When I started meditation, I didn't really know why. It was a principle I heard and read about mucho, and I was keen to learn how to be mindful. The idea of understanding feelings and moods better was appealing to me. In the end, thoughts are what have made and broke my life in the past; control over them could only be a good thing. I believe in what they call the Law of Attraction in which it is possible to make things happen in your life by thinking about them. That is how I landed my last job, how I fell in love with the last person and, frankly, why I sit here, in England, today. I wanted to get better at making good thoughts become the good life. But just by sitting down and meditating, that stuff did not manifest.
I first started meditating in February after I was experiencing the repercussions of a traumatic event, a sort of a break-up and very unhealthy relationships with some people I saw every day. January had seen three very significant departures from my life, all heavily represented in my work and social life. My best friend at work left the office (and the Northern hemisphere), my best friend left London (and the continent) and the man associated with some rough times left my life but not my vision. It was a hard time. It was very hard. Overall, I still had my job, my purpose and all the other things that made my life full so the emotional implications of these departures were drowned out by overall happiness. Until I meditated.
One day, when I was focusing on my breath, I experienced my first panic attack. It arose as my mind wandered to one of these people and the thought of them being gone from my life, me no longer seeing or hearing or feeling them, and I simply panicked. This reality was not a new thought; they already had been "gone". However, it obviously hadn't sunk in. I couldn't focus and I couldn't catch my breath. I experienced fear that they were gone. It was the first time in my life I experienced fear altogether. "Anxiety" was a term I never understood before. Until that day. Needless to say, it was a negative experience. I realized only weeks later, that it was a necessary one.
What had happened was a reaction in the brain; the same brain I had been trying to trick for months. Since almost exactly when I arrived in Cambridge, I had gotten addicted to a feeling of happiness and control which was an illusion. The absence of happiness and control is not necessarily unhappiness and chaos - a lesson I only learned now. Throughout my traumatic experiences of the last year, I had not allowed my brain to touch on the feelings that came with them: sadness, disappointment, the feeling of failure and, most importantly, shame. Until meditation actively tried to explore my brain and found those feelings. The meditation actively encouraged me to notice them. More so than just noting, I actually started feeling them.
What followed was the awareness that I had failed one more thing: my thoughts. I hadn't been honest with myself and now I had gone on a quest to "really explore myself" - such foolishness. When you're trying to hide some bad experiences in your brain, or in other words, attempt to be English about your emotional qualities, meditation is not the right thing. It will surface that stuff. Because all it is is an awareness of what is present AND hidden, in the mind, in the body. That is the reason guided meditations remind us of why other people could be affected by this voluntary blindfold. They certainly were in my case. After initially having an easy time shutting my mind off (because I had been doing it non-stop since July), I realized it was this exact motion that would bring about the change.
Now I am actively seeking change in my meditation. I am trying to learn about emotions before they arise - and consequently, how to direct them into a narrative I actually share. My thoughts have taken over in the last few months which I am not surprised about. Analyzing what feelings are present is not a pleasant experience when those feelings are part of recovering from shock and trauma. I have been making the same mistakes in my life over and over again so I fear that my thoughts not changing will have the same effect as my actions not changing. With more fear comes more of a challenge. In fact, I only realized now that I am in fact scared: not of heights, failure or loss (wellll, but ya know) but of failing to find my potential. I know it is there but knowledge is useless to the mind. The mind needs strength, not facts.
In the end, I still feel powerless because I still do not know how to control my emotions and thoughts. I have to rely on other people to point out the right decisions for me because I am not able to make an informed calculation between prudence and emotions. The struggle is to differentiate between when to listen to the mind and when to shut it up. And that, I have not learned. I have a 29-year-old habit of living in my head which has been a good home for me until this summer when my reluctance to acknowledge that I am traumatized manifested in the physical life. I, by no means, have to control the mind, both my head and my life are in no danger, but I owe it to myself to stop lying and confront what is happening which I have watched many people deny themselves. I cannot guarantee that my behavior will never become a problem for me so I want to fix it now before it becomes one. So no, we don't HAVE TO change, work on ourselves and improve our conditions but we cannot guarantee that life won't do it for us. At least I think I am now better prepared if it does.
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| Meditating in Macedonia in 2015 without knowing it. |
One day, when I was focusing on my breath, I experienced my first panic attack. It arose as my mind wandered to one of these people and the thought of them being gone from my life, me no longer seeing or hearing or feeling them, and I simply panicked. This reality was not a new thought; they already had been "gone". However, it obviously hadn't sunk in. I couldn't focus and I couldn't catch my breath. I experienced fear that they were gone. It was the first time in my life I experienced fear altogether. "Anxiety" was a term I never understood before. Until that day. Needless to say, it was a negative experience. I realized only weeks later, that it was a necessary one.
What had happened was a reaction in the brain; the same brain I had been trying to trick for months. Since almost exactly when I arrived in Cambridge, I had gotten addicted to a feeling of happiness and control which was an illusion. The absence of happiness and control is not necessarily unhappiness and chaos - a lesson I only learned now. Throughout my traumatic experiences of the last year, I had not allowed my brain to touch on the feelings that came with them: sadness, disappointment, the feeling of failure and, most importantly, shame. Until meditation actively tried to explore my brain and found those feelings. The meditation actively encouraged me to notice them. More so than just noting, I actually started feeling them.
What followed was the awareness that I had failed one more thing: my thoughts. I hadn't been honest with myself and now I had gone on a quest to "really explore myself" - such foolishness. When you're trying to hide some bad experiences in your brain, or in other words, attempt to be English about your emotional qualities, meditation is not the right thing. It will surface that stuff. Because all it is is an awareness of what is present AND hidden, in the mind, in the body. That is the reason guided meditations remind us of why other people could be affected by this voluntary blindfold. They certainly were in my case. After initially having an easy time shutting my mind off (because I had been doing it non-stop since July), I realized it was this exact motion that would bring about the change.
Now I am actively seeking change in my meditation. I am trying to learn about emotions before they arise - and consequently, how to direct them into a narrative I actually share. My thoughts have taken over in the last few months which I am not surprised about. Analyzing what feelings are present is not a pleasant experience when those feelings are part of recovering from shock and trauma. I have been making the same mistakes in my life over and over again so I fear that my thoughts not changing will have the same effect as my actions not changing. With more fear comes more of a challenge. In fact, I only realized now that I am in fact scared: not of heights, failure or loss (wellll, but ya know) but of failing to find my potential. I know it is there but knowledge is useless to the mind. The mind needs strength, not facts.
In the end, I still feel powerless because I still do not know how to control my emotions and thoughts. I have to rely on other people to point out the right decisions for me because I am not able to make an informed calculation between prudence and emotions. The struggle is to differentiate between when to listen to the mind and when to shut it up. And that, I have not learned. I have a 29-year-old habit of living in my head which has been a good home for me until this summer when my reluctance to acknowledge that I am traumatized manifested in the physical life. I, by no means, have to control the mind, both my head and my life are in no danger, but I owe it to myself to stop lying and confront what is happening which I have watched many people deny themselves. I cannot guarantee that my behavior will never become a problem for me so I want to fix it now before it becomes one. So no, we don't HAVE TO change, work on ourselves and improve our conditions but we cannot guarantee that life won't do it for us. At least I think I am now better prepared if it does.
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