It’s a habit of mine – weekdays at least – to have a quick check of emails as I begin my day. This morning, I was greeted by one from Routledge: it’s official, my book proposal has gone out for review. The anxious wait commences…
Yesterday, I found myself pondering what I might do with my writing day today. Ordinarily, this is a day I look forward to in my week – a day where I can dive into my craft, the “bread and butter” work completed for the week. What with finishing the draft manuscript of Humanistic Psychotherapy: experiencing second order change however, the question of “what to write?” loomed. But it’s not the only question looming…having got back from retreat, the step back and out often brings deep questioning. At least this gave me a solution to what to write; to catch up on blog posting not as a means to an end, but just for the enjoyment of writing.
The retreat – one focused on Mahamudra and working with the deity Manjushri – felt like a perfect opportunity. Timing wise, the end of an academic year, and a carrot to complete my book draft and make the submission to Routledge. Content wise, the nature of mind practice that I find so compelling and to work with a deity of communication. I relate a lot to the archetype of Manjushri, their menacingly raised sword ready to cut through and help the practitioner with discernment. What better for an author who is often challenged by over-writing, and a therapist who is motivated to let presence rather than words, speak. But most of all, the retreat facilitator was someone I have been working with for a decade but have never met in person: my once therapist, and on-going mentor, Rob*.
Retreats are never easy, but always without fail bring something of value to the path. Moving from 100mph to 0mph hit me like a brick. I’ve been describing it to friends as being like a bumble bee hitting a windscreen and everything following through on impact. Because even though the body is still, my being was saturated and moving…and no task in which the energy could be dispersed. The “only” thing to do was to sit and dwell within this restlessness of being; the adrenalin of being on the go, the collapse into exhaustion, the grief kept at bay in my busy-ness coming to the surface…and the frustration that this retreat was not meant to be like this: the opportunity to immerse myself in the practice “ruined” by my inability to keep my eyes open. It magnified the loss I was destined to process.
Many teachers might empathise with something of my experiences. After long, busy teaching terms, becoming ill as the school holiday arrives. I knew before going I was on the verge of running out of gas. I was as full of life as a saturated sponge; and a sense there was no-where for it to empty into (like said sponge being submerged in a bath). When I arrived in Dartmoor, I hoped the space would equalise my being. Indeed it did to some extent; in fact I shared with my fellow meditators one day how supportive nature is when practicing nature of mind out in the open air. The movement of clouds, trees, animals, birds all being suspended in the stillness of mind. But this wasn’t transferring to the zafu indoors. The fullness of my being becoming an experience of density. I found myself escaping into the wilds as much as I could to find some air, to find my breath.
As a therapist, it is interesting to note how often new clients are speaking to something of their reaction to space within what they are coming for. Modern life is speedy and full. It might be that there is a yearning for something else, something that calls from “underneath” the speed. Or, it might be that having been riding that tide of incident (as Karl Jaspers calls it), we suddenly hit the shoreline into nothing. Holidays often anticipated with excitement create an itchy scratchy atmosphere within families because of sudden space and no call for action. Our habit of speed leaves us without the hit when there is less doing, more being.
When we encounter space, what comes rushing in?
As I was meditating this morning, I felt the restlessness of my being; but unlike last week it felt more workable, the density of my experiencing having dissipated somewhat over the course of the retreat. As a mediator, the task is to do nothing: to simply allow the movement within to play. Like the phenomenological tradition in which I practice psychotherapy, it is an appreciation that lived-experience is a flow, a series of processes within, engaging with those without. But as I sat, in anticipation of coming to my favourite cafe to write this morning, I mulled over how we respond to the living-process might depend on whether we are Vajrayana Buddhists or Existential-Phenomenologists…a weave through my own being.
Last week, my companion for retreat was Emmy van Deurzen’s latest work Beginning to Live. van Deurzen’s work peppers my latest book, but I didn’t expect this less specialist text; it read like something between memoir and self-help. It was however an easeful read, and just what my bodymind needed in the early morning coffee opportunities, tea breaks, and bedtime reading. Whenever I read such texts, my educator self is always looking for where content might help our trainees; but I was also in the kind of space where van Deurzen’s provocative questions were reaching deep into me; asking me what is that yearning beneath the life I currently live? What will I do with my grief, the existential guilt; and the restlessness it throws forward, the existential anxiety – how my therapeutic tradition might understand some of my experiencing.
There is very little I wish to change in my life; its the attitude with which I live it. I know I was affected by something I read just before going on retreat: a definition of hell as “when at the end of life you come face to face with the self you could have been”. I know some of my grief is inevitable as I watch my parents in the last chapter of their lives, facing what they do. There is also the existential guilt of not living as fully as I can, as I want. My Buddhist path and practice asks me to surrender to the is ness; my existential leanings invite a reflection of life. Both paths call for courage and deeper engagement with vitality.
As I wrap up this long overdue blog, I remain with a contemplation van Deurzen inspired: that is to question where is the play, creativity, relaxation, and relationship that brings meaning and purpose? As life slows down, as space emerges, this prompt is gratefully received.
*Rob painted the deities in the frame pictured. Manjushri is bottom right, and you’ll see my current muse, Vajrayogini, as she is represented in the Gelug tradition, top right.