Empty and Asleep
Vacío y dormido
A question about the mind shutting off during meditation, and how the pull toward sleep marks the edge of an unfamiliar stillness.
Empty and Asleep
A question about the mind shutting off during meditation, and how the pull toward sleep marks the edge of an unfamiliar stillness.
When I go to this space of being present, or think I'm in the present, there's a feeling of, I think, what you mentioned: nothing and something. Sometimes my brain just kind of shuts off.
You nod off, you mean? You fall asleep?
More so on days that I'm tired, obviously. But what is this nothing? Is that a wall, or just where I'm at right now? Maybe you can expand on that, or share your experience.
When we do this work and things start to unravel, we notice how accustomed we've been to thinking. All we've done is either fill every moment with thought, or sleep. There's no in between, and so we lose touch with the experience of being. Being never leaves; we're simply filling every moment with so much thinking. When we start to do this work, that begins to unravel, and we move closer to being.
How this is invited
It happens for many reasons, but it has to do with a group energy. There's an attunement when this is invited by someone who is more in touch with that. It only has to be a little more in touch than we are, and it begins to attune our own mind, our own being. This can also become a group movement. An energy can be described as a transmission, a resonance, an entrainment (which is a more scientific term). Literally, your brainwaves start shifting, and your mind states move into unfamiliar places. Words can invite that and convey it too, but it's often said to be the silence between the words. It's a combination of addressing the mind with words and then creating the space.
You can notice this at the level of brainwaves, but internally the experience is of something starting to slow down. You will encounter all kinds of things that may be new or unknown, and the experience of emptiness is the reflection of that on the mind.
How the mind interprets the unknown
By that I mean the way the mind interprets something unknown. It flavors it with something, because the mind needs to know it. The mind can't contemplate something without trying to know it, label it, understand it. So it takes on the flavor of a mental experience, like emptiness. Even if I use the word emptiness to point to that, the mind will still interpret what that emptiness looks like, feels like, is experienced like. And if that keeps unraveling, the direct knowing of what is pointed to by the word emptiness can begin to be glimpsed. But it's not really empty.
Emptiness is a word that points to it because it contrasts with our common experience of a fullness of thinking. That's why there are so many teachings and expressions like: one must empty the cup for there to be new tea. I was playing with that metaphor today. There is no new tea that comes in. What happens is that we relate to the emptiness directly and recognize that it was never empty in the first place. It's fullness.
But to the mind, at first, there's a reflection of it, and a projection of it as something likely negative: something's missing, something's scary, something's wrong. It could be a deactivating of the things that keep us engaged. So we can lose motivation, or lose curiosity, because in a sense we are moved by, even addicted to, the fullness of thinking.
Why the mind falls asleep
The mind's cure for this is falling asleep. You get close to something, and when it's too close right now, the mind goes to sleep, because it also knows that place as the place of sleep. When we go to sleep, we actually go to that place, but we go there in a way where there is only mind, or only that which is empty. In meditation, what we want is to allow the emptiness while there is mind. Then you have mind, in the larger sense of consciousness or wakefulness, knowing the emptiness.
At first this might be a little too much. It's an acquired taste. There's a certain muscle that needs to be worked. What's happening is a positive thing, even when you fall asleep. It's not something wrong. You're getting close to something. So the exploration, the dance, could be: how can you invite going to that place where you fall asleep, and play with not falling asleep completely? Come in and out, and find that edge where you're almost falling asleep. If the falling asleep is happening, use it to see what's in between the falling asleep and the staying awake.
So the mind associates emptiness, and that flavor, with falling asleep.
Yes. And not only that; it also cannot relate to it without being in the state of sleep. The actual brain needs to learn how to function in wakefulness while that emptiness is present. This has been studied extensively with fMRI. They know what happens at the level of brain states when someone is able to go to what is called the fourth state while awake. There's a lot of scientific evidence that the brain and mind function in a way different from normal functioning. It's what is referred to as being awake, not awake versus sleep, but waking up. That is what is pointed to in spiritual work.
Working the muscle
It's interesting when you say you were trying to work that muscle.
The brain isn't a muscle, but it points to the way we understand a muscle: the metaphor of something needing to strengthen and get used to a demand. In our body and mind, and even in the brain, there need to be changes in the synapses, literally. The way it's organized, and the way the literal electrochemical energy in the brain moves, has to change. The brain needs to physically change. For some people that happens suddenly, which is why the experiences can be very intense. For others it's more gradual. Often it's both. But for some it's really sudden, and then the brain has to reorganize quite quickly.
I find I'm also experiencing almost like a flash, and then it disappears.
A flash how? Light, energy, warmth, sensation?
More of a sensation. My body is awake for a split second. A flash.
Glimpses and discontinuous change
Those you could describe as partial glimpses. Glimpse is a word that points to a very brief, momentary seeing of something, an opening, a movement. It happens like that because it's a discontinuous change. But if it happens over and over again, something begins to become accustomed to it.
You could call the change a quantum change. I don't want to obscure things with quantum science, but a quantum leap became a very popular expression. What it actually refers to is that the change is discontinuous. It doesn't move gradually from here to there. When an energy state in an atom shifts, it doesn't change continuously; it changes from one place to another in an instant. As a metaphor, that's similar to these shifts in identity, and even energetically. You're in, or you're out.
The change over time can be experienced as continuous, but it's actually a lot of glimpses, until they become more regular, more constantly accessible. For example, if you're asked, "Are you having an experience now? Do you exist? Are you aware?", when that question is asked, there is instantaneously a quantum shift to the answer: yes. That's the natural answer. The question refers you to awareness, and you can have all kinds of interpretations and sensations about what's happening, but there is a shift toward a knowing that's absolute. It's the recognition: yes, I'm aware. Then you come back to an interaction that's outside of pure awareness. That movement is a leap, not a continuous motion.
When it permeates waking life
As this becomes more and more known and accessible, and we become more able to be with it (comfortable isn't quite the right word, because it's not about comfort), when it becomes something we no longer react to, then it starts to permeate our waking experience.