#meditation

Autistic and other neurodivergent friends, I want to share something I have found really helpful for dealing with overwhelm.

Overwhelm is a state of 'cannot' that can come on suddenly, intensely, and even abruptly, and if you've been masking for some time (your whole life?) it can be a little traumatising to hit the wall like that.

Tara Brach is a clinical psychologist specialising in trauma therapy and a widely recognised and celebrated teacher in the Mahasi (Insight Meditation) tradition of Buddhism, the lineage I practice within.

She developed the RAIN meditation which I am offering as one way of recognising when you are in overwhelm and responding in a self-compassionate way.

RAIN stands for:

1. RECOGNISE what is happening;
2. ALLOW the experience to be there, just as it is;
3. INVESTIGATE with interest and care;
4. NURTURE with self-compassion.

Tara offers a bunch of meditations that step at different paces through the four steps of RAIN on her website:

https://www.tarabrach.com/rain/

I really love her teachings — they are enormously warm, wise, and often conveyed with a dorky sense of humour. She knows what she's talking about but she's not wedded to seeming expert.

Quick note about the N here:

In Tara's original formulation the 'N' stood for 'non-attachment,' which is a technical Buddhist term, and while I accept Tara's choice to rephrase it in the language of self-help, I think the original expresses a useful insight.

Overwhelm is something that is happening, not the truth of myself. Right now I cannot, but this has arisen, and it will be here for a while, and then it will subside again, and I will be able to can.

The reminder that all things are impermanent, the encouragement against grasping and attaching to experience in the moment as the truth of the self, can be very reassuring when the cannot feels so, well, overwhelming.

Also, maybe the sense of 'cannot' does express something we might want to take forward in our future sense of self — we may have been trying to mask (perform the way we perceive normies as performing their non-divergent selves), and this may not be sustainable, this may demand too much of us, and it might be more compassionate to look at ways of being our divergent selves in our participation in social and public life.

#autism #meditation #adhd #neurodivergence #RAIN #mahasi #buddhism

Scene of the ‘bed tea’ type.

I had been out and about trying to capture something meaningful amongst the crowds. Until, by chance, I ended up beside a lake, alone (accept for my dog and some flustered magpies).

I am reading a book at the moment that records the thoughts of an Australian doctor named Bill Crozier as he treks the Dolpo region of Nepal….following in the footsteps of one of my all-time bestest authors, Peter Matthiessen1.

The world that presents is steadfastly counterpoint to the world we re-present to ourselves.

Early every morning, as Bill stirs from his sleep, a porter will deliver a steaming mug of ‘bed tea’ to stoke his soul and warm his giblets2.

As he sits wrapped in his down sleeping bag, he eloquently describes the (often staggeringly epic) views streaming through the tent’s entrance.

As I sat, longer than I had intended, by this still lake….I thought that the scene presented to me would definitely meet the criterion for bed tea.

Yes. I think thats a thing now.

1. The book is called: Beyond the Snow Leopard by Bill Crozier and follows his travels roughly in the footsteps of Matthiessens original masterpiece The Snow Leopard. ↩︎
2. Every morning around 0430 (I am a very early riser) I pad out to the kitchen to make my own bed tea…only its coffee. And then I lay back in bed for a while with the steaming cup balanced on my chest, and I sip and simmer to the waking world. Highly recommend. ↩︎

#Australia #blackAndWhite #books #meditation #photography