What is Contemplative Writing, Again?

Recently I had an experience in an online class where I found myself going off in a way different direction, while writing, than I expected. Actually, I didn't know what to expect, and I ran into a trigger - a memory which carries trauma associated with it. I made the decision to *not* write about that, and came up with this piece. The prompt was "What are birds saying?"

It helped *me* clarify some things about how contemplative writing relates to formal contemplative practices. So here, for your exploration, is the piece as I wrote it, with very little alteration.

What are the birds saying when? Immediately my mind scatters in many directions. I could write part of this memoir or that project. I could use this time to write about writing. But can I just be here, in my weekly air conditioned second floor home office, with a huge fan blowing semi-cool air around the room?             

There are no birds in here.            

Oh. Fuck.             

Individuating

My Mother, Northern Ireland, 1960's

Last night, I dreamed my mother lived longer than she did. That she was alive, now, and revealing to me two surprising things: she A) is really into Sade now(this from a woman who listened almost exclusively to classical music) and B) now wears make-up and gets her hair blown out once a week (no make-up, only done-up hair was a big bun she wore her hip-length, uncut hair in daily). I asked her, "Where have you been hiding your Sade tapes all these years? In your Chopin cassette cases?" and she smirked and nodded.

Saturday January 24th was the 18th anniversary of her death. Having spent a few days recently with her longest-term friend - her bestie from Kindergarten - having done TRE and spent time working through old triggers related to my interactions with her - having mourned who she may have been becoming when she died, and who she may have become had she lived - the anniversary passed subtlely, sort of subconsciously.

I slogged through prostrations, felt worn and sad but also alive. Little conscious thought or process, plenty of body awareness of loss. It's powerful, this grief, ever-changing and sometimes more subtle, sometimes more strong. When people ask me - is it always the same? How does it change? My answers vary depending on audience - have they faced a major loss? Are they asking out of ignorance, curiosity or because they want to know if their own struggle is normal? Are they a spectator or a cohort member? And my answers change based on how I feel.

18 years ago I became an orphan. Something about this feels powerful to me: I have now been without parents for an "adult" amount of time. Recently an image came to me of "giving birth to my mother" - it didn't "make sense" until now. Now something is shifting, seismic level. The TRE is releasing trauma deep in my hips, letting co-dependence slip less frequently out of my lips. My neck loosens, softens. There's some kind of shift happening.

I am an adult at being an orphan. This is a new life, all over again. Next year, a year from now, she will have been gone half my life: half my life with a mother, half without. I cannot say exactly what it is, but it feels something like this: this year, 2015, is some kind of window. It feels like wanting to finish my memoir, Bermuda Triangles. It feels like I can see all her old friends this year and feel some opening as well as closure at the same time. It feels like stories I've told are changing forever, for good, for better. I am independent now, not as chained to my grief. Individuating from my orphan self, while also integrating.

Something is finishing, and something is beginning. Something is slipping away and I am finding something else in its place. The slippery life of grief, the slippery stories of memory. I feel strong, sad and clear. For now.

Let Some Shit Lie.

Day 8 of ‪#‎Quest2015‬ - The prompt of the day from Eric Klein:

How will you face your shadow bag and stop the stink, so you can bring forth what is best within you in 2015? What can you claim right now?

What I can claim is that I do this work all the time, constantly. In fact, dragging around the bag tired me out years ago. What wears at me now is actually the work of scooping it up. I am ready to let some shit lie there and let it stink.

I find I am tired now because I have dug a bit deeper recently than usual, and pulled up some plugs that I knew were keeping my drains from flowing freely. Now that the fluids are rolling out again, I need to lay back and let myself go out with the waters.

My only shadow is what I keep from myself, whether out of survival/protection or in some kind of saving face/flying under detection manoeuvre. For awhile now I have had recurring neck issues, and worked through them with Hakomi therapy and also chiropractor work. These have both been useful, but as some recent deep re-configuring of grief over my mother's death has arisen, I had suspected that my neck and my sadness were deeply entangled.

At a meditation instructor training I found incredible palpable energetic evidence that they are. In situations, repeatedly as we practiced and trained, I tracked as my body tensed and mind became righteous, worried because "the person in charge" (not me) was "not doing their job" and so "someone had to do something" and "the only person who could/would do it was me." In these tiny interactions, the teachers detected my aggressions before I did, mirroring back a struggle I didn't realize I was having. My peers, the other students, mirrored back gratitude that I interrupted unhealthy situations. But my body felt exhausted, like it had been climbing uphill all day.

I had to ask myself, once I saw how clearly I was triggered, then reacting to my sense of lost power with incredibly controlling behavior, what was really going on? The answer was clear as day: I was taken back to a place, the place I visited so frequently when my father died (I was 12) and my mother didn't know how to stay alive - the place, the era, the state of mind of unpredictability, drinking, incredibly hostility at home. It only lasted a few years - and in fact, got better in the last few years of her life - but I was so traumatized that for a long time all I would feel was shock, tension and control whenever a situation seemed at all unstable for me.

Cue now.

So this is the current shadow. They get subtler over time - when I told one person what I was wrestling with, after our group meeting, she screwed up her face and looked at me oddly. What? I hadn't been controlling, she said. But my body told me otherwise. I use "controlling" not to be judgmental but to get to the core of what that energy-draining background program has been trying to do, unconsciously, for over half my life now.

I am ready to pull the plug on this shadow beast, but of course that's not how it works.

Instead I am using this darkest time of the year to rest, and to merge a bit, with long moments of deep breaths, with this inner core pain.

Hello in there, dear shadow.
Let's air you out and maybe you won't stink so much.
Let's go for a walk together, get you out and about.
Let's get you more familiar with life so it doesn't freak you out so much.
We are about to do some flying and I need you to be willing to let some shit lie so we can take off together into the huge sky of 2015.