Trusting The Process
We want everything to be perfect, right? Everything to be better than it is. Our feelings to be always positive, our health always excellent. I know that I often do.
And yet, I’m now coming to learn of the difficulties that kind of thinking and believing creates. Most obviously, if we look around even for a moment we’ll see that this kind of perfection (one borne of good and bad, better and worse) doesn’t exist anywhere else in nature. Some trees are healthy and some are not, some young, some old, some dying, some waiting to be born. Leaves come and go, some times there is strong growth and at others there is little growth.
That’s all very well for things that are part of nature, that cannot really be anything other than what they are being, but what of us humans with our minds and thoughts and passing emotions? The advice is actually the same, but it seems that it shouldn’t be, with all these processes going on that we should be able to control.
Our thoughts come and go, and while it is true we can choose what to focus on, there may be thoughts that seem to appear from nowhere, and disappear just as quickly. Is it wise to expect all thoughts to be positive? Is it wise to stress out about such things, clamping down hard on our thoughts to try to make them all “perfect”? Is it wise to judge ourselves by the quality of our thoughts, or to identify so strongly with them that we say “I am my thoughts”?
Likewise, our feelings come and go. What are you feeling right now? Just one thing, or are your feelings in flux, changing one moment to the next? Things are not as solid or constant as they appear, so is it wise to expect all feelings to be positive, especially if they too seem to come and go of themselves at times? Is it wise to judge ourselves by the quality of our emotions, or to identify so strongly with them that we say “I am what I am feeling”?
Hypothetical questions aside, even if we look at a broader journey of illness to health, many will be familiar with the saying “things get worse before they get better”. Relying on whatever stage we are at in that moment to judge ourselves good or bad or doing well or not isn’t a path to peace and well-being, because how are we to know what’s really happening? Something taken on its own as a snapshot might not give us the best view of the whole process, like taking a sentence of speech out of context. If we have a cold, all snotty-nosed and stuffy head, it could just as easily be something deep inside our body reaching the surface to be cleared out rather than us becoming worse in health. If we’re feeling angry and irritable, it could just as easily be us finally getting in touch with our emotions after bottling them up for years, acknowledging long-held resentments and repressed feelings.
Looked upon this way, we must ask the questions, “what is health?” and look for a new way of analysis that doesn’t cut things into neat slices, a way that doesn’t rely on the judgement of good or bad or strict comparison between this moment and that. We must take a broader view, trusting in the process of moving towards greater and greater fulfillment and health of our spirit, and see that actually, like the trees and other things in nature, we too move through life as a cycle and a circle, through seasons and years and stages, from nowhere to birth to growth to dying and death and nowhere once more.
October 5th, 2006 at 9:24 pm
I agree, I couldn’t have said it better myself!
On the subject of looking at the bigger picture and not just focussing on the moment, I have a story of my own along those lines.
I was meditating on Monday night, when some old old feelings of anger came flying to the surface, one minute I was calm, the next fury and violent urges. I lost my focus completely, it was a very powerful experience. The anger was over 13 years old, amazing how things get bottled up isn’t it?
I realise that that release of old pent up emotional energy is just part of the meditation journey, and my next meditation was a far better experience. The saying that came to mind is “It’s always darkest before dawn”.
October 6th, 2006 at 10:00 am
Yeah, exactly Richard. That’s a perfect example there. The tendency is to think of ourselves as existing in the moment as a static thing, but more often than not we have many different times existing inside us at once, as you said, particularly things that get bottled up or held on to - we literally carry part of the past with us in our bodies and minds, and consequently we feel heavier. In a perfect world, we’d express everything right then and there, and never carry any of this stuff with us into other times. We’re not perfect, but that’s the aspiration, to feel and express as much as we can at the time, so that we remain light on our journey through life. Naturally there will be times when we haven’t the skill or awareness to deal with something well enough, and this is fine too: when the time is right, the healing will begin.
Your story perfectly illustrates why people are often told to have some kind of teacher when going into deep meditation processes - not that it is completely necessary, but that a teachers experience can be vital in putting such moments into perspective. If you didn’t have the experience you have, how might you have reacted differently to that sudden outburst? Perhaps decided it was a failing rather than release, clamped down on yourself hard, or become dispondent and given up meditation altogether as only seeming to make you angrier or having no real calming effect.
If we can learn to simply accept whatever happens, then actually whether we can see something as part of a healing or a releasing process doesn’t make much difference, we can just watch with interest, and our feelings come and go. But I have to say I do enjoy knowing what’s going on… when that rarity arises