So when things are hard its tempting not to enter the Present Moment and in turn drift off into escapism. Watch a film, take your mind off it, or even worse get drunk. This is all so well and good but it doesn't solve the problem.
However when faced with pain or difficulty surely the last place we want to be is Right Here, Right Now.
An important stage of meditation that I hear again and again appears to be occupying a perspective from which sensations become just feelings. As Pema Chödrön puts it we separate the sensations from all narratives and story lines and just perceive it as it is.
Strangely when faced with this advise we suddenly get pragmatic and say that isolating feelings from narratives does not solve the problem.
The issue now though what is "the problem." It is actually just a narrative!
Nonsense we say. I have just been diagnosed with cancer how is that a "just a narrative." Well what does "diagnose with cancer" actually mean? It means we will die a painful death. Well probably but is that happening now? No. It means I won't have a long happy retirement. But is that happening now? "Long happy retirement" is just a narrative, it is escapism. And so on. All we have right now after diagnosis is the same as we had before, plus a narrative and with lots of other narratives like "happy retirement" upset. We're just had a shakeup of our fantasies that is all. But perhaps now we do have some stress and discomfort that is a natural body response to hearing something frightening or upsetting. So this is where Pema Chödrön comes in. Just observe the sensations as they come and go. Don't add all the imagination that this feeling comes from my cancer diagnosis. But we will obviously experience a lot as our dreams of the future have had a massive reality check. But really we should not hold tight to future plans anyway cos they are unreliable, don't need a cancer diagnosis to remind us that.
Present Moment then is not just moving ourselves into the firing line. With practice is become removing ourselves completely. We don't need to move into the Present or hide in fantasies or alcohol. We don't move at all! Present moment simply allows us to see things in Sense Consciousness as they are without Mind Consciousness (narratives) bundling in or worse Self-Consciousness hijacking the show (and making it all about me). It stops being "my cancer diagnosis" and just "a cancer diagnosis."
This is 7 of the 9 consciousnesses. 5 senses + Mind Consciousness + Self Consciousness.
Meditation is usually focusing on making Sense Consciousness take over, and weaken Mind Consciousness and most importantly Self-Consciousness. These last two dominate so much that we often don't notice our sense at all. Reading and writing this is almost all Mind Consciousness. There is just a tiny bit of sense consciousness to see the words, and then often a big amount of Self-Consciousness as we own things like "disagreement" to make it "I disagree" etc. Mind Consciousness is the only one that sleep.
There are 2 more Consciousness usually even more weak that sense. Store House is 8 which records everything and survives death. This is why people are born with knowledge and personality. Thich Nhat Hanh says that this consciousness is the one that knows how to drive the car while Mind Consciousness is day dreaming or thinking about other things. I think that means its the same one that slowly processes a crossword or other puzzle so that when we come back to it we suddenly know the answer. It is low energy so doesn't need sleep, but its a weak consciousness that is never bright.
Finally there is what Buddhists call Buddha Nature. This is the True Consciousness. When we enlighten this one is bright and it shows up the others. We see the Self-Consciousness does not really own anything or even exist as separate thing. We see the Store House and how our past lives and actions have made our current life. We see our Mind Consciousness as just the maker of narratives and stories about our world like a daily personal NEWS. And that brings us back to that Key stage in mediation.
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