11-22-18

MEDITATION NOTES 7

COLLOQUY FOR CLASS 7

In Class 6 we looked at what a “full catastrophe” life might look like and maybe we discovered that it looked a lot like our own. We added the heavy presence of the gorilla from our mundane outer life to the frantic and harried presence of the monkeys of our inner life. It is no wonder that we often think of our lives as zoos. In all of this, I attempted to make something creative and useful out of all the noise and drama. Still, there is the notion that we can divide our lives up into inner and outer and this reinforces how we form dualities in other parts of our lives. Doing this emphasizes even more how divided we feel sometimes as we are compelled to choose one side of a duality over the other. In this class I will attempt to bring some of those dualities into a closer connection within the meditative space.

Meditation merely opens a window on our minds. There is nothing esoteric about the forms of meditation. There is nothing magic to be granted or grasped. Grounding and resourcing are as personal and accessible as anything in our minds could be. If meditation does not lead to eternal Truth and Beauty, to the idealized self or enlightenment, then it can at least lead to a better understanding of who we are, what we are here for, and what we might do as we make our way through our lives.

This course began with an examination of what we could do to take better care of ourselves and, thus, take better care of others. It was on this basis that we proceeded to celebrate the undivided self and to see that there are ways to heal ourselves in instances where we feel divided or imperfect as we compare ourselves to someone whose life context differs significantly from our own. I continued to stress the importance of returning to the body in which we experience ourselves, to practice calming by way of grounding and resourcing and reflecting on the vast choices open to us in meditation. All of these efforts are important and key to using the meditative space as an extension of our conscious lives.

Having said that, some important components of what the meditation container holds for us are still left out of the discussion. While we begin with our “self” primarily in our attentive gaze, we are not who we are without considering the duality of self/other that helps define us as individuals. I think dualities such as self/other often create barriers and boundaries that separate, but the duality of self/other helps clarify what we know about ourselves and how we are different from something or someone else as well as to know what is common to us all. I have mentioned how neuroscience has documented where the protoself is located and how the autobiographical self evolves over a lifetime. Recognition of these important concepts emerging from brain networks helps us develop a sound and healthy sense of self. This leads to emotional stabilization and regulation and resilience in ways that a meditative practice can contribute.

The most immediate duality in our lives is the self/other duality but, just as with the perceived duality we experience between our true self and the idealized self, there can be significant gaps of pain between ourselves and those with whom we interact. How are we to step beyond our own world to consider the world of another? Martin Buber is addressing just this gap in his reference to I/It. We sometimes treat ourselves as objects in a separate and wholly different life and we treat others as objects in the same way. When we take the stance of participant/observer in our lives, we become the subject of our attention. We can do the same thing with others in their lives. Buber says that “when Thou is spoken, there is no thing.” When we no longer treat anything or anyone as an object, then we are better able to consider deeper relationships with them. We are also able to generate feelings of empathy and act compassionately. Buber also writes about how I/Thou relationships are unbounded and like a stream of “continuous happening.” If we don't recognize this about our present-day relationships, then perhaps the contexts of our lives have shifted away from how our lives can be meaningful to one another. If meditation is one's vehicle into the inner space of being, then the work of integrating dualities can happen there. The practice of oscillating between our personal resource and what the monkeys of the inner world bring to us is the same practice of oscillating between our resource and the gorillas of the outer world. When everything is a subject and nothing is an object, then compassion takes an easy path.

At the beginning of the course, the context included the neuroscientific documentation of networks in which “self” can be located. It included as well the idea of an autobiographical self, a self-talk narrative that involves naming and labeling of emotional states and streams of consciousness that allow us to sense, observe, coalesce meaning, and act as participant/observers in knowing what we have experienced and to really know that the experiences are our own. Our relationships to everything in our lives shift from moment to moment and from day to day as the contexts of events, thoughts, and emotions shift. It seems to me that we find it easier to deal with hard divisions, with dualities, than with ambiguity, nuance, and unpredictability. I suppose that our primordial beginnings made choices like that more conducive to survival. Security and territory were more often preserved by choosing one part of a duality, even if it meant choosing the wrong side of it 49% of the time. The odds were on the side of choosing correctly more often than not. But in these times dualities are severely limiting because they eliminate some useful parts of our selves that we could use to our benefit and because, too, survival now is not about an actual saber-toothed tiger. Survival, in fact, might hang on our ability to incorporate dual natures into our concept of self/other and to become more open to what makes others who they are and to see in what ways all of us are similar.

Here is a list of dualities that comes to mind easily but which is in no way inclusive:

devotion coercion

outrage indifference

loyalty subservience

protection oppression

owner slave

independence imprisonment

advertising propaganda

free will manipulation

faith dogma

interdependence isolation

community atomization

birth death

concord war

humility arrogance

abundance poverty

passivity engagement

ego EGO

The list of potential dualities is vastly longer and that we are able to add to it reveals how our minds can easily default to a “this or that” instead of a “this and that” mentality. I am not suggesting here that we can altogether eliminate thinking about and acting on dualities. I am suggesting that dualities can separate useful partners and this can emerge from our thoughts in meditation. Meditation may be the place where dualities dance before us in different combinations. In some sense, maturity in our humanness is manifested in how we are personally able to hold both sides of a duality in contradictory tension.

Here I would like to suggest that the most obvious desirable, comfortable, ethical, and moral choice in a duality also has its shadow side, its dark underbelly. For instance, protection can become dominance, coercion, and oppression—its very opposite in the duality. Free will may tip over into manipulation and anarchy. Faith may take on command and control and wind up as dogma and violence. But, are we not all of these multitudes? And do we not look away when we pick only the side of a duality that suits us or soothes us? And, if we even acknowledge the role both sides play in life, do we notice how we feel it pertains to others rather than to ourselves? Do we not maintain the self/other duality at the cost of our own integration, one of the wonderful benefits of meditation and attentive self care?

I suppose I am trying to make the case for integration, for “believing in the world,” as Buber puts it. He speaks to the healing power of integration of all aspects of what it is to be human. That said, there will always be gorillas and monkeys with which to contend. If we know of their presence and acknowledge them as pieces of ourselves and do not keep them on the other side of who we think we are in the self/other duality(“that is not the real me,” “what right do they have to be here?”), we are closer to healthy integration. Just as we wake every day to who we think we are, they will be there to contend and occupy. With grounding and resourcing we will be up to the task of moving them to the side or quieting their insistent chatter. Don't let them force you out of your meditation so they can wreck the house. When looking at yourself in the mirror (which is what meditation is, after all), will you be able to say “I accept you”, or, as Franz Wright says in his poem (“The Only Animal”), “I do not condemn you”? How much do we accept and how much can we learn to accept? How can the habit of meditation assist us in seeing more clearly the necessity and value of honoring the dualities in our lives? And, then, how are we called to work with them in the work we do every day?

The last class in this course will explore how the meditative space honors the the self/other duality as a way of knowing ourselves better ( Who am I?), of understanding the relationships we have with the life events and people that appear in our daily lives (What am I here for?), and transition into a consideration of what it means to fully integrate our lives by our own choices and actions. (What then shall I do?) Meditation is a sacred space of the self but it is also a preparation for respecting and caring for others. Perhaps there is a possibility for fusion of inner and outer worlds and for a closer connection between self and other.