Meditation

I am home from a meditation retreat where we spent considerable time in silence and in a meditative pose. It wasn't the same experience for me this year and I was grateful for that. Last year I felt overwhelming emotion consistently; trying not to weep, holding back tears, finding my voice breaking when sharing. I had sometimes been unable to prevent tears pouring down my face when in meditation or on the day when we visited the group who sang sacred music. It was a private meltdown.

I suppose the good news story of last year is that I returned to my life in a still, private space. I felt that I had somehow gathered strength for those parts of my life that were raw and painful. I had been confronted by the intense pain of other people and I had been softened by it; opened up. It felt like a good thing. I felt like I had found my tribe, the walking wounded; those who knew that something had to be done about their emotional damage before they were annihilated by it. On some level perhaps I understood that more emotional pain was to come and I was grateful for the shoring up of reserves.

If left to my own devices I would not have attended again this year, but my friend had been onto me for several months, wanting me so much to be there with her. There came a point where there seemed no choice and I made the necessary preparations.

This year there were so many more sick people. I was affected by it, no doubt about that, but I also took it somewhat in my stride. I think I had developed an understanding of the reality of the situation. People are prematurely dying from cancer from the way they live and think and from unresolved damage of their past and present experiences. It was inevitable that at a meditation retreat, unlike a health resort, there were would be many sad stories to hear.

The first conversation that stood out to me was that of a middle aged local woman; by that I mean she lived in New Zealand. She had had a double mastectomy several years ago. Recently, she had discovered a lump in her neck and would return from the retreat to hear the results of tests; whether the primary cancer was located in her breast region or in a gynecological region. Either way, her prognosis was dire. She already had the news that she was terminal.

I asked questions about the support in her life. Fortunately she had been helped with a little counseling to deal with her anger and fear but any further help she could get would be useful. So, I pointed out her situation to one of the 'teachers' and received a very odd response. The woman had to come to her, she told me, and she wouldn't be doing anything about it unless she did. It felt like a slap across the face and I immediately closed down, merely offering that she was a woman with little support and I felt it wouldn't hurt to be aware of her situation and keep a watch on her. As if this 'triggered' her in some way she said that if she wanted specific advice she should attend a cancer workshop not a meditation retreat..

This made me incredibly angry. It felt heartless. Don't ever make the mistake of wholly trusting spiritual people, as if they are people without triggers and flaws of their own. We are just people who sometimes act well and sometimes not. Of course, I took the matter further in a subtle way and she did receive some one-on-one counseling from my friend. By the end of the week she seemed much lighter, smiled often.

At the end of the sacred singing this year, a deeply moving experience, we talked a little. There came a moment when I felt a need to move closer into her inner world. 'May I hug you?' I asked. She nodded yes. We embraced for several seconds and I stroked her hair. Now my tears escaped. 'It has been wonderful to meet you,'  I said. 'You will be all right.' I didn't mean she would live, because I don't think she will be alive for all that long. What I meant was that she would find the strength to die well.

Rightly or wrongly, I said as few 'goodbyes' before I left on the shuttle bus for the airport as I could. I had given all that I had to give. I had held in my own sorrows. I had been kind and supportive and good company. Now, I needed to go, as quietly and as quickly as possible.

The retreat is in a remote location and so I stayed overnight at the hotel airport on the first Friday, before I caught the shuttle bus that would transport me to the retreat. It was there when I turned on my phone that I received a message from my doctor's office to call them. I have been trying very hard to get a handle on my stress response over the past year but this message terrified me. I had recently had a battery of blood tests and prepared myself for the news that a cancerous state was indicated.

In fact, the news related to an elevated cholesterol count and I immediately researched, whilst I had access to the hotel's Internet, what to do about that. I love cheese and of course I determined immediately that it was another food to eliminate from my diet. I wrote a list of foods to focus on, flax seeds that I could soak overnight and add to my porridge, for example.

But, I knew in my bones that I had to work harder to resolve the significant stress that I was living with; stress being a significant factor in elevated cholesterol levels. My needs have not been, and are not met, and living with someone who can't process that has been stress provoking.

On the final morning one of the participants was asked to say a 'thank you' on behalf of the group to the 'teacher' who is retiring. She shared that when she met him her mind was a living nightmare. Her relatives being Jewish had been through the concentration camps and many of them had ultimately taken their lives. She had deemed that perhaps this was the only way out for her too. But, the teacher had taken her under his wing and instructed her to meditate consistently. Although she sometimes felt nauseous doing so she had kept up the practice until, day by day, the freakish nightmare inside her head started to lose its hold over her sanity.

It was Kate's comments that truly reached me. There has been a nightmare going on in my head and changes must be made. Time on my cushion must be increased. A sense of peace will come from the inside out. My job is to sit with myself in silence until then.

A moment of rage

There was a moment recently when I did something I don't do. A comment was made, on reflection an infuriating, condescending, macho, 'in your face' comment. I can rise above this sort of thing, usually. But, a congruence of forces left me without that hold back and in the comment I was filled with blind rage. I could have done nearly anything in that moment.

It frightened me. I went looking for material about it on the Internet and I came across an article by a 5  feet 7 inches male academic of 140 pounds who had taken on a thief in a Spanish railway station before he could even think. He wrestled him to the ground and proudly called for backup from the crowd. No-one was interested and for a few hours he and his daughter were chased through the streets of Barcelona by a gang of thugs. In his right mind, he said, he would have let them just take the wallet, but a blind rage got the best of him.

I absolutely hate to even lose my temper for a moment let alone feel rage. It discombobulates me. I actually have to meditate. I have to do specific meditations about calming the body and meditations with healing sounds to settle my whole system down again.

I am reminded of advice today that we have a right to feel all of our feelings. Obviously, when the emotional mind takes over the thinking brain that can be dangerous, as the above anecdote illustrates. Rage, it seems, is the same sort of emotion as would have us running from a tiger. It's hard to contain that impulse. In the moment, I just reacted, without thought.

However, it happened. I wasn't exactly angry with or disappointed in myself. I mean, I do hate to have that reaction, but I recognize it for what it is, a reaction. It's a little upsetting to realize that we are all capable of reacting with such force. I wonder if the gun lobby advocates actually understand how lethal it is for someone whose emotions have overwhelmed their thinking mind to have access to a lethal weapon...

 I remember distinctly what happened to my body. My head felt woozy and  I had a great deal of energy.  I didn't care if anybody was hearing or seeing me. I had lost any social inhibition.  I needed to move about. The blood was pumping through my veins making me hot and agitated.

I knew I had to be alone. I went home and tried to return to the normal events of the day. I cooked. This helped settle me. I went to bed on time and slept soundly. The next day, I woke exhausted, got through the morning, but my afternoon I needed to lay down on the floor and listen to a guided meditation. I promptly fell asleep.

It took two days for my mind and body to recover from that one moment of overwhelming rage. I can't even begin to imagine what it is like to walk around ready to fight someone; to be full of anger and with a disposition for violence. I can't imagine being that trigger happy on a routine basis, ready to react to any slight.

I know life doesn't always go our way. I know things aren't always as they should be. But, I choose a happy disposition, a positive outlook, an ethereal, even empty headed mind. I have no idea how to live any other way.

A spiritual journey

As a little girl I was sent to Sunday School. My grandmother was Catholic and my mother too, but my father saw that she had suffered within the Catholic Church, being of an anxious disposition, so it was determined my brother and I would be raised in his faith, Protestant.

My school was affiliated with a religious order and so each morning there was a prayer and a hymn, sanctuary doors were opened and closed. A Minister came into class a few days a week to speak of the Bible and of being Christian. He was very old and often dozed.

In the background my grandmother kept the Catholic faith in my life. She taught me about the rosary and she talked about Heaven and Hell. God being up in the sky watching all things, good and bad, was clear in my mind.

Everything from childhood has some sort of effect but what I am most aware of as an adult is that I love to be in churches. I love the service and the majesty of the whole thing. I like the spectacle and the way I feel in churches. I like to light a candle or watch others light a candle. I love the music and the architecture. I love being with people who think it right to pray.

There is a clinical psychologist on Utube that I follow and he talks of human beings being psycho-spiritual beings. We want there to be something bigger than us. I think that's what pulled me into religion as a child; what captivated me. It really is quite natural to want to be part of something bigger than yourself.

I don't any more but prior to the last couple of years I would pray to God, to keep my children safe mostly.

Twenty years ago when I had my final baby I began to do Pilates, to music. It was within this experience of movement and music that I started to feel some release from a post natal depression that had its grip on me. It makes sense really because as a young girl I loved dance, ballet. It was my escape. Within the discipline, the rigor and the music, I felt free.

Once I had been doing Pilates for some time I tried yoga and adored it. In the same building they were running meditation classes and this seemed like a suitable next step, the right time.

Meditation was far from easy for me but there were enough good moments to keep me coming back. The young woman did a wonderful job of guided meditations which I found very much to my liking. I took myself to stunning tanzanite caves where lurid things took place, and up mountains where I glided off into open space quite effortlessly.

A new teacher taught us candle gazing and to stay in our bodies. My mind was still floating about so the instruction that I must stay in my body was another breakthrough thought.

I learned about walking meditations. I  was beginning to not only be aware of the anxiety in my body but to be its witness.

One day whilst out shopping I ran into a woman who had stopped coming to the meditation group and she asked if I was still attending the group. I told her I was. She had a much better idea, she told me, a sacred sort of meditation space, a sanctuary where she experienced great peace.

As I recall it took me a few months to go to the Sanctuary, where I never ran into her. One would pay $10 downstairs and then go up the stairs. We'd leave our shoes and bag outside and take up a position. A candle set in a big bowl flickered light about the dimly lit room.

I didn't understand at that time how to sit on a cushion or to use a prayer bench, so I sat in a chair. It was very peaceful but I don't like chairs for long meditations really. Other than that issue I felt I was getting somewhere with the meditation. My mind was sometimes slowing down. Sometimes I wondered if I could stand it another moment, but I never left.

My inner world remained quite chaotic. So, one day, when I saw a notice for an 8 week meditation course, I signed up. Thinking back to it I was still pretty hopeless but I had glimmers of a peaceful mind. As well as that our discussions that dovetailed the meditation practice was giving me information about the mind/body connection. I was the only person to finish the course.

Meditation remains a great challenge for most people. The classes I originally took closed down, and the group that ran the Sanctuary was forced to close.

I fell into a hole until a good year later, I think, I went in search for an alternative. I found someone but too far from my home. The lucky break was that she informed me of where the woman who taught my 8 week class was running a meditation group close to my home.

I try very hard not to miss that weekly group session. It is a most eclectic group. There has been a bone surgeon and his wife, a woman who lost everything in a bushfire, an architect with cancer, a surgeon who has some dementia, a very old man who was a Lecturer of Philosophy, a woman who lost her daughter to cancer. Currently, there is a man of 40 something whose cancer has come back three times. We are just starting to get to know him and last week he spoke openly.

For years I have meditated on a cushion; well three cushions these days. Various yoga poses have stretched out my thigh muscles, and I have wide open hips, so it's not uncomfortable at all, though it was until I made the necessary improvements to my body.

My spiritual practice is supported by reading gurus, spiritual healers and leaders. I'm too old to imagine that there is anyone on this Earth that is a perfect human being but certain people have much to teach us.
Pema Chodron is a favourite of mine but so too is Eckhart Tolle, and I have a soft spot for Ram Dass. But, I appreciate many leaders and writers. Rumi is great and I once bought a book whilst in Queensland which I think had a significant subliminal effect on me: Oshos' 'Meditation for Busy People.'  I keep a tumblr blog in large part devoted to the thoughts of such people that support my practice and the way I aim to live and to think/not think.

To refer back to the first few paragraphs of this post I don't think of an omnipotent God above the clouds any more. I think of God as being within me, within all of us. Either that Godliness is expressed or it isn't, but it resides inside, not outside.

I don't know, and who really cares, why I am the way I am. I came into the world quiet and noticing when all about me people were loud and unaware. People in my world seemed to be running on adrenaline when I wanted to find a peaceful place to simply read my book, or to think. I danced. I played the piano. I read. Such a young girl isn't suited to the loudness of her environment. I sought quiet places and experiences as relief from the noise and agitation.

I've blocked out a lot of memories, it seems. It doesn't matter . I do remember being upset, very upset and chaotic inside. This was before the spiritual journey began. I would take my extreme anger for a walk. One time I took it to a Step class and did my best to stay on the block. But, there reached a moment when I thought I might actually explode, or implode, and so I was forced to stop.

When experiencing extreme negative emotions I don't think exercise works. First, one must go to the cushion and deal with the upset. It's only very recently that I had the courage to go into the negative emotion and stay with it such that it transforms into peace. This was a huge breakthrough.

The woman who taught me in the 8 week program is now my dear, dear friend and very recently, just in the past few weeks, we have begun to confide in one another. I haven't declared 'I am a submissive' but I have explained, because she asked me gently to explain further a statement I uttered, that I  am attracted to a certain type of man and that this has caused issues for me in my life. We are both starting to fill in the dots as to what we share with one another over delicious and deliciously long lunches.

Shortly, I will attend a meditation retreat where we will meditate about 6 hours a day and be in silence for much of the time. It is sheer bliss for me.

I wonder if I can say what I have learned on this spiritual journey in a paragraph or two. Man, that's asking something.

Well, first of all, let me say that I have come to understand the mind/body connection. If someone like me is around difficult people, perhaps loud and reactive, perhaps needing or wanting my energy but not offering energy of their own to me, this can create chronic stress, which can lead to inflammation in the body which can lead to inflammatory disease.

This is why it is so important for a submissive who is struggling in her relationship with a partner to investigate what is really going on in her life. Her energetic fields may be so open that she suffers emotional pain, tending to ignore her body and its needs. So, I have learned that creating a calm mind and learning techniques to calm the Other as well as one's own mind is vital to health and emotional stability. Relying on the Other when the Other doesn't have the capacity, for whatever reason, to tend to you is a recipe for much unhappiness. Shoring up on your self esteem and self reliance is the key.

Spiritually, I have learned to be still. I have learned that when troubled to sit, just sit. Pema Chodron talks of this. I have learned to allow negative emotion and to transform negative emotion. I feel what I feel. I allow it without being distressed by it.

I have learned to accept. I am not responsible for anyone else, can't and shouldn't change them. Nor, do I need to save anyone. I offer myself, my best self, and that is enough. I have learned to be settled and calm. This is no-one's responsibility but my own. I can find my peace regardless of the outside forces that swirl around me.

Love isn't constant. Perhaps a parent's love for a child is constant but even then it ebbs and flows; is stronger at some times than others.

Romantic love has so much potential. Sacred love is something that I feel eludes me but remains my goal. As a relationship ages there is the possibility for love to grow in depth and for sex to take on a sacred nature. I had that for a time, but then it was gone and I was powerless to bring it back. Things got out of balance. Life isn't over until it is over and so I remain hopeful, but accepting of the limitations of my life as well. There are still chapters left to live.

At the meditation retreat I was on last year we were shown a movie about the life of Father Bede Griffiths. It is his thoughts on sacred love that stays with me. I continue to feel that allowing a woman to be entrenched in her femininity and the man in his masculinity can bring me the sort of relationship that would be the icing on the cake, for me. I am not sure that everyone wants, or can, go to a place of intense intimacy with another person, so we'll see what comes. We'll see if it is possible to create that sacred shared space.

I am eternally grateful for the lessons learned on this journey. Even on the most jam-packed and challenging days, I find time to sit quietly and focus on my breath; breathing in, noticing the gap and breathing out, noticing the gap. We are incredibly fortunate to be alive.

Coming to conscious awareness

As time goes by, and if you are even mildly reflective, patterns emerge in your life. Questions rise up. You can find yourself requiring answers.

It can take decades potentially for consciousness of a pattern to occur. I think little niggles and doubts and concerns can be present but we are ingenious in the way we repeatedly squash them down.

One day, we find that it is all starting to make some sense. We have enough pieces of the jigsaw puzzle to start to see a picture. It's at this time that we might furiously look around for the last missing pieces. That's what I did.

Once one piece emerged and then another I became indefatigable in my attempts for a complete picture. My insistence paid off. I have a full picture and I'm in the healing and moving on process.

This is not to say that I don't make errors still because when you are around certain personality types they have a way of being triggered such they can act their most wounded selves at a moment's notice. There is no telling what might set them off, how they might hear and interpret your (innocent) words.

Someone said to me recently that they admired the fact that I had a irrepressible sense of humor about the circumstances of my life.

I don't ever think I've lost that sense that even the most damaged and difficult of people are multi-dimensional people. Nobody wants to be seen as a condition, or a victim, and those I have known and loved, as flawed as their behavior might be, are all good people at their core. Nobody asks for parents who are incapable of parenting in a good-enough fashion, or for childhood experiences which cut across the sense of self.

It might be excruciatingly difficult for them to overcome what has happened to them, the changes in the brain, probably impossible, but they have all had good and kind qualities. I never forget this. Never.

So long as I can be insulated from the toxicity through methods of self-love, not relying on  or expecting reciprocity, then I can hold onto feelings of unconditional love for them. I can't have the sort of relationship I'd ideally love to have with them, but I don't stop thinking of them with great affection.

When children comes into the world they expect, demand, that their primary caregivers unconditionally love them. That's their right as human defenseless babies with hard wired personalities.

Alas, optimal parenting isn't necessarily available to some people and the child is unable to construct an integrated self.  The parent(s) liked some qualities - abilities in the classroom or on the sporting field perhaps - but they despised  the vulnerabilities and certain expressed feelings; aspects of the children's personality that didn't serve their parents well.

Vulnerable feelings that were expressed by such children, but unwanted by parents who insisted that the child esteem them, created a false self. It's this false self that is protected with every fiber of some people's being throughout their lives. It's this false sense that demands that anyone that comes close to breaking into this false self must be torn apart and chewed up.

It seems to be the case that I was born with a remarkable degree of maternal love. It's not just children but adults too. I see into the damaged soul of some adults and I see a child that needs love. I seek to heal. It's this 'weakness' of mine that can, and has, caused me so much grief.

Now that I know exactly what I am dealing with I am less and less hurt every day by any arrows thrown in my direction. I've an acute sense of what is indeed going on, and I side step rather than duck these days. I do what I can where I can.

However, I no longer believe in miracles, or that I have love enough to offer such that I can save every situation. I'm no saint, can't walk on water; can't change what happened way back when. I do my best.  I'm satisfied with that now.

Self Trust

When you've been through something difficult and come out the other side it's perfectly reasonable and right to think of yourself as a Survivor. You made it.

What should you do now? In a way, it's a rhetorical question. Being a survivor, you most probably rescued yourself. If you learned how to rescue yourself, you've not only learned a lot about yourself and what led you into a dangerous or toxic situation in the first place, but you have discovered that you need to look after yourself. That is to say, you have learned that loving yourself, protecting yourself and putting yourself first is vital.

If you're on this page at all you're probably identifying in some way with a submissive stance, or someone who appreciates the submissive stance. What do Submissives tend to do; to think of the other? And, what do submissives crave, to be loved?

If you are brave enough to rescue yourself, finally, you are brave enough to recognize that you don't need someone else to tell you you are lovable. You can tell yourself, prove to yourself, that you are lovable.

It's such an odd notion for so many of us, to put ourselves first, but it can be done. Think about what you like to do. Give yourself permission to do a few of those things each day.

Watch your mood rise.

As you tend to your own self care your sense of self esteem/self love will escalate. As your self love escalates boundaries will seem normal and reasonable. There is much you still want to give to others because that's who you are, but there are limits. No-one can break your sense of self worth again. Those days of being manipulated are over.

As  you begin to operate in the world, open but aware, self trust will be the order of the day.

Confident of your worth and what you have to offer you manifest good things and the Universe will give back.