My Body is a Haunted House
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I sat on an airplane watching a woman across the aisle knit while watching a movie on her iPad. On her tray table was an open bag of chips and a soda.
She was consuming, producing, and commuting all at the same time.
I had a hollow feeling in the center of my chest; I was looking at a mirror.
None of these activities are wrong in and of themselves, or even together.
I just know that frequently when I’m engaged in any set of activities that would be better performed with four arms and four eyes, I’m avoiding myself.
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Watching a show gives me a place outside for my mind to rest.
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Crafting gives me a way to busy the body and satisfy the fear of being “unproductive.”
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Snacking gives me a way to push down the feelings that are trying to surface.
All three together and I’m perfectly organized to distract myself from myself: mind, body, heart. And often, that’s just what I want.
But on the plane I used that hollow feeling as a prompt, an invitation to go inside and explore.
Recently, my friend Grace turned me on to a meditation teacher named Judith Blackstone, whose work I’ve been consuming voraciously via an audiobook*.
Judith was a dancer who experienced spiritual awakening by energetically exploring her own body.
Since beginning her work I’ve discovered something about myself which I knew, deep down, but have been unwilling to admit: My own body feels like a real life haunted house.
When Judith invites me to inhabit my heels, my ankles tense as if I’m preparing to leap up toward the ceiling.
When she says “inhabit your thighs,” I feel quivering in my hamstrings and tension in my glutes, as if my own thighs are wrapped in reams of “Do Not Cross” police tape.
When she invites me into my own pelvis, I might as well be staring at a sign that says “PRIVATE PROPERTY! KEEP OUT!”
My heart might be the hardest one. Often when I try, my throat closes. My back tightens and my breath is cut short. If I begin to hum, gently, and direct that hum down my spine along the back of my heart, my chin will quiver and I will start to cry.
When I saw this woman on the airplane, and interpreted her activities as avoiding inhabiting her own body, I used this as a clue from life to inhabit my own body.
I put on my headphones and let Judith guide me inward to these physical places, and as usual, it was a challenge.
Before I ever learned to meditate, I had imagined it was a peaceful thing. And it can be that, but It’s usually so much more. It’s often frustration, sometimes rage. It can be fear or even terror. Sometimes sadness, sometimes despair.
Sometimes I do it everyday. Sometimes I avoid any formal practice for months. It’s just too scary there, it seems. I’d rather do just about anything else.
Sometimes people tell me they don’t meditate, or they can’t, as if to apologize. I never judge. I empathize. I know that what they are saying is “I’m scared of myself.”
Those of us who avoid meditation are locating our threats and our opportunities outside our own skin, so we are very focused out there.
But this is a trick!
If our bodies and minds are too scary or uncomfortable to sit with, then there is no where we can go and nothing we can achieve that can make us happy. As they say, “wherever we go, there we are.”
We may think we are chasing outcomes, but upon closer investigation, we are actually fleeing our own selves.
When I first met my partner Vince, he was one of the happiest looking people I’d ever seen. It wasn’t an outward jubilant happiness, it was a quietness in his eyes. They were soft, bright, patient, and kind.
As I got to know him better, I discovered why.
He had spent a decade or more learning to inhabit his own body. He would spend hours at a time, days even, laying down with his eyes closed, inwardly exploring the stuck places, the scared places, the tense places, the numb places.
In doing so, the tensions began to melt. During those years he died to his own grief. He burned in his own rage. He surrendered to humiliation, hopelessness, and dread.
If his body had been a haunted house, he explored every nook and cranny until deeming all threats an illusion, and then determining he was safe to be himself.
He is now at home in his own body and the peacefullest person I know.
I’ve heard many people ask him, “How did you find the discipline?”
To which he replies, “There was none. Only suffering, and just enough hope.”
When I read him the last few sentences, to make sure he agrees with this narrative, he said it was right. Then he asked me to add: “Though the suffering has ended, I’m still learning so much. In some ways it feels like the journey is just beginning.”
And so, even though my own body is still full of KEEP-OUTs, DO-NOT-ENTERs, and NOTHING-TO-SEE-HEREs, whenever my own interest and courage meet, I go inside.
I let myself get uncomfortable. I clean out a cobweb or two. I face down an apparent ghoul or ghost who turns out to be a trick of the imagination. I brave a growling beast who eventually turns out to be a scared sheep in werewolf’s clothing. As long as I can tolerate it, I explore all the ways my body is not haunted, it is merely feeling.
And when it’s too much, I get up. Sometimes I might even eat cereal, make art, and watch a few episodes all at the same time.
There are no rules here. This is my life, my body, my peace, and I will just keep doing the best I can.
* I’m now loving Judith Blackstone’s most recent book, The Fullness of the Ground. I highly recommend it for people who have spent some time in eastern spiritual traditions or with nondual teachings. I love audiobooks but in this case, I prefer the written version to this particular audible reader.
Here is an exploration titled
“Coming Home to the Body”
to pair with this post.