Dismissed
Processing the Abandonment of the Body
Remembering
Memories will suddenly come back during meditation like a jolt.
Today it was remembering the way that my mother would sometimes treat me in very dismissive ways. I remember as a child trying to express certain feelings, sharing the discomfort I was feeling in the body, explaining what was not feeling good about a certain situation and many times it was met with harsh dismissal. Innocently I believed that these aspects of life were not worthy of being acknowledged and had to be rejected.
I took on the belief that the body, this miraculous sense organ capable of such wondrous expressions, was something that needed to be ignored, repressed, pushed aside, abandoned and instead I needed to focus on pleasing other people.
And so that became my life for decades, playing the character of a perfectionistic people pleaser, neurotically obsessed with getting positive attention from other people, completely disassociated from the body, pretending that everything was fine but all the while being deeply conflicted within.
Healing
For years now the body has been screaming for attention. Chronic pain, chronic fatigue, severe anxiety, panic attacks, depression, intense bouts of rage, overwhelming emotional turmoil all have been ways that the body-mind has been trying to say, “Hey! It’s time to pay attention to me now! It’s time to wake up from the dream-belief that there is something wrong with me. It’s time to start making choices that feel good for the body and remember the truth that the body is an expression of Awareness.”
It’s taken such immense misery in order to be forced to sit still, remember, feel, see the conditioning for what it is and begin treating the body with care, love and attentiveness. And even though I’ve been attempting to do this for many years now, I still keep discovering how engrained I am in the pattern of abandoning the body.
Breathing and Observing
Today I’m noticing intense stabbing pain in the side of my ribs, like a squeezing contraction, mixed with feelings of fear, shame and hyper-vigilance. It’s deeply uncomfortable and so many painful memories are coming back of feeling this exact same way as a child. I also notice memories of past-lives coming up that feel related to this, seeing how it’s part of a bigger cycle of healing. It’s quite unpleasant to feel so much pain.
Yet at the same time there is something that feels so healing about seeing all of this without avoidance - to just keep breathing and observing what is coming up, to not dismiss the body as irrelevant, to treat it with respect, dignity and kindness.
There is a part of me that has always wanted to feel safe enough to experience “embodiment,” to be able to move through the world without constantly belittling and rejecting myself. So I am grateful that slowly this is unfolding. It’s bloody intense and uncomfortable yet my heart longs for healing and awakening above all us.
Waking Up
There is also a budding awareness that both rejection of and identification with the body-mind are the true cause of suffering.
The patterns that started early in this life of believing that “I am the body,” “I need to abandon the body,” “I need to repress my feelings,” “I am rejected,” “I am wounded,” “I need other people to love me,” “I need healing” are what made those experiences of dismissal so painful. Without these beliefs, those experiences were neutral, without meaning.
All of This mysterious life is an appearance in the “I Am.” The truth is that Presence has never been wounded, hurt, abandoned, in pain, in need of healing. Perhaps the body’s current suffering is actually a way of revealing that I, as pure consciousness, am being too identified with that which is temporary.
One breath at a time, waking up from the conditioning of the mind, seeing the Awareness that unconditionally welcomes the body with love, a Presence that effortlessly honors its sensitivity as a marvelous gift, worthy of being listened to with care and curiosity, yet ultimately not defining of who I am.
God, I love this post. Calling it a post seems wildly inadequate- it’s in fact in alignment to my experience of this consciousness we call life. Thank you for such an articulate insight of your own experience.
I felt this. The body keeps whispering until we finally slow down enough to hear it. There’s such grace in learning to meet it with compassion instead of control.