Random Thoughts on Healing

When I had my nighttime panic attack on retreat recently, my brain tried to convince me I was a bad Buddhist.  After all, it said, you've been meditating over 17 years, can't you get it right every once in a while?
Here are some other weird and perverse stories that I have carried:
When I got ulcers about 8 years ago, I was convinced it was because of all the hard drinking I had done in high school when I was trying to numb out and pretend I wasn't angry at my mother.   I had effectively worn away my insides from being irresponsible.
When I had a month's siege of headaches four or five years ago, I was convinced I had a brain tumor and my mind fixed on the fear factor and kept me spinning.  Working in hospice and seeing people with brain cancer brought this into focus and feeling I had inherited my mother's innate frailty with life, I was convinced.
When I couldn't remember elements of my childhood while working away on the memoir during the last couple of years, I was sure that it was because I had done drugs and alcohol in my youth and destroyed most of my brain cells responsible for childhood memories.
When I heard from two orthopedic doctors that I might need knee replacement, I immediately thought it had to do with carrying too much weight around for too long, which of course led me to proclaim that I didn't know how to live a healthy life.
When I sit in the midst of feeling lonely and sad, which has been happening a bunch lately, I begin to question my innate ability to love others, to be lovable, to know how to be in relationships, thinking frequently that I"m too aloof and know-it-all  for my own good.  Since that was a childhood defense for me, it's logical it would continue.  Mostly I think I"m pretty good with family, but as to the rest of it -- the friendship and lovers, I'm not so sure...


There are many more instances of my judging mind than the ones mentioned above, because my brain has been busy for a very long time monitoring my behavior, ever ready to give me failing grade for not being good enough.  Being mindful and seeing this as I do, my job is clearly to head this off at the pass, to close the door to the judgment and stories, say "no thank you," and get on with the adventure of living, as opposed to evaluating.  A conversation I had yesterday with a gentle healer went a long way to opening up the concept of trauma to me, and I want to bring this to bear on all of this.  Trauma takes many forms in our life -- it can look like child beating, or just plain neglect and contempt.  It can be wartime blood and death, or it can be getting clobbered by a car while crossing a city street in my neighborhood.  It can be rape and incest, or a continual negation of one's character.  Our body is an amazing vessel that carries all our life experiences, storing away the more painful into a deeper place often, and as we age, get a little more tired, we slow down and become quieter, and this body begins to reveal the truth.  There is pain, and it has a history.  We can respond in a couple of ways:  we can continue doing what we're used to, telling stories and making judgments, or we can approach the difficulty with love and compassion.  If we choose this, we can heal ourselves and begin to feel normal.

It turns out that the primary faculty that leads to healing the heart (and by association the body) is love and affection.  I enjoy saying that because it reminds me of the Dalai Lama who said that his religion is kindness, and this feels profoundly true to me.  So, despite whatever suffering (trauma) we (I) have endured, we (I) need to summon kindness and compassion so we can continue with the adventure of being alive.  I have come to this wisdom late in life, but no matter, because I see the fruits of this kind of attention.  I have discovered my own ability to stop and rub my fingers when they ache as I practice the piano for hours, and say to myself gently, "there, there, it's just stiffness."  I've found my vital breath in the midst of a storm of mindLESSness and been able to return to balance.  I've looked back at the trajectory of my life and seen all the beautiful humans and animals I have loved and been loved by.  Or ... just recently I've looked at my swollen knee and just seen a creaky sore joint that is now 70 years old, then touched it with care.

The road ahead for all of us is getting shorter each day we are alive, and it only seems reasonable to apply love, which is the root of being a human, not stories and judgment which lack form and truth.  I write and I tell stories because I must, it is part of inhabiting my life, but those stories are part of a much larger trajectory which is, in fact, about telling the truth and creating beauty.  I think that's why I'm here.