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Still in Therapy?
by
Zuza Engler
An old friend recently
told me in an e-mail that she is concerned that I'm still
"in therapy". Isn't it time, she asks, to grow up
and deal with life on your own? It’s true, I have been
at it for a while. It all began in my late twenties. I lived
in Poland then, and was severely out of touch with myself.
My life had a surreal quality of disconnection, like living
behind glass with the hope that one day, magically, I would
be able to jump into the movie.
That's
when I stumbled upon Laboratorium Psychoedukacji, a group
of foreign trained Warsaw therapists. I took their workshops
in human potential, bioenergetics, and Gestalt. I learned
about yoga and meditation. In one of their half-illegal and
half-illegible home printed newsletters, borderline subversive
in the communist regime, I read about the Lomi School. I came
to California and did the Lomi training in 1993, on the heels
of a six-month Tibetan Buddhist retreat.
Since
then I have done a great deal of inner work with a few holy
men and women – among them Robert Hall, Jennifer Welwood,
Christine Price, Ray Castellino. Our work together is the
practice of shifting, over and over again, from the mind's
stale conversations of past and future down into the creative
and messy event of this body breathing, tensing, moving, feeling,
living and dying: now. I am held in flesh, and held in deep
listening, in that space which like meditative awareness is
a vast and open pasture where all creatures of the mind, however
twisted, wounded or mean, are invited to graze, lie down,
or roar.
Who
am I, anyway, when I'm present? I am Presence. A larger being
steps in, with access to infinite strength and grace. My first
experience of that forever changed how I experienced myself
and the world. I felt the comfort of a big invisible hand
touching my back. It enveloped me in softness but was firm
in its message of support. I knew then that I am not alone,
nor have I ever been alone. When I remember that, memories
of past suffering, like old sepia photographs, become suffused
with a strange sort of light, at the same time losing their
old poisonous charm.
This
Presence feels very personal, particular to me. In a mysterious
way it is interested in my well being. It is kind and wise,
just like Grandpa.
My grandfather
was a robust man who smoked cheap no-filter cigarettes. I
breathed in their smoke mixed with cold morning air as we
walked to the market across town where he bought eggs, farmer's
cheese, and sometimes a live chicken to kill with a quick
blow of an ax on the tree stump used for splitting wood for
the stove.
Grandpa
took me to his office at the railroad depot where I played
with the abacus and the magic pencil, and to his small plot
of land next to the railroad tracks. While he worked in the
garden I played hide-and-seek in the jungle of tall staked
bean plants, watched the life of small insects, or talked
to the gladiolas, peonies, and other flowers he grew.
When
I was nine I endured several terrifying eye surgeries. Every
time I went under the ether mask I was afraid I would never
come back up again. When I did wake up in the vapors of post-op
vomit there was no one there to comfort me, and I had to lie
blindfolded for an entire week. When it was over, it was Grandpa
who came to get me. We rode home on an overnight train. I
slept across four seats inside a compartment while Grandpa
stood outside the door, completely blocking it with his huge
body, curtains drawn, telling people who were trying to get
a seat, “Sorry, no seats, everything is occupied.”
He was
my first blueprint of unconditional presence. He saw me through
the most painful experiences of my childhood, and even though
he could do nothing to take away the suffering, I felt comforted
and safe. Decades later, I rediscover that kind of presence
in the work with my teachers. In its spacious embrace, experiences
of old pain unwind, relax, and heal. Places where I felt numb
or broken begin to breathe and come alive. I find myself right
at the rich, pulsing, creative center of my life.
I don’t
even call it therapy anymore. From an emergency measure, the
practice of paying attention has become a journey without
end into ever deepening landscapes of soul and spirit. I appreciate
the company of those who have traveled there also. I don’t
think we are meant to do it alone.
So I
write to my friend, “Do not be concerned, but I have
no intention of quitting this adventure. It's my sustenance,
and I hope to continue till my last breath.”
Zuza
Engler is a passionate explorer of body and soul. She teaches
Soul
Motion TM and has a private practice in transformative
inner work in Petaluma and Marin.
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