Sunday, November 24, 2013

Ambivalence of experience: gratitude, grief, and greatness

It is common that at this time of year we think about gratitude.  We count our blessings and our comforts and that is a good thing because gratitude is a healthful attitude. 

How about gratitude for the yucky things that have happened to us? 

I have a friend who was in her 30’s and had been a stripper who was doing drugs, drinking too much and had ended up with an infection in the hospital.  She had a reaction to the antibiotic and stroked out and ended up wheelchair-bound to this day.  She has gratitude for the experience.  She says if that hadn't happened she would have been in a worse state.  She is a happy and productive person.

I've had other people tell me stories of hardship for which they eventually became grateful for.  I know that when I went back to school for my Masters Degree and my financial status took a turn for the worse and I ended up broken with weird life crisis after crisis, I had been hating life at that time.   Now that it is in the past, I love what it has done for my character.  I also find that relationships are enriched when other individuals open up and share their past hardships with me.  Not drowning in the negativity, but acknowledging it and having grown past it deepens character and relationship.  There is always that proverbial bug story where the bug is in the bit of milk and swims and swims and swims until the milk drop is churned to butter and then he walks off.  Meanwhile, his little legs are stronger.

It seems that we all need a little eustress.  Too much pain can kill us though.  How much is right for us?  Everyone is different, and human resiliency stories have taught us much about the strength of the human spirit.  Here it is Thanksgiving and I’m thinking about the Philippino’s and having to sort through their broken lives and lost loved ones from the hurricane.  I wonder about their strength and I wonder if the Kardashians or the Hiltons could handle that kind of challenge.  I suspect that the hard working proletariat is actually stronger in character and physical ability than the 1%.   

I’m very ambivalent about hard experiences as I’m sure we all are.  On one hand, they can develop us, but they could break us.  Without them, we can develop in new and rich ways creatively, but sometimes without them we don’t have the complexity of character to develop in those creative ways.  Everybody is different.  I struggle with my own set of challenges trying to find the good in them while I grieve them and it is a balance to try to come out on the higher side to find peace and joy.  Some of my own personal challenges have ultimately gifted me with the deepest insights and joys. 

Perhaps this is why in Buddhist teachings the concept of greeting experience with equanimity is so important as to avoid suffering.  There is a Taoist story of the equanimity of events being “good” or “bad” where a farmer’s son couldn’t go to work because of a broken leg.

Not all of our “hardships” are that extreme however, and sometimes we experience things as more challenging as they are and not really life-threatening or safety-threatening. 

Finding spirituality in the physical domain when one is alone or with other like minded people is easy.  However, I think that sometimes it is a tricky thing to find spirituality when dealing with unkind personalities or strange pressures that bring forth undesirable states of mind from whatever histories we have had.  How does one be meditative and mindful and not get locked in to “stories” or “memories” or “biases” at times like these?

Here are some tidbits from a book I just checked out from our library system www.library.pima.gov called Ordinary Magic – Everyday Life as Spiritual Path.

“Only awareness can free us from our thoughts.  In the moment we become aware that our thoughts are just thoughts, rather than reality itself, we can wake up from their spell and can return to presence.”  John Wellwood    I have noticed that when I was having problems at work with some databases that keep records for engineering changes that serve to make wealthy people comfortable at the same time my nephew, a young father in his 30’s was fighting for his life, I realized I didn’t have to get as upset as I was.  I’m learning more and more to remain calm in the stress and keep perspective.

“The music or art that affects us most deeply is never just happy or sad, but always combines these two qualities.”  I loved playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata for my mother because although our words were never enough for each other, I found that I could fully express all my emotions at that time through this piece of music for her.  I know she received the message.  Recently a painting that grabbed my attention and spoke to me more than any other painting I’d ever seen was John Biggers Shotgun Third Ward at the Albuquerque Art Museum a few weeks ago.  The first thing was that I felt the rain and moisture, the 2nd thing I felt a sense of strength through adversity, the third thing I noticed was the dancing of the children in the water while the adults looked on past them.  The 4th thing I noticed was the burning building.  I felt sad while I felt the triumphant spirits whom I knew would move on, survive, thrive, and grow.  This painting portrayed one of the churches being burned during a terrible time in Houston with racial unrest and the subsequent Black Panther movement.

“Opposition between good and bad is often compared to light and dark, but if we look at it in a different way, we will see that when light shines, darkness does not disappear.  It doesn’t leave; it merges with the light.  It becomes the light.”  Notice how gradual morning light meets your space?  Is there one threshold where the dark is no longer the light?

And finally, in summary:  “If you can be willing to feel fully and to acknowledge continually your own sadness and the sadness of life, but at the same time not be drowned in it, because you also remember the vision and power of the Great Eastern Sun,  you experience balance and completeness, joining heaven and earth, joining vision and practicality.”

My personal remarks in a poem:
Cleaving
the perceived misshapen
sever of life, of what “should” not be there

Sawing,
Repetitive pain
Finally sending pure awareness of experience
From explosive pain after pain
To unconsciousness

Cutting,
Fine tuning to
“fit” in to the dysfunction that was
No longer the natural shape

Polishing,
Clearing through clutter of mis-perceptions
Feeling buffed by having to see/feel/experience clarity

Light -
Shining and reflecting,
Refracting and glimmering,
Not, the stone, but the light throughout the stone.

The stone only shows the light because the light is there.
The light only shows because the stone is there.

Does a diamond feel so much pain?


Sunday, November 17, 2013

Recognizing our TRUE selves



Some time ago I had an amazing experience that at the time saved me, and the memory of it transforms me and sustains me.

It was a day back in February where I was struggling to keep my sanity as I was dealing with memories and realizations.  I didn’t want to be in that emotional state, but the memories and realizations made sense of why I was the way I was and so in that sense I was living more deeply and authentically to myself.  I had been more present with the thready bits of myself than ever before.  When I accepted the truths, I was less dissociative than when I tried to deny them.  However, being present with truths caused a considerable amount of pain that is so hard to describe.  It was tangible and I could feel it in my brain.  The discomfort was terrifying and I was afraid that I would end up yet again in a mental institution but this time never able to return to society.

My boss and my workmates knew that I was going through this and were more than cooperative.  They were compassionate and let me come to work and recluse to my work in the strange form I was.  I go for walks at lunch time and end with a stretch and a short meditation in an area between some buildings where there are benches and trees.

On this particular February day, I was laying back on the benches looking up in to the bare trees trying not to focus on this ominous darkness in my head but recognizing the experiences I had as I knew I couldn’t repress nor deny them anymore.  There was an echo memory of some talk I’d heard where someone was saying something that as bare as trees looked in the winter, there was busyiness in the roots and the branches out of vision where sap was stirring to produce buds and leaves – LIFE.  Having the 2 thought patterns simultaneously:  that of my feeling crazy, and that of the life producing the buds and leaves made me realize that I was identifying with buds and leaves instead of the life that produces the buds and leaves. 

Brain and body are manifestations of me – not the REAL me.  I am the manifestor, not the manifested.  As soon as I realized this something very tangible and physical happened.  I would love to know what an fMRI would have looked like.  It was like I could feel who I was (brain wise and soul wise) –- change places.  It was like I was sitting in a seat opposite of myself inside of myself.  I was at the core instead of the periphery.  My entire body tingled and I had a flood of relaxation.  I went from feeling tense and anxious to one of complete bliss and calm.  For several weeks after that time changed.  It was infinitely and deliciously slow.  I didn’t pay attention to what time it was because it was irrelevant.  Things took as long as they took.  I was more present with people.  I got feedback that I was more “soft” and gentle and it made me more attractive.

Unfortunately, the experience didn’t stay with me and I’ve had some rough times since.  However, remembering that helps put me back to that state from time to time. 

Realizing that energy is REAL, and that consciousness is real, makes me feel that that my core persists.  I was thinking of this the other day when I walked past a mirror in my bathroom, and I caught my own glance.  It was beautiful because I recognized me more than I ever have in my life.  Having had dissociative disorder, mirrors have always been challenging to me because I simply quite often have not recognized the person looking back at me.  Some times were worse than others because my own image faded and distorted and would be completely unrecognizable.  However, on that day, I KNEW myself.  I had a deep under-the-brain memory of myself.

So, the other day when I had a couple of PTSD triggers, and spiraled and tried to fight the spiral down, I kept having memories of the experiences of feeling this genuine self in contrast to this yuckiness that I was experiencing with the triggers.  I kept thinking to myself, “How can I feel so yucky when I know that I am something deeper and more pure than this emotional baggage?”  Yet, I knew that I was a person with emotions and that denying feelings didn’t serve me well either.  I did the basic “trigger treatment” that the books and the experts tell you to do:  rest, sit with the emotion and try to understand it, journal...  I could also feel that my mother would be telling me, “Get some water, some vitamins, and some sunshine.”  So, I did. 

The most significant realization came from understanding that the person who delivered the triggers was perceived as an “enemy” and that the real “enemies” were dead.  I knew that the person who inadvertently triggered me didn’t realize the complexity of the statements in how the emotional cascade could cause such a nexus of reaction.  I knew that this person was not my enemy as my enemies did not exist anymore.  I sat in the breeze and breathed and closed my eyes and repeated to myself over and over again, “My enemies are no longer – essentially dead.  My enemies are dead.  My enemies are dead.” 

Between the rest, water, good nutrition, vitamins and good old Vitamin D, and the emotional release through realization, I was able to pull myself out of this spiral faster than when I used to have them.  I am so blessed to have all the ingredients I need for successful healing and I pray for everyone else in their pain to have such wonderful ingredients for health.  Above, all, remembering who we really are, as I do believe that personalities are souls on brains, can promote such deep and beautiful healing.

Although self differentiates through experience and manifests itself through same, self is NOT the set of experiences.  Self is the EXPERIENCER.  Self is not the manifested, it is the MANIFESTOR.  Therefore, self is DIVINE.  Self persists in various forms and dances samsara in the cosmos, living in dukkha, seeking nirvana.