COMING OFF THE MAT
In a bereavement session I had today, the client and I got to talking about what sustains us when the blow of loss hits us. Most people find the way grief keeps coming over and again as a setback, because deep down most of us believe grief is like an endless progression. We have this assumption wired deep within because of the insights of people like Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and her stages of grief. Her work was seminal and is still important because it went a long way in combatting the death-avoidance in so many places around the world (especially America!). But what sometimes gets missed is that those so-called stages of grief are just a typology. They are not a roadmap to a finish line. We might want grief to be sequential, but it is not.
This client and I knew this, and when I reminded her of this to help her make sense of having good and bad weeks back-to-back, then we shifted to the discussion of how to manage this sometimes-unsettling rhythm. She talked about Vipassana Meditation (I think I spelled that right). I talked about a Christian style called Centering Prayer. I have practiced Centering Prayer on and off for years since I was taught it. I even include it in some of the courses I teach.
The way my spirituality comes together is such that I do not really care for guided meditation styles. I find it annoying and distracting once I achieve a “flow state.” Centering Prayer is better suited to me. It is not about trying to envision anything. It is not about arm wrestling the Monkey Mind into submission. You have a sacred word, and you repeat that word through your breaths. Thoughts and distractions will come and go. But instead of fighting them, you metaphorically sit on the riverbank and watch them impassively float down the river and away, then return to the sacred word.
The longer I practiced this, the more I found myself having a consistent experience of being on a cliff overlooking impenetrable darkness. There was no bottom. And every time I felt like I needed to jump. So, I did. And when I did, there was nothing. No bottom. No light at the end of a tunnel. Absolutely nothing, just like “The Cloud of Unknowing” says. I am a believer in the Christian faith/tradition. So, my experience in this Nothingness was a simultaneous absence of presence and a consuming sense of God being everywhere in the Nothingness. I know, it makes zero sense. But when you read the Cloud of Unknowing, this is what it says God Is.
But wait, there’s more! This client, who practiced a totally different meditation from a different religion said the same thing I said: that it was not the meditating that was life changing. It wasn’t even the mystical experiences we had. It was what happened to us AFTER we got off the mat. We found ourselves more compassionate. More tolerant of people’s “stuff.” More able to keep hold of the bigger picture. More detached from the things that would normally drive us nuts.
I am not trying to be profound. But I am increasingly aware as I look around me that so many of us are losing hold of the bigger picture. Compassion and taking time to understand someone who doesn’t think, look, or act like us is going out the window. So, in my capacity as a counselor and spiritual leader I am encouraging people to find their mat and seek that bigger picture. There is no one way to do so. But coming to understand that bigger picture makes all the difference.
