The Addiction to Feeling Good
La adicción a sentirse bien
A student describes losing a sense of peace when the intensity of experience becomes overwhelming, and the teacher explores how attachment to pleasant mental states functions like an addiction, pointing toward a deeper satisfaction that does not depend on conditions.
The Addiction to Feeling Good
A student describes losing a sense of peace when the intensity of experience becomes overwhelming, and the teacher explores how attachment to pleasant mental states functions like an addiction, pointing toward a deeper satisfaction that does not depend on conditions.
I'm noticing that in the river of experience, and I really resonated with that when you were talking about it in the meditation, it just feels like constantly changing sensations, thoughts, sounds. But I notice that I lose the well-being and the peace in there. There's a lot of discomfort. Everything feels like the volume has been turned up to ten when it used to be on four. There's no buffer anymore. Everything is so full-on and immediate and intimate. I know a mood state of happiness, and if that's not there, it feels like I'm missing something. It feels like this gross sense where I have to feel emotionally good, or else I can't notice the divine beauty you were describing, like the cup of coffee. I'm so used to identifying with that mood as being what I want, versus what's actually available.
The sailboat in the storm
It's as if you are a sailboat in a storm, or in an open ocean. If the ocean is stable enough, or moody enough but not too much, you're fine. But when the flow gets a little too intense, you lose the peace. The peace you're referring to, the happiness you're referring to, belongs to the sailboat. It exists in relationship to the sailboat. So if the sailboat is not at peace, or if the ocean is a little too this or too that, then there's a loss of that which you are familiar with as peaceful or happy. But the point of all of this is the reality that there is no sailboat.
Right now, when the storminess or intensity of experience is too much and you have a sense of losing that peace, notice that you're referring to something that is losing the peace. There's still a center, still a reference point. And you're referring to moods as well. I would suggest that the peace you're referring to is still conditional, based on sensations and thoughts.
Yeah, it's based on something referencing some kind of center.
Right, referencing some kind of center.
It's not really self. It's more like there's this thing, and maybe it's just memory that I'm referencing.
Undoing the reference point
But it's referencing memory in relation to that which is you, and there's going to be a center still active that has to do with what you are. What can happen, and I think what you're describing is actually a positive thing, is the natural process where, as you start to undo all of that reference to self as location, as body, as sensation, as thoughts, it becomes useful not to use the word "self" because it's too abstract. It's better to refer to what is probably closer to your actual experience, which has more to do with an agglomeration of sensations and thoughts. When you start looking at what self is, it's actually much more cloudy. It has a Frankenstein quality: just a bunch of things put together. There isn't really such a thing. It's helpful to call it "self" as a beginning, but once you've done quite a bit of this work, which you have, it's useful to look at what is really there that you're referencing. You can drop the concept of self and look at the sensations, the thoughts. Where is it located? How does it appear to be something you're referencing as "I"?
What I was getting at is this tension between everything moving and being too intense and the sailboat being rocked too much. At some point, it will be rocked hard enough that there's going to be a deeper seeing that there is no sailboat. Something there clarifies. It's a disillusion, so it can carry tones of disappointment, fear, loss, or death. But it's a process where that which seemed to be at the heart of it, being rocked and losing the peace, losing the mood it seeks and knows to be well-being or happiness, is actually a mood. By mood I mean it's an actual form, an actual appearance of thoughts and sensations kept going in a certain quality. That's the thing you feel you need to propagate because that's what feels good.
Peace without a reference point
Whereas the peace I'm describing is this: all of those are appearances. All of those thoughts, sensations, and moods can come and go and all be tasted and known without any attachment to any of them. And it's done by nothingness, or emptiness. Let's call that true self, true "I," if anything. But there, there isn't any reference point. That doesn't mean there's nothing here. There's clearly something here. And there's clearly something that I point to. It's just not what we've assumed it to be.
So that feels to me like it's just this constantly shape-shifting, moving river, this kaleidoscopic thing of how things feel, but there's nothing that really wants it to be a certain way. Is that what you're referring to?
There is a deeper, truer reality of you, or of this, that doesn't really care what's happening. Not caring in the sense of being dispassionate; there is love and compassion. It's a not caring in the sense of: no matter what it is, it's interested. No matter what it is, it's delighted. It's a "no matter what." And there can still be preferences, but they are playful.
I feel like something would have to let go for that to happen. Something's still holding on.
That's where I always come back to it being ultimately a choice. There is no rush, no pressure. At a deeper level, there is no need for that to happen. It's really up to you.
Is there something I need to do to facilitate that, or is life just going to do it when the time comes?
You and life are not two
It's up to you, and you and life are not two. Look at how that question already creates a concept where there is a choice that's either yours or life's. The whole point I'm pointing to is that it is the same choice. It's the same thing making the choice.
So there is a choice that can be made on a moment-to-moment basis. That's what I guess I'm confused about, because at one point you said something just happens, but now you're saying there is a choice that can be made.
At some point it happens that you choose to drop that. This is where language has its limits. Sometimes I lean toward one form of referring to it, and it also depends on where you are leaning, where you are holding on. I might lean toward language that points to the other side of that.
Ultimately, I can also say there is no choice, because it's playing toward that. We usually begin from believing everything is happening to us, that we are victims of what creates suffering, and we're in a battle with life to create conditions that reduce suffering. From there, a better perspective emerges where we start to see that we are creators, at least co-creators, and that the suffering isn't coming from life; it's being created internally, by something of a more subjective nature.
Then there's a seeing where "my will is not my will; it is thy will." There is no such entity here willing in opposition or agreement to the higher will; there is only the higher will. But then there is also the seeing that the higher will is "I." And even then, at that point, it just makes no sense: I, not I, higher will, lower will. There is just creation.
In all of these steps, we can identify with something or its opposite. We can have a sense of choices being mine or not. So it's a bit of an adjustment, how I speak about it depending on who I'm talking to.
It feels to me like right now there's something about choosing to identify with the center, with the mood state being a certain way, referencing that, as opposed to letting that go a bit.
Why "letting go" isn't the most useful instruction
Letting go is not that useful as a pointing or practice. If you don't want to let go, then you're trying to do something you don't want. That puts you in conflict with a prior choice you've made, which is: "I don't want to let go of this" or "I really want this." Now you have two forces, two energies created internally, pulling against each other. It's better to see why you are choosing what you're choosing. Why are you attached? Why are you wanting what you want, instead of trying to not want what you want?
Think of it as addictions. If you're hooked on a substance, you can try to drop it and really control yourself. But it's better to see why you want it and what you're getting from it.
I want it because I'm afraid that if I don't have this mood state, I'm just going to be in a lot of discomfort all the time.
Yes, and what about the positive side? What is it giving you that's not just avoiding something negative?
I'm not sure. I'll have to look into that. Control is part of it.
You control for what?
If I feel happy, if I feel this mood state in reference to a center, then I know what to do. It makes sense to me. There's a reference point. It's clear.
That's too conceptual. It needs to be more gut-level. What is it really?
When I feel into it, it feels more like it's about avoiding something negative. But you're saying there's also something positive.
The addiction to mental states
Everything in the world of choices has sides. That's why I was saying ultimately there is no choice, because in reality there are no two things, so no choice is possible. But in the process we're describing now, there is the side where you want to avoid the thing you don't want, and there's something you're going for which is not just avoidance. You say it's control, but control in order to what?
Feel good. That's the most visceral thing.
So now it becomes simpler, more gut-level. It's like: I just want to feel good. Now, what if you playfully consider that this is how somebody who is addicted to something responds?
I believe all humans, until what I think liberation ultimately is, are in the grip of an addiction, and that addiction is to mind. Some of us are also addicted to substances in the conventional sense, but I'm using the word more metaphorically, referring to something at a deeper level of the human condition. This became very clear for me: the addictive patterns and mechanisms, which were a big part of what shifted and dropped. Ultimately it is mind.
Feeling good, in the sense you're describing, can be known to be a mental state, not that different from what a substance produces. That's why addiction to substances is so dangerous and tempting: it manipulates the very thing we're already addicted to, which is mental and emotional states.
Savoring what is
When I talk about savoring what is, I mean that we can enjoy, to the same degree of satisfaction, a mental state that previously was known to be unpleasant, unsatisfactory, and not good. What that does is break the pattern of attachment. Or, in a sense, when the pattern of attachment breaks, that's what we realize. So there is a bit of a catch-22 there.
That really resonates. Addiction to positive mental and emotional states, versus savoring the kaleidoscopic flow, including the negative. That feels like right where I'm at.
The one who prefers certain mental states, and that which savors all mental states equally: one is more real than the other. One is reality and the other is illusion.
The center is so tricky, so insidious. It has so many different forms.
That's where the choice is: to be the one that prefers and rejects mental states, versus to be that which knows all of them equally and savors them equally. There can still be preferences, but ultimately, what can happen is this: there can be the knowing of preferences simultaneously with a knowing of no preferences. Something very human, raw, and vulnerable can be known as, "Oh, this is really terrible, this is really unpleasant," and at the same time, savored completely with total satisfaction. Simultaneously: no preference, no rejection. It doesn't appear to be one or the other. All of that reality is known and experienced simultaneously.
Preferences versus resistance
So preferences are different from resistance and fighting. That's very different.
I could prefer chocolate ice cream, but if you give me strawberry, I'll enjoy it. Versus: if you give me strawberry, I throw it in your face and scream and cry, the normal tantrum.
That's the preference versus the addiction to mental states. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate you and all of this.
Emptiness is not the absence of experience
Everything is just empty. It really is. But it doesn't mean that, because it's empty, I stop experiencing it. Maybe that's the mental construct: the belief that emptiness equals lack of experience. It's kind of the opposite. Absolutely nothing has a concrete center, absolutely nothing has a concreteness to it, and yet it is full of experience. Maybe that's a better description.
Yes, that's it.
So then what is emptiness in that context?
Emptiness is that there is no thing there. By "thing," I mean objects that have independent existence.
I mean, I can take that seriously and keep looking at it: is my mind still looking for an objective reality that has independent existence? Of course I can keep looking.
The assumption that there are still objects with independent existence that are perceived: that is the definition of duality.
And somewhere in the middle of all of this, the flatness lies.
Flatness as a threshold
The flatness probably happens when you're in a bit of a plateau or a threshold. There's something you're approximating, something to see through. A lot of emotional and psychological energy gets activated when we are in a stable identification. When you start to move toward a shift in identification, a freeing, there can be a depression of energy. It's basically the identification energy flattening. But it's an opportunity to see through something, and then energy will be released.
That resonates with my experience lately. The things that used to matter a lot, or that should matter a lot, just don't. And I associate that with a lack of aliveness.
Don't worry about that. It will come and go. Follow your dreams, if there are any.
That's the problem: there aren't any right now.
That's where you can ask yourself more deeply if there's something you want that you're not listening to.