MY GRANDMOTHER GURU: Awareness, Compassion, Groundlessness and Integration.

Pema Chödrön, Pema Chödrön.

Ahhh! What can I even say? My grandmother guru for SURE!

As I begin to write this tears well up, my heart space begins to warm and my throat gets a bit lumpy - lots of sensations arising. Thinking about how she has impacted my life stirs up big feelings.

People will often say that another person’s wisdom or generosity saved them at one time or another - that is how I feel about Ani Pema. Her teachings, her entire being, captured me in a way that I can’t really describe.

She just feels so...safe.

Like home, somehow.

There’s a steady embrace in her being, an unconditional warmth that you can feel emanating from her just by listening to her voice. Her teachings provide me with some of the most potent and effective guidance for integrating “life” - specifically parts of life that call for being present with big, difficult emotions.

Pema Chödrön is a buddhist nun, author and lecturer. She came secretly recommended to me by a teacher at my first Vipassana* mediation retreat in April of 2012. The retreat had been on my radar for awhile, but I hadn't yet felt brave enough to pull the trigger and sign up.

Then my dad passed away.

I was a mess.

Out of desperation, I signed up for the next available retreat. I had no idea what I was doing. I needed help, anything. The more drastic the better.

The retreat was hard, and not in any of the ways that I expected.

A lot came up internally, and I got stuck in many, many mental loops.

Much of my time at the retreat was spent grieving and integrating the death of my mother, who had passed less than 4 years before my dad. In exploring this shaky, life-shattering experience, I found myself sitting with some intensely heavy guilt. I was having a hard enough time that I requested a meeting with one of the teachers, and in expressing my confusion around how to “get rid of my guilt” she replied something like - “well, it’s not really about getting rid of anything - it’s about holding your center and being present with whatever energy arises in your experience, and meeting it with love and curiosity”.

Equanimous observation of WHAT IS.

She then recommended I check out Pema Chödrön’s work.

As soon as I finished the retreat I acquired Pema's book “When Things Fall Apart” and drank it up. I found that she had a huge catalog of recorded lectures all over the internet, and I got my hands on her lecture version of “Getting Unstuck”.

I heard her speak for the first time, and I was totally hooked. I couldn't get enough of her. I find that I re-listen to certain lectures of hers over and over - I still go through phases of having her in heavy rotation, especially when I’m having a rough go at life.

She’s just so raw and real, while also so compassionate - she teaches meeting yourself with compassion WHEREVER you find yourself, whatever version of yourself you’re feeling shame about. Her teachings really helped highlight a lot of the places where I was harshly judging myself and carrying around guilt or shame. They also inspired more curiosity around these energies - I wanted to get to know them better.

Pema speaks of things like emptiness and groundlessness, triggers and propensities, and taking radical responsibility and accountability for how we choose to show up in the world, independent of anyone else’s behaviors or choices - always copping to our decisions and actions. Radical honesty. PLUS compassion. SANS judgement.

Wow. I loved it all so much.

It was serendipitous for Pema to come into my life when she did. I knew for a long time that meditation had something to it, but I had always struggled engraining it as routine. The Vipassana retreat was my blindfolded (okay, gagged..haha) head first attempt at kickstarting a meditation habit for myself. It still took me another 7 years of working at it to really engrain it as a daily practice.

Listening to Pema’s teachings and reading her books created a desire in me to meditate - she explained things in a way that I could understand in terms of practical application. A lot of teachings thus far had resonated with me on a philosophical level - “Yes, I feel that is true. I feel like I Gnow that to be true for me”. But understanding what to DO with that philosophy in my everyday life in order to BE with my experiences with more presence, intention, clarity, objectivity, joy? :dunno:

Pema gives such practical, accessible practices to work with. Her perspectives and vulnerability melt my heart and give me permission to compassionately look at things in myself I’d previously been asleep to or scared to confront, or had met with criticism and judgement. She teaches easing up on the resistance, softening into your experience. Compassion for yourself wherever you meet yourself - especially the parts of yourself that you feel shameful or embarrassed about, “the parts that nobody else sees.”

There are also certain things about her that remind me of my mother - there’s a gentleness, and almost a sadness that I find extremely comforting. She feels like home - like some part of my mom knew that I could access her there - hints of her. She counsels groundlessness - emptiness, just like my mom did. The reminder that the true nature of our reality is that it is forever morphing, shifting, changing, dynamic - that the only predictable attribute of our existence is impermanence. This is synonymous to me to the idea of detachment. Nothing lasts and you can’t take it with you - so enjoy it while it lasts, and be glad that it happened, not sad that it’s over.

That is what my mother always taught me, too.

So in addition to being introduced to these teachings that were lighting me up, my stories of shame, guilt and judgement were coming into my scope of awareness -

AND - I now had this adorable buddhist nun in my sights, one with enough available material to keep my obsessive-ass busy -

AND! - I now had a practical tool of curious, non-judgmental observation through meditation to apply to it. (Judgement hadn't been something I’d looked at deeply before then - when you’re asleep in the program you're asleep in the program. I felt that I was awakening to new layers of my bullshit, and I was getting very, very curious.)

My biggest takeaway from her teachings is practical instruction in HOW to be with whatever arises in your experience. THIS, in my opinion, is where real integration and healing happens - in the ability to be grounded and rooted in your body and to the earth and the true nature of your being - the ability to be completely present with whatever is happening in your experience - whatever energy is arising. It matters not the energy, because the energetic experience is subjective. An invitation to curiosity and presence arises anytime you notice yourself resisting any part of your experience.

Pema also taught me to stop, breathe, and be with the sensational experiences of my body. She taught me how to bring the awareness of meditation into all aspects of life. To create space for whatever needs to be felt, and to feel it FULLY. Observe, acknowledge, assess, assimilate, adapt, integrate. accept, tend, love.

“Dropping the story line and staying with the feeling,” as she says. What’s happening is just what’s happening - any story or meaning or judgement attached to an experience is something extra that we add.

We don't integrate sensational experiences that still have stories attached to them that carry around stuck energy. We fully integrate through the practice of creating a safe container through which any and all emotions and sensational experiences can effortlessly flow and be felt so that we can release them back to source. These energies are not intended to become “stuck” - allowing ourselves to FEEL fully is how we allow them to flow.

This does not equate to acting out emotions or impulses - if anything it equates to doing nothing, or moving and emoting in a safe, intuitive way. Just being fully with the body’s natural cathartic process of adaptation, allowing the quiet whisper to lead. Doing so with the intention of becoming more sane and less “all caught up”, in order to help others become more sane and less “all caught up.”

This is integration - allowing the relentlessly transforming nature of our reality to flow through us like a river. Not clinging to objects that float by, not grabbing for the shore. Not avoiding waterfalls or rapids, but relaxing, trusting and surrendering to the wonder of this life experience.

This is the key to peace, to full integration.

Pema has served as a wise grandmother guide for me on this journey of self-exploration, always there to remind me not to use what I uncover in this search as a club to beat myself up with.

I learned to bring compassion to the part of myself that I catch in the downward spiral of self-denigration.

I bring compassion to the judge.

Compassion to the part of me that tells me I’m less than.

To the critic.

To the part of me that just can’t bring myself to do what I know is the courageous thing to do.

To whatever part of me experiences shame, guilt, fear, judgement.

I remember that I am more than my thoughts, emotions and actions - I AM the energies that run through me, I AM the world that I experience as other.

I am conscious awareness.

I am becoming.

And that is enough.

Thank you, Ani Pema.

Your daughter in groundlessness,

Heidi

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*Vipassana meditation:

https://www.dhamma.org/en-US/index

Pema Chödrön:

https://pemachodronfoundation.org/