Today in meditation I went deeply into my own darkness, into sadness and fear and rage. It made me remember starting out with my meditation practice, when almost every session brought with it tides of immense emotion rolling through me. Grief, sadness, the darkness in my heart. Mindfulness and meditation are often sold as the pathway to inner peace, and they are that, but perhaps the spiritual spin doctors who encourage these practices ignore their darker side. That when we sit still and encourage our mind to do the same we begin to see ourselves clearly and to feel that which we have pushed away. Whatever we have experienced that has been too painful to bear and has been hidden in the recesses of our subconscious starts to emerge from the murky depths to be seen and felt and ultimately washed clean like the rain hammering on the roof above me and trickling down the windows around me.
My first regular meditation practice was accompanied by a book called the Presence Process by Michael Brown. Michael urges us that the process is not about feeling good but more about getting good at feeling. I remembered his wisdom this morning as my old friends anger and sadness reared their heads and tried to take me along with their stories. But instead of riding those emotions, I allowed them to ride through me, to be held and released as we would comfort a small child. Over and over again I returned to my breath. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. It was ok to feel the emotion without it’s story, without needing to understand what or where or why it had come.
I know that I can allow myself to sob when I lie on my bed so that is where I went, to cry it out, to wash my soul clean. But anger did not want to cry, anger certainly did not want to be processed silently in meditation. Anger needs to express, to move, to shout or sing. Anger brings fire and fire is alive and dangerous and beautiful. Does my purpose and passion lie the other side of anger? Through dance and song and ROOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRR can I release the gifts that are there inside of me? How do I embrace my anger when for so long I was afraid of it, so afraid that I could not name it, could not own it. For years I could not feel anger, only sadness. When someone angered me I would cry! For crying was accepted in my house growing up, anger was not. My husband is Glaswegian and even now it only takes a few words in what we call “scary Scottish” to have me running for cover. What part of me is still afraid? I need it now, I need it to re-join the fold, the coherent whole that I am becoming. For anger is a doorway. I sense untold riches behind the door but I am not yet ready to embrace it. I pray that God, the angels and this magical place will support me in opening that door and unearthing the hidden treasure beyond, the treasure of my heart, the treasure of my soul.
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