What An Itch Revealed About the Eternal

The other night I experienced the itchiest of itches. At first, I got up to get something to scratch it with but then I decided that it would be fun to simply sit with the itch. I noticed that what I was calling “an itch” was actually something a lot more fluid. At first the sensation of a kind of prickliness dwelled in one place on the surface, then it moved deeper. At one point it became a kind of pulsing and at another it disappeared altogether, only to reappear a little while later. Was it really all the same thing? As I brought my attention, awareness and curiosity to my itch, I recognized that it offered a wonderful opportunity to explore the meaning of impermanence, space, awareness and conditioning.

We are conditioned to chase pleasurable experiences and avoid discomfort and unpleasantness. Without being a biologist, I’m guessing that it’s hardwired into us and has been incredibly adaptive for surviving. When faced with discomfort or pain we often seek relief immediately. Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with seeking relief from pain or discomfort. It is not masochism that we’re after. But what if our discomfort or pain had something to teach us about who we really are? What if instead of reflexively seeking relief from one’s discomfort, one became curious about it? What exactly is pain or discomfort anyway? Sometimes we do not have the luxury of being able to relieve our discomfort or pain. What happens then? I decided to look into what this simple discomfort could show me. For me, the itch became the opportunity to look deeply into reality. It was perfect because it was not so difficult as I imagine chronic or serious pain could be and I knew that I could stay with it and glean valuable lessons about fluidity and the changing nature of phenomena. Something as seemingly insignificant yet “stable” and consistent as an itch was a doorway for insight.


As I sat with the ever-changing itch I became less aware of it as an “itch” per se. A big space existed and in it was this “movement” which was traditionally labeled “itch”. There were sensations; pressure, tingling, sharpness, shifting. Soon the desire to scratch the itch disappeared and soon after the series of sensations I had been calling an itch disappeared altogether too. In a way it was a beautiful microcosm of our lives. The itch was born, lived for a while and quietly disintegrated into nothingness .

Our minds try to give the world a sense of continuity and stability but at some level nothing is as static as it seems; it is changing all the time. It is all born anew each moment but for our mind which strings it together.

So the itch was physically uncomfortable but could it tell me something about emotional discomfort or pain? When one experiences emotional pain what exactly is it? Does it stay the same over the course of five minutes? an hour? a day? The next time one is feeling emotional pain, what happens if one sits with it for a few minutes? Is it constant ? Do other thoughts/feelings enter one’s mind/body? what is the story that is being told? What is the texture of the pain? What is the mechanism by which it keeps going?

It seems that emotional pain must rely upon our minds re-telling the story over again and resisting what is going on right now. It is common to seek relief from the pain by re-hashing what "injustice" or "difficulty" or "problem" one is experiencing. It’s as if we think by re-telling the story it will come out differently, or we can soothe ourselves by dwelling on the details but does that really have the capacity to bring sustained relief? What if instead of circumventing the pain by telling stories about it, what if we focused on the pain itself? -- where it hurt? what it felt like? (not the story about it – but what it felt like in the body/mind) what it might be trying to tell you? What if you weren’t even trying to get rid of the pain but instead, just letting it be there? It is like somewhere we were told that pain is bad and therefore we must get rid of it. But is that really true? It seems to me that pain just is. What happens to one’s sense of self when one allows the pain to simply be there? Who or what is it that can watch the pain being felt?

Frequently when one experiences emotional pain one adds the layer of “I" should not be feeling this way” but where does that come from? Who says one should not feel that way? The fact is that one IS feeling that way and to argue with what is will always cause suffering. In fact, it probably is the definition of suffering.

Clearly emotional pain and discomfort are similar to the physical discomfort of an itch in many ways.
Observing the itch also offered me insight into addiction. Ultimately, addiction at some level, is rooted in a false sense of self. With an addiction, the addict identifies more with that which they crave, rather than see what they crave as something that passes through who they really are. I am reminded of how powerfully compelling behavior is often likened to “itching to do something”. Yes, one may want the object one craves but so what? What happens to YOU if you do not get it? (Now I am leaving aside physical addiction to something for a moment – but even in those cases, ultimately what happens to one if one does not get the object they crave? It may feel unpleasant or painful or may perhaps even be deadly but why is even that not ok? I do not mean that to be morbid. Who do we know/feel ourselves to be both in the absence of what we crave and in its presence? When I felt compelled to scratch the itch, somewhere I had dialed into the back of my brain a story about my discomfort. Perhaps it was that my discomfort would never end if I did not attend to this itch or that even if I managed to avoid scratching now I would certainly scratch later. Somehow the itch felt enormous and bigger than me and it crowded out all else. Really that is a flip-flop of reality. With addiction our sense of identity becomes so narrow that we define ourselves through our addiction and we are unable to relate to the world except through the craving. Dissolving an addiction seems like it would require a reimagining of oneself, a true recognition of ourselves.

Ultimately, we are the space that contains the itch and the pain. We are the observing of the itch and pain. In that space the itch came, morphed, and dissolved into the sweet no-thing-ness. So will we.
But to quote Eckhart Tolle– only the eternal in you can recognize the impermanent as impermanent.

Fear

The other night in a knee jerk reaction, I dismissed my sweetie. I did not like how I reacted. When I act in these hurtful ways I am not coming from a place of expansiveness. My sweetie had texted me and asked if I would take notes for other parents who could not attend a class that was offered through my son's day care. I told her that I would take notes and share them with other parents. Well, the class did not really lend itself to taking notes. When my sweetie asked if I had taken the notes, I summarily dismissed her. I did not simply say that although I had taken notes, they were not easily shared, my attitude made her wrong for even suggesting the idea in the first place.

I want to be the compassionate space for the world to exist around me. What gets in the way? What prevents me from being the loving space that lets things arise around me? In this case, I think it was an initial resistance to the task in the first place. It was an initial resistance born of fear. I do not see myself as a particularly good note taker and I suspect that I feared that my competence would be judged by the other parents. The fear was there, but not until I examined it now, was it ever acknowledged. In the end, my fear poisoned my reponse to my sweetie. It leaked out. If I had been able to see my fear at being judged about the notes I would have had more choices. I would have seen the fear and perhaps realized that who I am is bigger than the feeling of being afraid. I might have realized that the fear would pass too and I might not have responded from such a conditioned place. After all, she had the larger community in mind whereas my attitude toward her was closed off and self involved. Fear can be like that especially if it is not acknowledged. When it is acknowledged fear has a kind of exhilarating quality to it but when it stagnates in one's pysche it can pollute one's actions.

What are we really afraid of? Often it is a phantom. Look deeply. Are you protecting an image of yourself like I was? It was important that I be seen as "competent". Its a way I try to define myself, but definitions of ourselves are poor substitutes for just being ourselves and sensing it through and through. Who would I be if I were not competent? Would I still exist? Who would I be if I were not smart, or funny or male, or female or fill in the blank? Unconditional love comes from knowing that you are worthy of love, that you are in fact love, when you are absolutely nothing at all. This is what we desire so deeply - love for no reason - just because. Why is it so important that the world know I am -- fill in the blank? I suspect its when I am not rooted in the deeper connection with everything that it matters whether I exhibit certain qualities that make me feel special. Its when I do not feel the specialness of simply existing that I am afraid that I need to be a certain way.

I would like to ask you, what makes you afraid and I would like your responses? Few people live fearlessly, so what situations, people, circumstances, or scenarios, or things in general make you afraid? Maybe posting a comment makes you afraid? Let's talk about our fears. I want to hear from you.

You Don't Talk On Metro

The other day I was coming home on the metro after going downtown for a job interview. I was sitting in my seat reading Happiness Is An Inside Job by Sylvia Boorstein when a woman in her mid forties came and sat in an adjacent seat next to a young man fresh from college. At first the young man was listening to his mp3 player and jamming to his tunes. After a few minutes though, he decided to engage the young woman in conversation. In the metro, as a rule, strangers do not talk to each other. There is a metro decorum which says remain in your own little world and do not engage the other passengers. At first, because he had broken the decorum, I thought that the two of them knew each other, but when she responded by saying " "You must be new here, don't you know that people don't talk on the metro", I knew that they were strangers. I smiled and paused, alert like a cat watching a mouse hole to see how this exchange would go. The young man however, did not give up, he continued by saying "no, that can't be true" and repeated his question about how her day was. By now the woman was smiling too. He was serious in his attempt to be friendly. They began to talk. Soon they caught me smiling and observing them and the three of us engaged in a very pleasant conversation.


As all of this transpired, some other passengers began to smile too. It was not quite like what happens here: but it was interesting to observe. At one point the two asked me what I was reading and what it was about and I found myself in a discussion about cultivating happiness internally rather than looking to external circumstances to provide it.

I even mentioned that we are not our stories or our reactions or anything else that we can name and found myself talking about how we often respond to events from a place of our particular conditioning not from the expansiveness that we are. We chatted more, talking about our jobs (or former jobs) and where we lived and eventually the woman departed and said goodbye to the both of us. Eventually I got off too.

We never even learned each others names but we shared a wonderful connection that day. That connection exists all the time with everything if you take the space to be aware of it. But most of the time we are operating from our conditioned responses. " Its not ok to engage other passengers" "I must remain in my own world" "S/he will think I am coming onto them if I say something" We do not allow ourselves to feel our oneness or let it drive our actions. We do not see that we are created anew in each and every moment, as is the rest of the world. We operate as if what we did a moment ago, governs what we must do now. How freeing would it be if we realized deeply that we are reborn each moment and that it is only our mind which conjures the illusion of continuity. We do not have to brush someone off on the metro when they start talking to us just because that is what is done on metro. A new world awaits us.

How lovely it was to watch the young man crack the shell of our conditioning and remind us that we are all in this new world together.