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.

My Breath and I, We’re the Best of Mates

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

Last night, after an intense meditation where I was feeling a lot of tension and resistance in my mind and body, I went up to the monastery library to see if I could find anything helpful to read.  I really felt completely stuck – I could observe the tension, the fighting, the utter dislike of my own thoughts and experience – but I couldn’t find any way of working with them.  Every ‘technique’ I tried just left me feeling more and more stuck. 

I found a book by the Buddhist monk Ajahn Brahm called Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond. Ajahn Brahm was born in the UK, but for many years has been the Abbot of a monastery in Australia.  (He’s currently in the news for controversially ordaining women, and being kicked out of the Thai lineage his monastery  belonged to...but that’s another story).

Often when I go searching for something in a book that will help me during my ‘stuck’ periods I find nothing, but this time I found a really beautiful section on relating to meditation in a friendly, relaxed, way.  It was exactly what I needed to read.  Here’s the section – may you find it useful too.

‘I love meditation.  I enjoy it so much...Meditation is like a dear old friend that you want to spend time with...as for the meditation object, the breath, we’ve had such a good time together, my breath and I. We’re the best of mates...The opposite of course, is when you know you have to be with that friggin breath and you don’t like it...you see it coming along the other side of the street and you think, ‘Oh my God, here it is again.’

I use the following method to overcome any ill will toward my breath.  I look upon my breath like a newborn son or daughter.  Would you leave your baby at the shopping mall and just forget it?  Would you drop it as you’re walking on the road? If you appreciated your breath as much as your child or someone else who is very, very dear to you and very vulnerable, you would never drop, forget, or abandon it. ...When you have loving-kindness towards the meditation object you do not need much effort to hold it.’

I just love Ajahn Brahm’s happy, uncomplicated, joyful view of meditation.  After I read this I realised how much I see meditation as a chore; ‘I’m sick, and I’ve obviously done something wrong to be given this illness, so now I’ve got to do all this awful, boring, hard work to get better.’  I usually feel like I’m trudging along a long road with a heavy load.  Reading Ajahn Brahm’s book is a good reminder to me to take things a little more lightly – and a lot more kindly.

                                                                       Ajahn Brahm

Introduction

Hi! Welcome to The Chronic Meditator.  Here are some links to different posts you might be interested in. 

• Meditation ideas: Simple Breath Meditation , Pain Meditation 
• My meditation experiences:  Voices in My Head, Too Wired to Meditate, Photoshop Meditation Analogy, Emasculated by Buddhism and The Guest House.
  
• Different meditation postures:  Lie back and think of...your breath.
  
• LovingKindness (metta) meditation: Stealth Metta, and Sharon Salzberg retreat podcast 
  
• Reflections on living with a chronic illness: The 1001 Things, and Fishing Without a Hook. 
• And, if you're just dying to read a rant about my mum...pop over here.