Survival brain

One of the themes of this journal since the beginning has been growth and recovery from trauma.  I go back again and again to the idea of traumatic sprouts, re-growth that is at high risk of early death because of a major trauma that cut off the mature and healthy boughs.

I've been reading a book this week about using mediation for trauma recovery.  The author sees the danger in two systems, the thinking brain and the survival brain being out of balance.  She pointed to gratitude as too often being a positive thinking scheme by the thinking brain used to control the intensity of the survival brain.

Re-reading my post last week on creating a "gratitude algorithm," I realize I might have been in danger of one of those poor thinking brain band aid solutions.  A better solution might be using the algorithm of the precious refuge. The three gems, buddah, dhamma and sangha. In contemplating how precious these places of safety are, gratitude arises naturally from the survival brain and growth comes from a deeper place.

I had a chance to put this into practice this weekend.  I had another one of my work spats that set in motion the intense ball of insecurity, anxiety and shame that gets released every time I get into any kind of work conflict.

Trying to do a lot of breath watching to bring back that sense of how precious refuge in the dhamma is.

May Vipassana

I worried going to this one day Vipassana, so close to the last month, that I would end up with some kind of Vipassana fatigue.  But in the end I had one of the most productive meditation days I can remember.  For a full day I felt like I was on a true break from my self, the voice in the head, the constant craving and giving into self-referential thought.

Today, as I write this, I'm not as strong, so it's worth going over the insights that made it easier to live in a place of peace and focus.

In anapana, I surrendered to Goenka's voice telling me again and again to let go of effort, to let the dhamma do the work, and that my one job was to be aware of breath and the sensations of the breath at the nostrils.  The breath began to turn like a wheel, like it did last month.  For a few minutes I was so concentrated on this movement that everything evaporated and I felt myself disappear, not much but a point in a sea of white light that began to emerge.

In Vipassana,  Goenka changed the instruction slightly.  My one job was to observe the sensations as they were, not as I wanted them to be.  That job kept up for the rest of the day was enough to shut down that default network for most of the day.

This didn't mean a day of white light.  It mean a day with a lot of stress rising up.  But I sat with the resistance and by the time we were ready to metta, most of it had dissipated. 

Protect the dhamma and the dhamma will protect you.  In the context of a day of feeling more in touch with the dhamma than I have before, this made more sense, and I hope a deeper impression on my psyche.

Goenka reminded us that Meditating twice a day is like washing the mind, and that our job is not to feel great sensations, but to build our faculties of awareness and equanimity.

Doing this will give us mastery over the moment.  And in gaining mastery of the moment, we find ourselves becoming masters of life.