Working with the agitation flavor in meditation

Sometimes, when we do meditation practice, we experience calm and tranquil, states but sometimes when we do meditation practice, we experience agitation impatience restlessness and so forth.

There is a tendency to think when that kind of thing arises that I'm doing something wrong, but it's not OK.

I would say that not only is it OK, but actually it's quite natural.

I'm experience of restlessness in the body is a certain flavor of emotional experience in the body.

I use the word feel to refer to body sensations that seemed to a person at a given time to be emotionally nature and I have a sort of list of common flavors of field that come up for People, the biggest uncomfortable ones are anger fear sadness.

Shame slash embarrassment.

But right after the Big 4.

Comes what I call agitation or impatience.

Now it may not be dramatic like anger fear sadness and shame.

But the

Don't want to sit still antsy kind of feel is very significant because it informs the day-to-day life of everyone.

Most People are.

Hopefully not living on a day-to-day basis, with rage tear grief and shame flavors in their body.

But almost everyone experiences usually below the threshold of awareness a kind of.

Subtle agitation impatience quality in day-to-day life. That's what given gives that sense of being driven and frenetic that inability to stop on a dime.

Is primarily due to agitation flavors that sort of driving?

Now, therefore is the goal to get rid of those agitation flavors.

Well, no, I wouldn't really say quite that the goal is to be able to have a complete experience of those agitation flavors.

What do I mean by a complete experience I mean that you experience it with an extraordinary degree of concentration censored clarity and equanimity.

These are technical terms within the basic mindfulness system. But I teach and I've defined them. Elsewhere, when you bring enough concentration clarity and equanimity to any ordinary experience. It becomes utterly extraordinary.

And that includes negative experiences uncomfortable experiences like agitation flavor in your body.

It's desirable to be able to have a complete experience of the agitation flavor.

That doesn't mean however, that you necessarily have to.

Work with it.

When it comes up.

You may choose to focus away from it.

So you're practicing everything is sort of Common. Whatever let's say you're focusing I don't know you're focusing on your breath for example, your breath sensations.

And all this agitation comes up.

So what should I do.

Well, one possibility is to just let it be there, but in the background.

And you keep bringing your attention back to the breath.

But you don't think it's a bad thing that it's there. You don't try to suppress it. You just don't intentionally focus on it, you just keep coming back to your object.

Now I would say that you're not.

Bringing concentration or sensory clarity to the agitation.

But you are bringing equanimity to it, even though you're not focusing on it, you're letting it be in the background, you're coming back to the breath.

So one strategy would be just let it be there understand it's a natural thing. You let it be in the background. You keep focusing on what you were focusing on another strategy is OK. Let's not turn away from it. Let's turn towards it.

Then you would be bringing 3 things to it, you would be accepting it as a flavor in your body, so that's the equanimity piece, but you were doing that before hopefully.

That was already helping a little bit, but now you're bringing concentration and sensory clarity, you're intentionally focusing on it, and ignoring other things.

And you are trying to be aware of the locations the changing intensities and so forth.

And as a result of that that agitation flavor will cause you less and less suffering.

And as it causes you less and less suffering. It will less and less drive. Your behavior in day-to-day life in general when a challenge comes up.

One has the option to either turn towards it.

And work with it as an object to focus or one has the option to just let it be in the background and stay with what you originally doing you can learn something for both ways of working and I usually encourage People to explore both possibilities that gives you flexibility the price of flexibility, though, is complexity.

I mentioned that one of the.

Weak points of my approach to meditation practices that I give People a lot of options that also could be taken as a strong point of course, so I give People ways of turning their attention away from challenges onto restful states or positive states or the energie flow of the experience and so forth, but I also give People ways of bringing their attention.

Towards the challenge and accepting it as an object, perhaps solidified uncomfortable objectified but you're opening to it, turning the attention towards the challenge if when you're practicing the agitation flavor comes up.

It's certainly not a problem. It's certainly OK. In fact, it's totally natural that that's going to happen. From time to time? What to do about it well. There's a lot of things you could do and they're all good which should you do should you turn towards it. Should you turn away from it. Well, I would say it's desirable to have the ability to do other approach because both are legitimate and both are productive.