All will be well
and all will be well
and all manners of things will be well.
Julian of Norwich
Complicated, busy, painful, troubled periods in life happen more often than we would like. Sometimes I am able to react calmly, sailing through pandemonium, dealing well with grief. Others times, I’m lost. Submerged. Frantic. I feel like a horse wearing blinders. I can’t see what I need to do, what needs to change. I feel hog-tied by confusion, unsure of my choices, and I respond by moving faster and faster, which only makes things worse. I want to climb out of my life, stand on top of it, and survey the whole big, sprawling mess. I’m having minor accidents, snapping at store clerks, driving rudely, missing appointments, forgetting birthdays, feeling like I’m making matters worse. At times like these, I know I’m lost in chaos.
If you are retreating to get a grip on your life, to stop lurching around with a perpetual frown creasing your forehead, this is a good practice to do. It works especially well at the beginning of a retreat.
Prepare
Six sheets of paper or your journal.
A pencil or pen.
Drawing materials.
The Feeling Spiral
When your life resembles one long ER episode, only no cute doctor ever appears to rescue you, it can be hard to stay current with concrete things like mortgages and birthdays, let alone feelings. The only problem is, these stressful times can become extra depress-ful times because you are carrying last week’s, last month’s, last year’s feelings on your back. When an old feeling gets triggered by a present situation or when you simply haven’t had a breather to catch up with yourself, your present reaction can be more painful, more volatile. Your ability to see clearly what is in front of you becomes clouded. You become more and more frantic because you haven’t had time to feel. Tracing these feelings back to the origin helps you untangle your responses, and while the chaotic feelings may surface again, your perceptions and reactions get lighter and clearer with practice.
Read through the following list. Copy into your journal each emotion you’ve felt recently or each word that you feel a strong “hit” from. Do this quickly.
Angry, Awesome, Creative, Confused, Delighted, Dull, Irritable, Hurried, Scared, Resentful, Fascinated, False, Elated, Frantic, Good, Graced, Gloomy, Irreverent, Irresistible, Happy, Uptight, Self-protective, Glad, Shameful, Guilty, Humiliated, Anxious, Easygoing, Uneasy, Mean, Exuberant, Unstable, Old, Dispassionate, Serious, Dried out, Funny, Intelligent, Mysterious, Powerless, Empowered, Puzzled, Feminine, Extraordinary, Inspired, Maternal, Original, Glorious, Violent, Whimsical, Worried, Uncompromising, Rigid, Relentless, Quiet, Spirited, Truthful, Terrified, Tense, Trusting, Stifled, Stubborn, Picking fights, Empathetic, Zealous, Letting go, Inventive, Serene, Overflowing, Neglected, Unfeeling, Lively, Majestic, Loathsome, Queenlike, Vulnerable, Masculine, Unreachable, Incompetent, Inconsequential, Sensuous, Clear, Heartless, Jealous, Beautiful, Radiant, Gray, Devoted, Petty, Abused, Juicy, Needy, Receptive, Raw, Shaky, Powerful, Kind, Sad, Enthusiastic, Closed off, Busy, Wrung out, Capable, Sexy, Playful, Generous, Stingy, Envious, Feeble, Bored, Depressed, Exhausted, Out-of-the-loop, Calm, Stuck, Mighty, Helpless, Luminous, Holy, Critical, Criticized, Judgmental, Ardent, Spry, Know-it-all, Insufferable, Blank, Friendly, Bossy, Intense, Seductive, Satisfied, Caring, Invaded, Invasive, Suspicious, Graceful, Reverent, Frustrated, Fulfilled, Grateful, Bitchy, Fertile, Flexible, Forgiving, Outgoing, Inwardly focused, Faithful, Faithless, Emotional, Too big for your britches, Without a voice, Without boundaries, Need to curl up with a blanket and be read stories to.
Take each emotion you circled and trace it back to the original core. For example, you may have circled Guilt. Ask yourself, “When did I last feel guilty?” Perhaps you remember rushing to exercise class, behind in your work, your child wailing, “Mommy, don’t go.” Ask yourself, “Where did this guilt come from?” Perhaps what comes to mind is feeling like you’re never doing enough. Keep tracing it back by asking again, “Where did that feeling come from?” Maybe the slimy finger of shame glides over your heart, perhaps you glimpse images of times you failed at something. Again, “Where did that feeling come from?” A queasy feeling of fear stirs in you, loosely tied to a primal image of not being accepted. You have hit one of the basic five, the irreducible emotions of anger, joy, fear, love, and hurt. Every emotion comes down to one of these at its heart. Guilt may spring from fear, resentment from anger, creativity from love. You know you have contacted ground zero when you ask, “Where did this feeling come from?” and one of the basic five echoes back at you. You know you have hit the truth when you feel it in your body. Fear and anger are often felt as a clutching in your stomach, a pain in your neck, a band of tightness around your head, or clenched fists or jaw. Joy and love might express themselves as an ache in your throat, an opening around your heart, or a lightness in your whole being. Hurt can be a burning, tears in your eyes, or wanting to curl up and be hugged.
What does it feel like to be in this basic feeling? To ride the sensation? Sometimes it helps to write about how you are feeling, to trace the memories and associations that might arise. Or you might find this to be a nonverbal process, one that begs to be drawn or to be expressed in movement. Painting, drawing, sculpting clay, and walking are all helpful ways to “stay with” and deepen your experience. Or sitting or lying still and breathing deeply might be best.
See Good Ways to Listen and Contemplations: Ways to Work with Questions.
When you feel that you’ve ridden this emotion out, choose another one that you circled and work through it. You will find each time you trace your feeling that it gets both easier to find where the feeling started and harder because with each attempt you feel more. That’s good. Track the origin of your chaos a couple more times. Tracing several feelings back to their sources is enough to reveal what core feelings are active in your life right now and allows you to coax them into the open for a good airing.
This is an exercise that can be repeated whenever you are experiencing a hard time and your reaction is confusion, anxiety, and increasingly faster movement. Each time you descend the spiral, you learn more about what triggers you, what ancient associations from your genes, from your childhood, or from your adult choices influence you. It is never an easy descent, but it amazingly opens up space for you to begin to view your life more calmly, unburdened by a refrigerator stuffed with stale emotions.
You may want to take a rest here. This is a good place to take a break or end if you are doing a mini-retreat.
Standing on Top of Your Life
Spread out six pieces of paper if you have room. If you are on a retreat in the world, do one list at a time in your journal.
You’re going to make four lists. Your first list will be everything you can think of in response to “What I hate about my life right now is….” Be as scrupulously honest with yourself as you dare. No one is going to read it but you. Write quickly. Keep going until everything is out on paper.
Next list everything you can think of in response to “What is missing in my life right now is….” Name your longings, your wistfulness, your regrets. Don’t write down something because you feel you should.
Next list “What I love about my life right now is….” Be specific. Remember little things like a certain kind of tea you relish or the way your bed supports you when you collapse into it at night, and big ones like your best friend, your children, your health.
When you feel you have recorded everything, pretend you are your closest friend. What would he or she add? Do you agree? If you do, add it. If not, record it on another piece of paper with that person’s initials next to it. If you have a partner or lover, pretend you are that person and see if his or her perspective adds any new ideas. Do you accept them? If so, add them. If not, note them with initials on the other piece of paper. What about your mom? Your dad? (As you know, they don’t have to be living to have an opinion.) Your sister? Your cat? Are there either any other opinions that you need to get out of the way or any people whose viewpoints might be helpful?
Get out another sheet of paper. Close your eyes. Inhale slowly and deeply. On your exhale, let out a big sigh. Spend a few moments centering yourself.
See Opening Ceremony: A Few Guidelines and Good Ways to Listen: I Am Enough.
See in your mind’s eye your image of the Divine. Let an image spontaneously appear to you. Don’t edit, don’t refuse. No need to hurry, no need to force. Just let an image materialize. Feel streams of warmth and light flowing to you from this image, washing away negativity, doubt, worry, chaos, frantic rushing. Let yourself be bathed. Let yourself be supported by this love. (You may be saying, “What visualization hooey crap.” Perhaps, but it feels good. Even the intellectual, stuck-up part of me knows that what my mind imagines, my body echoes by producing corresponding reactions. So think of this as a healing session. You don’t have to really believe anything.)
When you are ready, perhaps your image of the Divine gently asks you, “Where are you in your life right now?” Whatever images, symbols, feelings, or sensations arise are perfect. Don’t refuse. Thank whoever has appeared, and, coming back with soft eyes, with no need to hurry or worry about outcome, render your vision of where you are in your life on paper, using color, shape, symbols, and images. What it looks like is not important. (Repeat after me, What it looks like is not important.) It is bypassing the words to get to the more intuitive, dreamlike state of images and symbols that is important.
Work on this as long as you like. If you need to do more than one drawing, fine. Post it someplace where you can see it, and take a break. Pick some berries, plant some tomatoes, read about a woman on retreat, eat brie and fresh bread by a lake—anything that nourishes you. This is another good stopping point if you are doing a mini-retreat, but don’t skip the self-nurturing. Leave time for a warm bath or a stroll, if only for ten minutes.
Come back and read over your lists of emotions. At the end of each list, write a few lines of feedback, a response to what you wrote. You might start your feedback with “I see” or “I now feel” or “I learned.”
Sit quietly in front of your drawing for a few moments. Look at it with the eyes of a total stranger. What insights or connections might this stranger see? Write a bit of feedback about your drawing. “What I see” is a good place to start.
Place your drawing next to your lists. Either spread them out on the floor or tack them on a wall. Make a fourth list in response to the question “How can I experience more balance and peace in my life?” Write quickly. Write everything. If you feel stuck, skim the first three lists and your drawing. If you feel panicky, know you are not making a commitment to do anything (you might not be ready to take action for days, weeks, months, years), but that doesn’t mean you can’t acknowledge what you might need.
Contemplate your drawing and your lists for the rest of your retreat. If you are going back to your regular life now, post them where you can see them. They are little road maps to help you see through the chaos. Hopefully, you feel a little clearer, lighter, more hopeful, and less anxious now.
For Long Retreats
If at any time you are feeling jumpy or anxious or that you aren’t “getting enough” from your retreat, do the feeling spiral. Do it several times. Meditate on your lists. What associations, ideas, visions come to mind? You might find the lists suggesting another retreat activity—anything from making a collage on how to experience more peace and balance to dancing out the frustration and rage of your “What I hate about my life right now…” list.
For Mini-Retreats
The feeling spiral can be safely done in an hour or a bit less. Just be sure to contain it between opening and closing ceremonies. Standing on Top of Your Life can be done quickly as a brief check-in with yourself. Do only the question “How can I experience more balance and peace in my life?”
See Retreat Plans: A One-Hour Getting Current Retreat.
For Retreats in the World
Standing on Top of Your Life lends itself to being done on a cliff overlooking the ocean or at a table in a café. Unless you are comfortable with strangers offering you tissues, the feeling spiral is best done in privacy.
For Retreats with Others
You could do the visualization together, either having someone record it beforehand on a tape or having someone read it while everyone else relaxes and listens.
Another group activity is to display your lists in a circle, including the piece of paper with others’ voices on it that you did not include in your own list. Silently, each woman walks around the circle reading the others’ lists and adding her comments on the extra sheet of paper, with her initials. Then everyone reads the comments and sits together in a circle to discuss them.
Or do a brainstorming session on how to bring to life one or two of the ideas you each listed in “To experience more balance and peace in my life….” When brainstorming, anything goes. Everyone speaks her ideas. Nothing is censored. No one comments on someone else’s ideas, either positively or negatively. Use a tape recorder or have someone record the ideas. After the wildness has run its course for one woman, switch to another. Then after everyone has had a turn, take a break. Then go back to the first woman and do what Barbara Sher calls a barn raising: think of people you know, skills you have, and other practical ways you can help her take concrete steps toward realizing one of the brainstorming ideas she likes.