The Contraction That Isn't Happening
La contracción que no está ocurriendo
A student describes tasting "I am" in meditation, then noticing small hooks that pull her back into a located sense of "me." The teacher explains that the apparent movement between expansion and contraction is an interpretation, and points toward the possibility of "I am" without content.
The Contraction That Isn't Happening
A student describes tasting "I am" in meditation, then noticing small hooks that pull her back into a located sense of "me." The teacher explains that the apparent movement between expansion and contraction is an interpretation, and points toward the possibility of "I am" without content.
I can share a little bit. It was really beautiful, thank you. When you first said something like "just be the I am," I can't remember exactly how you put it, I first noticed fear. Then at one point I tasted this beautiful bath of love. In words, what I noticed was "oh, no suffering." It was very much a feeling, a sense of no suffering. For a moment I also noticed the fear of going there, the attachment, the resistance to really choosing that. It was very tangible how possible it is. There it is. Such a sweet, sweet, sweet feeling.
Then I really chose it for that moment. I really became the experience. And I started to notice that, as you say, everything is I am. This is I am. I really tasted it; it was really everything. And I could also see myself located: the body, and so on, but also I am. Both.
Then I started to inquire more deeply. I don't know if I can put it into words, but there were small hooks that would bring me back to locating in the me. It went back and forth, and I started to ask, "What is getting into the me?" Does that make sense? I asked, "Is this the attention? Am I the attention? What is that locating?"
Yes, very much.
In some moments, the me, the thought, would come in. I've been experiencing this for the last week or so. I was in a session with someone, meditating, and I had a taste of something I think you spoke about in another satsang: "Oh, this was always there." It wasn't like today, but I saw it in all these moments of my childhood, all these moments of, quote-unquote, suffering. This was always there. And today I really sensed it. So what is that thing that pulls me back? I think you understand what I'm talking about. What is it?
There are many ways to talk about it, but I'll try a few. It's the illusion. So why does the illusion remain? What pulls attention back into something like a contraction is a belief. But it's not just a conceptual belief, like believing in God. It's a misinterpretation of what is real: for example, interpreting what is appearing in the mind as more real than it is.
Yes, that makes sense.
The interpretation of movement
That is why it remains. It starts with glimpses, and then it becomes more an experience of back and forth. But what creates the sense of moving back into something more contracted is the interpretation that there is a movement.
Is it similar to the moment when I saw the not-suffering and then saw the suffering?
Exactly. At first the interpretation is: there's suffering, then there's no suffering, then suffering, then no suffering. But then you realize, "Oh, while there was suffering, there was no suffering." So there is this sense of a movement: expanding, "I'm not identified," and then contracting back into identification. That's one way to talk about it at first. But there is actually no such movement. That's an interpretation.
So it's a way of interpreting lived experience?
I'm referring to interpreting current reality, current experience. When there is this sense of going back into contraction, into the mind, there is an interpretation that there is a contraction. As you noticed with suffering, there is an appearance of a contraction, an appearance of a movement, but it's not real. It's not real in the sense that, from a more fundamental reality, that movement isn't happening and the contraction isn't happening.
Is it like a focusing?
The kaleidoscope
No, not really. Think of a kaleidoscope. You turn it and move it, and sometimes the shapes appear to be something. Let's say you're moving the kaleidoscope and suddenly it seems you're seeing a form, a rabbit. But it's not really there. So when the colors and shapes of sounds, sensations, and thoughts arrange themselves in a certain way, it seems like there's a contraction into thought. It's only an appearance, as in the kaleidoscope. From a different, deeper perspective, it's not happening.
Not more effort
When one first recognizes this taste of I am, it's good to practice settling. But at some point, once that is somewhat available, it's important not to think that what is needed is to do it more and more through effort.
It's important to recognize that what's needed is to do that through effort, you said?
No. What is needed is not doing this through effort. The thinking is going to be: "Now I'm tasting this; I am this expansiveness. Then I experience the contraction into thought. So I need to practice more and more, so that at some point this becomes permanent." It doesn't happen that way. What is needed after this recognition of who I am is to notice that the contraction and the movement are not really happening, and that what you taste in the so-called expansiveness is there simultaneously, even at the times you seem not to be in it.
So the belief that it's not there is what makes it seem not to be there. That makes sense.
It's the interpretation of its absence. The form in the kaleidoscope seems like a subtraction, as if I weren't there. But the kaleidoscope is a good metaphor, because what I am, metaphorically speaking, is that which is looking through the kaleidoscope, and whatever form or shape is happening there doesn't affect the looking.
It isn't affected?
No, exactly. At some point what appears in the kaleidoscope may be the colors, shapes, sensations, and forms of contraction and identification. Even if I believe that is reality, the looking is unaffected. The looking which sees and experiences the contraction is not contracted. It is prior to the contraction.
So identification is, in a way, believing in the contraction rather than the looking.
It cannot be lost nor found
Yes. And this connects to the idea of having to practice so that it becomes more permanent. What can also be seen is that this is always the case. I am is. I am is. It cannot be lost nor found.
It's always there. I noticed there were also a lot of ideas about what realization looks like, and those stood in the way of seeing the experience itself. Does that make sense?
The mind is going to try to understand, and to create a strategy for repeating something. What can happen instead is that we see that what we were contracting into isn't there. It's like a hologram. So instead of a practice where we don't identify with objects, we can see that there are no objects, and then it becomes impossible to identify. It becomes impossible to believe that a form, an appearance, is a thing.
I see.
You're still doing the same things, but without that safety net, that filtering of belief.
It's a shift.
Yes, a shift in the fundamental sense of what is real. In normal functioning, the fundamental sense of what is real is the body-mind: what's happening in sensations and thoughts. Then there can be a shift in which everything that is appearing is seen to be not fundamentally real.
What "I" refers to
What is real is always what I call "I." When I say "I," when anybody says "I," we are pointing to what is real. The word "I" refers to the real. But if I believe that what is real is my imagination and my sensations, this person, then that is illusion. What can happen is the recognition that everything that appears as this person is illusory, in the sense that it's not fundamentally real. Let me clarify the difference between real and illusion in the way I'm using these words.
Mm-hmm.
What can be recognized is that what is real is, in a sense, I am. It can't really be named, but that is one of its names: I amness. That becomes what I'm referring to when I say "I." This is not because I have a different idea of what I am. It's because the reality I'm referring to is clear. And it's clear not because I know what I am, but because I know what it is not.
Real and illusory
Distinguishing the real from the illusory has to do with the question: what is essentially real? What is the essence of something, as opposed to what it appears to be? If I'm talking about a wave, the essence isn't the shape of the wave; metaphorically, the essence is water. With a golden ring, the essence isn't the ring; the essence is gold. It appears to be a ring. It appears to be a wave.
So when we say "I am," it appears to be this person. But one of the glimpses that can happen is that the experience of this person disappears, literally the experience. The person vanishes, and there is still the experience "I am." All of what is known as this person disappears. What that does is remove the possibility of believing that I am and the person are the same, because there can be I am without the person, but there cannot be the person without I am. So the question of which is the ring and which is the gold becomes clear.
That feels weird. Disorienting.
Yes, it's very tricky, very strange. Then it can be seen that anything that appears is not fundamentally what I am. So "I am" cannot refer to any object, any form, any sensation, any thought. And yet it includes all objects, sensations, thoughts, and perceptions. They appear.
I can see how there's no resting on anything. There's a sense of, I don't know what word to use, emptiness, I guess.
Yes, the emptiness. And form, in a sense, is made of appearing from the emptiness. Back to the kaleidoscope: if you close your eyes, the kaleidoscope disappears. It requires the looking. The shapes cannot exist without the looking.
Without the looking, which gives form.
I am without content
And then there is the looking without the kaleidoscope. That is more of a question that needs to be explored, because to the mind it's not straightforward. The possibility of an experience of I am without content needs to be investigated.
No form, no emptiness, just no thing.
Yes. Can there be the experience of I am without content, without experience, without form, without sound, color, shape, sensation, or thought? To the mind, the answer is normally no, because to the mind, I am is a form, a shape. For the mind, there cannot be I am without the shape: without the experience of the body, which is the mind's shape and image, and without the imagination of the mind.
It just feels so strange. I'm looking out the window, seeing the mountains and all the buildings, and at the same time tasting what you're saying. I guess it's just hard. You can't understand it.
You can't imagine it, because imagination is only more forms. The mind is only capable of forms. In more conventional language, this is tasting or knowing consciousness without mind, consciousness without object. One way to know this is to ask the question, to be truly curious, to really want to know: is it possible that I am without form, without shapes, without anything? That question leads to the experience. The answer to it is the experience.
Thank you.
You're welcome.