It is important not to expect anything. To want a divine experience of pleasure on top of freedom is the “fall” from our problem-free nature. This problem-free nature is joyful and peaceful. It is not something that comes and goes. There is a sense of freedom, a perfume. What really matters is that which is permanent. People often say that this experience comes and goes. If it does, it is not what we are talking about here. Whatever is impermanent must be objective.
If I categorize emotions as negative and want to get rid of them, I inflame them. There are moments when I can see that they are not me and can let go of them. However, because I am not established in knowing that they are not what I am, they keep on catching me again and again.
There are two mistakes in your question. The first is to take yourself for someone who is not established and who might become established in the future. This someone will never become established. The second is the desire to change things, the judging and condemnation of whatever appears. The moment we condemn a feeling as “bad,” we want to get rid of it. Who wants to get rid of it? The one who wants to get rid of it is the one who creates it. The one who wants to get rid of anger is itself angry about being angry. It will never come to an end unless you see the process. It is like a madman who continues to bang his head against the wall until he realizes what is going on. This refusal is very deeply rooted in us and, as we become more and more interested in this perspective, it reveals itself in all kinds of ways. However, behind all of these faces there is one single sense of being a person, of separation: the I-thought.
There is strong sense of the I-thought connected with watching. There is a reflection of the “I” in the mind. It is connected with the heart center. The more attention it receives, the more the trouble.
This connection is a perceived object. Even the heart center is an object, a perception that comes and goes, a limitation. It is not a problem. The reflection of the “I” in the mind is a thought, the I-thought. At the level of feeling it is a bodily sensation, the I-feeling. These are all objects that come and go. They appear and disappear within that which never appears or disappears, their source. It is for this reason that, on the path of self-inquiry, we do not look for feelings, we look for their source. We don’t stop with the I-thought or I-feeling. We let them merge with their source, which is the subject, consciousness. That is the true “I.” This true “I” is not itself a perception or a thought. It is too close to be perceived. We can only perceive something that is at an apparent distance. That which is at a zero distance from the perceiving reality can never be perceived. For instance, the eye can never perceive itself. It can perceive its reflection in a mirror or its image on a photograph, but it can never perceive itself because it is at a zero distance from itself. It is the same with consciousness. It can never perceive itself as an object. It can only be itself. When consciousness tries to perceive itself, it creates an object, and that object is the I-thought or the I-feeling.
The I-thought is not a problem as long as it refers to consciousness. When it becomes attached to an attribute, to a noun or an adjective, such as “I am a woman,” “I am a human being,” “I am happy,” “I am unhappy,” “I am frustrated,” and so on, it becomes the mother of all problems.
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In meditation, as thoughts subside and the feelings that fuel them become apparent, it is clear that the impulse to think sometimes arises in order to avoid the discomfort of this mass of undifferentiated feelings. However, unlike thoughts, these feelings tend to grow rather than subside when welcomed.
Don’t welcome the feelings themselves; welcome the totality of your experience. The fact that you speak of this “mass of undifferentiated feeling” suggests that you have already differentiated them from the rest of your experience. You are focusing on them. You are involved in a relationship with them, with one aspect of the totality of your experience. The reason you focus on this mass of feelings is due to a subtle desire to get rid of them. However, the more you focus on the feelings, the more you aggravate them. The more you scratch, the more they itch. Stop scratching! The scratching comes from a desire to get rid of the itching. Welcome the itching, but don’t try to do anything about it. See that you are focusing onto it. The fact that it is experienced as uncomfortable implies that you are resisting it, you are reacting against it. You have superimposed a feeling of resistance onto the original feeling. This is the feeling of anger towards the feeling of anger. In this way, layers of feeling are built up one on top of another. See the game that is being played. The moment we see the game, we stop playing, and everything gradually goes back to normal, layer after layer.
There are, however, some practical tools you can use, at least for a while. For instance, when you feel hypnotized by a feeling in your body, downgrade the feeling to the level of a sensation. A feeling is a bodily sensation attached to the concept of being a person, a separate entity. See clearly that this separate entity doesn’t exist, that it is not the subject, the “feeler” of the feeling. It is simply a thought. Seeing this clearly enables the thought, the I-thought, to be dropped spontaneously. Divested of its psychological content, the feeling is now experienced simply as a sensation in the body. Explore it and discover that it is just a neutral sensation arising in your presence. It is not a problem. If it has nothing new to teach you, leave it and move on.
Sometimes as a result of our residual desire to go somewhere, to achieve, there is a tendency to artificially create this mass of sensations in order to remain busy getting rid of it. However, the more we want to get rid of them, the more we create them. It is a “loop” of residual activity. Don’t try to get rid of something that you have created, just stop creating it and understand that it is your very desire to get rid of it that perpetuates it.
I have trouble with the word “welcome.” “Receive” seems more appropriate.
“Accept” is also OK. The important thing is to welcome the totality of the situation. Don’t welcome the object, which is just one aspect of your current experience, welcome the totality. If we remain hypnotized by a problem, by a negative element, we are not welcoming the totality of the situation, we are focusing on one aspect of it. True welcoming is always the welcoming of the totality.
I sometimes feel that even welcoming is an avoidance of being.
Artificial welcoming, intentional welcoming, is welcoming that has a personal goal in mind, and in this sense, it could be said that it is an avoidance of being. However, true welcoming is not an avoidance of anything. To reveal feelings in full light involves seeing feelings clearly for what they are. Let these feelings be purified of any psychological content in this welcoming space. When we look at a cloud in the sky, the cloud has no psychological content, no feeling of “me” attached to it. As long as you understand this welcoming as an activity, don’t do it. As long as there is a doer, a person doing it, don’t do it. However, there are many things we do without doing them as a person. They are in fact being done. For instance, when we breathe, we don’t breath. When a thought comes to us, we don’t think it. It just comes to us. It is in this way that welcoming takes place.
In fact, welcoming is not an activity. It may appear to be so in the beginning, because it seems that a certain effort is required to allow, rather than reject, certain unpleasant aspects of our experience. However, as we become more established in welcoming, we realize that welcoming involves the cessation of the activity of resistance, rather than the initiation of any further activity. It is the allowing of everything that appears within the field of consciousness just to be as it is.
To begin with welcoming is usually understood as something that we do. Later on it is understood to be something that we stop doing. It is understood as the cessation of resistance, of exclusively focusing onto a fragment of our experience. And finally welcoming is understood to be what we are, the natural, loving, open space in which all things come into being, abide, and dissolve.
Surrender to not knowing. Understand that ev
ery time that you have been happy in your life it came out of nowhere in an unpredictable way. We cannot secure happiness through knowing or doing. Let go of this waste of energy. Things will still be accomplished but the agitation comes to an end. Then, whenever we do something we enjoy it because there is no effort. We are not involved as a person and life becomes a celebration.
I am often uncertain whether I am involved as a person or not.
The way to find out whether the “person” is involved is to see whether the activity is motivated by a desire to achieve something exclusively for yourself as a person. To make sure that it is impersonal, that it is in harmony with the totality, ask yourself if you would approve of the action if you were an all-knowing, benevolent judge. This will immediately give you the impersonal, impartial point of view. For instance if you take good care of your body, you may think that such a concern is personal. However, if you look at it from the vantage point of an all-knowing and benevolent judge, taking good care of the body which has been placed in her care, you discover that such an activity is not necessarily personal. The body and mind are tools for celebration and the all-knowing, benevolent judge wants the celebration to take place. On the other hand, let us suppose that you have a thought of getting even with someone. From the point of view of the all-knowing and benevolent judge, she wants the thought to be dropped and for you to be happy. This type of activity is usually personal.
Discriminate between impersonal, spontaneous deeds and those that are personal. Don’t worry when there are moments when you are not sure. It is enough if you have tried with goodwill to apply this in your life. In such a case, your intention to take the impersonal stand is already the impersonal stand. Just do your best. Whatever comes out of this willingness to be impersonal will be impersonal, even if you make a mistake. It is the very willingness to be impersonal that seals the impersonality of your deed.
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From this place of unknowing do you lose the feeling of existence?
No, you don’t lose the feeling of existence. You are existence itself.
Even though I understand that I am not separate, I still feel separate at the physical level.
Ignorance at the conceptual level is thinking that reinforces the idea that one is a body-mind. Ignorance at the level of the body involves feelings that make us feel we are separate, that we are this body-mind entity, that we have been created. These feelings trigger the personal I-thought. When such feelings appear we should welcome the totality of the situation of which they are a part. When this has been completely welcomed, the attention is free to go elsewhere. We know that welcoming is complete when the situation has nothing new to teach us, when it becomes repetitive. Perhaps we can give the situation a few more moments to make sure we have looked at it from all sides. If there is no further unfolding and the feeling remains, we should ask ourselves whether we could live with this feeling for the rest of our life. If we do not want to get rid of it, if we could live with it forever, it means that it is no longer a problem; it no longer has the capacity to make us feel separate. However, if we want to get rid of the feeling, we must see that this desire arises out of another feeling, a feeling of aversion, of resistance.
Each time a feeling is completely welcomed, it loses its separating power. It becomes neutralized. Another layer of deeper and subtler feeling will now arise, and should be welcomed in the same way. Layer after layer of feelings come to the surface in this way and gradually, without our knowing it, the stronghold of the ego is exposed and dissolved.
Two things may happen in this welcoming: if we stay with a feeling and completely welcome the totality of the situation, it will lead us upstream to the I-thought which is in turn reabsorbed in the source. At this point the fear of disappearing, the fear of death, the underlying existential fear, vanishes for good.
However, there may also be localized feelings that have no psychological counterpart in the I-thought. When we see these feelings for what they are, simply a perpetuation of the agitation, and have circumscribed them and realized that they have nothing new to teach us, we just drop them. In the case of such feelings we learn the skill of dropping them earlier and earlier, and they appear less and less frequently. They lose their energy as we ignore them. We just recognize them for what they are. At some point, they will not bother us any longer. It is similar to someone giving up smoking. During the first few days, he has the desire to smoke every ten seconds or so. After two weeks, the desire will only show up once every five minutes and, after ten years, it won’t show at all. There is a gradual spacing out of these feelings.
When the feelings are “good,” it is not so easy to just leave them.
Good feelings are to be enjoyed. They are the expression of joy and take us back to joy, which is our true nature. Just enjoy them; be one with them. Understand that a moment of happiness comes from grace, and this moment of happiness is teaching us that happiness is not in an object. We have to know that we are this happiness in the moment. The object is almost irrelevant. The object is part of the dream but the happiness is real. Therefore, let go of the object. Surrender the object. Causeless joy is self-explanatory. If we are looking for it, we won’t find it, but when we stop looking for it, it finds us.
You suggested staying in clear seeing and in not knowing. I escape from that by formulating, for example, “I am consciousness.”
In the beginning, this type of thought takes us to the experience of our true nature, so it is not a problem. However, after a while it becomes shorter and shorter and at some point, we don’t even need to take the thought. We go directly to the experience, to the knowing inside, to the place we love the most, and we stay there. At some point, the need for this thought disappears because we find a more direct way to go back to our true nature. This thought is not an obstacle; it is a vehicle.
You once mentioned a sense of wholeness that later becomes holiness. Could you expand on this?
A sense of wholeness comes when we feel that everything is inside us. When we feel that, we understand that everything is our own emanation, an emanation from consciousness. This understanding compels everything that is experienced to unveil itself, to reveal its true nature. This unveiling is the revelation of the sacred. When we truly feel that the universe is in us, is us, that there is no separation, that there is this wholeness, then the universe and the events in the world unfold in accordance with this perspective, which is the true perspective. They reveal the sanctity, the holiness of the world. They reveal the permanent miracle. First it is experienced as a feeling and later on, it is confirmed by our experience of the world.
I often find myself daydreaming.
Daydreaming is an avoidance of the now which is deemed to be boring. It is an escape from whatever is arising in the moment and it takes us into the past or the future. It relates to the thought that we are a personal entity. There is a difference between daydreaming and what we could call “free thinking.” Daydreaming could be called “captive thinking” in the sense that it is captive of the notion that we are a person, that there is someone to whom the daydream is happening, a projected someone. In “free thinking,” thoughts arise freely and there can be strange associations, but there is no entity around which they revolve. It is very creative.
It is also necessary to have practical thoughts, for instance to make plans, to book the car into the garage, to make a shopping list, and so on. There is nothing wrong with these types of thoughts. They are an appropriate response to the current situation and do not need to hinge around a separate entity.
There is another type of thinking that doesn’t depend on, create, or maintain the idea of a separate entity and these are thoughts about truth. They come from the truth and lead us back to it. We could call it “higher reasoning.” It is only the first type of thinking, which revolves around a separate entity, that leads to misery.
However, even if we understand that something is a waste of energy, we may still keep doing it for a while. For ins
tance, if a smoker understands that smoking is detrimental to his health, he may not give it up straight away; it may take some time. This doesn’t mean that the understanding is not there. If, from the fact that daydreaming is present, you infer that there is no understanding, you are judging yourself. Having understood, realize that any understanding that is not applied is sterile. This delay in putting your understanding into practice is your decision. You can apply it immediately or postpone it.
If we drop a daydream, then the next time one appears, we will become conscious of it earlier. Each time we do this it becomes easier to drop it the next time, so the average duration of a daydream will get shorter and shorter. At some point, we no longer daydream because, before it takes root, we catch the impulse to avoid the now, which triggers the daydreaming in the first place. At this point the understanding, the moment of becoming aware of the daydreaming, and the moment of dropping it are simultaneous.
You have spoken of our non-acceptance of the simplicity or ordinariness of the now. I think that for enlightenment to take place, the now must become very special.
This rejection of the now means that you have not yet understood that objects have nothing to offer in terms of happiness. Whatever objects are present are labeled insufficient, in terms of their capacity to bring about happiness, and therefore there is a craving for new objects. This process maintains the ego. It is only when we are truly indifferent to objects that we can be in the now. When we are in the now, the true nature of objects is revealed. They are revealed as a permanent miracle because there are no objects as such.
I feel that you are responsible for the stillness that I feel at the moment.
My presence is your presence. Just let go of the notion that your presence is not my presence. It is our presence. There’s no difference, because when we come here, all of us as individuals, each of us is a component of the celebration. It seems that everything is being spoken from this mouth, but we are in fact all one huge body and somehow this mouth is, for the time being, the mouthpiece of this huge body. However, we are this one body and it is important for the ears not to feel separate from the mouth. We are one huge universe speaking and listening to itself. This distinction between student and teacher is an obstacle. Don’t indulge it. It is much simpler if, in accordance with our understanding that there is one single consciousness, we see these meetings simply as an opportunity to experience and celebrate this oneness, rather than hoping we are going to get something from someone. We celebrate it in silence, through our relationships, through our conversations, through our activities, and so on. We are all already perfectly equipped for happiness.
The Perfume of Silence Page 6
