Meeting Intense Energy Without the Narrative
Encontrar la energía intensa sin la narrativa
A question about how to stay present with overwhelming emotions like grief or despair, and whether identification with such experiences prevents them from being fully processed.
Meeting Intense Energy Without the Narrative
A question about how to stay present with overwhelming emotions like grief or despair, and whether identification with such experiences prevents them from being fully processed.
I'm new, and I'm feeling the vulnerability of being new. It was such a beautiful meditation that it seems almost wrong to speak. But for some reason I have this question. In your experience, when you are meeting a really strong energy that shows up, say grief or despair or something powerful: let me tell you my experience first. It is very difficult for me in those moments to stay open and to feel them. Sometimes I'm successful; sometimes I'm not.
I was on retreat with a teacher, and something she said stuck in my mind: unless you stay with it, if you identify with it, it doesn't process. I wanted to know if you can clarify. Did I hear that through a filter, and it's not really what she was saying? Because in retrospect, after something passes and I come back, I realize I was completely identified in those moments when those energies were moving.
There is a question there, and quite a lot to speak about.
In my experience, I cannot know exactly what somebody else meant by what they said. But I can speak to what my sense is, and whether what you're describing resonates as correct or relevant to me.
I would say yes, that makes sense: if you are identified with something that's coming up, it is not processed. I might say it differently, but I do think this is important.
Layers of experience: thought, emotion, sensation
When something intense comes up, usually what happens is that we aren't able to be with it directly. The challenge is being with the experience directly, with the raw sensation, the raw experience. The deeper things go, the less mental they are, the less emotional they are.
This is a progression. When I say "mental," I mean mind in the sense of images, concepts, and thoughts that have to do with memory, past, future, and even the images of myself and others: a narrative, a story. Think of a movie where there are characters, experience, time, dialogue, and concepts. That, to me, is thought.
But that is not all of thought. There is an aspect of thought that I would describe as imagined sensations. The mind, among many things, can reflect what the raw experience is. We perceive light, forms of light, perception of sight, sound, and sensation. That is the raw experience.
Then there is something deep that I can call feeling. It is not mind, and it is in the realm of sensation, but it is not normal sensation in the sense that it is not coming through the normal nervous system. It comes from something more mysterious, in my experience. That, to me, is true feeling.
Then there is emotion. Emotion is what I described as imagined sensation. It will be felt as located in the body, and there will be chemistry that happens through the mechanism of the blood and the brain, triggering all kinds of chemical responses that produce sensations in the body. But to me, this is all a mix of sensation and thought, very much triggered by the space of imagination, the space of mind.
How a narrative generates the whole chain
There are different layers. We can have a thought that is scary, and it is just a narrative. Then there can be an emotional response, a form of fear, and then the body will produce sensations of the activation of fear. All of that can happen, and it is all basically imagination. We know this because it can happen watching a movie. It is purely imagination. This is also the metaphor of daydreaming, where we "wake up" from the dream we are in during waking life, which is the narrative of thought.
Going deeper through raw sensation
All of this is context for how I speak about things, and now to come to your question. If something deep is happening, it can be of the more emotional layer, because there are deep emotions we were not able to process. There is a stuckness in the body-mind. But the way we can go deeper is by going into the raw sensations of it, really staying with what is happening in the body, and looking at all the activation of thought in the sense of narrative, seeing the illusion of it, seeing its illusory nature, seeing that it is just a movie playing.
The key there has to do with truth. The way one pierces through is truth. For example: can I be so sure that this is reality? And first, notice that it is made of thought. This is the first step. Most people don't notice this. For most people, whatever is happening in mind is reality. There is no separation between what is reality and what is the narrative of thought. But once we start to identify the difference between the narrative of thought and what reality might actually be, then it becomes a matter of being able to say: can I really be sure this is what's happening? That starts to get us less involved with the narrative and more into sensations.
The character at the center of the narrative
Back to your question: this is more of a progression. The more we disidentify with the narrative, the more we see that within that narrative there is a character, the person "I," the imagination of "I" and time. That is the first thing we are identified with. The character "I" is the center of the whole narrative, and everything is happening to me and around me. This activates all the reactivity.
If something difficult is happening at a deeper level and I approach it through narrative and emotion, that is a coping mechanism. It is a defense. This coping mechanism served us well when we were young, and it comes to a point where we need to move past it. But if every time something difficult and familiar comes up, I relate to it from the same place, from the same identity narrative, I am actually not processing what is really there. I am just swimming in the activation of my coping mechanism.
Identification as the barrier to processing
This is what I think you were being told. If you are still identified, you are not really processing, because processing actually requires the ending of the narrative that was the coping mechanism. That is the end of an illusion, the end of an identification. There are many such narratives. Ultimately we come to the one narrative, which is the "I" thought, the belief that I am something. This is what therapy does well in its first stages but does not reach, because there is more to go. The actual "I" thought, that I am something, is an illusion as well.
The tension between intensity and the coping mechanism
In the processing of trauma, of difficult energies, you will notice a tension between the actual intensity that feels unbearable and the narrative, emotional, mental coping mechanism, which is also very uncomfortable but feels safer. There is always an attachment and a habit to remain holding on to the identification. The direction is more into the raw sensation.
What can happen then is that the narrative can end. Literally, there is no real thought process, and the intensity could still be there, in fact much larger. This is where we move out of emotion into deeper feeling, and that is where really deep healing can happen. Energetics actually start to move through the body, and the mind is not blocking that energy anymore. The deep healing can happen there.
What the teacher's own experience has been
You asked what my experience is. Everything I am describing is my experience, but specifically in that meeting of deep energy: at first it was unbearable, and I would run as fast as I could from it. Then I was able to be closer to it. And then, in a sense, I lost the ability to avoid it. The identification mechanism started to collapse. That is where surrendering happens, where you are unable to go into the illusion and the energetics take over. In my experience it is extremely difficult, very intense, but eventually very powerful and positive. I think I have had more intense experiences than some other people I have spoken to who have gone through this. It seems like some people have it a little easier, but that is just how it is for me.
That was beautiful. I understand. I can't really know what's happening, but it seems as though things are getting more intense and deeper. That question just came up: I suppose now it's just accepting that whatever happens happens, and getting to that feeling level you were describing. I really felt that. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.
You're very welcome.