The Fear of Meeting Eyes
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A student describes the vulnerability and social anxiety that arises when making eye contact during meditation, and the teacher explores how beliefs about separation create reactive patterns that obscure a deeper, shared reality.
The Fear of Meeting Eyes
A student describes the vulnerability and social anxiety that arises when making eye contact during meditation, and the teacher explores how beliefs about separation create reactive patterns that obscure a deeper, shared reality.
During the meditation, an old hang-up popped up a few times. I've wanted to close it before, but I haven't. Meditating with eyes open or closed, it's just one space, until I look at you on the screen and feel like our eyes meet. Then sensations arise. I've been avoiding vulnerability for a long time. It feels like it goes way, way back: shyness, social anxiety. Maybe I'm realizing we connect on a deeper level with humans when our eyes meet.
It feels like it's being quite resolved, but it still pops up, especially in circles like this where we feel a lot more. I notice I'm avoiding looking at you, and then I'm interested to explore it, so I look at you, and it feels quite vulnerable, like you can see through me. That's quite confronting.
Then it gets tricky, because there are sensations that aren't liked so much. I try to sit with them, but it can be quite intense, and then all this "I need to do something" comes forth. I know what to do: just be with it. But I don't have as much say over it. The difficulty comes up in this contact. When I raise my hand, stuff comes up, but then as soon as I start talking it fades. There's still a subtle sense of "me talking to you" sometimes, unless I look directly at it.
None of that needs to go. What changes is the interpretation. There's the interpretation that there is something different between you and me, between here and there. But there is no such fundamental difference.
What can happen in that contact, and I think this is a very positive thing, is that it brings stuff up. It brings out content or material from the personal mind for it to be seen. Sometimes, as you're exploring, it is good to simply allow. But it might also be helpful to notice any beliefs that come up. You could be sitting with an activation, with energetics and emotions, and keep sitting with it, but it never shifts, because the beliefs that trigger it aren't recognized and seen as beliefs. One of those beliefs is that there is a fundamental difference between you and another.
Do you mean on a personal level, or just at all?
In the deepest, most important way.
At this level, there is also a difference that is real in a very deep and important way. But both are simultaneously true, and both need to be simultaneously seen. What is normally grasped is the difference. What is not different is elusive. And when that illusion, that belief, drops, it can be quite shocking. There is an attachment to that difference, to the assumption of separation.
Stepping out of limitation
What you're doing is the right thing: coming into it, stepping into it, having the activation happen, and exploring it. That is how it can be seen more and more, and clear more and more. But none of what activates the personal stuff needs to stop. It is all there for the freedom that is here to be known.
It's actually the other way around. When the freedom that is here is known, then the unnecessary activation slows down. With the mind, we tend to attach to the sense of: "Once I do this practice long enough and the activation slows down, then I will know the freedom that is spoken of." It doesn't go that way.
You mentioned there's a belief involved. That's not very clear to me, other than this subtle belief of "out there and here," like all of a sudden there's two when I look at you.
Exactly. Everything's fine until you look at me, and then two are made in your mind.
In this case, it felt like it was your gaze. That felt more primary.
Or was it the sensation that came forth when I looked at you, and then from that, a belief that there was separation?
What you're doing is stepping out of limitation. You are resonating with something that is not limited. But then there is a reaction. When you get in touch with that which is also you but has been cut off or forgotten, there's going to be a reaction.
That can happen in these circles: you get in touch with something that is a part of you but has been forgotten, and then the mind makes it "other." That's just what's going to happen. But if you look more closely, you can see that it's appearing in you. That which is in this other that is activating is a part of you. In the positive aspect as well: that which resonates, possibly a sense of aliveness, openness, and depth. It will have some flavors of moving out of the known. Does that resonate?
Yeah.
Beliefs that create otherness
Then it can be seen that there are beliefs that turn that into "other." And because it is other, there is something that can be done, or that needs to be done, in order to get that, or relate to it, or do something about it. There's a longing for that which is a taste of freedom, a taste of peace, and it's known or discovered in relationship. Then it can be seen that that relationship is also a part of you, and that, in a sense, there is no relating, there is no relationship. It is all one space, one being, one reality. Nothing needs to change.
But there is, in a sense, a need for this process to happen: a need to come out of the contraction, out of the attachment to thought. Which is what you're doing, by the way, in case it's not clear.
Good to know, because my mind's rather blank now.
That is exactly what you're doing. That's why you're here. That's why you speak. That's why you raise your hand. That's all it is.
There's going to be a deep assumption around an otherness that invokes a subtle sense of you being, in some way, a definition: "I am not that," along with some form of lack.
It feels like a very old pattern.
Interpretation versus reality
It doesn't have to leave or stop. All that needs to happen is it needs to be seen as an interpretation and not a reality.
What do you mean by interpretation?
It's a paradigm. It's a map. It's a form of conceiving what is real. But it's not what is real. If I look at a map and see how to get to a supermarket, what I'm experiencing is just the map. There is no real experience of the supermarket or the journey there. In the same way, when there's an interpretation of what you are, it's only a map: a sense of limitation with an emotional reaction. It's just an interpretation.
It feels like the deeper layer of emotion now is grief.
Grief beneath the pattern
Usually, when those deeper beliefs start to be seen as what they are, their purpose comes to an end. And usually that purpose is to avoid some sensation.
Yeah, it is.
That's a really good sign, because in earlier stages, the reactivity and emotionality are more comfortable than the actual sensation being avoided. Sensations become avoided through known, comfortable, repetitive sensations: emotions, thought patterns. The more challenging, deeper, real sensations carry too much fear at first, so the comfortable reactive emotionality is preferred.
At some point, you start to get tired of that repetitive, contracted emotionality. The narratives that create it become clear and are seen as false. When that happens, we start to prefer the reality, and usually the reality is some form of grief or some form of very raw fear. It's quite simple, and it's a lot more alive.
There's a lot of doubt in there as well, alongside the grief.
The doubt is going to be related to fear.
The thought came that I'm the center of attention here, and every lovely person here is watching me right now. And then the sensation follows.
The thought comes first, and then the thought that is seen as possibly real and true will invoke an emotion.
One, two, and three
That's not to say relationship is unreal. There is a very beautiful and useful universe where the experience of self and other is sublime. But it needs to be seen that it's relative, not absolutely real.
At first, we only see and know relationships in a world of separation. Then we can see that there is no separation. Then we can go back to a world where there is no separation, but there are relationships as well. The relative is contained within the whole.
I think this is what in Christianity is referred to as "one that is three, and three that is one": the Holy Trinity. In an illusion, in sleep, there is only two: self and others. Then it can be seen that there is three: self, other, and the relationship. There is some unifying aspect, some common reality that is shared. Then it can be seen that there is no self and other, there is only one. And then it can be seen simultaneously: one that is three, self, other, and the relationship.
Working with the fear directly
I can recommend doing things like gently confronting this. Something like joining a group where you spontaneously talk with each other. Improv, for example. Those groups come from a place of pure creativity and exploration. It's probably great for you.
Think of it as something fun, something to explore, to play with. It might be challenging at first. It's like when you raise your hand here: all of the anticipation is a buildup, and then you're in it and it's like, "That wasn't that bad." The more you repeat that, the more the anticipation of something difficult starts to become deactivated.
It's really clear that it is just the anticipation, and it will fade. But even with that, it still comes up.
That might never go away fully, but it will definitely tone down to a point where it's just fine. There's a shift in energy, and that's fine. It will bring stuff out. But what will definitely go away with the exploration is that really intense challenge. You can work through it.
It's like getting up on stage. I had horrible stage fright. After doing it over and over, it went to a place where it's not completely gone, in the sense that there's still stuff activating in anticipation. There's a vulnerability, as you mentioned. Especially if we are coming from a place of vulnerable exploration, there's going to be stuff moving. But what changes is that it used to be horrible, and now the whole process is very pleasant. There is still a shift, a movement, a change that happens. There's a rising of a different energy that before used to be terrifying, and now it's like a wave. The energy is shifting.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome. Thank you for sharing.