THE CONTINUITY OF EXPERIENCE
26 JULY 2022 (14 MIN READ)
“My life is a succession of events, just like yours. Only I am detached and see the passing show as a passing show, while you attach to things and move along with them.” - Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
I stumbled upon this powerful quote while reading the book, I Am That, and it absolutely blew my mind. Although such a simple concept—not attaching to the events of our constantly changing day—truly following this philosophy allows us to taste the day for the beauty of what it really is and enter a state of consistent peace. As an example of how attaching to events causes suffering, consider how many times one bad moment has turned into a bad day for you? Where you had a stressful, painful experience, and you kept focusing on that experience even though it already passed, allowing your whole day to be a reflection of that moment. This bad day could have been turned into a good one, if when that moment happened, you fully felt the pain, released it, and brought yourself back to the current external experience of reality, where that moment does not exist anymore. This philosophy can also apply to exciting plans at night.
For example, let’s say you have a party you can’t wait for in the evening, so you spend the whole day thinking about it and getting anxious about how it will go. Instead of going through the day with focus and gratitude for the experiences you endure, you instead live in your anxious expectations of how the party will go, while hopelessly blundering through the motions of the day. Although different, both cases are a recipe for mental disaster, because if we develop the habit of mentally latching on to experiences in the day that no longer exist in reality, we learn to exist in a world that is not in front of us, leading us to be at the mercy of our reactive mind, which matches mental scenarios to the feelings we need to process that we refuse to. Therefore, it’s not only important to be present with the external reality of life as it occurs, but also process and feel the internal reactions that come with it. Because if we do not process our reactive feelings to events, they will stick inside us and affect our perception of reality, disallowing us to be present with what’s in front of us.
Elaborating on the effects of not watching life as a passing movie, this article will further unpack how exactly repressed emotions from experiences affect our ability to absorb a fresh new moment, how attaching to past or future events destroys our ability to pay attention, and how moments of trauma from a long time ago can be healed to not drastically influence our experience of a new reality.
PROLONGED SUFFERING
Let’s first explore in detail the mechanisms of how one bad moment can turn into a whole bad day. Imagine you were back in school and you finally got that examination back that you studied so hard for. Unfortunately, it turns out that you did a lot worse than expected, receiving a disheartening C-. The minute you saw that letter on the page, your heart dropped and feelings of deep disappointment and shame flooded your body and psyche. Instead of sitting with the painful sensations and processing them, you decided to live inside your mind, creating thoughts that validate the feeling without having to properly feel it. Throughout the day, whenever the feeling from that test result arises, you keep going back to your head and thinking the same thoughts, making you unable to be present with any task in front of you, as the activity is constantly contaminated by the painful thoughts stemming from a past experience. Although this sort of experience is so common to all of us, an easy way out exists. And that way is not shying away from the sensations that arise from the painful moment in that moment. In terms of how that philosophy would play out in the previous example, instead of going straight to the mind, in an effort to not feel the terror inside and run the usual self-deprecating script one does when a negative feeling arises, feel the pain from that experience without judging it. Put your hands up and surrender to the emotion, because the truth is that emotional pain has been triggered from a larger wound that needs to heal. And one of the ways it heals is releasing the stored pain without any judgment. The more resistant we become to the leaking of that larger wound, through not feeling the pain fully, the more we plug the drain and invite the pain back into our hearts. And when that pain gets thrown back into our hearts, it becomes incredibly difficult to get rid of it, so it lingers throughout the whole day, coating all of our experiences with its pain and the negative thoughts it creates.
So, in an ideal world, when something like a C- arrives at your desk, breathe in the pain and do not shy away from it. Try your best to understand what wound is coming up in that moment, such as your parents showing you no love when you got a bad grade in the past, and gain compassion for that painful history. Once you have understood the source intellectually, stay in your body, be present with the emotion, and refuse to give any self-deprecating thoughts any attention. After a little while, the feeling should subside, and it is at that moment that you make the conscious decision to leave that pain in the past, moving on to the next moment that life presents with deep focus, even if that moment involves studying harder for the next test. This trick of fully feeling the pain our reactions cause from external events is what allows you to leave them in the past. The painful memories and thoughts only reignite in the future because you have not allowed yourself to fully feel the pain from the experience.
Another way in which not feeling the pain from a moment in the past affects our ability to experience life objectively is the way we create negative stories to validate the feelings we do not want to process. For example, if a moment made you feel incredibly anxious and you refused to deal with it—such as getting a worrying, urgent email that you procrastinate on answering—then that undealt with anxiety will unconsciously filter your perception of reality for the rest of the day. In other words, when you swallow the anxiety from a frightening moment, you invite that anxiety to alter your perception of the external world, such as seeing a common news headline and interpreting it as the end of the world, or perceiving people on the street as much more threatening than they actually are. Furthermore, when we repress that anxiety, our body and mind tries to process it for us, through searching for news stories that trigger it or looking for things to scare us, which is what we must avoid at all costs. This is how the reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic were so blown out of proportion. People were terrorized and they did not want to feel or rationalize that fear, so they not only exaggerated their reactions to the data to match their internal state but they also looked for constant headlines and stories to feed the beast. To avoid living in this dreadful state, we must get ahead of our anxiety before it gets ahead of us. And that involves recognizing and feeling it as soon as it arises, without any desire to make it go away. Once the sensation dies down, the rational part of our brain comes back online, and we can use that to correct our previously irrational thoughts, returning to a pleasant state where we can be present with the next situation life presents us. This works out a whole better for us, instead of refusing to acknowledge the anxiety and having it unconsciously dictate how we perceive every external event.
LACK OF FOCUS
We have been fooled to believe that happiness is a feeling we have to always be chasing, but in reality, happiness is always with us, if we choose for it to be. And the way we can always tap into that happiness is through being present in whatever circumstance we are facing. For instance, being sad and resisting the sensation through self-deprecating thoughts is a whole different experience than lovingly releasing the emotion without distraction. The former is a form of torture, while the latter is a beautiful experience. If we can become “happy” while feeling sad through presence, then everything can be a meaningful, loving experience if we can be present with it, feeding us peaceful happiness in any emotion that comes our way. Since this sort of presence is a key to feeling happy, we are facing a serious collective conundrum since the majority of us cannot bear to be present. Yes, on the one hand this failure is due to an overworked culture and a dependence on stimulation to cure boredom, but on the other hand we are mentally undisciplined when it comes to transitioning from one moment to the next, in terms of clearing the emotional slate from moment to moment. The main reason we cannot be present, as hinted to in the previous section, is the fact that we allow the painful sensations of the past that we do not want to feel linger into present experiences, and the anxiety-inducing ideas about how the future will go also warp our ability to focus on what’s in front of us right now. Thus, it seems like an easy solution: process the feelings of the past and lose any expectation of the future. Yes, in theory, but if only it was this simple, then everyone would be a monk, peacefully enjoying life with no stress. So, what’s the practical way to put this philosophy into practice?
In essence, once we have allowed ourselves to feel the pain from an uncomfortable moment, the power in presence lies in strengthening the muscle of conscious choice, in the sense of choosing to move on from the emotion and experience life for what it is. The truth is that most of us are addicted to mental drama. We allow a feeling from an experience, such as an argument with a friend, linger way past what it should, in the form of always thinking about what went wrong, adding gasoline to the fire of the negative emotion. The key in moving on from this bad habit is becoming aware of your addiction to it, so pay attention to how you tend to extend the pain from a moment to a whole day. And when you catch yourself, bring your attention back to both your breathing and the situation in front of you—think of it as a meditation of sorts. You may think I am instructing you to repress and distract yourself, but I’m actually recommending the complete opposite: choosing not to add unnecessary fuel to the fire of your emotional life, allowing yourself to heal in the process. If you truly allow yourself to feel and process the discomfort from a bad moment, then I believe the constant focus on that moment afterward is unnecessary and will cause you to have a bad day. Of course, if that moment was a tragedy, then I completely understand the inevitable focus on that moment. However, most of the time it’s just a slight inconvenience that we turn into armageddon, which can be avoided through a disciplined, well-trained mind.
Next, in terms of not allowing the idea of a future moment to create an anxious mind that does not allow us to focus on the task at hand, consider the difference between negative expectations and excitement. Most of the time when we are anxious about a future moment, such as a romantic date, we are allowing our negative expectations of it to dictate our current emotional state. Because you believe that it could go badly and that you could seem too needy, you are experiencing the result of that theoretical situation in the present moment. Not only will this make you suffer when it has not even happened yet, but you are more likely to come across that way on the actual date because you have sold yourself on the story that it will go that way. Instead, when the thought of the future event comes up, like the date, tell yourself that you are excited to grow from the experience, no matter how it turns out. Immediately, the vibration of fear will leave your body and you will be left with a feeling of genuine joy and excitement. After you have reframed the situation and entered a more pleasant somatic state, you have to flex that conscious muscle of returning back to the present moment and the current task that comes with that. This combination will set you free.
TRAUMA
The biggest trauma I have faced is watching my mother die right in front of me, as well as observing her brief moments of consciousness where she knew she was dying and was so frightened and confused. No one deserves to watch the person they love the most go through something like that, especially at a young age. After a couple of days of feeling like a victim and sulking in pain, I realized that if I did not do something about the trauma, I could never live a normal life again. Every single time the thought of my mother dying came to my mind, I was paralyzed with terror and grief, unable to pay attention to anything in front of me. In other words, my perception of life was nowhere near close to what it was in reality; what I was observing was a dystopian nightmare which I wanted no part of. I knew that I had a role to play in the healing of humanity and did not want to waste any time making life about me and my misery, so I took the fastest approach to healing trauma: holotropic breathwork. I have put in over one thousand hours of holotropic breathwork and I am happy to say that this trauma no longer follows me. I can now experience life exactly as it presents itself to me, if I choose to. However, the problem with holotropic breathwork is that you enter a psychedelic state mimicking that of dimethyltryptamine, a powerful psychedelic that kills your ego. Entering this state when you have trauma in your body is the scariest experience I have ever been through, as at times, I literally felt like I was dying and screamed for help. Most aren’t a crazy motherfucker like me, willing to go through this hell for peace, so I do not recommend it, especially for the faint of heart. So, what’s an easier, more loving way to heal from trauma and become able to be present again? A combination of somatic experiencing and group work.
In essence, somatic experiencing takes a more gradual, yet effective approach to healing trauma through making patients slowly process the pain stored in their body. A big problem with the traditional, Western route people take to heal trauma is that if you attempt to heal trauma just through changing thought patterns and prescribing pharmaceuticals, then the actual trauma itself, the repressed pain, never gets a chance to leave the body and allow you to properly heal. The only way to let the stored pain leave the body is to feel it and process it without escaping to the mind. As much as my philosopher brain would love for this to be true, you cannot, and I repeat, cannot think your way out of trauma—all you can do is feel. However, trauma can be so intense that it’s hard to feel it all at once and not be scarred for life. This is where somatic experiencing comes in, where the trauma gets slowly activated and gradually felt at small doses to release it more effectively. If you are struggling with trauma, then I highly recommend hiring a somatic experiencing specialist to help you get through it. Because the only thing that’s causing the trauma to constantly affect the way you experience life is its emotional hold over your body. Once those stored emotions go away, the trauma will stop ruling your life.
Next, in terms of group work and trauma, a big part of the problem with healing from trauma is the shame we learn to attach to it. And when you learn to shame a side of yourself, I can promise you that it will never heal. Shame, at its core, is a restrictive emotion, so if you feel ashamed about a specific emotion, then it will restrict inside you and stick to your core. The best way to break this shame is to talk to people who have gone through the same trauma as you and open up to them. This way, you will feel less alone and ashamed, since you know people who are going through the exact same thing. To heal from trauma you must feel empowered to feel it, which is only really possible when you have people in your corner who have gone through the battle and come out on the other side victorious.
