Posted by For the last couple of years or so, myself and some other members of The WCCM have been planning a move. Come the middle of April this year I should be arriving at Bonnevaux, the new international retreat centre for The WCCM. I will be there as part of the live-in community. In the meantime, I am living in transitional accommodation in an on-site caravan at a friends place in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales (west of Sydney, Australia).
Where I’m living is a wonderful place, full of trees and wildlife and a generous spirit. It is a place of peace that is giving me and many others a space of quiet and safety. Indeed, the spirit of the place has been stirring in me feelings that I might have not noticed or might have otherwise been tempted to ignore.
As accommodation goes the caravan is refreshingly basic: bed, a small swinging table, limited seating (thanks in no small part to my luggage), pump action tap with sink, two electric hotplates, some cupboard space, and a bar fridge. Volunteering for manual labor comes with the accommodation. This transitional accommodation is for two months.
After living in the caravan for around a week and a half, circumstances have found me back in Sydney this past week and in the house where I used to live. I am due back at the caravan this weekend, and I now find myself in something of a quandary: I am noticing resistance within me around returning. It is not about the caravan itself; more about my reaction to returning.
What am I do to with this resistance? Ignore it? Push it down beyond awareness? Just live with it? What might it be saying?
This occasion of resistance is a good time to practice what many are calling these days mindfulness; or perhaps we could call it the practice of becoming aware, without thought, of what I am feeling about heading back to the caravan.
How could this be done – to not think about what I am aware of? Isn’t thought and awareness the same thing? No. Thinking is largely a product of our self-consciousness, while awareness occurs in consciousness. What we repress ends up as unconscious.
Feelings are best felt rather than ignored, suppressed, and repressed. Feelings left unfelt in this way require quite a bit of energy to keep them ‘out of mind’. Over a lifetime, energy used in this way can cause exhaustion, anger, resentment, even grief and depression. Repression of feelings also contributes to the ageing and damaging of our bodies. So it’s important to grow in the practice of the regulation of our feelings, allowing them to rise and be felt. However, because we are well versed in repression, this can be a challenge to learn and continue to practice.
A healthy mind is all about being conscious. If we are too self-conscious (a common malady today), our thinking can crowd out our feelings, giving little space for us to simply feel. Anger may rise, for example, and what we could do is quickly start to analyse it: where is this from, why am I feeling this? The result of this is that we are no longer feeling or allowing space for feeling. Thinking can also be a part of suppression and repression; over-thinking contributes to feelings becoming unconscious and unfelt.
So, it follows then, that if we are to give more space to the feeling of feelings and so become more mindful, it would be good to practice the art of not thinking. Easily said than done.
Meditation is the practice of not thinking, or non-thinking. How does this happen? Via the giving and re-giving of attention to a mantra we, in efffect, give the energy invlolved in thought something else to do. Rather than thinking about tomorrow, last week, or today’s to-do list, we practice the art of allowing thinking to recede and quieten via attention on the mantra. What then happens, over time, is that space is freed to feel. Feelings can rise safely and not be subjected to the scruttiny of self-consciousness via thought. In time, too, because they are being safely felt, the intensity of our feelings subside. Another way of saying all this is to say that we are becoming conscious.
So now is the time for me to become aware of what I am feeling. It is important that I put any descriptive words aside and simply feel the feelings. Now is not the time to speculate. Now is the time to simply feel. After feeling words will come. This practice is a fruit of meditation.
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Hope your time in caravan is blessed, sad ou didn’t get visa for earlier visit here in Ireland. Best wishes, S
Thanks Stefan.
I found this extremely helpful …. self-conscious is having feelings and then analysing them and thinking about them. Allowing feelings just to be without critiquing them is I feel, a key. They are the surface waves that ebb and flow. Deeper down there is silence and stillness and the ability to just be. You are having a perfect opportunity to be in solidarity with those who live like that week after week with little hope of any change. You give courage to all of us, for you are showing commitment to what you believe in and value.
Well, when the circumstances present, best to go with it as best we can…. thanks Anne-Marie.