Witnessing: Attention, Intention and Healing

When we think of healing ourselves, the thoughts and focus revolve around me, myself, I-- my needs alone, and what is necessary to become whole.  Antennae should sprout up whenever a concern or effort becomes self-centric, because that type of concentration isn't healing, it's actually antithetical to healing.  That type of focus is small, cramped, without space or breath.  And a healing is not possible when I am living in that compressed space.

\Counter intuitively, holding someone or something fully in your attention is an act of self-healing.  This is so because your energy is in flow, moving from inside to out and back again. It's not a masochistic "you come before me", but more an inclusive acknowledgement that a universal love flows in and outside myself, connecting, interconnecting.  A salve completing the Whole.  In physical terms, this might resemble the infinity symbol, the horizontal figure eight.  In that act of interconnecting, we allow ourselves to let go of ego's narrow agenda and we enter a universal connection.  Because of this unconditional attention to someone else, paid attention becomes a prepayment I benefit from.  This paid attention benefits the environment, myself as well as others.

\ I've written about materiality and energy in space (Place, Space, Materiality and Health), wherein I speak about the influence of energy on space, humans and nature.  We all have felt an environment or space blessed by a smudge stick, prayer or meditation.  And alternately, we have felt the tensio\n in the energy of a space that has had a recent argument or violence in it.  We don't consider the vitality of this energy, how it supports or undermines a flourishing.  Similarly, we don't consider the energy of a full attention on an other or on a space.  Humans are designed to connect.  It is in this connection, these exchanges of energy that create a healing.

How could it be that this simple act of observing another (without an agenda) could be so nourishing to another and oneself?   Giving attention, to be a witness is to be in a relaxed, tension free place in oneself.  Our bodies and more whole self relax into the rightness of the Self in this state.  This unto itself is a healing.  It rights (normalizes) hormonal releases (endocrine system), the neurotransmitters that dictate hormone releases from our central nervous system, it hosts a more relaxed, stress-free environment from which to act from, to Be in.  In this state, one creates a slower, more accepting self environment that impacts relationship.  This type of energy nourishes the atmosphere around it, as mentioned above. One can feel the difference; this ripples out.  And as indicated above, it circles around and cultivates the same within.  Mutuality.  Healing is never singular, but always exponential.

What does intention have to do with an attention that heals?  For many, an intention is a mental formation directed.  An intention might start with an idea, but if it is true, it is surrounded by feeling.  It is something that does not wince at not knowing and uncertainty.  Feeling supports intention in a language with non-words the cognitive self cannot understand.  It is a connection to this type of feeling that allows the Witness to suspend the monkey-mind's goings-on, permitting a deeper attention, which saturates an atmosphere with a more relaxed openness.

\

Memory: Portals and Thresholds

The brain is a mysterious organ.  Medical people are the first to admit although they know an iota of its workings, for the most part, it's a mystery.  Why, for example does a historically belligerent psychopath become docile and non-manipulative after sustaining a brain injury?  Reasoning brings us to our anatomy and physiology texts to understand better why damage to one aspect of the brain jump-starts another part, changing personality sometimes in the process. 

There are lots of reasons and speculations behind what happens in the world of Alzheimer or dementia patients.  Those of us with experience working with people with memory challenges do a lot of watching and surmising.  But we really don't know what a person with this type of brain change is going through.  We can speculate, but we don't really know. Understanding that there is an atrophying in the synapses of the brain which impact neuro-transmission is information, but that knowledge does little to support the relationship at hand. Occasionally, there will be a moment when the portal door of their world opens up to the outside and one  sees the terror of their situation (only for a moment).  Something else is required.  In our trying to understand their reality, we can often end up becoming extremely limited in our observations, possibly because it's impossible to have a fixed knowing for ourselves in regards to their reality (and any one's reality if the truth be told).

The fact is, we are breathing the same air, eating the same food, but living extremely different realities (or are we?). As a dear mentor of old used to tell me, "What can you trust?  Most aspects of oneself are wholly unreliable.  But there is usually something which can be relied upon, something one can trust in oneself." Whereas brain function in the memory-challenged is mostly fully unreliable (and getting more so all the time), the experience and understanding the world through the experience of energy can almost always be trusted.  Much like a sense that has been lost, other senses pick up the sensitivity and awareness.  Hearing becomes more acute for the blind, touch and sight becomes acute for the deaf.  Possibly, energy awareness becomes larger when any part of the body loses function, especially mental capacity. Again, it is possible the body circumnavigates its loss into a win of sorts.

Most Chinese temples and ancient abodes  have elevated (about 18 inch) thresholds.  Legend says these raised thresholds were meant to trip up bad spirits from entering the temple. In this day and age this myth might serve to remind us to remember (the best parts of) ourselves as we high-step into the new territory of space.  And like the many maladies that will strike us over a lifetime, loss of  memory is that new space, whether it be our own or somebody else.

Having information or knowledge about the disease process or the function of the brain system is just that, its information.  Unfortunately its not all that helpful in having a relationship with memory challenged people.  Being with someone with memory changes requires another aspect of ourselves other then the part of us that is trying to figure him/her/the expression out, a part that isn't so entrenched in one's own reality.  It's an opportunity to high step it over that threshold and straddle both realities;  my own which I (delusionally) believe to be infallible and an other, seemingly anchored in a suspension of time and place.  Humble meets humanity and there is a breath.

Ego-comfort often demands of us to assume much.  For the ego, it's comforting to imagine what we think another is going through, thinking or feeling.  That is our sentimentality showing through, a type of romanticizing of the condition, probably due to the paradoxically perceived realities-- theirs and ones own.  It's also ego's self-soothing mechanism to believe my reality is somewhat more "real" than a memory-changing other.  The truth is their reality is just as real for them as mine is for me.  I need to find in myself that which can accept this.  Otherwise, energetically I will always read as patronizing to the mentally challenged and that would be an insurmountable obstacle to making a trust relationship with them. When approached energetically, other's manifestation is taken in differently because one's own approach has become different.  One becomes less concerned about cognitively understanding the sometimes startling behavior or pattern of thought ("lack of reason" as ego knows it) and more concerned with meeting the energy field of oneself and the other. 

This idea of seeing another through the momentary portals that materialize, stepping over those high thresholds to meet another requires a willingness to suspend one's entrenched belief in what reality is.
This approach calls for us to be more open, cultivate an intrigue and wonder of what is there, an energetic being who Is and the shared time.  Memory lapses are real, but they become less "the thing" to notice and more the terrain that is tread.  Attention is in the life present, not necessarily the organic manifestation.

Threshold  

By R. S. Thomas
 

I emerge from the mind’s

cave into the worse darkness

outside, where things pass and

the Lord is in none of them.

I have heard the still, small voice

and it was that of the bacteria

demolishing my cosmos. I

have lingered too long on

this threshold, but where can I go?

To look back is to lose the soul

I was leading upwards towards

the light. To look forward? Ah,

what balance is needed at

the edges of such an abyss.

I am alone on the surface

of a turning planet. What

to do but, like Michelangelo’s

Adam, put my hand

out into unknown space,

hoping for the reciprocating touch?

Healing in the Unknown

We are human.  We have our ideas and our expectations about everything.  However, sometimes a project, a healing, an effort of one kind or another takes on a life of its own.  It indicates to us how it should go, a direction sometimes quite counter to our expectations and even what we know we "know".  A totally unexpected understanding of how energy moves becomes apparent.

This is a huge opportunity. It is a huge opportunity to Be with what Is, to follow the course of energy that is present, that is guiding me in the moment.  Do I free myself from my rigid expectation, acknowledging what is, trust in the unfolding?  What is required of me to allow this shift of attitude, to change an approach?

Experientially, this opening and awareness has transpired because a modicum of relaxation has entered.  There is less tension around the original expectation. I see there is a slight difference in the apparent energy; before it was so dense, the layers endless, no relief in sight.  I sense a shift has happened, there is an open space available, some breath has been here.  When/how did that happen?  What was present before was a lot of chaotic and static resistance, a blockage. I want to discount this aspect of a healing.  I don't even want to admit it is part of it.  But it is.  It's the messy, ugly, tense part.  The part that doesn't work, has no flow, seemingly little hope is present there.  And that is how it should be; that stuck, uncomfortable no-way-out sense is necessary.  Without that piece, that fever pitch polarity, that excruciating rock bottom reached doesn't give relaxation the loosened door hinge to sneak past.

Especially when working with others, it is very easy to be automatic.  A type of judgement comes in where you've sized up their capacities, their weaknesses, you think you know how to approach them and how to approach the project or healing.  What happens is, quietly the other's efforts (which are unlike your own) have transformed the energy of the project. What you thought was going to have to be the first step, the first hurdle is not.  It is something else. Perhaps, another type of order due to that person's sensibility and type has altered the healing, the coming to a semblance of its own order in the healing.  In my normal way (usually when I've done all that sensible executive assessing), I've misjudged them and their approach.  My unrecognized prejudices have dismissed or denigrated their capacities and misinterpreted what I characterized as weaknesses.  That's human me pretending to be alpha. But the fact of the matter is something is different. The energy has changed.  The layers have fallen away, and I had very little if anything to do with that.  It's unlikely in my world view, but there you have it.  It's surprising.  It's mysterious.  It's welcomed.  It's the Unknown at work.


When this phenomenon occurs it is possible to be grateful.  Grateful that you apparently aren't in charge and don't carry the responsibility for the resolution.  This isn't abdication.  It is inclusion.  It is recognizing something greater than me is at work, something which is unknown.  The awareness of the unknown becomes more transparent when I let go of my personal point of view, my expectations.  It includes others and their seemingly impossible perspective. It allows for the unexpected.  This is what is interesting about healing work.  This is what is interesting about anything; a totally unimaginable, unexpected process and/or outcome.

Gabriel said: "None of us there is, but has a known station."  Koran, chapter 37, verse 164

Because of our chronically reliable attachments (ie: ideas, identity, beliefs, knowledge, feelings), it's a miracle the unknown ever comes for a visit making itself visible, or that we could experience a deep enough sense of relaxation to attract it or have an awareness of it.  In human indoctrination, it is mandatory to know.  It's a different matter entirely to be moving toward a "known station" as the Koran says above, while all the while not knowing what that is.  The known station is not in my power or understanding, but I travel the unknown to get there.  So goes the healing process.

"Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations.  What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?  The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?"  --Stephen W. Hawking

Place Travel: Experiencing Culture

The experience of being in another culture foreign from the one you usually find yourself is valuable on many levels.  It forces us to alter our habits and witness the values of others, as surreal as it may sometimes be. There is an internal tugging that goes on frequently, when differences are before you.  "I don't like this.... I don't like that" are frequently felt.  It is liberating to have the experience of necessarily detaching from these likes and dislikes in order to get through the day.  It opens our internal doors and windows and allows another breeze to blow through.

One doesn’t have to go far to “travel” to other cultures.  The Mall and Walmart are foreign cultures to many:  Chinatown-USA, a boyscout camp, an outdoor fish market, a truck stop.  Cultural dynamics are everywhere; family of origin, college campus’, places of worship.  All geographical areas have their unique and peculiar culture (shore communities, wooded rural places, mountain, metropolis’, poor, working-class, affluent).  Fast food restaurants, Whole Foods, Starbucks, food co-ops, hospitals all work hard at evolving a human business culture.  The lighting, the layout of space, operation procedures are all ways they intentionally attract customers.

  C

Our bodies, minds and spirits are challenged on an ongoing basis when on foreign soil. Experiencing differences is the norm. Differences of energy, foods, people/personalities, sounds of places,-- ordinary sounds like languages and indigenous insects/animals wake up intimate parts of myself.  I begin to open, have an internal expansion, not only to the outside, but to the inside.  I sometimes experience a closing, when judgments or criticisms are ever present in small gnat-y ways and in larger reactions. I travel with these openings/closings as I traverse these various terrains.  I’m “shook” up by the cultural details and impressions.

Most of us continually make choices to travel or not, to subject ourselves to other cultures. We often choose to not enter cultures that challenge our own well established internal ones.  Probably the most rich aspect of “space travel” is a recognition of my own internal culture.  I begin to notice the flexible and inflexible parts of myself willing and unwilling to shift to accommodate the differences. My energy changes depending on an internal defense to the outside or conversely, a welcoming that is available to the foreign.  The more I am aware of this internal culture, the better prepared I am going to these other places.  

I know there could be tension visiting my friend because he doesn’t care about what he eats, but I care about what I eat.  I want to allow him to have his food culture, while still respecting mine.  Ahead of time I decide to not talk about food or nutrition unless he asks me with genuine interest, to suspend the likely judgment I will have surrounded by his white bread and make sure I obtain good, whole grain bread for myself for breakfasts.  Low and behold, our affection and care for each other is able to survive our differences.  And we both eat what we want with only a few shared loving wise cracks in between.

What resources of our own personal internal culture are available to us, that we draw upon whether it be on a hot crowded train, standing-room-only traversing India’s countryside or sharing a semi-private hospital room with a non-stop TV watcher-roomate? The answer can never be, not to travel.  Traveling is inevitable.  Cultures collide, they are around every corner. Perhaps, Know thyself.  Accept what is.  Enjoy life.

The Fine Art of Self Soothing

I’ve blogged regularly on the subject of anxiety (Oy Vay: High Anxiety),  the possible reasons for the exponential increase over the last several years of the culture’s anxiety and possible ways to approach it holistically.  Most of what I write about has been in the context of the adult population.  This post mostly concerns children and young adults.

Once upon a time, and long long long ago, generations of parents cultivated in their babies and young children the art of self soothing.  This was a spontaneous and natural response on parent’s parts, probably learned from generations before them, involving bed time rituals to settle their kids: warm, relaxing baths, melodically read bed time stories, oils massaged into their necks and temples and sung lullabies.  It was (subliminally?) considered an unconditional love time when the central nervous system settles down for the night, the mom and child’s breathing rhythms match up and synchronize and a sense of calm, all-is-well-in-the-world takes precedence.  Everybody in the home would dial it back a bit and a sense of safety, oneness and wellbeing was shared.

There is a natural response to the sun setting, darkness moving in, and the universal signal by our circadian rhythm to quiet and sleep.  There are many variations on this.  In a darkened bedroom, a parent sitting with a child listening together to the crickets or bullfrogs outside, something they do in the summer months when the windows are open, the curtain fluttering languidly against the sill.  Sometimes there is a few spare murmurs between them on the mutuality of the share. Night sounds. Sounds that becomes associated with rest, repose and comfort.  Subliminal images and an ambiance that trigger in oneself from an early age that all is well. It just as easily could be the urban sound of cars moving on the street outside, an occasional muffled horn sounding or the magical non-sound of snow falling, collecting on trees or pavement.  There is a sense of safety in the nightly being tucked in in a particular way and the comfort of no light, maybe sounds of family moving in a kitchen, inaudible voices in conversation or other household members making their own sleep preparations.

I think these night-time rituals must still go on to some extent in most households across the world; how could they not, they bring delight and peace to all.  But it is a different world we live in now, and the children are anxious. There is a trend of popping Melatonin for 12 year olds and kids reporting they can’t go to sleep for hours after lying down. The members of today’s nuclear family often each have a bedroom of their own, thus the comforting sounds of a sister or brother in a bunk above snoring lightly aren’t present to a sibling as they find their way to sleep.

It’s a more complicated world, with more tenacious tensions. And somehow, parents (for all the reasons mentioned in my other posts dealing with anxiety) aren’t managing their own tensions well, which obviously osmotically affects their children. Adults perhaps don’t have a sense of their own containment or a value for the sublime and ephemeral markers which produce a perfect repose.  It may be akin to the difference of writing a letter by hand instead of sending an email or singing a song instead of playing it on a CD player, or reading a story aloud instead of hearing it on an electronic device.  Something of great value transpires in the direct human expression that will never be matched otherwise by anything else.  Children energetically require this.  And they are missing it.

So, we have children experiencing adult challenges (like insomnia) and being treated like adults in how it is remedied. Especially babies and children need to learn the fine art of self soothing. And probably direct information is not the best approach (breathing techniques, relaxation exercises, etc).  Accessing their imaginations in a positive way around the ending of a day and the beginning of a night, providing markers and repetitive opportunities to help them identify in their own unique way that which relaxes them would be a tremendous act of charity they will have their entire lives to draw upon. Parents realizing one’s own held tensions, hypervigiliance, lack of trust of the unfolding of the day, of a childhood, of a life is a big start.

For many families, child-rearing has become a very tense, uber-planned, perfection-oriented feat to perform.  When really, it is this natural exploration of being in relationship with someone who has these huge growth and evolutionary leaps over a twenty year period.  Life moves extremely quickly when raising a child, we want to grasp a knowing what to do when we’re stymied.  Understandably.  But this inability to have a spontaneous response and reliance on contrived and strategized approaches can be stifling, especially to an open perception, which is a child. 

I have a sense this is anxiety producing for kids; this lack of trust of the unknown which their parents and other adults around them suffer.  And nothing makes a kid more anxious than (energetically) witnessing a suffering parent.

Nature as Healing

If you had told me last week I would be studying a chipmunk, it's movements and apparent hygiene habits for over an hour on a given day this week, I probably would have said you were crazy.  But it happened.  Who has the time (besides a rodent-ologist) to do that?  Anyone who spends a prolonged period of time out doors is subject to nature's spell.

"Nature's spell" being, a much slower vibration than the modern, technology-fraught one most of us are subject to all the time. We are subject to nature's energies when we are among trees, plants, water, wild animals, air currents and the stars for lengthy periods.  They impact us.  Their vibration is much slower.  Nature's energy is a-buzz with constant activity.  But its layered and varied and harmonious with that which is around it.  Most of all, it is related.

From the decaying matter at the forest's sub-terrain with it's trillions of microbes, bacteria and insects relating to its matter and each other to the wild animals that navigate it and interface with it's layers.  Woodpeckers impact a tree's life by it's constant hammering, drilling holes, releasing from layers of bark the life working in the tree. Wind and storms topple weakened trees providing homes to live in, mulch for the ground below, fertile foundations for moss and fungi to thrive.

From a human perspective, nature can be violent and apparently ruthless. But somehow it is always related.  The great black bear of Alaska in salmon season can be seen grabbing flying fish in mid-air, taking down it's prey in a gory spectacle.  But it never takes more than it needs.  No wild thing acts outside of it's nature, because it is living it's nature.

I think we become more sensitized to outside nature's vibrations just because its mass is so immense (compared to our own relatively puny mass); our internal senses are trumped by the shear mass of nature's relating vibration surrounding us.  Our own nature's vibration is Us.  You'd think it would be hard to miss, this nature running through us. But much of our internal workings are automatic (thankfully).  We don't have to think or have an awareness of our respiratory, endocrine or cardiac systems for them to function.  Whereas that is very convenient on most days, the other side of the coin is that we take our functions for granted and usually have forgotten they are doing a massive job without any of our (gross) attention. This lack of awareness in a way desensitizes us to the more opaque layers of our energetic self.

What could be the importance of having an awareness of one's own nature?  The awareness of having a more sensitized connection to external nature is a clue.  We "See" as we become more sensitive to nature's vibration, we begin to experience the layers of relationship. We naturally start to develop an appreciation for that and a more acute energetic listening capacity.  The same is true when the nature springs from within. Becoming more aware and connected to this deeper vibrational aspect of nature and myself can only support our health, function and sensitivity to same.  This relatedness we bring to the world and our relationships is our human inheritance, a gift from the natural world.

photo courtesy:  Mie Sato

Place, Space, Materiality and Health

Everything is material.  Everything is energy.  Everything has Qi. A closet, a room, a house are layers of embedded self.  Our "stuff" is charged with energy.  Likewise, most of our other stuff crammed into closets, buried in corners never to see the light of day, are energetically static, becoming a drain on our personal energy, and the collective energy of the space. A room, a house, objects are living, breathing things.  They bring life or they don't.  What animates them is my relationship to them.

Besides for hygiene purposes, we regularly bathe to clear our inner and outter energy fields.  Usually, we relax in a bath or shower, breathe deeper (moving the internal energies) and cleanse that which has energetically stuck to us on a given day.  Why would it be any different in a world where there is Oneness, even in regards to inanimate objects?  That which we surround ourselves and live with needs to be cared for in a similar way in which we care for our bodies.

Our materiality needs to be met, attended to.  Things that remain broken and uncared for reflect our own defunct state.  Things that are in order support a life, allowing it to work well.

What makes us so attached to the things we own, the things we don't really want or need?  Why don't we want to take care of what we have, what possessions we surround ourselves with?  What makes us hold onto more than we can handle, more than what we can attend to?

What does it mean to attend to an object, to exchange energy with something that is material (usually inanimate)?  Giving attention to an object is an exchange of energy; it acknowledges the space it takes up and therefore the space at large.  We create a place with our attention to that which we live with.  Looking at a picture, admiring it or disliking it, moving one's memory in regards to it is "owning" it and reaffirming one's relationship to it. Running a cloth or duster over objects is recognizing them, recognizing their need to have attention.  In the act of care, we acknowledge our relationship to it.  Similarly, our act of neglect recognizes our lack of relationship to the object.

What is the first thing I wake up to?  An altar created with prized objects that affirm their worth, my worth, that changes periodically depending on where I am in myself?  Or do I wake to a pile of dusty books? unfolded laundry? spent flowers in a tired vase? Papers stacked on a side table I don't want to deal with? Is the first thing I see upon waking energizing, hopeful, an impression that beckons my life to this new day ---or is it another  unattended "thing" to be ignored for the millionth time, unseen, unloved, uncared for?  This connection to inanimate objects are real and vibrant relationships that manifest all types of energy through my life and effect me and my health every day and every night.

How do I take care?  Where don't I?  How is that related to my present day reality? Does the pattern of attention (or in-attention) follow me from room to room?  Where is the place of choice?  Having choice as to what is in my life and what is not in my life. Is the collection of objects or clothes or shoes a decision not to make a choice?  Accruing materiality.  Crowding inner and outter space.  Denying Place. Not facing the energy gotten and given by such things, not acknowledging the depletion, sometimes depression these things (by no fault of their own) exert.  A type of negativity is rendered  because of my refusal to validate the relationship I have with them. How many decades has it been since I pulled that book off the shelf?  How many years ago did I last wear that dress?

Forget the psychology of objects, and "owning".  Remember the energetic dynamics that play on and impact one's life with these things and the subsequent layers of memory, influence and connection created. Engage with the concept of being a "good householder".  One's health depends upon it.