#214 Stop & See Clearly: shamatha & vipashyana
And the Quiet Grief of realizing I'd Abandoned Myself
I run FREE twice weekly Recovery Dharma meetings at 9:30am Bali time on Mondays (9:30pm New York Time) and then also at 6:00am Bali time on Wednesdays (6:00pm New York time on Tuesdays). You can join us by joining our WhatsApp Group here.
Sometimes, when I think about starting to write regularly again for Substack, I feel overwhelmed. Last year, I used to write every day - about my personal practice, about my spiritual studies, about my travels to host yoga retreats. My life has shifted so much since then - and I stopped writing so much. And now, I’m like: Where do I even begin? There is so much of my journey over the last six months that I haven’t shared with you, that if I started now, it would feel like too much to catch you up on.
It’s been wild. I think the real catalyst for it all was the ten-day Vipassana course I participated in in early December. (If you haven’t heard of Vipassana, it is a ten-day silent meditation retreat, where you can’t have any contact with the outside world, read or write, and you meditate for about 11 hours a day). Since then, it’s reorganized and reframed so much of what I thought about myself and my identity.
Last night, I was reading The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh to prepare for my online Buddha Dharma philosophy class, which I teach every Tuesday morning on the Buddha Dharma. He explains in Chapter Six how Buddhist meditation has two aspects: shamatha (stopping) and vipashyana (looking deeply). Vipashyana is where we gain insight and liberation from suffering. But he emphasizes that the practice of shamatha (stopping) is fundamental, and often overlooked. Because if we cannot stop, we cannot have insight.
I was sharing with my students how I think our inability to stop is the cause of so much suffering in the world. We live in constant input. In North America, I grew up with the news on in the background every night. My granny and dad always had the radio playing. Now, for many of us (myself included), that distraction has been replaced by scrolling. It’s still the same thing. And if we’re not stopping, we’re not reflecting, and we aren’t becoming aware of our wants, our needs, our suffering, and how to alleviate our suffering.
In the last few weeks, I feel like I’ve been released from my social media addiction. I can’t fully explain it, but something shifted. It’s like I suddenly woke up and saw how much suffering it was causing me to be constantly exposed to stories, news, and other people’s lives that stirred emotions in me that didn’t need to be experienced. I no longer have any desire to post or log into the platforms I used to. I am sometimes shocked when new people find me on the internet and connect. (I’m like - how did you find me without me constantly posting on Instagram? Lol!) But it feels good, like a genuine connection beyond social media. (Side note: I’ve heard that some of you have found me lately through Sober Yoga Girl Podcast & Sober Yoga Girl The Book (Audiobook) which is so cool!)
When we are constantly receiving input, our minds don’t have enough time to rest. shamatha. And it’s in that rest that deep insight arises. vipashyana.
I saw this clearly during my Vipassana. For the first three days, I slept - deeply, constantly. shamatha. I was that exhausted. And then, by Day Four, my causes of suffering began to surface. vipashyana. I suddenly saw with clarity what I hadn’t seen before.
This year, I’ve been working with the idea that the truth is within us all. We all have intuition. We all know.
And yet, we have a tendency to place others on a pedestal. I did this for years - I would listen to teachers and assume that they were all knowing, that they would offer me the solution - when really they are just the medium delivering the message. I’ve done this with partners, too - thinking they have a more evolved practice than me, or a more deep understanding of spirituality and philosophy. The Buddha said, “My teachings are like a finger pointing to the moon. Do not mistake the finger for the moon.” I often think about this when I offer the Guru Mantra in class - that we honour our teachers for guiding us, but ultimately, everything we seek is already within us. Our Gurus are just showing us the way.
I recently experienced an ending. I didn’t share about it on substack because I don’t share publicly a lot of what is going on for me anymore. I find myself valuing my privacy more and more. But the same thing happened that happened to me almost a year ago with an ex partner: when I stop, when I rest, when I take space with myself, when I return to my body and allow my nervous system to down regulate - everything becomes clear. shamatha and vipashyana.
I often tell my students that we forget and remember, forget and remember. The aim is to shorten the time we spend forgetting and lengthen the time we spend remembering. I forget that I am of the spirit - and then I remember. My nervous system dysregulates, and then it regulates. And then I come back to the truth. And as my relationship with my daily 60 minute morning meditation practice deepens, it’s becoming quicker for me to remember. The remembering might have taken four months last year - this year it took two weeks. So, this is progress.
And yet, yesterday, during a craniosacral therapy session, I felt a quiet grief. Entering the session I told my healer that my body felt fine, but as she began working, I started to feel profound pain. She said all my major muscles were engaged - as if I were in a freeze state. As a tear rolled down my face, she asked what it was for.
“I’m sad I abandoned myself again,” I said.
Because like every time I’ve ended up in a scenario like this, I can trace back through everything that happened and see the moments I knew something wasn’t right - and yet I denied my intuition. It was there very early. (It always is). And that’s why I was in a state of Freeze. I continued to override my nervous system signals, thinking that I could logically convince myself of something. Meanwhile, my nervous system was on alert.
Last year, a teacher told me he thought I was addicted to creating chaos. At the time, I resisted that idea. How could I be responsible for the behaviour of others? How could I be responsible for them creating chaos? But I see it now. Every time I don’t set a boundary. Every time I keep going along with things and don’t truly honor myself. Every time I ignore my gut intuition about someone or something. I am playing an active part in chaos’ creation. And right now, I am feeling a comedown from that.
This morning, in my Buddha Dharma class, we explored the second Noble Truth and the ways we continue to create our own suffering.
The first noble truth is that there is suffering, and the second noble truth is that suffering has a cause. There are three turns of the dharma wheel around it:
Recognition
I am continuing to create suffering. Even after we diagnose our pain, we keep feeding it. The Buddha spoke of the four nutriments:Food: what we consume physically
Sense impressions: what we watch, hear, and engage with
Volition: our desires and intentions
Consciousness: both collective and individual
Encouragement
Real happiness is possible if we stop ingesting what causes suffering. If something harms us, we can choose differently.Realization
We commit to stopping what causes our suffering. We return to simplicity.
There’s a part of me that wants to celebrate: Way to go, Alex. You spotted an unhealthy situation in two weeks instead of four months. You’re growing. You’re learning. You’re shortening the periods in which you forget and lengthening the periods in which you remember.
And that’s true.
But there’s also grief. Because if I’m honest, I knew in my gut for a while that I was not ok. I can point to the exact moments - the sensations in my gut, the conversations I clocked, the inner knowing. In hindsight, I see how by continuing to talk my self out of what my intuition already knew - I participated in creating my own suffering. (And the more I talk to people about it these days, the more they tell me they had these experiences recently too! Gut instincts about people they hired that they ignored, or gut instincts about places or things. It seems like a lesson a lot of us can relate to right now).
There are so many AA slogans about this - about cleaning up our side of the street. About taking responsibility for my own side of things. I see a familiarity in this scenario because I’ve gone through it so many times. As Gabby Bernstein says, “We will continue to attract the same person in different bodies until we show up for the universal lesson.”
Right now, I feel a bit like a wounded animal. I am exhausted. My body is on antibiotics, fighting an infection. I am tired. My nervous system is slowly coming out of freeze, recalibrating toward safety. Rest is what I need. I spent the day at home yesterday and today. I’m resting up to start teaching on the RA YTT later this week.
Thicht Naht Hanh writes, “Calming allows us to rest, and resting is a precondition for healing. When animals in the forest get wounded, they find a place to lie down, and they rest completely for many days. They don’t think about food or anything else. They just rest, and they get the healing they need. When we humans get sick, we just worry! We look for doctors and medicine, but we don’t stop. Even when we go to the beach or the mountains for a vacation, we don’t rest, and we come back more tired than before. We have to learn to rest.”
And in the rest, I feel space returning. Space to focus on what matters most to me: the sober women’s yoga community and the Mindful Bali community I’ve been building for the last seven years, since I got sober in April 2019.
I am grateful for each one of you who has participated in some of our classes and programs over the years.
If you’re feeling called to reconnect, here are some ways to do that:
Upcoming Retreats & Trainings at Mindful Bali
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I have FOUR Free Online Resources for Sober/Sober Curious Women.
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I have a podcast, Sober Yoga Girl, where I interview more than 250 guests from all walks of life on their sober/mental health/well-being journey. You can listen to the show here.
I offer a free 60 Day Sober Girls Yoga Challenge to support women in going alcohol free & developing a spiritual practice to support the journey. You can join us here.
I run FREE twice weekly Recovery Dharma meetings at 9:30am Bali time on Mondays (9:30pm New York Time) and then also at 6:00am Bali time on Wednesdays (6:00pm New York time on Tuesdays). You can join us by joining our WhatsApp Group here.
Current Online Yoga Classes:
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