So this morning I’m running a meditation class close to home. I’m going straight into it today by the way - no faffing about. I’ve woken up with a distinct aura of grumpiness.
I’ve been doing it for about 2 months. When it started out, I had quite a few people turn up. Then it petered down to 1. The past few weeks it’s been empty. Every week. Just to be clear, this isn’t a promotional newsletter asking you to please come to my meditation class. I’m purposefully not going to tell you when or where it is exactly.
What I want to talk about is the conflict between accepting that I cannot control who comes to the class and the path that my ego goes down, which is usually something like:
Am I a shit meditation teacher? What’s the point in me doing this if no one is turning up each week? Fuck this, I might as well take my Saturday mornings back.
As I’m writing this, there’s a definite pull towards the latter.
The reality is that, even if no one turns up, I at least get to sit in the room and do my own meditation practise (which invariably makes me feel pretty relaxed for the rest of the day).
It’s almost amusing to step back from the emotion and watch how my ego is, essentially, having a little tantrum/crisis of confidence. That might sound a little weird, stepping back from my emotion, but it’s a core trick that I’ve learned over the years and one that you can cultivate through a lot of this self awareness work.
You’re putting an extra step in the workflow between emotion and thought. A feeling arises and before it’s able to stick it’s tendrils into the orifices of your thinking you catch it, observe it, and question it.
If you’ve ever done any programming, it’s like putting a break point in your thought processes and debugging what’s going on. It doesn’t stop you from feeling it, but it does give you a little peek behind the scenes of your mind.
This all might sound a little bit weird and esoteric. Behind the scenes of my own mind? What the fuck are you talking about David? How can I as the mind look behind the scenes of the mind?
There’s this spiritual teacher called Mooji who described how the whole process works in a really elegant way, and I’m going to borrow it here to try and help get the point across.
So Mooji talks about the mind being like the sky. You’ve got the clouds, which represent the thoughts moving through the mind (your ego). Above that you’ve got the blue sky, always present and clear. That blue sky represents your awareness.
When it’s a clear sunny day and there aren’t many clouds in the sky, that’s us on a good day. The thoughts come in and they don’t cause much of a disturbance. Imagine then, when there’s a storm, it’s raining and there’s lightning and the clouds are doing their turbulent grey dance. That’s when we’re angry or upset or in the grip of some intense emotional state.
If we exist in the ego during that storm, then we’re going to get buffeted and thrown about along with it. What we forget is that the sky is still there above that storm. All clear and blue and peaceful.
When we’re inside the ego, it’s like we’re looking up at the clouds from below. When we’re the awareness, we’re looking down at them from above - outside of their influence in that space of peace.
We don’t not feel the emotion, it’s just that we don’t exist inside the emotion. That separation is what allows us to observe it and start to question what’s going on. To turn the lens of awareness inwards and probe what we’re experiencing in that moment.
Our challenging thoughts and emotions become tools through which we can better learn about ourselves, rather than dragging us into a quagmire of self-loathing, anger, bitterness, or whatever other negative adjective you care to insert here.
I appreciate if you’re new to this then the idea of observing instead of being the emotion must sound impossible. It’s not, and I can say that with all certainty, but it requires effort and practise and a lot of slip ups along the way.
There are days when I find it difficult to not be the emotion and I’ve been doing this sort of thing for a while. In those times, it’s all about exercising self-compassion. OK, I’m upset or angry. Let’s just feel it and be present with it. No judgement. No attachment. It will pass. It will pass.
I feel better now. Thanks for the vent. I’m off to teach a class to an empty room.
Much love
David