The answer is in the asking

I am apparently as dense as a brick, since every once in a while I go right back around to the same questions and get the same answers, and then I'm like "oh, got it, duh, of course." And then a few months later...

This time around it started with getting into some really odd deep states last week in meditation. Just blackness, restful, refreshing. Sometimes utter loss of consciousness, I presume, as there seemed to be periods I can't remember or wasn't aware of. I have been praying the rosary as my main meditation lately, and presumably I continue despite the states, as I'd find myself somewhere further along the string of beads when I rose gently back into awareness.

In any case, I found it a bit surprising, and interesting, but as a friend said, "these states arise when needed".

Then a few days later, I got hit with a really intense agony during my sit. Pushed down into a heap, in total pain, face twisted up. No content whatsoever (no memories, visions, emotions, etc.) just a physical manifestation. It lasted a long time and left me a bit rattled. I hadn't had something like that happen in a year, maybe.

It got a bit hard to sit then, anticipating how much it was going to hurt, although the subsequent sits were much milder. But then the questions come - why? what's this about? what's happening? I want an explanation, I want to understand...

And then the zen whack comes - why the questions? Grasping, wanting something to hold on to, looking for answers. The real answer: allow it to be as it is, do not grasp at answers. Allow that there are no answers. Not knowing is not a problem.

Whack! Then I get to laugh at myself.

Thank you for sharing this, Ona. I, too, am often quite dense with regard to this matter. Something about your telling of this phemonenon resonates strongly with my experience.

My practice periods also undergo a similar cycle. Periods of expanded peace are followed by unpleasant physical and emotional experiences. It's as though awareness acts as a solvent, relaxing the usually rigid structures that keep all kinds of painful experiences out of reach. Actually, the rigidity also keeps us from the peace and freedom we long for. When we open up, we get what we get (to use an annoying tautology).

One painful thing that comes up often for me in practice a deep sense of being unworthy, unloveable, or rejected (all related). This feels BAD - about as bad as anything can feel. But there's something about opening to this feeling that transforms it. It starts out really bad, and then it isn't so bad anymore. And that's when some of the most universal insights can really come alive in experience. Difficulties are workable when we face them. Grasping, aversion, and delusion are counterproductive. Experience itself is not inherently traumatic. And, it's not a matter of seeking some final resolution, but rather, one of openning up to a process that makes it possible to truly live this human life.

Experience heals itself when we let it.

Thank you for sharing something so difficult.

It helps me to think of these processes as ongoing purification. The analogy might not work for others. The specific stuff each of us carries that needs processing and releasing is different. It seems to me it works itself out the way it needs to, when it needs to, and the more we can accept that process and allow it to do its work freely, without struggling against it or trying to make it different, the more effectively it can proceed.

I remind myself, I cannot know what the next moment will bring, and that includes never anticipating what the next sit will be like. Sometimes I need to remind myself a bit.

"Trust the process," my teacher used to say, and it's still good advice for me.

Does that resonate? Do you think of it another way?

Yes, that resonates.

I've thought of it as "purification" as well. Though, sometimes I wonder just what is being purified. Since purification involves removing unwanted stuff, what stuff is purified out of experience through this process?

This question is what makes talk of purification problematic at times. I tend not to think the purification process is some kind of cathartic release, whereby we get rid of old emotional material so it never comes back. That idea can turn people in to purification junkies, diving into their experience any chance they get in order to provoke the feelings they wish to purge; as though once they do this enough times, the experiences will no longer arise.

I see it differently. If there is any purification at all, it's a weakening and eventual dissipation of reactive responses to experience. In other words, I think grasping, aversion, and delusion are the targets of purification. Even this is problematic. We can resist or deny these responses when they arise, creating a nasty positive feedback loop.

Still, increasing out willingness to experience what arises, when it arises, is what starts to turn things around. I don't think all unpleasant experiences are caused by the three poisons (as they are called), but some might be. And, they certainly add fuel to the fire when they aren't a direct cause.

In this regard, the path and the fruit are one in the same. There are big shifts along the way, but they are (usually) of the same quality as the practice itself... at least that's how I see it... for now.

...
I see it differently. If there is any purification at all, it's a weakening and eventual dissipation of reactive responses to experience. In other words, I think grasping, aversion, and delusion are the targets of purification....



-awouldbehipster

I think so, too, for now. Perhaps because certain specific memories, habits, etc are particularly heavily fraught with grasping or aversion or delusion, they stand out more when they come up, and may come up over and over.

But I think (and this goes back to another recent thread) that if you take a memory, for example, which in most of your life had a ton of grasping, aversion and delusion around it (to keep it simple and on the lighter side, let's say the day you threw up on stage at school, and everyone laughed, which became one of those events which represented everything you hated about school, about yourself, was full of shame, was part of your identity as a failure nobody likes, etc.). The less grasping, aversion and delusion there is around that memory... well, it's a completely different animal then. If/when grasping, aversion and delusion around that event and all its associated entanglements falls away, then there is simply a memory of a day at school when you threw up and the memory that for years you held that as a symbol of all that was wrong in the world and with you and so on. But there's no shame, no sorrow, no fear, no self-loathing, no humiliation, no problem at all. Just a memory of an event. It might even be pretty damn funny, once it's not wrapped up in all that other stuff, no?

Thoughts?

"The less grasping, aversion and delusion there is around that memory... well, it's a completely different animal then. If/when grasping, aversion and delusion around that event and all its associated entanglements falls away, then there is simply a memory of a day at school when you threw up and the memory that for years you held that as a symbol of all that was wrong in the world and with you and so on. But there's no shame, no sorrow, no fear, no self-loathing, no humiliation, no problem at all. Just a memory of an event. It might even be pretty damn funny, once it's not wrapped up in all that other stuff, no?" -Ona

Yeah, I think the functions of a memory can be transformed through practice. Something that once caused so much misery can be transformed into something else entirely. I wrote an article for Truth a Paradox on this topic:

Why it's OK that Mara Returns: Transforming the Functions of Self-referencing-related Stimuli Through Meditation

(A long title, I know.)

For me, the transformative power of meditation has a lot to do with its ability to radically alter our experiential context. Before practice, we wear our thoughts and feelings like glasses. We see our world through them. Practice helps us to take the glasses off and see them for what they are, when makes everything else seem different, too. Everything gets more workable. Needless suffering can finally stop. It's really quite remarkable, isn't it?

...Memory is pretty malleable and even though we think our memories are the source of our bad stuff I suspect the bad stuff is not the memories themselves but how we deal with them when they arise.

Make sense?


-cmarti

I think that's what I was getting at with my last post. Might not have said it well...

Also like the glasses metaphor.

"So whatever we are 'fixing' with practice it has to be something that is always now. Memory is pretty malleable and even though we think our memories are the source of our bad stuff I suspect the bad stuff is not the memories themselves but how we deal with them when they arise." -Chris

Yes, this is valid. We are wise so suspect that memories may not be literal copies of actual historical events (whatever those are!). But that doesn't matter, really. What gets us in the end is whether or not we buy-into them. If we buy the story a memory is selling, we become the subject of the memory, rather than taking the memory as object. With the former, we freeze around painful experiences and keep the cycle of suffering intact. With the latter, we let go of experience, and it takes a different course; moves in the direction of freedom and wholeness.

And I also like the consideration that "this moment has never been experienced before" and that includes this particular experience of a memory or any other phenomena. In which case the experience is not re-living some past story, but only experience something completely new, completely fresh...

Thoughts?

Another REALLY good point, Ona.

Just one other thing occurred from a convo I'm having with a friend on skype just now. Sometimes we are actually attached to certain memories (even unpleasant ones) as part of our identity. We can't really imagine leaving behind that part of who we have been for so long - like what would fill that space? what would we be without those strange gilded chains? If we let go of an old pattern, what should we do instead? It can be scary. Even if we want to or feel a freedom in leaving something behind, sometimes we kind of cling at the same time...

There's a key word to pay attention to here...

"We can't really imagine leaving behind that part of who we have been for so long - like what would fill that space?"

That's exactly right. I don't think most of us realize that freedom is available because of this space. It can be frightening. It can feel like we're going to be completely empty (in a bad way), alone, void, nothing, unimportant, invalid, etc. But this space we open up to is like water. If we relax, we float. Groundlessness becomes our ground.

John Welwood has written a lot about this. There are many opportunities in therapy to touch this spacious quality of being; to discover it; to relax into it. Too often, though, a therapist will guide a client right into another self-concept, rather than allowing the space to fill with undefined presence.

So, yes - as frightening as our memories can be, sometimes we cling onto them for dear life, because we don't know who or what we are without them. In other words, the "I" wants freedom as "I", and so has difficulty realizing the freedom when the "I" is allowed to dissolve. Who we are when we let go of "I" ends up being much more reliable, if we only have the courage to fall into it.

Yes, Jackson. Excellent. Love it.

Although we really have to stop agreeing with each other so much.

"Although we really have to stop agreeing with each other so much. "

I disagree

What you said about conventional therapy filling the space... that's very interesting. I'll think on that.

@chris - SLAP!

Chris, only if you'll join us!

"What you said about conventional therapy filling the space... that's very interesting. I'll think on that." -Ona

It's interesting, isn't it? And it makes sense. Refining one's self-concept can actually be quite helpful. Contrary to the teachings of many-a-guru, not all self-concepts are equally harmful. Some are much more flexible - flexibly stable - than others.

Therapists who are not familiar with meditation or other more transpersonal perspectives just aren't usually aware of the possibility of tapping into the spaciousness of being. If they haven't experienced this reality for themselves, they are likely to be just as nervous about it as their client would be. A therapist experienced in meditation is able to facilitate this process of discovery with their clients; if the clients are ready for it, of course.

Oh, this makes some interesting sense. I might have babbled on about this before, but there's a way in which this refining of the self-concept to be more stable is done with spirit work and intiations in Santeria and related spirit-working traditions. Giving a person (through ritual work over time) a guardian deity or spirit - initially to protect them but in time it becomes recognized as a permanent part of them - a stable, cool, wise, grounded, empowered aspect of their self that can cope better with the upheavals of life than the frazzled, reactive, hurting self that was there before....

I've seen some people transform quite a bit through this kind of work, becoming in time far more patient, compassionate, pliable and so on.

I've been a bit consistenly fascinated by the way entities/spirits/deities etc can be involved in transformation, since it's been such a part of my own path.

@Chris - I think it's useful, though, for some people at certain points in their development. A person who is coming from a lot of emotional damage or trauma, for instance, would benefit from developing a more stable, coherent, flexible, positive self-concept just to function better in life and cope with daily stuff. Not everyone is called to, wants to, or has any interest in deeper transformative stuff. And if they do, I would put money on it being safer, healthier and less painful for them if they have first worked on their shattered, mangled ego and got themselves in some kind of functional working order. If someone is not very stable, stability is a nice place to get to before heading into what can be some rather scary and strange territory.