The Consequences Of What We Feel

Hey,

Everyone,

Welcome to the Wake Up Call.

I hope you can hear me.

My microphone has a red light on,

But I'm hoping you can hear me.

Okay,

Hi,

Everybody.

It's Judy Cohen,

And this is Wake Up Call 406.

I hope you're safe.

I hope you're safe and well.

We've been looking at the classical mindfulness teaching with contact as condition feeling comes to be with feeling as condition craving comes to be with craving as condition clinging comes to be.

And condition,

I talked about this last time,

It's basically whatever is happening in the moment,

The weather,

My history,

Your history,

The country,

The continent,

The land we find ourselves standing on,

The other humans that we're surrounded by.

So basically everything in this moment.

And contact,

We now know,

Is what happens when one of our sense doors,

So our eyes,

Our ears,

Our mouth,

Our nose,

Our skin,

And our nerves,

Or our mind connects with an object.

So my eyes see a lake.

Eyes are the sense door.

Seeing is what they do when they're functioning.

Lake is the object.

Contact,

Hold on one sec,

Sorry.

Contact is the result of that process.

Or my mind thinks about a lease.

Mind is the sense door.

Thinking is what it does.

Lease is the object.

Contact is the result.

Or here's an even more subtle one.

My mind and heart long to talk with my dad.

So mind or heart is the sense door.

Longing is another thing that the mind and heart does.

Dad is the object.

Contact,

From a mindfulness perspective,

Is the result of that I don't actually get to talk with him.

Okay,

So contact is the condition.

That's what's happening.

That instant when my eyes see the lake,

My mind thinks about a lease,

My heart longs for my dad.

That's contact as condition.

Okay,

So if you've been practicing or playing with this,

Maybe you notice the process,

It's really fast.

Contact is happening all day long,

So it's not always easy to catch.

And for me,

It's much easier to catch it happening during meditation and then import it into my daily life.

Any insight that I might have on the cushion,

I can bring that into daily life.

Okay,

So then what's next?

With contact as condition,

Feeling comes to be.

So what are we talking about?

Feeling used here is the same as feeling in the second foundation of mindfulness.

It's that sense of each moment being one of three things,

Either pleasant,

Unpleasant,

Or neither.

But in this case,

We're getting very specific.

We're investigating each moment of contact as being pleasant,

Unpleasant,

Or neither.

And here's an example.

Sometime while I was writing today's call,

This was yesterday,

I had the thought cookie,

Okay?

And I just put cookies on the screen.

So when I put the cookies on the screen,

You saw a cookie,

If you can see the screen.

So yesterday,

Again,

I had the thought cookie.

So here it is,

Breaking it down.

My mind,

Which is the sense door,

Had a thought,

Its function of a cookie,

The object.

And contact arose.

With contact as condition,

Feeling comes to be.

So that means according to the mindfulness teachings,

Contact,

Every single moment of contact,

It's either pleasant or unpleasant.

I caught that moment of contact,

Which was kind of fun.

So I got to play with it.

And it was a really easy one.

It was pleasant.

Contact happened,

Feeling came to be.

And the feeling was pleasant.

But then here's what happened,

Okay?

Because the contact of mind with cookie was pleasant,

I got up,

I walked to the pantry,

I pulled out the cookie drawer,

And I got a cookie.

And it all happened so fast that I could barely keep up with it,

Right?

So,

And here's the thing,

It wasn't the thought of the cookie that got me up out of my chair,

Which would be my natural inclination is to say,

Oh,

Well,

It was the thought of the cookie.

It wasn't the thought of the cookie.

It was the fact that contact with cookie was pleasant.

It was the pleasantness that propelled me from desk to cookie drawer to cookie to mouth.

And here's how I know that.

If I'd had the thought cookie,

Or let's say somebody had walked over with a plate of delicious looking cookies like in this picture,

And maybe they are delicious looking for you,

And maybe they're not,

And this is the trick here,

This is what I'm talking about.

Let's say that I hadn't been feeling well.

The contact of mind thinking about cookie or eyes seeing cookie or nose smelling cookie,

It wouldn't have been a good thing,

Right?

Contact in that case would have been unpleasant.

And the last thing I would have done is had a cookie.

I would have said no thank you,

Or I would have waved them away with my hand,

Or if I was really feeling sick,

I might've even had a gag response.

Or let's say I'm not a cookie fan.

I don't even like sweets.

I wish.

So in that case,

I'd had the thought cookie,

Or someone brought over a plate of cookies,

And I just don't care about cookies.

My contact with the cookies,

Either through the mind door or another sense door,

In that case,

It would probably have been not pleasant,

Not unpleasant,

And maybe it wouldn't have even registered at all.

It would have been like,

Eh,

I don't care,

And nothing would have happened.

So you see how this is working?

We have these thousands,

Or I don't know,

Maybe we have millions of these moments of contact every day,

All day long.

And if it's true that each moment of contact is generating a feeling that's either pleasant,

Unpleasant,

Or neither,

Then we're always,

Every moment,

Being influenced in this way.

With contact as condition,

Feeling comes to be,

And then the question is,

Okay,

Then what?

And that's the next part of the teaching.

With feeling as condition,

Craving comes to be,

Right?

Meaning when the feeling of a given moment of contact is pleasant,

We move towards the object.

I got up,

I got a cookie.

When it's unpleasant,

We move away.

If I hadn't been feeling well,

I'd have turned away from the plate of cookies.

When it's neither,

We don't even notice.

We space out.

The cookie offer wouldn't have registered,

Okay?

And so maybe you can sort of start to see it's not a neutral event.

It's not a neutral event.

I mean,

There's no trouble with the first cookie,

Maybe,

Or maybe it's not good for me.

But when pleasantness propels me to grab,

Even one cookie,

And I'm not aware of it,

Let alone two or three cookies,

Or the whole box,

Right?

And I eat them all.

Or,

You know,

Let's say you take,

I don't know if you've ever done this,

But if you take out a pint of ice cream and you're watching a show and you promise yourself you're just gonna have a couple of spoonfuls and then you look down and the whole pint is gone,

Right?

It can be a problem.

Because,

Let's translate this into something possibly more consequential.

I get an email,

Right?

I'm working.

I'm working on something that is important.

I have a deadline,

Right?

And I just check my email and there's an email that says,

I don't know,

Nordstrom is having a sale,

Right?

Contact,

Pleasant.

Pleasant,

Sale,

Right?

Pleasant feeling propels me away from the document I'm trying to get out and into Nordstrom's.

You know,

Probably virtually,

But who knows?

You know,

Maybe I even get in my car and drive over.

And I still have to get that draft out,

Right?

So now I'm really stressed because the pleasantness has distracted me and now I don't have the time that I needed.

Or the opposite,

I see an email.

It's from that difficult opposing counsel.

The feeling that arises upon contact is unpleasant.

And,

You know,

I quickly write back something really hostile.

It's probably really pithy,

But it's hostile.

Or I slam down my computer so I have that fight or flight response.

Okay,

So it sounds like we're helpless,

But we're not.

Why?

Because of mindfulness.

We have mindfulness.

We have the ability to bring intentional moment-to-moment awareness to this process.

That's the great thing.

We have the ability to see these moments of contact,

Or,

You know,

As many as we can.

And,

You know,

To see them with courage,

With grace,

Without wishing things were other than they are.

And to see whether they're pleasant or they're unpleasant or they're neither.

And to choose.

Do I want another cookie?

Feels really pleasant.

Do I want to distract myself with some shopping?

That sounds like fun.

But what's the best response?

What's the best thing to do about that email?

So it's simple.

It's not easy,

But it's not complicated.

We notice the contact.

We pay attention to whether it's pleasant or unpleasant.

We nod to that,

But we don't let it propel us.

And then because we're onto it,

Because we're onto this process of the mind,

Right?

We don't let it lead us down the road.

We get to choose.

We get to choose what's best.

Okay,

You can tell I'm very excited about this.

So let's let all of that excitement go.

And next time we'll talk about craving coming to be and how craving and clinging happen.

But you already saw a little of that.

Now let's just sit with this.

So letting all the words go,

Taking a moment to settle in,

Getting that sense of the body sitting or standing or lying down,

Of the breath in the body.

And once you feel settled in,

Then maybe starting to notice this process,

Letting go of the breath as an object of focus and just noticing what is arising and passing away in your field of experience.

And as you notice that,

A sound,

And then is it pleasant or unpleasant?

A sensation,

Pleasant or unpleasant?

Thought or an emotion?

And maybe most things that you notice neutral,

Neither pleasant nor unpleasant.

Most things don't stand out,

That's fine.

And if the mind wanders,

Just coming back to your practice of noticing what's arising and passing away in each moment and of the feeling of it pleasant,

Unpleasant,

Or neither.

Just becoming more and more familiar with this investigation of experience,

Of our contact with experience being one of three things,

Pleasant,

Unpleasant,

Or not much of either.

Or you can keep sitting and keep playing with this and also or play with this throughout the day,

Throughout the week.

Thanks everyone for being here today on The Wake Up Call.

Take good care and I'll see you all next week.

Be safe.

Bye-bye.