I have been thinking about the difference between thinking about an experience and actually experiencing it.
I can think about happiness without being happy. I can think about what happiness means, remember being happy, or imagine what happiness might feel like. The happiness is an idea in my mind.
Then something can shift.
While thinking about happiness, I may suddenly find myself experiencing it. The thought seems to have become an experience.
When that happens, the experience seems to include both mind and body. There are the thoughts and mental formations surrounding the experience, along with the sensations occurring in the body. And they don’t necessarily seem to arrive separately. They can appear together, as one experience.
Then there is something else.
There seems to be a like meter running in the background.
Liking. Not liking. Wanting more. Wanting less. Wanting something to continue. Wanting something to stop.
It seems to be operating almost continuously.
This makes me wonder whether the like meter is actually part of the experience or whether it is something added to the experience.
An experience happens.
Then comes my relationship to it.
I like it.
I don’t like it.
I want to hold onto it.
I want to get away from it.
Perhaps those are two different things.
I have often assumed that if I liked an experience, I could somehow make it last longer, and if I didn’t like an experience, I could make it diminish by resisting it or moving away from it.
But perhaps the experience itself has a life of its own.
Perhaps it is more like a wave.
It rises.
It reaches its fullness.
It changes.
It falls.
The liking and disliking may not determine the movement of the wave. They may simply change how I experience being on it.
The roller coaster makes this especially interesting.
Fear can be intense. The body can tighten, the stomach can drop, the mind can anticipate what is coming. Yet underneath the fear is an awareness of relative safety.
The same fear in another circumstance might not be enjoyable at all.
So perhaps the roller coaster provides a way of experiencing intensity without needing to escape from it. The fear can be fully present while another part of the experience knows that I am safe.
Maybe that is part of what we can learn from experience itself.
Not how to make every experience pleasant.
Not how to eliminate unpleasant experiences.
But how to allow an experience to be fully experienced without immediately adding the need to hold onto it or push it away.
To feel the fear without becoming the resistance to the fear.
To feel the happiness without trying to keep the happiness.
To experience the wave without needing to control its movement.
Perhaps the freedom is not in changing the experience.
Perhaps it is in discovering what happens when the experience is allowed to be exactly what it is.
Spiritual Gravity 