The Thrill of Contraction
La emoción de la contracción
A student describes the tension between recognizing the world's chaos as mental drama and feeling unable to stop engaging with it, leading to a dialogue about the addictive quality of identification and the only real choice available.
The Thrill of Contraction
A student describes the tension between recognizing the world's chaos as mental drama and feeling unable to stop engaging with it, leading to a dialogue about the addictive quality of identification and the only real choice available.
The world feels like it's on fire, crazy on fire, and I feel it more and more. The contrast between what we just did in meditation and this crazy burning world blows my mind. All day I've been thinking, thinking, thinking, and then feeling, feeling, feeling, and then noticing: oh, there's thinking; oh, there's feeling. There's no meeting point there. That just is, and this just is. That's what this meditation was for me.
Before I even heard the word "non-duality," it was obvious that there's no doing that will ever do it. And yet I feel like the alcoholic who's going to end up in the gutter every morning until she gets it, even though I already know that picking up the drink won't help me. There's no solution. Here we are. Nothing has to change. But today's meditation was really challenging. I was so stirred up with it all. Although I could let go at various points, and I noticed that everything I'm upset about, if I look around, nothing is actually happening. I hear things in the news, I hear people talk, but right here, right now, there's nothing. It's all happening up here.
And what was challenging?
To let go of it. The alcoholic wants to drink, and I want to get into the drama. At certain points in the meditation, I thought, "Wow, this is really exciting." It felt very alive and very real. I could get into it. There's almost an actress side of me going, "Let's see how much juice I can get out of this." I could feel that.
The thrill without the chaos
Yes, and that excitement could grow to a point where the chaotic aspects aren't needed. You could have that excitement without the chaos. By chaos I mean unnecessary patterns. Those patterns can settle, and the aliveness and the thrill can remain.
That's beautiful. In other words, just because these things are not real, or are transitory, doesn't mean I shouldn't engage. Go for it. Engage however I see fit to engage. Don't pretend. Don't step back. But it's all about the identification at the end of the day. There's beauty in it, I guess is what I could say.
It's important to see what is driving you to that identification, what's driving you to that sense of limitation and contraction and collapse and suffering. Can you have the cake and eat it too, in a different way? You could let go of the part that's the contraction and the chaos, because that contraction, that identification, is, for me, the very definition of addiction. It takes many forms, but it's very addictive.
It's addictive because there's a certain thrill we get, even though we might experience it subjectively as something very unpleasant and full of suffering. The more you see it, the more you come to that edge of letting go, the more you notice the part of you that really likes it, that really is attached to it, that really is addicted to that contraction. You spoke to that, and it's real.
There's a part of us where the mind imagines: "If I let go of this contraction, I let go of the thrill of life." There's a certain roller-coaster aspect to contraction. In the illusion of believing you are limited, there's a certain intensity and thrill that is one of a kind. You can only have that inside that illusion.
Yes.
A different quality of aliveness
But what I'm proposing is this: it is about discovering that when you really let go of that (and at a level it is a choice, it is seeing where the value truly is, and stopping the addictive contraction), you start to discover a juiciness and a thrill and an aliveness of a different form, a different quality, that is extremely satisfying.
As you were speaking, I think I detected a flaw in my thinking. You didn't say it directly, but here's what came through: there's this illusion that when I let go of identification, then I won't suffer so much. But the identification is the suffering. And I think there's still this hope that in the future this will all be figured out. It's so subtle, but I think that's what's underlying everything. The true thrill is presence. It is me, this, now. Unadulterated, without the stuff on top. There's nothing more thrilling than that, nothing I've ever experienced.
Just life.
Yes, but when it gets diluted, I'm not here anymore. I'm in the movie theater.
Exactly. But the movie theater is what gives you the thrill. You might experience it as something very unpleasant and full of suffering, but it is a certain thrill.
But it's a lousy substitute. That's what I get.
Yes. And when you truly get it, deeply, you're no longer going to McDonald's for burgers.
When I say "I get it," that doesn't mean I am it and it's over. But it's very clear to me right now that this is a cheap substitute. And the whole struggle itself is part of the thrill too: "Just jump!" "No, I can't." "Just jump!" "I can't do it!" That's part of the drama as well.
The dream of time
Yes, because there's the idea that there's time and there's somewhere to get to.
Exactly.
That's a loop. There's a part of life where time exists, where time is real, within what is called the relative. There is an aspect of reality that we can live. But when we are not inhabiting what is prior to that, when we don't recognize that time exists within something larger, that it's a subset of reality, then time becomes the whole of reality. And when there is no reality prior to time, that's when the addiction to the dynamic of time kicks in: the movement, the drama of "jump, don't jump," because you've heard that if you get it, then this will happen and that will happen. But all of that is the dream of time.
The antidote is not to try to stop that movement, because it's infinite. The antidote is to see that it exists within a smaller subset of reality, the place where time, appearances, mind, and bodies happen. There is something of a vaster reality, the reality that contains time, that contains space. In that reality, there is no time. That is what can be recognized, and recognizing it will calm the storm of time.
But my point is that there is an interest in believing time is the only reality. There's an addiction to that. There's a need, an attachment.
It feels very survival-oriented.
Yes, because that's the root illusion: that what you are is that which comes and goes. Because there are things that come and go; bodies come and go. It is exactly about survival. It's the primary illusion that what you are can survive or not survive.
Seeing comes before deconditioning
I know that it has everything to do with deconditioning.
No. Conditioning is what will happen as a consequence of deeper seeing, but the seeing comes first. Deconditioning is a process in time.
But I have no control over the seeing. That's what I always think.
That which you are, that's almost the only choice you have. It's basically the only choice: to see things as they are, or to pretend not to see them as they are.
For me, the pretense is the conditioning, and it seems to fail.
I get that. But when that becomes a narrative of "I can't do it because of the conditioning, now I have to address the conditioning," you're creating a whole problem in time that keeps you in that story.
And yet it does usually take time to decondition.
But my point is deconditioning isn't what's needed. Deconditioning is a consequence. It's like having a condition that needs medication. You take the medication, and then your body digests it, it goes into your blood, and it does its work. I'm talking about taking the pill.
Yes.
When you talk about the effect of the pill in the body, you have not much to do with that. The taking of the pill is the seeing, and it's almost the choosing to see.
It's the grace, then.
It is the grace. But then again, you are grace. See how you're deflecting?
Choosing the drama
I am. I'm going to do everything I can, because I don't want to feel this. I'm just going to keep peeling the onion and crying.
Exactly. But you can see now: you are invested in debunking the possibility.
I totally am. And I want to play it out.
And that's where you can realize you are choosing that, you are wanting that. You can see: "Okay, I want to go to McDonald's and eat four burgers and feel like crap."
And then I get to complain about the indigestion. It's totally that. It's again the paradox of two completely different worlds: one exists and the other doesn't. I feel like I chew on this and chew on it.
Yes. And this is where I say there is no rush. You can do this as long as you want.
But the world is burning!
Make it the world's fault.
Or "I've got to go save the world," or whatever. It's crazy.
Let us know when it's done.
You'll know.
It's interesting. When I go right to that point, the resistance comes up. You really don't want that to be the case.
Yes. I just go crazy. It's like, "What the hell?"
And the point is, it's up to you. You have the choice. You can be free if you want, or not.