Today’s post adheres to the plan laid out last time, but it’s not as short as I’d hoped. What follows is a description of one of the tools I use to achieve and maintain Peace, Balance & Clarity. It presents one of my tricks for realizing my blog’s tagline in my own life.
A recent post mentioned (in passing) that I’ve been using a new and helpful meditation. It probably isn’t my creation, but if I heard of it before I’m not sure where. Meditation may be too strong a word; visualization or fantasy might fit better. The basic technique involves imagining a better childhood and family life than I actually experienced.
Longterm readers (assuming there are any) have no doubt heard too many times about my crummy childhood. Rather than repeat it, I’ve written a synopsis on a separate page, for anyone interested. This post doesn’t require that you know the whole story, and in their essence all unhappy childhoods are the same. The truth is, I’ve spent far too much time reliving the sad details of my upbringing. My bereaved and abused childhood has become the background mythology of my life. Although there were fun times, I seldom relive them. Far more often I think about the loneliness, grief, abuse, and neglect. As much as I hate to admit it, I have built a story of myself as a Ruined Child. My aunt tells me that at my youngest ages I was an exceedingly affectionate and happy toddler. But fate and cruelty crushed that innate sweetness, or at least that’s the myth.
So what is my visualization? I picture a completely different upbringing. A big reason my parents first fought and then divorced (setting in motion the destruction of my childhood) was that my father insisted on moving to Los Angeles, where he had discovered ‘swinging’ and ‘free love’. My mother, a proper midwestern girl, hated the place and the lifestyle for which my dad yearned, and refused to go along. In real life, they divorced. In my ‘meditation’, they reached a compromise and moved to Berkeley instead. My father enjoyed the liberal, collegiate environment, and my mother managed to steer him away from the orgies. Rather than dwelling as a bitter left-winger in a conservative neighborhood, my father became a happy radical Berkeley professor. Rather than dying in a psychiatric ward, my mother continued her social work career by helping the mentally ill. She only worked half-time, however, and was home every day after school. I’d arrive home and sweep through the door with my friends, and she’d serve us cookies and milk with a broad smile, patting me lovingly on the head. In other words, I picture a childhood exactly opposite to what really happened. I build the scene out in my mind, visualizing the neighborhood with its huge leafy sycamores, the 1920′s vintage house and its redwood wainscoting, my sweet mother with her floral apron. I smell her chocolate chip cookies and feel her fingers mussing my hair. It feels as ‘real’ as any ‘true’ memory.
At a recent meditation seminar led by a therapist, I mentioned this practice and was told that the brain can’t tell the difference between imagination and reality in memory. While I believe there are embodied traumatic experiences that the brain does hold onto as implicit memory, and that can’t easily be overwritten, the narrative stories we remember may well be subject to revision. So if I spend enough time reliving my imaginary childhood, perhaps my brain will gradually heal itself. More important, perhaps my mind will let go of the Myth of the Ruined Child. In fact, that seems to be happening. Now, whenever the Ugly Past enters my mind, I replace it with the (imagined) Happy Childhood. Whereas in the old days I often made myself feel sorrowful and unwanted by replaying my upbringing, I now actually feel cheered by trips down Memory Lane. A sense of myself as a Loved Being is growing within. Does it matter that the memory I’m reliving is fictional? Not if it works, in my opinion.
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