Monday, June 20, 2005

Belonging


One of my clients spoke of it today. Was it just that I was listening for it? I’d been thinking about it for weeks now. Is that why the topic showed up? Or is it just that much more present in the world than I had thought? She spoke of needing to find something to belong to. Having been unemployed for well over a year now she no longer wanted to belong to that world, she wanted to work, to find her beloningness in another realm. It’s not, as she said to me, that she doesn’t belong to her partner, her mother, her family, but she wanted more. She wanted more.

I thought once again of a conversation I had had many years ago with the poet David Whyte. We were talking about my work with trauma survivors. He pointed out that everyone belongs to something, even if it’s their depression, their rage, their commitment that nothing good happens to them. David gave me a gift that day. In pointing out that we all belong to something, the psychic itch to support people to belong in more empowering ways began.

“….this is where I want
to love all the things
it has taken me so long
to learn to love.”

David Whyte wrote those lines in a poem, The House of Belonging. It speaks of the necessary shift to love the things it has taken me so long to learn to love. How often I hear clients long for this life they haven’t yet learned to live. It’s just as often that I hear clients, and myself, riveted to their stories of what isn’t there, what isn’t working, and why it can’t, and won’t, work in the future.

What does it take to learn to love, to belong to something more meaningful?

Over the years, as I listen to clients and hear their profound longing, I marvel at our world which has us live so disconnected from the energy of life that springs unbidden. I watch as people struggle to let go of what they’re supposed to do, who they are supposed to be, to slowly grasp for the energy inside that bubbles and bursts with joy and well being.

Why is it so hard to listen to that well-spring? Why do we struggle to follow it? That is a thread to follow for another day. Today, I write of belonging, of knowing the gentle letting go that comes from holding a baby or an animal, feeling it’s breath going in, and out, and in, and out. Today I want to remember the feeling of my nervous system letting go, one synapse at a time. I want to remember and relax into the groundswell of wisdom that arises in those precious moments of letting go and opening to something new.

“…. Now their loneliness
feels familiar, one small thing
I’ve learned all these years,

how to be alone,
and at the edge of aloneness,
how to be found by the world.”
-- David Whyte Ten Years Later

Monday, June 13, 2005

Life as a Guru


There are moments when life has a will of its own. Those are not the moments I love when they happen. They are, however, the moments that have marked my ongoing evolution. I’m grateful for the years of ashram life that invited me to see everything, and everyone, as a potential teacher. Not always easy when the event, as Rumi wrote, is “a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture.”

I recently had one of those moments. You know, those moments, that last longer than the chronological experience. I shan’t describe it in detail. Its not an event in which I look the hero. I wasn’t at my best. I spent some time struggling to meet that experience in the way Rumi suggests, “treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.”

Those are the ancient teachings of yoga. Rumi continues, “The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.” Therein lies the heart of yoga. Whoever, whatever, is the teacher, the guide, the key to transformation.

Well, as I said, those are hard concepts to keep in place when you’re seeing the worst in yourself. I’m relieved to read Rumi’s humanness, to hear that he knows and writes about the darker side of life, “the dark thought, the shame, the malice.” I know them well. They have visited me on more than one occasion.

Having a spiritual life or framework makes it easier for me to bear the dark underbelly of life. Perhaps the cynics are right, spirituality is a panacea. They may be right, but living life where the shitty things are guides to transformation makes it easier for me to bear the heavy ache of my heart when my darker demons emerge. It helps me soften the edge of defensiveness, of protectiveness that I imagine keeps me safe.

My beloved David told me recently that I am a porcupine. Reflecting on that I know the prickly truth. Deepening into those words I felt the flood of compassion that comes from bearing the vulnerability of life. I’m prickly not to hurt others out there from whom the perceived threat comes, but to protect the soft, tender core that still believes there is no love to come her way. In terms of the Internal Family Systems model, that is clearly an exile, a part that has been cordoned off to protect it from harm.

And as I meet this part, perhaps not quite yet laughing as Rumi suggests, but meet it with compassion and tenderness, I find the way through the dark underbelly of life. This is why this experience has come: to invite me beyond the pricklyness of my defended life into a life more rich in love. Softening into life instead of defending against it gives me the possibility of living with my heart steady in the midst of the “crowd of sorrows ready to sweep my house empty of all its furnishings.” Now I can be ready to embrace the events in a wholly different way.


Here's Rumi's poem

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes with an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes
because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

Monday, June 06, 2005

Trauma Conference 2005




Writing for this blog has been a learning experience. I’m always aware of the internal threshold I have to cross in order to write something, express something from my heart. There are some old fears about being seen, yes. But there’s also this internal desire to shift my working vocabulary from old patterns of Irish Catholic sarcasm and fear to the steady perspective of seeing the best in others. I don’t know if it’s true for others, but it's a discipline, a real spiritual practice.

This reflection arose as a few people mentioned to me that they noticed I hadn’t been posting anything. How gratifying that people notice. There are parts of me that are surprised that people take the time to seek this blog out.

One of the reasons I haven’t been posting to this blog is that I was co-presenting a workshop at Bessel van der Kolk’s Trauma Conference and had some work to do to get ready for it. I’ve been to innumerable conferences throughout the world over the years, but this one affected me in ways conferences don’t. As with most of the conferences, Bessel had a number of people from the “hard” sciences, meaning not the touchy-feely ones that psychotherapy can be a part of. What affected me so much was that these very rigorous scientists spoke from their hearts while they were talking about research studies and neurobiology. Steve Suomi talked about his work with rhesus monkeys and what they are learning about attachment. They’re even exploring the genetic component that might be there between individual monkeys and their inability to fit into monkey society. He spoke very fast for well over an hour and a half, and I sat there enthralled. I can honestly say that doesn’t happen much at conferences!

Alexander (Sandy) McFarlane was another one. Brilliant man and terrific poetic speaker. He wove together the arts and the study of trauma. Again, another chance to sit there for an hour, present and listening while he presented research graphs and described the effect of trauma on a person. He presented studies that showed the delicate interaction of cognition and trauma. There are those with trauma who can’t pull on their cognition as those who haven’t been traumatized. They can be flooded with stimuli and unable to sort out the irrelevant with the necessary. I’m sure I was listening not just to help my clients but to map it onto my own experience.

We also had a talk from David Servan-Schreiber the author of a run-away bestseller in Europe, The Instinct to Heal. The title says it all, the body has an organic instinct to heal itself if we listen to the body, integrate the body and mind, generate more calm and relaxation than not. I bought the book, of course, and am enjoying the read.

The everyday clinical experience was presented by Janina Fisher, who gives wonderful support to the day to day treatment of trauma. Her easy, thoroughly accepting manner calmed us all and reminded us to enjoy the roller coaster ride that is trauma treatment.


We watched the videos Karlyn Lyons-Ruth presented from their attachment research. The most painful was seeing what happens to babies who are ignored by their caretaker. Heartbreaking……

One of the most personally striking impressions for me after the conference was how differently I listen and pay attention when someone is talking from their heart, from their enthusiasm than if they are divorced from their experience. I stopped going to some conferences because the scientists just talk and I sit out there listening and inevitably clicking off inside. I try to return to the talk, try to bring my focus back, but I inevitably wander off again. Yet, here, where people were alive with their work, I can no problem focusing and attending.

The result of the conference was returning me to me. What opens my heart? What thrills me? And how do I continue to learn to speak from that. The last four months I have had to pull back from the busyness of life, of my practice, of teaching and traveling. I want to more balance so that I can genuinely link together my love of life, the work that I do, and my desire to generate more love with others. What could be better than that?