Why Does the Separate Self Keep Coming Back?

Hi, and yeah, hi to everybody. My name is Lukas. I'm from Germany and living in Cyprus. And I thank you all for this really wonderful week that was my first retreat. And yeah, I really loved every second of it. So thank you, everybody. My question is about something that I struggled with for quite a while now. Yeah, obviously, especially this week. And I have prolonged days of the deep sense of oneness. And when thoughts arise, when feelings arise, there's not really somebody behind that. And it's just beingness. Even though thoughts arise, there's no resistance to them at all. Even if this thought may contain the I in the sense of a separate sense I, this I doesn't have any pull, any power, so to speak. And it's just in the ocean of beingness. And after a while, after several days, whatever it is, this seems to be at the moment just a period, so to speak. And then at some point, this pull of a separate I comes back. When thoughts arise, they tend to obscure the being again. And resistance comes back, and very intense resistance. I don't know. It almost feels like the more in one side I go, the more the other side is coming back as well. And then there's, again, prologue. I know, of course, being is only a way out. It must be there. But for some reason, and that's a little bit the struggle, that just a few days prior, not just for a minute or something, just like complete days, there's just this beauty and peace. And after a while, there's so much resistance again without anything really triggering it. And outside, there's not any specific event that's very intense or very. It's just like inside. And I wanted to know your wisdom about it, if that's a normal process, so to speak. And this process seems to be going on for quite a while already now. And if there's something specific that you could do in this instance. Yes. Yes, Lukas. It's completely normal, because you've had this taste, this recognition of who you essentially are. And that recognition has, it's uprooted the separate self. But the separate self hasn't completely come to an end as a result. Just as when you uproot a tree, the tree doesn't die overnight. It takes time. So the old habit of thinking and feeling on behalf of the separate self continues just through force of habit, although you're no longer feeding that habit with the belief that the self around whom those thoughts and feelings revolve is real in its own right. So yeah, it's completely normal. It's also completely normal for the sense of separation to come back with a vengeance. And there are two ways of possibly explaining this. One is that, in fact, the separate self is not coming back with a vengeance. It's just that as you rest in your being more and more, there's less impulse to suppress or avoid any feeling, because you understand, you feel deeply that no feeling can harm you anymore. So you no longer need to protect yourself from the discomfort of your feelings. So you allow much more to come up. It's not really that there are more of those feelings. It's just that you're more open to them. You suppress them less. The example many of you know that I often give is that the sun over the well at midday, when it's not midday and the sun is not shining into the shaft of the well, the creepy crawlies at the bottom of the well are fast asleep. There's no light. They're dormant. But for a brief period of midday, when the sun is above the well and its light shines all the way down to the bottom of the well, the creepy crawlies wake up because of the light. And they start drifting up to the top of the well towards the light. So our feelings are like that. Most of the time, they're dormant or repressed or avoided, because they're too painful, unbearable, and so on. Then, when the sun of awareness begins to shine in your life, there's no longer any need to repress them or avoid them. So they begin to bubble up. And you think, oh, it's getting worse. Before, I just had a few feelings. Now, I've got a whole flood of feelings. Things are getting worse. No, things aren't getting worse. It's just that all that material that was dormant in you, there's no need to repress it or avoid it anymore. So it's coming back. So that is very normal. That is one explanation for this resurgence, this apparent resurgence of the sense of separation. The other is that the more you rest, abide in your true nature, the more the separate self, if we can caricature the separate self as an entity or a self, the more the separate self feels threatened by the separate self, as it were, feels the imminence of its own demise. And so it has to come back with a vengeance to reassert itself, because it feels, if I don't reassert myself, I'm going to die. It's right. It is. So that's another reason that sometimes, the more you rest in your being, that there is this resurgence of the sense of separation. Some people feel this is an intense fear sometimes, just before they dissolve into being. There is this fear. And the fear is the fear of the separate self, which realizes it's the moth that's just about to, all the moth wants is the flame. But as long as it's at a distance from the flame, it's safe. But when it comes really close, the moth suddenly realizes, oh my god, I can't experience the flame. I can only die into the flame. And then it flies away again. So that's a second reason why sometimes there's this resurgence of resistance or fear. But it's not really necessary to do anything about it. If you start doing something about it, you are doing exactly what the separate self wants you to do. The separate self has got you. And oh good, Lucas is doing what I want. It's perpetuating me by trying to get rid of me. So the fact that you see it clearly, the mechanism, the fact that I've now given you a couple of reasons why this happens, it just enables you to remain in being, as being, and not be pushed and pulled by the antics of the separate self. And sooner or later, it will realize, Lucas is just not. I can't manipulate him. And it'll leave you alone. Yes, thank you. This is felt definitely in the sights of emotions, pull of the sense of being an eye, but also on a physical level. And I heard the term, I don't know if you use the same term, pain body, meaning that just by sitting down, just by, yeah, no events triggering it, but I can literally sense a feel of almost like electricity coming through the body. And it's almost like the more I rest in being, the more this pain body, for lack of a better word, yeah, is triggered. And in my even very intense symptoms of the body, but it's not like any specific event happened or there's no thought about any specific event. It's just this somehow stored energy, for lack of a better word, in the body. And of course, knowing that this will come up and it's quite, so it's sometimes also I kind of push it away a little bit or just try to not face it all the time. But of course, it has to be faced. But also this pain body, I don't know, these symptoms are there for quite a few years now. So I don't know if you have anything to say about that. The pain body, I think, was a term that was coined by Eckhart Tolle. One of his great contributions to the non-dual teaching in our era. And it's a modern interpretation of the Vedantic teachings on samskaras or vasanas, for those of you that know about the Vedantic tradition, this residue of feelings that live in the deeper recesses of our mind that are not normally accessible in the waking state because they have been reasonably successfully avoided or repressed, but nevertheless live dormant most of the time at the bottom of the well. The pain body is the creepy crawlies at the bottom of the well. But sometimes an event can trigger them. If an event in your life is similar to an event that took place 30 years ago that caused you to contract emotionally, if a similar event takes place 30 years later, although there may have been a good reason for contracting emotionally 30 years ago, but if a similar event now takes place in your life 30 years later and there's no good reason for contracting emotionally or withdrawing, yet you will still do so because it will trigger the old memories. For instance, your mother abandons you when you're two years old, or perhaps doesn't abandon you, but is unloving or unkind. And you have this feeling of abandonment throughout your early childhood. You feel that your mother or your father was always abandoning you. So you have this deep association between love and abandonment, that they come as a mixed package. You think that love and abandonment are the same thing. So later on, 30, 40 years later in your adult relationships, particularly your intimate relationships, your partner wants to go away on a holiday on their own for a week, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to want to do if you just want some solitude. But nevertheless, because of your predisposition to abandonment, you think that your partner is abandoning you. And therefore, you think that they don't love you. And therefore, there's this huge reaction to their going away where they love you dearly. They just want to go away for some solitude, to write a book or whatever. So that's an example of a pain body being triggered by an event that's similar to an event that caused it to be laid down in the first place, but actually has nothing to do with it. So the more aware you become of this, then when, to continue the example, your partner wants to go away for the weekend or something, instead of feeling abandoned and therefore unknown, you just say, oh, of course, sweetheart, that's a beautiful idea. Have a lovely time. How can I help you prepare for it? And then when they're away, there's no pull. You just text from time to time. I hope you're having a lovely time. Look forward to seeing you when you come home. And you don't feel any lack. You don't feel abandoned. And you feel no lack of love. That's just an example of how the pain body is laid down early on in our life. As a legitimate response to the situation, it is reasonable for a young infant to contract if they are abandoned by their mother, because they need their mother for obvious reasons. So the pain body is often laid down for legitimate reasons early on. But because it cannot be processed then, it doesn't leave the system, because the infant obviously cannot understand or rationalize what's taking place. So it stays stuck in the system. And it's the origin of trauma, of course. And the trauma is not really stuck in your body. It's stuck in your mind. Trauma is when the mind doesn't recognize that something that was happening to you 30 years ago that was indeed a traumatic experience is no longer happening to you now, that your mother has ceased abandoning you, or your uncle has ceased abusing you, or whatever it is. That's no longer happening. Your body has actually recovered. But your mind has got stuck. Your mind keeps thinking that it's happening now. And hence, it's very easily triggered by an event. So just understanding this mechanism, not doing anything about it, but just understanding it helps it to lose its hold over you. And you'll find in time, you'll just become freer and freer of the tyranny of the pain body. It will lose its power over you. Thank you.