Stronger Every Day

      A few days ago, I made good progress on a stationary bike (so far, this sounds like a joke) rehabilitating an injured knee. The following spontaneous response was a first for me: I held my head in both hands & silently told myself, 'Well done!' - the way a loving parent would congratulate & encourage their small child. Immediately I strongly sensed that this was initiated by my deceased parents, now standing together smiling, filled with love for me & each other.
     This whole event was deeply moving, healing & empowering, because during their life, my parents had never given me loving approval or congratulations. I knew that my Dad loved me. But his idea of good parenting involved consistently reminding me, no matter what I achieved, that I should have done much better, and anxiously urging me to work smarter, harder, longer, etc. My Mother on the other hand, from probably before I was born, found creative ways of letting my Dad and I know that she didn't love us, was ready to leave, & finally did so in my early teens. Even as a little kid, my Mother's other-worldly coldness always felt wrong - something too broken to ever understand, repair, or even communicate with.
     It's now very well known (Adverse Childhood Experiences {ACE} studies) that lack of secure attachment & lack of unconditional love, especially during early childhood, are severely traumatic, predisposing to many adverse mental & physical health consequences throughout life.

     In my adulthood, I avoided thinking about my childhood, but when I did, I angrily resented my Mother - anger is a massive drain of vital energy, yet some of anger's (toxic) energy can keep one going (in some ways) better than depression.
     "Holding on to ‘it shouldn’t have happened’ perpetuates a grievance. This creates an energetic contraction that freezes your life force, locks it into the past, and prevents full engagement with life now. ... But even though this self-protective pattern continues way past the original event, it is possible for the energetic knot of trauma to be released."
      Amoda Maa. “Embodied Enlightenment. Living Your Awakening in Every Moment.” Reveal Press, 2017. 

     After decades of meditation practice & learning about trauma, I gradually forgave my Mother, realizing that she herself had been traumatized by her cold-hearted father, and had unconsciously behaved like her father towards me - "intergenerational trauma."
      Bessel Van Der Kolk. “The Body Keeps the Score. Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.” Penguin Books, 2015. 

“Your task is not to seek for love,
but merely to seek & find all the barriers within yourself
that you have built against it.”                                                  Rumi

     Listening to about 50 interviews of people who had near death experiences (NDEs) revealed a consistent pattern of them being received by a loving intelligence that instead of judging them, accepted & welcomed them regardless of what they had done. Life was seen as an opportunity to learn - much like small children falling in the process of learning to walk. THIS was the nonjudgmental light in which I now perceived my parents.
     People who are able to recall pre-birth memories recount that before birth, some of us volunteer to be "bad" in the life to come, specifically to evoke positive changes such as forgiveness & loving support, from those around us, because it often takes a shock to our system, such as abuse, trauma & wounding to catalyze our awakening. This is yet another reason to be nonjudgmental & be the source of unconditional love & nurturing.

     "Our task is to discover a freedom that's independent of all circumstances & times."
       Kornfield J, Breiter P. "A still forest pool. The insight meditation of Achaan Chah." Quest Books, 1985.

    The relationship between our body, mind, and overall energy or 'life force' is vitally important to understand. A few weeks ago, my injured knee was stuck for two weeks at a maximum of 60° flexion (bend). I felt a rigid hard limit beyond which I simply could not progress - very frustrating & energy-draining, as I had been happily active before my accident.
     Around this time, I started taking an online course, “Progressive and Intensive Online Course Bundle by Dr Joe Dispenza.” https://drjoedispenza.com/ This is a very intelligent - incredibly important - immersion into letting go of our past negative conditioning. Much time is devoted to re-education, meditation & other trainings to focus on & realize our aspirations. An excellent 60-minute interview about this training: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH8GtM7CCcI

     Over the past week, my attitude & energy has become far more optimistic, and not surprisingly, the flexibility in my knee continues to improve very nicely - presently around 98° (a huge improvement).

      We seriously underestimate how negatively our past traumas impact our outlook on life, our ability to create a better quality of life, & perhaps most importantly, on the quality & quantity of energy we have to make critically important life changes. We can hugely benefit from becoming conscious of the autopilot that runs our lives. We CAN write a NEW program for a MUCH MUCH brighter future - it really is ENTIRELY up to us.
      The older we get, the more challenging it is to be positively energized - which is absolutely necessary not only for bouncing back from injuries, but to navigate all the other inevitable 'set-backs' we encounter. We CAN be positively energized & filled with joy even as we lose physical & mental competencies as we approach death, right up to, and during death itself. Who we truly are is beyond time & space.

     “A single force, love, links and gives life to infinite worlds.” Jordano Bruno

 

     We FIRST have to bravely shed a LOT of rigid protective armor (that we don't realize exists) around our traumatized hearts before this even makes any sense.
     A lot of people have a strong impression that they've never been traumatized, that their heart is not armored & may even get upset that there's too much time wasted on the subject of trauma! These folks especially would benefit from reading: Bessel Van Der Kolk. “The Body Keeps the Score. Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.” Penguin Books, 2015.

 

 

PRACTICING The Heart of Mindfulness

      In one of Tara Brach's fine guided meditations, she suggests: “… with the out-breath, let go of any unnecessary holdings in the heart.” https://www.tarabrach.com/meditation-loving-what-is/

 
     What a wonderful suggestion!

     Of course we all have protective armor of varying thickness around our hearts due to all the traumas we've been exposed to, perhaps even before birth. Even the process of being born is traumatic to the child, no matter how smoothly it goes. 

     So what are unnecessary holdings in the heart? If we've become resilient, balanced, mature adults, and have forgiven those who may have harmed us, and have learned to consciously face & accept even life's harsh realities, we likely will still continue to carry some habitual armoring in our body, but especially around our heart. This is now completely unnecessary, and something best to intentionally work on releasing.

     A much greater challenge is if we're continually traumatized in some manner, be it racism, sexism, domestic violence, homelessness, food insecurity, unemployment, etc, etc, etc. Even here though, armoring the heart is - somewhat like the "freeze instinct" - a necessary survival tactic of the very young, and for those not yet able to respond more maturely & effectively to trauma. An armored, frozen heart is not capable of vibrantly engaging in life. So even here, it is best to adapt more effective adult responses to end & mitigate the damaging effects of trauma AND intentionally work on releasing these holdings in the heart.

     An armored heart becomes such a natural part of us, that the suggestion to release the armor to some will sound completely insane - as if being asked to immediately become a heart organ-donor! And even if you've reached a point in your life when the idea of shedding defenses around your heart sounds appealing, even urgent, in real life, it's actually a slow, cautious process, mostly out of your direct control. The heart is, after all, our most vital organ!

     So even though we're hard-wired for self-preservation & conditioned to fear, at the same time, our life feels whole & meaningful only when we have open-hearted connection to ourselves, others, the world. So how can we resolve this potent pull in opposite directions?

•

     A meditation PRACTICE I've found beneficial is holding a beloved baby in my heart. It can be your own baby or grandchild, baby Buddha, baby Jesus, a puppy, kitten, baby bird - whoever feels closest for you. The key is to feel directly sharing the nurturing warmth, peace & protection of your heart with a tiny, beloved, helpless little innocent being. We are holding this beloved innocent & our own innocence together, in nurturing safety & unconditional love, so both are thriving in real time. Allow yourself to rest in the physical feel of nurturing & being nurtured, embodying our true nature.

• 

     Immediately after writing the above, I listened to an excellent interview in which Dorothy Hunt answered a question about desire - to have something or to get rid of something. "This awareness, this awake nature of ours, it’s moving from inside the thing that we’re trying to get rid of, rather than trying to get rid of it. We just let awareness come inside – it begins to liberate it from the inside. Whereas the mind tries to pry it open, or get rid of it. Awareness is like the sun that melts these frozen things. So much of what feels like a block is just some kind of frozen feeling, frozen experience that hasn’t been allowed to simply be. So when we allow our inner experience to be what it is – the Buddha once said, ‘Hold your anger as though it’s your only child’ – bringing that compassion, that embrace, that intimacy, bringing it close so we can see ‘What is this?’ instead of ‘How do I get rid of it?’ The mind wants to know, ‘How do I get rid of it?’ But this awake space, this awareness, has no judgment, it just shines the light on what is. And then we begin to see desire for what it is.”
        Dorothy Hunt interview: https://batgap.com/dorothy-hunt/

 

“In this choiceless, never ending flow of life
There is an infinite array of choices.
One alone brings happiness -
To love what is.”                                           Dorothy Hunt

      “Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting.” Jack Kornfield

     “When we stop tensing against life, we open to an awareness that is immeasurably large and suffused with love.” Tara Brach

 

 

Armouring - discovery phase

     While we sometimes notice tightness in the neck, shoulders and back, our first multi-day meditation retreat will very clearly reveal just how armoured we are.

     “Wilhelm Reich was a student of Freud's who believed that the body plays an important role in an individual's expression. Crucial to his understanding of psychology is the concept of armoring which is basically the physical component of repression as understood by Freud.

     Armoring occurs when an impulse is halted at the muscular level. For example, it is natural for a child to cry when they are sad. However, a child who is punished for crying will find a way to inhibit this behavior. At first, this inhibition is conscious, and may include tensing the muscles of the eyes and face, holding the breath, or whatever else works that the child is capable of doing. Reich said that normally a child will cease the inhibition once the threat passes, but when a child is repeatedly subjected to the same kind of treatment, the inhibiting behavior becomes learned and integrated into the child's way of being, along with the accompanying muscular armoring. It becomes habitual and unconscious, and the person no longer notices they are ‘doing’ anything at all.

     Reich viewed the purpose of this armoring as protecting the child from perceived threats, but the cost is the diminished freedom that comes fighting against constant muscular contraction as well the energy that is required to maintain this state of contraction.

     You may be able to fight and win battles in a suit of armor, but when you're wearing one all of the time without knowing it, it becomes impossible to dance.”

http://nononsensepsychology.blogspot.com/2009/05/wilhelm-reich-armoring.html

Photo: Mike Ronesia   www.dpreview.com