Читать книгу Insanely Gifted - Jamie Catto - Страница 9

CHAPTER 3

Willing to Feel

Be brave enough to live life creatively. The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can’t get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover will be yourself.

Alan Alda

One of the limiting habits we have formed as a species is always to try to and move towards comfort and push away discomfort. We feel a pain and we take a pill to make it go away, but as long as we are always trying to escape the uncomfortable we are missing half of the treasure of life. It is when we are uncomfortable that we have to reach out to others; it cultivates intimacy and trust. When we are in pain our compassion for others who are experiencing pain, too, is deeply felt, unlike the rest of the time when we are buzzing around in self-involved busyness. The dark night of the soul is one of the most growing experiences many of us ever have.

In Eckhart Tolle’s classic self-help book The Power of Now he talks about a concept which he calls ‘the pain body’. The idea is that as we grow up, our rage and our pain and our grief are often unsupported and unwelcome in our homes and schools, and much of the time we have to suppress, not express, how we feel. When we do this, remnants of that unexpressed emotion get lodged in our bodies. Week after month after year of continually not expressing these painful cries and wounds results in an accumulation of unexpressed, over-reactive emotion in us, like a large constipated lump. This is what Tolle calls ‘the pain body’, and it causes us to over-react to the challenging people and experiences we encounter every day. When someone upsets us, our reaction often bears no proportional resemblance to the size of the infraction we’ve suffered. Why? Because we are not only feeling the pain caused in that one moment, we are experiencing the pain body rearing up with the lineage of all the times someone treated us like that, back to our early childhood. All the unexpressed times when we were hurt or unjustly treated wake up, and we howl with decades of accumulated pain. It is so overwhelmingly painful that our mind holds the person who triggered us responsible for how we are feeling, and we attack or control or condemn them, trying anything to avoid feeling the accumulated pain fully.

We each have in us a unique cocktail of accumulated, unexpressed pain influencing how we react, and we all react to different triggers. Someone who upsets you might be totally benign to me, and the guy who makes me want to explode might be just vaguely annoying to you. No matter who we are, if we grew up in a home where our natural, total expression of all our hurts was unwelcome, we will each carry our own uniquely sensitive lump of unexpressed, constipated emotional gunk, usually, in my experience, lodged down our fronts from our throat to our belly. When it is triggered the contraction that happens in our body is so excruciating that we will do anything not to feel it.

This brings us back to how our bodies are hard-wired to constantly mend themselves. Yes, when we scratch our skin it heals over, and when we break a bone it magically reknits itself, but the body is even more genius than that. It knows it has this yucky, constipated lump of over-reactive emotional ‘stuff’ lodged in its torso and so is understandably on a daily mission to flush that shit out.

It is almost as if each annoying experience is tailor-made to awaken a lump of that pain body so that it starts to feel itself intensely, and if we are skilful we can participate in the body/mind’s genius process of clearing out that day’s cupful of emotional gunk. If we resist and control and suppress that feeling, then it gets pushed back under, waiting for another day, another trigger, to give it a chance to release. But if we are willing to feel, we have a chance, day by day, cupful by cupful, to allow Life’s genius to move it all through. From this perspective, the challenging people and trigger situations of our lives are really walking laxatives sent to help us discharge all that emotional constipation.

ASTRAL ANUSES

In ancient China the dominant philosophical principle from around the fourth century BCE was the Tao, which roughly translates as the Way. They weren’t busy worshipping anything or anyone but they were scientifically, and meticulously, generation by generation, mapping the pathways that this life force (Chi) moves around our bodies. To give you an example of what we mean by Chi, think of an apple that’s just been picked from the tree. When you first hold it in your hand it is firm, full of juice, full of life, full of Chi, but if you leave it on the table for a couple of weeks you will see its skin begin to sag and its firmness soften as gradually all its Chi leaks out of it. The human body is the same. Early in life we are full of Chi, our skin is tight and supple, we have lots of energy, and we heal quickly, but later on as we reach old age we have far less Chi and our skin is beginning to wrinkle and sag, our self-healing capacity is drastically reduced, and our ability to leap around withers year by year.

The ancient Chinese developed systems to cultivate lots of life force and came up with methods to make sure you waste the minimum amount of it as you go through your life, so that you can meet old age with more ease and longevity. Practices they developed such as Tai Chi (literally meaning ‘Big Chi’) and Chi Kung are becoming more and more popular here in the West for facilitating health and wellbeing. It is not only keeping the body healthy that conserves and cultivates Chi; the way we think plays a significant role. If we are relaxed and calm we don’t waste so much Chi, but if we are hectic and constantly upsetting ourselves with inner and outer conflicts, we use up our reserves of Chi and end up exhausted and depressed.

The Taoists taught that the ability to be mindful of all this and to, above all, be aware and present with how we are breathing, is the key to conserving and cultivating our life force and living a healthier and more contented life. They have all kinds of practices where when you feel into yourself, you can sense that your stomach is feeling blocked or your throat is feeling tight and you can participate with the body’s genius in releasing any blockages so that the Chi can flow smoothly and unhindered around its pathways. All illnesses, the ancient Taoists believed, are the result of blockages in the complex Chi pathways of the body. Have you ever had acupuncture or seen the acupuncture map of all those pathways? Those are the major and minor Chi channels that the life force travels along, and Chinese medicine is all about helping it flow correctly to keep you well. Here is a big difference between Eastern and Western medicine. In Western medicine, we go and see a doctor only when something’s gone wrong, but in China you see your doctor regularly to prevent getting ill in the first place.

In order to fully participate in this genius yet delicate process of release and unblocking we need to turn our attention inward and get to know how the insides of our bodies feel. We are used to doing this when we have sex. We can easily put our minds between our legs or wherever the pleasure is pulsing, and if we stub our toe or have a headache, it’s not hard to place our attention where the painful sensation is being felt. The extension of this is not only to notice the feelings inside our bodies when they are as intense as that but to be in daily intimate contact with the subtler sensations within us and play an active role in assisting the body’s genius in keeping the life force constantly unclogging itself and flowing smoothly.

Check in with your Body

In the next chapter, Full Body Listening, we’ll go deeper into the specifics of how to do this, but for now just feel your whole body, wriggle your fingers, wriggle your toes, and feel how you inhabit this whole body from crown to toe, not just living solely in your head with all its busy thinking mind and chattering mouth. We are so head-centric here in the West that we often get so top-heavy we forget that our whole body is a sensitive, sophisticated feeling system that is working for us constantly, communicating and transmitting vast amounts of vital data. How does each part of your body feel right now? Don’t analyse the sensations, simply observe them with gentle curiosity.

THE TRIGGER IS NOT THE CAUSE

When we begin to look at the challenging people and upsetting situations in our lives, without playing the victim and instead from the perspective that Life’s genius might be doing something benevolent, we can notice two great benefits available from these. The first is that we begin to see that no matter what anyone does to us, the emotional feelings that erupt in our bodies have not been put there by the trigger. The emotional reaction comes from that old, reactive pain body which has been waiting like a silent time bomb to explode.

Here’s the proof: if someone came into this room now and started being incredibly racist, I mean really going for it with all the forbidden words and angry, ignorant rhetoric, and you and I were standing here, I might have a total emotional meltdown and start freaking out while you might acknowledge they’re a racist and be repelled by them but not go into the same total emotional freakout as me. What does this tell us? We have both been exposed to exactly the same stimulus. I’m melting down and reacting very dramatically, and you, while still acknowledging they’re a crazy bigot, are emotionally calm. That’s because I already carry a dormant, reactive time bomb from my past experiences with racists, or from other violent people, and you do not. The emotionally reactive potential is in me, and although the racist might have triggered my time bomb to go off painfully, he didn’t cause it. That distinction is vital if we are going to take mature responsibility for the reactive parts of ourselves that go off in us day after day. The trigger is not the cause. No one can send us into an emotional tailspin if we don’t already have an Achilles’ heel in that area. So if I acknowledge that although the racist may definitely be wrong and bad and his behaviour inexcusable, the following reaction that I’m experiencing in my body came from my own uniquely reactive potential that lives in my tender pain body. I have that flavour of reactivity in me just waiting to get triggered by a racist, and you do not. My reaction is mine.

It is incredibly seductive to believe that whoever wronged us is responsible for the painful reaction we feel, but it is a mistake which often distracts us from meeting this experience with power and wisdom. I have just been vividly made aware of one of the reactive time bombs that lives in my body. Could it be that once again Life’s genius is helping me? If I have the balls (or ovaries) to step out of my victim-led take on what just happened and meet the experience with the full potential that’s on offer here, I will be almost grateful for what just happened. It is signalling to me that I have something I have been carrying around all this time that I need to dissolve in my body. With my breath and willingness I have a chance to go internal and fully feel the eruption, and disconnect from the external stimulus that set it off.

Now that’s not to say that it won’t be appropriate to have a sober conversation with whoever hurt me, but if I don’t take space and first address the painful eruption in my body then when I immediately confront the trigger person I will invariably sink deeper into a fight, and my over-reaction will usually set off their reactive side. If I go straight into battle with the trigger I’ll be doing it as a way to abandon my own feelings, and to use that person to avoid myself.

If I first address and dissolve the charge in my body and only then have the conversation with the trigger person then I will not be coming at them with angry blame and leaking my rage all over them. If I let the charge in me settle down first, then there’s a real chance that the person I need to set boundaries with, or share my needs or judgements with, will actually hear me, and my calmer, more responsible demeanour will elicit a calmer and more grounded response.

Between the stimulus and the response there’s a space, and in that space is our power and our freedom.

Victor Frankl

DISSOLVING EMOTION

Returning to the ancient Chinese Taoists, we can see what dissolving the reaction might look like. They discovered thousands of years ago that by placing your attention in the area where the eruption is being felt, and by breathing gently there, by creating an idea of spaciousness around the sensations and willingly feeling all the sensations, instead of the usual practice of avoiding the feeling and battling the external, then with patience and even friendliness, the painful blockage begins to dissolve, your nervous system calms down, and a thimbleful of your reactive constipation is discharged. This might be in the form of some emotion being felt, or just the pressure easing and moving out of the body.

Usually, when someone irritates us, instead of responsibly going internal, we go straight into battle with the external stimulus to make the feeling go away. We argue with them, we condemn, we manipulate, we numb ourselves out or escape in a number of ways – anything but feel the feeling fully in our bodies. We need to totally turn this habit around if we are to be free and creative in the world. Instead of rejecting those painful feelings, we need to turn our attention away from the external and go inward. Instead of trying not to feel what erupted in us, we need to become fascinated with it, willing to feel every atom of it. We become like a wine-taster, a connoisseur alert to the tiniest sensations within the pain body. This is how to be a willing participant with what Life’s genius is offering us at that moment. It is only by feeling these waves fully with total willingness that they get to find their expression, be fully felt, and then dissolve from our bodies for ever. When we make a committed practice of using the painful triggers of life in this way then we don’t need to keep encountering the same shit day after day. There is progress, and we gradually learn to accept and welcome all our feelings as useful conduits to free ourselves from the tyranny of our reactions. When I fight the external, I am a slave. When I am willing to feel, I am powerful.

If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it is fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there’s an arrow in your heart.

Pema Chödrön

Our physical reactions to stories or events from the past, or from things which are unfolding right now, when fully felt, willingly, have a place in our bodies. You can ask: ‘Is it in my solar plexus?’ ‘Is my chest tightening?’ When we give it some attention it becomes obvious where in the body the ‘blockage’ is lodged. These disruptive events or challenges can be useful signposts to locate the nooks and crannies of stale and stuck emotion. It is useful to sometimes drum up that story, let the events and possibilities that bother us come to mind, and then immediately feel where in our body a sensation has been activated. Bingo! It is like an FBI phone-tapping device. The story leads me to the feeling like a tracking mechanism and betrays the hiding places of the blockage.

For example, when my girlfriend talks to me in a certain tone of voice I can feel an angry tightness rising in me. It starts in my legs, it enters my breath and chest, and can trigger a disproportionately dramatic rage reaction in me if I don’t notice it in time. The accumulation of all the times my mother spoke to me like that and I felt unseen or misjudged is still living in me, and the similarity of my partner, who is usually totally innocently observing something, challenging me or pointing something out, awakens all the unexpressed rage and claustrophobia of my past. At this moment I have a choice: I can spill years of undischarged bile all over her, blame her and reject her and hold her responsible for the horrid feeling I’m experiencing, or, if I am skilful and brave, I can turn inward, notice the massive volcano erupting in me, choose not to make it her fault but take full responsibility for it. In practice this would mean taking some space to breathe through and dissolve or discharge the sensation before I unskilfully fall into a row with her and end up sleeping on the sofa. Even better, to vulnerably express to her what I’m going through without making it her fault or triggering her into defensiveness is the real black-belt way to respond because then I can receive her support and gentle head stroking or holding while I process it, and it can be a route to a deepening of our intimacy. This is, to me, alchemy, transforming what could have been shit into relationship gold.

It is ironic, really, because we spend so much of our time worried about being abandoned or exiled in different ways, but, truthfully, whenever we try and battle or manipulate the external to avoid feeling these painful reactions, it is like we are saying to ourselves, ‘These feelings are not OK to feel, your feelings are not welcome!’ We are abandoning ourselves. No one else can abandon us if we are willing to feel all our feelings. So when, for example, we are hoping that our partner won’t abandon us, we are really looking in the wrong place. It is no one else’s job to make us feel safe. Yes, we can set up safe agreements and boundaries for ourselves, and hopefully the people we love will agree to them, but it is not their job to be scaffolding for our soul. They can support us and they can be there in the hard times, but it is no one else’s job to notice how we are feeling and make sure our emotional needs are met, and it is also a massive turn-off for a lover to be expected to be our parent or carer. They don’t have the capacity to guarantee to us that they’ll never ever leave. The only person that can guarantee to me that they’ll never ever abandon me is me.

DISSOLVING UNDERLYING BELIEFS

The second opportunity that Life’s genius is offering us when we are triggered is to discover what beliefs we are carrying that keep these kinds of reactions repeating and repeating. We never feel stressed or reactive about something unless we have a belief running inside us that holds the feeling in place.

Someone who has made a whole system for this kind of enquiry is an American teacher called Byron Katie. She has a sophisticated yet simple and effective method for going into these beliefs and dissolving them (www.thework.com). The first thing she asks is: ‘Is the belief definitely true?’ And we often discover, time after time, that it isn’t and that we have a choice as to whether we want to habitually keep believing it or whether we can let it go.

For instance, I have always been a needy, abandonment-phobic kind of a boyfriend (or husband). If I sense or suspect that my partner is attracted to someone else, internally I start tightening up and waves of anxiety begin to course through me. If I have more evidence of my partner being attracted to another man, I will likely surrender to excruciatingly jealous feelings and thoughts. Why?

What would I have to believe is true to feel this way about this?

I asked that question and I realised, wow, I would have to believe that if she left me for someone else my life would be unliveable, and in that moment I became powerful again, because it was then up to me to go deeper into the belief, maybe consider where and when it was implanted, and then choose not to live by its false projections (until next time – it can take a bit of practice!).

Fear is really such a blessing because it gives us a menu of the beliefs we are carrying that aren’t true for us any more. Of course there are some genuine survival issues in life that we do need to be afraid of, but most of our head-fucking about what might happen is a total waste of energy. As Mark Twain said, ‘I have lived through some terrible things in my life – some of which actually came to pass.’

If I go deeper into my beliefs I notice that somewhere deep down inside I believe that if my partner ever left me for another man then my life would be unliveable. It would be over. If I am holding that belief to be true, then when there is any kind of a threat or suspicion my body will react as if life is literally falling apart. I am so sure that life would be unliveable if she left me that if anything signals that possibility I begin to melt down. But is that belief really true? Yes, if she left me for someone else it would be really painful, maybe even hellish for a time, but for how long really? A few months maybe? Even if it was, in drastic circumstances, a whole year, before very long I would get over it and meet someone else.

Most of us have been in relationships that ended and we are all still here getting on with our lives, in new relationships or open to whatever is coming around the next corner. Very few of us died from a broken heart, but we (well, OK, I) act as if being left for another lover would literally kill us. So the second invitation which is on offer from the painful feelings that go off in our bodies is to enquire into the belief that is holding that reaction in place and to see, with a little scrutiny, whether that belief is actually true.

We usually reject feelings of fear. Of course, they don’t feel comfortable, but Bashar invites us to look at them differently. He says that fear is the same energy as excitement going through our body but bumping into beliefs that are not in alignment with who we really are, so although it can be painful, it is also a signpost. He says that when you play the piano and hit an out-of-tune note, you don’t run away from the piano and swear never to play it again; you tune the note. Fear is telling us where we have an out-of-tune belief that needs dissolving, so we could actually get excited about it. Wow, a fear, how exciting! I can dissolve something holding me back!

WILLING TO FEEL

They say that you can’t love anyone until you love yourself, but what does self-love mean? What does it entail? I mean, I bought some chamomile tea, does that count? Self-love begins with the willingness to feel all our feelings without rejecting our own experience, not by abandoning the young character who lives in us, but by welcoming the waves as much as possible and reminding ourselves that all our feelings are OK to feel. If I go soft and yield to it.

This is where the masculine side of our nature has to take a back seat. It is not about analysing the feeling or doing something to make it go away, it is not about taking any action. It is the feminine part of us that is most useful here. The part of us that gets impacted, that can allow the sensations deeper in. Every time we make space to feel, to allow, to yield to what’s happening, we send a message of self-care and acceptance to our wounded places and give them permission to exist. In this way we take one more step towards wholeness and integration and become less reliant on other people making it better for us.

When emotions arise we often try to stifle them. We mustn’t cry in public, right? We don’t want to be a burden on people, we don’t want to look needy or as if we are trying to get attention with our drama, and our intense emotions have rarely been supported and approved of in our childhoods, so the first impulse, when tears or anger rise up, is to push them back down. The self-loving practice that has created great shifts in my life is to cry and cry and cry, not self-indulgently wallowing, but consciously feeling all my feelings, saying yes, yes, yes, as I feel each wave pass through me, and soon enough it passes and ebbs, and I feel lighter. The times when I collapsed with anxiety or panic attacks, I would notice a pressure in my chest, the pressure of years of corked tears.

Once when I was sixteen, I was having such an intense meltdown that I called the doctor. An hour later I was sitting in his waiting room and a sudden surging of emotion took me by surprise. The tears burst out of me and I cried for about ten minutes. After the wave had passed I noticed that the panic attack had totally vanished. I sat there feeling absolutely fine and a little bit sheepish. I didn’t have anything to show the doctor any more. I got up and slipped out of the waiting room and went home.

Now I cry often. It feels good, like doing a huge poo. Sometimes it is from sorrow welling up, sometimes from sudden beauty or intimacy. I let myself weep in public places and alone driving in the car. My body wants to love itself this way. I’m glad I don’t suppress it any more.

This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and attend them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still treat each guest honourably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.

Rumi

THE ART OF RECEIVING