Please feel free to listen to my music while you read. Thanks and I hope you enjoy!
We are always trying to remember what we choose to forget.
- Saul Williams
When I'm not making beats or teaching a class on Buddhism, I am a full time psychotherapist. With my clients I've noticed a phenomena regardless of race, class, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic status that shows up in the experience of everyone I see. When the mind encounters thoughts or feelings that are threatening to the individuals sense of self, it attempts to push the idea, memory, association, etc. out of its awareness. The mind attempts to disown the phenomena. Sometimes the disowning is about difficult events or emotions such as trauma, helplessness, guilt or worry, but often times the events are based on positive experiences such as a recent success or a new relationship. Regardless of the quality of the phenomena, it gets pushed into an area of the psyche sometimes referred to as the shadow. It's a zone where anything threatening to the self sense gets placed. I like to think of it as the hallway closet of the mind where we toss the things we can't find any other place for. Eventually, either through intentional spring cleaning or through reaching maximum capacity and exploding, this storehouse of rejected experiences will eventually be revisited. But why do we do this and is this a conscious or unconscious event?
The truth is that we are choosing to forget, choosing to not hold thoughts, feelings and events positive and negative that we find difficult to reconcile within our awareness. We do this because seeing situations as they are is threatening to us. Instead of experiencing the truth of our lives, we defer to illusions and the accompanying behaviors of addiction, mindlessness and pretending as if we are not in as much pain as we're truly in. If we faced this pain it may feel as if we will die or succumb to the intensity of how we feel; however, the real threat of our pain is what we do to avoid it, not the pain itself. The pain of the phenomena rarely matches the pain of the avoidance. The real threat of our truth is the responsibility our truth asks us to acknowledge. Whether pain or pleasure, the truth of things calls to us to be faced and embraced or we will be haunted until we do. By remembering or recalling our place as participants in the natural human experience of feeling and being as we are, in all of of our torment and triumphs, we can give ourselves permission to hold whatever may arise in our minds as worthy of consideration and contemplation.
What are you always choosing to forget? Why? What would happen if you allowed it to hold space in your awareness? Are the pain and consequences of avoiding things you would like to forget, greater than the pain of the things you're avoiding? How do you know?
Let's contemplate this: Sit in an upright and comfortable position (on a cushion or chair) with your hands in the meditation posture (place the back of your left hand on the palm of your right hand and let your thumbs touch lightly). Let your eyes rest, half closed and focused on nothing in particular. Let everything in your field of vision just be, without labelling or judging it. Just let your eyes relax. Sit for five minutes and focus all of your attention on breathing. Feel the complete in and out breath and when your mind wanders, bring your attention back to your breath.
After five minutes, allow a word, a sentence or the entire phrase to arise in your mind and when the word, sentence or phrase fades, say it gently again. Allow whatever arises to arise without judgement and when something feels real, when there's some spark of insight, rest in your mind and place your attention on it. When your mind starts to wander, bring your attention back to what arose for you. Practice contemplation for ten minutes and then return to focusing on your breath for five more minutes. Focus only on the most subtle of experience. Afterwards, carry whatever arose for you in contemplation practice into your everyday life.
Check this previous post for an explanation of contemplation practice. http://www.hiphopalive.org/mind-spray/2016/12/7/4p2lnb8omwoc5dc5uznhcxii002b89
If there is a verse you think should be contemplated or think I should discuss, let me know in the comment section below.
Hiphop Alive
Justin F. Miles is the founder of Hiphop Alive and pioneering practitioner, theorist and educator at the intersection of Hiphop culture, mindfulness and contemplative studies. He is the leading voice championing the use of Hiphop infused contemplative modalities to foster resilience, emotional intelligence, and community empowerment.