[MD] integrating the shadow

[gav]

been on a week long retreat - walking and camping in rainforest. buddhist flavour - insight meditation teachers. big learnings.

quickly reacted strongly against the whole thing - being thrown into a group of strangers (about 30 of em) doing something i would rather do alone or with 1 or 2 close friends. nearly left on second day after i got sick, but fate had other plans.

on the third day, after walking out my cold through 15kms of pristine forest, i felt better and chatted freely with several of the folk over a cuppa that arvo. that night the evening meditation and discourse was opened into a discussion...and yes yours truly piped in, of course. the topic was non-violence and something stirred in my chest wanting release.

after listening to a gentle polite and superficial treatment of these pacifistic ideas i heard one lady say that she could never kill and...well it came out. i interjected that absolutely everyone is capable of murder, absolutely everyone and that life and death are siamese and mutually fecundating and that static moral codes are problematic - they don't work - every situation is unique, and that all that we need is to respond authentically to each situation. the discussion was quickly terminated and i had established myself as the bad boy.

that night i didn't sleep well. i felt bad for upsetting the woman whose assertion of her inability to do violence had triggered my outburst...i felt like a pratt because i had been reltaively inarticulate and emotional....i felt like i should have just kept my mouth shut.

next morning the meditation was at protestors' falls (my first visit to this sacred aboriginal site). a broad wall of rock - all square angles and outcroppings and massive... the water atomising itself from its 50m plunge. stillness, 30 of us perched here and there wrapped in blankets, eyes shut...but i couldn't leave them so. i just stared at the rock for a while, and then i saw the face, and my attention jolted gently. the alien visage patterned from some lichen perhaps - the expression strangely perfect and benign.

at breakfast i apolgise to the lady i thought i had offended and i feel lighter even before this, something had shifted. i spend some time with the creek nearby and then we are broken into small groups for some check in time....i try and explain my position re: violence via the bhagavad gita - ie that murder is sometimes moral, fated. but i am admonished gently by the teacher for interpreting the tale literally. i desist but am far from convinced.

the next day we end up at a mountain forest meditation retreat - it is beautiful and peaceful - the sun doesn't penetrate except as a dappling touch and the fire goes all night and day. here we are silent for two nights and a day.

it is during this time that i start to feel very happy. the silence sits well with me. we meditate regularly and i find it easy and comforting and i nearly burst out laughing at the solemnity and pained expressions on some faces.

i am starting now to see what is going on. i write a little thing while sitting on the toilet: "life is like a detective story in which you try and solve the mystery of your own absence...ironically you solve the case by giving up the search and identifying with the mystery itself."

the further we investigate something with the mind the closer we get to the terminal paradox that bars entry to its secret, its truth. it is only by holding in mind both poles simultaneously that we open the lock.

in my case i was realising why i was on this trip. true i would have had a far easier and more relaxing time without having to be intimate with a bunch of strangers, but what these strangers had given me was this gift - i didn't care about them! i didn't care what they thought of me, i identified myself in opposition to them - i was sufficient unto myself and free and then! the opposite pole presented itself immediately - my compassion for them was suddenly heightened - i cared more than i ever did! i felt humble and proud simultaneuously - the razor's edge: that hairline one must traverse shifting weight, balance, focussing attention always lest one fall back to the polemic.

the sacred 'no' precedes the sacred 'yes'. the hero's journey is an *individual* one - one must become outcast before they can return to be a true contributer. i was realising that my life had been an extended journey along these lines. i had been the academic and dropped it, i had been the long-term partner and twice dropped love and i had been dropped myself a third time....i had found no niche, no home and now i was embracing it....i have recently made myself homeless and i have no fear, cos i have many homes and, at least up at that mountain retreat, i was feeling total faith.

and now perhaps i was on the return leg....my interactions lately with kids have been inspiring. for whatever reason young kids gravitate to me and i actually seem to have better interactions - realer interactions, with them than adults. i am starting to want to learn from them....i think i am going to be a primary school teacher.









      __________________________________________________________________________________
Get more done like never before with Yahoo!7 Mail.
Learn more: http://au.overview.mail.yahoo.com/