Meditation Is Not A By-Pass
Meditation
is not a spiritual "by-pass." Deep silence does not circumvent our
pain, but cuts to the nectar of pain. In the depth, we do not rise above the
scar tissue, but penetrate its juicy core. At the center of sorrow, we discover
a flower of boundless energy.
One sap pervades both rose and thorn. Petals
of happiness, thorns grief, but the same transparent sap in both. The sap is
bliss, Ananda. Which is no fleeting mood or temporary emotional high, but the
nectar of pure existence, glowing in the dark. Transcendence is not above. It
is the hollow in the seed.
Yes, even in moments of quiet our solitude may ferment into upheavals of rage
and despair. One student said, "I can't wait to get to the other side of
this anger!" But when we try to wrestle down this anger with our mind,
what happens? We only churn up more wrathful thoughts and images from the past.
Mind, through mind, will never get to the other side of anger.
My teacher once said, "Blessed are you when you are confused, for then your mind descends into the heart." In such moments of turmoil, it is good to practice a sabbath from mental images. Anchored by the breath, one sinks into the space of the heart, and welcomes the sacred alchemy of the body. The body brings salvation to the mind.
Embrace anger as pure sensation in the forehead. Embrace grief as awakening of the gut, which is also the root of laughter. Embrace fear as a contraction in the chest, throbbing with energy. When we embrace these emotions as energy, without attaching them to images of the past, or naming them in the mind, we give our energy a chance to evolve, to blossom, to transform itself. This is the nature of energy: ever expanding transmutation. When we give our energy the freedom to blossom, what was constricted in trauma becomes fresh electricity in our cells, bold electrons in our synapses. We discover that our anger was creative energy contracted and solidified. And in this release of the body, just as it is, we actually gain energy.
Use the gift of this body, the gift of pure sensation free from thoughts, to let your anger dissolve into its deeper primordial condition: fear. But don't stop there. Feel the taste of fear, and it too will transmute into something even more primal: weariness, weariness with trying to be in control. At this nadir, when relief seems so unlikely, we simply give up control - and we are suddenly infused with the irrepressible energy that has nowhere else to go. This energy of self-release and expansion cannot be named or labelled. It is just the alchemy inherent in Being who we are.
The safe
space of our own flesh is the temple of this alchemy, where it is perfectly OK
to be out of control. OK to explore sensations of intense emotion as
sensations, not thoughts. These nameless threads of consciousness are roots
and hollows leading down into the underworld, the Groundlessness at the heart
of creation, where fountains of living water gush from the well of our
embodiment.
A bee falls into the ocean of nectar at the center of the rose. Yet it does not
drown. It comes forth laden with the gifts of darkness.
Comments