Unease: One Big Tangle

 Even when tied in a thousand knots, the string is still but one.

Rumi

I woke up with a very familiar feeling of "unease" in my belly, like there was a very well -known knot or tangled mess in there.  I realized at that moment that unease was a life-long companion in my human experience. There was a reason for that.

Let's go back to the entry I wrote on July 30th, Untying Knots

I automatically thought of the big tangles my yarn gets into, when I am knitting, when the working strand gets caught up in the nonworking strand of yarn. I remember writing a few days ago about the analogy this created in my mind of patiently needing to work through each tangle within the big tangle, despite the notion that it would be so much easier to "cut the tangle" out of the yarn. I told myself that snipping out the knot would be like "spiritual bypassing".

Well, I had another "aha" moment this morning that contradicted that notion completely. I could see so clearly that it would be much better spiritually to snip the knot out...or at the very least to see the whole tangle as one big knot that really couldn't be separated or fixed by focusing on unravelling each tiny knot within it. That big knot was "suffering" and regardless of how many misguided twists and turns the yarn had taken, how many mini-knots and causes that led to the big tangle, it is all one knot with basically one cause, as the Buddha said.  I am going to use the term "clinging" to describe that cause here because it will fit into the analogy of strands of yarn clinging together in a tangled-up way. It also fits in better with my favorite topic: samskaras: the stuffed and stored emotional energy we cling to.  Clinging is "craving", "desiring" something other than this. 

So, let's get back to the unravelling of a tangled-up mess in the human experience.

As I was saying when I woke up with this very familiar knot in my gut, I was reminded how unease was such a part of my entire life.  I could see, suddenly, the reason why. I was not seeing "unease" as one big knot...I was forever seeing and focusing on the tiny knots within the big knot. Life seemed to be a mass of tiny knots that needed to be untangled.  I was focusing on each tiny knot within the tangled mess as the cause of the unease I was constantly experiencing and I was believing that I had to fix each tiny tangle to unravel the whole  for this version of life to be smooth and workable. From this perspective, there were so many problematic tangles. There were problems with each of my four children and knots or problems within each of those. There were financial tangles and tinier tangles within those. There were relationship issues and tinier knots within those. There were problems with health and health seeking; problems with past trauma wounding that kept making itself known ...there were the everyday life experiences that offer challenges on a regular basis. And there was this constant awareness of the suffering of other beings. I didn't see one big tangle of "suffering".  I could only see the many tiny knots leading to the big knot. It was overwhelming to even look at.

My approach to such "unease' and suffering over the course of my life lie in the addictive and very distracting tendency to focus downward on each tiny tangle and deal with one problem at a time, to unravel one knot stream at a time, to get to one tiny knot at a time. I thought I could eventually create ease and peace in my life if I put the time and effort into unravelling one tiny knot at a time. I sat down in my proverbial knitting chair and I painstakingly focused on each knot and attempted to unravel it, fix it, solve the problem.  Sometimes those knots unravelled pretty easily, other times they were pretty tight.  I kept telling myself, "When I get through these streams of knots the strand will loosen, things will get easier, Life will be better and with each strand I untangle I get closer to what I really want. Peace. Someday with all this problem focus and hard work I might even attain peace." So, I kept going in that way. To do this I had to focus on the details of the knot's history so I could trace it back. It meant a constant focus on what was...on the negative details of the story which keeps the energy levels down. 

The thing is, this approach never really worked at eliminating knots, at removing that sense of "unease", at least not permanently.  It seemed to take forever to unravel a set of tangles, to get through a series of problems, if I was lucky enough to. As soon as I would exclaim, "I did it!"...more knots would show up.  I really wasn't solving anything. Instead of removing suffering and unease from mine and others lives in this efforted approach, I was actually just numbing and distracting. Just as I was  when I was literally attempting to remove tangles in actual yarn that night. In this "each problem" approach I was lowering my gaze from what could be and distracting myself from this feeling of unease by meaninglessly doing. The focus on separating the details of a problematic life into individual knots that had to be unravelled didn't work. I still woke up every morning with that feeling of unease in my gut.

Each time we focus on the tiny knots within the one knot of "suffering" we get too caught up in the smaller details, too tangled up in little me's experience of a "problematic life". We become the tangled mess. When we are not that.  We are not the knots or the problems we are fruitlessly trying to unravel. We are the knitter knitting and looking at the tangle.  That tangle of unease, isn't us...it is simply something we are observing and experiencing. We do not need to get all tangled up in.  We do not need to fix and solve every worldly problem this human experiences.  Attempting to do so is what increases and perpetuates this feeling of "unease".  It is an impossible mission.

Imagine as a meditator sitting down with the "what is" of your experience.  Would it be easier and more likely peace inducing to sit with a million separate problems of unease jumping around in your head, or to sit with all problems grouped together in one big thought cloud of unease? Is it easier in real life to deal with one problem or a million little ones?

I said in that entry a few days ago when I first used this knitting analogy, that snipping the  knot  would be like taking the easy way out, "spiritual by passing". I now believe just the opposite. Focusing on each of our worldly problems and trying to solve each one at a time, may be the psychological solution to ending suffering...but it isn't the spiritual answer. That is the spiritual bypassing. 

Yes, there is suffering...but there is only one cause...clinging.  When we focus on each individual problem, we are clinging to the world as the cause of our suffering and the solution for ending it. It keeps us in our "me-me" detailed focus that gets us nowhere.  We continue to cling to this idea of 'me" with its problems and story. 

Seeing, instead, all these tiny worldly problems as one knot of " human suffering" with one cause that we all share, is very freeing. On a personal level it means I don't have to feel so overwhelmed focusing on each individual knot that forms this big knot in my gut of unease. I can just focus on the one generalized feeling of "unease" all humans share. I can also eliminate suffering in a much easier and more lasting way.  I can see that I am not caught up in that tangled mess. I am the knitter observing and experiencing a very common  experience of suffering.  I can expand that clarity to seeing how all suffering an be ended. 

The snipping away of the massive tangle is understanding suffering and unease as a worldly human experience brought on by craving and aversion. Suffering is a tangle in the yarn of our life but it is not what we are.  We are the knitter observing the tangle with the choice of getting all caught up in it again and again as we fruitlessly attempt to unravel one tiny tangle at a time, or to focus on the whole as one tangle. We can then snip it away through a practice of healthy detachment and realization.

Hmm! What would you chose? 

All is well.