Spiritual Practice and Transformation That Lasts
Spiritual Experience is Fleeting
About a year ago, I wrote a piece about the fleeting nature of transformation – mine in particular. I described how I’d had a significant spiritual experience that evaporated almost as soon as it was over. I have had many such experiences – revelation followed by falling flat on my face into an issue that had long been a block to my spiritual development.
Everybody on a spiritual path seems to experience this. As Jack Kornfield[1] has noted, the problem isn’t attaining enlightenment, so much as making it stick. Only recently have I been coming to grips with the practical implications of this. Writing, reading, course work, and spiritual practice have convinced me that if our transformation is to be a long-term change, we must build a way of being that supports it in our everyday lives. This new way is based on non-judgmental self-observation, acceptance of what-is, self-compassion, contemplative prayer, and, of course, the grace of God. These actions lay down a neurological structure that can withstand the inevitable losses that come with our lives. This structure can sustain us as the body-spirit beings we are, even when the body fails.
Mental Function
We are too quick to equate sharp mental function with the entirety of the person. My Dad (that’s not him in the picture) was significantly impaired by Alzheimer’s disease in the last two years of his life. My mother-in-law lived with dementia and now my mother is, also. In these cases, even though the cognitive layer of mind was/has been diminished, I have never got the sense that the inner person was not there. I have wondered if there are things I can do now to help me navigate such an experience gracefully if I ever get to that point.
Conscious Sedation
I recently had a minor surgical procedure. Conscious sedation suppressed my mental function, but my emotions and my senses worked just fine. It was a window on what those with dementia might experience. (Who really knows?) It give me an understanding that, even in that state, one could live a life worth living.
Many Unknowns
The surgery was to remove two skin lesions that both turned out to be basal cell carcinoma, a very treatable type of skin cancer. There was some possibility that I would need general anesthesia, as opposed to a local anesthetic and a sedative. It depended on the size of one of the lesions, whether it was too large to respond well to a local anesthetic, and the surgeon would not know that until we were in the operating room. General anesthesia is a significant step up from sedation in terms of both risk and recovery. After general anesthesia, you can feel out of sorts for several days, as opposed to several hours, and it is susceptible to various complications, such as mental fogginess, loss of muscle tone, and even pneumonia.
The surgeon was not sure if he would need to graft some skin from my chest onto the larger of the two incisions. It would depend on the size of the incision and how much he could stretch the surrounding skin to cover the wound. He wouldn’t know until we were in the operating room. If he needed to do a graft, it would complicate my recovery, as a graft needs to be kept dry for two weeks, as opposed to three days for ordinary sutures. It would also result in a hairless patch on my scalp where the skin was to be grafted. Not that you’d necessarily be able to tell – it’s already pretty hairless up there.
So, a fair bit of uncertainty – general anesthesia versus sedation, skin graft needed or not, possibly a big hairless chunk out of my scalp. I was carrying a low buzz of worry prior to the day of the surgery, not only for the surgery itself, but for the implications of the recovery period. When I arrived at the hospital, the hospital staff met me with kindness and compassion. Everyone I met made me feel cared for and gave me a sense of safety. They significantly eased the worry that I had felt below the surface of daily thought.
Emotional and Sensory Function in Absence of Sharp Mental Function
It turned out I only needed sedation and a local anaesthetic. I have had similar experiences where the sedative put me right to sleep and I woke up not remembering anything. This time was different. I was relaxed, but conscious of the activity in the room. I heard people talking, although I didn’t hear exactly what they were saying. Occasionally, a brief snippet of speech would emerge, not enough for me to follow the thread. I picked up the tone of speech, which was calm and focussed, with occasional quips or small talk between people in the room. I felt the surgeon working on my skin, particularly when he sutured the wounds, but I didn’t feel any pain. Once, when the scalpel went around the edge of one lesion, I felt a slight sting, but nothing serious.
The overall feeling was oddly meditative, as you might feel lying on the floor, listening to music through headphones or during a sitting meditation. I was aware, but relaxed. I think maybe I could have spoken, but I didn’t. Even if it would have been appropriate in the setting, it did not feel in any way necessary to speak. I was functioning mostly at the sensory and emotional levels of consciousness. The thinking part of me was blunted, quieted, present, but not needed just then. Afterward, I came up through the levels of consciousness and went home after an uneventful hour of post-surgical observation.
A Necessary Feeling of Safety
I mentioned the experience to a mind-body practitioner I know and compared it to my mother-in-law’s experiences, which she knows about. She responded, “See! It matters who is with you!” I think by this she meant that it matters how others treat you when your cognitive mind is not working well. When others around you are able to make you feel safe, your mind is not scanning around in fear and worrying that you can’t adequately respond to threat. Your mental activity can quiet and the more foundational parts of you – sense and emotion – can still function very adequately.
Building a Foundation
What about when the “right person” is not with you and you are not medicated to blunt your worrying? Can you still accept what-is, not needing to know everything going on around you, but still able to sense, give, and receive love? That’s where the long term of spiritual practice comes in. Cynthia Bourgeault states, ” The purpose of spiritual work is not penance or martyrdom. What begins to gather in a person—by conscious seeing—is a certain inner independence from the external conditions of one’s life.”[2]
Will a nervous system strengthened by spiritual practice be immune to decline and dementia? I doubt it. The world is still the world and we have to live in it as it is. What that practice can call forth in us is not immunity to the normal challenges of life, but a way to navigate them in the most graceful way possible.
Title image: K Chirag on Unsplash
[1] After the Ecstasy, the Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path, ©2000, Jack Kornfield, Bantam Books
[2] Love is Stronger than Death : The Mystical Union of Two Souls; ©1999; Cynthia Bourgeault; Monkfish Book Publishing