Transcription
This series of guided meditations and instructions presents a set of tools and approaches for working skilfully with emotions and mind states in practice.
So I hope you can remember what I think I said in the opening talk, that the unfolding of the instructions is not linear. It can't really be linear. So we're adding pieces of this jigsaw puzzle, and they just kind of come when they come. The practice will get easier. If you feel that you're struggling, you'll get the hang of this more and more. It will become more familiar. And so this morning I want to actually just touch on some possible difficulties that might be coming up and how we might address them, and also introduce a new piece, another piece of the jigsaw puzzle. And like any meditation practice, difficulties can arise. In fact, difficulties will arise. That's taken for granted with any meditation practice, that difficulties arise. Then it becomes a question of, well, how can I relate to these difficulties? What's my attitude towards them, certainly? And what's a skilful way of responding to them? I just want to touch on a couple today.
So the first one is tiredness, or the hindrance of what's called 'sloth and torpor' -- sort of dullness, fogginess, heaviness, sleepiness that comes. Chris spoke about this last night in the talk and offered a number of possible responses that one can make to bring the energy up and relate to it in a good way. And I want to offer one more thing, particularly related to the practice that we're doing. Tiredness is actually a very interesting mind state. Sometimes one is sitting or walking or just in one's day, and one feels completely exhausted, or just overcome with tiredness, and it feels like the whole system is tired -- everything, every bit of me is tired: mind, soul, body, the whole show. Now, of course, sometimes we are really tired, and we need to sleep, etc. And oftentimes there's a backlog of tiredness that we arrive at on retreat.
But if I can begin paying attention to this experience of tiredness along this central line, I might find something very interesting. Oftentimes, when I look for the feeling in the body of tiredness that's going along with this feeling that I have, it's not that easy to find it. It's very interesting. And oftentimes what I might find is just a pressure behind the eyes or a sense of tightness in the head, behind the eyes. And that's what I find physically from this big feeling of tiredness that I feel I'm in. And it's unpleasant. It's probably not excruciatingly painful, but it's unpleasant -- a little bit.
Something's happening there. Something very interesting is happening. So first of all, if I can identify that and let it be what it is ... So it's on this central line; it's maybe in the middle axis of the body inside, and I can just identify, just open the hands again and let it be, let it be unpleasant. Just let it be what it is. And feel it, feel what it is. The whole enormity of the tiredness can sometimes begin to clear, and it's actually a much smaller experience, a much more handleable experience.
If I really investigate this, what I notice -- I'm not saying 100 per cent of the time, but enough times to be surprising -- what I notice is that with this little ball of tightness or pressure or heaviness behind the eyes, there is a response of aversion to it: I don't like it. I want to get rid of it. And that wanting to get rid of it somehow makes it balloon up to encompass the whole of the being, it feels like. Do you understand what I'm saying? Check it out. So I'm not saying it will be this, but it's quite interesting. Something happens to make something that's quite small look very big. And in that is a huge insight for us, and also something very helpful in relationship to tiredness. So to play with it, explore it, because it might be that it's relevant. It might be helpful and particularly relevant to our practice that we're doing.
Again, tiredness is very interesting. I was talking with a good friend the other day, and she was saying she's been tired a lot recently. And we were talking about other stuff. Actually what's been going on -- and it was she that came to this insight -- she feels like because of certain ways some of the relationships are in her life right now that she's kind of bottling her effervescence; she doesn't want to be too loud and too much energy. So she feels like she has to kind of tone it down a little bit, and she's repressing the life energy. She ends up feeling very tired, and then she feels like she has no life energy, but actually that's not what's going on. Again, tiredness is very interesting. How often is tiredness actually about resistance and resisting maybe something I don't want to feel? Or I'm even resisting my very own energy, my very own life force, my very own overflowing? And sometimes in life that can become such a habit, and I don't even know that I'm doing it. The days go by, and one's in a relationship with oneself that's kind of just squashing, squashing oneself. So one's tired a lot and tired a lot. Possibilities, possibilities. Certainly don't know what's happening, but tiredness is usually more interesting than it might first appear.
So that's one thing to play with and explore. Another obvious difficulty that can come up is physical discomfort when we're sitting and walking and sitting and walking. Very understandable and normal. Let's talk a little bit about that. But actually, let's take it again at the shallow end. What about you're sitting in meditation, and you get an itch in your face or your ear or something? Now, very easily the hand just comes up and scratches it. What the scratching is, "I want to get rid of this itch," right? And we don't really think about it. It's a movement of aversion, basically. But the itch is slightly uncomfortable. What would it be to actually, "Ah, itch. Okay." And actually, what is an itch? What is it? Linger with the sensations of an itch and explore this human -- actually animal, as well -- experience of an itch.
So in a way, we're bringing this same practice with the open hands -- we're bringing it towards the itch and just holding openness for the itch to be there. And what is this? What is this experience of itching? So in a way, it's just the same thing. And then what happens when I do that? What happens when I bring that relationship to an experience? Now, of course, sometimes when we're sitting and walking, the physical discomfort is a lot more intense than just an itch, and there's something painful in the body or aching, etc. Very normal, very understandable. The first thing to do then is to relax the rest of the body, because if your back is aching or your knee is aching, it's very common for the rest of the body to tense in reaction. So first check the rest of the body. Relax the shoulders, relax the belly, relax anything that feels like it's holding and tensing. That's going to be helpful because that tensing is adding -- it's adding problem.
And you may want to notice: where is not in pain? In other words, maybe I have an ache in my shoulder, and the attention just gets sucked in there, which it often does. The attention gets sucked into where it's a problem, and that's not always helpful at all. So really helpful: "My shoulder hurts. Well, how are my toes? How is the end of my nose? How are my earlobes?" And they're probably okay. That kind of gives a sense of more space around something, more context. Rather than just getting sucked into where the difficulty is and tightening this knot there, actually hanging out a little bit where it's [okay], just realizing that there are places where it's okay. But then, again, we could bring the very same practice that we're doing along this central line to wherever the pain is. What would it be to just bring a light, curious attentiveness, allowing the pain to be unpleasant (which is what pain is -- it's just unpleasant)? "In this moment, I can let you be unpleasant." And there's this allowing and this curiosity there.
So in that, the attention can probe a little bit; it can enter into the pain. I sort of target the pain and go inside the texture of it with the attention. And then what might I find? Just as I might find in the central line, I might find that the pain is actually changing moment to moment. The experience is impermanent. One moment is not the same as the next moment, the next second; it changes. And there's this flickering nature of it. And why is that important? Why is that important to see that? Because what we tend to do with difficult experience is make it into an impenetrable, solid, heavy mass that we then feel squashed by and oppressed by. But if I can stare at it enough that, moment to moment, I see it's changing, then I see actually it's not as solid as it seems to be. And so I'm not so oppressed by this sense of something being so solid -- it's got more space in it, and I'm seeing the gaps in it.
It can be also very helpful when there's physical discomfort to -- we'll talk much more about this later on in the retreat -- to actually open up the awareness quite broadly. In a way, when there's difficulty, like I said, the attention can tend to shrink into it, and that's not helpful. But if you open up quite a space, and be with listening and the sense of the space in the room, it's almost like the pain has a bigger context, and that's really, really helpful.
I can also begin to become aware of what my relationship with the pain is, which is usually I want to get rid of it. Maybe I have a sense of that, and then I can begin to relax that relationship a little bit, kind of let the pain be there. Practising relaxing, relaxing the relationship with something. We'll talk more about this because it's really important, but I want to put it out now. The important thing is not to strain, not to strain the body. So there are chairs, and I said yesterday there are extra chairs. It might be really skilful to alternate the postures if it's too much. It's not an endurance test with pain. [We] want to be taking care of the body.
We want to have this sense that the mindfulness that I'm bringing to whatever's going on is helpful. That's really important. So if I'm just trying to endure a pain, it may not be that the way I'm paying attention to it is very helpful at all -- I'm just getting into a struggle and a strain; may even be hurting my body. The mindfulness then, the attentiveness, is not helpful. So this is a whole other dimension of practice, to begin to ask and sense when our mindfulness is helpful and when there's something not helpful in it. We'll say much more about this but, again, I'm throwing it out now.
At the risk of overloading you with stuff, you know, sometimes we can have a very intense gaze at something. It's like staring something down. I have this pain, or I have a feeling, whatever, an emotion, and I'm staring it down; I'm really just penetrating it with my gaze. So the intensity in the attention is very strong. Sometimes that's helpful, and sometimes it's not helpful. I can laser-beam this thing. When I make this [open hand] gesture, it's partly saying there can be more softness in the attention, less intensity, less hardness. You begin to get a feel, over time -- this might take some days even -- to get a feel when the attention is more intense and when it needs to be more soft. Sometimes, you know, the attention that I'm giving something can be touching it like a feather, just lightly touching something. And that is actually much more helpful than laser-beaming it.
Now, sometimes, of course -- and a number of people said this in the group we had yesterday -- we're trying to do this practice, and it may be new, and one looks inside, and it's, "Well, there's not much happening. I can't feel anything. I'm not feeling anything." Well, actually, for most people most of the time, that's what's happening. We're not in a heavy-duty emotional state most of the time in our life. And that's fine and right and okay. I'm not sitting here saying, "If you're not feeling anything you're in denial. And really you're sitting on a volcano, and, you know, guys, you better get honest with yourselves." [laughter] I'm not saying that at all, at all. I mean, maybe, you know, but ... [laughter] That's not at all the assumption; check it out if it's yours. Most of the time we're not in the grip of some very powerful emotion. So can I realize that? This is actually my life. This is my life, to not be in some intense grip of something all the time. What does the mind do with that? So it could be, it occurred to me, it could be helpful to put aside this whole word 'emotion' or 'feeling.' Just leave it aside, because it could be that's getting in the way for some people. And think rather, well, what is the experience along this centre line? Maybe that's more helpful.
So just don't even think in terms of feelings. When I look, and here's this centre line that we've been talking about, right from the top down to the perineum, and I'm in there, and I look, and I say, "Well, right now I don't feel any particular emotion that I could say it's sadness or it's fear or it's joy or whatever. But there's an experience here." Well, what's the experience? And maybe I go in and I see, "Oh, well, it's a little bit knotted around the throat, or it feels a bit tight," like I was saying, "behind the eyes. Or there's a bit of pressure around the chest, or it feels open here around the solar plexus, maybe. Or the belly feels soft." It's just an experience somewhere along the centre line. Or maybe it feels tingly along a larger area, or warm somewhere.
So maybe the word feeling is too loaded and too blinkered, a little bit. Maybe I go in and there's really a feeling of nothing happening -- it's kind of like a space. I go here in the belly, and really, well, there's just space there. Let's take that as an example: I'm looking for the experience and there's nothing there. There's nothing. But then I decide to just very lightly, with this feather attentiveness, look at the feeling of space that's there in the belly region. And I'm with it. Oh, and that's interesting with it, then it tightens a little bit. And then I'm with that, and then the tightening passes. And then it's the space again. And then I'm with the space a little bit more lightly, and it's as if there's a kind of melting, a melting in the space. And actually that feels a little bit pleasant. It's very subtle, but it's a little bit pleasant. Well, that's interesting. It's shifting, and the very looking is part of what's shifting it. The looking is part of the whole thing.
So I'm just with this. It's melting. It's a little bit pleasant. Maybe I can stay with that pleasantness in the same way. Or another time maybe I go in and I'm looking and nothing particularly strong is standing out. And I look a little bit more closely and I see, "Oh, right down at the perineum, right at the bottom, it's like there's a little bit of tightness there, a little bit of holding." Maybe I'm with it, and in the way that I'm with it, because of this open hand, this approach of allowing the unpleasantness, it can just soften a little bit. There's a softening that comes in. And then I'm with that. It's like, what does it feel like to soften? And then I notice, "Oh, as it softens there's a quality of tenderness that comes into the being." Very subtle. The physical sensation softens, and I wouldn't even call it an emotion; there's a quality of tenderness that just comes through. I'm making this up, okay? [laughter] And then there's tenderness, and then I'm with that tenderness. And then there's like a shadow, just like the briefest shadow passing through of a kind of melancholy. And I'm just putting that word in, and again, it's an emotional word, but maybe I don't even have a label for it -- it's just a feeling of something, like a cloud just so briefly passing across the sun. It's this alive, gentle, light attention. The lightness of the attention to nothing much happening starts to reveal a whole world. Partly what we're doing, and we're doing it with any meditative practice, is we're learning the art of attentiveness. We're learning the art -- and that's a really good word -- the art of mindfulness.
I found this beautiful little passage about the painter Paul Cézanne. And I can't remember where I found it. But the long periods he spent alone, studying a scene and then painting it, shifting his viewpoint a little bit each day, became legendary among young artists. His utter patience in looking, and his willingness to just stay in a scene, looking and looking until it became alive for him. People would hear about this: "There's this crazy old man who sits there all day looking and looking at something that doesn't seem that interesting." And then he writes in a letter to his son, also called Paul, in 1906, and he says, "Here on the edge of the river the motifs are very plentiful, the same subject seen from a different angle gives a subject for study of the highest interest and so varied that I think I could be occupied for months without changing my place, simply bending a little more to the right or left."[1] It's extraordinarily beautiful, and if you know his paintings, he's a real master of looking and taking that looking inside.
So patience. Patience, really key. We're not pressuring, and something begins to sensitize to what's going on. I want to talk about resourcing, but I'm going to leave a lot of it out, and I'll talk about it another time. But I'll pull one thing out for now, and then we'll do an experiment. When I feel calm -- in other words, not much going on -- what happens when I pay attention carefully, lightly, caringly to that feeling of calmness or 'not much going on'? I give that attention. What happens if I could just sustain the attention on the experience of calm or 'not much'? So that's a question for you to explore.
Now, I would say that, very interestingly, if I can just do that with the experience of it, what happens is the feeling of calmness can grow. It's very interesting. The feeling of calmness, the experience of calmness grows by giving it attention. And sometimes it even grows so much that it becomes deep peace or joy, just through the attention. Possible. And in time, if I learn to pay attention to aspects of experience that I would usually overlook, they can really build with the repeated attention to them, so actually joy becomes kind of a groove for the mind. A groove. We're used to being in joy, and it becomes more and more accessible. But it's coming from sustaining attention on something that I would otherwise have overlooked because it just doesn't seem worthy of attention.
[24:18, guided meditation begins]
Okay, let's do a little experiment if you're ready. Come into your meditation posture. Okay, and again, just take a little time to settle in the body, to establish your posture. Connect with this sense of kindness, this offering, this giving to ourselves. This is what we're doing. The practice is not a demand. It's not a pressure. It's not a 'should.' It's not a performance to prove our worth to ourselves or to others. Simply this kindness. Simply this caring for ourselves.
Now, whenever you feel ready, becoming aware of how it feels to sit, and the feeling of sitting. And then perhaps seeing what's happening along this centre line, and seeing if there is anything standing out or prominent, or whatever's the most prominent. And just touching that with the attention, holding that in the open hands, whatever it is, and letting it be. Allowing it to be, pleasant or unpleasant, or neither particularly. So there's just this curiosity, this intimacy with the experience along the central axis, or somewhere along the central axis. No pressure.
Now, if it's possible to expand the awareness, so it's almost as if there's a balloon or a bubble of awareness rather than the central axis, that actually you can feel the awareness expanding, pushing the edges almost of this balloon out so it's even just a little bit bigger than the physical body. There's a space of awareness just around the body. So it's a bigger awareness. And one's stretching this balloon of awareness. You're stretching the awareness over this whole space that we call the body.
So in a way, the body is in this little bubble, and that whole bubble, that whole balloon, is filled with awareness, bright and sensitive awareness. Feeling the texture of that space, the vibration of it. What does it feel like, that whole space? So there's a kind of global awareness of this whole area, this whole bubble. Stretching the skin of the balloon. And then just feeling what it feels like. What does it feel like, that space? What's the quality, the felt, kinaesthetic sense? So you're really kind of opening the body and opening the awareness to that whole space of the body. This balloon will keep shrinking, it will keep shrinking; that's the normal tendency, and you just keep stretching it so that it's a little bit bigger than the physical body. You just keep stretching it out and filling it with awareness, with sensitivity. So the awareness is alive in that. What does it feel like, this space? It'll keep shrinking, and you keep pushing it out and feeling into the energy, the quality, the vibrations in that space.
Again, no demand, no pressure. Just letting the attention be light. Letting the awareness receive whatever's there. Keep this balloon filled, stretched tight with awareness. What's the sense inside? So opening the space, stretching it over the body, letting the awareness fill that space. The whole body is included all at once. The legs, the arms, the head, the whole body is in this balloon. Just feeling into the texture of it. Opening, opening the awareness, stretching it. How does it feel? What do you notice? So we're less interested in the anatomical body, and more in the feeling of this whole space, the energy of the whole space, the vibration of it. Keep pushing it out when it shrinks, because it will keep shrinking, and you keep stretching this balloon.
So in this larger balloon of awareness, this larger bubble of awareness, maybe there are regions that feel differently. Just allowing all of that. Maybe you're even aware of this central axis within the larger bubble, but without focusing in on it so much. Just feeling, noticing whatever's there, however it is. Maybe the whole space feels quite uniform in its texture, in its energy, in its quality.
[43:46, guided meditation ends]
Rob: How was that? Fantastic! I'm just interested. It helps me to know. Strange?
Yogi 1: Quite abstract.
Rob: Abstract? How do you mean, abstract?
Yogi 1: That I don't really know how to describe it, so I'm just sort of ... it feels nice, but I don't really have anything ...
Rob: Any words for it?
Yogi 1: Yeah.
Rob: Jo's saying, if you can't hear at the back, first she said it's abstract, and I asked her what she meant by abstract. And then she said, "It feels nice, but I don't really have any words to describe it."
Yogi 1: I can't get into any detail about it.
Rob: Okay, and can't get into any detail about texture. But that's exactly right when we do this. So it's a different kind of attention. There's a way that the attention can be very detailed or move in a way that it's actually -- I wouldn't use the word 'abstract'; I would say more spread, diffuse, less detailed. And actually that's really helpful. It feels nice, but I can't exactly find the words for it. Yeah? So that's actually great. Anyone else?
Yogi 2: [inaudible]
Rob: Yeah, okay, very good. So for some people this is much harder. We're used to paying attention in a more directed way, and to be more global like that is very unusual. Other people, it's the other way around -- it's easier to do that. So all I can say is the more practice, the more familiar it will become. And for other people, this was probably easier than the other thing we did, you know. So people are different, etc. Can I come back to that in a sec? Anyone else?
Yogi 3: [inaudible]
Rob: Okay. Bubble? Egg? Sphere?
Yogi 3: Sphere-like.
Rob: Okay. What we're really doing is --
Yogi 3: It's that I don't like the idea of being in a sphere.
Rob: Okay. Energy ball? Okay. Really what we're doing is we're paying attention in a more open way, in whatever way helps that. So it's this field -- it's a field that I'm paying attention to. Rather than a point or an area, it's a field that I'm then inhabiting with attention. So whatever works.
Yogi 4: I have the feeling that we're [inaudible] outside the room ... there was risk of it shrinking unless I managed to incorporate it. That's what happened. I managed to get arising feeling incorporated inside the bubble.
Rob: Good.
Yogi 4: This way, this helped the bubble keep its form.
Rob: Very good. Could you hear that at the back? Yeah? Good. All this stuff is very creative. That's really helpful. We're responding in the moment to what's happening. If I don't respond to what's happening in practice, either I hit a brick wall or I fall asleep. One of those two things will happen. But there's a sense of, "Well, what should I do with this? Well, I'll try this. I'll try that," and it starts to be very playful and creative, which is great. As I said in the opening talk, so often we have an idea of, "Am I doing it right? Is this right?" And I want to know that I'm doing it right, but actually there's a sense of, well, I can just try things and kind of see what happens. In this sense, [yogi 4] tried something and there was a discovery there. So really, to give yourself permission to play and to experiment. That's really okay. Please?
Yogi 5: I felt like once I had the bubble around me, then I would go off into thought. And I didn't feel it shrinking or anything, I just thought, okay. It was almost like the body was protected, and so I could go and dissociate for a little bit. I come back and check on it. But I felt like I had more of a tendency to leave off in thoughts and stories instead of staying there.
Rob: And when you were here, in the moments that you were here, what did it feel like?
Yogi 5: It feels very similar to what I feel in mettā practice.
Rob: Ah, good! Okay, very good. Can everyone hear that? Yeah? Good. So "It feels very similar to what I feel in mettā practice," which is, could you put words to it, even throw a few words at it?
Yogi 5: Loving-kindness, softness and protection and safety.
Rob: Okay. Beautiful, yeah, lovely. Softness, protection, safety, kindness, warmth perhaps. You know, things like that.
Yogi 5: Solidity, too.
Rob: Good, great, lovely. Solidity and safety. So that's great, okay? Not always, but often what happens when you open up the field like that and you inhabit it a little bit, it's actually more pleasant than we might imagine, you know? There's actually a resource there. And what you're describing is also very interesting. And then it's like the mind doesn't stay there -- it goes somewhere else. But there's something good for the mind here in this space. So it's a matter of just coming back and feeling out the texture of it more. So it's almost like bathing in that, in that sense of what you describe, the safety, bathing in the kinaesthetic sense of it. Does that make sense? In time, the mind, the attention gets used to doing that and it becomes a real resource. So it's just a habit to go off, and you bring it back and really feel it as much as you can. And that, as I said, it begins to become a kind of a groove, a place where the mind dwells in this space of well-being. Over time, really quite a lot of time, the habit changes. Yeah? Every time you notice it, just bring it back and enjoy that feeling more. Feel it and enjoy it, and something starts consolidating there. Does that make sense? Yeah? Great. Rosanna?
Yogi 6: I just focus first [inaudible] sort of encompassed also. It was much bigger.
Rob: How big?
Yogi 6: Encompassed the outside, and I sort of had to come back. It felt like a great tip on sort of bringing this feeling of protection everywhere one goes.
Rob: Beautiful. Could you hear that at the back? No. So Rosanna was saying at first this egg, she was imagining it as an egg, and it got really big to include even the outside. So we're going to get to that as a different thing in a few days or at some point, making it really big and seeing what that does. But for now, I'd rather not, and keep it here. And then the sense of actually realizing, "Oh, this can be a sense of resource and protection that one's kind of taking with oneself." Yeah? But like Jo said, you know, it may be -- so people are saying, "Oh, it was really helpful." But some people found that was really difficult -- "I didn't feel anything; it was even difficult to make the awareness big like that." People are different. The sort of styles of attention are different. Completely fine.
But right now, I think, we have two kinds of practices: this central line thing and this bigger thing. And just play with them both. And over time you can develop them both, for now. Eventually this bubble thing that I'm talking about becomes a real resource. Sometimes I'm working with someone and there's real trauma there or something really difficult in the past, and the emotions there are very strong, a lot of fear in relationship to them. And accessing this kind of thing, opening the awareness and actually realizing there is this sense of safety, there is this sense of well-being there, it creates a really helpful context for the difficulty. And one can resource oneself and then dip into the difficulty, and resource oneself and dip into the difficulty like that. Very, very helpful. So it enables one to approach what is difficult, because one has, one is developing a store of something helpful.
So like I said, in a way now we have two practices. We have this one that we introduced yesterday -- we're just checking what's happening along the line. It's more directed like that. And this one that's more open so far, this bubble. Sometimes -- and you'll have to see how your own practice evolves -- it happens that the bubble, actually, in the moment, provides a context for what's going on here. So it could be I have a heartache going on, I have a sadness, and actually the bubble is around it, and it really helps because it gives this sense of resource around something difficult. But see how it goes; maybe don't push that right now. Maybe just keep them separate and see. Maybe that evolves or not.
Does that feel okay? At the back? Yeah? Okey-doke. In the walking today, same thing. How does it feel to walk? Maybe you want to check out the centre line. Maybe you want to stop to do that, slow down to do that. Feel very free. Play with the whole thing. Be very playful and experimentative. Or sometimes you may want to stop and check out this bubble, this egg. And how does that feel? Or slow down, and maybe you can even walk in this bubble. So play with it, play with it. It's your practice. And get a feel. You will definitely find some things easier than others, as everyone does, and some times easier than others. And that's all very normal. But just play with these tools a little bit.
Paul Cézanne, Letters, ed. John Rewald (London: Cassirer, 1941), 262. ↩︎
