‘Embodied Presence’ is not a performance… It’s like putting a statue of the buddha in front of a treadmill, then running nowhere very fast, believing we’ll reach nirvana (the ultimate ‘letting go’).
Many in this novel yet medicated society seem to perceive ‘letting go’ as the cessation of pain, which isn’t necessarily the case at all.
Because we’ve politicised our body-minds so much, ‘forgiveness’ of those that abused us, isn’t always what it seems either.
‘Forgiveness’ (too soon), if we’re not actualising it in our body, which I know many do not, could even potentially be harmful to our body-mind.
One thing I’ve consistently noticed over the years is how many of us covertly, if not dissociatively, default to an armoured ‘power over/under’ lens in regards to the ‘act’ of forgiving.
“I forgive you…” can be very complicated politically, therefore biologically within ourselves.
This is a somewhat hierarchical society of ‘have’ and ‘have not’s. Therefore much of our neuro-physiology (our character armour) is devoted to hypervigilantly scanning, gauging, protecting and advancing our own territorial position, in what we personally perceive this social hierarchy to be.
When we are abused or betrayed, we can often painfully or shamefully feel like we’ve fallen 8 rungs down the social ladder. Humiliated, ignored, ostracised or what have you.
When I sensitively track the bio-energetics of a client who has expressed the need to let go of the past, and apparently forgive their abuser, they almost always desensitise… Like clockwork…
A bio-energetic shutdown is commonplace in this decision to forgive, performatively yet unwittingly repressing what we really feel to do so.
Actual forgiveness can take quite a while. Rushing it serves nobody.
I sometimes see ‘performative forgiveness’ as a kind of ancestral and cultural patterned ‘avoid-dance’, masking the armoured defensive self image for self preservation and belonging purposes.
Our self image might conveniently believe something like: “I’m a good person, I forgave them, this situation is resolved, I’m moving on…”
In this context we are quite possibly ‘jumping the gun’ (our unprocessed grief and rage) as we apparently ‘forgive’ someone, grasping at a pain relieving resolution, so we can ‘let go’.
In a culture of complicated and extractive politics of entitlement and addiction, I feel we generally misunderstand what ‘letting go’ is.
I know on occasion I’ve certainly fallen into the mind-trap of associating ‘letting go’ with past ‘transcendental’ experiences…
That awesome night on mushrooms communing with spirit intelligences… That peak experience dancing in the woods years ago… The 8th day at a vipassana meditation retreat, and suddenly suffering ceases like a balloon popping… That night I got drunk and I blissfully stopped caring what anyone thinks of me…
These are some of many past reference points for my attached mind to defer to, when I grasp at ‘the right way’ of ‘letting go’.
Unfortunately for my so called addiction patterns, ‘letting go’ rarely if ever has anything to do with these past reference points.
Our organism is patterned vibration and movement. Our self image grasps at past or future reference points in abstract.
Like I said, ‘organismic presence’ (what we essentially are) is not a performance.
Yet in this society of manicured image, novelty and spectacle, it is very, very easy to fall into the mind-trap of believing it is.
“Am I presencing right…?” Is an unspoken constrictive self consciousness, which I feel in countless body-minds, including my own when I do some kind of meditation practice.
For myself. Everything in the universe is movement (vibration). Entropy.
There is ultimately no right or wrong, only nature and consequence.
So outside of a necessity to actively respond to a situation, to be present, is to effortlessly feel underneath the politics of right and wrong. Letting this moment, this nature, this consequence, move, vibrate, release, recirculate in whatever way our organism needs.
This for me is by definition what ‘letting go’ is.
To let go is to let this moment move, to let this life vibrate without resisting it.
A moving, weaving, collapsing, intricate web of bliss and pain, as it essentially is.
It has little or nothing to do with culturally policing or escaping the pain we personally feel.
I know I still carry some unprocessed humiliation deep down, protecting me from even deeper grief which my own ‘shoulda woulda coulda’ enculturation masks.
A grief (let alone anger) repressed by protective tension patterns, which was mirrored and imprinted by key figures in my life, to be socially unacceptable, if not downright shameful.
I feel that actual forgiveness is pointless, until I have personally fully processed the pain that causes me to continue experiencing some kind of victimhood at the hands of another.
When I’m deep listening to the bio-currents and neuro-musculature of clients attempting to forgive someone, I very often experience a kind of internalisation of their pain, and a hardening of their body-mind even further. You would think the opposite would occur, but in my experience, it usually doesn’t.
I rarely if ever experience a client release ‘trapped trauma response charge’ through forgiving. It’s too premature and performative.
Yet…
I often invite my clients to throw the whole notion of forgiveness out, which alone has a consistently softening, dearmouring effect on most people.
Time and again I’ve invited people to feel nothing more than a pinch of empathy (no forgiveness, no faking), gently contemplating the pain that an abuser avoided, at our own expense.
This small (non performative, non politicised) feat alone, has consistently softened peoples nervous systems, and repatterned their body-minds, way way way more than the conveniently deferred act or performance of ‘forgiving’ them.
Because this is what their system was actually capable of and could actually muster organismically. An ’embodied-life-force-changing’ step forward.
Crassly speaking, our wounded self still believes the abuser is somehow still present in the same room as us. If not, they’re hiding in the shadows just outside the door.
Oftentimes, simply even imagining what kind of pain is literally driving the person ‘that trespassed against us’, whilst completely self accepting the anger and rage we feel, can effectively initiate the vital process of releasing trapped emotional and trauma charge. (In my tracking experience, most people don’t accept themselves at all when they’re angry)
Letting move. Letting go.
This is a small part of what I track in people in real-time direct feedback, to move through the narratives they are still holding onto, literally remapping and updating their nervous system to what is happening now, as opposed to then…
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