meditation as healing

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Reframing our view of Ourselves and Our World.

Reframing our view of Ourselves and Our World.

Our conscious mind is designed to protect us, keep us safe.   It is also where we undertake progressive learning and it stores our memories.    It is our reference library where we store our lives.  It is designed to help us make decisions quickly, many of them from memory or learnt behaviour, imprinted by repetition, be that through structure learning environments, family, school or work place, church, community and the playground, or our own assessment.   Each of the lessons which we learn is designed to teach us what is right and wrong, what keeps us safe.  Be it bullying, trouble, hurt, danger, and likewise, where we are rewarded, love, money, gifts, friends and favours.  This learning, is shaping and forming our identity.   Setting universally applied, fundamental truths.

We learn our values, behaviours and mindsets from these environmental lessons.  Feedback, this is true, this is false, this is right, this is wrong, this behaviour is punished and that one is rewarded.   When these environments are challenged, removed, changed then these innate, almost automatic understandings, behaviours and responses that we use to govern our lives come under question.   Similarly, we need a major incident, often traumatic which sweeps in and changes our lives which then forces us to, or creates the opportunity to start rethinking our fundamental truths.   

By fundamental truths I mean those truths which we take for granted, those rules or understanding regarding how we process and understand the world around us and our place in it.  These truths, often handed down from generation to generation, we rarely challenge, unless we are forced to.  Often we hold these understandings of ourselves, the order of the world, our relationship to the world and ourselves so sacred, that we push back anyone who questions them, does not abide by them or who asks us to question our beliefs, values, understandings and therefore our behaviours.  Even if our truths do not fit the situation or the facts, we make it fit, often contradicting ourselves in the process.

A major incident, usually a loss, can offer the opportunity, to consider our fundamental truths.  The question is: Are we willing?  We are capable, but only if we choose to do the work and the hard yards do we see belief and behavioral changes.   It requires honesty, absolute honesty.  How often are we really honest with ourselves  and about ourselves?  How often do we hold ourselves up, bearing all to an internal review of our beliefs, understanding and our perception of our world, even of who we are and how we are?

It is easier if we approach this gradually, if we have or take the luxury, that is.   If we have the courage and take that path.  If we choose to actively seek to understand who we are and how our mind was put together at the most fundamental basis.   Beliefs that we never question.  Truths that we believe are absolute without questioning them.   One of the beauties of meditation is the ability to take us from a locked mental state to an open mental state, where, if we leave the conscious mind behind, escaping the strict frameworks of truth, belief and identity behind. Then what are we left with.  We are left with the freedom of the subconscious mind.  Stripped bear, we are faced with the honesty of the situation, without an emotional connection.  Emotion, as a value,  sits in the conscious mind, emotion as an experience, sits in the subconscious mind.   This is reframing.

(In the subconscious mind, there is no judgement of good, bad, evil, ok, it just is an experience.  Judgement can only exist, when we have a criteria within which we operate, this is the role of the conscious mind.  Fundamental truths are learnt.  Therefore, they can change.)

There is a truth, but this is a truth without judgement. There is a view of us, or an understanding of us, which is striped bear of the imposed or imprinted beliefs and understandings of who we are.  It is a more time relevant, wholistic repertory of what we have experienced and how we are experiencing our life and asking us if this is what we want.  It shows us how we are processing information, creating our own experiences by the way we are living our lives and most importantly showing us, where we have let ourselves down, but remaining fixed in our world view.   

We might find that some of our world views and understandings from our teachers is still relevant, valid and important, we choose to keep them.  It might also show us where we are outdated in our sense of self and our role in the world because what was true, or we were learnt was true is no longer so.   The difference, choice, do we choose to consider and re- evaluate who we want to be, how we want to be and if so, how we move towards that.    Who of us, if given the chance to rethink, transform and reframe our new view of ourselves and our relationship to the world around us, would choose to do so.   I have and I do.  It has given me a much fuller and happier life. 

Meditation

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Meditation as a Space for Healing.

Meditation as a space for healing

The Conscious Mind and embedding of reaction / action – social learning.

The conscious mind is the brains cognitive centre.  It is where we process information and where we spend the majority of our time.   It is our place of day to day work, play and relax.    The design of the brain is to learn and imprint important life lessons which we need for survival.   Survival is about making sense of the world around us and learning what behaviors keep us safe.   We learn or are taught to listen or look for certain events that represent danger to us physically, emotionally or mentally.   Alternatively we are taught that certain events that bring us success, happiness or plentifulness.  So we learn to escape, avoid or mitigate events that impact on us negatively or to seek events that impact on us positively.    In a nutshell, yes / no, good / bad, enjoyable / harmful.   

Our brain communicates these events and the outcomes of these events via pathways and chemical reactions which flow through the mind and the body.    The pathways with repeated behaviour become freeways / motorways of the brain, where we learn once the event happens, that this is the path or the appropriate reaction to take to elicit the correct. that is, learnt response.   The event becomes a trigger.  Once the trigger occurs, either something we see, hear or feel then the brain immediately without conscious thought begins our response.   We start to have automatic responses to certain triggers or responses.    

The learning of the triggers is by experience or experimentation, observation (both active and passive taught) and active teaching.  Unfortunately for us, these triggers are not time bound, so they remain relevant to us in the present, regardless of their relevance or acceptance in the current or in the future.   Time does exist in the conscious mind, but it is not contextual to the learning of yes / no, right / wrong, good/ bad.   

Therefore we have a tendency to hold on to our early learning and keep this as our constant framework for behaviour, evaluation and decision making, throughout out life, regardless of how much our life changes.  In our current environment of ever changing and fast moving situations, if we hold on to our original learning about yes / no, with blind acceptance, that this is a fundamental truth of the world and my response to the world, therefore my place in the world, we remain fixed.   

While there is comfort in staying fixed and rooted to your foundation understanding of the world, there is equal value and perhaps more value in being able to move your thinking into the present context of your life and how you want to live and experience this life

For most of us, once the trigger and the response is ingrained in the conscious mind we do not question the origins or validity of that response until we are forced to evaluate the event, our response and why we are triggered that way.   

The reason we are forced to re-evaluate is many, but usually:

  • we realize that our response is not working, often with the help of receiving the wrong outcome to our auto response.  The response is damaging us, rather than protecting us.  ( repeated or strong negative feedback.)
  • we suffer as a result of our behaviour. (we hurt someone of something we love)
  • we are taught a new way to think, consider advertising, especially political or social messages.
  • we are unable to undertake the triggered response.  ( your loss of speech.)

The realization that our old behavior or thought patterns is damaging is, that is, us recognizing the impact of the behaviour and taking responsibility for the creation of the event, sits uncomfortably with most of us.   Even in the most drastic of circumstances, we must be willing to accept that perhaps our behaviour or former behaviour was a not serving us well in the current circumstances of our life.    

This is the opportunity that meditation offers us.  It offers the opportunity to take  us into a space, within the subconscious where we do not have the judgements of the subconscious mind.  They do not reside in the subconscious, only the conscious mind.  In the subconscious mind there is no judgement, where we do not judge and are not judged.   Here we are safe to begin the process of evaluating our we are assessing our lifes, our life events and our thoughts and behaviours that we have been taught and that we live by.   Are they relevant to the person we wish to be.

Please note:  Professional Coaching and Counseling is a most important aspect to help us assess our behaviour and to make the changes.   I am not advocating meditation above or beyond either of these aspects.  It depends completely on your own circumstances and the current state of your wellbeing.  In some circumstances you will need additional assistance to create the right environment within the functioning of the brain and within your own willingness to go down the path of reviewing your fundamental truths.

The Lotus flower is a powerful image in Buddhism and Hinduism as a symbol of transformation.  Rising from the mud, traveling through the murky water to reach the sun.  Once it has reached the sun, the flower blooms, resting on the water and bathing in the beauty of the suns rays.