#75. How To Deal With Emotional Pain? | Vigyan Bhairav Tantra

Namaste sannyasa family and everyone.

A very warm welcome to all of you in this daily live meditation session with me,

Dhyansay.

We're meditating on 112 meditation techniques of Vigyan Bhairav Tantra.

Let us begin the session by meditating,

Contemplating on a question that has come up in our sannyasa family for one of the meditators.

It might also be your question.

So let us go into this question together and contemplate over it.

Is it okay if I use restful awareness as a coping mechanism?

Sometimes when I experience a lot of pain,

Painful emotions in my life,

I jump into a space of awareness to manage my pain.

So I'm not so tied up in it and there is a separation between the pain and me.

I wonder if this is okay or if I'm using awareness as escapism.

Here the question is about restful awareness.

This restful awareness which is our true nature,

This restful awareness which has been the underlying,

The undercurrent of all meditations,

Of all meditation techniques to take you from wherever you are and to this restful awareness in you,

Which is your true nature.

The question arises,

Am I using this awareness as escapism?

If this is restful awareness,

You can never use this as an escapism because this restful awareness is all-pervading.

This restful awareness is the only thing in reality.

This awareness is pervading the whole body,

Mind,

Anything where your consciousness can manifest itself.

This restful awareness expands,

It extends to that.

So from whom can you escape?

How can you escape and be in this restful awareness?

There is no escape possible while you are in this restful awareness,

While you are in an ordinary state,

You are always compartmentalizing things in life where you draw lines,

Where you draw boundaries and you move your awareness from one to the other.

That is where you can escape from one to the other.

But when you are in restful awareness,

You are in all.

There is no silos,

There is no escaping,

This is not concentration.

See that there is a very clear difference between concentration and restful awareness.

Concentration is focusing,

Is narrowing down your awareness on a particular point,

On a particular object,

On a particular subject,

While you are in concentration,

Yes you are not with the other.

While you are in concentration of an object,

You are not with the rest.

That you can call as escapism.

So concentration may be an escapism because concentration belongs to the mind,

Concentration belongs to knowledge,

Concentration is excluding something and including something and focusing on something.

Restful awareness is completely different.

It is all forbidding,

It is all expansive.

There is no choice that you make,

There is no focus that you make,

There is nothing that you are running away from,

There is nothing that you are running towards,

There is no effort in this restful awareness.

So since there is no effort in this restful awareness,

And it is all expansive,

There is no escape possible.

Whatever you are escaping from,

If you are in restful awareness,

You will encounter it,

You will see it,

You will come across it if you are in restful awareness.

You say,

I do this so that I am not so tied up in it and there is a separation between pain and me.

This process of taking a distance,

Taking some separation,

Taking some distance so that you can observe what is going on,

This is needed.

Yes,

This awareness where you take a distance from what is going on is needed.

But see the purpose of that.

It is for you to see that you are not it.

It is for you to observe it,

To learn about it.

As an example,

In meditative contemplation,

We say,

You are not the body,

You observe the body.

You are not the mind,

You observe the mind.

In this format,

You create a separation,

You create a sense of distance between the body and the mind.

This sense of distancing is to create a watchfulness.

Is not to escape the body,

Is not to escape the mind,

But rather to be in a position where you can watch the nature of the body.

You can watch the nature of the mind,

You can observe the nature of the awareness itself,

You can observe the true nature of yourself.

So all these separations,

All these mechanisms that are utilized in meditation techniques,

They are done so that you can take a distance and observe.

Eventually,

After that observation,

After that learning,

You let yourself be in restful awareness.

Once again,

In all expansive,

In all pervading,

Without any boundaries,

Without any silos,

Without any separation.

You say you do this because you experience a lot of painful emotions in your life.

There is no escape from these painful emotions.

If you will escape,

You are just looking for a temporary solution,

A temporary patchwork somewhere hiding from these painful emotions.

See that there are three possibilities if you want to heal out of these painful emotions.

The first possibility is catheresis.

Catheresis is when something external creates a disturbance in you.

Something external creates a pain in you.

Something external just does not fit to your internal space.

Like you eat something which is not fitting your internal digestion and until it is out of your system,

Until it is pushed out of your system,

You feel that pain,

You feel that turbulence,

You feel that unrest.

If something external has impacted you,

Has entered in you,

Then catheresis is one of the ways in which you can quickly feel the relief.

In the meditation world,

In the spiritual realm,

The catheresis can be done with Om.

The catheresis can be done with chanting.

While you are reverberating and vibrating in the chant,

In the mantra,

Your energies once again start to rise and you have this catheresis possible.

We have done some meditations in this past series of Vigyan Bhairav Tantra where we have done catheresis using the sound of Aa,

Using the chant of Om.

Take a look at that.

There would be one option to do the catheresis for your healing out of the painful emotions.

The second is love.

To be in love.

To be in love with whatever,

It does not matter what your object of love is.

What matters is that love arising in you.

That love in itself is healing.

That love in itself is transforming.

And in every session,

The vibration of all sessions contain that love.

If you cannot find that love in your external world,

See and feel the love in all these sessions.

Connect to the love of this space,

Of this tantra vibration.

That is also healing.

And the third,

The truth.

These are the three possibilities to heal catheresis,

Love and truth.

Truth is facing,

Not escaping.

Truth is in awareness of what is the reality.

And as you go through these painful emotions,

If you settle in restful awareness,

If you really move into restful awareness,

In that restful awareness,

Watch.

In that restful awareness,

Observe.

In that restful awareness,

Face.

What is this pain?

Is this something that is real?

Is this something that is self-created?

Is this something external?

Do not necessarily rationalize it.

See it,

Feel it,

Be aware of it,

Go into it.

As you go into it with your awareness,

The pain melts.

Everything in awareness melts.

We have been saying in the past sessions,

Awareness is the solution to thoughts,

To emotions,

To negative emotions,

To painful emotions,

To suppressions,

To the unconscious.

As the conscious penetrates the unconscious,

It makes it conscious.

It lets the unconscious disappear,

Merge into the conscious.

That merger,

That union,

Is what Tantra is.

Where there are not two anymore,

There is only one.

And that one is pure consciousness,

Is pure awareness.

So as you settle in restful awareness,

And you have the courage to observe,

To watch,

Go into it from a distance,

If you like,

Being in restful awareness,

Not escaping from what you are experiencing,

But observing,

Watching what you are experiencing,

In that watchfulness,

In that witnessing,

In that observing,

The pain disappears.

It may rise for a moment because you have brought your attention to it.

You may want to look away,

But if you continue,

If you remain in this restful awareness and observe your pain,

Observe these painful emotions,

They are going to melt,

Disappear.

The pattern of it,

The formation of it,

Will disappear into the formless.

And that is the only permanent solution.

Everything else is a patchwork.

Everything else is an escape.

Let us move on to the technique for today from Vidyan Bhairav Tantra.

Bhairava says,

Contemplating on the manifest world as imagined or elusive,

Like a magic show or a painting,

And seeing all existence as transient,

Happiness arises.

Let me repeat.

Contemplating on the manifest world as imagined or elusive,

Like a magic show or a painting,

And seeing all existence as transient,

Happiness arises.

See that here we are building upon what we have been learning in the past sessions,

What we have been contemplating in the past sessions,

That this world,

This existence is Maya,

Is an illusion.

Here Bhairava says,

Contemplating on this world as illusion,

As imaginative,

He now gives three clues to the nature of this illusion.

We learned what are these layers which create the illusion,

And now we are learning how,

What is the nature of this illusion,

How can we derive happiness into this illusion.

Yes,

This life is an illusion,

This physical world is Maya,

Is an illusion,

This existence is an illusion,

But what to do with that?

How do you derive happiness?

How do you be with this illusion in the happiness?

Here he says there are three aspects to the nature of this illusion which you can contemplate on.

The first aspect is,

He says,

Like a magic show.

Very interesting,

Three aspects like a magic show,

A painting,

And seeing all existence as transient.

Let us go into these three aspects of the nature of this Maya,

Magic show,

A painting,

And something that is transient one by one.

Let's take the first for today and we can discuss the rest of the two components tomorrow.

Like a magic show.

He is saying that understand life and this illusion as a magic show,

As if you are in a magic show.

See that a magic show,

What happens in a magic show,

What happens in an illusion.

There are two dimensions.

One is the dimension where there is an expectation of the mind.

You are flowing along an expectation of the mind.

When the magic is happening,

When the magician is performing,

Is creating that magic for you,

Your mind is flowing along that magic.

Your mind is expecting an outcome,

Is expecting something to happen.

And suddenly something else happens.

There is a jump,

Shift from the dimension of the mind,

You flowing along with the rational,

With your logic,

And you moving suddenly,

Jumping,

Transcending,

Taking a leap onto another dimension.

The dimension of the reality,

From the illusion to the reality,

From the dimension of the mind of your expectation into something unexpected,

Into something that was unpredictable,

Into something that was uncalculated by you.

Something from your calculation to somewhere where there is no calculation.

Something that your mind was wanting to project and predict to something that is unpredictable.

If you see your life as an illusion,

As this Maya,

As a magic show,

Where you are expecting something to happen,

And there is an openness for something else,

Something unpredictable to happen,

Then there is happiness.

If everything in your life becomes predictable,

If everything in your life becomes only objective and constrained in the calculation,

Where will the happiness be?

The happiness arises when there is this space of unpredictability,

When there is a transcendence from the rational to something that is irrational,

Something that is from predictable to something that is unpredictable,

From the mind to the no-mind.

This jump is the magic,

Even in an illusion where you perfectly know in a magic show that it is an illusion.

There is magic,

There is happiness,

There is this shift,

The transcendence from the illusion to the reality.

Similarly in life,

If you see this as an illusion,

If you see this Maya as an illusion,

In observing this nature of Maya,

Of illusion,

There is also a possibility,

A transcendence,

A magic that can happen which can throw you from the illusion to the reality.

Much more can be said,

But let us take these next minutes to move into silence,

To move into meditation,

Contemplating on this nature of this illusion as magic.

By bringing awareness in your inner space and leaving room for the unpredictable,

Not trying to calculate,

Not trying to predict everything,

Staying in the unpredictability of what is happening,

Remaining open to the unpredictable,

Remaining open to the unknown,

Remaining open to uncalculated.

Let us close our eyes and move inwards,

Taking a posture that is comfortable for you,

With your body finding its balance,

Not leaning forwards or backwards,

Nor to right or left,

Nor up or down.

In a balance centered,

Restful and alert.

Awareness inwards.

Awareness inwards.

Happiness inwards.

As the awareness rests in your inner space,

Remaining open,

To be unpredictable.

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Not trying to hold on to anything.

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