If we have a car, it can be really useful to be able to climb inside it and drive somewhere.
Sometimes, however, we climb into the car, turn the key, press the ignition button, and nothing happens. At this point, the car, as a car, has become useless.
If we relate to the car as just a car, it will never start working again. What is needed is for a shift of consciousness - we shift from “car” to “a collection of car parts working together to make a car”. Once we have this, we might be able to find the problem, and re-make a working car.
This analogy can apply to our inner experience.
Let’s say I’m experiencing anxiety. Perhaps anxiety is like the car - it is useful when it works, not so useful when it doesn’t.
So the exercise here, for anxiety, is simple (feel free to replace anxiety with any other sensation or emotion if that is more useful to you):
- Bring to mind something that you are anxious about.
- Feel how that feels in your body.
- Ask yourself, “Is this anxiety?”
- Now ask ourselves, if anxiety is like a car, what is it made up of?
- What sensations can we notice?
- How many sensations can we notice that make up this anxiety?
- When we have identified a few, we can ask, just as a car does not exist outside its constituent parts, does this anxiety exist outside its sensory components?