Hello friends. It has been a long time since I’ve written a post. In this past year, with the pandemic and all the events unfolding on our precious planet, I have felt something deep in my being recalibrating. The question Tara Brach often asks, ‘what really matters’, has been guiding me as I go about the roles (mother, counsellor, teacher) that show up in this life. More and more it becomes clear that the quality of attention we bring to each moment matters, kindness matters, staying connected to our heart/self matters.
Something that is undeniably showing up in the world at large, in clients, friends, family members and in myself, is trauma. I thought I would write a piece here on my own experience of the tricky dynamics between trauma and mindfulness and self inquiry (including the enneagram). My hope is that by sharing this story (of how unrecognized trauma was affecting my journey), if you are also carrying trauma that you have yet to identify, this may guide you to become aware of it so you can skilfully and compassionately attend to it. I’m sending out energy of deep peace and support to all affected by trauma of any sort.
I love studying the enneagram – as a tool for self inquiry, the insights that come from this profound teaching have allowed such clarity in recognizing unconscious patterns, which is the start to unravelling them. One pattern that I recognize as being a steady experience in the 2 fixation is the constant effort of creating an image of who I think I have to be and then working ceaselessly to meet all the impossible expectations of that image. Specific ingredients for that creation are pulled from a carefully measured (projected) evaluation of whatever the audience (imagined or real) would find acceptable, or even better, desirable.
This image-creating is deeply unconscious, thus hard to catch. I am so grateful to have found a teacher, Eli Jaxon-Bear, who is masterful at directing his students’ attention towards their fixation so they can finally recognize it for themselves. One time, Eli asked me ‘what do you want’, and I was lurched into this space of suddenly fully experiencing dissociation. This entire life had been spent creating an image, creating ground to stand on, and constantly modifying and improving this ground. His question left me groundless. Before (and during) this inquiry, the confusion and vulnerability inherent in the absence of ‘ground’ was too overwhelming to function in; it wasn’t even seen as a possibility to survive without a ground. So although it was uncomfortable at the time, Eli’s question allowed me to become attentive to (and momentarily severed from) the identity I had believed myself to be. It also brought me in direct contact with trauma that had been completely repressed, although I still didn’t recognize that at the time.
It took me some time to process and integrate this teaching. I continued to inquire even more whole-heartedly, but I found that even after decades of mindfulness and other meditation practices and years self inquiry with extremely skilled support, there were still layers in me that were frustratingly frozen and seemed immovable. Finally, after attending the first of many trauma workshops (I thought I was going to learn skills for my clients), I was able to recognize trauma in myself that I’d thoroughly buried. This recognition was a relief and marked an important point in my journey of self-understanding. As well as the many physical and mental symptoms and patterns that now are clear markers of a trauma response, I could also see how trauma seeped into my personality and exacerbated my tendency to move into somebody-ness rather than hang out, even for a moment, in the unhinged terror of groundlessness. Before I recognized the role trauma was playing, I wrote it all off as fixation (and oh did I ever punish myself harshly for this behaviour!). For me, the key for recognizing trauma was initially its immovable, impossible, seemingly permanent nature despite years of willing and devoted inquiry.
I dove into studying trauma, and experimenting with different tools developed to resource the traumatized brain. From this I am learning how to recognize and attend to my own and others’ traumatized states as they appear. I am able to use mindfulness and self inquiry more skillfully. Before, I was actually using mindfulness to become more skilled at focusing my attention away from what was so unsettled. I got good at concentration, (anchoring my attention to the breath, sensations in the body, sounds, mantras, etc.) which I now understand is different from meditation. This did settle and calm my nervous system, but of course it did not heal the trauma and perhaps made me more adept at turning away from it (and convincing myself I was healing).
I can see how I used self-inquiry to bypass trauma by dismissing my stories as ‘narratives from an illusory self’ and moving directly into the bliss of essence. I did find a wellspring of loving compassion at my core, so this bypass was an easy route to take. This too was useful for bringing a more balanced chemistry to my brain, and for giving me small experiences of total rest and peace, but I still hadn’t addressed the trauma.
A desire to address the trauma wouldn’t leave me alone though – and I’m so glad. But this came with shame – shame that these stories were still here, still alive and still affecting my life experience (and it ‘shouldn’t be anymore’). It fuelled self-hatred because the presence of trauma was framed in my mind as evidence of how identified I still was and that all my realizations to date were bullshit… and a belief sat heavy in my bones that I was broken beyond repair.
But the medicine of self inquiry was already working.
For years, and still now, I go back to Eli’s question ’what do you want’. For a long time, every time I asked myself that question, I felt this confusion of not actually knowing who or what I am, let alone knowing what ‘I’ wanted. So I worked with the question ‘what’s actually here’? I could find a body was here, a physical form with all kinds of different and changing sensations and a vibrant life force, but that was just something I could experience I still couldn’t definitively say that was me.
I could hear how thoughts manifested as an inner narrative (in my voice) that would go over things in a fairly predictable way. Over time, I could recognize the energy of different emotions and how they moved around this body – and the overlying story that accompanied them. But with all that, I still couldn’t find a ‘me’. And I looked hard… I oscillated between searching and waiting (although this personality is too impatient to wait) for ‘somebody’ to appear, (thinking I was supposed to find somebody!). I though maybe I’d find an angelic version of myself or my higher self dressed in beautiful robes smiling at me or something….! I never found anybody. I never found a single thing. I shone the light around miles and miles of this landscape of nothingness within, never finding anything.
This consistent absence of finding ‘somebody’ or ‘something’ initially registered as failure. I was overlooking ‘nothing’. I kept looking for a beautiful ‘true’ ground that I could point to to call myself, but couldn’t find one (that I didn’t have to create). Only a wide open space of nothing. Then I noticed something in me started to ‘not mind’ this familiar experience of nothing. This was a turning point. From then on, when I saw myself squeezing into being a somebody, I experimented with some trauma resourcing tools, so I could support my nervous system to stay in the experience of being nothing and not scramble back to create ground. In retrospect, I think the combination of supporting the wiring of my nervous system coupled with sincere and consistent self inquiry were both essential for allowing unresolved trauma to be attended to, which naturally made way for the grip of egoic identification to soften.
Very soon I didn’t need the tools as much anymore. Something started to naturally yield, and I was able to become more and more aware of how peaceful and at home I felt in this field of nothingness. This was where a deep unwinding took (and continues to take) place. Now I love feeling the natural trusting of this groundlessness. This is home, this continual unfolding into silent, endless, loving awareness.
In endless gratitude and peace ~ L.