While walking or working or driving, being at home or on vacation we are bombarded by thoughts and sense contacts (sights, sounds, smells, etc.) Many of these thoughts and sense contacts pass in and out of awareness and leave no echo. In the same way when we drive we see many sights (trees cars, buildings, lakes) and hear many sounds that pass through awareness with little or no echo. However, there is often one sight or one sound that reminds us of something either consciously or subconsciously and we lose our connection to the mindfulness of now and are off into a detour of circular thoughts about the past or future.
We may be driving a blue car, which is just the same color as a blue car that our uncle had when we were a kid, and the next thing we become aware of 5 miles down the road is the thought about a trip to the Catskill Mountains and camping. Where did that come from? The sense contact of the blue car triggered a memory of your uncle’s blue car and that triggered a memory of being a kid which led, to freedom in the summer and then to summer camp and then to camping. Probably a good memory but just as often it could lead to the opposite and leave you in a foul mood for hours.
Meditation gives us the practice to become more mindful and not get lost in the detours of the mind that are continually coming up almost every moment. We do have free will but we need to be mindful to exercise and steer our thoughts and actions like we direct and steer our cars.
Sense contacts all during the day create desire to get more of what we like and to want less of what we do not like. The problem is not the sense contacts nor the desire or wanting that the sense contacts trigger. The problem is that we think getting what we want will give us the happiness that we think we are missing. But we all have had the experience that when we do get what we want the happiness lasts for a short time and then we are back wanting something else in what appears to be a never ending circle.
The problem is that we cling to the desire and it pulls us out of mindfulness. We get lost in the detour not of the desire itself but in the clinging or stickiness that it creates in us. If you grasp this thought you will see that the common thread to all the desire and all the wanting is the clinging. And that the clinging (its sensation and insistence) is the same no matter what the desire or wanting is.
The key then is to become able to separate the clinging from the desire. You can think of it as breaking down an emotion. An emotion is made up of energy and thoughts. If you are angry it is made up of a lot of energy and thoughts about what you are angry about. If you separate the energy from the thoughts you are left with energy in the body (felt as sensation, energetic movement, strength, willfulness) and the thoughts about the anger. When you think about it the energy can be the same and depending on the thoughts that accompany it the emotional state will differ. Happy has energy and happy thoughts. Sad has less energy and sad thoughts. Exuberance has a lot of energy and action thoughts.
Using meditation as practice to be mindful, you can become aware of the separation of emotional thought from its energy and then redirect or steer the energy in the direction of your choosing.
The trick is to notice you are not mindful, which is usually due to wanting something or resisting something. Name the emotional state. Ask yourself what am I resisting? Separate the energy from the thoughts about it. And immediately redirect your actions to the opposite of what the resistance is about. Yes, it takes strength and free will to be able to redirect your actions. However, the longer you wait the more the resistance will fester and the more you will become lost in that detour (and the longer to find your way out and back to mindfulness).
It’s all about energy. Sense contacts bring up desire. Desire brings up energy. We have the free will to develop and use that energy as we choose. If you are stuck on how to direct the energy and your actions you can try one of the four heavenly abodes compassion, loving kindness, sympathetic joy and equanimity. With any one of these the redirected energy will also shift your thoughts as you are now steering in the direction of happiness and mindfulness.
Michael
The alchemy of suffering
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