Welcome, dear reader, to another month of taking metta off the meditation cushion and out into everyday life.
Last month found me unexpectedly washed up onto Metta’s Purer Shores, volunteering at a Kadampa center longer than I had expected after bringing to light questionable behaviors at my new live-in caregiving job. This month found me none the wiser as I continued to bless that particular mess, and allowed metta to reorientate me in unexpected ways.
I recently heard someone call phases like this “sacred disorientation.” To be honest, dear readers, it felt more like life’s croupier was now calling “rein ne va plus”—nothing goes anymore,r no more bets—and sending this little life of mine spinning in the opposite direction of the Dharma’s roulette wheel while I waited to land in one of many possible pockets.
Everyday kindnesses helped.
Early morning walks in nature helped.
Waitressing in the center’s World Peace Café helped.
Surprisingly, attending meditation classes did not.
The teachings were harmless enough, the meditation hall peaceful, the other students welcoming, and yet . . . every fiber of my being wanted to be elsewhere. Maybe it was already time to move on? Maybe this new tradition wasn’t a good fit after all? Maybe it was simply time to rest after so much upheaval?
I like to think I’ve sat often enough to know the difference between a sankhara surfacing or a teaching that doesn’t speak to me or my body asking for more rest. What was happening felt like none of the above in a way I couldn’t yet articulate.
A few days later, some clarity arrived when one of the center’s residents came to help in the café for a few hours. Waiting for the dishwasher to finish its cycle so we could dry a rack of coffee cups, I confessed feeling a surprising urge to punch the teacher the evening before. They laughed and admitted they often felt like that too!
They shared that they were from Iran and currently stranded in the UK due to world events. Every time they closed their eyes to meditate, instead of peace all they saw were bombs going off, which understandably led to worrying about their loved ones. I listened as they described their resulting survivor’s guilt, loss of appetite, and recent break up with a romantic partner.
And then came a plot twist only the Dharma could have foreseen: they and their ex had both worked as caregivers for the agency to which I was currently giving a second chance by lingering longer at the center. Neither of them had had good experiences either, and it was quiet confirmation that it was probably time for me to throw in the towel on that score.
Once they’d spoken their peace, I thanked them for their openness and secretly extended the same understanding and compassion I felt for their impossible situation to my own.
After walking away from Vipassana last year, my desire to explore new possible meditation paths was sincere. So far, I was enjoying Kadampa’s more gentle teaching style and was slowly familiarizing myself with the formal framework of sadhanas, pujas, and offerings. However, maybe there was too much disorientation just now to give this new tradition a fair trial.
I then remembered a suggestion a few months ago to explore the nervous system regulation teachings of Irene Lyon. While the Dharma’s roulette wheel kept me spinning, it seemed as good a time as any to do just that.
Metta’s reorientation began harmlessly enough, listening to some of Irene’s interviews on somatic experiencing and joining one of her online nervous system tune-up courses. In contrast to the resistance I was feeling to meditation teachings, my body couldn’t get enough of this new learning.
There was a lot more to it than just fight-or-flight vagus nerve soothing biohacks. Although, not unlike meditation, somatic exercises seem easy enough to learn initially but not necessarily simple to keep practicing.
What body scanning is to meditation, orienting is to embodiment. And what a meditator might experience as a sankhara could well be trapped procedural memory—like wanting to run away from a frightening situation when your nervous system freezes you to the spot instead—still trying to reach completion decades later? The difference being keeping still to observe or to close out old loops.
All sorts of unexpected aches and pains surfaced as I gently began to rewire my nervous system from chaos toward safety. Some days it felt like nothing was changing, others like everything I believed to be true until now was misguided.
The way some old Looney Tunes cartoons had hungry characters imagining whomever was in front of them morphing into a roast chicken, everyone I encountered suddenly morphed into their nervous systems. Some appeared calm, some inflamed, and some tangled up in a frayed knot. Interestingly, outsides often didn’t match insides—especially not with my fellow meditators.
Paradoxically, reducing everyone to their nervous systems filled me with unexpected compassion for whatever may have tangled with them. It also explained so many past instances when I had come away from encounters with experienced meditators and teachers secretly wondering whether I had just witnessed detachment or disassociation.
All sorts of dots connected from my years of house-sitting, volunteering on organic farms, working in hospitality, and serving in spiritual communities. It never made sense to me why the most seemingly peaceful places attracted the least peaceful people. As if dysregulated nervous systems were somehow looking to regulate through their surroundings—essentially seeking peace outside themselves—rather than being drawn somewhere like-for-like?
Dear reader, some of my favorite books and films are told by unreliable narrators. You know, the sort of plot where halfway through the story the rug is pulled out from under everything you believed up until that point? Discovering all sorts of unreliable narration within spun me out of the Dharma’s roulette wheel entirely and onto the floor—had I just spent some 15 years mistaking meditation practice with functional freeze from earlier traumas? Was I confusing facing my darkness with hiding in the light? It’s a subtle but important distinction between reliving traumas and rewiring our way out of them.
Considering what my body was thawing and sharing with me day-to-day, it was highly likely. In the last three months, I had evolved from keeping the peace, to holding the peace, to now embodying peace.
And then I stumbled upon a series of five conversations between Irene Lyon and Chris Dierkes, a former priest. Irene described how many of her new students who arrive as dedicated meditators often outgrow the need to meditate altogether once their nervous systems regulate. It was dawning on me that, like me, they had probably turned to meditation to try to regulate their nervous systems when most meditation practices were originally designed for already-regulated nervous systems.
I gobbled up their five conversations, hanging on to every word the way I had with Willoughby Britton’s interviews this time last year. Willoughby founded a center called Cheetah House to help meditators in distress. Her wisdom helped me understand how and why I had outgrown Vipassana. Irene and Chris now helped me understand that I probably wasn’t yet ready for Kadampa or any other new form of meditation.
I recall Irene’s mentor, Peter Levine, saying: “True human enlightenment will happen when every single person has a regulated nervous system.”
All these years, I had been trying to walk before I could crawl by meditating before I could regulate. Willoboughy’s teaching calls for moderation, and Irene’s teaching calls for titration—concentrating on small and steady progress rather than chasing big catharses that often end up re-traumatizing us further.
In one of her conversations with Chris, Irene described worrying that she wasn’t doing enough for the world with her online offerings. A student then emailed to report that thanks to learning nervous system regulation, they had managed to stay fully present for themselves and their family in a bomb shelter the previous night!
And so, dear reader, when you next find yourself spinning out, please give metta the chance to soothe the precious newborn you once were and reorientate you toward peace.
Or, to metta-morphose Steve Winwood’s anthem to resilience and perseverance “Roll With It, Baby:”
When life is too much, roll with it, baby
Don’t stop and lose your touch, oh no, baby
Hard times knocking on your door
Metta will tell them you ain’t there no more
Get on through it, roll with it, baby
Luck’ll come and then slip away,
You’ve gotta move, bring it back to stayYou’ll leave bad times way behind
Nothing but good times on your mind
You can do it, roll with it, baby
See more
Cheetah House
Irene Lyon and Chris Dierkes: meditation and mindfulness 101 (YouTube)
Irene Lyon and Seth Lyon: healing our resistance to making money, exercising & living in the matrix (YouTube)
Peter A Levine, PhD (Ergos Institute)
Related features from BDG
Trauma Dharma
Resiliency: Releasing Trauma through Embodied Art
What the Black Sheep Learns: The Stories We Inherit and How to Hold Them
The Activism of Available Time
A Conversation That Dissolves Suffering
