06 Apr It happened at Mahjong
It happened while playing Mahjong recently.
Somewhere during the first couple of games, as the four of us bantered and played tiles, “it” started. First, with a few gremlins inside me lobbing negative thoughts. Sure, I knew these gremlins were trying to warn me, protect me and all that. We’ve been friends of sorts for many, many decades.
They used to dominate me, seduce me into their negativity. Now, with lots of years of practice, I was able to note them, and let them rise, crest and fall. At first.
Then they persisted, threatening to make a mess of a good time. I know they offer a perspective of some importance … at least they did back in another time when I didn’t have other ways to deal with life.
Once they get rolling though, latching onto undigested thoughts, feelings, memories, and sensations, I can be rolled up in their worlds, forgetting I don’t live “back then” when they’d arose to protect me.
Now I know that their “truth” happened a long time ago. What they’re signaling now isn’t the same. I’m not the same. What’s happening in my life isn’t the same.
So, while continuing to uncover mahjong tiles, I was also uncovering and dipping into my well-worn practice of grounding in my heart.
Finding my way into the refuge I’ve cultivated that centers me, opening me to spirit above and the Great Mother below. There I find ease, goodness.
As I drink in the solid clarity, I feel the secure connection to peace, quiet, space. When I’m triggered, this practice is less activating than connecting through my heart towards others in my world. Grounding to my own heart is so much more nourishing than getting caught in the threat patterns of my history.
Isn’t it fascinating how these old relational gremlins can reach out through time and space, showing us, once again, over and over, the undigested hurts and wounds that happened earlier in life?
And this, despite years and years of practice.
Guess that’s why I began thinking of healing these old wounds as an Olympic endeavor. I’ve certainly put in 10,000 hours. You know how they say it take 10,000 hours to become expert at something. Well, any of us on the healing path have put in more like multiples of that.
We can also look at the healing journey as a Modern Day Bodhisattva Training. We’re literally learning, training every day how to transform our suffering into compassion. Compassion for ourselves, compassion for others.
It has helped me see consistent, persistent healing as a positive engagement with life, instead of feeling it’s a burden I want to get rid of.
Now healing is an everyday part of life.
It gives me room to be fully me, shedding off the shackles of my woundedness. I’m deliberately choosing, consistently, ways to Rewire my Threat System in both evolutionary and developmental ways.
Those triggers are gifts now guiding me through the suffering into a more nourishing and fulfilling life.
May be odd to see it that way, but it’s true.