The Stormy Mind and What Knows It
La mente tormentosa y aquello que la conoce
A question about the limits of calming the mind, and the recognition that freedom does not depend on the storm ending.
The Stormy Mind and What Knows It
A question about the limits of calming the mind, and the recognition that freedom does not depend on the storm ending.
Thank you for the beautiful meditation and talk. It falls somewhere the words can't reach. Sometimes a thought comes, "this is so nicely put, I should write it down," and I try to hold on to it, and by the time I remember to write it down, it's gone. It's like drip coffee, dripping onto some level below. And as you said at the end, it's a felt sense.
That's what matters. What resonates is wordless. The words just create a little gap, and then what is tasted, what is felt, that is what matters. The words are garbage. Throw them out.
It's a beautiful garbage.
What can happen is that the words become dangerous, because they can become a truth, a reality. That is why I call them garbage.
But when you see them as symbols, symbols can be really beautiful. I love how you put some things.
Words as symbols, and the vastness
You spoke of the vastness, the expansiveness. Sometimes it feels like it almost takes your breath away. It's mind-blowing, literally.
It can be. We're in the business of how to blow your own mind. Once you can blow your own mind all the time, you're free.
The free fall of blowing your mind. Lately I've felt that free fall. I was sitting in the car one day, and it was raining. I was looking at the windshield, at the drops of water falling, splashing, rolling. Some roll off fast, some stay and make different shapes. That is what it felt like: the whole of reality is just there to watch. It's a dance, a show, exploration, fascination, and enjoyment, all in one.
It's that. It's a miracle, and so beautiful.
I also wanted to say, it's a really beautiful YouTube channel, the graphics and the pictures. Are those your paintings?
No, it's AI. It's basically my real home. I've been in this for twenty years. My work started in what is called computational creativity, which is now generally recognized. I've been one of the people doing that from the beginning, so I'm very involved in it. I see it as a tool for a creative process. It's also a way to help me create more videos with the little time I have.
The limit of calming the mind
Thank you for your sharing and your words. Sometimes I have a structure, but I can't hold myself with a mind that is like that. I can't stop. Maybe the circumstances are a little different, or I try to do many things at the same time, and that's the point where I collapse. Exercise, walking, meditation: those are the things that can hold me, so I don't go into that rush of craziness in my mind. So I say, "okay, stop, stop with this." How can I help myself a little more?
Part of what you're doing is necessary and helpful, which is all the work that can be done to settle, to calm the body and the mind. But there is a place where you cannot go further just by calming the body and the mind. To attempt to calm further with the same techniques is futile.
Futile. Yes.
So there is a point where what is needed is to see the core belief that is operating. The belief is that you need to calm the mind. When you're in that place where the mind is a storm, and the body becomes stormy as well, the fundamental false belief is that what you need in that moment is a calm mind. This is why it's tricky, because it has helped to do the practices, the meditation, the exercise, to calm the mind. But there's a point where you hit a limit. You cannot go any further. At that point, what can be seen is that there is a belief that what is needed is a calmer mind.
Freedom with a stormy mind
That recognition can open the possibility to trust that you can have complete release, complete satisfaction, complete freedom with a stormy mind simultaneously. The stormy mind is not the condition that needs to change. Freedom from the stormy mind is not the ending of the stormy mind. So that is the first belief that needs to be questioned: the belief that what I need is for the stormy mind to stop, and that therefore I must keep making the effort to calm it. There's a limit, because we're trying to change biology, chemistry, and electrical impulses in the brain to create something that, past a point, is not possible. Past that point, it only creates more stormy mind, because it's trying to control something which is itself a control mechanism. It's fighting and fighting, trying to control the thing that controls the thing that's controlling. There's a point where that will never work.
The infinite loop
So the first belief is: you need to calm the mind in order to be okay, to be at peace, to be at rest, to get what you're wanting. And in that belief, the assumption is that what I'm wanting is in time, in the next moment. If I change the stormy mind, then I will get what I'm wanting. Where does that exist? In thought, in the imagination of the next moment. That's the belief: in the next moment I will get to where I need to be. This is the assumption that what I need is not here. And it supports the belief that it's not here, because the mind is stormy. Since I believe the mind needs to not be stormy for me to be well, I can only be okay when it's not stormy, and that's not now, it's next, it's the next moment. This is an infinite loop.
The one who needs it
So now the trick is to look at the sense of "I" that needs this. The trap is in believing that you are Irene. Here is what is tricky: everything you know as "I," or rather the illusion of it, is sensations, the body, the perception of the body. I can see my hands, but that is not I. The sensations are appearing to that which I am. The hand is appearing to that which I am, to that which knows.
More importantly, there is the thought "I." Not just the word "I," but the image in thought: the person that is imagined, a construct of many thoughts, with memories, a past, a future, desires. This very complex thought process is all imagined, all mind-based, and all of it is appearing right now, known right now. You can recognize it because you're seeing it, and that which is seeing it is not it. It's what you are, but it's not what is seen.
It's not what I am seeing.
Estás viendo a Irene. You are seeing Irene. You cannot be that, because you're seeing it. If Irene is being seen, am I the hand, or am I what sees? Am I the person, or am I what sees and knows the person? So first there needs to be a step of "not I." This is neti neti. Not I, not Irene. But not some abstract thing that is itself a thought.
What sees
That which sees is also that which is seeing everything that appears: all sensations, all sounds, all sights, all thoughts, all body, all the universe. All of it is known and seen by our true nature. What can be known is this: the mind can stop. I am. The mind comes back. I am. Not the mind. Not Irene.
As this becomes more true and real in your own experiential understanding, you see: yes, I am seeing Irene, therefore not I. Irene becomes an experience, becomes an object. Irene, the crazy mind, becomes an object. That which knows the crazy mind is at peace. That which knows Irene is at rest, not moving in a sense. But it's not a thing.
This is where the mind can come in and imagine some abstract observing thing that I am, which is not even a thought. That is not I either. That which observes, that which knows, that which sees, that which is here right now hearing my words, is not localized. It's not a central place. In a sense, it's everything and nothing. It's empty, and everything is appearing within it. It's almost like an infinite empty background. That is what knows, what sees, what perceives, what hears. But it's not a thing.
Tasting it in experience
I'm saying words, but this can be known in experience. It can be tasted. The first step is: yes, Irene is appearing, not I, because that which knows Irene cannot be Irene.
Remember the first belief: I need the mind to calm down. What is needed now is to trust enough to explore, what if it doesn't matter? It feels uncomfortable because you're believing you are the character inside the storm. Inside the stormy mind there is a character, an imagined Irene who is in a storm. All of life is happening to her, it's all stressful, she has to do it and control it. But all of this is the imagination of that character, and that character is in a storm. So that character needs the storm to stop. But once you see you're not in it, that you're observing it, then you can see: oh, the movie is playing a storm.
The silent watching
You can watch it and notice that which sees the storm is not in the storm. It's just silent watching. It's an empty looking, a silence that is watching, that is knowing, not located, without a center, not here or there, not in time. Time appears as well. You know time, the experience of time. It's known, it comes and goes, it moves. That which knows time is prior to time. It's the I am.
Thank you.
You're welcome. This is what Christ was pointing to: the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last letters of the Greek alphabet. "Before Abraham was, I am." It's not saying, "before Abraham was, I existed before him." It's "I am." Between or before the beginning and the end, I am. It's not pointing to some abstract thing about Jesus. It's your current experience right now: this experience of hearing me, of knowing, of seeing thoughts, of knowing your perceptions of sound and sight. Before all of that appears, I am. And I am is in you. It's the same. It's beingness. You know that as I am.
The attachment to "I am the thought"
The confusion comes when I am becomes "I am the thought." That is the attachment. When that is believed, the only assumption possible is: what I am is in this storm, and I need the storm to end to be okay. But what can be seen is that before the storm and the mind, I am. The storm comes and goes, I am.
When you're in the storm, even for a microsecond, you recognize it. You may taste it very subtly, very strangely: even in the storm, there is something, this I am, that is at peace without moving. It's not the storm. That taste can become more and more the foreground of experience. Instead of feeling like a distant, subtle background, it becomes the foreground, and then the storm goes to the background, where it is ignored.
Thank you very much.
My pleasure. It's so important.