In general, we do things for rewards. And in general, the deeper your practice gets the more rewards you get. However, in certain phases of your practice, the deeper you go the worse things you get. Now where’s you motivation to practice?
This is very difficult. In general, the deeper you go into the physical discomforts in your body, the deeper you go into what we call samadhi, and the easier it is to put up with that discomfort. And in fact, its tends to sort of dissolve or not bother you so much. But there are certain kinds of yucky sensations that can come up for no apparent reason. Sometimes people get it in the legs, and their legs shake, it feels like – and those of you that have had this experience will know what I am talking about – it feels like your skin is crawling, like your bones are itching, like you just can’t stand to sit there for a second longer, you just want to jump out of your skin, your blood is boiling.
It’s what in Yiddish is called schpilkish. Some of you know this word. It’s like pins and needles all over you. And the more you relax, the worse it gets. It’s not like the other pains, it’s not like the aches and pains from the posture. The more you open up, the more you relax, the more unbearable it seems. And that is a very difficult thing to overcome, because you seem to be getting punished for going deeper into meditation, not getting a reward. And that is very difficult to overcome in your mind.
But let me give you some encouragement for this particular kind of challenge. Be happy when you get these types of pains, because they are pure impurity. Now you may be saying . "What does he mean by pure impurity? That’s in oxymoron, that’s a contradiction in terms. "
In this case, the impurity is resistance, or what we call aversion, or congealing. Ordinarily, resistance doesn’t come up in its pure form, it comes up mixed with something else. With what? Something to resist. There will be a strong pain, and in general, the stronger the pain is the more resistance. Unfortunately, the subjective experience of suffering is a function of both how much pain there is, and how much you resist. Some of you may of noticed the phenomenon where its like it’s bearable, it’s bearable, it’s bearable, and suddenly it’s not bearable at all, it’s completely gone to a whole other level. Actually, there’s only been another increment in the pain, but because it’s now multiplied with an increment of resistance, suddenly the pain has increased greatly, and it just seems utterly unbearable.
So in any event, what happens when you sit and meditate is that you get the blessing, the wonderful experience (even though you think at the time it’s a horrible experience), you get the wonderful experience of resistance with no pain. It’s just pure impurity, pure resistance. The characteristic of this kind of sensation is that it doesn’t really hurt, but you can’t stand it.
If in your practice you get the experience . "It doesn’t really hurt, but I can’t stand it," this is good, this is what you want to get. That’s ‘good’ that’s high-quality, that’s what you want to get. That is pure impurity coming up.
But the more you relax and open up to it, the worse it gets – seemingly. Because you’re just opening yourself up to level after level. So you don’t seem to be getting a reward, you seem to be ‘punished’ for going deeper into meditation. And that kind of phenomenon is very difficult to deal with, on a logical level, unless you remember what I just mentioned, and you can work through it.
Of course, you’ll always remember what to do if you remember the axiom of consistency. Whatever comes up, you consistently observe it with detachment, including the phenomenon of "the deeper I go in meditation, the worse I feel." Even ‘that’ phenomenon you can consistently observe. But for many people, this obstacle become invincible , because they can’t logically get over the fact, if you follow what I’m saying, it’s like it doesn’t make any sense. Why should things be getting worse the deeper I go?
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