Meditation

I have worked with quite a few spiritual mentors over the past several years, each of whom has appeared in my life in his or her own unique form: Therapist, astrologer, friend, or internet-based-guru. Many, if not all of these individuals, have suggested the discipline of meditation for me. I have always cringed in response. The mere suggestion taps into a certain resistance that lives within me. And this is true even though intellectually and in general I think it is a good idea. So why do I cringe when the idea is presented as something I might do within my own life?

When I listen to and read some of the descriptions of meditation and its goal of detaching from (or not attaching to) the ego, what I hear is: Give up your feelings; give up your passion; live a more even-keeled (i.e., mediocre) life. My feelings are what guide me in life. They offer me some proof that I am in fact alive. I experience intimacy with myself through such feelings. They help me to know what it is I am passionate about. And I learn something about the bigger picture by going more deeply into them. As I said to one of my mentors recently, “I would rather experience painful feelings than to feel nothing at all.” “The people who propose this enlightened way of living are likely not water signs. They’re more likely to be born under a Libra or Aquarian sun… ,” my resistant self muses, unfairly.

So, even as I clearly see how I am attaching to my identity as a feeling person in the resistant statement above, and even though I know that those meditative practitionners are not really suggesting I live without passion or detach from feeling, I still choose not to meditate in any formal way.

But here’s the thing: I received an email from a family member today asking for my “detached” perspective. I ‘m quite sure that detached was used here to indicate the belief that I do not have feelings about the given situation. I was enraged: Of course I have feelings about the suffering of someone whom I love dearly! But I have been through years and years and years of good psychotherapy and I know how to own my feelings and not impose them on others, to not behave from a reactive place, and to go deeper into my experiences without getting lost or tangled up there (although sometimes I do get lost and tangled up there). This is the point of meditative practices, I think. And I think I’ve achieved much of this through a commitment to psychotherapy and other forms of healing work.

I’m still sorting much of this out. What I’ve discovered thus far is that what offends me most about my perceived understanding of some new-agey suggestions is the exact opposite of what they are in fact suggesting. Whereas I perceive some mandate that I should not be fully present in my experience, being fully present is exactly the point. When we are attached to some end goal, some way of perceiving ourselves, or some hidden agenda, then we are more likely to miss what is going on in the now. This, I get.

I know that to be a witness to our feelings and experiences is a mark of health only if we are also living them fully. Otherwise, being a witness is purely dissociative—and this is a big difference; it is the difference between psychological health/maturity and psychological illness. Furthermore, there is a big difference between what we experience in the moment, our raw sensations and feelings for example, and what we tell ourselves about these experiences—i.e., our stories. Human beings are meaning-making and story-telling beings. It is our nature to do so. The important thing here is to acknowledge this. To acknowledge that “I feel sad” is different from “I feel sad because I’m not leading the life I wish to.” The latter is a way of making sense of the primary feeling of sadness. If I can acknowledge that what I am doing is trying to make sense of something that will always be more than I can capture, and to be present to this effort to make sense, then I can also leave room for the mystery that is the sadness. For the mystery of the tears which seem to form somewhere behind my eyes and the release of energy that accompanies the flow of those tears and the years of hurt that are somehow present in this one and the suffering of the world that also speaks through this moment. To remain open to the mystery of life even as we try to make sense of it seems to me to be what most of life is about. Art, dance, therapy, friendships, bodywork, healing arts of all kinds, and yes, even meditation, can help us to be there.