Liberating Emotions: Part One
Directions for touching awake awareness
Last night I walked around in a daze. I had just been told about the death of someone I used to know. At dinner, I listened as college students shared their worries and concerns. I was reminded of the seasons of a life stretching from end to end. The emotions we experience seem so important at any point in time, so crucial. A few years later, the same emotions come up for us in completely different contexts. We discover ways of coping that involve distractions and the pursuit of pleasure. We may experience frozen emotion that causes us to be depressed and/or anxiety that prevents us from relaxing and letting go. This typically goes on, in one form or another, for a lifetime. There has to be a way to live without covering up all the time.
Feeling what’s there. What would that be like? If you’re like me, you’ve run from emotion all your life. In one way or another, we find ways to bury emotion and distract ourselves from pain. Emotion becomes a part of our story.
What would it be like to just feel …. Everything?
This path offers such a way. Feeling what is, being with what arises. Without the story, emotion becomes energy that can be worked with. Without the burden of a conceptual story, emotions flood the landscape with openness and aliveness. Feelings become bright and vivid. As we go deeper into this transformative experience, the energy of emotion becomes raw, alive, powerful, and usable.
Emotion + Story
What is this experience of raw emotion? Met with openness, an initial glimmer of emotion appears prior to the full presentation. Following this, the emotion arises as energy in the body, then disappears. An emotion, vividly experienced and empty of desire, sparks into existence and the flame burns brightly.
But emotion is seldom experienced. Instead, we fall back into the safety of the conceptual mind. Suddenly there is emotion + story. Lightning quick, raw emotion becomes story. A narrative happens. Language and image interact with memory and imagination.
Unending commentary incorporates the emotion. The mental narrative may be pleasant, harsh, or demanding. Captured by the conceptual mind, the emotion is never expressed, never felt. Instead, the combination of story + emotion is a kind of closed loop. Because the raw emotion is never actually experienced, it keeps returning. We remain glued to the story of me, fueled by desire, avoidance, and indifference. This is all quite seductive and difficult to resist, in part because it is hard to recognize. Even when terribly painful, it always seems like my life.
The path we are travelling offers a different way. The rest of this post transitions into practice direction. I want to break down how we can experience emotion without story. This practice requires a preliminary step, which is the ability to touch awake awareness, however briefly. Once that has occurred, we can begin the practice of experiencing raw emotion within that awake space. If you engage in these practices with patience and persistence, you cannot fail.
My goals in writing these posts are two-fold. For those who have never experienced awake awareness or had initial glimpses of this state, Part One describes how to touch this awake space and how to stabilize awake awareness. Part Two introduces the self-liberation of emotion. These parts of the path take some time. So let’s go!
Directions for touching awake awareness
To touch awake awareness, first get into a settled, relaxed space with a shamatha practice and/or energy practices, such as certain pranayama techniques. I had one friend who dropped into a stable, relaxed, and focused state by playing the drums, so there are lots of ways in. If you just started meditating, this step might take a while. It’s useful to work with a teacher who can help you develop good habits conducive to this relaxed and focused state. There are many helpful books, both modern and ancient, that provide specific direction.
Once you can access stable mental clarity, the next step is to use a technique to look into the nature of reality. The formal name for this part of the path is vipashyana. Awake space is what you are attempting to contact. Other names for what’s being contacted include spaciousness, vastness, and emptiness-awareness. What’s important to understand is that you are searching for an experiential knowing.
When you are in a relaxed and focused state, there are many practices that can be used to move towards awake awareness. They involve seeing through. For example, Mahamudra techniques instruct us to look for the one who is experiencing a sight, sound or body sensation. Where is the you who is hearing? Where in the mind or the body is she located? Actively look for this experiencer. Where can it be found?
When doing this practice, habitual thought is a source of difficulty. We misunderstand the crucial need for experiential knowing. The mind turns the questions into puzzles for the mind to solve.
Where is the you that is hearing?
The mind says, “Ok, got it. I can’t find it. What’s next?” These mental solutions are always wrong. When your mind hijacks the process, simply return to your shamatha practice, make sure you are in a relaxed, focused state, and keep looking. If you find yourself getting pissed off or discouraged, simply stop. Establish your shamatha, then move forward. This part of the practice may take some time.
So you are looking for the inner source that takes in experience. WHO is hearing the bell? Who is seeing the table? Where is that inner source of knowing located? Look everywhere in the body and the brain. Keep looking systematically until it is crystal clear.
Here is a helpful quote from Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche:
“When you are in rigpa, whatever appears is like a reflection in a mirror. It is appearing, yet empty; the mirror and the reflection are not apart or different. The reflection is visible but there is nothing tangible, nothing to hold; although there is nothing tangible, it still appears.” From Vajra Heart Revisited, p. 23
So you see there? That is a great description of what we are after! Seeing emptiness does not mean tuning into formlessness or contacting the void. Not at all. Rather, it’s much weirder than that! Presentations of form and vast spaciousness present together. There’s something happening, something being experienced, but that something is not solid. Furthermore, the perceiver of the thing happening cannot be located! This is truly weirdness beyond any reasoned outcome!
A reminder: This is not a mental technique! If you start to tell yourself “I found it” or “I can’t find it”, stop and go back. Be willing to start over many times, going back to your shamatha practice. Then move forward again, looking, looking. Be content with actively looking, for as long as it takes. Look as though trying to experience a single raindrop falling on a pool of water. Hold an intention of looking carefully, systematically. If you take joy in this looking, you are on the right track.
We may need to do this practice for a while, over a period not measured by time. The practice leads us to know a bright display occurring together with emptiness.
Once you experience a sound combined with the surety that no-one is hearing; a visual display and no-one here to see; and internal sensations without a person to sense them, then you are touching into awake awareness. This is a beautiful space combining vividness and freedom.
At first, touching awake space is fleeting. You may gain a clear sense of emptiness and form that lasts for just a few seconds. This is a normal part of the process. In fact, congratulations are in order; you are progressing on the path! Now make a new goal for your practice: to stabilize the awake awareness. The way to stabilize the awareness is simple: you hold the intention and keep practicing.
So that’s enough for Part One. If this writing opens the tiniest window in your heart-mind, it will be worth it. Part Two will describe a way to deepen practice by experiencing emotion within awake awareness.