is happening in meditation means you are sitting through thought. That's why it is coming up. And then you have an idea that if you control thought, or if you see something, this is going to go away. That's not the direction. That's a trap. That's going to make it worse.
It makes sense. It's like what was said earlier about feeling the feelings as they are.
Think of the metaphor: at first the experience is unpleasant. The first time a child eats sushi, let's say, it's unpleasant. But over time there is an acquired taste. Something shifts, and then the same thing starts to taste very nice, very pleasant, very alive, and even loving. Something that at first can feel scary can then be known to be love. Something that at first feels intense, painful, and distressing can start to feel more like the peace of the emptiness of being, the trust in the mystery of the heart.
At first, when we are identified with thought, the relationship with that experience can feel like a push and pull against something unpleasant. But we are being called to it. We are being pulled, and we are also resisting. It is like the image in the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo: the coming together of the human and the divine. But the relationship there is normally one of longing and fear. It is also simply being in touch with your human experience and the anguish and pain, or whatever is coming up.
The beauty of the difficult path
It also resonated when you said that for you it was very distrusting. I think I've always been that way too. I can relate to that. I remember it being very difficult, but now in hindsight I look at it and see that it was just the beautiful nature of how it was for me. It had a particular journey. There's a beauty to it.
It becomes a problem when you want it to be different. But wanting it to be different is what makes it a problem. It is defining the situation as if something should be different, as if something is wrong.
It reminds me of something I once heard: the more astray you are, and then you come back, the richer the journey.
Yes. The farther away you are from yourself, the richer the journey home. Just trust in the possibility that this is exactly how you want it to be.