The mind is a morass of sensations that fling themselves against the canvas, splattering their reception by laws of attraction and rejection. The observer may sit patiently, never being moved only moving, never seen only seeing, never the watcher and never the watched.
Or the observer may be cast outside by the tremors and insistence of its subject matter. Forces of delight pull the observer outside into a theater of dreams, not lucid. Forces of pain pull the observer outside the shell of being, subtly transforming a painful experience into a study – the study appears to itself and its own rationale objective and unintrusive, but it has forgotten the distance it has fled and the distance it insists remain, and the distance it silently hopes will increase.
The map is on fire, and the territory too
I begin with anxiety – a singularity of pressure that covers itself in drifting rags of static, shines sporadic torches of shrapnel, buries itself firmly in an unknown bedrock and knows how to swim through it too.
I begin with my relationship with anxiety – an unaware shame and cowardice that masks itself in the ruthlessness of a scientific gaze, and in the righteous purpose of an explorer hurrying to the mountain’s top.
Sometimes I sit and I watch. I find the breath, and intend to its count and characteristics, and the moment to moment surprise of a gaze that is directed without expectation of discovery. Sometimes I sit and I watch and the pain in my chest repeatedly drags me away from my intentions that were otherwise so bright with hope and purpose.
The spotlight of attention flickers, and the tension (often unacknowledged) builds up between my secret fear and the insistence and self-reliance of the pain. Repeatedly the sensitivity of the sensations are truncated by other places and things (thoughts, pains, wanderings of the mind) and the continuum of the breathing becomes a staccato of interruptions.
These movements are not the same as the freedom of a leaf sailing currents, or an awareness that flows from sight to sight with the ease of presence. It is not the saccades of self-awareness, although this too involves continuous flickering and orbits around a a sight. This is a self-awareness that does not know the denial that is the true container of its horizons. This is an intention to mindfulness that commits to further heights without permitting itself to succumb to the local minima that appear before it.
This difficulty, as described, is two-fold. It is the pain of a rejected emotion, and it is the pain of a rejected rejection. These two reference points leap forth from one another to become their own center, and in turn provoke new responses that repeat these ignorant repetitions.
Mindfulness that is and that isn’t
In the past I had sat to watch the breath, and distracted by a struggle that had become familiar – a pain in the chest that would insist upon its own permanence – would intend to watch the offence.
I had thought that I was being mindful of the pain. And I was, but I was unaware of some of the variables that were available; I had preset my intentions, adhering to a mindless agenda. In the past I had taken the pain as an object for observation. I would look at the pain, and use attempts at description (e.g. sharp, L-shaped, in the top of the chest, crystal barbs, purple wet) to bring my mind closer. I would intend to continuously watch the pain, no matter if it morphed or moved. When I noticed distraction by thoughts, I would return to the sensation. Sometimes if I sensed an impatience (esp. for the pain to dissipate in response to my unflinching attention) then I would use thoughts to soothe my hurry (e.g. telling myself that my intention for the current meditation is to watch the pain until the end, and that I should hold onto it and enlarge it even if it starts to fade or weaken).
The limitation I had not known was possible seems like this: there is a difference between seeing the pain akin to an external impression, and seeing the self that is carrying the pain. The first might be useful for learning to look at the pain, which is a prerequisite for being with the pain, and it might also be a study of concentrating on an emotional object (or object of dissatisfaction). But, especially if the goal is emotional rehabilitation by mindful recourse, then it appears to be that mindful experience of pain is a more direct route.
Mindfulness of experiential pain
Sit. Look and attend. Find the pain. Breath in, into the pain. This seems to combine the resistance of expanding the torso, with the sensation of resistance to the pain, with the innate dissatisfaction in pain. Attend to the location of the body, and be mindful of the self as residing in the body, most especially overlapping this residence with the location of the pain.
Then, breath out, relaxing with the pain. This seems to combine the release of relaxing the chest, together with the pain which may be mildly abated during this phase. Still attend to the location of the body, and be mindful of the cohesion of relaxing body and sensation.
It may be that the self morphs its shape to avoid and pull away from the pain. It may feel as if the self is split around the pain, so that the pain is watched slightly from without. In these cases it is useful to develop mindfulness of body, and to repeatedly return (especially during exhale) to the body’s form.
There is a trained repulsion to accepting pain. It may be helpful to use thoughts and intentions to redirect the mind towards accepting itself as unified with the pain. Perhaps when breathing in, think, “this pain is part of me, and I accept it despite its discomfort”, and when breathing out, think, “I accept myself (qua pained)”.
Over and over again the mind will flicker and shudder against and around accepting the pain. But the pain needs to be felt, and the rejection needs to be felt, and the endless rotation habituated between the pair needs to be felt. All that needs to be done is repeatedly breathe into the pain, and repeatedly relax with the pain breathing out.
There is nothing to be worked out, no scenarios to be simulated or considerations to be evaluated. The mind can be given a mission, but only a simple one, needing only direct experience of the pain, and no ratiocination or discursive thought: What does this feel like? This recommendation for attendance may strengthen the attendance of the mindfulness to the boundaries of the pain, and make it easier to integrate into self-recognized and identifying existence.
Many thoughts may arise, that try to dissect the pain, or calculate its origin, its semiotics, or strategies for its disappearance. These are distractions of a mind that recoils from its own suffering. But not everything that appears to the mind at these times must be ignored (temporarily). Memories of origin of previous pain may arise, and it may be beneficial to consider these as windows for further experience, to be experienced (and not analyzed).
Mirror of the skull
The efficacy of this practice can only be extrapolated by the progressions of its practitioner. This measurement may be contentious or conflated by the inevitable co-presence of life, so that either success or failure may be awarded blame elsewhere. But from the first person perspective there may be reports of the tendency of this method to foster a particular mind state, and from the third person perspective one may infer possibilities from first principles.
Scribblings from the field
I breath in and out, forcing my body’s container of self to encompass the pain, and relaxing with my form carrying the pain that softens with the falling chest. Persistence in the face of constant deflection and automated cringing and fleeing may result in a spans of continuous awareness of the self in pain. This persistence may result in sparks of awareness that express the pain qua its own understanding of its nature in accordance with its own memory of previous pains.
Persisting to attend to that memory of pain may be conjoined to a reliving a past trauma. The emotion of a past trauma may not be identical (and very different) to the present pain, and yet be a metaphor for its comprehension. The emotion of a past trauma may comprehend itself by its own metaphor; its own emotional memory.
A theory of body/feeling
It may be argued and extrapolated in accordance with idiosyncratic premises, that the phenomenon of feeling maps on easily but not necessarily to the mapping of the body.
Not necessarily because the feelings may be made as objects of attention without a body or even space map.
Easily because of a bio-phenomenological logic that is intuitive to anyone with a body, but arbitrary to a perspective without one.
Training the awareness to take the form of the body, makes it less difficult to take the form of the body during times of distress. Later, since the abstraction of feeling and emotions map easily, it may be easier to train awareness to encompass the form of the feelings.
A theory of craving/kamma
The suitability of awareness for release from emotional pain may be discussed via appropriation (nb. removed from context and ethos) of Buddhist phenomenology.
The urge to be free of pain is a mode of craving (for freedom from suffering). Amongst its directed causes are an identification of the mind with the sensation and feeling of the pain. The feeling of the pain is the co-present urge of rejection (and at time, attraction to sensations of comfort when the pain is not present).
A method for practicing mindfulness of pain may improve the habituated response (or kamma) to the pain. If one is constantly rejecting pain, then habituation and craving will cause repetition. If one is constantly rejecting rejection, then habituation and craving will cause repetition. Mindfulness creates a sheltering kamma, so that in the future pain may come and pain will go, but the cycle of suffering less evoked.
A theory of segregation/synthesis
It may be that suffering may be caused by rejection, that rejected emotions cause suffering, and that awareness synthesizes its objects into an uninterrupted frame of reference. In this model emotional suffering is caused by the segregation of the self whereupon the perceived source of internal suffering is expelled. In this model meditation soothes suffering by reuniting aspects of the self that were previously segregated.
Meeting oneself travelling on the journey
I walk alone on this path, and it is my path. I see myself approaching from beside me, and swing away to avoid myself. I look down on the path: perhaps there is only one shadow.
Or perhaps there are no shadows, and all the shadows mere steps along a road that can only ever traverses itself.
