(Drawing: The Scream, by Hanaa Soliman, 2019)
I was walking home in the early evening. The street was empty and quiet. I had been engaged for months in a deep group inquiry using A.H. Almas’s book “The unfolding now”. As I walked, I was trying to practice what it was like not to “mess” with my experience, as he instructed. Allowing what is here to simply be here, and noticing inner mechanisms that kept trying to change the course of things.
As I got closer to home, I noticed a lone man coming in my direction. My body tensed up. Quickly, various reactions based on past trauma started to organize around that initial tension- in my sensations, emotions and thoughts. I was “preparing” with trusty, albeit outdated, information and reflexes. The usual drill. Except that, as I reconnected to my felt sense through breath and sensation, it suddenly dawned on me that, by giving in to this “messing” with my experience, I was also losing any real alertness in the moment. Which is exactly what I would need to determine whether or not this was a dangerous situation, and take the appropriate action!
And that’s when I found myself, for the first time ever in such a situation, doing exactly the opposite of what I’d always done. Gently relaxing in my body, heart and mind… for my safety.
No matter how often Zen masters, psychologists and teachers pointed at that, I could grasp it conceptually but didn’t spontaneously apply it in the moment. It always took quite a bit of convincing and focusing for me to keep reverting to a more relaxed state in such situations. Until it finally landed into my embodied experience on that evening walk.
This new orientation has served me so generously since, and I’d like to share with you how I’ve come to think of it.
Tense alertness is about being safe FROM our lived experience. Since our nervous system as children didn’t have the capacity to process some of the challenging situations we faced, we’ve all had to contract in order to stop the unfolding of certain sensations, emotions and thought processes which, if allowed to flow, could have been devastating, threatening our very survival and the relationships it depended on. That’s one of the ways we managed to sacrifice “authenticity for (crucial) attachment”, as Gabor Mate put it. We had to contract away from a truth we didn’t yet have the resources to live by. As grown-ups, we often continue to function in the same way, contracting when we feel the need to keep ourselves safe from a perceived inner (e.g. harsh inner-critic talk) or outer threat. In reality, our contracted state only allows our senses to function within a limited scope: They are then mostly wired to the fight/flight/freeze/fawn response of our sympathetic nervous system, leading to a limited set of possible actions. And in Enneagram terms, this only gives us access to the “closed” Head Center, which we can picture as a tight box, buzzing with recycled content from the past but unable to be fully aware of what’s really happening and needed in the present moment.
Relaxed alertness is about being safe WITHIN our lived experience. People often tend to think that a relaxed person would be slouchy, uninterested and ready to smile and nod at whatever happens. But it’s important to remember that this is actually a fear/trauma-based coping mechanism, a kind of dissociative state blocking away many elements of our experience. When we’re more here and relaxed, our nervous system allows us to have greater gentle awareness of the many elements at play in the same situation. As the body is grounded in breath and sensations, the heart is gently being with what is here and the mind is more open to the reality of the moment. And this is SO much safer! We can truly sense/feel/read the situation and tune into what’s needed. The outcome is then much more useful for us and for everyone around us, whether we’re in a process of personal inquiry, engaging in a difficult conversation or even being in the presence of potential physical danger.
And if you’re still wondering about that man on the street, as I relaxed and continued to walk, noticing the feel of the asphalt under my shoes, the air on my skin, the man’s gait and the quality of the light around us, I started to discern that there was a pleasant quietening of the whole experience. My body gently showed me that I needed to continue walking at the same pace, in the same direction, but slightly closer to the other curb to signal I wasn’t interested in an exchange. This was not a repeat of past experiences. Nothing was to be feared here, and all the information I needed would make itself available as I needed it as long as I remained open and relaxed. After we briefly crossed paths and I got home, I only felt gratitude for his timely appearance, which brought me a bit closer to the gift that the present moment can be when I stop pushing it away.
(Further reading: I find this true story by Terry Dobson to be a beautiful example of what I’m referring to here.)