Sea-changes
I didn't write down or post my gratitudes last night, but I did speak them aloud when I was done my sitting practice. The ability to calm my mind still eludes me, but the practice of sitting in physical stillness for a few minutes every night before bed still seems a worthwhile thing to do, even if it's a constant battle to get the brain out of gear and into neutral. Pre-bed-time is usually when my brain is trying to spin down and parts of my day are flying or falling off the side of the processing wheel like so many bits of clay, and the nature of the thought processes is either random or looping, depending on my emotional state. If nothing else, the sitting practice is good for confronting that emotional state and "putting it to bed" by giving some time and acknowledgement to its existence, rather than trying to lock it in a box for the night so I can sleep. Ask me how well denying my emotions has been working for me so far... g'wan, I dare you.
These practices take time to develop, I know. I've given some thought to moving the practice to mornings; the young monk who taught me the basics of meditative practice used to do that. He'd roll right out of bed first thing in the morning and literally roll right onto his prayer mat to begin his day. I'm usually too fixated on stretching my butchered sleep cycle as long as I can or subsequently rushing to get through the morning routine that I don't want to contemplate what would have to change to accommodate a morning practice. I can justify that choice, but mostly, I just don't wanna make that significant a change. So if I'm going to build a practice into a habit into a discipline, I'll take the path of least resistance first, and worry about changing the scheduling later, if it becomes necessary.
A propos of nothing, really, I realized last night that I had inadvertently incorporated the Four Elements into my meditation space. The plants and the offering of rice for Earth; incense, the breathing practice, and the wind I watch moving the trees outside the window for Air; the fountain for Water; the candles for Fire. This wasn't deliberate design, but the synchronicity tickles and pleases me.
I posted to FB yesterday that someday I want to be able to articulate (more accurately, at least) my understanding of my internal emotional experiences in the moment as I become aware of them. Brené Brown wrote of a tactic for diffusing the flooding state that I'm trying to explore as well, but sometimes I just want to communicate outwardly what I'm experiencing so that whatever follows comes as less of a surprise to whomever I'm with. Tara Brach wrote a lovely little story about a man with Alzheimers who could do that (I have her book, Radical Acceptance; I think it's time I go back and restart that, as soon as I'm done Daring Greatly). This morning I had a chance to combine principles from both authors into a miniature experience in conversation:
me: I'm trying to think of a word for the bittersweet feeling that comes from looking through someone's family photos encapsulating a life that might have been mine had I wanted it. It's not regret for the road I didn't take (I didn't take it for good and worthy reasons), nor jealousy/envy that someone has a life I don't. I'm happy for the family, yet I'm keenly aware of things that are glaringly absent from my own life that might bring me similar joys. The feeling, whatever it is, hits like an open fisted punch to the solar plexus and makes me feel tight and hot in my chest, and a little bit like I want to cry for... something.
her: Like the direct opposite of schadenfreude?
me: Maybe.
her: And how do you grow, then?
me: Today, it's by acknowledging the emotional thing that exists in that space, even if I don't know what it is; I can make there be space for it,and practice articulating it to someone who, as Brené put it, earned the right to hear that story. Or like the Alzheimer's patient in Tara Brach's story, who just sits in the moment and describes what he experiences without making a Bad Thing of it.
her: You're acknowledging the emotional think that exists like the Alzheimer's patient, but how is it like that for you? He put out each descriptor individually and addressed them as a list. Is it feeling like that as you go through the things you feel or is it smoother and more connected with the other fibers of your life experience in the here now?
me: One new factor is the internal acknowledgement of emotional state change, or the presence of a particular emotional content; the second factor is a deliberate attempt at external articulation; the third factor is the avoidance of applying a value judgement to the emotional content as felt or expressed. Right now, being able to access the emotional state change in the moment is something at which I am unpracticed, so the translation from internal acknowledgement to externalized articulation is going to be more like the Alzheimer's patient: it will be an ad-hoc, stream-of-consciousness attempt to put words on the experience without trying to tie anything into anything else. that kind of evaluative cognitive process is too far down the machinations line for what I'm attempting to discover and integrate right here, right now.
her: So, when I begin to read something from you that may seem non-linear or non-narrative, it may be a part of the expression process that is still in a sort of brain-storm format.
me: Yes; that would be a good starting point. Especially if it indicates emotional experience.
her: And this sort of bravery really deserves a non-judgmental acceptance.
It makes me conscious of how the ancient patterns of voicelessness overlay the emotional landscape like a thick, toxic smog, evaluating everything I experience often before I'm aware of it and determining what or how to share, what gets filtered, and what gets jettisoned. I am extremely conscious of Brené Brown's contention that the one thing shame cannot stand is to be identified, to have words attached to it - for someone who lives and breathes the power of language like I do, this juxtaposition of conflicting ideas is troublesome, but a challenge I think worth meeting (or at least trying to meet)*.
So if you happen to be in conversation with me and notice I'm either subvocalizing a single-word mantra like "Pain, pain, pain, pain, pain...", or suddenly I slip into a non-linear expression of something that's trying to encompass an emotional experience in the moment, DON'T PANIC :). In the first case I'm trying to head off a flood so I can stay present, in the second case I'm trying to share the experience of the moment as fully as I can. Both are likely only going to affect the people I trust most to stay with me through the moment, but if that practice widens it may include or affect more people with whom I communicate, and I apologize in advance for the weirdness.
The antidote to voicelessness isn't simply giving voice to everything; I suspect the antidote to voicelessness is actually *trust*. First I have to build the practice of trusting the bridges between emotions and cognitive functions, then I have to learn to trust the act of expression within myself (one of the reasons why I opted to voice my gratitudes last night aloud, but in private). THEN I build trust with select individuals to hone the act of sharing those articulations in the moment with others, and only well after that becomes something I understand better, does it become a general personal practice, one which adapts to people and experiences on the fly (there will always be my own and other boundaries to consider and respect; it's never going to be *just* about me, no matter how hard I try...).
As experiments go, this one's about as terrifying as licking the SARS culture in the petri dish. But as one of the photomemes crossing my FB feed yesterday reminded me, "If you want something you've never had, you've got to do something you've never done." Erm, not that I plan to start licking random bacterial and viral cultures... you get the idea.
*-I'm also grappling with something I read yesterday in her book about oversharing as a form of defense or manipulation, something I have often been guilty of in this space, so I'm furiously rethinking how much detail is what I authentically want to share (and why) and how much is inundation in order to hold the reader at bay (and why), so the level of detail in subsequent posts may fluctuate wildly across all contemporary filters while I ponder that.
These practices take time to develop, I know. I've given some thought to moving the practice to mornings; the young monk who taught me the basics of meditative practice used to do that. He'd roll right out of bed first thing in the morning and literally roll right onto his prayer mat to begin his day. I'm usually too fixated on stretching my butchered sleep cycle as long as I can or subsequently rushing to get through the morning routine that I don't want to contemplate what would have to change to accommodate a morning practice. I can justify that choice, but mostly, I just don't wanna make that significant a change. So if I'm going to build a practice into a habit into a discipline, I'll take the path of least resistance first, and worry about changing the scheduling later, if it becomes necessary.
A propos of nothing, really, I realized last night that I had inadvertently incorporated the Four Elements into my meditation space. The plants and the offering of rice for Earth; incense, the breathing practice, and the wind I watch moving the trees outside the window for Air; the fountain for Water; the candles for Fire. This wasn't deliberate design, but the synchronicity tickles and pleases me.
I posted to FB yesterday that someday I want to be able to articulate (more accurately, at least) my understanding of my internal emotional experiences in the moment as I become aware of them. Brené Brown wrote of a tactic for diffusing the flooding state that I'm trying to explore as well, but sometimes I just want to communicate outwardly what I'm experiencing so that whatever follows comes as less of a surprise to whomever I'm with. Tara Brach wrote a lovely little story about a man with Alzheimers who could do that (I have her book, Radical Acceptance; I think it's time I go back and restart that, as soon as I'm done Daring Greatly). This morning I had a chance to combine principles from both authors into a miniature experience in conversation:
me: I'm trying to think of a word for the bittersweet feeling that comes from looking through someone's family photos encapsulating a life that might have been mine had I wanted it. It's not regret for the road I didn't take (I didn't take it for good and worthy reasons), nor jealousy/envy that someone has a life I don't. I'm happy for the family, yet I'm keenly aware of things that are glaringly absent from my own life that might bring me similar joys. The feeling, whatever it is, hits like an open fisted punch to the solar plexus and makes me feel tight and hot in my chest, and a little bit like I want to cry for... something.
her: Like the direct opposite of schadenfreude?
me: Maybe.
her: And how do you grow, then?
me: Today, it's by acknowledging the emotional thing that exists in that space, even if I don't know what it is; I can make there be space for it,and practice articulating it to someone who, as Brené put it, earned the right to hear that story. Or like the Alzheimer's patient in Tara Brach's story, who just sits in the moment and describes what he experiences without making a Bad Thing of it.
her: You're acknowledging the emotional think that exists like the Alzheimer's patient, but how is it like that for you? He put out each descriptor individually and addressed them as a list. Is it feeling like that as you go through the things you feel or is it smoother and more connected with the other fibers of your life experience in the here now?
me: One new factor is the internal acknowledgement of emotional state change, or the presence of a particular emotional content; the second factor is a deliberate attempt at external articulation; the third factor is the avoidance of applying a value judgement to the emotional content as felt or expressed. Right now, being able to access the emotional state change in the moment is something at which I am unpracticed, so the translation from internal acknowledgement to externalized articulation is going to be more like the Alzheimer's patient: it will be an ad-hoc, stream-of-consciousness attempt to put words on the experience without trying to tie anything into anything else. that kind of evaluative cognitive process is too far down the machinations line for what I'm attempting to discover and integrate right here, right now.
her: So, when I begin to read something from you that may seem non-linear or non-narrative, it may be a part of the expression process that is still in a sort of brain-storm format.
me: Yes; that would be a good starting point. Especially if it indicates emotional experience.
her: And this sort of bravery really deserves a non-judgmental acceptance.
It makes me conscious of how the ancient patterns of voicelessness overlay the emotional landscape like a thick, toxic smog, evaluating everything I experience often before I'm aware of it and determining what or how to share, what gets filtered, and what gets jettisoned. I am extremely conscious of Brené Brown's contention that the one thing shame cannot stand is to be identified, to have words attached to it - for someone who lives and breathes the power of language like I do, this juxtaposition of conflicting ideas is troublesome, but a challenge I think worth meeting (or at least trying to meet)*.
So if you happen to be in conversation with me and notice I'm either subvocalizing a single-word mantra like "Pain, pain, pain, pain, pain...", or suddenly I slip into a non-linear expression of something that's trying to encompass an emotional experience in the moment, DON'T PANIC :). In the first case I'm trying to head off a flood so I can stay present, in the second case I'm trying to share the experience of the moment as fully as I can. Both are likely only going to affect the people I trust most to stay with me through the moment, but if that practice widens it may include or affect more people with whom I communicate, and I apologize in advance for the weirdness.
The antidote to voicelessness isn't simply giving voice to everything; I suspect the antidote to voicelessness is actually *trust*. First I have to build the practice of trusting the bridges between emotions and cognitive functions, then I have to learn to trust the act of expression within myself (one of the reasons why I opted to voice my gratitudes last night aloud, but in private). THEN I build trust with select individuals to hone the act of sharing those articulations in the moment with others, and only well after that becomes something I understand better, does it become a general personal practice, one which adapts to people and experiences on the fly (there will always be my own and other boundaries to consider and respect; it's never going to be *just* about me, no matter how hard I try...).
As experiments go, this one's about as terrifying as licking the SARS culture in the petri dish. But as one of the photomemes crossing my FB feed yesterday reminded me, "If you want something you've never had, you've got to do something you've never done." Erm, not that I plan to start licking random bacterial and viral cultures... you get the idea.
*-I'm also grappling with something I read yesterday in her book about oversharing as a form of defense or manipulation, something I have often been guilty of in this space, so I'm furiously rethinking how much detail is what I authentically want to share (and why) and how much is inundation in order to hold the reader at bay (and why), so the level of detail in subsequent posts may fluctuate wildly across all contemporary filters while I ponder that.