11-22-18

MEDITATION NOTES 8

COLLOQUY FOR CLASS 8

In Class 7, the dualities that are a natural presence in our lives and that dwell at the heart of our emotions, attitudes, and actions were front and center in the meditative space. I tried to show how they provide a useful purpose in defining the “self” and how they also possess shadow sides and dark underbellies. It was my intention to suggest that both sides of a duality can be brought much closer together in many instances, if not unified within us. The unity that contains them is what makes us fully human in our frailties, follies, and failures as well as our greatest and most noble virtues and exertions.

This class is intended to examine the third of the three major questions I posed at the very beginning of the course: What then shall I do? These three questions are the motivation for my daily meditation and their translations into context, relationships, and action/interaction are the framework for my practice. Perhaps they can serve you as usefully in your practices.

The parts of meditation we have explored are all of a piece, with one aspect predominating at one time or another. The tools for stabilizing the wholeness axis and making use of the forces that work to unbalance us on any given day are available for us to use as they are needed. We can pause and find the meditative space and enter it wherever we are. Yet, we remain in a state of relative isolation as we sit or stand or walk. We are prepared for something else. But what?

One of the most powerful mysteries of meditation and, thus, of the human heart and mind is how intense focus on the “self” can transform into care for and care of others. Indeed, just as we noticed in Class 1, all of the steps and stages of self care are part of establishing the healthy ground for acting outside our mental constructions, acting with compassion. Compassion, that transitive step after empathy, emerges naturally from “self” and, ironically, depends on “self” for its active life. When one is able to give up one's self for another, then one has embodied compassion in all its dimensions. We as atomized and singular individuals enter into a physical relationship of care of and for others. How does this happen? What carries us over into compassion?

One of the most difficult of all of life's lessons, it seems to me, is how to manage losses. Loss is one of the most solid and intractable causes of suffering because at its root is fear. Meditative space mirrors the losses we experience in our mundane life. We are not schooled in how to deal with loss and we are never practiced at it enough to be good at embracing it. An often-told story has it that a wise man offered a young boy a priceless treasure if he could find one house in his village that had not been touched by loss. Of course, he returned to the wise man with the news that he couldn't find one house and the wise man offered him the knowledge of loss as the treasure. Yes, and the meditative space will be infused with the shadows and realities of losses. It will be the most difficult of visitors to accommodate. When we get the visit from a loss there is the inevitable pushing back, the attempt to isolate it from our experience, to rationalize it into something else--all the ways we have of turning away from our fear. We separate it from ourselves, once again contributing to the divided self. No matter the origin of loss or its dimensions, we seek to lessen our suffering as a result of it. Maybe we ignore it or distract ourselves from it. My thought is that losses have something to teach us about forgiveness and letting go because they are rooted in fear and fear is a powerful underlying disabling emotion (remember fight, flight, or freeze?).

Losses, our own and others', are powerful because we embody them. We embody our own in our consciousness and we embody the losses of others when we “walk in their shoes” and express empathy. They are blunt force traumas to our wholeness axis, to how we see ourselves and our emotional lives. We are never habituated to loss but receive every one as a surprise, even though we may know something of its context. Our relationship to the final loss of life (death) is always unrehearsed and psychically traumatic. I think this happens by degrees but not because it is absent from life altogether. Everyone in the village has known loss and over a lifetime the losses do mount up. Because losses will show up in meditation, we can use the same tools of preparation for them that we use for monkeys and gorillas or any of the other joys and sorrows or sharp dualities that visit us. We get better at using the tools and better at understanding loss and particular losses. With practice, we are better able to comprehend the biggest loss of our lives—our lives. Any loss we suffer or see someone else suffer reminds us that we will at some point face our own mortality. We may not see it this way when we see what losses a hurricane or a mass shooting create, but our empathic attunement points to the losses in life and our own death that lurk in the background. And where there is loss there is fear.

Because we personalize loss so thoroughly (ours and that of others), we see ourselves as victims of cruel fate. We separate ourselves from what is part of the natural order for humans. Instead of seeing loss as part of human life, we see it as unnatural and cruel. The acts that lead to loss are often cruel and violent but we add suffering to the pain of loss. Can we distinguish the pain of loss from the suffering we personalize? Maybe. Is it possible to work with the pain of loss and to make the choice not to suffer because of it? Can we understand the context of the pain and let go of the suffering? Can we choose to forgive ourselves and others the causes of the pain and not continue to suffer? What would that mean to healing?

The meditative space has room for both the pain and suffering of losses because it contains all possibilities and mirrors everything. Sometimes, there is no way to let go of the suffering accompanying loss. But if we are able to see it for what it is and lessen its hold on us (can we toggle between the loss and our personal resource, as we can do with other traumas?), then perhaps one day it will be possible to let it go. Letting go is as difficult as being adept at losing. We seek the solace of meditation when trauma and loss are at our door, but meditation in its comprehensive inclusiveness also embraces our accomplishments, the causes for our celebrations, and the great joys and triumphs of the human spirit. We employ meditation to assist us in dealing with the darkness but forget that meditation is also a place for great light. But, in the grand scope of human life and death, we know that we will also be letting go of the sources of light as we know them in our mundane lives. We open to not-knowing in what lies beyond our earthly consciousness. While we have explored the necessity and value of each of the class themes, let us briefly notice what we might let go in each, all in service of compassion.

In Class 1 we explored “self” as a subjective experience, but we might be letting go of

its isolation from the world.

In Class 2 we looked at various constituents of the divided self. We might let go of our

ideal version of ourselves.

In Class 3 we cleared space for meditation and enlisted poetry as an entry point to it and as

a resource. We might let go of some of the tautness and dependence we have on our

personal resource.

In Class 4 we looked at how expansive the meditative space could be and how “flow”

sometimes characterizes it. We might let go of this space as defended territory.

In Class 5 we confronted the monkeys in our inner lives. We might let go of their

intimidation.

In Class 6 we braced ourselves against the forces of our outer lives. We might let go of

some of the burden they impose by making choices more supportive of

our resilient zone.

In Class 7 we looked at the dualities that tend to describe and define our lives. We might let

go of their insistence and entertain ambiguity and greater nuance.

In Class 8 we have explored the culmination of light and dark through compassion. We might

let go of some of the suffering of loss and some of the oppression of fear.

What helps with loss is the support we feel from grounding and resourcing. Resourcing may include the support we feel not only from the earth and the context of our present life circumstances, but also from the support we sense from others in community. When we meditate in a public space, we are in interaction with all those present, even though we may be in silence with our eyes closed. We are oscillating between the strength of our inner space and the felt energies of those near us. When we act on that support and reach out, our losses and demons are quieted in the shared experience of being human. We know that our compassion for others is merging with their compassion for us (“are we not of interest to one another?,” asks Elizabeth Alexander) and we know this in a way that is beyond linguistic knowledge. In our meditative space, are we able to imagine someone we know or someone unknown to us who has pain and suffers as we do? One ancient meditative practice is based on this very exercise and it allows us to offer and receive compassion in the interconnected web of human experience.

Sometimes the losses we experience are not of our making and certainly the losses of others most often do not share our own life circumstances. Yet, when we embody the losses, when we attune to them in ways that awaken empathy, we can remain in a state of reactivity until we turn to them and offer forgiveness for the pain and the suffering they have created, whether or not we have caused them or they are our own or belong to someone else. In this way, we transition from empathy to compassion. This is the release from empathic block and exhaustion we looked at in Class 1. The act of forgiveness is the action/interaction opening us to compassion. Forgiving is not forgetting. It is releasing judgment and allowing for care of self and others within a wider context. Within compassion lie all the possibilities for meeting the pain and suffering that accompany loss. Compassion does not necessarily diminish pain and suffering but it does allow for eventual healing. Meditation can be the space in which compassion is accessed and then enacted. In a way, when we offer forgiveness for the conditions and judgments that lead to pain and suffering, this is a form of letting go. Our compassion has allowed for the reality of loss and the natural reactions to it, but forgiveness of causes and conditions brings us into an I/Thou relationship with ourselves and others, as developed by the philosopher Martin Buber in his I and Thou. Isn't compassion at the heart of caring and self care—and meditation itself? I believe that what we can aspire to is a state of greater personal liberation in spite of all the forces that move through our lives because we are human beings.

So, meditation and everything it holds contains self and other in what Martin Buber refers to when he says: birth and death “do depend not on whether I 'affirm' or 'deny' the world in my soul, but on how I cause my attitude of soul to the world to grow to life, to life that acts upon the world, to real life—and in real life the ways of very different attitudes of soul may intersect.”

It is my hope that this course on meditation has offered something that is useful and of benefit to you in your lives. May all of you know peace, joy, and an undivided and healthy life.