Chapter Four: Coherent and Incoherent Energy
Coherent and Incoherent Energy
Trying to Concentrate in a Chaotic State is Very Difficult
It Is What It Is
[Discourse given on day one of a seven day foundation retreat, December 2011]
Coherent and Incoherent Energy
[Burgs points at two symbolic drawings of two different human energy fields – one is in an unhealthy, disorganised state (fig.1), the other in a healthy, organised state (fig.2)].
What does this tell you?
This is how we arrive (incoherent energy fig.1), and this is how we want to go home (coherent energy fig.2).
(Fig.1) Incoherent Energy Field
(Fig.2) Coherent Energy Field
I think it’s really important that we think like this and really connect to this idea, because half the time when we think we’ve got a problem, we think it’s the problem. A problem might seem pretty insurmountable when we approach it with a disorganised energy field (fig.1). But approach the same problem with an organised energy field (fig.2) and you’ll probably find it’s not much of a problem at all. So this is extremely important that we understand this aspect.
And we spend so much time trying to work out some idea of what the problem is. We go and see a therapist or a counsellor or whatever, and we talk about ‘my’ problem, and we go in a chaotic and disorganised state, and we talk to them in this incoherent energetic state, and we try and find an explanation in this incoherent energetic state, and we leave still in an incoherent energetic state and we wonder why we didn’t knock it on the head.
But, if you arrive here in an incoherent energetic state, and you don’t think about your problem at all and gradually make the transition over the course of the week and leave in a coherent energetic state, you will probably find when you look at the problem, that it isn’t much of a problem at all.
This is so key.
Now, what is all this cloud of tangled knotted energy that I’m drawing around this here? (fig.1)
This is noise, mental noise. This is the energy that is produced by our mind. So, later I’ll talk to you in detail about where this body comes from and I’ll explain it in terms of the four things that produce materiality in our body: Temperature, Nutriment, Consciousness, Kamma. But in this instance I will start with the notion that consciousness is producing so much energy within us, and the coherence of that energy has a huge determining factor on what sense we make of our experience. You may have heard people speak of the chakra system. Well for the moment let’s look at them in terms of sort of centres in our subtle nerve system that basically act as an interface between us and what we are knowing.
You look out there and you assimilate what’s going on and it’s the interface (the assimilating of that experience) that works its way gradually into our awareness through our sense-doors and through our physical body. And then every time we react to what is going on or have an idea about who we think we are, it produces this cloud of energy within us. “I think I’m special,” produces a cloud of energy. “I think I’m rubbish,” produces a cloud of energy. “I think I’m better than that person,” produces a cloud of energy. “It shouldn’t be like that, why is it like that!” Every time your mind arises it produces so much energy and so much subtle materiality is produced with it. Now you can’t see it yet, but it’s going on all the time, and it produces this cloud.
You talked to me earlier today, you said, “I can’t concentrate because there’s so much emotion.” Well where’s all that emotion come from? You’re just sitting on a cushion. You carried it here with you. From where? It’s carried around you in this sort of cloud of energy, and the more dense and incoherent is this cloud, the more there is in the way between us and what we are experiencing. So some of it we call kamma (and we will talk about that later). That is the action energy behind what we do and what prompts us to do and the rest of it is just mental noise.
This mental noise is all ideas, what I think about myself, who I think I am. What I think about someone else, who I think they are and what they mean to me. What does it mean when they behave like that to me? What does it mean that these things are going on in the world, etc.?
And all this stuff stops us just being with things as they are, so we can see what they are clearly. Some people are prone to an extremely elaborate idea of the world and themselves, and others don’t have so much of an idea of the world and themselves, they are much more what we could call ‘immediate’; they just are who they are. The more elaborate is your idea of yourself and the world, the more noise there is between you and what you are experiencing, and the more distorted will become your experience of it.
Trying to Concentrate in a Chaotic State is Very Difficult
So, while you are trying to concentrate in this chaotic state, it is very difficult. You are constantly distracted, constantly restless, thinking about trying to go anywhere but here because being here puts you in touch with all this chaotic energy. If I go and think about something on the other side of the universe or on the other side of the country, like what my boyfriend is doing now or what my girlfriend is doing now, I don’t have to experience this chaotic energy because I can go into an abstract remote experience that pays no attention to the cloud of chaos that I’m sitting in. And this is what we do, we remove ourselves from the present to avoid experiencing how incoherent we’ve become.
The invitation to come back to the present, which puts us back in touch with how incoherent we are, can often be quite a challenge. So the first stage of your mediation is not going to be that smooth. To go straight from charging around like a maniac with no idea of what you’re doing in the world, to sitting on your cushion like the Buddha and concentrating on four elements for an hour is going to be very uncomfortable. You are going to have to go through many stages of reorganisation before you sit effortlessly, so don’t fight with yourself.
Understand it’s just incoherent energy. Your mind’s rattling around, it can’t drop this and it can’t drop that, it thinks about one thing and suddenly ‘BOOM!’ There’s a mass of charge on me, my head feels like I’m spinning, I’m either very hot or very cold – all these things. It’s the mental charge you’re carrying around all these various issues. And the one thing you’ve got more charge on than anything else is your idea about yourself. So, the biggest charge we carry is the idea of who I think I am and what I’d like other people to see me as. Now this isn’t necessarily kammic energy, this is just noise, mental energy, ideas that we are clinging to. We carry it around with us.
So we are not here to refine the idea of ourselves. We were always going to be what we are. “Last year I thought I’d go be a fireman, now I’m going to go be a soldier, now I’m going to go be a ballet dancer.” I don’t know, it just doesn’t matter, that’s not the issue. What matters is that you can just be with what you are – that’s what we’re trying to learn to do here. And if you find yourself in a chaotic state then you must have made a mess further back down the line. There’s no point sitting there thinking, “Well, hold on, it’s not fair.” This whole idea of this ‘victim’ mentality doesn’t understand the law of Dependent Origination and doesn’t understand the universe. It can’t see that it was always going to be like that and me not being able to be with it is because I didn’t understand that it was always going to be like that. There’s no such thing as a victim. As they say, “You never get more than you can handle and you always get what you deserve.” Whether it’s something delightful or something not, until one is able to take accountability for oneself, then you are stuck. Because it is what it is and we are stuck with it until the conditions change. And even then it will still be a case of, “It is what it is.”
You are stuck because you are waiting for the universe to come and sort you out and it isn’t going to come and sort you out. It doesn’t care if you’re in a muddle or not. Like it or not, we get in a muddle and we undo ourselves, and only we can undo that muddle. The universe will roll on either way. It’s not waiting for us to sort ourselves out.
It Is What It Is
It is what it is. It is a pure perfect expression of that process by which things come into being; it’s never not perfect and there’s never a hair out of place; it can’t be the case that something comes into being without the cause for it being exactly that. That is the law of cause and effect, that is the law of Dependent Origination, and the more you see that, the more you know it was always going to be the case that I was like this. I made that choice, and behaved like that, and I came to that view and dependent upon that view decided to do this. What was then the outcome was always going to be the outcome – and so you accept “It is what it is,” and let go. Things were always going to get to whatever state they got to as a result of that causal chain that went before it. If you don’t want things to stay in that state, then you change the conditions for their continuing to be that way, rather than merely wanting them to change. So you create within you the wholesome grounds for future well-being, and you remove the unwholesome grounds for future suffering, and that is the way in which we free ourselves over time.
Now is that clear? It is clear! It’s wonderfully clear! And not understanding this is why beings get into a frightful mess. And knowing this and seeing this is the beginning of coming to that point of, not just accountability, but having in your hand the capacity to work out what needs to be worked through. So maybe it starts with a sense of “Goodness me what have I done?” And actually that’s not the point, it’s about what you’re going to do next that will determine your future. You are where you are right now, so it doesn’t matter what you’ve done, where you’ve come from, how you got here – you’ve got here. What matters is that you start sowing the seeds of good fortune in the future and stop sowing the seeds for misfortune in the future.
If you take a seed of a bitter lemon and you sow it in the ground, you put water on it, you put fertiliser on it, no matter how much fertiliser, no matter how much water you give it, even if you pray to it every single day, it will still grow up to be a lemon tree and produce a bitter fruit.
But if you take a seed like a mango, you sow it in the ground, you put water, you put fertiliser, even if you never pray to it, it will grow up, turn into a mango tree and produce sweet fruit. Its nature (once the seed is sown) is to produce its fruit. This is the Law of Dependent Origination, the Law of Cause and Effect, or the Law of Kamma.
So, when you are first trying to concentrate, you are having to try and concentrate in the middle of all this energetic chaos. So don’t worry as you won’t necessarily get much concentration yet; certainly there will be wandering off, and this incoherent energy will pull you this way and that and your mind will go off thinking about all those things you obsess with. What you have to do is understand however disturbed your mind has become, it’s just like water, “If I leave it alone for long enough it’s nature is to settle and come to stillness.” Things don’t exist in a state of conflict on their own, everything inclines to a state of order if it’s left to do so, including you. So at some level you are holding this state of incoherence in place. If you can’t concentrate or you don’t feel comfortable sitting on the chair or on the cushion, it’s because there’s too much incoherence and the antidote to it is just being there, just stay there. Keep trying; the concentration won’t be very good and your meditation won’t be very good yet, but the more you pay attention or try to, the less mental noise you will be producing and the more the incoherence will drop away, the stiller you’ll become. So the first picture is like a very disturbed pool of water (fig.1), if you leave it long enough it will end up completely clear. By the time your energy has reorganised you should be able to concentrate reasonably well, and by the time you get to here (fig.2) you will be effortlessly concentrating.
So try to understand this energetic part of your meditation, and how patience and just being there is the antidote. If it feels a bit rough it’s okay, make reflection, “Well why did I expect it to be otherwise? I’ve been churning around with these issues in my daily life, I’m not going to sit still and expect them not to be there,” and gradually let yourself settle.
So, I just wanted to make that point because it’s not just a linear path. We have to look at all areas, all the ways that we can bring ourselves to a more reorganised state, because if you just try and meditate your way out of here, you might just get disappointed and think, “Oh this meditation is not going to do anything for me.” Meditation will help you, but it’s the attitude that is willing to work itself out from this tangled knot into a state that is able to start to meditate in a constructive way that is so important. It is this attitude that’s gradually going to turn things around. So it’s only symbolic but does that make some sense?
So, the way we build up our meditation is we first learn to meditate and pay attention to the body, and then we start to understand how the mind functions, and then we see what the mind does to the body and what the body does to the mind. That is the order in which we develop insight.
Q: If it’s kammic energy, is there a way to purify it?
A: We will get to that. All in good time. All you have to do at this stage is to settle, is to be able to sit still. It’s not always comfortable because we’re not completely relaxed yet and we haven’t learned to relax completely. Stay with it. Keep trying. Keep trying. Some people have to keep trying for a whole week just to concentrate for a few seconds. But however long it takes, it doesn’t matter because the really gross stuff is what has to get dropped off at the beginning so we can start to engage with some kind of skill. So if you are sitting there with your mind wandering around trying to bring it back but off it goes, try and bring it back again. What you don’t want to do is to not make the effort to bring it back. You have to make the effort at this stage. Don’t worry if it’s not successful yet, it’s about making the effort in the early stages and keeping at it. The more disturbed your mind is, the more it needs to be left alone before it becomes clear. The more sediment there is in a tank of water, the longer it has to be left after it’s shaken up before you can see through it. If there’s not much sediment in a tank of water, then pretty soon after leaving it alone it becomes clear. Whatever you are carrying around, you have to just be with it. But it doesn’t matter, the principle is the same, so just give it time.
