Transcript:
When you suffer, you naturally want to get away from that state. When you're in pain, your mind goes to its opposite of not wanting to be in pain. If you're anxious and that overwhelms you, you don't want to be anxious. If you're very angry, there's a part of you that doesn't want to be angry, or you might want to be non-violent. If you're overwhelmed by sadness, at some point, you want to find a way out of that. That is a natural instinctive way of how your mind responds in trying to overcome your discomfort.
The issue is that it creates psychological time between where you are and where you want to be. Within that space, within that creation of psychological time, that trying to overcome you create all the other emotions that are possible, you're trying to achieve, you might fail, you get depressed, you get frustrated for not arriving. If you arrive, you have a sensation of achievement, a short moment of fleeting pleasure.
Then again, that cycle repeats itself because if the initial point of departure rests on a state of suffering then you will always come back to that. You will always gravitate back to that. When you're angry and you say to yourself, you should practice non-violence. That non-violence still rests initially on a state of anger and so something will upset you, or bring you out of balance, out of that idea of non-violence that you've created, and will put you back in touch with the anger.
The same goes with anxiety. You might do courses of being more assertive, being more willful, but eventually, it's a superficial layer that you've created on top of that anxiety, and you fall back into the anxiety the moment your energy starts to drop. It's important to realize that psychological time is the perpetuation of suffering and the moment you stop that movement of achieving, of getting somewhere, of becoming. Then you close the gap of dissociation. You close the gap of psychological time and hence you stop suffering.
I bought your trauma care meditations and they are amazing. I don’t understand how psychological time relates to dissociation. I know the general idea is we should not oppose or fight negative feelings that are coming up. We should stay with them mindfully. I understand dissociation because it was a coping strategy I used for years. Your trauma care meditations explain dissociation very well. Are you saying when we fight uncomfortable feelings, this is a type of dissociation?
Correct, as described in the above video. The moment you try to overcome any emotion, through striving towards its opposite, you are creating duality which is a form of dissociation.
I remember, so long ago, when my husband passed, and so long ago, when my father passed, that I instinctively felt that it was absolutely necessary to move through the pain, not go around it or try to change it. For my body and mind to experience the pain, the grief of the loss, and to not try to distract myself, or give an allowance of time in which I should feel better, etc. Is this what you are talking about, Roland? Are you talking about letting your body and your mind process the difficult emotions and experiences?
Indeed. The trouble is that we either dissociate or drown in the emotions. Neither is helpful. The key is enough containment so you are able to process the emotions while moving through them. Will make a video on containment soon.
Thank you. I’ll watch for the video.