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.
Okay. I don't really want to offer any new practices today. We've got plenty to play with, plenty. So a little bit talking around work with the emotions, etc., and perhaps tying things together, exploring a few things.
Going back to the opening talk, we said that what we've been doing, this whole set of practices on this retreat, really is just one angle, one way of approaching this whole realm of human emotionality. As I said then, it's one out of many possible approaches. I wouldn't even say it's the best one, you know. I don't think there is a best one. They give different things.
The more one goes into it, the more one realizes actually, what is an emotion, anyway? What is a mind state? It can be very easy to think I can circumscribe something with a definition and know what it is. The more one gets into it -- is it different than the body sensation, and the thoughts, and the perceptions, and the reactivity, and all of that? What's the actual thing there? Can I find it?
When we come to work with this -- so, for instance, we've been working a lot with what you could call 'inner dynamics.' So reactivity, allowing -- you could view them as dynamic forces in the psyche, in the consciousness. We've been working with those, becoming aware of them, and learning to soften, and all that. So working with inner dynamics.
There are whole other ways of working with almost like inner persons, as if there are characters inside of us, archetypal characters. That's completely valid as well. Sometimes when we talk about the inner critic, we're talking about the inner critic as if it's someone. Sometimes it feels like it's a someone inside. Is there really a someone inside me? But I go back to what I said last night: what does the 'really' mean? It's a way of looking that can sometimes be helpful. If I have an inner critic character, I can dialogue with that character. I can understand maybe this character, this person, has a certain perspective, or something they want, or something they're demanding -- maybe for good reason, maybe for mistaken reason, whatever. Or my regarding it as a character can sometimes inflate it and make it stronger.
I could also regard the inner critic as just some thoughts, and they arise and they pass. I see all it is is certain thoughts arising and disappearing at certain times, and the belief of those thoughts, and the reaction. That's all it is. It's just that. Sometimes that's a really helpful view, and sometimes not. There's no reason as practitioners why we can't move between both, both these views. I'm using the inner critic as an example.
So similarly with the story, the stories that often go with our heartaches or our anger or our difficulty. On one end of, if you say complexity/simplicity, a lot of what we've been working with, the practices on this retreat, are simplifying practices. Here's this big, complex emotion, and can I look at it in a way that is simple and that simplifies? So I just find, "What does it feel like in the body? And can I just be with that?" Very simple and simplifying.
But sometimes going into the story is really helpful. And then sometimes going into the story is completely making a problem out of things -- it's rigidifying and solidifying a self-view and an other-view, a "this is exactly what happened" view, and we get locked into a prison with one story. Maybe when we look at our past, it's actually that there isn't one exact story. This is tricky territory. It's not denial, but it's that maybe our stories are more malleable than we might realize. I can look at a story, the same thing, "Such and such and such happened." I can look at it this way, interpret it this way, look at it this way, interpret it this way, look at it this way ... What comes from all that, as we were saying last night? What helps? Rather than "This is my story," it's like I have stories, and I have possible stories, and it's all plasticine. I can shape it.
It's tricky to say this, and one has to be very careful, but there's something in this that I think is really helpful at some point, when one feels ready to understand. Sometimes we might need to cling to a rigid story.
So what would it be, in relationship to a certain story, that liberates something for me? I'm not changing; I'm just seeing it differently, in a way that gives me strength, gives me courage, gives me creativity and momentum into the future, uprightness, openness, propels my life with a sense of purpose. Or is there a way of looking at the story that I just cave in, and I get stuck, and I'm locked into something? Makes all the difference. And it's the same story, in a way.
So what's the way of looking? I keep going back to this way of looking, way of seeing. What's the way of looking, way of seeing, at the story/stories? Just as holding the sensations in the body, we're practising ways of looking at that level.
But to me this is all really interesting, if one doesn't feel a need to lock into this or that view. And why would we need that? Which is also an interesting question: why would we need that? Something happens in meditation, or can happen, when we get quite quiet, in the times when we get quite quiet. Again, this is one perspective. This is just this one perspective that I've mentioned. It's not the only one. But we see this business of what I've been talking about: fabricating emotions. You actually see it going on. It's almost like you catch the consciousness in the act.
So sometimes when there's a lot of quietness and a lot of calmness, there's really not much happening, you can actually see the beginning of an emotion constellate. There's just some body sensations that come, maybe some thoughts, and there's the interpretation of the body sensations. Then, if I'm just aware, I'm just watching, spacious, calm, and I don't block that -- this thing, I can see it coming together, and I don't block it, I don't stop it, I'm just watching it, and I allow it, as we were saying yesterday with the allowing -- oftentimes the allowing, and the just watching and allowing, it doesn't get constructed. One is seeing something about the beginnings of emotions and what goes on there.
As I was saying, rather than what is one view and a very important and helpful view -- that there are kind of pre-packaged, pre-existing emotions in me waiting to come up, one actually notices something different. Rather than "I'm a person who has this, this, and this emotion -- anger, fear, and whatever, in me, waiting to go," rather than that, one sees something different. Again, that is a really helpful, valid perspective, but one also sees from another angle. I see habitual tendencies to fabricate certain emotions. And that's something different. Rather than this anger existing in me because of something that happened, ready to expose itself when I'm not in denial and when I have the courage to feel it, rather, I'll see that somehow in my life, in the way I've been, in reactivity and thought, there's a habitual tendency to fabricate this kind of emotion, anger or whatever it is, or this kind of mind state.
That's not something we should blame. There's no blame in that at all. There's no blame at all if I notice I have a tendency to fabricate irritation, or judgment, or anger, or whatever. It's not about blame at all. But when I see this, it's like I can't fully believe any more. If I see this enough times, I can't fully believe in this idea of karma from the past or feelings from the past that need releasing, that I need to somehow release, they need to come up and out in a catharsis. I can't fully believe that (although it's helpful, very helpful at times).
So there's something I need to understand about what I'm calling fabrication, construction, on many levels, many levels. Partly to do with emptiness, like we were saying. Partly, also, if we take it to a more personal level, what's it giving me? What's it give me? Let's say I have a tendency to fabricate a sense of loneliness, or isolation, or feeling misunderstood, or anger, or sadness, or depression. What's it giving me? And again, that's not a question to judge. Because then you think, "What's it give me? Oh, yeah, my ego's invested in some terrible way. It's giving me something on the sly, backhand or whatever." And automatically it comes in with a certain assumption, a certain judgment of that question. But maybe it's giving me something beautiful and good. Very contrary to maybe typical kind of thinking that we might have about this in the Dharma. Maybe it's giving me some kind of richness. Maybe it's giving me some kind of soulfulness or something, some kind of way that things are opening up through this, and deepening, and planting something deep in the being. Maybe. Who knows? But what it needs is openness, and honesty, and courage, and curiosity.
[10:55] So we talked a little bit [about] how we fabricate emotions. One of the pieces that we've mentioned, but not really that fully, is how the self-view comes in to fabricate certain emotions. So I believe, I have these assumptions and conclusions about who I am, what my personality is: "This is me. I'm like this." Oftentimes, they're so negative, aren't they? They're so self-blaming. But out of that little pot of writhing snakes of self-view comes the emotion. And then the emotion, here I am having that same old emotion again. And it feeds back into the self-view, and the self-view feeds the emotion, the emotion feeds the self-view, and so it goes, and so it goes.
So a big, big part of practice, at lots of different levels, over time, is really questioning the self-views we had. There was a retreatant here a while ago, and we were working a little bit on this. She realized that -- and this is quite common -- one of her self-views was that, in her words, "It's all my fault" -- whatever 'it' is, and it was usually most things. "It's all my fault." There's this self-blame. So really skilfully, she took herself outside onto the lane, and she just walked quite rapidly, repeating out loud to herself, "It's all my fault. It's all my fault. It's all my fault." This is a slightly dangerous practice. [laughter] Not to mention you might get arrested. [laughter] But anyway, she was doing that, and it's quite quiet here, but. She was doing that, and after a while it's just, "This is completely ridiculous." And she started laughing. The very self-view that had been in there, almost that she couldn't see -- it's so close, it's like the hand being up to the face; I can't see. It was so close, and was having such a devastating effect. You repeat it, put it out loud, and you hear yourself say it, and it's just ridiculous. How could it possibly be that it's all my fault? The self wants to make -- it's the star of the show, it's at the centre of the universe, it's the most important person here.
So really good to expose these and really question them. And awareness of emotions, too, unlocks the self-view, as well. Because a person finds themselves, if they're aware, having certain emotions, "That doesn't fit my view." So the big guy is sitting and watching some romantic movie [laughs], and it's like, it doesn't fit, with the tissues and ... but it's opening the self-view. And who am I when all this goes quiet? In meditation, in those times when it just gets really calm and really quiet, and actually there's no real emotion there, it's just a kind of equanimity, a kind of stillness, who am I then? I might have defined myself based on the repetition of such-and-such emotion. All that goes quiet. And then who am I?
So with all this, this multiplicity of perspectives that I was talking about, multiplicity of directions of exploration, as well, and what we've been talking about this week, do I have the courage to feel? Can I summon, can I develop, the capacity and the courage to feel what's difficult, and also what's beautiful, because sometimes people want to constrain that? Do I have the courage to feel? And do I have the courage not to feel? Do I have the courage to allow all the feeling and all the emotions to get really quiet? Because that may threaten the self-view. And it may threaten whatever ideas about emotionality, and how that locks into a story, and how that locks into "this is how things are," maybe not just for me. Courage on both sides. Interesting. And where do I tend to go? Where do I tend to have courage, and where do I tend maybe not to have so much courage?
A little while ago someone was here, and had had quite a traumatic upbringing in different ways, and was still struggling a lot, and was here on and off for a little bit, still struggling a lot with certain holdings in the body, and certain emotions, and certain self-views. I can't remember exactly what happened now, but we were working, and I think what happened was, she was working with some emotion, and again, going back to what we said a couple of days ago, strength and power came up for her. I could see that it was there, and she wasn't noticing it, and she wasn't inhabiting it, and owning it, and letting it fill her. She just went off onto something else. Completely missed that it was there.
We were talking about the difference, then, between releasing an emotion -- she had done lots of work in therapy, and cathartic work, and bodywork, releasing the pain of trauma, releasing anger, releasing grief, etc. But that's a different thing. Releasing emotions held in the body, etc., is different from releasing strength or power, in this case, into accessibility. This is a dimension of the being that, despite all this catharsis, and all this work she'd done over really quite a long time, very dedicated, there's a different kind of releasing, which is releasing our resources into accessibility. It's a different notion of releasing.
Actually, I think I'm going to stop there. You get the bigger point. Yes, an emotion I have -- I feel angry about such-and-such, I feel afraid when I go out there and I see a tiger or whatever it is -- the fear is telling me something sensible, like when I put my hand in the fire and it's hot. It's telling me something that I need to listen to. That's what an emotion does. Very healthy, very necessary, very important. So yes, it's that. Yes, it's true that we have stuff coming up from the past. Such-and-such happened, and this grief needs to come up, this anger, this whatever it is. Yes, it's true that the emotion actually doesn't exist without me making it in the moment and fabricating it. That's also true. Yes, lots of other things are true -- that actually, from a whole other perspective, the emotions we have are kind of, you could say, just the archetypal expressions of the unconscious that need to express themselves, because that's how the psyche constellates itself. That's a whole other view. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. What do these different modes of approach open up for us?
