Healing my Zombie Self

Tara Brach, one of the teachers in my Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program, talks often about how we all fall into trance and forget the true nature of our being. Truly, I have lived in this trance for years at a time in the past and still struggle with falling into and out of these zombie states of mind. I believe there are some who never know anything but the trance this temporal existence provides us with. Or maybe it's not the temporal existence giving us anything but the interpretation of such an existence. We are taught that we are separate beings from the time we are very small children and into the rest of our lives.

And for sure it does seem that way on a physical level. But as we get very still and just notice our existence we begin to realize that life is far more about the interpretation of our physical world than it is about the infinite minute details that fill up this thing we call life. To see this all I have to do is close my eyes and bring to mind a favorite memory.

It is the morning of August 6, 1999 and I am holding my middle child, Sarah, for one of the very first times as I sit in a glider chair in my maternity room at Presbyterian St Luke's in Denver, Colorado. I am overwhelmed with gratefulness because I had thought I was going to have another son. But here she is, my little angelic girl, all dressed up in the soft blue outfit we had bought to bring our new baby boy home in.

I open my eyes now and look down at the tattoo that wraps around my right ankle. It is a scene from Winnie the Pooh with Pooh Bear and Christopher Robin sitting lazily in the grass and the words above and below the tattoo read, 'As soon as I saw you, I knew an adventure was going to happen.' Sarah, now 23, has a matching tattoo. She was the one to pick out the saying and design.

I ponder the truth of the words and a flash of images flood my mind one after another.

First, Sarah is gleefully dancing around at age two and the sound of her infectious laughter fills my ears. Then, I remember finding her 14 or 15 month old sister Veronica with a tuft of hair on the top of her head pointing straight to the gates of heaven after Sarah had just betrothed upon her sister her very first haircut. It was a first for both girls as Sarah is a master hair stylist today and cannot cut hair fast enough to satisfy all her adoring fans!

My mind wanders through a garden of memories as I remember playing with all three of my children in the big backyards they were blessed with throughout their childhoods; even if it costs them some stability moving from house to house and then apartment to apartment... and now the sorrow and guilt start to pour down on my memory garden as I long to have given more and done better by them.

Ahh! But there it is! The trance I was speaking of before. Here I am with an infinite number of memories and details waiting at my beck and call to be experienced and each one with the ability to lavishly soak my brains neurotransmitters with happy chemicals and connections (my science here is weak at best, but you get the idea) and instead I let my zombie mind take over with fear and loathing that has no place in the happy memories of my children's childhoods.

And yet, meditation teaches me that to judge my experience is to remain in trance. The more I try to understand or manipulate my experience the more entrenched I become in an ever changing trance of this judgement or that. Once I can become still and just notice my thoughts, notice my judgments of those thoughts, and notice the sensations that both are bringing about in my body I can step out of trance and free my zombie mind by letting what is here just be here.

This is step one in the process of Healing My Zombie Self. I will notice what is here in each moment as it arises. I will say to each experience, 'You are welcome here. You are safe. I love you and I thank you for all you have brought with you to teach me.'

Namaste Dear Friends

Thank you for your kind attention <3