Lately, I have started noticing a new phenomenon attempted by my mind every time I am knee-deep in an important read or a revealing listen on the subject of non-duality.
Whenever I begin to make a breakthrough interpretation from the teaching, right when it feels like the ray of illumination is about to pierce through the hazy veil, my mind jumps in with a hurried recommendation for an indulgent distraction. It is always something useless and random like, “That was a big-deal revelation, so why don’t we take a break and scroll through our Facebook/Twitter feed?” or “Let’s do a google search for oxidized jewelry with kundan stones.” And without fail, I would oblige to this nonsense every time only to lose the precious train of thought and having to circle back later in the hope of coaxing the epiphany once again.
It is quite obvious that my mind acting like a leverage-threatened mistress is a desperate attempt to slow down whatever momentum is at play, but what does my mind know, that it doesn’t want “me” to know? When the mind is not a separate entity, but only the present thought that I am identifying with as the “I”, what truth am “I” avoiding by hiding behind the illusion of the mind?
What do I already know, but pretend to not know, so I could act like I am struggling to know?
We have a chronic habit of approaching almost everything in life with varying levels of anxiety ranging from, “Hope I don’t make a mistake while filling out this form” to “What will I do when my loved ones die.” In some instances, we have deep-rooted trauma that manifests in a debilitating manner every time there is a trigger. We repress and resist our pains and fears because we are worried they would overwhelm us and collapse our delicate existence. We hope it will go away miraculously if we keep repressing it, but we only yield more power to the fear when we avoid it, and we walk on eggshells for the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders for its next appearance.
But is it possible that deep within our being, we already know that if we get closer to suffering, we would be relieved of it that the mind would no longer be able to keep us bound to it? Does our mind fear its gradual dissolution if we were to recognize this truth and hence resist getting closer to our fears to have a better look?
“We have been dancing around our fear all our life – managing it, suppressing it, fulfilling it. What are you afraid the fear will do to you? Why are you so afraid of the fear? ”
Rupert Spira
What will really happen if we allowed our fears to come closer? How life-crushing and self-destructive would it be to look at our fears straight on?
Here’s the frame-by-frame unfolding of ‘suffering’ in our awareness when we are hit by a trigger moment –
First, it would begin with a painful thought or memory getting our attention, following which we would have an immediate visceral sensation of discomfort in our body that we identify as fear. We would feel a tightening in our chest or a drop sensation in our stomach that will start to snowball into a deepening uneasiness overall. As the sensation takes shape, a narration would follow alongside in the form of resistive thought like “I don’t like this”, stirring up more traumatic memories that amplify and justify the fear.
But if we were to halt the resistive thoughts for a moment and pay attention only to the raw sensation, what would it feel like? Without the background story, isn’t the sensation just a strong vibration that wanes and grows, shifts and spreads, something that continues to remain as just a sensation whether it subsides or blows up?
Then is it not true that the actual sensation is not what is traumatic, but it is the narrative that we attach to this sensation that causes the suffering? Is it not true that the sensation of ‘fear’ we feel in our body has no default good or bad quality to it, but it is the thought arising along with it that interprets and labels the vibration as ‘fear’? And if it is only a thought that randomly came into our attention that decided to manipulate our sensations as ‘fear’, then are we really the ones who are fearful?
“Just leave your thoughts in the background. Turn the volume down and refer directly to the sensation. If you don’t think about it, do you know the sensation is something called ‘fear’? Go to the sensation of the soles of your feet. Will you label that sensation fear or is it just a neutral, amorphous, tingling vibration? Now compare the sensation of the soles of your feet, which is just a neutral sensation, and the sensation in your chest. What’s the difference between them? Little bit more intense but apart from that, is there any difference?”
Rupert Spira
According to Spira, the ultimate message that suffering is trying to tell us is that we have mistaken ourselves to be separate, finite beings while we are truly the love-and-peace-personified Consciousness itself. But even if we are not yet ready to see that grand picture, at the very least seeing fear as only the sensation manipulated by thought that is not of our making will help us ease the death grip we place around our sensitive experiences. Because the more we sit with the label-free sensations and recognize their neutrality, our resistance to the thoughts and emotions surrounding these sensations would also begin to soften to the point that we feel okay being in the same space with them.
There is a story in the spiritual corners of the world about a headstrong hiker who set out to climb a mountain without any guides or fellow climbers along, as he wanted the pride and glory of the achievement all for himself. When he approached the summit in the dark of the night, he slipped and fell off a ledge into a crevasse with nothing to stop his fall.
As he was falling into the dark abyss gripped by the fear of death, he suddenly felt the safety rope cut short his fall. Dangling in midair with no chance of being saved, he blurted a prayer out aloud, “God, please save me!”
Miraculously, he heard a deep voice from the sky responding to his prayer. God asked, “What do you want me to do?”
The hiker, filled with gratitude, said, “Help me!”
God replied, “Do you trust me enough to do whatever I ask you to do?”
The hiker, desperate for help, pleaded, “Yes! Yes, I will do whatever you want me to do.”
God answered him in clear command. “If you really trust me, then cut your rope.”
The hiker hesitated, knowing that the rope was the only thing stopping him from falling to his death. So, he chose to hold the rope tighter and wait for help.
The next morning, a group of hikers found the man frozen to death, clutching the rope tightly, hanging only two feet above the ground.
The teachers of the nonduality world promise there is relief if we could brave the last leg of our fear-based experiences. There is an assurance that when we begin to see the real substance of our fears, we will realize that we are the space in which fear comes and goes, a space of Awareness that is untouched and ever present.
We only need to trust God/Pure Consciousness/ True Self to guide us close to our fears, for just behind the iron door of what we call ‘fear’, is peace waiting for us.
“There is a deep intelligence about your being—every part of your being – that is working for you. A little respect for yourself will bring you a lot closer to understanding that whatever arises is not a problem to be repressed or avoided. Feelings arise for very intelligent reasons, even if the little tool called mind cannot know why.”
Kiran Trace
