Learned instinct

I’m not sure I can say this, not sure I can even think it, for it involves something I can see only, at times, out a corner of the eye, a thread of light so fine as to be easily lost in the sparking chaos, a mere scent come in a flash and just as quickly gone.

This moment of awareness is neither conscious nor unconscious, but at another level. You are not in control of it. It’s in control but “it” isn’t anything other than pure nameless awareness without anything to cling to, or to praise or to blame.

An example. While visiting a friend once, I began to roughhouse with his two rambunctious sons of eight and ten. I was paying attention to the eight-year-old when I turned to find the ten-year-old’s fist heading for my sternum at a terrifying speed. My reaction was purely and deeply instinctual – no time to put my hands or arms up for protection, no time to duck, no time to move at all, no time even for fear. I think I simply watched, purely, without thinking. Without calling it up, in an instant, a kind of invisible power kicked in. When the boy’s fist hit the center of my chest, I don’t remember feeling anything but he was thrown backwards and knocked soundly to the floor. He looked up in amazement at me looking at him in amazement, neither of us knowing how this had happened.

Meditative practices are like that, I think. We can’t use them, but they kick in – not when we think we need them, because that involves too much self-consciousness. But not at random either. They kick in at that moment when bone hits rock, like at the moment of death.