The Disappearing Hands
Las Manos Que Desaparecen
A student describes recurring experiences of spaciousness while driving, where the sense of "my hands" dissolves, and asks how to relate to such states without becoming attached to them.
The Disappearing Hands
A student describes recurring experiences of spaciousness while driving, where the sense of "my hands" dissolves, and asks how to relate to such states without becoming attached to them.
I wanted to share what has been happening lately. In the last couple of weeks it happened several times in a row. I would be driving, looking at my hands on the steering wheel, and there was a kind of looking, an extending. There was no understanding that those were my hands. There were just whatever we call hands in a space, and that space would expand and become alive. It's hard to explain, but the empty space becomes alive, and whatever you call hands is just part of that one picture, one flow. There's a heart opening with it. It does subside, but it leaves a lasting imprint.
This happened quite a few times last week, and a lot of other things are coming up too. I'm being very deeply touched by things, and material from childhood bubbles up and releases. There seems to be a lot of energetic activity lately. I'm trying not to get attached to it, but that feeling of the disappearing hands has been strong. I don't think I've had it quite like this before. I don't know if there's a question in there. I just thought to share.
What do you feel you get attached to, that you're trying not to get attached to?
Wanting it to repeat. That expansiveness feels amazing, and then the contraction that comes later feels a bit painful. But even the contraction, as in meditation today, just happens within the flow. There's less resistance. And even if there's resistance, it's accepted as resistance.
I'll take that as the question, the wanting not to get attached. The key is that this is a state, and it's a state more likely to arise in that kind of activity. Driving requires a focus where a lot is at stake, so we go into a very deep and intense focus. The attention has to stay on the present, on perception, sensation, sound, and on the openness of reality, of space. It also requires a use of the mind in which the normal filters and veils, the difficult self-talk, grow quiet. All of this invites such a state.
A caution about where to seek
I would really avoid using driving as a way to meditate, to have experiences, or to enter that space, because of the risk involved. Just focus on the driving. If something happens, it happens, but don't seek it there.
Yes, there was some of that, because you forget you're actually driving.
What matters is what can be learned, because in a state something can be seen that is always true. That's where the value is, not in re-entering states. States can be attractive because something is tasted or known, but they are temporary. What is seen is often not separated from the state in which it was seen, and so we develop an attachment to the state.
On the positive side, you can take what was recognized and inquire into it in an ordinary state, or in what you called the contraction that comes after. Inquire, right now, what of that state is still the same. That sense that these hands are not mine is true and real now. Those are words, a thought describing something. So hold not the words as a truth or as a new narrative of reality, but the experience they point to. That is always true.
I have been trying to do that, using the memory of the experience to see what's happening right now, to use what was seen and felt then.
Look at whether it has really been seen, because then there isn't much trying needed. Look right now. There may be an impression or a belief that it's something far away and distant, that it requires a big shift, but it doesn't. It's actually more the direct experience than not. It just appears in a subtler way, with less intensity. It's true right now, and it's true about everything: all sensations, all appearances.
The thought "these are my hands"
It feels like all it takes is for the mind to say "those are my hands." It seems more thought-based.
It's an important and useful thought, but it's not a representation of reality in an absolute sense. It's a function. Once it becomes obvious to you, directly, in any moment, that there is no "I" to which those hands belong, that they are not a part of some self, and the same with the feet, the same with everything, then it loses its allure and its romantic quality. That initial experience of disidentification becomes such an obvious, natural way that reality simply is, and then it's no longer important. It's just reality. And then they are my hands again, in the more important sense, purely as function, but not from the point of the illusion that they are mine and that this is absolutely real.
What always struck me in those experiences is how obvious it felt, being out of the way. And then you go back, the veils come down again, and it's like you're trying to thread through all this thickness of thought. It's not obvious at all, when it was so simple.
The thinness of the veil
Part of how to work through that is to recognize there's a belief that the veil is very thick, that the experience is rare and difficult to access. That is the veil itself, guaranteeing its own perpetuation. It's part of the belief and the attachment to the illusion. See that the veil is actually so thin that it isn't there. It's literally an illusion. In a sense there is no veil. There's only the belief in what appears to be real, and that belief is what makes it a thing.
With that perspective, look at your experience in any moment for that veil. You'll be able to see through it instantly, and then it becomes so obvious that it's utterly ordinary and natural. It loses its importance, because it's only significant in contrast to something that feels special and mystical compared to ordinary reality. It's actually the other way around. Reality is that. It's so ordinary, so natural, and then it's no longer important.
It seems like such a different way to live, to be in life. That's huge, right?
It is, and then that too becomes very normal and ordinary. In my experience, what it becomes is that the extraordinary and the ordinary are the same. You can't say it's one or the other. It's both.
The energy is also just a wave
There's also the energetic component. When this is seen in those experiences, there's always so much energy present.
The same applies to the energy. It gets made into something special, and then it loses its specialness.
But it seems there is some real energetic shifting, like something is happening.
Yes, but all of that is special and important only to a false separate identity. To what we really are, it's not special. It's not significant.
So it's just another wave that comes and goes?
Yes, it's just like washing the dishes. There's an energetic opening, the energy passes, and you're washing the dishes. It's only special to the remaining belief in separation, to that which one believes to be separate.
It feels new, though.
That's fine, that's natural. At first it is very new and very beautiful, and it's something to celebrate. I'm only pointing to the warnings, the new places in which illusion can seep into the experience.
The subtler forms of attachment
At first the attachment is often to ordinary experiences. Then it becomes attachment to more mystical or esoteric spiritual experiences. This is documented in all the books of spiritual process and awakening: first the attachment to the worldly realms, then the attachment to the otherworldly realms, the subtle realms. These have more to do with experiences of expansiveness. They're categorized in different levels of depth and subtlety, but it's all attachment to states. What is attached is always the remaining sense of separation, the remaining sense that there is something here permanently moving into and out of states, something to which those states mean something and which those states affect. There's a sense of "I progress, I improve, I get better," a specialness.
I see that. So basically just let it all flow.
And know that it is the natural progression, because these things are mapped. It is a fairly standard progression toward the more subtle. This is the process that, more often than not, is the way of awakening. More and more, the subtle remaining sense of separation gets seen, and it's also harder to see, because it becomes more subtle.
On teachers and the maps
I still see some teachers stuck in it too, which is interesting.
There is no official line at which one has seen through enough to be ready to teach. There's no official standard. The more, the better, but there's also a relational aspect. People with a lesser depth of awakening can still transmit and teach to those in greater illusion than themselves. It's like having kindergarten teachers, primary school teachers, high school teachers, university professors. It's not exactly like that, but in a sense it is.
It's even very hard to know oneself. I don't have a clear sense within myself of what stage anything belongs to, and there isn't any official map that everyone agrees on. There are as many maps as there are traditions, and within the same tradition the maps disagree. Then the tradition splits into three branches that disagree about the map, or the stages within it, or how to move through them. It's thousands of years of this.
In my experience, I get attracted to different teachers at different stages, and some fall away. I basically just follow the feeling of the heart and trust it.
Different teachers also focus on different things. One can have a very deep realization but a particular dedication and skill for teaching and transmitting the early stages of awakening. It's also a matter of style.
Everybody has their own flavor and their own gift. I'm really grateful for that with you. It feels hard to get stuck in anything, because when I bring something up, you point straight to it. Thank you.
I'm glad. You're welcome.