Her healer may begin by simply placing her hand on her patient’s chest. At first, she feels nothing. But then, extending her awareness into her hand and then further beyond herself, into the thoracic cavity of her patient, she can feel, very clearly, the tightness, the congestion, and precisely where the brachia are irritated and swollen. She just rests in this experience. In the course of twenty or thirty minutes, her patient may report that she feels a kind of relief, as if something cool and soothing is developing in her chest.
Then, or in a subsequent healing session, the healer will extend her awareness further, to a more subtle level, and feel a terrible fatigue in the chest of her patient, so complete and so crushing that she herself cannot imagine even the effort of turning over in bed. The healer senses a weakness, a lack of strength, a deep vulnerability. Going further, she comes upon an oceanic sadness and, deeper still, terrible fear, the trembling and shaking of a small child who is not connected, in her heart, with the deeper wellsprings of love, confidence, and ease that, by all genetics and all biology, should have been given, been mediated, by her mother.
The healer’s process is simply to feel. Importantly, though, she is not feeling someone separate and disconnected from her. She is not feeling a person at all. Rather, her own awareness is with the other and within the other, because of her (the healer’s) own embodiment, more clearly than the other’s own awareness of herself. It is as if the healer’s own state of being is the congestion, the tightness, the irritation, as if her own feeling is the terrible fatigue, sadness, and fear. In a sense, she has realized the other as herself; she has realized herself as the other. There is no separation. She dwells fully and completely within the experience of the other person. There is nothing else.
Simply in experiencing the physical and emotional being of the other person, the healer is activating the most powerful kind of healing there could ever be. The healer is resting within her own sense of connection to and continual nourishment from the depths of her own body, with openness, relaxation, and trust. From within this, she is able to connect with the “illness” of the other. At the same time, the other—perhaps without knowing it at first—is opening to the “health” of the healer and thereby being connected with that all-healing source of the body’s greatest depths. Is it the healer’s depth she is experiencing or her own? At this point, from the viewpoint of either person, there is no difference, which means that the “patient” is now finding linkage in the deepest way.
The patient’s body is now connected with the underlying love—theoretically available in herself but never developed because of her mother’s inability to mediate this to her—that she experienced insufficiently as a small child. Through repeated sessions, without a word necessarily being spoken, for the patient, everything can rearrange itself in a new way. This is true for the healer also, for she has been through the illness of the patient, experiencing it completely as her own and, with her patient, has mysteriously resolved for herself whatever of her own personal karma was waiting there for her.
Our discovery of the interpersonal dimensions of our own body, then, is helpful to others not because we are having a different experience from them or having an alternative reality to offer. It is helpful, rather, because we can allow ourself to enter the other’s most intimate, threatening, intense feelings, to be there, but perhaps more clearly and fully, and with more confidence than the other can just now manage. In effect, we are opening to them our connectedness to our own somatic depth, to the unconditional health and well-being of our deepest somatic stratum. Through our opening, our somatic connectedness then becomes their connectedness to that same depth and reality in themselves, which henceforth becomes more and more available to them. As always with the body work—and this is one of the body’s great lessons—we most help precisely by not doinganything, but just by being. Of course, we can be that way with others only because we are able to be that way with ourself—at the level of the interpersonal body, there is no difference. Once we are able to abide deeply within our own body, then being with the other is really nothing additional and nothing extra. In being with them, we are really just being at a deeper level with our own body, which, at this deeper, more subtle level, already includes them.
FIFTY: Layers of the Interpersonal Body
Our discovery of the interpersonal subtleties of our body enables us to be with others in a new way. Whenever we meet another person, whether a stranger, an acquaintance, or our most intimate partner, there is always the shock of their otherness. There is always the temptation to try to manage them by fitting them into our mental inventory, to intimidate or cajole them into hiding their otherness, or to find some shared mental or emotional ground, even if it is not true to either of us. In us, there is always the temptation to externalize and try to ward off, tame, domesticate—to destroy—the potential threat of otherness. Interpersonal relationships, in these ways, always offer the possibility of mutual conspiracy, mutual deception, and a lack of integrity.
When we are easy in the body work, though, we are in a position to welcome the edge of fear that here, as always, alerts us to an “other.” We find in that fear an invitation to return to the darkness of the body, to its open, undetermined way of being, so that we may see—or, rather, be shown—how it is and how it can be with this other person.
In any relationship, there is always some shared ground, but there is also much difference, much that is not and perhaps never can be mutually known or held in common. The body work brings us to the profound insight that all of this is eminently workable, all of it is humorous, hopeless, and delightful, all at once. There is nothing wrong with any of it, either with us or with others, whatever the areas of intimate sharing and whatever the unfathomable chasms that separate.
We have so many experiences with other people, and, in our habitual way, we think them in need of some kind of fixing, some alteration or adjustment. When we reside in our somatic being as the interpersonal body, however, we see that the way others are is exactly as it should be; it is part of an unfolding journey of the relationship that can only begin precisely where we and the other are, exactly at this moment.
When we abide within the body, we are no longer imprisoned by the unconscious demand that relationships “work out.” In fact, we can find much relief and joy in coming to the realization that no relationships ever work out in any real or lasting way. Otherness can never be finally overcome. Having come to this conclusion, and really accepting it, we can be humorously surprised by an experience of tremendous openness and intimacy just where we least expected it. We can realize, laughing at ourself, that the only reason we were previously unable to experience this relationship as “working out” is because we carried around the idea that it should. Having let that go, then, what we had both hoped and longed for—which was hanging us up in a frozen waste of unfulfillment—was able to happen in a very natural and spontaneous way.
The work with our “personal” body shows us just how to work with our “interpersonal” body. Just as in our personal somatic explorations, so too in the interpersonal sphere, we have to let go completely of what we think in order to connect. In relationships as in our immediate personal body, as long as we are hanging on to some idea or expectation of how things should or could be, we are not going to find the avenue of connection. In this way, our training in personal body work ends up being, at exactly the same time, training for how to be in relationship, in the interpersonal body.
Just as we enter the darkness of our physical body, so too we need to be able to enter the darkness of the interpersonal body. Each relationship has its surfaces. Like the surface of our physical body, the outermost layer of relationships is a conceptual overlay of ideas, assumptions, and preconceptions about what and who this person is, how they should be for us, and even what it means for us to interact with them. Beneath this surface of the “interpersonal ego,” the depths and subtleties of our actual relationship lie enfolded.
In work
ing with the interpersonal body, we need to move through this impacted surface, let it go, and descend into the unknown, unfathomable space to discover what this relationship is and needs to be. We do that, again, by descending into the darkness of our own body. When we go deeply enough, we run into the darkness of the interpersonal body. In meeting and integrating the shadow of our interpersonal body with our consciousness, we are discovering more and moving further toward who we ultimately are.
FIFTY-ONE: How Other People Help Us Meet Our Shadow
In the present section, we are exploring the three layers of our ego—the personal ego, the interpersonal ego, and the cosmic ego, all restricted and reactive conceptual overlays respectively of our own person, other people, and the cosmos. Through our disconnection and withdrawal from our somatic experience into our conceptualizing mind, in order to obtain a tidy, controllable, and secure version of reality, we thus wall off the vast majority of our experience of ourself, other people, and the immense universe beyond. All this walled-off experience is trapped in our body in darkness, where it awaits our willingness to experience and integrate it.
Thus it is that, as our somatic awareness develops, the shadow of our greater being rushes toward us, inviting communication, intimacy, and union. A special domain of Buddhist psychology, that of Yogacara, considers the way in which “external” encounters with other people can powerfully incarnate the appearance of our shadow, our unlived life, and make it available to our experience. As a fitting conclusion to this discussion of the unfolding of the interpersonal body, let us consider how our increasing openness and sensitivity to others enables our interactions with them to powerfully make our shadow available to us for encounter, acknowledgment, and integration.
According to the Yogacara school, when we have any experience of the external world, and particularly of other people, we are meeting our own shadow, our own enfolded body. This is not to say that the external world that we encounter is nothing but our experience. No, there is certainly an external world independent of our experience. But what we see in that world, what we notice, and what it means to us are a direct reflection of our own unresolved karma.
A simple example will illustrate this point. Suppose we are at a social gathering with, say, twenty people in the room. At a certain point, a woman walks into the room and calls out, “Hello, everyone.” Everyone turns to look. But no two of these twenty people see the woman in the same way. In fact, in some sense, there are twenty different women being experienced at this moment. For one, she is an intriguing stranger; for a second, a date who has just arrived, provoking hope and fear; for a third, a daughter or a sister; for a fourth, an ex-wife whose mindless extroversion has once again provoked fury; for a fifth, the preschool teacher of one’s child; and so on. Each person in the room will not only see this person differently in these obvious ways, but will respond differently to her gender, her age, her appearance, her racial group, and so on. What each person sees will embody his or her feelings, preconceptions, and judgments—likes and dislikes, hopes and fears. What is significant, though, is that what they choose to focus on in the other person is a reflection of their own self-concept, their own ego in the largest sense, as this stands against what lies beyond. What they see in the other person are aspects of themselves—my date, my “ex-wife,” etc.—that they think really are this other person, rather than a projection of their own situation. In seeing the woman, each person thinks, “She is really like this; she is really this way.” In other words, the woman embodies aspects of each person’s own awareness, but no one sees it. They think their impressions have really come from “out there,” that what they see exists objectively and independently of themselves. But though unrecognized, it is their personal karmic fruition, their unlived experience, that is arising in the form of “the other” at the moment of her entry.
The same thing applies with inanimate objects. If twenty people look at the same oak tree, they will see something different depending on the place from which they are viewing it, their station in life (a woodcutter might see potential firewood; a young boy, something to climb; a homeowner, something that might fall on his house in a storm; a graphic artist, something to depict; and so on). In addition, each person’s experience will be conditioned by all of his or her previous experiences of trees and especially of oak trees. Again, what arises for us as the fruition of past karmic causes and conditions is not the abstract, generic experience of a tree, but the specific, finally individual and unique experience of this tree at this moment. The tree holds our own purchase on reality, our own ego concept, but we don’t see this; we think, without realizing it, that this is really how this tree is.
When we first encounter a person or a tree, our experience is enfolded. In other words, we see them as an external object, “not us.” So far, the information that this precise karmic ripening has presented to us lies shrouded in mystery, in darkness. So far, it is inaccessible. Seeing the other as separate, our self-concept remains intact. In order to meet the shadow that this encounter brings to us, we need to realize that it is “our dark brother” coming to reclaim his relation to us, bringing information we need in order to grow. But how do we come to this realization and reclaim that part of ourself that the other is holding?
An example taken from dream interpretation may serve as a good analogy to help us understand this process. Suppose a person with some familiarity with dream work dreams of a dark, aggressive, raging figure who is chasing her. In the dream, she is afraid for her life and runs, seeking to escape. Upon waking, initially, the dream and its dream figure seem quite other to how she experiences herself. However, once awake, she takes the attitude that this dark figure may be a part of herself, some unwanted or unacknowledged quality, that she may be fleeing—a part that is, nevertheless, seeking to be met and received by her, and integrated with her conscious viewpoint. She realizes that the dream is the agent of her larger self seeking her out.
She takes the timing of this dream seriously: it has come up at this point because this aspect of her unknown self requires admittance, just now. She will then pay close attention to her conscious experience, to see if she can find there moments of aggression and threat manifesting themselves, perhaps on a subtle level, that she is moving away from, but which are insistently appearing and reappearing, “seeking admittance.” The more she notices that “this is also me,” the more the intention of the dream will be honored and fulfilled, and the more her conscious standpoint, her self-concept, will undergo transformation. She may well find in herself, and as herself, the dark power of anger, wrath, and rage, and may come to understand that these are intelligent and apt—and even necessary—responses to certain kinds of external situations. She will have to let go of her former self-image as an unfailingly “nice” person, but she will gain a much fuller sense of self, for now that this aspect of her shadow has been integrated, these qualities will henceforth be available to her in her life as a woman in the modern world.
It is exactly the same when we meet external situations and occurrences with others. Suppose we meet someone who provokes an intensely negative reaction. Suppose that we take immediate advantage of the gift of this meeting by proposing to ourself that “this person is an aspect of myself. On some level, I have these abhorrent qualities. On some level, I am this person.” Strangely enough, if we are willing to do this, we may very quickly notice in ourself—through remembering events, noticing emotions, recalling things others have said to us—that we, in fact, possess these very same qualities. While we may not necessarily exhibit them to ourself or others, we can see clearly that they are there beneath the surface, that we have the potential to exhibit them at any time, and that, circumstances being different, we might well act in an even more unpleasant, irritating manner than the person we are contemplating. In this way, we “unfold” the previously enfolded and impacted encounter that provoked such a negative reaction. Through the encounter, we are able to meet and join with an aspect of our previous
ly unacknowledged person.
We meet our shadow, not only in those people who provoke strong negative reactions, but in those for whom we have positive feelings, as well. When we react with very positive feelings, we are similarly encountering aspects of our enfolded self. When we fall in love, we are meeting an aspect of our deeper self that is calling for integration. Likewise, when we work with a greatly respected teacher in school or a spiritual mentor who moves us deeply, we are coming face-to-face with aspects of our enfolded self. We have an opportunity slowly and over time to integrate the split-off part of ourself through the relationship itself. But we can take much more direct and immediate advantage of the situation by realizing that this encounter is bringing the shadow right to our doorstep. By looking directly within, by receiving the relationship without manipulation and even without comment, by simply looking to see where this “other” dwells, we can discover missing qualities in ourself, thus incorporating the shadow aspect in a direct and immediate way.
While the most readily understandable examples of meeting our shadow in the external world are obviously the dramatic ones, it is important to realize that, according to the Yogacara, literally every meeting is an expression of our unresolved karma. There are so many meetings in life that bring us face-to-face with what is unfamiliar: if we are male, the very different way a woman we know may go about things; if we tend primarily toward the thinking function, the approach of people who rely on feeling, sensation, or intuition to know and move through the world; if we are middle-aged, the seemingly alien worlds of tiny babies, young children, adolescents, young adults, and the very old; if we tend to be mainstream, the ways of being of people living at the margins, criminals, the insane, people embodying different races and nationalities, and people in situations of terrible poverty, social ostracism, or disease.
Touching Enlightenment Page 22