June 29, 2023 Video Class #6 (captions)
Meditation Course Class #6
Aaron: My blessings and love to you. I am Aaron.
I hope you’ve been practicing. I hope you’ve been able to practice with joyful objects more than challenging objects, but of course there will have been both.
I’ve been emphasizing to you everything will arise when the conditions are present for it to arise. It will cease when the conditions cease. You are part of the conditions that cause objects to arise or allow them to cease.
When you are contracted, afraid or angry at some object that has arisen, your contracted energy is part of what holds it to you.
When you can relax and greet it with a “Oh, hello, I see you have arrived,” and just be present with it without hysterics, without clamping down with fear or rage, it helps that object to release.
And when it’s a beautiful object that has come, your open heart helps it to stay more present in your experience.
When something unpleasant arises, like the skunk of our recent class—actually, it turned out to be a cat. But if it had been a skunk, skunks come. That which stinks come into your life.
And of course, there is aversion. Then often that aversion is compounded by negative thoughts, judgement and so forth, coming to the human, who thinks, “I should be calmer. I should have equanimity.” Well, why should you if there’s a skunk ten feet in front of you? Yours is a normal human reaction.
If something is very pleasant—the smell of fresh cookies baking from the kitchen. “Oh, I want that!” And grasping, and then more contraction, “I shouldn’t be grasping.” Well, you’re human. It’s a pleasant scent, of course there will be a pleasant sensation and a desire for the cookies.
In both these situations you’re very caught up in being an ego self, a somebody who should or should not. Somebody, the small self, takes liking into grasping, or dislike into strong aversion, and then into judgment of the self.
Compassion is essential here in either situation.
When pain comes up and then judgment of the human who is really disliking the pain, it’s just more aversion, more contraction, and heightens the pain.
So, we have two different things to look at here. One is simply opening more deeply to compassion so that it becomes an almost instant response to the experience of contraction.
Let’s try something here, then, just as an example of how this works.
Right now, you’re probably relaxed, listening to me. Maybe a little tension, “Am I getting what he’s saying?”, or something else, but mostly relaxed
In the next minutes, I’m going to shout loud. It’s going to startle you—probably going to startle you. I want you to watch the process. Hearing. You’ve been warned you’re going to be startled. Hearing, hearing. I assume there’s nothing unpleasant, even if it’s a loud shout. At least not terribly unpleasant.
With the startle, hearing. And then, almost immediately, the voice is gone. The shout is no longer happening. Your body is contracted.
Choiceless awareness. Three strong objects: the shout; the contracted, startled sensations in the body; and perhaps the aversion to them.
And then perhaps a fourth object, judgment. I should not be startled. I should not be averse to the startled experience. I should, I should, I should not. Judgment.
There’s a thread that is predominant through these, and that is contraction. Shout, contraction. Aversion to the shout, contraction. Startled sensation, contraction. Aversion to being startled, wanting to settle down, judging the self, contraction.
So, let’s see what happens. When I shout, as you observe the hearing, contracting, the whole flow of it happening fast, and then settle into contraction, if with that contraction there is strong judging of the self, know the judgement. Judging, contracted. Unpleasant experience, contracted. Wanting it to go away, grasping, contracted.
Let’s go that far, and then, breathing in, I am aware of the contraction. Breathing out, I have mercy for myself. Breathing in, making space around the contraction. Breathing out. Breathing in, kindness to myself. Breathing out, and so forth. I’ll guide you through it when we come to it.
So, it’s (shout!) pause.
Ah, contraction. Contraction. In contraction, just contraction. Nothing to fix. But it’s an unpleasant experience. Can you feel aversion to the contraction?
Now let’s try breathing in, I offer space to the contraction. Breathing out, I release some of the contracted energy.
Breathing in, aware of the contraction, spaciousness offered. Breathing out, exhaling the closed tightness.
Breathing in, opening space in my body, space for the contraction to just roll around.
Breathing out some of the contraction. Not pushing; whatever wishes to go. Releasing, releasing.
Breathing in space and releasing.
Breathing in kindness to this human, who so many times each day experiences some catalyst that invites contraction. An unpleasant physical sensation, an unpleasant thought, contracting.
Ah, right there with contraction, where is spaciousness?
Breathing in and feeling the lungs open, the shoulders open, the body open. Breathing out.
Breathing in a sensation of love. Maybe put your hands over your heart. Breathing out.
Breathing in and inflating the body, opening, opening, and breathing out.
Breathing in, (your name), and say, “I love you.” And breathing out.
Again, “I love you,” and breathing out.
Can you feel the increased spaciousness? Maybe a lot; maybe just a little.
Now, without telling you when, I’m going to shout again. I’ll keep talking for a bit and yeah, you’re warned, and all of you are tensing!
Just know a shout is going to come. It’s like being in the ocean and some waves are very small, and then there is a big one that slaps you in the face. And then it moves on to shore and the next wave is small again. There’s nothing fix, nothing you need to control. The shout will not hurt you.
But if there is present tension before the shout, just know it as tension, tension.
Breathing in, breathing out. Smiling to the tension. (Shout!)
Contracting, hearing, hearing. Hearing a shout. And startled, contracting.
Let’s go through it again. What do you do when there’s a contraction? What is predominant right now? The shout is no longer predominant. The energy from the shout may be predominant. Your body contraction may be predominant. What is predominant for you?
Breathing in and aware of contraction, of stress, of fear, of sadness, but especially of a body sensation, closed, tension. Breathing out, I offer space into that tension.
Breathing in and observing the whole body around that tension, spacious. Breathing out tension.
Breathing in space. Breathing out tension.
Breathing in space, and room for a smile. Breathing out tension.
Breathing in kindness, loving the self that is learning so skillfully how to handle loud noises, stress, pushes, unpleasant experiences. Ahhh….
Breathing in…then exhale, ahhh…
Breathing in…ahhh…
Breathing in…ahhh…
It is not so hard to pay attention to the whole body when it contracts and just stop and say, “contracting.” Preferably free of judgment, but if judgment arises, knowing judgment as another shout, the shout of judgment.
Each time, ahhh… Offering it space. (Shout!)
Did you contract less that time? I didn’t even warn you that it was coming.
You contracted, but you did not hold the contraction. Did you notice that?
Of course, you will contract; it’s a knee-jerk kind of body movement. If something punches at you, you contract. That’s part of being a mammal.
The issue is not whether there’s contraction but holding the contraction and the stories “I’m no good. I can’t do this. I’m helpless. I’m hopeless.” Ahhh….
The third time it may be no or further stories, just the startle that will come when something comes at you. Ahhh…
So I am human, and I startle when something pushes itself at me. Startled, contracting. Breathing in with mercy to this human. Breathing out fear and judgment.
Breathing in kindness. Breathing out fear and judgment. Ahhh…
We come to this point through practicing vipassana. Watching an object arise. Noting it has arisen. Contact, consciousness. Feelings of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Any move to negative thought. The move into aversion, or the move into grasping, if it’s a strongly desire object.
And then awareness noting aversion or grasping as an object, rather than being caught in them. This takes practice, just as if you were learning to play a piece on the piano, you would need to practice.
This takes practice, to be able to go from an unpleasant object to aversion. To noting, “Here is aversion.” It’s another object. Breathing in, I am aware of this aversion. Breathing out, I offer space to it.
Maybe only two or three breaths before the strong aversion is gone. There’s still an unpleasant object. You are able to be with it; it’s just an unpleasant object.
Someone we know related this week. Late at night he was driving his car down a highway, two lanes in each direction, with woods as divider between the lanes. A highway up in the north country. No cars, no traffic, but the ends of a storm that had been raging.
He came around a bend going 70mph—not speeding, not slow—and suddenly there was a mammoth oak tree lying completely across the road. At that speed, one moves 100 feet in a second, 200 feet in two seconds. Almost an eighth of a mile, in 6 seconds. A car going that speed cannot be stopped in 6 seconds.
Tension, tension. Here’s where your practice can save your life. If you freeze, you’re going to smack hard into it, maybe kill yourself. If you note, “Tree, tension,” even in those few seconds, you can control your car and put on your breaks, probably still seriously hurting your car, but not in the manner of (whomp!). Gentle.
Our friend broke into the branches. He swerved enough not to hit the trunk but the branches at the top of the tree, which all crumbled. An oak tree, crumbled his car, of course, totaled his car. But in the few seconds it took it to stop and finally impact the trunk, it had absorbed the energy of the crash.
The tree absorbed the energy as the branches broke off. The front of the car absorbed the energy as it crumpled inward. And he was totally uninjured. Car totaled, but he was uninjured because he was present. Because he was in that moment, seeing the tree, able to respond, not to react by slamming on the breaks and swerving and perhaps rolling and flipping over into the ditch.
Just the body knowing what to do. Putting on the brakes. Turning a bit. Allowing everything to absorb the energy of the punch.
Hitting a tree. I don’t mean literally hitting an angry person but being confronted by an angry person. Being confronted by a very frightening scenario of some sort, like a serious illness. In all of these situations, if you have been practicing, when there is contact and consciousness and feelings of unpleasantness, you’re going to move into spaciousness rather than contraction. And from that spaciousness you know what to do.
Then you don’t hit the trunk of a giant oak tree at 70mph and kill yourself. You just breathe and stop the car. Swerve. If somebody is raging in front of you, swerve, by which I mean find a different way to approach it. Back off.
There is so much spaciousness in your life. And all of the catalyst that come to you are an opportunity—may I say a teacher?—there to say, “You know what to do.” Let’s see if you can approach this catalyst with a heart-centered, open, loving manner. Your heart open. Fear? Yes. Anger? Yes. But still the open heart.
The open heart is always open. We talk about closed heart, open heart, closed heart, open heart, but this is not accurate. The open heart is always there and there is something in front of it which leads it to appear as closed. And when you release that which has armored, the open heart is accessible again.
From that open heart you can deal with even the strongest situations in your life. They may not be pleasant, but you grow from them. You learn the power of your love, of your kind attention, of your presence.
We’ll talk more about that in our next gathering. Thank you for letting me be with you today. I am Aaron.