“You're never ever ever ever there.” - Cake
I think we run in to trouble when we have an unhealthy relationship with things that arise. When I talk about “things that arise”, I’m referring to not only external events and circumstances, but the thoughts, feelings, and emotions that arise, either as a reaction to those external events and circumstances, or seemingly “out of nowhere”, triggered by a memory or an expectation or whatever else.
In these essays (for lack of a better word), I’m generally referencing addiction since that’s where most of my troubles arise, but the same goes for any sort of psychological suffering we may be subject to; depression, chronic anger, etc. Take your pick.
We might find that our reactions to these arisings can continuously take us down painful paths. Pulled by desire. Pushed by the avoidance of emotional pain and discomfort. We might conclude that it is our relationship to these things that is causing our problems. Endless time has been spent, studies done, books written to investigate how to improve our relationship with these experiences to result in a better outcome. Maybe shut them out to prevent them from hurting us. “Thought-stopping” exercises. Or perhaps work on bringing a sense of acceptance and understanding to them, a mindfulness of the arisings so that we can react in a healthier way. Maybe work on befriending these thoughts, feelings, and emotions so that we can understand them when they arrive, and allow them teach us rather than allow them to control us.
An endless variety of relationship advice.
I would like to suggest a different, more radical approach for when these things arrive at your door, which is to not be there at all.
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“What?”
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For this, we can think of our life like a snowglobe. We assume, and are taught (and thus the assumption is reinforced) that the content of the snowglobe is the world we live in — there’s a little mountain, a little tree, a little house — and we are the little character in there, doing their best to get through the day, get the house in order, maybe find time to enjoy the mountain and the tree, and survive the inevitable storms. This is a great visualization, because it works in both a figurative and literal sense. Sometimes we must bear the brunt of an internal blizzard of emotions… and sometimes it actually snows outside! Not so different.
The globe is shaken, the storm begins. Now, instead of imagining yourself as the little character in there, thrown around in the tumult, imagine yourself as the globe itself. The sphere in which the tumult is contained.
The globe experiences none of the storm. The globe is silent and imperturbable. The globe has no relationship whatsoever to the cacophony, other than a perpetual, disimpassioned willingness to hold its contents, regardless of the violence contained within.
Standing as the globe, the silent, transparent field in which all experience occurs, none of the contents have any power to sway you. No rise of anger, ache of desire, flush of rage can leave a stain. It arises, it dissipates. The glittery snow swirls for a moment, and then settles, and having no relationship with it, having not been there at all, you remain unmoved, untouched.
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“What?”
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This all may sound like a bizarre flight of fancy, some sort of psychological trick at best, a psychotic break at worst, but consider this: The scenario of you-as-the-globe far more accurately describes every moment of every day of your (and everyone’s) entire life than you-as-the-contents. Even right now.
Look! Every experience, thought, emotion, event, even self-conception, no matter how joyous or painful, comes and goes. Only one thing ever remains, which is this invisible, dimensionless, ever-present field in which the experience takes place. You cannot claim to have a relationship to any of the contents, because you can never find the one thing that is always with you, that you, in fact, are referring to when you say “I”, and it is that field of consciousness itself, in which things arise and fall away, but which itself, having no definable characteristics, is ultimately and eternally immovable and pristine. This is your actual experience. This is who you are.
You were never there to begin with.
If you get back in trouble, it means you got mesmerized by the swirling glittery snow, the little mountain, the little tree, the little house, and you forgot who you were.