Separation
Yesterday I had a session with intuitive bodyworker Megan Gouldner who works out of Core Therapies in Florham Park. Megan is certified in massage therapy, physical therapy, and a number of other related things, and her unique blend of massage therapy with “listening” to the thoughts stored in the body that need to be released has helped many people with chronic illnesses. In my case, a recent spate of panic attacks led me to her; I am capable of dealing with the mental side of the equation (regular meditation, breathing, etc.), but I needed help with the physical side.
The session was excellent, almost 2 hours long, and she uncovered quite a bit, things I had forgotten or repressed, that were affecting not only my body, but also my interactions with others. What I want to share today is one very important thing that she said during the session: The most negative thoughts and feelings that we have are usually rooted in one thing: separation.
The first separation we experience happens when we are born; we are in the mother’s womb, and then are somewhat violently ejected through the birth canal (or via surgery), and this initial separation seems to impact us for our entire life. She spoke about it from a neuropsychological point of view; I tend to look at it through the lens of Object Relations Theory. Either way, there is a point at which we recognize our separateness, that we are separate human being. In Object Relations this happens the first time we recognize our reflection in a mirror. We then begin our development as a human being, and our experiences up to about age 7 are the ones that may shape the rest of our lives, and end up defining our personality and way of expressing ourselves in the world.
If you think about the things that make you fearful or upset, they usually have to do with separation—loss of a loved one, loss of a job, loss of a home, the fear that a group will not accept us, or some other circumstance or situation that we don’t want to change. This ties in with what I’ve said in my own book, “Death and the Maiden”—our actions as a society, and our attitudes toward world changes and events come from a fear of death.
Death and separation can be equated; our creation mythologies deal with this issue. When Kronos castrates Ouranos in Hesiod’s myth of creation, Earth and Sky are separated. The separator is Kronos—Time. In the Adam and Eve story, the defining creation myth of Western culture, the separation occurs for humans when they eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Then they notice that they are “different”—separate. For this they are punished and sent out of the Garden, a place outside of Time, into a world that has Time, and therefore also has Death. To live in Time means to live in a finite, measured space.
However, Eastern religion takes a different view. The Many-From-One separation idea does exist, but that separation is called Mahamaya, the goddess of illusion. The idea that we are separate from each other is an illusion. Carl Jung once noted that his patients tended to take a turn for the better when they realized that they were not alone in their problems. This is the theory behind having a support group; we have a community that shows us that we are not alone in our suffering, and can learn from each other.
There’s another aspect to Maya, or Illusion; and that is the Lila, or play. The word “lila” is part of the name “Lalita”, the goddess associated with the Sricakra. (If you don’t know what that is, check out my Intro to Tantra podcasts.) The implication is that the world is a kind of “play”; it is a script we write as we go along, it can have unpredictable twists and turns, some happy, some not—but ultimately it is “play”.
There are really two lessons in this: the first is that we are not alone, and not as separate as we think. “No man is an island” is how John Donne said it. The second is that we tend to take life too seriously. Meditation aims to detach you from your experience of the world, to step back and look at it as though you are watching a drama on TV, or Netflix, or whatever. This helps you stay centered and not get caught up in the illusion, represented by the Wheel of Fortune Tarot card. In practice this is easier said than done, because we store all of our experiences in our body, and tend to assume past experiences will automatically repeat themselves like some kind of a curse. We’ve also inherited the Biblical idea that the movement out of the Garden is somehow unnatural and bad, and has to be fixed. The more we practice getting away from these kinds of thoughts, the more we can flow with life and enjoy it. That said—negative thoughts are also part of the “play” and script, and we should not try to push them away or repress them; we should have the full range of human experience.
In one of his lectures, Alan Watts talks about a disciple seeking out a guru, and telling the guru about how confused and lost he is, and how he wants to find enlightenment. The guru just stares at the discipline strangely. Watts tells us that this is not because he thinks the disciple is an idiot; he is actually thinking “Come off it Shiva, I see the game you’re playing!”