Transcription
... And really, I feel, when we get into desire and the exploration of desire, it's actually infinite, in the sense it's one of the mysteries of human existence. We will never get to the bottom of it. It will be amenable to being opened up from, I don't know, maybe countless directions as well. We're just touching on three directions today -- three, if you like, spokes of a wheel, into or out of desire, hoping that each one kind of opens it up in different ways. And depending on your background and the kind of teachings that you're familiar with, or the tradition (spiritually or otherwise) that you're familiar with, each one will open up in a different way, or sound very different to what you've heard before, or in conflict or whatever. In a way, I'm meaning to open things up. A lot of that depends on your background, what you've heard and what you're familiar with.
Part one was already quite big, but part two -- and I'm going to be a little unfair here; I'm giving myself three minutes for part two, and I'm going to dangle something a little bit tantalizing in front of you, and then take it away, partly because it's important, very important, and partly in order to balance out what else we're saying today a little bit. I want to spend most of the time dwelling on, reflecting on something else.
We said this morning it's actually impossible, no matter what one's heard, it's actually impossible to be in the world of things, and move in the world of things and objects and events, to be in that world free of desire. It's actually impossible. It's a fiction of a notion. However, as a meditative practice, letting go of desire, and taking that as a kind of meditative avenue, is extremely powerful, and takes one extremely deep. This is what I want to touch on. It's really something to point you in a direction, if you're interested in exploring this. And if you are, it's something I've certainly talked about a lot at different times, and I can point you to recordings on the internet, etc., if you want to explore this avenue a bit more.
I feel it's very implicit, it's present in the classical Buddhist teachings, but it's not given much attention these days. It's certainly implicit there, and actually explicitly in a few places. I'm really talking about a practice, a meditative practice. We're not even touching on it here today; I'm just talking about it.
It would start with learning to become, in meditation, familiar with how it feels to desire something, to want something. Desire can work both ways. In other words, I might want to get something that I don't have, even if it's just a pleasant feeling in meditation. I might have a pleasant feeling, and I might want to hold on to it. Those are both movements of desire. I might have an unpleasant feeling, and I might want to get rid of it. That's also a desire. We call it 'aversion' in the Dharma, but it's a kind of desire. So it could work in any of those ways, but they're all the movements of desire.
Getting familiar with that as an experience: what does it feel like to have that movement in consciousness at any time? Now, sometimes, obviously, it's gross, relatively gross. The mind is screaming: "I want this! I need this! I need to get rid of this!" The thought is involved, etc. It's clear. With meditation, taking it as a theme, the awareness can become more and more subtle, that we're actually noticing and picking up on more and more subtle desires. The first thing is to become familiar, but then to let go of this desire, to find ways of relaxing the clinging, the craving, the aversion, the desire. So getting familiar and letting it go.
What happens if one takes that as an avenue in meditation? Well, after a little while of doing this, one will report that there is less suffering in that time. There's a conspicuous decrease and draining out of the suffering felt in the moment, of any dis-ease felt in the moment. Any kind of discomfort or dis-ease or suffering, it will be lessened to the degree that one lets go of the clinging, of the push and pull with experience. And that's almost like, it's just a universal law, pretty much. That's the first thing.
There's already a very important insight there: most of the suffering we experience in life comes from the relationship that I have with something, not from the thing itself. I could have a backache or whatever it is; if my relationship is one of pushing away, there will be suffering in that. When I let go of the desire to get rid of, the desire to change or whatever, the suffering drains out of the experience. The suffering is in the relationship, and not in the thing so much.
I need to see this, I don't know, 10,000 times. I might understand it. I need to see it 10,000 times, and feel it. This is why it's a meditative practice. Feeling in the body: what does it feel like to desire? What does it feel like to have that sense of dis-ease? What does it feel like, the release from the dis-ease? And feeling it in the body, over and over: "This is what clinging feels like. This is what release from clinging feels like. Suffering, not suffering. Suffering, less suffering," over and over and over, till it's literally imprinted in the cells, that insight, that wisdom. Very important. And that's wonderful. That's absolutely wonderful. The whole relationship with life begins to -- we're seeing things differently.
But I can't sustain, as I said before, can't sustain that non-arising of subtle desire. I can't sustain that in my life. It's impossible. It would be a silly thing to even try. The practice, and meditatively, doesn't stop there. (I'm watching my three minutes here!) It goes further. If I keep doing this, not only do I see less and less suffering -- and, of course, with that, more and more openness, more and more well-being, more and more joy and peace come -- as I'm doing this meditatively, not only will that deepen, but other curious things I will notice. The sense of self, the sense of me being something separate from the rest of existence, will correspondingly -- what should we say? -- fade, dissolve, get less sense of something solid, independent, separate. The very sense of self begins to quieten, to dissolve, to open up. The habitual sense of me being separate from everything else, that begins to bleed out.
Not only that, but the sense of substantiality of things and of experiences, as if we're in a world of real, solid, independent things, that also begins to open up, to dissolve, to fade -- so much so, as one takes this more and more deeply, more and more subtly, with more and more sensitivity, letting go, letting go, letting go, letting go, that actually it begins to be that all experience begins to fade. All perceptions, all experience begins to fade. It just gets more and more -- or less and less and less, if you like. Appearances themselves begin to fade. This is just what happens if you do this. It's a law of consciousness, if you like.
What on earth is going on here? What is happening there? I can have a roomful of people, and I get them to do this, and I come back in a week or so on retreat, and I say, "I bet you're experiencing this, this, this, this, this," and they, "Uh-huh." It's a law of consciousness. What does it mean? What are the implications of that? One could say, "Well, obviously you're doing something weird with your brain biochemistry, and your brain's not working properly. It's not processing." But really? All I'm doing is sitting there, being present, and letting go of desire, letting go of clinging. Something here is of the most, you could say, the deepest significance in the Dharma. The deepest thing that the Buddha was pointing to is being pointed out in that unfolding of that kind of experience. Something is being implied about the nature of reality and the nature of perception. It's something that needs to be understood. That brings the deepest freedom.
[9:35] End of part two. There's something huge there, but I don't want to dwell on it today. What I do want to go into is something, in a way, even more puzzling than that -- more puzzling to me. I said I wanted to teach in a different way today, rather than the usual sort of ways of saying stuff. Can we enter a slight fantasy now, that I'm a research scientist? And I've done some research, and I want to present some findings to you. Is that okay? And why can't you also be research scientists? In other words, every time one sits down to meditate, you're a researcher into consciousness, a researcher into the nature of mind and the nature of experience and all of that. Why would one not look at oneself that way? It's okay? [affirmative noises] So, different role. And again, to me, it suggests a lot of questions that are not so easy to answer, in fact.
Something happened. There was some difficulty going on, actually with behind-the-scenes politics at Gaia House. Of course I'm involved there. And it was a quite difficult situation. It was kind of weighing on me in a quite difficult way. I felt like I stumbled on something in meditation. I can't actually remember the details of what was going on, or exactly how I did it, but I knew that I stumbled on a kind of principle. So I started trying it out with students and people I was working with, and getting them to approach things in a different way, and see what would happen.
As I said, what I want to do now is kind of present case studies, if you like. These are real things that happened. I'm protecting the anonymity of the people, but they're real 'case studies,' if you like, of what happened when people approached something in a different way using desire. And I hope that through sharing these with you, you'll understand what I'm getting at in terms of the principle. I'll try and make it clear in that way.
As I said, I can't remember the details of what exactly I was going through. I'll start with someone else, a student. I was working with her on the telephone, a telephone interview. She had had an experience. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it involved going into a bank. And there was some kind of problem in the interaction, and something happened, and there was a big hassle, something about her money. Very frustrating. And she found herself really upset by this, the way she was treated, and what happened, and how what she needed from the bank didn't happen and all that. And she said, "No one said 'sorry.'" She was quite upset still about this.
Now, from a traditional -- and some of you will know -- from a traditional Dharma practice, we could say, "Okay, here's this thing happening. How can we approach this in a way that relieves some of the suffering?" Now, some of you will know there's loving-kindness practice, where you bring the intention of kindness to yourself or to others. So one could have approached that situation like that: you're feeling hurt, you're feeling angry; let's bring some kindness in to care for yourself, to care for the bank manager and whoever it was. That would be one approach.
Another approach would be -- and again, some of you will be familiar with this -- is: can you see it, we say, as 'not-self'? This self is an illusion, we say in Buddhism and other spiritual teachings. And she was an experienced practitioner, able to work with that kind of practice. So rather than the self or the ego getting pumped up in this situation, can you actually drop that ego, see the self as illusion, and it opens up the whole situation? We could have done that. We didn't do either the mettā or that. Another thing we could have done is: can you explore these feelings that are coming up? And we talked a little bit about this. There was a sense of helplessness, that she was helpless to do anything in this situation. There was a sense of grief at not being taken seriously by the officials in the bank. There was a sense of not being respected. One very viable and important avenue would be to explore those feelings, hold those feelings, care for them, meet them, embrace them, etc. And then, out of that, is it possible to be with? In this case, there was what felt like a hurt little girl inside. She was in her sixties actually, but inside is a hurt little girl, and that little girl feels helpless. Can you relate to her, yourself, with compassion, with care, with warmth, with love? That would have been beautiful and viable. All those three would have been.
We did something else. I said, "Okay, this anger and this frustration and all of that, what are you wanting?" Or we could say, "What is this desire wanting?" Now, when I put that question to her -- and of course this will happen to everyone -- you have that question, and immediately the head comes up with answers: "Well, I want this or that. I want this or that to happen, X or Y to happen." Or we feel the lack. Someone just suggests something about wanting, and it goes immediately into a sense of lack. Ramiro brought this up this morning a little bit. We feel the lack in the desire: "I want this, but I don't have it, and I feel the not-having of what I want." In a way, the desire is stuck on this or that that I want, and I end up feeling the pain of the sense of lack.
So that was initially what happened. There were these head answers. I said, "What happens if you come and feel the energy of that desire of what you're wanting? You feel that in the body, and don't assume -- really see if you can kind of sweep aside the assumptions that what you might want is bad or immature or wrong, etc., and really feel the energy of the desire in the body." And she did that. And then what happened, actually, is a sense of empowerment came, which was very interesting. A sense of empowerment. And she felt like there was the ability then to say something and to stand up. She actually had to have more interactions with the bank because of this. It was the ability to stand up and say something to the bank manager, etc., and the bank clerk. In her words, there was "the possibility of a creative response" came with that, and with that, included, was a feeling of strength. She went from a feeling of helplessness to a feeling of strength, not just helplessness and lack.
So, okay, very good. And I said, "What happens? That's great. Can you go back to the feeling then, and really feel this feeling again, and really open to it? And allow, really allow and open to that movement of energy in the body, without landing on an image of an event or an action that you want to happen that comes from the mind." So really allowing the energy, in the body, of desire here, and really open to it and allow it. Allow it to fill, to fill the experience, to fill the sense of the body, and move, and really give it space. This was all on the phone. She actually tried that, and then what happened when she did that was a whole sense of energy came into the whole system. She was extremely energized. She said, "It's like dancing. I feel like dancing. There's this dancing energy in my body." And a whole other level of strength came in. A whole other level, a sense of openness came. And love came. And love was one of the answers that she'd given originally to the question, "What am I wanting here?" "I want love." There was a sense of an absence of love. At that point, there was no sense of lack, and a not overwhelming but a very intense sense of abundance. I think that's pretty interesting.
[18:32] Another example. I was talking with someone else, and this was in a face-to-face interview. She was starting a new romance, very lovely. She'd met a man, but he lived in California or somewhere. But he was over here for a while, and they'd spent an extended period of time [together]. Then he went back, and she was going to go and visit him. She said, "I want to talk about craving, because I'm craving and I feel that the craving is painful. I feel it's a contraction. It feels like a contraction." And also noticing, with the craving that went with this wanting to be with him, there was fear of loss as well. So the whole territory felt contracted. Wanting something in the future, somewhere else, and there was the fear of loss -- it's a new relationship; it might not work out. [So] the fear that there would be loss and it not working out.
Again, one can approach it in more traditional ways. More from a traditional Buddhist perspective, it would be like, "Well, what's craving? Let's look at this craving, and why it brings suffering, and how it works." I would say craving, from this perspective, involves what I would call 'hype,' okay? In the sense that to really fall for something, it needs the mind to hype it up in ways. And the mind constructs, if you like, an artificial distinction between things and times, so they seem very different. The sense of difference between here and now, and then and there, gets artificially differentiated. It seems so different. In her words, "The adventure begins then, when I get to California. That's when it's going to be alive. Now," she said, "it just feels like waiting. It's like limbo. I'm in limbo," even though there was a lot of lovely exchange now, and texting, and speaking on the phone.
But then the question, from this more traditional perspective, and a really valid avenue, really important to be able to work this way as well, is: is it really that different? Here/now, and then/there -- is it really that different? Or is it the mind making it different? So we say in Buddhism, I have here, right now, wherever I am, I have experience of sight, sound, taste, smell, touch, and thoughts, and mental experiences, and body, and feelings, and all that. I have all that, what we call the five aggregates and the six sense doors. I have that here, and I will have that there. There will be sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touch, and feelings, etc., all there and all here. And they're not that different. There will be colours and forms, and feelings, and nice emotions and not-so-nice emotions, and pleasant sights and not-so-pleasant sights. But the mind is coming in and hyping it to create this differentiation.
That's a really important way of working -- it's like cutting the hype, seeing that there's hype involved. Less hype, we see through the hype, less craving. [inaudible, yogi asking for clarification] 'Hype' is like advertising. It's like spin, market, pumping something up. You make something look, in an unreal way, more attractive than it is. You're creating, like "I really need this, because it's very different than what I have now." Yeah? Less hype, if I see through the hype, less craving. Less craving, less hype. It works both ways.
So that's valid. But again, we didn't work that way. We mentioned it, if I remember. It was a little while ago. But in this other mode, I said, "What are you wanting? There's this craving. What are you wanting?" At first she said, "I want him!" [laughter] "It's obvious. Dumb question. I want him!" And it's hard at first to see any deeper than that: "It's just obvious. It's obvious what I want. I want him." We explored it a little bit: "What are you appreciating? What are you loving there?" She said, "I love that I can say anything and I'm listened to." Those were her words of what she loved in this beginning exploration. "I love that I can say anything and I'm listened to."
Again, taking that a little deeper, "What are you wanting here?", she kind of outlined some things. "What I really want is the opening of the heart. That's what I'm really -- it's not so much him; I want the opening of the heart. I want the expression. I want that expression. I want the connection and the being received. And I want to love." So these, if you like, are more general, deeper wantings than just this or that person, this or that object. Deeper qualities. We could say the desire then is not landing on something so limited as an object. "Can you feel that? Can you really feel into that and allow that?" And then she began to do that, and again, she said it felt like a current inside her, in her words, "deeper and more powerful" than she was used to. It was affecting her very sense of self as she opened to it. She said, "This current feels deeper and more powerful than who I usually take myself to be, or who I usually feel myself to be." So it's usually a whole level of desire that one wouldn't let oneself go to, and in experiencing it and opening to it, it opens up the whole sense of self.
I was working with her, and I said, "Can you let it fill the body? Can you allow it and really feel it, really give it space?", etc., as I said before. And then she said, doing this, and she was able, "Actually, it feels like the boundaries of my self are dissolving. It feels like the very sense -- like I don't have any edges, and there's a whole expansion of the sense of self, a whole expansion of the sense of being." Now, at that point, she got a little bit afraid: "I'm losing my sense of boundary. Something is really opening up." I mean, it's a deep and beautiful experience, but it was a little bit fearful for her. I [asked], "What are you afraid of there?" And she said, "I'm afraid of losing myself. I'm afraid of disappearing." Actually, what happened in this instance was we ran out of time in the ... [laughter] But, you know, one could then bring compassion to that, compassion to the resistant self, compassion to the self that's a little bit afraid of opening beyond its usual boundaries. And very normal to have resistance and fear with that. Playing with one's edges there.
But eventually, and whether this is slow or fast, one would be able to allow that expansion. It's something extremely lovely for a human being: the sense of self opens out from just this little box enclosed here that ends there and is different from everything else. So precious for a human being for that to dissolve and open out and expand. And then there's a whole new sense of self and life force that goes with that, strength, openness, and actually independence. So not being so dependent on this object of desire, that object of desire, because I have something here. Something opens out here. And in a way, fulfilled -- it doesn't close us off and make us kind of aloof, but something is being fulfilled to a great extent by (what could we say?) that life force opening, by the deep desire flowing.
[26:44] So I had a question, or I have a question: is it possible that this sense of craving that we know, we all know, a sense of craving that feels contracted and painful, with the swing, as she was talking about -- it swings to this fear of loss, and if it's a relationship, it swings to this fear of rejection: "Just starting a new relationship. Maybe he won't like me. Maybe it won't work out. Maybe this or that" -- that kind of craving, the kind of craving that repeatedly moves away from the present moment and gets lost in the future and in daydreaming, that kind of painful craving, is it possible, that kind of contracted craving, that that kind of contracted craving might actually be a result, even, of not connecting to, not realizing, and not allowing deeper desire to unfold, to be felt and to flow? Is that possible? Is it possible, also, that there's a habit of feeling desire in a certain way that feels pained and contracted?
Another example. I'm just walking us through examples to paint, outline what I'm trying to communicate. A guy I was working with in an interview, he was asking a lot of questions about his direction in life, and again, a feeling he really wanted to give in service, and service to the Dharma, and all kinds of things. But he also was hungry for romance, and he wanted a family. He was alone, and he didn't have children. He wanted that. He feels that as a deep current. So he feels pulled, not sure what to trust in himself, all this. And again, starting with (and he's a long-term Buddhist practitioner), "What if you just literally sweep off the table the assumption that desire is wrapped up with the self's wants, and therefore is something untrustworthy (what we call in the Dharma a kilesa, a kind of impurity)? You just wipe that off, and you look at it fresh. Wipe the assumptions off the table. Maybe, even, what would happen if, as an experiment, you actually put in a different assumption, just as an experiment, and assume instead that my movement of desire (or aversion, whatever it is) is actually like a plant's movement towards the sun?" What's that called? Phototropic. There's something intelligent, if you like, in the very movement of desire, rather than it being something that is not to be trusted. What if you assume that? So one actually trusts this dynamic intelligence in that movement, of the life force or whatever.
He did that, and we were working with it, and he said, "What I want is love." He meant giving love and receiving love. And there was this real sense of opening to that, and again, in the body -- body very much involved. But as he did that and opened to it, again, no sense of lack. No sense of lack in that desire, in that movement. It's a current of the being or the life force, whatever you want to call it. And he, again, felt it very physically. In the front of the body, something completely opening up with it, and actually, eventually it just opened up to the whole body. It opened up so much that it felt like whatever this was, this sense of energy, was actually bigger than the body, and the body was inside it, and the thoughts were inside it, the whole life was inside it. And again, like we said earlier this morning, what then if the practical choices came out of that? It's a very different relationship with the whole thing.
Someone else, again, had felt like they were feeling or noticing at times beautiful qualities of the heart arise, like curiosity, wonder, or excitement. And they were doing a lot of work. They were a long-term Buddhist practitioner, and they were also working in parallel with a kind of shamanic tradition. They were working with that. And here were these lovely qualities. They noticed that whenever they came up, they squashed them. They squashed the excitement. Excitement somehow wasn't allowed in the being. Wonder and curiosity, they kind of got squashed a little bit. And the explanation was because of past hurts and trauma, difficulties in the childhood, that the energy was repressed and held back, constrained through fear, etc.
He said, "I feel that when I was a child I was told, 'You're too much. Your energy is too much. Lid it. Put it in a bottle.'" And he internalized that, and that's what he kept doing to himself, with all the repression that that involved. In this other shamanic tradition, like there would be many psychotherapeutic ways and other teachings, might say, "You need to go back and identify the causes of the patterns in your history, and so to speak" -- this is the language they use -- "dig out the root. And when you've dug out the root of that repression, then the beautiful qualities can manifest." And that's completely true and completely valid. I mean, it's not completely true, but it's true and valid. And there's another approach, too, which we're going to talk about. It's also possible to feel into, in this case, the frustration at repression, feel into that energy and the desire involved in that. And again, what's it wanting? What's being wanted here? And again, similar thing, feeling it in the body, and the qualities then manifest with that of what one's wanting, and the sense of self opens and changes. And he said that the sense of self opened in a way that he began to feel power in him. But not power over; just power. He felt powerful. And he said, "The self feels, I feel different. I feel a freedom in this now, in this sense of self, compared to the usual, distorted, kind of repressed, inhibited, habitual sense of self."
There's something that may be, in the desire, in the frustration, in the aversion itself, may well be the seed or the seeds of what we're looking for, which, to me, is very curious. It's extremely curious.
Yogi: Paradoxical.
Rob: Exactly. Something very curious is going on here. In the desire, in the frustration and the aversion itself, is the very seed of what we're looking for. If I approach it in the right way, that which I am looking for can actually manifest, curiously, those qualities here and now, and with that, open up the sense of self.
I'm thinking of two other examples. This is a very experienced practitioner, a young guy. He's very, very bright as well. Very bright, very dedicated practitioner. And he noticed in his -- I don't know if he was meditating or something -- he noticed images and sort of little, brief fantasies and desires, even, of appearing certain ways to other people. He said, "I noticed this was going on, that I want to appear bright and insightful, and creative, and virile, and kind of dynamic, and noble, and kind of fearless in my exploration," all that. At first, of course, he was suspicious of this: "This looks like ego. I want to appear fantastic to other people. This can't be trustworthy." And at first, indeed, the 'me,' the self, was tied up with it. It was wanting to appear a certain way.
But being with it, he let himself explore it, and actually he realized it wasn't so much about the self; it was almost as if realizing the qualities themselves, of brightness and everything else that he was talking about, those qualities are beautiful qualities, and it's almost like wanting them to appear. It wasn't so much about the self. It was almost like wanting them to manifest in the universe: "I want their beauty to be seen, and even to be appreciated. It's not about me. There's a sense of the universe, you could say, unfolding these qualities through time. It's not about me." And as he let himself experience that, there was a whole sense of vastness. Again, the sense of self opened up. It's very different. Very different than 'me' and an ego that wants something. And he felt a much bigger, much deeper sense of 'me.' In a way, there was really not so much self there. It was as if these qualities belonged to the universe, and not to the self. Actually, one can go beyond that, too, and not even identify a universe, go beyond in the emptiness of that.
So we often assume -- and this relates to something; what's your name? Lee. What Lee said, touched on this morning: we assume that desires are from the self. The self and the desire are intimately related. We assume that, or that desires will feed the sense of self, the sense of ego. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it's not so simple as all that.
If I share something from my experience, in the last few years I've been studying a lot more than I ever have in my life, and all kinds of things. One of the things I was studying, or I have been, is modern physics, just as much as I can understand it, because of its relation to the Buddhist teachings of emptiness. There's a lot of crossover there. So I was studying as much as I can understand, and really hungry to understand. After a while, you know, I would read this book, and I would go on to the next book, and I felt a kind of impatience with the process. [laughter] And that impatience was becoming familiar to me. There was a kind of pressure on understanding. And it's almost like, you read one book, and you finish it, and basically it just leads to another book. [laughter] That leaves me with more questions. I chase this, and that leads to another one. It's a sense [that] I'm unable to read them fast enough, and I want to arrive at the end. I want to arrive at, "I understand it now. I can just put it down and be finished with it. No more books to read. No more to study."
I felt into that, and it's like, again, what's it wanting? What's being wanted here? Actually, there was a kind of openness to the joy in ongoing inquiry. So it wasn't so much about reaching an end point. There's a sense of maybe it's beautiful to just keep inquiring, keep discovering, keep questioning. There was something in that that was actually very, very lovely. It opened up a lot of beautiful joy, and again, the sense of self opening up different experiences and perceptions and levels there.
[38:51] Two more brief examples. Someone I was working with -- this was on the phone again -- had an ongoing situation with her sister who was struggling a lot in all kinds of difficult life situations, and not really dealing with those situations and those challenges very well at all, really not doing very well with them. My student there was really, really concerned and worried, and really struggling over her, in her love for her sister. There was a lot of pain in it for her, really quite a lot of pain and torment, seeing her sister go through this, and feeling like she wasn't really open to suggestions or being helped. She felt powerless in relation to it.
And again, it's like, can you feel what you want for her? Can you feel what you're wanting for her? Can you really let yourself feel into that? And very similar, like we were talking about, what we did before. And what happened was it reconnected. Tenderness came into the experience of the love. Trust came. Love came, and peace came. Rather than worry -- what's the difference between compassion and worry? Compassion doesn't have worry in it; it's more steady. It moved the whole loving to that, rather than being fraught and painful. She said she felt really connected to her strength, and was able to access her strength, her self, her sanity, the spaciousness -- through the desire, through going deep into opening to the desire.
Someone else -- last one, and this is a curious one -- was reporting, "I feel this ongoing resistance to life. I feel like I'm just resistant to life." I said, "What do you mean?" "Well, part of it is I feel resistant to other people's suffering. I just feel like I want to block it all out." So you can go in via the resistance: what is that resistance wanting? Now, we might think it's actually what she said: "I want to keep all that out." You might think it wants to be unhassled by it all. I want to be not troubled, not impinged upon by all the suffering in the world and around me, not have anything penetrate that way. But actually, going into it, it was completely the opposite. It was not that. Rather, it was to open. The desire, accessed through the resistance, asking "what does this resistance want?", was actually "I want to open, to engage, to meet life." And in feeling that, the desire that was wrapped up in it or seeded in the resistance, actually openness came. Really increased the sense of openness, and the sense of resistance just drained out and bled out.
There's actually a ton more examples. I'm just sharing some of them. I went through a period where I was just trying it a lot in all kinds of different situations with people, so much so that in about 98 per cent of the cases, this is what was happening, and I felt like I didn't even need further proof. Something was here, and it was happening, and it's like, "Okay, it's pretty clear now." To me, this is very, very interesting. It's puzzling, and something is happening here that's not immediately obvious what's going on.
Let's put that aside, and come back again, just some reflections: what is the relationship with desire? What is my relationship with desires? Complex. Why do I have the relationship that I have with desires? Where does that come from? Just something I've heard? Some teaching? My past? If I go back to that, what I described in the morning, and there was that student who told to the other teacher of her longing for God, and the teacher said, "Oh, that's just craving," well, it may be that teacher was actually -- and I know her; she was adopted as a young child, and a very difficult childhood with that. And I wonder whether it just wasn't okay, it's not okay for her to desire; it's not okay to want deeply. This might apply to me. This might apply to you.
Is it okay to desire deeply, to want deeply? And if you go back to the child, the mother, the breast, love, attention, whatever it is, father, and out of that -- and I'm not saying it all comes from early childhood and family; I'm not saying that, but could be some -- fear of desiring, fear of inhabiting and allowing desire in life, because one is afraid of disappointment, afraid of humiliation, afraid of punishment. And then how easily, wherever that comes from, whether it's cultural or whatever it is -- how easily then one co-opts spiritual teachings on "no desire, let go of desire." And I know, and I know others know, later in life, if that is the case, one can actually re-experience the frustration, the deep frustration, the deep pain, primal desire, etc., and see that it's okay, really see that it's okay. And there can be a healing there. It may be that one needs to grieve, and grieve what one didn't get, and something can open and move on.
This, what I've described in part three, in this way of working with difficulties when they come up, it may be that one needs to actually grieve the sense of lack in the present, of what is lacking in the present. It may be that that is a kind of precursor; I don't know. But be careful -- this is a real caution -- because, as I mentioned, it's so easy with desire that we get stuck in the sense of lack in relationship to desire. That's where the mind goes, and that's where it gets stuck, in the sense of not having. Desire and lack may go together, may be intertwined. And if it gets stuck there, then our experience of desire will actually be predominantly an experience of lack, which is painful. And does it need to be that?
If it's been the habit, if I've been accustomed to noticing and feeling lack whenever I have a desire, if that's where the mind always goes, that's where the attention always goes, then discerning and tuning into and allowing desire may feel very unnatural. It may feel like this is a strangely artificial move. It may feel like I'm making something happen here. It may feel like the lack seems like what is actually present, what is natural, what is unforced. It may seem that way, but what in there is just the illusion of habit, a habit of attention, a habit of constructing something rather than another thing? And then it feels for all the world like it's natural and untampered with, but it's just the habit of creating that.
Just in however many times I've tried this with people, there have been a couple of instances where it didn't work. One instance was where someone, in the interview, was like this [slouching] as we were talking and engaging. I would actually say body posture is quite important with this. If I'm like this, it might be that the usual -- what should we say? -- psychophysical circuits of energy and mind, etc., that's where the energy is flowing, just in the usual circuits. And those usual circuits may well be, if one is like most people, may well be the circuits of lack, of despair, etc. Desire, if we're talking about it the way we're talking about it today, actually has a lot of energy in it. And I might need to sit upright, have the body be open, in order that it actually opens to that flow. If I'm like this, just the habituation of the body kind of conditioning the mind and the consciousness, it will condition it in the habit of going in [inaudible], in the sense of lack and the sense of futility, etc., weakness. So I need an open, upright posture to allow that fullness.
I've been wondering: what does this need? And I don't know how it sounds. Maybe it sounds like, "Whoa, this is all really advanced. I don't know. I could never do that." I don't know. None of those examples that I shared with you, none of them came from people on retreat. None of them. Not one. It wasn't saying, "Well, I'd have to be really mindful and really sensitive and really quiet to be able to do that." Not one of them came from a person on retreat. They were all people living very busy lives, in the middle of their busy lives.
Usually, though, as I said, lack and desire are intertwined, and we get frightened or pained by the sense of lack mixed in. But maybe it's possible to differentiate the lack from the desire, and actually unfold it out. Maybe that needs more subtlety of attention; I don't know. I'm questioning: is that what it needs, that the attention is subtle enough to separate them? Maybe both the sense of lack and the sense of desire need exploration, not just one or the other. And as I said, maybe I need to feel the lack first and then open to the desire. But I wouldn't even assume that. Maybe I don't need to feel the sense of lack first. Just so careful with the assumptions we have around everything.
I ask myself out loud: what is needed? Because no one who I've shared this with has then come back to me at a future occasion and said, "You know that thing we did on the phone? Well, I've been trying it on my own, and this works." And that's partly to do -- I don't know why that is; it's complicated. But I wonder what's needed. Now, they had someone helping them, guiding the awareness, helping them work through it. But it may be, as we were talking about, separating out the lack, feeling the grieving, all that. It may be that it needs a kind of facility with one's emotional life, a capacity of navigating the different emotional states. It may be that it needs that. It may be that it needs the precious practice of being able to let go of desire, and trust that, and feel it's okay, or at least to feel desire and know it, familiar with it -- feel safe having it, feel safe letting it go. Maybe it needs that. I know for myself, because I did it with myself: I know that it wouldn't always need someone else there, helping you through it, guiding you through it. No way. Maybe it's complex. Maybe it's difficult. Maybe it's advanced. But I don't think so.
So to me, it opens up a lot of questions. Especially if you're familiar with a classical Buddhist background, you might be like, "Hmm, I don't know how this fits in now. It's not obvious how that fits in. It's very hard. I could just about make it work, but I'd have to go quite deep and da-da-da." It depends, as I said, on your background, what impact this is having on you. We might have to go to the tantric teachings. And I wouldn't want to just equate it, either, but there's a goddess, a deity in the Guhyasamāja Tantra, a Buddhist tantra. Rāgaratī, that's her mantra, actually -- "she who delights in lust." Her name is Paṇḍāravāsinī. She's a version of Tārā, if you know anything about Buddhist tantra. Her realm is the realm of warmth and fire. There's something there. It's pointing to something.
In the Jewish Kabbalah, the mystical teachings of Judaism, there's a phrase:
We [need to dare] to extract the sparks of divinity [the sparks of God] even, and especially, from those states of mind and heart that seem completely removed from God.[1]
Here's this anger, this aversion, this frustration, this bloody-mindedness, this lust. It seems like it has nothing to do with anything spiritual. It's saying maybe right in the middle of that, something can be redeemed of the divinity, if we use that language there.
Friedrich Nietzsche said, interesting:
Ultimately one loves ones desires and not that which is desired.[2]
So where's the treasure? Where is the treasure: in the object of the desire, or in the opening that comes from the movement of the desire (if I can do that really deeply)? It's a habit of humanity, of ignorance, if you like, to keep expecting the object to give the fulfilment, even after we've experienced something different, like what I've described in this part three, or part two, even. Even after that, I keep wanting the object to give me something. That's a habit. And as I said, no one's yet reported to me, "I did this again on my own. I followed it up."
Just to wrap up: part two and part three outlined briefly methods and approaches that you could take. To me, number two takes you incredibly deep. Number three is, to me, very interesting, what's going on here. At the very least, methods and approaches. So I hope it doesn't sound abstract, what I'm talking about today. This is actually our life, and ways we can work with it. It's not abstract. I'm talking about practices and ways of engaging. So there's that, wanting to give you methods and approaches that are not abstract.
But as well as that, I think the intention really today is maybe to plant seeds, to plant some seeds of questioning that might open something up in areas that may be not so open, in terms of our assumptions and our inquiries. So it might be that today feels like, "I don't know. Didn't really get much from today. It didn't da-da-da-da-da." But if all it's done is plant some seeds, and they begin to sprout at a future time, that's good. I actually think what's being touched on today is huge, and it may not be that one realizes the relevance or the significance of it today. In a way, that's fine. There's an enormous amount here, just what I've gone through today. There's a lot here. I would say what I said, I think, right at the beginning: if something I said so far today, if you haven't been surprised or felt like your understanding or your views are stretched, if there's nothing new for you here, something's gone wrong. [laughter] It's probably my fault, but something's gone wrong. There's going to be something in there that's not going to fit a view that you had, something surprising. And it might be uncomfortable, and it might be disconcerting. It might be puzzling. It might be exciting. I hope that it's exciting.
Inquiry is interesting, when we inquire, because one also has to be honest that sometimes we're looking for certain answers. I think I'm inquiring into life and into myself, or into this or that, but actually I want the answer to be this or that. It's good just to be aware of that. What do I want to see? What do I want the conclusion to be?
Okay. So I'm going to stop there.
Sanford L. Drob, "The Depth of the Soul: James Hillman's Vision of Psychology," Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 39/3 (1999), 56--72. Also available on Drob's website, http://www.newkabbalah.com/hil2.html, accessed 10 Jan. 2020. ↩︎
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, tr. R. J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin, 2003). ↩︎
