The Imagination of Parents
La Imaginación de los Padres
A question about how awakening strains close relationships, and how guilt, memory, and a felt blockage in the heart all point back to the same imagined self and other.
The Imagination of Parents
A question about how awakening strains close relationships, and how guilt, memory, and a felt blockage in the heart all point back to the same imagined self and other.
In my experience, realizing my true nature makes it hard to interact with others. Is this just a normal thing?
Yes, it's very normal. Some things are temporary, in the sense that it takes time to adjust and to find new, creative ways to interact. The change of who you interact with also takes time. Some people you interact with less, and you discover new people that it's easier to interact with. So it's very normal, and usually it just takes time, a lot of patience, and creativity.
It can also take quite a bit of change. Some friendships drop away and new ones arise. And with different relationships, blood relationships, family, you find new creative ways to interact. We can go into specifics if you'd like, but it's very normal.
I'm pretty much seeing an ending relationship with my family, particularly with my parents. I know thoughts arise, and I see them as thoughts, but they still have a very strong pull. It's very tiring. Not to the point of being hypnotized, but there's such a strong sensation to any thought relating to my parents. And I think there's a guilt-like thought. The enticing link is based on guilt.
The sense of guilt. We often confuse it with responsibility, but responsibility is what's important and what's real. Guilt is usually not helpful. It's more of an illusory emotion.
My action is judged as disgraceful, which is a guilt.
I hear you saying that the way you act and behave, you judge as not being grateful enough. The sense of guilt.
That's pretty much my parents' view of me. And that is where it comes from, the sense of guilt in me.
Guilt and the blaming of the other
With guilt, what needs to be looked at is what the illusion is for you there. But also, when we are in a relationship, and these will be some of the most powerful relationships in terms of how they affect our experience, our parents if not the most, one needs to be careful. A relationship that activates the sense of guilt carries a tendency to blame that other for our pain, for our guilt. As you feel guilty for whatever is happening in you, they become the ones who are causing the guilt, and so they are, in a sense, blamed for it. But guilt is only yours, even if they are telling you you're doing everything wrong and you shouldn't be doing this, and that feels like guilt.
Yeah, that's what they're doing. They keep pointing at me. I understand. That is me.
It's just a sense of guilt that makes what they're doing feel painful.
Look, this is a perfect crossroad. You're in the most perfect situation to work through one of the greater illusions on this journey, in this movement of waking up and growing up. Everybody comes to this bridge in the road where certain relationships bring up the most difficult challenges, and it's usually the most intimate ones: our parents, family members, partners, or children. One of the deepest illusions is the sense of self and other. This dynamic you're describing is the perfect confrontation with that illusion. It's a very deep, very subtle illusion. It almost seems completely crazy or irrational to call it an illusion, because how could it be that there is no self and no other?
Bringing up the parents in experience
That dynamic of parents pointing, of guilt, of the experience, of wanting to be free from that struggle, that is the edge of the delusion. What if all of that is not real?
Right now, bring up in your experience the sense of your parents. What is that? Who are they? Right now you're relating to something that is not your parents. Of course we're communicating, but what is it? You're talking about your imagination, the imagined mother, imagined father, based on memory. I want to be careful, because that is how we communicate and work through things. But it goes so far into being taken as reality that in this very conversation we can speak as if it's absolutely true that we're talking about your parents. We're not. We're talking about your imagination of your parents.
That doesn't mean they don't exist and it's all unreal. There is something that is parents, but it's not what you imagine. And consequently, when you're talking about your parents and guilt, and your process of awakening, and what you want, and your struggle, that which you're referring to as yourself is also your imagination. That imagination requires both. You cannot have the imagined parents without the imagined self, and vice versa.
Now, the solution isn't to pretend all of that is pointless, because then you still have a relationship with parents. It's not that simple. What matters is to see things for what they are: to be aware that when you get immersed in the experience of guilt and the thoughts around your parents, all of that is imagination and thinking. When that is seen exactly as what it is, then thinking can be done with wisdom, which is actually a lot less thinking than we assume is necessary. Much of that thinking is illusion. It's a loop of illusion feeding illusion.
But the heart of it is stepping into this as if the foundation of it were absolutely real: that the imagination of yourself is what you are, and that what you imagine around it, the imagined parents, is absolutely real exactly as you imagine it. By imagination, I mean how you are thinking of it, conceiving of it, experiencing it in your present reality. Then I call it imagination, to remind you that you're there, not here. You're imagining them. You can imagine a unicorn and it's the same thing. Your parents and the unicorn are made of the same thing, existing in the same dimension, made of the same mind.
Now, wisdom is: don't think of your parents as unicorns, because they're not the same thing at the practical level of how to use the mind. One can conceive and imagine parents in a practical, useful way, knowing that one is conceptualizing, imagining. And much of that conceptualizing, when done this way, turns out to be unnecessary. Most of it is in service of the rumination of the sense of self, the imagination of self.
So, back to your original question: yes, relationships get tricky. It will simplify the more you see deeply through your imaginations. The more you see that the self and the other you believe are real are imagination, then what is real is a mystery, and it's less challenging in that sense. It becomes less a matter of life or death for some dynamic to resolve.
Seeing, not removing
So would you suggest that the key is to come back to here, to this moment, and see that it's all imagination?
There is only ever here, this moment. So you can't come back to it. You can never not be here. What's important to see is where you go, which is not this moment. Where you go is to a perspective, a point of view, where what you're imagining is reality. What you can do is simply see that it's imagination. I'm not saying see that it's illusion and then try to make it disappear. No. Just see that it's imagination.
I do understand that. There's no need for them to go. Just seeing is enough.
Seeing it for what it is. You could be right here with the imagined parents, aware that you're imagining them, and maybe intentionally contemplating your relationship with them, knowing very clearly you're contemplating an imagination. Then you can ask: is this useful? What's actually happening? Why am I contemplating this? Is there a point? The more clearly you see this is just imagination, the more you'll sense when it's a rumination with no point, when you're just avoiding a sensation or a feeling or a pain. Then the imagination can be put aside and you can sit with whatever is being felt. The next moment, it might feel right and appropriate to contemplate a relationship or a conversation, because you're exploring something from a curious, creative perspective of how to relate differently.
Belief comes before sensation
I'm very clear they're just my imagination, because my parents are nine thousand miles away from me. It's so clear it's just memories coming up.
Yes, but I guarantee you it's not always clear. I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that at different moments of your day, when you're having an experience about your parents, it slips into something where it becomes more real.
There's a strong emotion, a strong sensation that keeps me tied to the thought, and I feel the sensation.
The sensation is strong because you believe the thought. It's not the other way around. When you make the imagination real, the sensation, the emotion, becomes strong.
The emotion often wakes me. There's a sudden realization of that thought, and I just feel the sensation. And there's a discipline not to fight against the emotion and sensation.
Yes, it's pointless. That's just feeding it.
As much as I can, I leave them there. But there's still this feeling of struggle with similar memories coming up from the holiday.
The intensity as a sign
That's where you get closer and closer to what's really happening. Distinguish this: when we're in the imagination and caught into believing it to be real, there's the illusion, and then there's the intensity of emotion, guilt, and so on. That intensity is a sign that you're believing the imagination you're creating. You're seeing it as real, not as imagination. So the intense emotion is a sign: this is imagination, it's a dream, and you are believing the dream.
Now, feeling that sensation or emotion isn't doing anything. It's just staying in the illusion, because you're feeling an illusory creation. That does nothing. But something else might be there to be seen, some deeper feeling, some deeper pain. It could be more of a fear, a sadness, a loneliness, an emptiness. That is a different part, more of a real heart feeling.
I feel it physically in my heart area. It feels like a blockage, something not very liquid.
The blockage as a doorway
Yes. And everything else we're talking about is tied to that. It's a way to navigate and manage that. So what you can do is go directly to that sensation of blockage and sit with it. Don't get taken into imagination. Sit with it. What is that? Is it pain? Is it fear? What is that?
I got that very heavy feeling during the meditation just now. It's very uncomfortable, but it's nothing like pain. I only feel it when I sit down very quietly. If I'm doing movement, or any other task, I don't feel it.
There's distraction. When you sit to meditate, you go deeper and you touch something deeper, and that's where the real changes can happen. So don't discard it as, "Oh, there's not much there, there's just this." That might be a doorway. That discomfort is where the origin of much of our mechanism of illusion and avoidance comes from: numbing and getting away from that deep, subtle heart discomfort. Whatever it is, it's like a blockage.
I've had the thought of worrying about disturbing that part of me, that it might start a wild thing.
Your contemplation around relationships, about whether you should end the relationship with your parents, all of that might be the illusory rumination, a way to fix and resolve that sense of blockage. And it's not going to. If it's coming from a way to avoid and resolve that through some illusory process with the imagined parents, it's an avoidance. Only after you resolve it by going to this, sitting with the sensing, feeling, opening, connecting, allowing, then there could be a wiser relationship with parents.
The fear of releasing something in the body
I think there's a fear regarding releasing something physical. It's so unknown. I don't understand any of this energy flowing through the body.
It's all sensation. Nothing more, nothing less. It can be intense, but it's just sensation. Right now, what you know of your body is all sensation and all energy. That fear, and the way you describe it, is the typical way the mind comes up with reasons not to go there. As soon as there's a direction toward it, the mind says, "No, but now there's this obstacle, and the fear, and this, and that. I shouldn't go there." Back to illusion. Back to, "I will solve this by ending the relationship with my parents."
Yeah. I wouldn't fly to see them anymore, but it didn't help anything. It got worse.
It probably did what needed to happen, so that you come closer to what needs to be addressed, which is right here with you now, in your heart.
I think it is some sort of fear about the body.
That's just how your mind has labeled it. Think of a very young mind, a child who felt there was something under the bed or in the closet, something difficult and painful. Then there's a very young story about why not to open that door, why not to look under the bed. In your case, it's, "Yes, because of what happens to the body and the energy. It's very scary, I don't know what's going to happen, it's difficult, and I'd rather not open that door, because I don't know about energies in the body." But it's just a narrative. Don't open that door. It's the logic, the reasoning, the strategy, the self-convincing. Don't open that door.
Just sitting
So do I now just meditate as much as I can? I don't really know what I'm doing. I just sit, and then it's felt.
That's a blessing, that it comes up for you to explore, and a blessing that you're not in denial of it. So you're confronted, as I said from the beginning, with this next step, and it's opening that door. Anything else, even all the spiritual practices you can imagine, would just be wasting time. The avoidance of this.
I feel it's true, what I need to do. It's just that I didn't know what meditation actually is. Everyone has their own definition.
There are many types, each for addressing different illusions and different aspects of this reality. A lot of them are very valid, and they're different. So I'm giving you, in a sense, a tailored meditation. That sensation you described, the one that comes up when you sit, that's what needs to be explored in the present moment. It's a practice, but consider it a contemplation of your reality, the reality of your heart in this moment. What's really happening, what's really here.
Then there could be others. If one is caught up in the illusion of believing one is the body and the mind, there's a meditation that can address that. They're all valid, but they need to be used for the right thing, for what's needed in the moment. It's all contemplating what is reality, what is here, what is happening.
I'm very happy. I don't know why.
Great. Yes.
Thank you for your pointing.
You're very welcome.