The Contraction Into Thought
La Contracción Hacia el Pensamiento
A reflection on how the sense of "I" contracts into thought, creating an apparent division between an inner perceiver and an outer world, and how recognizing that division as interpretation dissolves the fear that drives our struggle.
The Contraction Into Thought
A reflection on how the sense of "I" contracts into thought, creating an apparent division between an inner perceiver and an outer world, and how recognizing that division as interpretation dissolves the fear that drives our struggle.
I want to explore something without a question this time. It may be brief, it may be a little longer, and then I will open to questions. This is a bit of an experiment. I have never had the impulse to do this before, but I have been feeling it the last few times.
What is coming is a sense that much of the struggle, the underlying dissatisfaction that can be seen in many ways, is experientially a kind of contraction. It is not a physical contraction, not a muscular one. In a sense, it is the contraction of that sense of I-am-ness. It is a contraction into thought, which is not really possible, and that is where the word illusion becomes relevant. It appears that one can contract. It appears that one can, in a sense, push the world out and contract into thought. Because this is not really possible, it becomes a constant efforting, a constant attempt at preserving an illusion of something that in a deep sense we know is not true.
We know the reality in the deepest sense. We know it because we are that, and we were fully immersed in it when we were born, when there was not yet this ability to create separation.
How perception becomes divided
Consider what happens. Everything appearing through sight, through sound, is known directly. Sights appear, sounds appear. But there is a subtle interpretation, a creation through the mind of a mapping, an understanding of what the sound is. For example, the interpretation "voice," or "bird singing," or "a car honking." In that interpretation, there is a mental mapping of "bird sound," and that is placed outside. What is placed inside is the "I" who hears the sound. Both of these are part of a thought construct.
Right now, as you are hearing the sound of my voice, there will be an interpretation of the words, and there will be the sense that the sound is out there, not me, not I. That requires a very subtle imagination of a subject who is here, perceiving, thinking, understanding. In a sense it can be said to be real, because everything that is, is real. But it is not what it appears to be. It appears that there is a sound outside and a hearer, a perceiver, here separately inside, and that these are two separate things. That is real, but it is only thought. The reality of the sound is not outside the thought that there is a distance, that the sound is out there and I am perceiving it here. That "here" is real only as thought. It is just thought.
But it is a very deep structure, something the mind began doing when we were very young, so it appears to be the nature of reality itself. In truth it is a thought construct. Everything that is perceived, one can say, is inside. Then the mental interpretation follows: I see that, and it is over there, and I am the perceiver seeing this from in here. That is only a thought.
Why this matters
Why does this matter? Because when it can be seen purely, entirely, and only as thought, it is seen to be relative. It is seen to be only functional. There is a use to that interpretation, but it is not fundamentally reality. What that changes is this: I am not fundamentally, or at all, that interpreted subject. It can be seen that the reference of "I here, body, mind" is only occasionally a useful interpretation, but it is not what I am.
At the root, the fundamental confusion is the sense that the subject imagined to be on the perceiving, hearing, deciding, doing side is what I am. That subjectivity is a thought construct, and therefore not I. The sense of I-am-ness can then be recognized as prior to this construct. Whatever happens to the "I" thought, the "I" construct, cannot affect me, because I am not that. In fact, it is imagination. It is an occasionally useful function, but it cannot be threatened, because it is not what I am. The body can be threatened more, because it can be damaged. The imagined subject is just imagination.
The fear beneath the dysfunction
At the level of functioning, it matters that the way we imagine that subject, the way we interpret, is as accurate as possible, the best interpretation of what things are in the world and what things are in this body-mind. That functioning can then become more free, loving, wise, and joyful. The core of the dysfunction comes from the fear that arises when I believe myself to be that, and only that. Then I am protecting something that is imagination, needing a whole array of thoughts and beliefs and illusions to avoid experiences that are imagined to threaten that imagined self.
When it is seen that I am not that, there can be a freeing up, a constant learning in which there is no longer, or very little comparatively, the friction of that fear. The fear that requires protecting something that does not need protection.
The key is to look at that constant construct, that thought, and notice that as it is seen, as you catch it as an appearance, an object of thought, then I cannot be that.
The paradox the mind cannot hold
This is where words are not very useful. But so the mind can grasp the seeming paradox, one can say: everything is I, everything is not I, simultaneously, and also not not I. The mind cannot hold both. What this can show the mind is where there is a tendency to interpret one side as real. For example, sounds, sights, what I perceive: the label "not I" becomes reality. An interpretation of something is assumed to be the thing itself. The interpretation becomes reality, assumed to be real.
Right now, in this moment, this can be explored. Take anything that is being perceived, that is being seen. Look at the sense of it being "not I," of it being outside, the world outside. Then assume the possibility that this is just an interpretation, happening in real time as perceiving is happening. You can even explore the opposite interpretation and see how it creates friction in the mental interpretation system. What if that which is being perceived is included, embracing the I-am sense, where the I-am sense is not contracted and collapsed into sensations of the body and into thoughts?
One space, no outside
For those who are more scientifically inclined, we also know that the brain is receiving all of the information being experienced: sounds, sensations, perceptions from sight, thoughts. All are being created simultaneously in one space. Where in that is there an outside? It is an interpretation after the fact. There is visual information, sound information, thoughts. Then at some point, visual and sound become "outside," and thoughts become "inside." How is that happening? Why not thoughts also outside, perceptions inside, reversed?
The key has to do with this: if the I-am sense, the sense of "I am this," is assumed and contracted into body sensations, imagination, and thought, then in that interpretation everything else can be outside, "not I am," "not I." What can be seen is that I am is prior to the body, prior to the thoughts. It is one of the fundamental aspects of reality, of consciousness.
The body appears, the body is here, the mind is here, and this is an accurate, functional interpretation, useful to work with. I am more this than the bed. I am more this than the wall. I am more this than the laptop. But knowingly as an interpretation.
The role and the playwright
It is the role that has been given and chosen. But the knowing is also this: I am the playwright, the theater. Right now, this is the role, and it is a gift, a privilege, a miracle. It is given and chosen at the same time, and in that there is freedom. It was not given against my will. No condition in life has been imposed on me against my will. It is, in a sense, a free falling of constant openness and learning, a constant joyful confusion in that not knowing.
Then, knowing that everything is interpretation, there is the vastness of when all is seen as interpretation. Everything becomes infinite, vast. Only interpretation makes things limited, small, contracted, with beginnings and ends.
An invitation, not a truth
These are all words. See what of the words resonates, and if not the words, then what is beyond them. What resonates, what is true, will be experienced or known or felt in some sense with expansiveness or lightness, even if at times it is a bit scary or shocking. Always explore in your own experience. Nothing is said here as absolute truth, only as an invitation to explore a newer experience.
Then this love of your own truth, your own reality, your own taste, will be the doorway, and it will move on its own. It is the love of love itself, until the love of it recognizes itself as love, always here. Reality searching for reality, until it is seen that what is searching is what it is searching for.
That is what I have. I am open to questions. Thank you.