I wasn’t sure I would get time to write this week, such is the end of term and the tidal wave of assignments that need my attention. And yet it is these assignments that inspire me to make the time. The trainee’s attempts at what is affectionately referred to as the “leaving home essay” this year have been particularly moving: tasked with writing to their currently held conceptualisation of counselling they take out into the practice world, I love getting to read thoughts, feelings, experiences (both in the client and trainee therapist chair), the making sense of the theory and philosophy. It’s a journey; one I remember. There are both obvious differences (it is well over a decade of practice ago now) and yet surprisingly, many things that remain the same in how I see the healing work and my (our) role in it. Undoubtedly, writing is one way that helps that synthesis; and for me, it also helps me keep in touch with my self(ing).
So, here I am! In the corner of the cafe, again…becoming a local, carving out rituals.
Once I knew I would have time to write, it soon became clear what I would be writing to. My muse? The milestone notification on my meditation app – the neat number of 4,444 consecutive days of meditation (or 12 years, 68 days). The Dalai Lama once offered we should check in on our practice “progress” every 10 years or so. I add those “” not just because there is no progress to be measured on the meditation path (not in the Tibetan buddhist view at least (given we are already awake, and there is actually nothing to do!). More personally, those “” signify what felt like a paradox, a somewhat bitter pill…the 4,444 ticker fell on a day that I was falling; falling into an old pattern, an enduring relational theme we might say…and I didn’t catch myself very quickly. One of my students this week asked me is it normal to only be aware we’ve been hooked after the fact? I smiled…as “yes”, it is. My meditation practice has helped me immensely in catching my reactive patterns earlier. There are times I would say my own awake nature is at the fore and I catch the pattern arising in my awareness before I act it out; but this power is still in its infancy.
Having re-started therapy recently, the intersection of what my practice and therapy has brought me has been both on my mind and in the new therapeutic dyad I am a part of. Likening it to a process of weeding the garden of the mind, meditation brings me a settling of mind (or sem) to reveal the clarity of awareness itself (or rigpa). In everyday therapeutic speak, I like the Jungian phrase complexes. Without awareness, complexes are like the nub of knots; the ways in which we get tied up, twisted, tripped (enduring relational themes for example). Like a jar of mud, sitting settles out the dirt from the water…and I see more clearly. This is what helps us see reactive patterns as they emerge (or at least, more quickly). All good.
Well, kinda. I am not alone in the community of Vajrayana Buddhism in experiencing a seeming increase in neurotic behaviour! Since receiving pointing out instruction and undergoing the preliminary practices of Ngondro, I have lamented how close to madness I can often feel. I have described it to non-buddhist friends as like a “thinning of mind”; not unlike psychedelic experiences or even the edges of psychosis, it is as if the brakes are off. Mind becomes so boundary less it reveals an expansiveness that the humble function of ego begins to shake and tremor. In this thinning, more complexes arise from the depth.
If meditation brings the clarity to see the weeds distinct from the earth; it is therapy that has helped me pull them out.
I credit the Vajrayana with tilling the soil, shaking the beds and stirring more and more material to tend to.
The Vajrayana view also means I can stand with arms outstretched, holding the weeds up in my hands, and seeing through them with transparency.
I am reminded of the quote often attributed to Freud, “we can never drain the swamp”. The mindfulness movement infers that meditation is the panacea. To some extent, it is very very helpful in calming and containing. This is the personal realm (often equivalent to the Hinayana) in which we clean up our back yard. But because we are interconnected (the Mahayana), we commit to helping tend to the gardens of others: out of compassion, we deliberately step toward the fire (and encounter enduring relational themes). The bodhisattva vow expressed in the Zen tradition conveys “sentient beings are limitless, I vow to save them all”. This is not just speaking to the “no progress nor goal” to achieve (it’s impossible!), for me I am beginning to see that the power of the Vajrayana is not because it promises a totally clear garden, but rather, it goes deeper and deeper into the swamp to pull up not just the smaller, trickier weeds of the personal, but rather to differentiate sem from rigpa and rest in the transparency.
I am making my way through Lama Tsultrim Allione’s text “Rising Wisdom” in which she is speaking to the four directions and the five buddha energies. This has been a wonderful text to get my teeth into as I make my final preparations toward tripping the light fantastic with the sky dancer herself, Vajrayogini. I head off on a 5 day retreat to my beloved Normandy this week. As I witnessed the second year students walk over their own ritual threshold in the past few days, I had in mind the one I am about to take as I board the ferry and reconnect with the practice I was transmitted a calendar year ago. I understand more clearly how in entering her mandala, Vajrayogini helps me with the weeding of not just my garden but of all beings. The practice is very sensual (she is a red temptress after all!), raising desire through practices that evoke all five senses. Stirring passion (suffering) she sifts the soil, allowing me to weed more: I was sharing my weeding metaphor with my new therapist last week: that it feels like I bend down, pull up the weed, see them more clearly in front of me, and they dissolve. This is transmutation. Focus is not on the weed, but rather than clear luminous mind that sees the weed. Shifting allegiance, we come to recognise the nature of mind is always pure…it always has been, it always will be. We mistake our mind for the weeds and neglect the purity and fertility of the bed from where they come.
It’s endless, ceaseless. Unlike Ngondro, I will never “complete” Vajrayogini (gulp). Each time I practice, the refinement comes in truly entering the atmosphere of the mandala. To stand in the middle and encounter the spin of the energies associated with each of the four directions until the blue, red, green, yellow mix and dissolve into the white, spaciousness of awakened mind. I have no idea (really) what I am about to embark (and let myself in for). All I know is that this path has not let me down so far. It’s not easy. To feel a thinner mind means the grain of sand is now in the eye, not in the hand (a traditional buddhist teaching). I feel my pain more, the path is to suffer less from it. And when I don’t catch it, I fall and spin out of control. If, and it’s a big IF I align with awareness, I see, I feel with clarity and the spin itself dissolves.
I realised the other day, I started out on the therapeutic path 20 years ago. It was a kind of accidental stumbling into (long story, another time)…and it opened up a wormhole! I understand the lamenting of clients who sometimes feel they have got worse rather than better through therapy. Twenty five years ago, I felt like a strong indestructible creature…but those habits and strategies were a protection of a softer, vulnerable Helen. I was “strong” but unhappy, rigid. Now I am strong in a different way; not just resilient, strong because I can feel my pain, because I can feel others pain…and because I can now love and be loved. This has been such a gift, and I appreciate how I can extend this to the clients and trainee therapists I work with.