Alden Gannon - Illuminating the Edges of Self

Very cool article from the Buddhist Geeks blog.

Illuminating the Edges of Self

19. Mar, 2010 by Alden Gannon

Silent retreat participants often speak of what I call the re-entry problem. During the course of the retreat, the noise of the mind loses some of its grip on us. We often gain access to the silence that forms the ground of all things. What has seemed frustratingly elusive in our busy lives becomes apparent and easily accessed.

But then we go home to traffic jams, clients, bosses, families and friends. The clarity and calm gets lost somewhere in the shuffle, and within a week it seems we’re right back in the mind states that led us to seek retreat in the first place. And when I examined this closely in myself, I discovered that most of the old painful patterns and thought streams that re-emerged after retreat were triggered through close relationships with family and coworkers. And without access to these relationships on retreat, I had escaped those conditions that caused these mind states to arise.

Relationships reveal the edges of ourselves. When friction arises with others, it can expose places within us that remained hidden in the retreat environment. And in the process of awakening, we become conscious of processes and phenomena that were not in our awareness. Friction at the edge of our selves can be a powerful agent for exposing unconscious patterns and beliefs that need to be examined under meditative awareness.

What exactly is this interpersonal conflict that is so common to the human experience? It might be as simple as annoyance at a cell phone user in a restaurant or as complex as the roots of wars or hatred. What does this experience reveal about us? How do we bring meditative awareness into the difficult emotions of our close relationships?

I facilitate a group of meditation practitioners who are exploring these questions. We gather together and practice mindful speaking and listening in a space of meditative awareness. Someone offers a problem they are struggling with, typically within a close relationship. The group practices listening mindfully to both the speaker and their own reactions to the story presented.

The speaker invites an inquiry into the conditions beneath the story. For example, the speaker might tell us about a recurring conflict she has with her partner over housework. Gradually, we move from the narrative into progressively deeper meanings the speaker takes from the events related to us. Little by little, we honor then release the outer levels of the story, seeking their more fundamental forms.

For instance, our example story might start with statements like “he always forgets to take out the trash” or “I hate having to nag.” These emphasize the boundaries between partners and spans the conflict over time (“always forgets”). The speaker is granted complete safety and held within a non-judgmental space to allow the unedited thought stream to emerge. Expressing the story completely begins to release its hold.

But we don’t stop there. We seek the root causes and conditions of the narrative. Beneath the narrative lives fundamental beliefs about ourselves that are at the same time deeply personal and profoundly transpersonal. A more fundamental version of the same story might be “he doesn’t love me.” To the speaker, that is the meaning behind the story and much closer to the actual source of suffering. An even deeper observation might be that the speaker feels undeserving of love. As the inquiry proceeds, it moves towards revealing unseen aspects of the self and away from the events of the narrative. It becomes more personal and directly revealing.

But at the same time, it moves towards the transpersonal. As we gradually release the drama of the story to reveal its roots, we also move closer to the universal human experience and away from our unique experience. We see that all human beings have felt unloved or unheard. Often our group falls into a space of deeper connection where we are no longer sharing personal stories, but the universal experience of the human condition. The truth of suffering and its release through non-attachment is revealed in the moment of seeing through our personal narrative into the experience of all sentient beings.

Behind our group is the deeply shared intuition that the spiritual journey must travel through the personal, not around it. The core of our personal pain needs to be examined and unpacked. The challenge is to hold our stories without either enforcing our belief in them or dismissing them outright. They must be allowed to release themselves, in their own time, under the light of meditative awareness. Outside of the retreat environment where friction and old patterns inevitably arise, we can focus our attention on our own root narratives with the same loving care and persistence we practiced on the breath in the meditation center. And unsurprisingly, reveal the same truths.

Tags: Buddhism, relationship, personal growth, Spirituality, Alden Gannon, Illuminating the Edges of Self, Buddhist Geeks, Friction, interpersonal