Rupert Spira: Why Does the Separate Self Keep Coming Back?

Hi. And yeah, hi to everybody. Uh my name is Lucas. I'm from Germany and living in Cyprus. And I thank you uh all for this really wonderful week that um yeah, it was my first retreat and um yeah, I really loved every second of it. So, thank you everybody. Um my question is about something that I struggled with for quite a while now. Um yeah, obviously especially uh this week and um I have prolonged um days of of the deep sense of oneness and um when thoughts arise, when feelings arise, there's not really somebody behind that. uh and um it's just just beingness. Even though thoughts arise, they don't have there's no resistance to them at all. Even if this thought may contain the eye in the sense of a separate sense eye, this eye doesn't have any pull any power so to speak and it's just it's just in the ocean of of beingness. And um after a while, after several days, whatever this this seems to be at the moment just a period so to speak. And then at some point this pull of a separate eye comes back. When thoughts arise, they tend to obscure the being again and resistance comes comes back and very intense resistance. Um I don't know it almost feels like the more in one side I go the more the other side is is coming back as well and then there's again prol I know of course being is only wailed it must be there but for some reason and that's a bit a little bit the struggle that just a few days prior not just for a minute or something just like complete days there's just this beauty and peace and after a while there's so much Um yeah, resistance again without anything really triggering it in the outside. There's not any specific event that's very intense or very it's just like inside and I wanted to know your uh um yeah wisdom about it if that's a normal process so to speak and this process seems to be going on for quite a while already now and if there's something specific that you could do in this uh instance. >> Yes. Yes, Lucas. It's completely normal. And um because you've had this this taste, this recognition of who you essentially are. And that recognition has um it's uprooted the separate self. But the separate self hasn't completely come to an end as a result. Just as when you uproot a a tree, the the tree doesn't die overnight. It it takes time. So the old habit of thinking and feeling on behalf of a separate self continues just through force of habit. Although you're no longer feeding that habit with the belief that the self around whom those thoughts and feelings revolve is real in its own right. So yeah, it's completely normal. Uh it's also completely normal for the sense of separation to come back with a vengeance. I think there are two ways of possibly explaining this. One is that in fact the separate self is not coming back with the vengeance. It's just that as you're as you rest in your being more and more, there's less um impulse to suppress or avoid any feeling because you you understand you feel deeply that it no feeling can harm you anymore. So you no longer need to protect yourself from the discomfort of your feelings. So you're actually much you allow much more to come up. It's not really that there are more of those feelings. It's just that you're more open to them, less you suppress them less. Um the example many of you know that I often give is the the um the sun over the well at midday when the sun is not when it's not midday and the sun is not shining into the shaft of the well. The creepy crawies at the bottom of the well are fast asleep. There's no light that they're they're dormant. But for a brief period at midday when the sun is above the well and its light shines all the way down to the bottom of the well, the creepy crawies wake up because of the light and they start drifting up to the top of the well to towards the light. So our feelings are like that. Most of the time they're dormant or repressed or avoided and because they're too painful, unbearable and so on. Then when the sign of awareness begins to shine in your life, there's no longer any need to repress them or avoid them. So they begin to bubble up and you think, "Oh, it's getting worse. I only before I just had a few feelings. Now I've got a whole flood of feeling. Things are getting worse aren't getting worse. It's just that all that material that was dormant in you there's no need to repress it or avoid it anymore. So it's coming back. So that that is very normal. Um that is one explanation for this um resurgence this apparent resurgence of the sense of separation. The other is that uh the more you um rest abide in your true nature, the more the separate self if if we can caricature the separate self as a as an entity or itself, the more the separate self feels um threatened by it. The separate self as it were feels the imminence of its own demise. And so it has to come back with a vengeance to to reassert itself. Well, because it feels if if I don't reassert myself, I'm I'm going to die. And it's right. It is. So that's another reason that that sometimes the the more you rest in your being there, there is this resurgence of the sense of separation. It's that some people feel this is an intense fear sometimes just before before they dissolve into to being there's this fear and the fear is the fear of the separate self which realizes it's the it's the moth that's just about to all all the moth wants is the flame but as long as it's at a distance from the flame it's safe but when it comes really close the moth suddenly realize is, "Oh my god, I can't I I I can't experience the flame. I can only die into the flame." And then it flies away again. So that that's another a second reason why sometimes there's this resurgence of resistance or fear. Um but there's not really necessary to do anything about it. that if you if you start doing something about it, you are doing exactly what the separate self wants you to do. The separate self has got you and oh good, Lucas is doing what I want. It's getting getting um perpetuating me by trying to get rid of me. So the fact that you see it clearly the mechanism the fact that I've now given you a couple of reasons why this happens it just enables you to rem remain in being as being and not not be pushed and pulled by by the the antics of the separate self and and sooner or later it will it will realize um Lucas is just not I can't manipulate him and then it'll leave you alone. >> Yes. Uh thank you. Um this is felt definitely in the sides of like emotions pull of the like sense of being an eye but also on a physical level. Um and I heard the term I don't know if if you use the same term a pain body um meaning that just by sitting down just by um yeah no events triggering it but I can literally sense a can sense a feel like almost like electric electricity coming through the body and it's almost like the more I rest in being the more this pain body for lack of a better word. Um yeah is is triggered. >> Um and in my like even very intense uh um yeah symptoms of the body but it's not like any specific event happened or there's no thought about any specific event. It's just this somehow stored >> uh um yeah energy for for lack of better word in in the body. And of course knowing that this will come up and it's quite so it's sometimes also I kind of push it away a little bit uh or just try to yeah not face it all the time uh but of course it has to be faced. So yeah but also this pain body like uh I don't I don't know is is yeah these symptoms are there for quite a few years now. So I don't know if you have anything to say about about that. >> The pain body I I think was a term that was coined by Echartole. um it's one of his great contributions to the nondual teaching in our era and it's a um a modern um interpretation of the vedantic teachings on um samscaras or basinas for those of you that know about the vantic tradition. this um residue of um feelings that that live in the deeper recesses of our mind that are not normally accessible in the waking state because they have been reasonably successfully avoided or or repressed but nevertheless live dormant most of the time at the bottom of the well. Uh the pain body is the the creepy crawlies at the bottom of the well. And and but sometimes um an event an event can trigger them. If if an event in your life is similar to an event that took place 30 years ago that caused you to contract emotionally. If a similar event takes place 30 years later, although there's no there may have been a good reason for contracting emotionally 30 years ago, but if a similar event now takes place in your life 30 years later and there's no good reason for contracting emotionally or withdrawing, yet you will still do so because it will trigger the old memories. For instance, um your mother abandons you when you're when you're two years old. um or is perhaps doesn't abandon you but is unloving or unkind or or um and you have this feeling of of um abandonment throughout your early childhood. You you feel that your your mother or your father was always abandoning you. So you have this deep association between love and abandonment that they they come as a mixed package and you think that love and abandonment are are the same thing. So later on, 30, 40 years later, in your adult relationships, particularly your intimate relationships, your your um your partner wants to go away on a holiday, but on their own for a week, which is a perfectly reasonable thing for want to want to do if you just want some solitude or and and um but nevertheless, because of your predisposition to abandonment, you think that your partner is abandoning you And therefore you think that they don't love you and therefore there's this huge reaction to their going away when they love you dearly. They just want to go away for some solitude to write a book or what whatever. So that that's an example of the pain body being triggered by an event that's similar to an event that caused it to be laid down in the first place but actually has nothing to do with it. So if you the more aware you become of this then when to continue the example your your partner wants to go away for the weekend or something instead of feeling abandoned and therefore unloved you just say oh of course sweetheart that's a beautiful idea h have a lovely time and can how can I help you prepare for it and and and then when they're away there's no there's no pull you just text from time to time. I hope you're having a lovely time and look forward to seeing you when you come home and and you don't feel any lack you don't feel abandoned and you feel no lack of love. So that that's just an example of of how the pain body is laid down early on in our life. um as a legitimate response to the situation that it is reasonable for a young infant in infant to contract if they are abandoned by their mother because they need their mother for for obvious reasons. So the pain body is often um laid down for legitimate reasons early on but because it cannot be processed then it's it doesn't leave the system because the infant obviously cannot understand or rationalize what's taking place. So it it stay it stays stuck in the system and um it it's the origin of trauma of course and the the trauma is not really stuck in your body. It's stuck in your mind. Trauma is is when um the mind doesn't recognize that something that was happened to you 30 years ago that was indeed a traumatic experience is no longer happening to you now that your mother has ceased abandoning you or or your your uncle has ceased abusing you or your what whatever it is it's that's no longer happening. your body has actually recovered but your mind has got stuck and your mind keeps think thinking that it's happening now and hence it's very easily triggered by an an event. Um so just understanding this mechanism not doing anything about it but just understanding it helps it to um to lose its hold over you. And you'll find in time you'll just become freer and freer of the the the tyranny of the pain body. It will lose its power over you. >> Thank you.