A Single Tree Podcast

We are used to needing to push forward and produce or “work on” things, even in therapy. Healing, however, occurs when we become passive. It is something we receive, rather than being something we make happen. In order to become passive, we have to feel a sense of safety.

Silence/contemplation/meditation are paths to healing. Our organisms (bodies) are usually bent on helping us avoid difficulty and keep us feeling “put together” in our environment. If we become “meta” to ourselves and the responses, then we have opportunity to encounter ourselves and things we have been avoiding and make some shifts in our responses. We need to feel safe and connected to do that.

As organisms (bodies), we respond to our environment automatically without conscious awareness. The ways we do this make up various parts of our experience as humans and even form elements of what we think of as our personalities. We tend to think of these responses as “problems,” but there is no reason to pathologize or judge these adaptations that are useful in helping us survive and regulate ourselves. We need to become present to them and take a neutral stance to understanding the way our organisms organize themselves in our environment. Just notice the ways you have adapted.

We’re another year older and have become more focused on our collective experience of stress and trauma. All of us experience difficulty which has an effect on our bodies over time, even as we are unaware. De-pathologizing our adaptive responses to difficulty and setting ourselves free from blame are the first steps to getting to healing. Healing is becoming connected again with ourselves and others. The book referenced is The Myth of Normal by Gabor Maté.

Trauma theory is helpful in understanding how our nervous systems respond in stressful situations. We can also learn to navigate the different levels of nervous system activation, even when dangerous and life-threatening events occur. We tend to avoid these difficult things in our lives because we do not believe in our ability to experience intense sensations or understand how to complete the circles of activation and deactivation that occur naturally within us. It is in these intense activations that we can experience surrender, reckoning with our own death and spiritual awakening.

In his book In An Unspoken Voice, Peter A. Levine identifies four portals to spiritual awakening, as in the Buddhist and Taoist traditions. They are death, mediation, sex and trauma. In these experiences, humans experience profound surrender, and our nervous systems, which normally seek safety and control, are overwhelmed. Perhaps we can practice this type of surrender as a way of life.

There are layers to our human experience – perception, thought, emotion and sensation. It is important to pay attention and understand what is happening at each of these levels, but they, in and of themselves, are not the fullest or deepest experience of existence. There is a deeper sense with which we can connect – “underneath” all these layers. There are different ways to access it and different things to call it, but our spiritual practices will lead us to the same place.

Effective teachers are guides which help us find our way to truth, not just dispensing "answers." And when we suspend judgment of everything we do and think, we can experience our inner reality as it is and move toward healing and shaping it.

Religion puts forth right belief and right action (morality). If we stay in a dualistic mindset, it will not allow us to explore and know reality and ourselves deeply. We can have practices which allow us to take in what is, and give us better ability to have freedom in shaping behavior.

We discuss our belief systems' role giving structure to our morality and ability to know what is true. These are structures that are helpful for a time and then it is helpful for our spirituality to move beyond them, into a non-dual way of knowing and experiencing God and reality.

We discuss our personal paths to non-duality. We are all raised to think from a dualistic, black-or-white perspective, but inevitably our experiences lead us to a place where that type of thinking no longer works. We must find something larger that helps us interpret our experience and the world around us with a different mind.

Judging everything – our circumstances, our inner experiences and other things and people – is a tendency we all have, and widely accepted as a normal way our brains work. It is a necessary function of our thinking in the first part of our lives, but then it is important for us to take on a non-dualistic or non-judging stance. It helps us have a more whole experience and be able to accept life as it is, rather than how we wish it was.

We often want to define ourselves and set ourselves apart from others by identifying ourselves with a category or group and by being the heroes in our own stories. We also seek to establish a sense of comfort and stability at all costs. Life comes along and hands us interruptions, irritants and inconveniences that seemingly throw us off course, but perhaps those things that don’t seem to fit can be incorporated into an inclusive whole.

Growth as human beings means expanding our container to let in more and more reality. We often don’t engage in this type of work because it means we will leave behind comfort, safety and others who are like-minded, but expanding consciousness doesn’t mean we are better than others or that we cannot continue to agree and hold space for others’ views. In fact, it means the opposite: we have more space for good, bad and different.

There are two seemingly opposing forces at work in all living organisms: the drive to change and the drive to stay the same. The conservative/progressive divide in our culture indicates this dynamic is at work intensely right now. We must continue to talk to one another, believe change is possible and practice awareness of these seemingly opposing forces. Healthy growth happens through providing the necessary conditions and building to the point where insight and learning takes place.

Conversations are grinding to a halt and relationships are strained due to the current political gridlock. To develop a dialogue that will help move us forward, we must seek to understand the deeply held values in ourselves and others. We must also seek to hold two seemingly irreconcilable things in tension with one another to get to something new. We invite your feedback, and hope you will help us move this discussion forward.

We tend to look at others and focus on ways they can change, rather than practicing vulnerability, which can help us experience transformation. Transforming ourselves will help us be part of change, and also help us practice non-violence. Being able to engage in vulnerability makes us more powerful because we become unflappable in the face of threat.

It is easy to see increasing polarization in our culture about racial tensions and other issues. Our first response to these social issues tends to be taking one side or the other. The rhetoric in our culture is tense and lends itself to rigid stances and power-grabbing. We must examine our own nervous system responses to find within ourselves the ability to speak and act from a truly powerful place. Real power tends to be based in trust and vulnerability.

We are in solidarity with those affected by violence and those who live in fear because of it. Many of us are experiencing tension after violence toward people of color and ensuing riots. In this episode, we discuss ways to respond to tension and the threats we experience in order to establish complex responses which can lead to peace and reconciliation.

This coronavirus pandemic has presented us with prolonged exposure to stress and the realization we are in a larger context than we may have thought. We are used to seeking and attaining comfort and predictability that is not available to us right now. We discuss how we can let our trauma and stress move through us and come out the other side unshakable.