After the meditation: mind, chest, abdomen
So after the guided meditation, I feel in my mind it feels almost like a, it's like almost like the image of a firework that's exploded and then there's like all these kind of white lines almost like pushing out of the edges of my head, almost like there's a space and then it's almost breaking out a little bit and the whole space is kind of alive and bright and shimmering, it's like white light. And then in my chest it feels as if there's this energy and a warmth, almost like a ball or a stone just like moving. And it's kind of pumping a little bit, maybe going bigger and smaller, and then it's kind of moving out.
And then in my abdomen there's this like deep kind of groundedness and stillness that's kind of holding the heart and then holding the mind, and it feels like after doing that practice that the heart and the mind trust the gut to hold it and protect it. And because of that it allows this almost vibrancy and intensity and power, energetic power, in the mind and the heart to kind of to blossom and be there without any sort of here or any sort of fear or any sort of protecting or something like that, if that makes sense.
Meditation is like whole-body exercise
So, I think with the meditation and meditation in general, something that's just that I want to kind of express or that is helpful is thinking about it. It's as if when you think about learning and exercise and how they used to kind of just teach you to do this one movement, right, for exercise, and then they found that with exercising that doesn't really work that well. Like when you lifted weights or something, if you just did this one repetitive movement, sure, your muscles got stronger, but it wasn't that applicable to daily life, right? Now, like some of the more new exercise styles, you know, you're doing full movements, moving the whole body with the weight or something.
And so, what happens is it forces the muscles, lots of different muscles to get triggered or activated, and so it builds skills and muscles and conditioning that's based in and highly and directly applicable to everyday life. And I think for me, with meditation, that often can be a not well talked about or explained goal. And that a lot of what meditation is about is learning how to move into and out of different parts of the body without any sort of agenda or control. Right?
Many people can learn to move their awareness throughout the body, but they are often quite controlling about it. And with real meditation, we don't want to be controlling at all about it. And so it's this delicate balance of having an intention while also surrendering any sense of control.
We are whole and one, but we think we are separate
And so, and one of the reasons why this is so important is because one way to think about the issues that humanity has, or you have, or people have, is that we are whole and one, but we have become confused and we think we're separate, right? And so what happens is humans are very metaphorical, right? And so it's not just, oh, we think we're separate, or I feel separate from my partner, or something like that, but quite literally, in our body, we've separated our body into pieces, and those pieces don't communicate anymore, right?
So, when I first did, when I first started meditating, I had almost no conscious awareness of anything that was happening below my neck. And it took a long time for me to remove this wall of tension and pain and contraction and shame and self-attack that was living, you know, in here, to systematically, piece by piece, remove that and heal that so that I could have just this direct knowing and seeing from my mind down into my body, right? And so, often what needs to happen is we need to find these separated, fenced-off, hidden pieces of ourselves, and then subtly and over time, build trust with them and encourage them to come out into the light and to return to their home, you know, return to the ground of being.
Shepherding the pieces home: a retreat story
When I was pretty far along on the path of spiritual awakening, I remember being on a retreat with Sharon Landrith, the teacher that asked me to be a teacher. And I remember one retreat, I was just sitting there, and I just was sitting there. It felt like I was just sitting, and I was kind of like in the base, kind of right above my pelvic floor almost, a little bit higher. And I was just sitting there, like a little version of me for hours.
And it was as if all of these contractions and stories and memories and thoughts were just kind of floating throughout the body. And I was just sitting there next to this. It was almost like a fire and a well at the same time, if that makes sense. And it was just like I was just kind of like, come home, you know, come home, you too. Yes, you too. Yes, you too are included. Yes.
And then every time I would see a piece, it would just very slowly just return and return. And it felt like that's all I was doing for days, just sitting there kind of shepherding in all these kind of disparate pieces that thought they were unwanted or thought nobody cared or had been forgotten, right? And I think when we get right down to it, a lot of what this path is, is that it's kind of helping all of the parts of ourselves remember that we're whole, right?
Spirit is one, our humanness is two
Okay, so I'll do a little bit of a Dharma talk. That was kind of a bit of a Dharma talk, but we'll do another one, a little bit different one. So one thing that comes up a lot that I just think is helpful for people to know because it's something that is misunderstood and it's not always so obvious. And it directly relates to a lot of the teachings I do.
So, spirit, right? We're both spirit and human at the same time, right? That's kind of one of the fundamental paradoxes. And spirit is represented by one, right? We're all one, and our humanness is two, meaning the world of duality, right?
And so, always that's happening. Now, say if we have a big shift, like an awakening or a big realization, you may, you know, in that, you may not be aware of the two, you may not be aware of your humanness, you might just be aware of spirit. But most likely, the two is there, it's just very quiet or in the background, right?
So when we're doing human things, right, like processing emotion, healing trauma, talking to another person, there should be at least two, right? When we're just doing spirit things, then there's one, that makes sense, right? What I often see as an issue is that people try to do the, use the spiritual thing, right, which is everything is one, when doing human things, when everything is two, and that causes a lot of problems.
The guided meditation: me, the contraction, the field
And so, the guided meditation that we just did, right, we're establishing in that very specifically: this is my safe spot, this is me, and I'm looking from here, right? And then I'm looking at something else, that's the two, that's the contraction, right? And then the field is the one, right? So, that pattern is very, very important. That is one of the main things I would recommend we master.
Because what happens when we get triggered is we start out as me and the emotion, and then that distance disappears, and we become that which is triggering us, right? We become the emotion, we become the intensity of it, right? And we have forgotten the two, and we have merged with the trauma story or the pain or whatever it is.
Early attachment trauma and merging
So, this is often caused by early childhood attachment trauma when we don't fully and successfully differentiate from our parents or our family of origin due to a number of different reasons. Could just be fitness, like you might just been different than your parents. Could be due to a trauma, or they have their own attachment trauma. But what happens, right, is as a child, we see the world as one, right? So the first few years of life, there's no sense of self.
And then it eventually develops, but even when it develops, it's not that strong until we're much older. And so what happens is the child's way of viewing and going through the world is merging with everything, so becoming everything. And so, and then when we go to differentiate as adults, then our teens into adults, then we learn to be separate in a healthy way and then have a relationship with things. So there's two things.
So it's easy for us when we get triggered and that trigger or that trauma is due to early childhood attachment wounds or just from early childhood. It's easy then to return to merging or losing ourselves in the experience. And that's what causes us to lose contact with our wholeness and go into separation.
Realization is a returning, not a merging
I think that there's this confusion, this misassumption that when I have a realization, right, or when I have a shift, that I'm merging with it, right? That on somehow the experience of the self is that the self disappears or dies, and then we become that awake space, right? And so then there's this idea or this story afterwards: oh, look, I had a shift or a realization, and then I became that. I merged with it, right?
And it is true on a certain perspective that that's what happened, but that is actually backwards, meaning you were already the awake space, and you were restricting your awareness and your field of view in a way so that you couldn't access it. And then when you had the realization, it broke down that restriction or that wall, and then you spontaneously become the awake space, right? So it's not as much a merging out of yourself and into something else, it's a returning back to what's already there. And that is not the same as merging, that is the opposite direction.
A stable place in the body to relate from
So developing this skill to have a certain point in your body that you trust, that is stable, that you can relate to the world from, to your inner world from, and then practicing holding the tension or the contraction or whatever it is, and being conscious and aware of the relationship between you and the contraction or the pain is very important.
The Reordering: say yes to both
What I found, and I've labeled, I've titled this or something like this, the Reordering. And it's one of the most one of the patterns of the healthy patterns of behavior I do all the time now. And my experience of it is, you know, it's a little bit hard to put into words, but it's like if you say yes to both things, right?
And you feel the space between them and know that space is what's giving birth to them and holding all of them. And it's this alive space, then it just naturally you'll let go of both. And if you kind of are leaning one way or the other, say yes to one, but pushing the other way and then you switch, right? Then you never really let go. That makes sense.
Holding both in the paradox
And so what happens is if you have a place in your body that's this safe, stable place, and then you have this other part of you that's foreign or scary, right? Then you hold them at the same time, you know, that creates this paradox because how can you have this one piece that's stable and safe that's you, and then you have another piece that is unknown and scary and you're avoidant of, right? And so you have this paradoxical experience because they're both happening at the same time.
And so then being able to hold both in the paradox and tolerate any sort of tension or discomfort or intensity that arises between the two poles of the paradox directly relates to your ability to and your capacity to get triggered, handle emotional dysregulation while still staying grounded and connected with your own innate wholeness. Good. All right.
Transcript from the recording, lightly cleaned for reading.