The Threat of Letting Go
La amenaza de soltar
A student explores the resistance and sense of threat that arises during group practice, and the teacher discusses how what feels threatening is only the illusion, not what is real.
The Threat of Letting Go
A student explores the resistance and sense of threat that arises during group practice, and the teacher discusses how what feels threatening is only the illusion, not what is real.
What I notice is that there's this resistance, and when I really look into it, it's just control. I have to be the one to decide: am I going to take on board what you're saying? Am I going to sit here? Am I going to investigate what you're proposing? So the question is, is that a worthwhile investigation, or is it enough just to notice it?
The question for me is: what works? I would reframe it that way.
What could work is to see that there's a second-guessing of a decision you've already made. When we meet one-on-one, you're usually asking from a very clear initiation on your side. Here, because it's more passive, because you're sitting and a direction is coming from me, this activation you're describing gets triggered. The resistance.
Seeing through the activation
But it's a personal thing. Rather than investigating the experience of resistance in the activation, I'd say let that just be something that appears. What can cut through it is seeing that when you sit here, you've already chosen, and at any point you can choose to leave. The choice has already been made, and recognizing that could help settle the activation.
Whatever doesn't settle is just part of what I was describing earlier. There are going to be sensations, tensions, thoughts. But sometimes the discernment that sees through the illusions of what's activated in the mind can really help settle things.
I think what you're saying is, on some level, very threatening. And the danger for me sometimes is just activating my psychological mind, because I have so much identity there. But at the same time, that itself is a psychological process.
The one you're describing, yes, it is, one hundred percent. The thing is, I'm aware that what I'm doing is threatening. It's threatening the illusion. But what's real is not being threatened.
So maybe that's getting closer. It's something like: notice that there's something that feels threatened, notice that it's an illusion that feels threatened.
It's the attachment to things being the way you think they are.
And then just notice that, notice the activation. Maybe that is enough.
Yes. And if you want to add something, you can even celebrate it, because you know what's happening and you know what you want. It's just that the process is a little bit like, ouch.
The fear of losing control
Sometimes I get affected because I saw some things you went through and how extreme and intense they were. There's a part of me that thinks, if I drop control, maybe that won't go so well.
That's where I have no idea how it will be. But what is most likely is that it won't be the same. Every process is very unique. There are patterns, shared experiences, but it's very unlikely to look the same.
Yours was so intense.
But I tell you, it's so worth it. It's like ripping a Band-Aid off. So worth it. And afterward, it's so, so much better.
Moving into the unknown
I was telling a client in my practice, someone with pretty serious OCD: what's going to happen if you're not clean? What's actually going to happen? It's the same thing.
Exactly. It's the unknown. You don't know. And that's the whole point: moving into the not knowing, the risk.