FETTER 2
Doubt is the second fetter. It almost always shows up after the self is converted from a delusion into an illusion. It’s a continuation of expectations. (see expectations page) “it can’t be this easy” or “This is too ordinary” are some of the thoughts that accompany the uncomfortable sensations.
Doubts are always the result of believing thoughts. One of the best ways to ‘weather’ them is to go to the only thing that is actual, and that is experiencing. What is happening in the body NOW?
It is useful here to consider if the doubt is actually doubt that a self exists or if it is doubt whether we are really awake.
It is experienced as a feeling of confusion about the veracity of a story.
This is not the ‘place’ to work through doubt. It is just ABOUT it. (More concepts) but here is something to consider;
i can report that every time these descriptors (awakened/liberated) are used, they are accompanied by the question about whether there is a sense of special-ness or superiority.
Whether or not a ‘shift’ has occurred is not a matter of opinion, but to consider it is to enter story-land.
Now, this is a big one… Story is a companion to every experience, and (almost) every experience is a response to story.
Among the many seekers that i have worked with, there have been some that i would describe as awake in every way but one. That is that they didn’t believe that they are.
Consequently, they were responding to a different story, so, many of the new behaviors that would have been instilled by the brain rewiring was eluding them.
What are the criteria that determine if a ‘shift’ has happened? (rhetorical question) Well, most people would like to have had an epiphany-type experience. They see bells and whistles as proof that it has happened, but for many, it doesn’t happen this way.
There was also a belief in seekers, that if we were to ‘awaken’, that these things would change instantly and completely.
The stories of perpetual bliss, may or may not be true. They are certainly not experienced here, nor in anybody that i have related to.
There was a time when it was believed that the stories about ourselves were actual. That we were in control. That truth was a thing. That we were inherently good or bad.
If, on reflection, these things are recognized as a fallacy, if they are recognized to be illusions, then a ‘shift’ has happened.
There is the need for this to be an experiential shift. Not just intellectual. What does that mean?
The intellectual recognitions are usually accompanied by an experiential component, but without doubt, it takes time to re-condition many years of habitual responding.
If there is a feeling component to the recognition of the illusions, then behavior changes. Responses to the illusions when they present, become different.
Knowing that we don’t have control over everything that happens means that we don’t beat ourselves up over a perceived failure. We don’t deny the consequences of it, but neither do we dwell on how it could/should have been. We move on quickly.
Can you see how carrying a story that you are not there yet, inhibits this experiential component from happening ?
This is not to say “fake it until you make it.” You only have to ask yourself “do you actually grok the nature of the illusions?”
If you honestly do, then be open to the behavioral changes, the consequences of Seeing what is actual and what is story.
The following (in white) is with grateful acknowledgement to Pernille Damore
https://www.youtube.com/@TheAwakeningCurriculum
In the Buddhist text, as in life, doubt is often referred to as something we experience about our actions;
Am I am doing the right thing?
Is this the path for me?
Is this useful information for me?
That is one level of doubt: the skeptical doubt.
Another level of doubt is the internal doubt.
That is usually happening in comparison to either our own expectations, or to our assumptions of other people’s experiences.
All through the lessons in this fetter, we will circle back to that, since the foundation of that underlying belief is often about what we call “The Emotional Indicators”:
Fear, Anger, Guilt and Shame.
The underlying belief is created from one of the emotional indicators, and creates a felt sensation of a push/pull of doubt.
That sensation is easily transferrable to basically any other sensation of doubt you experience in your life.
The underlying emotional indicator is usually the same, the push/pull is usually the same, and the sensation of being paralysed is usually the same.
Just because the doubt circles around different topics, does not make it another type of doubt!
We are not that complex as human beings.
Doubt is doubt!
It is only the overlay of Ego chatter that makes you believe that “this is one thing, and that is something completely different!”
If you really feel into the sensations in the body, you very quickly discover that the underlying emotional indicator is the same, the push/pull is the same, and doubt is doubt.
In the Buddhist suttas, doubt is compared to a puddle of water filled with mud, which is a beautiful metaphor.
If you imagine a puddle filled with mud, you will see that there are parts of the puddle where the mud is extra thick, and that makes that part of the puddle extra dark.
If you were to look into that part of the puddle, there would be no accurate reflection; neither of you looking into the puddle, norof anything else surrounding the puddle.
Because there is a lack of light, what is looked into is obscured, and that is what it feels like to be sitting in a place of doubt.
You are in that state of “no light” that is locking you into a kind of paralysis.
You feel stuck in your track. Your mind is circling around in the same topic of non-ability which (in the Buddhist suttas) is often compared to you being lost in a forest and forgetting your way back.
When you are in that paralysed state of doubt, you forget all that you have heard.
You forget everything you knew until this point.
And it is often almost like the more years of seeking you have, the more you forget!
That sense of paralysis is very similar to what is experienced by someone with anxiety.
There is no movement.
You cant move forward, because you are not sure where to go. And you most definitely are not going back!
So you feel frozen in time.
Because of the thick mud with no light entering, there is no clarity brought to you at any point.
The more you fight to solve the doubt, the more you are stirring up the mud in the puddle, and the more obscured your clarity will become.
So the antidote to doubt is Calm.
You need to calm down!
If this is where you are, then you need to stop fighting.
You need to breathe.
Stay here.
Breathe deeply, and see if you can find a spot in your body right now that feels calm.
You will not find that calm in the mind, so dont even bother looking there.
Right now your mind is in a state of misdirection and confusion.
Your mind does not know which way to go.
It is not functioning in an optimal way since it is overactive, and overreacting on a complete overload.
So don’t even bother trying to find calm in your thoughts.
Do not try to stop the mind chatter.
Let it be.
Can you be in a body where the mind is confused and grasping, while your attention and focus is in finding a calm spot in your body?
Breathe, stay here.
Where in your body do you find calm right now?
Are your hands relaxed?
Can you focus on relaxed hands while the mind chatter is still going on?
Take a deep breath.
Feel how your belly gets bigger as your diaphragm expands when you inhale, and feel how it relaxes when you exhale.
Are there parts of your belly that are without tension?
How about your thighs?
You will find that there will be parts of your thighs that are tense, but there will also be parts of them that are relaxed.
Do you feel that?
What we are doing now is allowing tension to be there alongside with calm and relaxation.
The same goes for your mind.
You can allow your mind to have racing thoughts, grasping thoughts, critical thoughts, while you are still capable of breathing and finding calm in the physical body.
They are only assumptions that are letting you believe that calm needs to be any different than it is right now.
That is not truth.
Because clearly this is what is happening right now
And what is happening right now is never what the mind believes it should be like.
For some people, pointing like this can produce an image of a head separated from a body.
That is fine.
It simply reminds you that two opposite experiences can be present alongside one another, without either of them needing to change, or be any different than they are.
By doing that you are slowly expanding your acceptance, compassion and love to what is.
You will soon find out that the calm that dissolves doubt is exactly about acceptance, compassion and love.
So let’s just go back to the mind formations while you stay in the calm body right now.
Do you see that a lot of the thoughts happening, in the overactive mind, are based in wrong views?
A wrong view is a mistaken assumption, or a deluded understanding, that directly leads to experiences of suffering.
So a wrong view is basically any thought that does not make you smile and feel content, connected and present in life.
Let’s just go back to the muddy puddle analogy. The muddy water needs to settle.
All the sticky, clingy mud needs to slowly settle and drop to the bottom for the water to become clear.
It is the same with your mind endlessly circling on the topics of doubt.
You have to leave it!
You have to bring your focus to something else, and what you will find is that bringing your focus to the calm in your body, and allowing what is to be, will let the muddy water settle on its own.
If you keep experiencing thoughts that are products of assumptions about something that consistently makes you feel sad, concerned, or in despair, then how are you ever going to feel anything but that?
It is not like all those concerned and confused thoughts have ever led you to something productive throughout your life. It is not in their nature!
The job of doubt is not to find a solution for you.
Doubts fulfil their job description perfectly by maintaining more doubts. Doubt thoughts are self-replicating and self-promoting.
A thought of despair will leave you with a sensation of despair.
A confused thought will leave you with a sensation of confusion.
And those sensations in the body will lead to more associated thoughts, thus creating an ongoing feedback loop of painful paralysis.
The thoughts simply do what they are supposed to do. So you have to leave them. You have to leave the sticky clingy muddy thoughts.
Trust and find calm.
Calm down.
Calm down.
Nothing will fall apart by you taking a few minutes without focusing on your doubtful thoughts!
You can allow your body to just calm down.
You will find calm in a more sustainable manner than what we are doing right now, by creating a serenity practice that works with where you are, in the moment.
At first you will experience a sporadic clarity which is so much better than before.
Secondly, you will discover that doubt will dissolve itself if you just leave it.
Remember that doubt issues are dissolved, not resolved!
We work with the Fetters in pairs, and the pair that goes with the 2nd fetter of doubt, is the 10th fetter of ignorance vs wisdom.
And if you think about it, it makes perfect sense!
You need to find calm in knowing that you don’t know.
Knowing that there are some things you will never know.
There are some things that are not even to BE known.
So we are moving from an ignorant person who thinks that they can know, and must know, and can understand, and can sort out situations and maintain control, to a simple spontaneously moving being who operates from a wise state of Not-Knowing.
What we are doing now is a good example of that, because doubt is confusion of the mind.
Doubt is mind-created, and by calming the mind, most of the doubting conflict is simply going to dissolve itself while you are sitting here calming the body.
Remember though, that calming the body is not done with the purpose of solving doubt!
Doubt cannot be solved, but can only ever dissolve itself. So if you have a purpose in what you are doing right now, you just have just placed an emphasis on a topic that isn’t there!
We will talk about that type of purposeful doing in the next fetter.
We also want to make clear that when we are talking about you leaving the doubtful mind to be as it is, and focus on the bodily sensations, we are not talking about spiritual bypassing, or nihilism that pretends that there is nothing there to doubt in the first place.
It is not that at all!
On the contrary; we are asking you to create a lot of space for what is.
Accepting it as it is.
Leaving the doubt alone to be as it is, and that action itself will make the doubt dissolve itself all by itself.
Spiritual bypassing or gaslighting is dismissing what is here, and refusing to allow it to be here.
That is not allowing.
That is a conditional, “yeah, you may cry, but make it quick!” kind of allowing. It’s inauthentic.
That inauthenticity does nothing good.
Everything you resist persists, so the only way to have issues dissolve themselves is to create space to what is, and know that you can never know how to solve them.
That is wisdom.
So if you catch yourself creating space for doubt with the purpose of having it go away as quickly as possible, then know that you are meddling.
What is normally recommended for doubt in Buddhism, and also what we bring your focus towards, are very pure serenity practices of unconditional acceptance, of loving kindness Metta practices, of breath work, and of compassion, and holding so much space for what is.
All through this fetter you will find that every lesson is followed by a meditation.
That is for you to have a lot of options, and to find the meditation practice that works the best for the issue at hand.
We would like to end this part of the lesson by emphasizing the importance of going outside of your own capacity, and relying on outside council.
You need confidants around you, either as a group, as a guide, or with wise friends that can help you with reassuring you in your process.