After indulging into Catalist program, along the line during our development, something began to change. From “process-orientated”, we have begun to tune into more “result-orientated” form because that’s the language of the modern corporation or organisation. No matter how fantastic is the process of your program, it has to bear result that benefit the corporation constructively and it has to be measurable.
And I think this has contributed some reflective mood into my own practice and this MCO offers a perfect space to put this into order of words.
I have always wanted to write this piece but I gave up many times because I struggled with the difficulty of writing and putting something that is basically non-verbal experience into expression of words.
A little bit about my journey. During my late teens and early twenties, I turned towards meditation as a way to work with tremendous mental stress and suffering when I was preparing for my law exams. The particular meditation practice that I have learned over my yearly silent retreats, were those that emphasized watching breath, different emotions, thoughts, feelings and sensations that arose out of sitting session as well as daily lives.
The practice and teachings of meditation had a powerful effect on me, and guided me through difficult times. This practice developed my concentration and my ability to have an objective witness to many experiences and the insight into the nature of things as being impermanent and changing every moment.
Meditation practice has turned me into a different person, in a good way judging from my own perspective, and has helped me less affected by wildly uncontrolled thoughts and emotions. In meditation, I learned how to contain my own waves of energy from various emotions like anger, jealousy, grief etc and find a workable perimeter for my experience.
Especially in the early years of coming in touch with this experience, I kind of liked what was changing in me and so began to relate to the world through the framework of meditation.
That’s when I became separated from others who are not in meditation practice and I was not realising by doing that, I was separated from richness of my own experience too. My practice began to rigidify into a strict ideology that rejected certain experience of anger, frustration, jealousy, discontentment and favoured others like joy, contentment, calmness and peace. Certain emotions, like frustration to me was bad and just like I habitually watched myself this way, I also treated the same way I was relating to others. My contact with others were no further than watching them with no sense of understanding and care, just like I watched myself.
If things were not pleasant, I developed skilful means of coming back to the breath and the rest of me were basically not overwhelmed and quite numbing. After a while, I noticed that I was losing touch with how I feel, what my values and moral stance are, and how to make decisions. I was good in watching but could not say the same with responding, behind the face of joy and serenity, buried within was fear and insecurity calling for attention.
Those who knows me by my childhood nickname Ling and my schooling name, Mei Chiew, has certainly remembered this “lack of feeling” image about me. Friends left me unexplained and soon, I wasn’t invited to any gathering parties.
It is only quite recently that I started to find the lost portion of my beings, judging that with all that phenomena that surrounding me, no matter how good I felt, it definitely not a sign that I was heading towards enlightenment. Being “result-orientated” came in positive light at this juncture because that I was going nowhere in my practice and in my life, I was willing to take a serious look at myself and my practice again.
Because I am Trainer of yoga teachers, I was always carefully holding myself together in good shape. At first, it was hard because of the habit of containment when the dark side of myself, the unwanted feelings and emotions would begin to surface. Excitement would arise, I would watch it and hold it there.
My body discipline over the years has allowed me to slowly come out from behind my emotional storeroom by first loosening the stiff and unresponsive muscles that restricting mobility of the spinal column and softening the areas around the neck and shoulders to have warmth and gentleness spread to the face and eyes.
After some years, I learned that I could be with the excitement and the darker side of anger, not resisting the energy of the moment and make a choice to follow that line of energy to explore the landing ground for those overwhelming energy instead of just watching it.
Because I have the tools of support coming from my body discipline, I felt less frightened about going into grief, anger, rejection and insecurity and slowly allowed those tension to find its way out from the body. If we can tolerate fear, open to it, then we can get more information for its release instead of being afraid and tensing against it.
This is my process of self-learning and self-healing. My world seems so much closer to me now, that I am more involved in my relation with friends and relations coming from a sincere and loving mode. Previously, I have been busy watching and containing myself, I missed the lively part about living.
I still meditate but now I am back to connect to life with more rooms of expression for friends and relations. Don’t get me wrong, I am not suggesting I am enlightened or even close to it. I am still discovering and renewing my practice every moment and penning down this has helped me more clearly to understand my spiritual journey.
With many things in life revealing itself, I am more clear about what wants to come to life. For me, it was growing desire to let go of old anger and disappointment and my unexpressed needs to finally accept happiness and love. It has become crystal clear that some part of me wants to move forward and ready to evolve into a new expression of life.
At this juncture, the words from my meditation teacher constantly repeated loudly inside me “Don’t cut the hair of the sheep, let it be as messy as it is”. It is from here we can begin to live.
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