Transcription
You know, many people recognize directly that something about thought causes a kind of dysphoria. Something about thinking or something about the way we experience thought causes us to feel anxious, uncomfortable. I just use the term dysphoria, which means essentially uncomfortable in some way. This is pretty widely recognized, I would say. Uh, what's interesting is that it's possible to recognize this momentarily but then kind of go back into the problem itself. You can kind of hide in the discomfort in a certain way that allows you to forget about the discomfort. This is the strange world of thought identification where we identify with thought. It's like a house of mirrors, as I described in my book. Um, lost in this house of mirrors. You can convince yourself of all kinds of things, which is very odd. Uh, you can convince yourself that you feel in ways that you don't actually feel. You can conveniently forget that you feel really uncomfortable. You can forget that you feel anxious. That you're, um, your inner world is kind of laden with a lot of fears. Uh, I don't mean to laugh because the fears, when we repress them and when we avoid them, seem so daunting, but it's amazing that we can kind of avoid that and like suppress it somehow or avoid it by the way we think. Um, and not only that, it, it is taught to us through a lot of means, certain kinds of uh, self-help approaches and so forth. Uh, actually, without realizing it. I think even I think even the people who teach this stuff don't don't realize what they're doing. But it teaches us to actually avoid the discomfort of thought. It, it teaches us to overlook the dysphoria that's inherent in a certain way of thinking. Uh, but that's really not the the the point of this whole video.
So the point of the video is more to just point out that it is reasonably common that people at some point realize that their thoughts are uncomfortable. That there's something about thinking and the way we think about ourselves that just causes us to suffer, causes us to feel unsatisfied. Uh, and again, causes us to want to go sort of unconscious in thought in another way. Uh, so that's good news. It's good news that we're aware of the problem, so to speak. Uh, the the challenge arises, uh, beyond the moment when we realize there's something inherently uncomfortable about thought. The challenge being that we don't really know what to do about it. And strangely, one of the most common things we do, aside from avoiding seeing it, which I just mentioned, is we, we struggle with it. We resist it. And this can, um, sneak in pretty quickly into like say, spiritual practices, meditation, uh, mindfulness practices, where we're either subtly or not so subtly actually resisting thought. We're like trying to push it away. We're trying to make it an object of our experience. Um, but I want to say something about this, and and that is just seeing that thoughts are uncomfortable and then taking up some kind of approach or practice to addressing thoughts in a different way to, let's just say, becoming more aware of thoughts. That in and of itself is good. It's not the whole answer, but it's, it's a good thing that we're just actually taking the time, taking the opportunity to start to recognize thoughts as such. That's a good thing. Uh, but again, it does often lead to a kind of resistance or frustration. Um, partially it's because the the emotions that we've repressed through being identified with thought start to actually come a little bit more to the surface as we become aware of thought, and we sometimes think it's actually the thoughts that are doing that, whereas maybe it's years of certain emotions we've been repressing, like fear or things like that. So some of it is that some of that emotions just coming up, but also some of it is that we do tend to sort of resist thoughts. So we tend to push thoughts away, and that can even become extreme to the point where we have this kind of disassociation or dissociation experience where we can actually set up this kind of freeze state within oursel, within our mind, even to the point where the mind can go blank or we can feel, uh, derealized and and so forth. So all of those things can happen, and those are various types of resistance.
So this is mostly what I wanted to talk about. It is a big step to become aware that thoughts are uncomfortable. It's another big step to start to actually slow down and go, okay, well, let me look at what's actually happening here. Let me become aware of my thoughts. At this point, uh, I really want to be clear that doing both of those things is great. And it's really important to start to notice what it feels like to add resistance to the experience because you don't want to do that. So notice if you're really struggling with yourself, if you're really feeling like you're trying to force thoughts to do something or force your mind to stop or be quiet or pushing thoughts away or pushing and pulling on thoughts. If you feel any of this happening, just notice, okay, there is there is resistance going on. And then the number one thing here is if you notice resistance, if you notice yourself resisting thoughts or there's some resistance happening, maybe that it doesn't even feel like you're doing on purpose. Um, first of all, just go easy on yourself. Notice, oh, okay, this is just resistance. This is a good thing that I'm aware of it. Because in this process, anything you become aware of is good. Anything you become aware of is just more clarity. It's more you're you're moving in the right direction, but it can be uncomfortable to see what you haven't been seeing. So, you know, don't beat yourself up when you see that there's resistance. Actually, just notice, okay, this is what it feels like to feel resistance. Feel where you feel it in your body. Your body is kind of mapping this. So, feel your body when you feel resistance. Where do you feel it? And sometimes just relaxing those areas of the body can soften this resistance. Sometimes it can dissipate it completely. So maybe you're feeling it in your jaw or your face or your, your eyes even. Just notice, try to relax those muscles a little bit. Yeah, you can, you can even contract in your eyes by like squinting your eyes or trying to focus to something really close, and that can actually tense the muscles in and around your eyes, believe it or not. But also in your face, your jaw, even your neck. These are common places to to tense up when we're we're starting to become aware of thoughts and and noticing resistance. So if that happens, just relax. Relax your face. You know, you can move your jaw around and open your mouth and move your, you know, massage your face muscles, purposely relax your face. Take some slow breaths, relax your neck, relax your chest. Just feel into your body and relax it. Let it, let it relax naturally. Give it some, some time to do this. That relaxation does help. It really does. It'll help you not back this resistance by a physical resistance.
Once you've done that, uh, what I really recommend here is a very gentle approach to thought, a gentle approach with thought. And the way you get to this gentle approach is instead of thinking in terms of a doing, right? Like stopping my thoughts or pushing my thoughts away or, um, hammering my thoughts down or something. People imagine all kinds of wild things with thoughts. So instead of something that feels like a doing or a pushing or a control, the, the gentle approach that I'm talking about is more like curiosity. It's, it's like a simple noticing. You could say, notice how simple noticing actually is. Like right now, notice the colors in front of your face. Notice the sensations in your body. Did you actually do something to notice, or did the noticing, it just happened? It's already there. It's so simple, right? You don't have to cause experience to happen. Experience is just happening. So the noticing of the experience and the experience essentially are one thing, one one event. So approach this with like a kind of simple noticing instead of any kind of resistance, pushing, pulling, or like applying some kind of hard, uh, practice to your thought. Again, just notice, oh, if there's some resistance, relax. And then just notice how thought moves. Notice how it feels, the thought space itself, the thinking, so to speak, the movement of thought, the movement of mind. If there's images or are images in the mind, just notice what they appear as. Not notice the images without analyzing the images. Right? Don't add thought to this without trying to concentrate and change the image or hold on to an image. Just notice it. Notice that space that the image seems to be appearing in. Yeah. Notice the, the, if there's a narrative. Just, just get close to that. Get close to the, the, the speak inside the mind, the self-speak or the voice or the narrative or the, whatever that thinkingness is. Just get close to it out of curiosity. Um, very gently, just simple curiosity. You're not trying to change it at all, not trying to make it not be there. You're not trying to analyze it. So, you're not pushing on it. You're not pulling on it. Just noticing, noticing how it moves. Noticing how thought moves. And then you start to notice that thought, and you could say thought, if it's appearing, it's appearing in contrast to something, right? For instance, if you see something that's a black spot on a white wall, you're not going to notice a black spot on a white wall unless there's a white wall, right? Black spot on a black wall is just black. White spot on a white wall is just white. In the same way, a thought, if a thought's appearing, it's actually in some kind of contrast. You could say it seems like it is. So notice what is it in contrast to, or a different way of saying it is, what is this thought appearing in? Notice the spaciousness in which this thought is perceived. Right now, notice the spaciousness in which a thought is forming, disforming, morphing, changing, dissolving, reappearing. You can notice all of that at the same time as you notice the entirety of the space in which it's happening. That's the second part of this. But again, gentle noticing, a kind of expansion of noticing, instead of a narrow focus, noticing a kind of expansion and openness of noticing. Notice the entirety of that space in which thought is forming.
And then third, notice you notice the sense of you, the thinker, or you, the one that's observing the thought, or you, the one that's contemplating, or you, the one that's listening to this. Just notice that space. Whatever that space is. You don't have to try to find it precisely. Again, that's effort. You don't have to pin it down. That's a practice or technique. You don't need to do that. Just notice it. Notice the spaciousness of whatever feels like you. That's it. And then notice that spaciousness has the same quality as this thought and the space holding thought. It's spacious. Kind of doesn't have an end or a beginning. When you're simply noticing it, it doesn't have boundaries, doesn't really have a center, doesn't have an edge, it doesn't have a top or bottom. It's spacious. The sense of I, the sense of of you, right? Sense of what feels like you is spacious. Just like a thought, and whatever thought is appearing in is spacious. Just like the thought, the spaciousness, and you are all continuous. It's all one spacious substance, let's call it, or spacious knowingness. But there's no observer apart from it. If you've really clearly recognized what I'm talking about when I say the noticing of the sense of you, the noticing the sense of of of the center of what you are, the simplest aspect of what you are, this, the most basic aspect of just being awake to even hear this in the most basic way, to perceive this in the most basic way. If you've sensed that and you're able to just notice, okay, yeah, I can't pin it down precisely because you're it. You're not gonna turn back and look on yourself, but you can sense it. It's definitely something that can be sensed. Of course, it's you. Yeah. Notice that that is not apart spatially from anything that's perceived by it. Just notice that. Don't make conclusions. Don't judge yourself on whether or not you think that's true. I mean, just notice what's happening. Just notice what's simply happening in the spaciousness of what feels like you. In the spaciousness of what it feels like thoughts are forming within, including images, narratives. The movement of that spaciousness may may feel like fluid, like like ocean with waves, right? Eddies and waves and currents. That spaciousness. We could call it consciousness, but there's not really a need to name it anything. Just notice it. Notice you've never left it ever. As long as you've ever perceived anything, it's been here. And then and then notice since it's been here this whole time, as it's been here this whole time, it's really never changed. You could say aspects of it have been more or less pronounced maybe somehow like a thought, but ultimately that which is aware of the thoughts, that which is holding the thoughts, that which is a sort of substratum for thought, that has never gone anywhere. Doesn't come or go. It doesn't have that coming or going in the sense that the, the perception of an event comes and goes. The perception of a moment comes and goes. This expanse, this this knowingness, it doesn't really come and go. It's just simply there. Simply awake, simply aware.