It's a true honor to be with people who know they're dying, and this is part of my life now. You know the saying, "Be with people as they are"? When people have come to this place where they know they will die, or grappling with that idea in a body that is starting to stop working, still not knowing exactly what that means and will be, they're in a place I haven't come to yet. My psyche has gone into this dive in various ways over my life, but my body has always been working well, so I have certainly not become that raw in vulnerability yet. The people, just as they are, are my beautiful teachers and friends, even if we've only met for a few minutes. I feel more love between each of them and me than the normal perspective on human love. It's just there.
Sometimes our eyes meet... sometimes we stay in a place for a while together without anything other than there. With nothing to do. It's a wordless plane of existence while still here in the space and the time of a moment. Someone wrote the most beautiful description of the total eclipse. She talked about the quality of the light in that darkness, neither day nor night to the mind as we know light. She used the words "completely rarified". I recognize her description in my own experience of the total eclipse and in these grateful times with people who are close to death. My friends. We talk about AWE in these extraordinary experiences, and they are teachers for our minds. There is AWE everywhere all the time. It becomes more and more visible to us, feel-able to us, never graspable, never definable, owned by no one. We're all gathered into AWE cleanly without residue, and even as we put words to it and say from our personal points of view how it was, it only opens and opens and opens us. And we are friends in these impermanent bodies.
0 Comments
Sometimes in BCST sessions, we'll notice the arising of something familiar and historically daunting, triggering, but in that moment there's space for it to move without the usual fear reaction. It can be something very unexpected. A memory, body sensation, emotionally charged subconscious something. Our mostly forgotten old fear that's still with us, waiting patiently to be met.
We can't really plan or dictate our healing process. It comes as it comes, under the right conditions. It's honest like that. BCST is, to me, deep body-inclusive meditation. It's a chance to allow these old haunts to move and begin to resolve. The focus is on the health, the loving presence that is our true nature, and within that generous invitation, these old fears can come out of hiding. There's more and more acknowledgement recently about the nature of diseases, like cancer. I believe it was already known in us but we don't let ourselves know fully due to cultural norms. What's known is that diseases are, or can be, the result of internalized and long-held trauma. The contractions that have become normalized in us, that have become folded into our personalities, are suppressions of our natural flows and full human expression. So, we hear more often these days, as culture is starting to understand it, that we all have little tumors and "diseases" within our bodies, and they self-heal when the conditions open up in us. We do not always know about it, typically we don't know what's happening in our bodies and subconscious, but our nature is to be well and nature is always looking for opportunities to release suppressions, to flow and thrive. Meditation and practices like Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy are very supportive in making space for the subconscious to reveal and for the usual body resistances to soften and to notice the fresh breeze, a sense of lightness return to us. An unbothered attitude in the face of something that used to feel threatening. We feel taller, more grounded, more in our center, when these deep contractions let go. More of our true nature gets to be at play in life. I read just the headline of an online article that said something like "It's actually healthy for kids to throw tantrums" and I just glanced down at the first comments which were a bunch of eye roll/laugh emojis and one word exclamations. We sure have a habit of dismissing deeper considerations, communicating on the thinnest surface, don't we?
How honest we are as kids, and how pure our energy moves through its pathways at the same time. Some of it is simply developmental, that our selves are learning how to move, react, respond, express in the new young body with this quickly changing voice. And YES, it IS healthy for kids to be able to express as they develop. Some of it is that, as kids, we haven't trained ourselves out of honesty yet, so what hurts hurts big, and what's funny is the funnest thing ever. So alive! Do you know how it is to witness a usually well-kept adult break in half? Have you ever broken in half? Completely against your training and will? Kids do it and it's called "a tantrum" and adults who are terrified of their own possible/probably/inevitable breaking in half will quickly yank the kid up or hush them up. What will people think of me? Adults sometimes break in half, too. If others see this, what do they do? Call the police? Turn away and make jokes? Do something for distance. To just BE with that full energy, that dam break that could not be contained... Does that make your belly ache or soften or tighten? What about your heart? I have no doubt that under the thin surface of all of us well-controlled, trained, presentable adults there's rumbling and and wisdom that wants to let it all drop away. We can practice our capacity to not turn away when energy moves. It might be like a feather lifted off your shoulder and the world is totally open to you, finally. There's a remembering of your true nature, and here you are, free. If it comes by way of a breakdown tantrum, just stay with yourself through it and notice the freedom that's rushing open behind it. It's impossible to screw up our lives. It's impossible to do this wrong since how we live is what we know in any moment. What we do is what we do, how we think and feel is how we think and feel... in any one moment.
Forgiveness is essentially a state of freedom that comes with understand ourselves. Forgiving the imperfect actions, the hurtfulness, the screwups. We come off the relentless hook of perfection and find out that we can breath naturally in our honesty. Honesty holds the door open for everything that is happening and has happened, allowing for unashamed change. Natural change. Faith in the continuum of moments of life. Faith in the impermanence of life in these bodies. Someone will want to hold you down to your past, waiting for an apology. I'll hold someone down. We all do it. What is an apology? Words of assuming and accepting blame? Is it coming from shame? Or, is the real essence of apology just like the real essence of forgiveness? A state of freedom that comes from understanding ourselves and others a bit more. Breathing freely in honesty for all the imperfect actions that ever hurt anyone or anything. Permission to live, here and now, and permission to die cleanly when the time for that comes. An interfaith minister asked us to name out loud some things we will miss about a person who has recently died. All sorts of affectionate things were said in the room. Then she asked us to name out loud some things we won't miss about the person. I think there was a longer pause that gave her some time to talk about this request. She said that just because someone died they haven't suddenly became a saint. Let them be their whole selves. Let yourself be your whole self. She talked about the graciousness of grief, to allow ourselves to be honest. A few people said some things that I don't remember since I was just sitting there loving what she'd been saying about keeping it real.
Gosh, that's all I want. It's all I ever wanted, and had little to no information from anywhere that real and honest was a possibility for most of my life, until recent years. Until I began the braving to be real and honest myself. I remember people swooping in to perform "care" yet they hadn't paused to find out what was needed, or wanted. I remember people instructing others on how to caretake, as if there's a solid object called "caretake" and that's what you do, the way they're doing it. The strongarming and the sneaky shaming. Without any other options, I'd lay down into doormat shape and allow the out of touch "care" to be forced upon me or the other person. Thinking back on it, from the comfort of my couch and dogs flanking, I notice a yawn coming on. A yawn that could stretch back into my entire past and release all that weird WEIRD confusion around caring and around people dying and around grieving these changes that came that were not wanted but there they were. Heck, even changes that ARE wanted can inspire grieving. Life is sort of a continuum of grief and laughter. At least that's part of it. Some say there are stages to grief. I don't know about that. Maybe when we're honest, when we've dropped the performances and ideas about it all, there's no distinction between grief and the rest of life. Maybe in super real honesty, there's no real distinction between life and death. Just a continuum of light. In 2010 when I was sitting a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat, I was about to go nuts. A spot on my face had started to itch and it became my focus. I sat there for an eternity planning when and how I'd reach up to scratch it, because that's all I knew to do with itches. At some point the simple meditation instructions repeated in me: meet everything that arises with equanimity, as impermanent, and from the field of loving presence. It occurred to me that the itch is the same as anything else that would arise, and I'm here to do this particular practice.
My agreement with the itch then changed. It stopped being my target to get rid of, stopped being an exception to the practice, as I had been uncuriously seeing it just moments before, and surprisingly it started to move and stretch out across my face and scalp and down my neck... I witnessed the itch turn into warm energy and its movement opened me to a realization about something in my life I had no idea was coming. That sort of thing happened over and over in those 10 days and still happens. It's a new way forward from before. How many itches of so many sorts happen in a day in a life? How many opportunities are we missing by reflexively, uncuriously scratching away and blocking our doors to awareness, with conventional beliefs about things we've labeled as solid state? When I feel something start up in my body, and it's not because I just feel down the stairs or cut myself or something like that, I allow it the sensation. Even if I did just fall down, the only thing really to do is move openly from there. I find out over and over that nothing is separate. There's no body separate from mind separate from emotion. It's all one movement with countless facets we can perceive in a moment. Aware of my context, that I'm not standing in the middle of the street about to get hit by a car but something just came across my mind and I contracted, allowing pause and openness lets me learn, unexpected and undirected by my thoughts. Things that are held separate from the rest of it by my beliefs, perceived exceptions to the practice that my personality holds out as special, even that stuff is just energy trying to move. The only barrier is our strongman beliefs about ourselves and the world as solid state. One morning in college, my biochemistry professor suddenly stopped lecturing mid-sentence. He became very still, then sat down. The entire teaching auditorium full of students was paused and open and silent. He eventually told us to go home but no one moved until a few started going down to him. We learned later that he was having an aneurism, and that the space he created in himself, probably made even more potent by the space we all created for him, saved his health and maybe life. He was fine. Had he continued pressing on or had he gone into reflexive contraction against that movement, the pressure would have compounded in his brain. Instead, it got to dissipate and move through. What if we all practiced everyday to meet life this way? What if a sudden itch or pain somewhere is not met with reflex habit or fear and contraction but open kind awareness? Faith in life itself. We can still be taken to the ER or equivalent, but on the way we can be spacious inside and allow for the unexpected pathway to open. "What I think of you has nothing to do with your worth".
Words that came across my mind earlier today. I saw the face of the person. Giving him back his worth from within my mind does feel freeing. I don't like him because he's made it clear that he doesn't like me. So, I guess my not liking is retaliation or defense. Those words also flow in the opposite direction. What he thinks of me has nothing to do with my worth. Yes, someone could have said that to me but it would have only gone so deep. This sifted surprise up from inside my body as I walked to buy half & half at the corner store. A moment of grace I want to name, roll around with. People honestly not liking each other but still co-existing is better than people having to "love each other" because that is a high expectation in the world of egos. We can trust that need with the spiritual truth of Love, which can hold all our disagreements. Our honesty and flexibility is what's needed down here in the trenches of life. Plus, nothing is fixed in place and only honesty allows real movement and change. Who knows what will come? I feel a bit inspired that this not having to lord over ourselves with "should love each other" is a way forward in this world of crazy division we've been creating with our expectations. No person can take away another person's worth. Check, and thank you. We can coexist, all worthy of the same big Love, what we ultimately are. Our bodies are perfectly safe. They are our only homes in this life.
Healing is a unique process to each of us, of reoccupying the safety and at-homeness of our bodies, the bridging of the divide between the life of the mind and the life of the body. As healing goes on, as deep as we choose, the bridge disappears and we are simply whole and fully alive, free to be our non-strategized selves. There is no conflict in that, only generous truth. I find out over and over that healing is a creative discovery, and I don't have to wait until I'm dying to remember my wholeness, to feel and to know. Without this body, where would I be? And as long as I'm here, why not be fully alive? Not scary alive, running mania type thing. Fully alive. It comes down to choice. That's the free will in life. There is nothing wrong with you or me. I'm saying this because I know it's true, not because I believe it might be true. And pain is not an indicator of wrongness, I know it as an indicator of love, that something needs care. In any moment of pain in the body, old or new, it can spur separation and worry, an unsafe feeling. Try allowing consciousness to include the pain and expand, feel the love that is always with you, right there in your safe home. If you just fell off a roof and you feel pain, the love will allow you to yell for help. If you just cut your finger, the love will grab a cloth and compress the cut to stop the bleeding, and allow you to look to see if you need stitches and follow through with the need. If your family shuns you and your heart is crying at the loss of connection, allow the love within your own body to bring you wholeness right here and now. Allow your own mind and body to live together, and allow the present flow within you to maybe even have no need for a bridge between mind and body. Maybe choose to discover that you are unconditionally whole and be comforted in your safe home. The safer we become in ourselves, the safer we become for all, and the safer our world. Last night I dreamed while
sort of awake about a person I reckon was me floating in the middle of the sea. He became aware, in a moment, where he was, not knowing how he got there. His next thought was The Will Of God Put Me Here and he felt pleasantly sedate, accepting of his fate. His next thought was the memory of everything he had ever thought, believed, chosen, spoken and done in every moment of his lives, prior to Willing Himself To That Spot In The Sea. Then he was vividly awake. Then he was capable of swimming toward land, fully alive. Therapy without the backdrop of "mindfulness" seems more like coaching than therapy. If we're looking to "fix" ourselves, then maybe coaching is fine. Our world is full of that mentality, so we can't miss if that's what we're looking for. But if we're wanting to truly heal, then a therapist needs to be far more capable. It's the difference between giving answers and helping find the right questions to explore. To heal means to become whole and that comes from within.
When we approach life in a fixing sort of way, we end up needing on-going management and defense for our fixes because that's not a free state of being or the truth of our potential. 'Mindfulness' implies developing awareness beyond our tight, fixing, control-focused minds; an inner orientation with nothing really to do with problem solving. It is more like open attunement in the moment of life. This moment, and this one... We learn to observe and start to perceive how we've been making stories about reality rather than simply living reality. By perceiving our mental behavior while practicing flexibility and curiosity (non-attachment to any outcome, no preference) the behavior of story making begins to dissolve itself. Truth shows up and relaxes us. We begin discovering we are actually walking in amazement that we could have never planned and executed from that stodgy way of thinking, believing and trying that we've been doing. It's our right and responsibility to continually practice (friendly within ourselves) and when consciousness shows up expanded beyond our mental belief systems, we finally see and can stop believing our mental activities. We become capable of surfing life as it rolls along. Not goal oriented but life oriented. Free. ... Therapy should help with this. "Be like water, my friend", Bruce Lee famously said. He wasn't just talking about physicality. The mind can and needs to orient to flow. Without this flexibility, we create prisons everywhere. That's what human culture has created around the world, and we've got to evolve past that model by awakening to the simple moment of life within ourselves, not remaining problem fixing oriented in our narrow boxed in ways of thinking. That's not healthy and it's not healing. Therapy, whether talk or body oriented, and any mode of healing needs to become oriented to the evolving front of humanity. If not, then it's just more compartmentalized thought exercise that we desperately need to move beyond. We're killing our ecosystem from our addiction to compounding heady ideas. The newest fad is not evolution, it's just another fad, "same as it ever was". Recently, I joined and then left a talk therapy group that I discovered was practicing a purely fix-it style of group coaching. Heady analyzing and mansplaining galore! It felt like a cult. I was baffled at how obtuse it all was, lead by a person who is a PhD psychologist. That person must have no mindfulness practice to rest on. That experience made me wonder about the prevalence of therapy these days and the strong potential to end up being groomed further down a dead end via "therapy". Therapy, to me, is relating with respect for the *still small voice* of wisdom inside us all. It takes a mindful, spacious orientation to allow that voice to be heard and to allow honest change to happen. Therapy needs the humility to perceive the moment while in the moment with another human. Allow the honest question to arise out of the moment and to be spoken as an invitation to explore. There's a free, bright-eyed wonder to this. A commitment to staying in the not-knowing with each other, open and generous, honest and awake, so the honest resolution can happen organically. Big invitation into freedom. That's therapeutic to me. |
AuthorHi, it's Ginger. I hope my thoughts here will add to freedom, expansion and creativity for you as you read them. Archives
May 2024
Categories |