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Gentle is the Flow
River de Chute, Easton, Maine
Today's Saying: Your unpleasant emotions are not in themselves an obstruction to your spiritual growth and joy; only in ignoring them are they an obstruction. When we see these emotions as the path, we can attend to them, working with them, and they are transformed like poison transmuted into honey. The honey is already in the poison. Work with the poison, and you will enjoy the honey. So, we need to befriend both our positive and negative emotions.
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Note: Different spiritual paths provide different means to work with our ever-changing emotional states. Even in one path, such as Tibetan Buddhism, how one works with emotions changes from one level of the path to another. Yet, my point below entails we cannot bypass feelings we do not want to feel and expect their transformation to occur. Another point I make is we need to be with the body. Even in meditation that seeks to transcend the body, the momentary pleasure enjoyed, such as in a feeling of transcendence or oneness with one's god, will not likely do much to heal emotional wounding rooted in the body. One can bypass the body and have ecstatic experiences, but those leave when one returns to the consciousness of the body. Hence, we are not wise to use our faith path or spirituality to avoid being-with the feelings we find unpleasant. The only way to enjoy inner unity consistently is to grow there: there are no short-cuts, even if one has many brief visits to that harmony within, our natural being. I learned this the hard way, seeing all my elevated experiences in meditation seemed largely to leave untouched the shadow of repressed emotions. Thankfully, Buddhism helped me see how better to work with emotions bodily. I was blessed to discover all feelings are workable. In befriending positive feelings, we can intentionally cultivate those qualities directly, both inside and outside meditation. There are different ways to do that; however, that is not the subject for this presentation, but one forthcoming. I am hopeful you will see wisdom for yourself herein and how it can apply to whatever wisdom path you follow.
Peace!
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Bulleh Shah (b. 1680), Punjabi philosopher and Sufi poet - "My Eyes Pour Out Tears":
He left me, and himself he departed;
What fault was there in me?
Neither at night nor in the day do I sleep in peace;
My eyes pour out tears!
Sharper than swords and spears are the arrows of love!
There is no one as cruel as love;
This malady no physician can cure.
There is no peace, not for a moment,
So intense is the pain of separation!
O Bullah, if the Lord were to shower
His grace, My days would radically change!
He left me, and himself he departed.
What fault was there in me?
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Bulleh Shah's poem fits the genre of the lament. Lament is called in contemplative spirituality aridity or desolation. Aridity suggests a sense of dryness - all the juice, so to speak, has gone out. Desolation speaks of the absence of consolation - one feels no comfort. And most of us begin a spiritual practice for we long to feel more alive and to sense consolation.
Lament is a form of prayer common in devotional paths. One lives in the sense of a relationship with a personal object of worship. Bulleh Shah feels himself cut off from closeness with Allah, even saying Allah has forsaken Allah. In the Christian and Jewish Scriptures, the Psalms (HaMizmor), lament is the most frequent genre by far, divided between individual and community ones. Jesus spoke a lament on the cross, quoted from Psalm 22.1, "My God! My God! Why have you abandoned me?"
The feeling of lament occurs in nontheistic paths, too, like Zen Buddhism. This is true for a wide variety of feeling-textures arise in all paths, as in life generally. And we can shift quickly from a feeling of connection and vitality to separation and staleness. A nontheistic spirituality may not have a God-image; yet, it ushers one into a sense of intimacy with something many personalize as a deity.
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I recently sat in meditation on an evening in which I felt this aridity and disconnect all day. I observed this silently. I was befuddled by how I had felt since the morning. So, I did not have the energy to cheer myself up or enliven the sit. I stayed the whole time, mainly in a sensation of numbness. This inertness did not concern me much, while it would have years before. Why? I will speak to this point.
I have practiced many years in meditation with being-with the feelings of aridity and desolation - indeed, with all feeling states that arise in and outside meditation. This has been a long journey. Initially, I was much attached to a devotional path. I assumed the normal feeling was to sense closeness to my god. And many in my form of Christianity taught feeling our god absent was a sign of sin standing between us. Furthermore, I equated closeness with my god to feeling what I interpreted as closeness. So, I struggled when not feeling that intimacy. I would pursue it, going in and out of it.
Over time, I learned there is not a normal way to feel inside or outside meditation, as in life outside the quiet alone. One of the lessons of being in the Silence is to detach from feeling entitled to experience only the sentiments we wish. Attaching either to pleasant and unpleasant feelings brings suffering. It took Buddhism to teach me that vital lesson. Still, I have had to keep practicing this truth for it to grow in my experience.
When we withdraw from reliance on particular sensations, even welcoming aridity and desolation, we relax, and something remarkable happens. We learn how to sense Presence with us, close to us, one with us, even in the sense of absence. If we allow ourselves, when we sense dryness and emptiness, to get close to what we feel in the body, something opens up. We sense absence is not absence at all. Absence is teeming with Presence. Absence is alive. Therefore, a feeling of intimacy and separation are two sides of the same coin, so to speak, even as aridity and vitality are.
Yet, to learn this in experience, we do not leave the body during these feelings. We keep returning to the body, the ground of sensation, not fleeing into flights of fancy. We listen to what we say in the head about what feeling arises in the body - "Why am I feeling this way?," "I feel awful!," "What's wrong with me?," "I just hate feeling like this!" An underlying message is likely, "I shouldn't have to feel like this" - that is the message of entitlement. Entitlement is a form of hubris.
One of the keys here is not to equate Presence with any feeling. Presence is stable. Feeling abandoned by Allah, Bulleh Shah affirms Allah is near by speaking to Allah. The Jewish writers of the Psalms do the same thing. Prayers of lament express that what one feels is not true - feelings say, "I am alone, empty," prayer says, "You are with me, fullness of life is here."
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Does this mean we should not know sadness in times of aridity or felt separation? Again, if grief arises, it arises. This is to be honored. My experience is that the more one learns this truth of the feeling of aridity and absence being a valid expression of Presence and Life, one relaxes with it more easily and finds, oddly, fewer times of these feelings. By pursuing pleasurable sensations as the only normal way to feel, we create more the opposite of those pleasant feelings.
We can experience the joy that is beyond the opposites of pleasing and displeasing. This joy is hard to put into words, and, sometimes, we use the word bliss. This bliss is an inner satisfaction, contentment, equanimity; bliss arises when one ceases pursuing only pleasant feelings and opens to be intimate with Life in all passing states of sensation.
And the sense of lament, and expressing lament, belongs as one of the ways Life shows itself to us. If one finds herself at a point in which she no longer feels lament, good. But, good, too, if one does not. We feel what we feel, and any feeling can be sacramental if we allow it to be.
There is no need to suppress any feeling. Instead, by not hiding it, we can be-with it. If needed, we can explore the root of the feeling. If we suppress it, it is likely to cause harm later, for what is concealed tends to be expressed in ways consciously we do not wish to happen. So, meditation is a time for learning to be gentle with ourselves, whatever we feel. And, also, we may discover a need to get professional help for emotional healing. Learning to relax and be-with unpleasant emotions does not mean not being unaware that they often speak to us of something unresolved within us. For example, if one often feels disconnected, she may have a defense against intimacy. But we begin, regardless, with a gentle being-with, a kind welcome to whatever feeling is present - that is the first step.
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An exception... What I have said above does not exclude that a person could face an emotional intensity in sitting meditation in which it might be wise to come out. If it occurs, this is a sign one has something deep-rooted in need of healing. Yet, if it does, one need not judge herself. There is nothing wrong with admitting one needs help to resolve inner pain. Suppose someone does come out of meditation due to a sense of being overwhelmed by an unpleasant emotional reaction. In that case, I suggest doing a form of mindful walking - this is a way of meditation.
And persons on a spiritual path are wise not to think spiritual practice alone will assuredly take care of all one's need of emotional healing. Sometimes, it is wise to get professional help as an accompaniment to one's spiritual practices - that help is part of the path, too.
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*© Brian K. Wilcox, 2021
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse. The book is a collection of poems based on wisdom traditions, predominantly Christian, Buddhist, and Sufi, with extensive notes on the poetry's teachings and imagery.
*Bulleh Shah poem from, Best Poems Encyclopedia, www.best-poems.net .
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