When Thought, Emotion and Sensation seem to cancel out Being
There are times when we feel unwaveringly calm within ourselves, unconcerned about pushing parts of life away, unconcerned about keeping states apart in order to secure peace for ourselves. There’s a sense of being anchored in presence, of being essentially immune to everything that arises. Everything is fine. Nothing touches this spaciousness, it doesn’t judge or attack - it’s pure serenity without context or form.
Then, it’s cancelled out all of a sudden, by an uncomfortable feeling of unease… disturbing thoughts come and there’s discomfort in the body. Something is wrong. One becomes preoccupied with solving the problem, of coping with the emotion and adjusting the physical position as to move away from pain. Serenity is lost and there’s conflict all over the place that screams for one’s attention. Sometimes it can be remedied and sometimes it can’t – one just has to wait for it to go away.
There’s a lot of advice on healing floating around. People devote their lives to assist other people in their healing journeys, trying to crack the code of the mind as to free the victim within, or to build the identity as to make it stronger and more convinced of it’s freedom. There are elaborate plans accessible from various people about how to go about processes of undoing dysfunctional programming and rewire the brain to produce positive experiences. It’s sound all good and well – until one starts to go deeper.
Healing, in terms of turning pain into pleasure, is anti-life. It is to attempt to walk toward pleasure and away from pain, deliberately trying to separate the two states, knowing that they depend on each other for existing. Healing, in this sense, perpetuates truth as a contradiction, as relative and meaningless. Health only exist in comparison with disease, it’s is a relative thing, completely dependent on the degree of illness. It’s meaningless on it’s own. In other words, it’s non-existent on it’s own.
This realization is a difficult one to digest, because it seems to contradict Life as independent of Death. There’s no point in healing because it’s directly linked to pain. One is stuck in a cycle, going around in circles trying to remedy something that was all part of a sad script with no purpose. The saying “pleasure and pain are the same” is very accurate. The two polarities are constantly interchanging. Life has “ups and downs”, at least that’s what is commonly experienced. Some perceive themselves to grow through life’s roller coasters, attempting to romanticize the so-called “journey”. Some are less gullible and curse life for its cruel tricks.
Experience is not Life. This is the first thing that needs to be established. As long as experiences of pleasure and pain are given any connection to truth, one is trapped in duality – and, as a result, trapped on a scale of polarity. There’s a place from which all phenomena is watched that is insubstantial and indescribable because it has no distinct attributes. This is space, pure Presence and pure Being. It’s the only consistent and reliable thing in this world, because it’s not really of this world. It’s unbothered by thought, emotion and sensation.
Healing that is undertaken because of the desire to get out of pain is not real healing because it’s not permanent. By confirming oneself as the sufferer of pain one has condemned oneself to sickness. Life is all abiding, but it’s up to the individual to confirm this for himself. As long as dysfunction has purpose in our minds, it will remain a reality for us. When it’s not seen as needed anymore, it is gone. When discomfort arises, in whatever form, it’s because one has confused the self with something that is untrue. Do not seek to remedy something that is illusory. It’s better to establish one’s own identity firmly – and let the things that don’t belong fall away.
