When you look at the image above, you might see it as the profile of duck facing toward the left or as the profile of a rabbit facing toward the right. When what you see changes from one to the other, you experience a perceptual shift. Once you see this shift, you can't unsee it.
There are a number of perceptual shifts produced by meditation and mindfulness that lessen suffering and cause changes in behavior. None of these perceptual shifts have anything mystical about them. They are easy to understand intellectually but they are not transformative unless one sees the truth of them in their own mind. For example:
- Before you begin a meditation practice, you may see events as the cause of suffering. For example, if someone says something unkind, it might hurt your feelings and you would see the person and their words as the cause of your suffering. But after you begin a meditation practice, you may come to see that such events are not the cause of your suffering, the cause of suffering is your reaction to the event. This doesn't mean you ignore problems, it means you can respond to them with compassion and reason rather than out of control selfish emotions.
There are many other types of perceptual shifts caused by meditation and mindfulness
- At first you may notice that sometimes you are aware of emotions and other times you keep them bottled up inside yourself - suppressed. Later, when you observe the activity of the mind or when you cultivate metta or bliss, you notice there is something inside you like a switch or a valve or a gate that you can open to let emotions flow or close to suppress emotions. You notice that suppressing emotions makes you feel worse - the larger part of suffering comes from resisting emotions rather than the emotions themselves. So you try to keep the emotional gate open as much as possible, in daily life if you can, and when you are trying to concentrate in meditation or in mindfulness.
Opening the emotional gate doesn't mean obsessing over every unpleasant emotion you can think of or remember. It means that if a situation arises that upsets you, you relax and you look for the emotion being held in, and let it out, let it into consciousness so you are not suppressing anything, and the unpleasant feeling, the "I don't like" or "I don't want" aspect fades.
- Unpleasant emotions and cravings at first seem involuntary. Later they seem to be more like habits that you engage in inadvertently and with attention and effort you can give up the habit and stop making yourself suffer by staying relaxed, staying mindful in the moment - neither suppressing thoughts, emotions and impulses nor getting carried away by them - not mistaking the stories they try to tell you about good and bad, right and wrong, winning and losing as having anything to do with reality.
- At first you think emotions are about reality, for example: in such and such a situation it is right to get angry, later you realize those kinds of stories are not reality, they are just a dream about how to make yourself suffer.
- At first you get upset over problems, you might dislike or get angry at people and events. Later you realize you cannot learn to stop suffering without actually suffering and so you stop judging people and events because they help you to make progress, and because you feel compassion for people who are themselves suffering.
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At first it seems normal to be immersed in your thoughts, emotions, impulses, and sensory experiences. Later, after practicing mindfulness in meditation and in daily life, you notice the distinction between mindfulness (observing your thoughts, emotions, impulses and sensory experiences - observing your environment, the sensations in your body, and the activity of your mind) versus being immersed. You see that being mindful, observing, creates a sense of detachment. You see that most suffering comes from immersion. Later the difference immersion and mindfulness becomes more like the difference between dreaming and being awake. Even later you see that the detachment leads to non-attachment, and mindfulness becomes the new default.
- At first it seems like your mind is you, you think your thoughts, opinions, emotions, and impulses are yours. You think you are using your mind when you try to solve a problem. Later you see that thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, and feelings of self arise from unconscious processes, they pop into awareness unasked for, uninvited. You don't see how they are formed or where they come from. Even when you are trying to solve a problem you don't know where the impulse to solve the problem came from. You realize thoughts, emotions, and impulses are not yours, you don't control them. You don't control your mind so your mind cannot be you.
- Still later, when you observe the activity of the mind, you see that the moment to moment activity of the mind is a constantly changing sequence of cause and effect. An event or a thought may lead to another thought or invoke a memory that might cause an emotion that might produce an impulse etc. etc. You see there isn't anyone in control, all there is just cause and effect.
- At this point you may feel like you are just an observer of mental activity without any agency, but later you realize observation creates the observer. Without anything to see, there would be no seeing, no observing of sight. This is true for the other senses, and it is also true for all mental activity. Without thoughts there would be no observing of thoughts etc. etc. So you see there is no observer separate from the process of perceiving, no experiencer separate from experiencing. The feeling of being an observer and the feeling of having no self both arise from the same unconscious processes from which all mental activity arises.
- Another similar perceptual shift happens if you notice your sense of self, your feeling of being, you will notice that it changes from situation to situation. In school you think of yourself as a student. At work you think of yourself as an employee. When you are with your parents, your children, your friends, you have a different sense of self in each situation. When you think of different issues or topics that you often think about, you will notice you have a different sense of self with each of those. The same is true for emotions and emotional issues you experience. And if you keep observing you will see that the feeling of self is actually influenced moment to moment by every sensory experience, by everything you see, hear, and feel. You will see that every moment of experience produces a unique sense of self. This is another way of seeing that experience creates the experiencer. You see there isn't a separate continuous constant self apart from experiencing/observing.
- Knowing that observing creates the observer you then notice, for example, when you see, if you just see and stay mindful, and you don't get carried away by thoughts, emotions, and impulses, you don't assume, because you see, that there is a seer, you just see without any observer necessary. When you are fully involved in experiencing, there is no experiencer.
- Initially you think the ego is you, and is the good guy in all the mental stories the mind weaves, and who is someone who must be defended from insult and injury at all costs. Later you realize the ego is an opinion that is the main character in the plot to make yourself suffer. This disenchantment helps you to let go of selfish attachments and aversions arising from egocentrism and egotism.
- Surrender, accepting emotions, not resisting emotions, is one level of non-attachment.
But another perceptual shift goes beyond surrender.
If you observe the activity of your mind, you may see that the stream of consciousness is simply a sequence of cause and effect. One thought or emotion, or impulse, or memory, leads to another until something sets you off on a new tangent. There isn't a unifying entity to be found in the various independent unconscious processes that produce the stream of consciousness (thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, feelings of self and no self). And you may also see how the ego, (the idea of that entity which can't be found generated by those unconscious processes) is involved in most suffering - you understand how suffering arises in your mind - it arises from impersonal processes, you do not choose it or ask for it, it isn't you or yours, it isn't an objective truth. When you see it this way, there can be a perceptual shift, and you see there isn't anyone in a position of responsibility that could be identified to surrender, accept, or not resist.
After the perceptual shift, you don't feel like there is anything that needs to be accepted because it isn't on you. You no longer see yourself as the central figure in the story to which suffering is happening because the premises on which suffering is based are undermined.
You suffer less because you see that the old way of thinking, the thinking that produced the suffering, was based on a misunderstanding of the cause of suffering and on a misunderstanding of what the self is.
You realize you suffered because you felt some responsibility for something. But when you recognize that feeling was based on misunderstandings, you suffer less.
Summary
When you watch the activity of the mind you see that:
- Emotions are not reality. You don't have to believe the story that says you should, for example, be angry.
- The situation is not the problem, the problem is your reaction to the situation.
- When you notice unpleasant emotions and cravings arising, you find you can relieve much suffering by opening your emotional gate - by accepting emotions rather than suppressing them.
- Unpleasant emotions and cravings that at first seem involuntary later seem to be more like habits that you engage in inadvertently and with attention and effort you can give up the habit without suppressing them.
- You cannot learn to stop suffering without actually suffering and so you stop judging people and events because they help you to make progress, and because you feel compassion for people who are themselves suffering.
- Thoughts, emotions, impulses, sensory experiences, and feelings of self arise from unconscious processes, they are not yours, you don't control them. You don't control your mind so your mind is not you.
- The moment to moment activity of the mind is a constantly changing sequence of cause and effect, there isn't anyone in control, all there is just cause and effect.
At this point you may feel like you are just an observer of mental activity without any agency,
- But then you notice without anything to see, there would be no seeing, no observing of sight. Observation creates the observer.
- Every moment of experience produces a unique sense of self. Experience creates the experiencer. There isn't a separate continuous constant self or apart from experiencing/observing.
- When seeing just see. When you are fully involved in experiencing, there is no experiencer.
- The ego is an opinion that is the main character in the plot to make yourself suffer. This disenchantment helps you to let go of selfish attachments and aversions arising from egocentrism and egotism.
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