That's right, an underground cave.
Actually, it was a cave I visited 25 years ago as a teenager in 1993.
And after all these years, it was the same dark, cold (52 degrees fahrenheit), mysterious, scary, beautiful place I remembered it to be.
Here are a few photographs of the cave walls, ceiling and the river that flows through it...
A funny thing happened though while I was walking the underground paths through the darkness and shadows of the caverns, I began to think of the experience of walking in an underground cave as a metaphor for a meditation retreat.
To me, meditation retreats where you spend one or more full days (early morning until late at night) in back-to-back periods of silent meditation, have begun to feel like a deep dive under.
Where periods of intensive, uninterrupted meditation sessions give the sensation of going underground to an underworld which allows you to penetrate a surface that most of the time is as invisible and unknown as those caves I visited.
Saki Santorelli, Director of The Center for Mindfulness at UMASS, writes of this very experience in his book: Heal Thyself when he discusses the metaphorical (or archetypal) implications for mindfulness meditation and healing from a myth called The Devil's Sooty Brother about a soldier who spends some time in hell after making a deal with the devil.
He writes:
The story is clear about this: to find our way home we must go down. We are asked to move underground, to examine in fine detail the unwanted aspects of ourselves...
Each of us is asked to go down into this underworld, into the darkness, to face our fears, to acknowledge and 'own' all aspects of self, and in this way to be renewed...
Our reckoning with these forces cannot be put off forever, and our willingness to go down-to take 'a good look around hell'- is necessary if we are to regain the fullness of our lives. This is a part of our universal quest, our destiny..
In doing so, we might discover radiance pouring into and emanating from all of our flaws and fissures, illuminating and transforming into 'gold' what has been dark and most feared.
If we refuse this journey, we may never play the music of our own lives. We might never sing the song that is only ours to sing. What a tragedy this would be. For the world needs your tune, remains incomplete without it, and waits, endlessly patient, for your voicing of your song.
Well Mr. Santorelli, I will be "going down into this underworld" tomorrow as I am scheduled to leave for another silent 5-day meditation retreat, and I must admit I'm a little nervous for this deep dive.
It's a different kind of nervous from the first retreat though, because the first time I was nervous about what I didn't know.
What I didn't know about: the place, the people, the protocols, the meals, the schedule, and what I didn't know about myself including: my own meditation stamina, how I'd feel away from my children with very little communication, and whether or not I'd even like a meditation retreat enough to ever want to do it again.
Well, after a few one-day silent meditation retreats and my first 5-day, I now know a lot more about the place, the people, the protocols, etc. I also know more about my own meditation stamina (not too bad) and the fact that I do like retreats enough to do more.
But that's not all.
I also now know that when I engage in extended periods of meditation my physical body begins to tell her stories of the last 40 years--the good, the bad and the ugly--in the form of body sensations, long forgotten memories and intense waves of emotion.
It is a time when, as Mr. Santorelli states, I get to "take a good look around hell."
I know this is not a bad thing, and I absolutely do not judge my meditation experience in a negative light when these stories begin to unfold in what may be the 6th hour of the 3rd day of retreat.
I actually trust them completely.
Probably because I have been very heavily influenced by the work of Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, a psychiatrist who has extensively treated, written about and researched on trauma with a specific attention to the potential role of yoga and mindfulness in the healing and recovery process.
I first read Dr. van der Kolk in 2003 while in school for clinical social work and immediately felt a deep resonance and kindred spirit in his work.
He had not yet published his now very famous book, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma yet, but he had published an article in 1994 called "The Body Keeps the Score: Memory and the Evolving Psychobiology of Past Traumatic Stress."
For those of you who have not yet read anything by Dr. van der Kolk (or heard him speak, which is also amazing), here is a little sampling of his writing from his book The Body Keeps the Score:
We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body. This imprint has ongoing consequences for how the human organism manages to survive in the present.
If Darwin was right, the solution requires finding ways to help people alter the inner sensory landscape of their bodies. Until recently, this bidirectional communication between body and mind was largely ignored by Western science, even as it had long been central to traditional healing practices in many other parts of the world, notably in India and China. Today it is transforming our understanding of trauma and recovery.
In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past.
As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself…The critical issue is allowing yourself to know what you know. That takes an enormous amount of courage.
Mindfulness not only makes it possible to survey our internal landscape with compassion and curiosity but can also actively steer us in the right direction for self-care.
In our studies we keep seeing how difficult it is for traumatized people to feel completely relaxed and physically safe in their bodies...A major challenge in recovering from trauma remains being able to achieve a state of total relaxation and safe surrender.
Neuroscience research shows that the only way we can change the way we feel is by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going inside ourselves.
Being frightened means that you live in a body that is always on guard.
Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.
Though thankfully by no means as extensive or egregious as the folks I work with at the hospital,
in my life I have had several experiences that have made an "imprint" (to borrow one of Dr. van der Kolk's words) on my body. An "imprint" that, I now know, will only reveal itself after prolonged periods of exquisite silence and stillness.
An "imprint" that in the broad daylight (above the ground) can feel as shy and harmless as a deer alone in the woods- one loud noise, one sudden movement, and right quick she will run out of sight, possibly with the person standing just beside me never even noticing.
But then, in the darkness of the underground, this "imprint" can feel like a starved wild grizzly bear who hasn't eaten in days.
(There's a dialectical set of archetypes for you!)
Preparing to go into this 5-day tomorrow, I'm thinking about that wild grizzly bear...
Is she still hibernating? Has she gotten enough to eat yet? How can I begin to befriend her and help her to feel safe again?
Recently I re-read the 7 attitudes that constitute the major pillars of mindfulness practice as taught in Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. They include:
1.) non-judging,
2.) patience,
3.) a beginner's mind,
4.) trust,
5.) non-striving,
6.) acceptance, &
7.) letting go.
I feel a need to carry these 7 attitudes with me into this next 5 days as strategies for skillfully and compassionately walking through the underground caverns of my heart-mind.
Wish me luck!
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