Sense (Part 3)

"...I have a tape of a Tibetan nun singing a mantra of compassion over and over for an hour, eight words over and over, and every line feels different, feels cared about, and experienced as she is singing. You never once have the sense that she is glancing down at her watch thinking, "Jesus Christ, it's only been fifteen minutes." Forty-five minutes later she is still singing each line distinctly, word by word, until the last word is sung.

Mostly things are not that way, that simple and pure, with so much focus given to each syllable of life as life sings itself. But that kind of attention is the prize. To be engrossed by something outside ourselves is a powerful antitode for the rational mind, the mind that so frequently has its head up its own ass - seeing things in such a narrow and darkly narcissistic way that it presents a colo-rectal theology, offering hope to no one..."

- Anne Lamont, Bird by Bird

I would say one of the most common responses I have to my clients (particularly the adults) is a feeling that we need to slow down. As if counseling is a race to get as many words out as possible by the end of the session, that as long as the week is purged into the room something may miraculously change. A sprint to the finish. Thing is that instead of a nice energizing run, this kind of sprinting feels more like running with our heads cut off, leaving us both exhausted. And not a good exhausted. An overkill, burnt out exhausted. Instead of a connected session, I end feeling as though I just came out of a manic episode.

How often my work so far has been to kindly interject, and ask for us to slowly step into just one piece of what was just ejected my way.

How can I move us into our senses? What if we said the same eight words over and over? The awkwardness alone with leave us ending up with more connection, more levels of being, of seeing, of hearing, of experiencing each other than the manic states could ever create.

The same eight words, refocusing the attention from content to process. From mindless chatter to actually experiencing and noticing what it means when two people exist simultaneously in the same room. To give space, to give care to each moment, to each expression, each nuanced, delicate expression that speaks of the heart more loudly than any words ever could.

That is not easy work. But it is here I feel that I am actually doing work. Only then do I feel as though I just went on a good run, blood flowing, breathing heavy, endorphins kicking in, connected to my body. It is not easy work, but it is good work. And again, it is kind work. I don't feel as though I just had to run 20 miles in the freezing rain with a t-shirt on. I went on my time, paying attention to my body, what I needed, what I wanted. A good run. Good runs are so good.

So is a good session. It is so good. Existing in such a deep simplicity of the moment with another human being. That is why I am in this work. For those spaces. To have the privilege to be in those spaces. That is a gift. And as Lamont says, I pray I can remove my narcissistic head out of my own ass so I can look up and have the privilege of truly seeing, and truly experiencing that gift.

Sense (continued)

"On a dark afternoon - I was ten or eleven - I was walking on a country road. On my left a patch of curly kale, on my right some yellow Brussel sprouts. I felt a snowflake on my cheek, and from far away in the charcoal-gray sky, I saw the slow approach of a snow storm. I stood still.


Some flakes were now falling around my feet. A few melted as they hit the ground. Others stayed intact. Then I heard the falling of the snow, with the softest hissing sound.

I stood transfixed, listening...and knew what can never be expressed: that the natural is supernatural, and that I am the eye that hears and the ear that sees..."

- Frederick Franck

Sense

I bought a Dialectical Behavior Therapy book online to prepare for upcoming clients at my internship. My school doesn't teach this orientation but the psych hospital does and most of my patients at the agency are not exactly ready for psychoanalysis, nor does the medicaid system allow for the long term psychodynamic psychotherapy I have been learning the past 3 years.

It's mostly exercises, many involving some kind of meditation. I've been trying them out, especially the ones I may be using and teaching the clients. Several come off to be painfully trivial. My mind and body resist such simple tasks, thoughts whining "this is stupid, this is boring, this is so painfully mundane."

I'm supposed to breathe deeply, then touch and describe an object in the room, what it feels like, color, shape, smell. Or simply breathe and listen, picking up every noise in the room. Or simply breathe, just breathe, counting each breath.

It is boring. It is mundane. It is incredibly simple. But why then is it so hard to do? It's so hard. Even counting my breaths. It's painful. I can't do it. I lose focus, mind wandering to anything but the moment.

It is painful. And it is so good. In the midst of the exercise I feel something soften in me. I feel something loosen up, calm, ease. I feel kindness. So much kindness. Kindness that allows for the moment, the moment that allows me to once again be a child. To live again as a child, existing in my senses, in the moment. The child that only knows its body. The child that only knows touch, taste, see, hear, and smell. Its like going back to the fundamentals. Going back. The humble, kind task of going back before going forward.

It's crazy but it's like I can hear this voice speak to me. This voice that slowly, softly speaks, "it's ok... it's ok...it's ok..." It is so soft. It is so strong. It is so kind.

The exercises feel like confession. They feel like repentance. I feel a soft grievance of the years and years spent in a mind/body split, the years spent moving so fast I can't even think. To be talking to someone and be ten steps ahead, to feel like I'm looking from a bird's eye view instead of right across from you. I'm gone. I'm not there.

That is not cool. And that is why doing the mundane, painful exercises that call me to the moment, to the details, to the rhythm of my breath, to the still sounds and calmed eyes that take a moment to stop and look; that is why these exercises feel like repentance. I am confessing my absence from the moment. My years of absence from the moment. My years of absence from myself. My years of absence from you.

These exercises coax me into the mundane. I confess and repent how I have called the mundane unholy. It has always been the fantastic, the perfect worship song at the right time with the amazing insight and revelation where holiness was found. Why can't the holy be in the mundane, in the practical, in the moment? Why can't it be in the simple? Why can't the holy be in the touch, in the smell, in the ability to hear the stillness, to hear the sounds that can only be heard when you really listen?

It feels so kind. So kind. To be in the moment. It is repentance. It is holy.

"Will you stay with me in the moment? In the simple. In the touch. In the look. I miss you there."