The Big Sqeeze - a meditation on suffering

Tonight I have a bad case of what Pema Chodron calls 'the big squeeze.' (Don’t worry, I don't mean diarrhoea! This blog attempts to be honest but I wouldn't go that far.)
 

Pema Chodron, a Western Buddhist nun, uses 'the big squeeze' to mean the difficult issues and feelings that replay over and over again in our lives.  For some it might be fear and anger, for others dullness or boredom. I think 'the big squeeze' is such a great term, because it describes viscerally what it feels like when those really tough emotions come along. I literally feel like someone is contracting and clenching my gut when I'm feeling two of my huge squeezes - confusion and numbness.
 

So, tonight, up pops these big squeezes. The numbness makes my body feel sodden and thick, as though I'm soaked with water and weighed down. The confusion broils away in my stomach as I try to fight my way out from this heavy numbness. I decide to do a meditation that I hope will be calming, and perhaps help me sit with these two contradictory feelings - one dull, the other querulous and anxious.
 

I imagine the Dalai Lama standing in front of me.  I begin to name whatever I'm feeling, thinking or sensing. For every label I give, the Dalai Lama responds - ‘I’m sorry for your suffering.'

'Heaviness in my leg'
'I'm sorry for your suffering.'
'Sadness...leaden sadness'
 'I'm sorry for your suffering.'
'Annoyance...tinnitus in my ear is annoying me'
'I'm sorry for your suffering.

A few minutes into the meditation, the critical voice in my head rises up.  As soon as the Dalai Lama says, 'I'm sorry for your suffering’, a judging response pops up in my mind. I'm finding it hard to sit with the judgements without becoming anxious, so I pull my laptop over and start writing whatever the voices say in response to the Dalai Lama's kindness. Here's what I wrote:

'I'm sorry for your suffering'
get over it
'I'm sorry for your suffering'
you have to do it on your own
'I'm sorry for your suffering'
there's no help here
'I'm sorry for your suffering'
don't be pathetic, it's all downhill for you
'I'm sorry for your suffering'
other people have a harder life that you, don't feel sorry for yourself
'I'm sorry for your suffering'
this isn't real, you aren't real, this suffering isn't real
'I'm sorry for your suffering'
kindness is rubbish, it isn't real, don't be a wuss ( Aussie slang for 'wimp' LOL! )
'I'm sorry for your suffering'
you deserve this suffering, there's no way out

After the first five minutes (listed above), the kindness of the Dalai Lama starts to sink in, and my voices change in tone:

'I'm sorry for your suffering'
oh, someone is listening to me, that feels good
'I'm sorry for your suffering'
it's not my fault, i don't have to prove anything
'I'm sorry for your suffering'
i thought it was all my fault, could this really not be my fault?  Is that possible?
'I'm sorry for your suffering'
Could it be that this suffering is real?, Could I be real?

And, after fifteen minutes or so, that's where the meditation ended.  Because I'd written my thoughts down I thought I’d make them into this post. 
   
I don't think I'm so unusual in having these critical voices in my head; not everyone's sings exactly the same songs as mine, but no doubt most people have a top 10 selection that's on fairly high rotation. One of the things I find most extraordinary is that these thoughts are all sitting there. They're not hidden beneath ten years of psychotherapy, or a three-month meditation retreat.  All I have to do to push them into action is to say something that provokes them - ‘I’m sorry for your suffering.'
   
These thoughts are like looking at a forest of trees, and not being able to see the forest for the trees. I can't see them in my everyday life - because they're everywhere. They are the foundation of my belief system; the rock out of which my reality is carved.   That's what makes them so pernicious and powerful.
   
For now, it just helps to have more awareness of these thoughts - to let them dance their dance, and sing their song. And, in response, to say:
   
'I'm sorry for your suffering...I'm sorry for your suffering...' 
 

Reflections on staying at the monastery

During January I posted a series of blog entries that were written while I was staying at the Santi Forest Monastery.  I thought for this post I'd write a short reflection on my time at the monastery, just to wrap things up.

One of the interesting things about having this blog is that I often sit down to write something with an idea of what I'm going to say, and it all ends up going in a completely different direction.  So, for this post, I deliberately haven't planned what I'll write - and I'm interested to see what direction my fingers take me!

Overall I'd describe my time at the monastery as - confronting, difficult, peaceful, slow, and sad. This is the third time I've stayed up there, usually for around three weeks at a time, and it is always a difficult time for me.  I get very envious of people who go on meditation retreats and say how rewarding or beautiful it was.  I sometimes think there's something wrong with me that I find it so very hard.

But, I try to remind myself that I have difficult things to deal with.  Because I've been living with this illness for well over a decade it's natural that in the first few years of really looking at my feelings and bodily sensations,  I'll find a lot of sadness and despair arising.  

Because I can't do normal, structured meditation, I've come up with my own structure for the day when I'm at the monastery. From whenever I wake up (usually around 8.30am) until 10.30am I lie in bed and either do a meditation, if I feel I can, or just drift in and out of an exhausted haze, trying to be with and recognise whatever sensations are there. 

At 10.30 I go up to have a shower in the communal bathroom, and then have lunch and help to clean up afterwards.  During this stay, I also had a little job, mopping the sala (hall) and setting up mats and bowls for the next day's lunch.  Then, from around 1pm until 6pm I go back to my caravan and either listen to dharma (Buddhist) talks, do some structured meditation, read a bit from Buddhist books, or rest.  

At 6pm, if I feel up to it, I go back up to the main house and have a cup of tea with the other residents. In the evening, I can do what I like - and I usually listen to an audiobook on my ipod (which has nothing whatsoever to do with Buddhism!)

So, that's my day when I'm at the monastery, and I do find it very confronting to be living so closely to my feelings, and my physical condition, without any distractions like TV, radio, family, friends, my mobile phone,  e-mail or the internet.

During this stay, I cried a lot, and felt a deep, dragging depression. It seemed like a heavy weight that I would carry with me everywhere.  There seemed to be no way to fight my way out from underneath the bleak despair.  I was really forced to feel it - day after day after day.  A couple of times, one of the monks at the monastery pulled me aside and said, 'What's up?'  He's a very perceptive person, and I suppose he could tell just by the way I looked that I was having a tough time. 

He spent quite a while talking to me, trying to get an exact feel for what I was struggling with.  He started off by saying, 'You know, it's good to try to just accept the pain, to allow it.'  I think I stopped myself before I actually rolled my eyes at him, but I'm sure I got my message across in what I said. 

'I know that! I know I'm meant to be accepting pain, moving towards it, allowing it...blah, blah, blah...all the books say it.  But, I can't do that, and that just makes me feel even worse, because I hate it so much.  All I feel is how much I don't want it to be there, and this terrible judgement for it being there.'

'Oh OK!' he said, 'So you already know that.  Well, then, what you need is  kindness and gentleness.  Forget all about meditation; forget about what everyone else is doing here.  That's not for you right now.  All you have to do is be gentle.  When you get up out of the chair think, 'Am I doing that gently?'  When you lie in bed, think 'Is this a gentle posture for my body?'  All you have to do is be kind to all of those feelings.'

He was a great support to me, and, after talking to him a few times I did feel like a lot of the fighting and resistance to what was happening subsided.  I was able to just allow the depression, sadness, and judgemental thoughts to be there, without fighting them so much or trying little 'techniques' to get rid of them.  It was  painful to allow these things to just exist.  

I laughed just then at writing 'it was  painful' - because this process is, unfortunately, not in the past - it is  painful.  And that's really what I've taken away from this stay at the monastery. I'm more able to allow difficult feelings to exist.

I got home and started to read a Stephen Levine book that I haven't picked up in about a year.  Stephen talks a lot about moving towards pain, and, since I've always had such trouble with that concept, I ended up putting the book down. I was judging myself too much (and feeling judged by Stephen!) for not being able to send my illness love, or accept it. 

But, after reading a few pages of this book after returning from the monastery, I burst into tears. I was reading a chapter about a  woman whose son had died.  Stephen talked about her including her grief in her heart, and all of a sudden I thought, 'I understand that, I know what he means.' And I had an awareness of how I was moving towards my pain - allowing it to tear my heart open.  I had a vision of me literally stepping into my illness.  

It was very sad, but also quite beautiful, because I had a realisation of how cutting myself off from my illness had cut me off to life.  Over the next few days I realised that although I think I'm 'getting no-where' with this meditation, and that my stays at the monastery are just a complete waste of time - things are slowly changing, and moving.

This is one of the more luxurious huts at the monastery

- I stayed in this one on my first visit.

Drinking tea when there's no way out

This post was written in December 2009, when I was spending a month staying at a Buddhist monastery near Sydney, Australia.

I’ve been reading a book of stories by the Buddhist monk Ajahn Brahm called Opening the Door of Your Heart (previously published as ‘Who ordered this truck-load of dung?’).

It’s a lovely book, full of short stories, some of them re-telling Buddhist fables and tales and others recollections from Ajahn Brahm’s life.  The chapters are all very short, and the whole book is alive with warmth and humour. I think it's well-suited to people who have an illness and might have trouble concentrating or reading.

I found one of the stories particularly moving and enlightening.  It's the story of a man who’d been in the British Army in World War 2 (and later met Ajahn Brahm). The man had been on patrol in the Burmese jungle when the scout from his patrol returned to tell the captain that somehow they’d stumbled into the middle of a large number of Japanese soldiers. They were surrounded, with no way to move out. The patrol expected to be ordered to advance, and even if none of them survived at least they might be able to kill some of the enemy. 

But instead, the captain told his men to stay where they were, sit down, and have a cup of tea. The man who told the story to Ajahn Brahm said that they all thought the captain had gone mad. But, they were in the army and they had to obey him.

“They all made what they thought was to be their last cup of tea.  Before they had finished drinking their tea, the scout came back and whispered to his captain. The captain asked for the men’s attention. ‘The enemy has moved,’ he announced. ‘There is now a way out. Pack your kit quickly, and quietly – let’s go!”

The man told Ajahn Brahm that he felt like he owed his life to his captain, and not just for saving him in Burma. 

“Several times in his life, it was as if he was surrounded by the enemy, completely outnumbered, with no way out and about to die.  He meant by ‘the enemy’ serious illness, horrendous difficulty and tragedy, in the middle of which there seemed no way out. Without the experience in Burma he would have tried to fight his way through the problem, and no doubt made it much worse. But instead...he simply sat down and made a cup of tea.”

After reading this story I put the book down and lay there for a while, just listening to the sounds of the Australian bush on a summer’s night – the crickets, and the rustling of the gum trees outside my caravan. In my mind I saw an image of me, surrounded by my enemies of fatigue, pain, despair, fear and depression.  I saw them all around, surrounding me in the dark night, lurking in the trees and bushes outside my caravan.

What was my inclination?  Was it to sit and have a cup of tea?  Or, was it to hurl myself headlong at these enemies – hoping to fight my way through and emerge at the other side, wounded but alive?

Of course, it was the latter.  But, for the first time in my life I could see that there was another option.  I didn’t have to throw myself on my enemies and wrestle them to the ground in an adrenalin-pumped fight to the death.  I could just sit, have a drink, and say, ‘who knows?...let’s wait.’ 

I started making a little meditation around this.  I allowed the difficult feelings to arise, and imagined myself sitting down, drinking a cup of tea, and shrugging my shoulders...just waiting.  This was a completely new way of relating to these feelings. Immediately I could feel the some of the huge responsibility I’d taken for all these ‘enemies’ slip away.  They were still there – but it seemed they weren't totally my fault, and totally my responsibility to fix. I saw that it wasn’t my job to destroy myself fighting them. I could be aware of them, without blaming myself so much for them being there.

Often people with an illness are encouraged not to 'play the victim.' We're encouraged instead to take responsibility for our situation, to heal our own bodies, to investigate why we have 'dis-ease.'  In itself, this isn’t a bad thing, but I wonder sometimes whether the pendulum has slipped a little too far one way and whether we are being urged to take on too much responsibility for what is happening to our bodies. Ajahn Brahm’s story made me realise I’ve taken on far too much responsibility for my illness. It has been a profound realisation, and one that I know I’ll be working with, and deepening, over the next weeks and months.   

 

One of the huts at Santi Forest Monastery

Shinzen Young - book giveaway!

As a little present for one of my readers I’m giving away a copy of ‘Break Through Pain’ by Shinzen Young.  Break Through Pain is a book and CD set, and is in excellent second-hand condition. I’ve read the book and copied the CD onto my lappy, so I thought I’d give the set away to someone interested in exploring Shinzen Young’s pain meditation techniques.

The first person to e-mail me gets the book.  Please send me your postal address along with the e-mail. It doesn’t matter if you don’t live in Australia, I’ll send the book anywhere (on earth. No e-mails from space please).

Once someone e-mails me I’ll come back and update this page so you’ll know if the book has already be taken by an earlier reader.

The Church of Hard Knocks

This post was written in December 2009, when I was spending a month staying at a Buddhist monastery near Sydney, Australia.

13 December

I’ve been reading a book by Petrea King called ‘Sometimes Hearts Have to Break.’ Petrea is a well known Australian healer and counsellor who’s worked for years with people who have life-threatening conditions. In her book, Petrea tells her own story of recovery from leukemia, and the stories of some of her clients.

One of the stories was of a young, newly married couple who were members of a type of Christian Church where illness was believed to be caused by lack of faith.  Getting any treatment or using pain-relief to deal with an illness was seen as mere pandering to the devil; the person had to heal through faith alone.  If they didn’t heal, it was because their faith wasn’t strong enough.

Tough stuff – but could see how I run a particular branch of this church in my mind.  I have a strong belief that my illness was caused by something I did wrong.  This is how the thought pattern runs in my head: I’ve been kicked out into the wilderness of pain and illness by some spiritual or ethical flaw, and my task is to work as hard as I can to fix myself and be allowed back into the land of the well. These beliefs run very deep and are hard to see – and when I do see them they’re difficult to deal with.

In Petrea King’s story about her clients, the husband had been diagnosed with bowel cancer 6 months previously.  He’d had no treatment, and no pain relief.  Now, he was dying, and as well as having to deal with an early and difficult death, he felt an enormous sense of failure because his faith obviously wasn’t strong enough to save him. Petrea counselled the young couple and talked to them about the idea of a loving, compassionate, caring God – not just the judgemental God of the Old Testament. The man died the day after he saw Petrea – with less physical pain (because he accepted morphine), but also, with some freedom from the terrible burden of self-blame that he’d carried.

Here’s what Petrea wrote after telling his story:

‘Many people fall into the trap of trying to earn their recovery, believing if they only find the right combination of therapies they will be able to undo the cause of their disease.  This thinking is quite popular in our society at present and the worst misunderstanding of this philosophy is that we create our illnesses in order to learn some spiritual lesson from them....
This is a complex area and is often grossly simplified by proponents of this philosophy.  It can serve as a terrible judgement and certainly doesn’t facilitate the experience of deeply joining together in our humanity. There is often a hidden agenda which says, ‘If you eat the right foods, forgive the past, meditate for hours a day, drink your vegetable juices, take your vitamins, and only focus on the ‘positive’ , then you might not die of your disease.’

 It seems natural that we all search for certainties when the only constant in our world is change. Impermanence is scary. I can see that my mind struggles constantly to find reasons for things I can’t explain – why am I sick? Why are some babies born with AIDS? How can thousands of lives be snuffed out in a tsunami?

Sometimes this immense and incomprehensible suffering leads us to develop systems of judgement and blame – just so we can feel some small sense of control.  We can use these systems to assure ourselves that we can find a way out of our own pain (if we just meditate long enough/eat raw foods/buy enough crystals/fix our flaws). We can also use these systems to reassure ourselves that the terrible pain that’s happening to someone else won’t happen to us (she got cancer because she repressed her anger – but that won’t happen to me!)

 I can see the system of blame I’m running in my own mind, but I can’t change it. A constant thought stream buzzes through my head- if I just work harder at meditation, if I could just relax more, if I could just be more peaceful/less angry/more open-hearted – then I’d get well. Those demanding and critical thoughts run deep, and fighting them just seems to leave me more exhausted and entrenched in blame. I’m trying to close down the church branch in my mind – but it just doesn’t want to go! I try to remind myself that just witnessing it, just being aware of its existance, is an important first step.

Just Relax!

This post was written in December 2009, when I was spending a month staying at a Buddhist monastery near Sydney, Australia.

7th December

At lunch today I was talking to a woman named Jacqui who’s come up from Sydney to stay here for a few days.  Over our dhal and rice, we talked about my experiences with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and the time she’d spent with an auto-immune disorder.

She made a comment that I thought was really interesting. She’d been to see a psychologist, who was also a Buddhist and he told her that her illness was caused by stress.Jacqui’s face became animated, and she talked about how this comment made her feel.

‘I asked him why he said that,’ she said. ‘Because it’s just not helpful!  It might be true, but for the person who’s having the illness it’s not helpful. It’s up to the person themselves to come to some sort of realisation about what their illness is caused, or not caused by.’

‘That’s so true.’ I said. ‘It’s like someone wagging their finger in your face saying ‘just relax!’ – that’s not relaxing at all.  All that happens is that you have your original problems and then on top of it you feel ashamed because you think you shouldn't be stressed, but you are!'

Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m not guilty of thinking other people should ‘just relax;’  my sister and I have often fantasized about dropping a valium in my mother’s cup of tea in the hope it would calm her down -  or at least make her sit down.  (We never used it; you’d need a bulldozer and a ten battalion fascist army to subdue my mum – I’m fairly sure mere pharmaceuticals couldn’t do it).

Jacqui and I talked about the best way to get the ‘just relax’ message across without making the other person feel judged. We both thought that it was important to be able to support and encourage people to relax, not to just wag a finger in their face telling them what to do.  Better still – just provide the supportive conditions and encouragement without even telling the person you think they should be more relaxed.  After all, what’s more delightful and helpful to hear?

a)    You’re so stressed out...just relax!
b)    You’re a great friend and I really care about you. Life seems hard for you at the moment – would you like to spend a week chilling out in my multi-million dollar Byron Bay beachhouse?

OK – obviously a rhetorical question, but as I was typing I spent a few seconds imagining a friend in front of me saying a) and b).  When I imagined someone saying a) I had tightness in my chest, and feelings of disappointment and not being understood.  When I imagined b) I felt relaxed, delighted, and very connected to my imaginary property tycoon friend.

I also winced at the thought of how many thousands of times I’ve told someone to ‘chill out’ or ‘just relax’ and how this might have made the other person feel.  Because my illness causes a lot of adrenal problems and anxiety, I probably order myself to relax many more time than I say it to anyone else. So, maybe I’ll try to take a break from telling other people – and myself – to ‘just chill out.’  (Because it’s probably the least likely thing to induce any chilled-ness!)

Coming back down to my little caravan in the bush after my conversation with Jacqui  I lay on the wooden deck outside the van, and started listening to a Tara Brach talk. She said, ‘ I sometimes get impatient with the instructions that are given traditionally for meditation which is ‘just relax, just relax, be in the present moment’...as if that’s, like, an easy thing to do!’

Relaxing is not, like, an easy thing to do – or we’d all be walking around in a state of calm equanimity.  I must try to remember that next time I’m with an uptight person (such as myself!) and am thinking impatiently to myself, ‘Could you just relax!’

My fantasy Byron Bay beach house. Boy...could I relax there!

My Little Everest

This post was written in December 2009, when I was spending a month staying at a Buddhist monastery near Sydney, Australia.

Monday 7th December

Yesterday I had a long chat with one of the monks who live at this monastery, and it turned out to be very helpful.  Because I’m usually housebound or bedbound with my illness I can’t get out to meditation classes, so I’m pretty much on my own as far as meditation instruction goes. Being able to come to Santi Forest Monastery for a few weeks, and have people I can talk to about meditation is so valuable.

I first got in contact with this monastery through telephone.  I rang, talked to the Abbott, and then rang him every few weeks to ask meditation questions.  I was very embarrassed when I met him to find out what an esteemed and extremely busy Abbott he is – to think I was bothering him with my oh-so-basic meditation questions still makes me cringe a bit.  After the second or third phone call, he said that I could come and stay at Santi if I wanted to. He said I didn’t have to attend breakfast, morning meetings, or do any work – I could just come as I was and do whatever I was able to do.

This was a big challenge for me – firstly to summon the energy to get to the monastery, secondly, to deal with the shame I felt at not being able to get up early,work, and meditate like everyone else, and, thirdly, to overcome the fear at spending 6 weeks with no distractions – just me and my illness. I had spent the past 10 years doing everything I could to avoid feeling my pain, and now it was just going to be the two of us for 6 whole weeks!  How romantic – me and my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in a little hut in the woods.

It turned out to be even tougher than I thought it would be.  I got very sick after I arrived and struggled even to get to the main midday meal and have a shower.  All I seemed to do was lie in my bed in my little hut and cry.  I felt like I was in prison. Looking at the people around me all I could think was, ‘What are you doing here?  Why do you seem so happy...this is hell!’ Whenever I talked to the Abbott I’d cry, and I kept thinking that he must be thinking, ‘Why did I ask this crazy woman to come here?!’

I vividly remember talking to him just before I left. I apologised for spending the whole 6 weeks in tears. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘Every monastery needs someone who just sits in the their kuti [hut] and cries.’ I smiled with relief, and we both laughed.

‘You’ve done a good job, ‘he said.  Somehow I knew that he was being completely sincere - although, if anyone else had said this to me I wouldn’t have believed them. I felt that he really did think what I’d done was difficult, and I’d done well in persisting with it.  I have to say I agreed with him – I certainly didn’t feel any better physically, but I knew that in facing my illness head-on I’d climbed my own little Everest.