Haven’t posted in awhile. This goes back to a previous chapter.

“From the Universal to the Personal” is a key chapter for me. The whole book speaks to me and feels momentously instructive and supportive for where I am these days, but this chapter, in particular, answers the question I started with this year. How can I be more lighthearted?

I can relate to the story Kornfield tells about  the woman whose instinct for self preservation was triggered by the threat of boiling water. Maybe some people awaken to their lives gently, but some of us — me, for example — need louder, more  dramatic wake-up calls.

My wake-up call came in December 2008, when the weight of thoughts and feelings I had been avoiding hit me with full their force, all at once, overwhelming me. I can’t go into the detail here, because I couldn’t see the detail of it, it just felt like one big overwhelming force, as if I was  threatened by that pot of boiling water. Thank god, thank my friends, and thank my hardy immigrant heritage, but my survival mechanism, my resilience, kicked in.

Last  year was all about releasing pent up stuff. Lots of stuff I thought I’d released and understood before, but really hadn’t. Lots of stuff I thought I’d dealt with but hadn’t. People I thought I’d forgiven but hadn’t. Feelings I thought I had felt, but hadn’t. Feel, feel, feel. Release, release, release. I think that’s all I did last year. That, and a whole bunch of crying. Private crying, crying in public in safe circles, and crying in public in not-so-safe places. Feeling, releasing, crying, and talking about my story, my self — the world of form.

It was necessary. And I am better for it. But I am done now. I can’t fool myself into thinking that I am done forever. (Here is the only thing I know for sure anymore, I am not as blind to my life as I used to be, but I will always be blind to my life.) For now, however, I am done, and I have moved to a new space in my life — one where there isn’t quite so much avoiding and a lot less crying and (perhaps) a lot less urgency to tell my story. It’s a huge shift for me.

My story matters, but it doesn’t matter.

I get that. I feel that. And I think right now I am living it as much as I am able. I have felt a weight lifting from my heart. My heart and my spirit are lighter, my relationships with others are lighter, and I am enjoying this plateau. (Even though I know it will probably not last. I feel like I have learned something huge in my life — and there is no going back.)

A  2/20/12 note to you, dear self. You were not done.

As the Wise Hearts know, I’ve been doing group therapy for a little over a year now. The term “therapy” rankles me. “Therapy” connotes something negative, something that needs to be “fixed.” I have always been the person who needs to be “fixed” — in my own mind, and in the minds of my significant others. No wonder I always dragged around a feeling of heaviness and suffered a low-grade depression. Now I look at my drive to understand myself in a different and more positive way. And — glory be — Buddhist psychology supports me. Oh baby, where have you been all my life?

I have always been curious about what makes people tick, and I am especially curious about how I tick. The group work affirms this curiosity as a positive thing, as does Buddhist psychology. And I am happy to be in this process of growing and learning with people who are curious about themselves and their relationships with others. This year in group has been one of great personal growth for me. I actually felt weight lift from my heart this year — weight I didn’t know I was carrying around.

In the past in one-to-one therapy, I’ve learned about my personality type through Myers-Briggs, learned how childhood “wounds” affect my behavior in “Imago” therapy, and been called a “garden-variety neurotic” by a therapist who turned out to be particularly inept — a story for another day. In my group, we refer to our “schemas.” Similar to the Imago’s wounds, the schemas are maladaptive coping styles developed in early childhood as a result of damaging childhood experiences. . We all have them, the only difference among us is how operative these schemas are in our everyday lives. I think there are 18 schemas, so many to remember. The Myers-Briggs, Imago, schema stuff — it’s all very helpful explanation. Maybe objectifying behaviors by giving them names helps us deal with them. Maybe learning all these psychological theories was a necessary developmental stage for me like babies crawl before they walk. But you know what? Maybe the names also also lend these ideas an importance and provide us with unhealthy identities we tend to cling to in an unhealthy way. I’m at a point where I want to throw it all out the window.

Kornfield’s healthy/unhealthy states. What could be simpler? (Or less judgmental?) Rather than types or wounds or schemas, healthy or unhealthy states are all I believe I need to be aware of now.

I have for most of my life known what my childhood wounds and schemas are. Intellectually, I’ve understood it all even before I was given official names to categorize them. And knowing all that stuff hasn’t helped me a whole lot to get behaviors and thought patterns that have negatively affected my life under control — but mindfulness has. We are encouraged in group to meditate and be mindful of our mental states, just as Kornfield is encouraging us. The theory behind my group is “mindfulness based cognitive therapy,” but when you boil it down, it’s psychology with a Buddhist bent.

Am I an expert, now, free of unhealthy behaviors? Hardly. But for the first time in my life, I feel like I have a tool — mindfulness — a very powerful tool, that I can practice and access to help me lead a more positive and rewarding life. I’ve made baby steps.

Through my group work, the Wise Heart book, other studies, my wise heart friends, and my own embryonic meditation practice, I’m learning to notice my anxiety, fear, or feelings of great urgency to take an action. Those are signals I am in or headed towards unhealthy state of mind (where I am likely to take equally unhealthy actions.)

My mind lies to me and hides things from me, but my body is very honest. So I am learning to be mindful about my body, and when I notice the grip in my chest, butterflies in my stomach, aches in my back, or other physical signs, I know I need to slow down, feel it, and wonder about what these signals are trying to tell me. I am, in more cases than I used to, making decisions and taking actions in healthy, rather than unhealthy states.

There’s a lot more to say about my own experience in and outside of group this year, but this is a blog entry, not my life story, and I better get back to the work that pays my way. But I want to say: I am still subject to my emotions and coping mechanisms learned so long ago. I’m not fixed — but I am no longer flailing. Okay, wait, I still flail too, just not as much. Life is certifiably better. I’m learning to tap into my inner wisdom and trust myself in a way that I only used to trust a psychological theory. The Buddhists really have it going on. Not sure why western psychology and religion had to complicate things so much.

I’m behind on my Wise Heart reading, but even farther behind on my posting here. Miss Racing Thoughts is always challenged to make action catch up to intention. So I am backtracking a bit to Chapter 4, The Colorings of Consciousness and the practice: Recognizing Mental States.