become a wizard of ahs

What happens when we sit down to meditate? We begin to see the movements of mind. Many of the movements are away from the perceived objects of our experience. Let’s call this the movement of rejection.

There’s an itch, or a jarring sound, or an sudden upheaval of thoughts, and if we look carefully there is usually some tiny micro-moment when we say no to that experience.  Huge strata of our personality may be formed by millions of unexamined micro rejections leading to a baseline restlessness as a constant background hum in the mind.

We could also say there are counter movements of rushing after other types of experiences we feel are pleasant–ego aggrandizing fantasies, indulgences, judgments. But every time there is a preference or indulgennce  in one aspect of our experience can we see that there is a simultaneous rejection of another?

When we say this usually inaudible, pre-verbal ’no’ in the mind, it sets in motion a division and sets the stage for inner conflict. We take sides with one of these self-created divisions in our own mind, and it is as seemingly innocuous as a reaction to a sound of a car going by as we settle down to meditate on the breath.

A subtle snowball of rejection can start. There is little psychic build-up and we don’t ant to fell this. So it gets covered up and defended against, and resisted more. You may become aware that you are pushing away  little psychic snowball and reject that you are rejecting.

Welcome to the vicious cycle of rejection, division, and conflict that is our mind. Although the mind couches this all as a rejection of some external thing (the car, our partner, etc), progress happens when we can see this as a rejection of our own experience. It’s a rejection of our-self.

Watching our two children go from little babies into young children has really help me see some of the processes that often go unnoticed in meditation practice. With this cycle of rejection process I recall when our fist child Uila was a baby, how her little body would express the natural tension from hunger or the need to void. Then the flow into tension reduction as Katina or I would help soothe her back into a return to contentment.

Sometimes if there is a delay in tension reduction, if a parent is not available emotionally, the return to contentment doesn’t get established as a norm. There can be a disturbance is feeling an innate confidence in our own return to contentment.

I like to consider this innate confidence a trust in the natural flow of experience. When there is an erosion of this basic trust we start to lose confidence in our-self. There is a primitive split in the mind. The self is split against itself.

We see this over and over in our mind as we mediate (most of us, anyway,I would say). We replay this dynamic over and over again. Much of meditation initially is watching ourselves get swamped  by the movements of the mind.

We see that although we want to accept our inner experience, it ain’t easy. Much of what we call our self , our ego, was formed by millions of rejections. Rejection is the coin of the realm of self. One could even say that a personality formed as a rejection of the warm, deep expanse of the timeless nature of being. Perhaps.

We need to start someplace in our meditation. We start by seeing that many of our initial experiences in meditation are witnessing attempts at acceptance are actually just more subtle forms of rejection.

There’s a line from Krishnamurti which comes up a lot for me:

“If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.”

The moment you start thinking of changing yourself you are rejecting yourself. This is so clear in meditation.

So what to do?

Simple. 3 points:

relaxation

observation

non-interference.

The skill ids not necessarily to say yes to our inner experiences in meditation but simply o see how we are rejecting them at a subtle level.

(to be continued) ….