Playing with the unpleasant

I expect you have had one of those experiences where something unpleasant happens. I remember the time we had loud drilling intermittently throughout an entire meditation! It definitely wasn't ideal circumstances for calming the mind and finding stillness and peace within. It was however very interesting to notice what the mind does and the body does when there's unpleasant experience or the anticipation of unpleasant experience and so useful to play with this too.

As soon as there is an idea that meditation should be a peaceful quiet space, the drilling is a problem. The body tenses, the mind is agitated and thoughts start to proliferate. When it's viewed as normal - when the mind becomes accustomed to it, the resistance to it in the body relaxes and the noise can be ignored, it fades into the background. When the mind views it as interesting, it can turn into an exploration of the tone and vibration and how the body vibrates with it. When there's no identification, no wish for it to be gone, it can even become a positive experience - why do people enjoy going to the cinema and seeing people in horrendously stressful situations and feeling that stress or fear in their body - perhaps because there's no identification with it being their experience, even though it's felt in their body. As soon as there's aversion, tension rises and the experience in the body becomes much more intense, contracted and unpleasant.

 The drilling in and of itself isn't a problem. The mind and the view create the experience. And we actually have a lot more control over this than many of us realise. Just by shifting and playing with the view we have.  

“It all begins and ends in the mind. What you give power to has power over you”

 ~ Leon Brown

So when there's something unpleasant happening, this can be rather a gift - a time to learn about the thoughts the mind comes up with and notice how the tension builds in the body when there's aversion to experience. To breathe with it and explore it. To smile at it. It can be something as simple as a smell you don't like, a food you don't like, perhaps a chore that you have to do, or a person who is pushing your buttons. What if this could be viewed as normal compared to other experience? What if this was pleasant? What if your normal experience was far worse and this was the best?!  Perhaps you notice the body and mind relaxing a little when it's viewed as normal. Perhaps you can view the experience as just passing straight through you without any resistance as if it matters not at all whether it is there or not? How does that feel in the body? Or can you view this as the most interesting experience that has ever happened and be really curious about the actual physical experience, the sensations, the tiny fluctuations within the experience?

And don't worry when you can't shift the view. This is a practice. If it was that simple none of us would have any particular problems in life 😃  Then you can wish yourself happiness, wish yourself peace, wish yourself freedom from this rather unpleasant experience, and perhaps eat a cookie!

"Today me will live in the moment unless it's unpleasant in which case me will eat a cookie"

~ Cookie Monster

And the people who practise this all the time - they become like monks. Happy and at peace. Not because they are peaceful, but because they have no attachment to, or identification with, whether they are peaceful or not. Imagine what that would be like….

"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n."

~ John Milton