Stuck in a moment

A couple of weeks ago I shared that it had been a good summer: one that ticked all the boxes across body, mind, and spirit. I also mentioned that it was not without its challenges. One of the ‘good’ things about being an existential psychotherapist – a Buddhist one at that – is the reality check that life is not smooth; and any ripples in it are not a function of how well we are ‘doing it’. Pain and suffering are not personal failures! That is the wide angle perspective that a good, accurate (life) map provides. And yet, on the ground and IN the experiencing, life can still ‘bite’. The moment I signed up to being a Vajrayana practitioner some 5 years ago, I officially vowed to being ‘without preference’ – but this summer has tested that view, and my capacity to lean in.

Transitions are notoriously testing of ‘without preference’. Whatever the type of transition, there is what was behind and what is ahead. That might be the decision to leave one career and start another; or it might be enforced change, like a relationship break-up, or the loss of loved one. There is also a whole gambit of emotions – the excitement / fear of the new, the grief / relief of losing the old. And, whether we have chosen the change or not, we can often seemingly have “at odds”, emotional responses.

I made two decisions this Spring – the first was to take on a yidam practice (for which I flew to Canada for the empowerment early summer); the second was a physical relocation involving the sale of our much loved home. Two decisions made, life had other ideas! The forward momentum toward the life of the future; and yet not being able to.

Stuck

Stuck because the housing market has been very flat

Stuck because I am only half-way through the fourth and final practice of Ngondro*

No new house and reduced commute

No yidam practice until I finish my current Ngondro commitments

As I write this, I can feel the flickers of foolishness. I know both scenarios will change – this is one of those times when the Buddhist teachings on impermanence provide relief! But as I have come to know throughout my Ngondro career, these ancient practices stir up deep complexes, bringing them into the light of consciousness for our ‘viewing pleasure’. Its not just the stuckness of Ngondro, not just the stuckness of house moves: its what the stuckness activates.

Another contributor to the heat under my mediation cushion has been my writing project – thankfully not a place of stuckness these summer months! I am making good progress and the book writing is proving an(other) enjoyable experience. The material I am covering is the existential ground – and whether it be the pondering of life’s givens, feeling for my old friend Sisyphus who came to find meaning in the futility of our thrownness by pushing a boulder up a hill every day; OR leaning into that thrownness itself… considering the mother of all transitions, childbirth. Believe me, sitting on a cushion counting mala beads can feel futile EVEN when this is a wholehearted choice I have thrown myself into; working hard, going no-where…yep, stuckness activates.

I have shared numerous times on this platform how I identify with enneatype Six process. We are of the type who are hardwired to look out for (and avoid) threat and uncertainty. I don’t know how much my own nuances would resonate with other Sixes’ motivations and behaviours, but for myself I know that in the face of uncertainty, plans and activities (that move me forward) stop me falling into that deep abyss of no-thing-ness (or in enneagram speak, I ‘disintegrate’ to enneatype Three). Busy-ness gives me shape and form. When I push on life, it gives me feedback – “Oh, there I am!” Like when a cyclist pushes on the pedals, the pedals push back up.

A metaphor I used recently when explaining this stuckness to my meditation mentor was that of a rope bridge – with each idea and plan, I lay down the next plank, and I can step forward into life. Below is a huge chasm. I have developed a great propensity to think about life rather than being in it. I think a lot about the next plank(s) and how to lay them. Without being able to lay down the next step, I risk falling into the abyss. No movement, no confirmation. And something in me equates stuckness with a potential fall.

There is something that a lot of Ngondro practitioners experience (or the Vajrayana students I have spoken with) – the sessions in which nothing happens are the most painful. That dry, futile, counting (of whatever activity) is really rather boring! When this happens, all sorts of doubts can arise**. “What am I doing?” “Is this even helping?” “There must be other uses of my time” “blah, blah, blah”. This can push us “to try” to find what the Buddhist sages say we cannot create because its already there; and so we look harder – and its like a slippery eel; the more we grip, the more it eludes us. Its no wonder another metaphor I have been using is a bee in a jam jar: I know the freedom is there, I just cannot crack the glass.

But then, something cracks us…you know the one Leonard Cohen sung about, the one the light enters through? Whether its despair or surrender, the dam breaks. After weeks of hopelessness, and feeling so alone in that stuckness, the process breaches the banks. Alone, I feel that reach out and no-one calls back. I feel the terror of falling through uncertainty; as if bodymind is replaying the memory of that mother of all falls, being born. I have been here before, Ngondro has ensured I process the complexes deep within psyche; no matter if I think I have already done it…enough!!

In therapeutic work, stuckness is often called ‘impasse’: and its a common feature of work with clients. People come to therapy wanting to change; and yet as the work progresses, it soon becomes clear they don’t want to change – they want others or life to do the changing! And anyway, successful therapy is less about objective change than one thinks when the contract is first signed. In Gestalt psychotherapy for example, we have the notion of the ‘paradoxical theory of change’; briefly stated “change occurs when one becomes what she is, not when she tries to become what she is not”. We must simply KNOW our experience, no need to change it.

In fact, the whole ‘three yana’ path of Buddhism is about letting go of preference: pushing away what we don’t want, thirsting after what we do. By the time we reach the third yana of the Vajrayana, we are invited to make desire our staple diet! Bringing ‘knowing’ and ‘experiencing’ together is key.

Discussing all of this with my mediation mentor gave me the courage to not try to exit my stuckness, but to allow it in all its gory glory. Dropping in, fully experiencing it, and holding that little infant as she learns to fall…”there is no ground”*** In a life that offers no certainty, the Vajrayana view encourages us to let go into what is, no preference.

I am reminded of John Welwood and his gift to me when he spoke of being and becoming: the latter is that forward movement we make through understanding and fulfilling potential; the former is when we drop down, vertically, into the experience itself – all we need to know and understand is right there, already.

Welwood is a hero of mine; another is that great spiritual teacher, Bono. I was a little too young really to be into U2, but that is the gift of big brothers! When I happened across a podcast interview this week that he did with Brene Brown, I relished the listen. It was one of those moments of synchronicity to hear him talk about feeling stuck in the polarities life throws up.

“And there was so many sorts of things pulling at me and these polarities. And it’s taken me a while to realise that… I was holding on to them, I was reaching out there, I’m trying to hold on to the positive and minus terminal and feeling the electric shocks. I realised that that was kind of powering, that the contradiction is exactly where to be“

Bono’s autobiography is titled, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story. Surrender to what? The one story is – contradictions. “To be in the world but not of it was the challenge in the scriptures, that would take a lifetime to figure out. As artists we were slowly uncovering paradox, and the idea that we are not compelled to resolve every contradictory impulse.” (pg 143). Carl Jung talked of paradox as “one of our most valued spiritual possessions”. In holding the tension of opposites, those battery terminals, we are “widening consciousness beyond the narrow confines of a tyrannical intellect” enriching life, because only paradox “comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life” (1944).

Shortly after finishing my practice check-in with my meditation mentor, I remembered one of U2’s tracks – you’ll find it at the bottom of this post. The invitation to is to stay in the moment: it might feel ‘stuck’, it depends on how much we add a narrative, or just stay with what is: the embodied response to the lived experience, no story.

I wasn’t jumping, for me it was a fall
It’s a long way down, to nothing at all

On my return to blogging this autumn, I shared that my book writing is taking me into the territory of dialectics: another word we might use when leaning into paradox, contradictions, polarities and the healing fall of surrender. My intention over the coming weeks is to share my writing on the polarities of life; I hope you will accompany me across that rope bridge offered by existentialism.

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*The preliminary practices of the Vajrayana: prostrations, mantra, mandala, and Guru Yoga

** I am a Six; my raison d’etre is ‘doubt’! Claudio Naranjo called this ‘spiritual stuttering’

*** Reference to my favourite all time Chogyam Trungpa Quote (link)