Last weekend retreat on the subject of pain has given me the courage to explore all kinds of things I don't often have the courage to feel. When we let go of our aversion to pain in the body, it's easier to let go of aversion to emotional pain. On Friday I spent the day meditating on the most subtle, but painful emotion of them all: shame.
There is so much power in shame because it is the deepest most negative feedback loop in our mind, in our heart and in our body. I feel it buried deep in my gut, hating this constructed self that grows stronger and more constructed the more I hate it. It's a feeling I am averse to, so I avoid it, mostly by looking for opportunities to shame others. And the more I do that, the more deeply it's reinforced. It's a unconscious practice, but the one that has the most power to destroy us.
As such, it also has the most power to liberate us. But here's the rub: only if we're prepared to feel and familiarize ourselves with the shame. Or prepare to feel the numbness that we create around our shame.
I grew up in a family steeped in shame. My Catholic baby boomer parents caught between the sexual liberation movement and their own strict upbringings married as a result of pregnancy. Shame was the foundation of their marriage and my life. I chose liberation over Catholicism in the end. And here I am now a single mother. At least not in a marriage of shame. But still alone and struggling and feeling bad about myself and the life I am trying to build for my son.
How might a week of meditating on shame change that?
Well first shame is a very grounding emotion. I feel it most strongly in the root areas of my body. Second it's a blocking emotion. By feeling it I may be able to unblock a lot of frozen, numb energy that is stopping me from thriving in life, creatively, financially, socially.
What's important to keep in mind is that I'm not trying to get rid of shame. That may be possible, but that's not my goal here. My goal is to harness the power of a so called negative feeling so that I can be happier and suffer less. My goal is to turn poison into medicine.
My goal is not so much liberation as the path of liberation.
