Third Stage - Grasping and Resistance

Once a basic palette of notes is established, most of what we experience is being noted.  But I've left out another important dimension (or two).  The primary thing here is to focus on one's reaction to experience in terms of what we might call grasping and resistance.  This is an area that is more or less covered in traditional Buddhist terms by noticing that things may be perceived as "pleasant", "unpleasant", or "neutral".  This gives us some information about how we are built, what our biases are, and what reactions are coming up.  This dimension is sometimes based on inherent qualities, and sometimes learned.

The dimension of pleasant and unpleasant is closely related and almost identical to what might be the most important takeaway from this section, the overall awareness of "grasping" and "resistance".  For most practical purposes these will line up, as we will grasp for things that are pleasant and resist what is unpleasant.  So we can kind of think of it as one dimension.  But just to be accurate, notice that occasionally, for example when long term goals are involved, we might find that these don't line up.  An endurance athlete may learn to grasp for the intense unpleasantness of pushing into the "red zone", knowing that this is how they win.

The dimensions of pleasant/grasping and unpleasant/resistance begin to tell us a lot about our relationship with our experience.  The goal of meditation is in some ways to become okay with all experience, and so when we notice that something is unpleasant and we are resisting it, we can actually note the resistance itself, let that resistance just be there like it is like any other object in experience, and see if maybe we can let go of some of that.  And if we can't, we let that be okay too.

It becomes very important to notice grasping and resistance as these are the areas where we really learn to surrender and let things be.  Sometimes this can be difficult if we have conditioned ourselves to avoid unpleasant experiences.  We may immediately, perhaps unconsciously, in a habitual way, distract ourselves away from unsatisfactory experience.  The remedy is to develop practices to keep ourselves continuously aware, and to notice these sometimes subtle movements.  Notice the movement away from the unsatisfactory and feel the unpleasant sensations.  We're not cultivating or dwelling unnecessarily on the unpleasant, we're just giving these sensations the fair share that they always deserved, and we're getting the feedback from those experiences that we've been missing out on.

And although we've spun the pleasant side as, well, pleasant, it turns out that if we are desiring or craving something, there can actually be an anxious, furtive, needy quality to the grasping, a sense of lack or want that we may eventually come to see as unpleasant.  People tend to notice this long after dealing with the more typically unpleasant side of things.  Once again, more to let go of.

Noticing "grasping" and "resistance" are a major key to unraveling ourselves.  Other similar words would include craving and aversion, or contraction.  Use what works.

Next:  General Theory

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