What Is Always There
Lo Que Siempre Está Ahí
A student describes a shifting experience in which thoughts and presence appear together for the first time, and the teacher points to the recognition that nothing is truly lost when thinking arises.
What Is Always There
A student describes a shifting experience in which thoughts and presence appear together for the first time, and the teacher points to the recognition that nothing is truly lost when thinking arises.
I will try to explain myself. I feel that I'm in a process, and the process is changing. It's very fast, unbelievably fast. I want to share what happened. I experienced the being, like in another session, but this time it came with a more lively color. Before it was dark, and now it was a rose color.
The surprise was that this time I could see and feel the thoughts passing during the experience. In other moments I was separated: the being on one side, and then the thoughts and emotions. But now there were thoughts, and I could still be. It was very tender and very different. This whole scenario was seen as a center.
I felt more like the little girl who has the presence. Not unconscious, but a presence from which you can observe. It was a feeling I had in my childhood. Then it moved, and it became a lovely sensation, the sense you describe of something that was always here, and is here, and is here. I cannot repeat your words exactly. It's present. You can see it. What surprised me was having both the thoughts and the being. It's a matter of attention. If I jump into being in more contact, it's different. This is my experience.
Can you say a little more about the last part, about jumping in?
Thoughts and presence together
I never had this experience of having the thought and the presence at the same time. Now I feel the presence constantly. This is something I never had before. So it was always there, but something in me was denying it. I wasn't in contact with it. That became the bridge to my childhood, and now the thoughts are more tender. What is going on is not so terrible. It's just that when the thoughts are very, very far away, it's different, because then it's all thought, all mind, all emotion. But now it's okay.
Yes, I understand.
I don't want to say too much, because it feels very fresh and still in movement. But if I were to say something, it seems there is a lifting of a kind of hypnosis, which is very common when we experience one thing or another. When thoughts are there, there is a sense that something is lost, and that is why the thoughts feel so terrible. If the thoughts are good, then it may be okay, but normally they are not. So there is always this battle to change what the mind is doing.
Nothing is actually lost
Once you realize that there is something that is always there, then the dimension in which thoughts are happening becomes much smaller. It seems something is lost, but you come to realize that this is always the case.
Always the case, yes.
There isn't actually something lost.
It was a great experience, because I never had it before. Or maybe I couldn't understand what was going on before, because when you are not able to understand, it seems so concrete.
What you're describing is something that changed, but not at the level of thinking, not at the level of the mind.
Yes, it's not on that level. It's deeper. Thank you.
That's wonderful.
What has happened in this group, with you and with the presence here, is that I can move through experience so differently. I come from a very different background, but this is a place where the experience is so different. I wanted to say this to you, because it's a group as well, and it's calling forth something new, a new sensation. And when you speak about it, you put it into words and show me what is going on.
That's wonderful. It's truly my pleasure.