September’s bloom

Ooh it‘s September… I can‘t tell you how many ‘new‘ beginnings there have been this past week: the return of the Tuesday morning with Jane sessions (alongside the rest of the Sanctuary‘s wonderful drop in meditations), the Being Present course began AND I started back at university. I had been in the midst of an MSc in Psychotherapy when my husband got sick, passed away and I had to defer. This weekend was the first time being back on campus, as a student, in eighteen months.

You can imagine my trepidation but equally the amount of kindness and compassionate, ‘but Jane, how are you REALLY?‘ questions that I faced. When you are taking a Masters in Psychotherapy, there is no hiding. Thankfully, in amongst the tear filled eyes and the nervous belly, I was able to say that I have nearly two feet planted in fundamental okayness. If you asked me a year ago, it may have only been one or even half a foot. 😉

This is a concept that I was first introduced to by Dr. Rick Hanson, who is an American neuropsychologist and I wrote about in the post: “I’m fine… well, I am basically Ok”. Whether it is what he calls a ‘background of unsettledness’ running through our moment to moment experience, or it is that we have been enduring illness, trauma, deep grief, a loss of job, (name your difficulty here), underneath it all, in more cases than not, there is a basic okayness holding us up.

What does Hanson mean by this? Well, he explains it as wherever you find yourself reading this, and again in more cases than not, there is probably some form of a roof over your head, a bit of food in your belly, no one is attacking you and you are safe. As he says, things may not be perfect, but you are basically okay. Just acknowledging this fact can help stabilise any uncertainty about the future and any lingering suffering from the past. Right now, in this moment, you are okay.

This concept of basic okayness can be found in a few different disciplines of thought, although they differ slightly. For instance, Eric Berne, a Canadian-born psychiatrist who created the theory of transactional analysis as a way of explaining human behavior, states that “every human being is born a prince or a princess; early experiences convince some that they are frogs” (Berne, 1966, pp. 289–290). This portrayal of fundamental okayness moves beyond physical safety to include our subjective internal experience of ourself and those around us. At first glance this may seem different to Hanson’s okayness. However, Hanson’s practice of touching in with our physical safety is a means of returning to a stable mind and that prince/princess state. I must stress that this is a simplification of Berne’s theory, who he himself was a bit vague in his description of okayness.

In Berne’s analogy,  we are psychologically in tact at birth before life has the potential to wear us down and change this. This brings me to yet another take on okayness that goes even further: the Buddhist concept of Buddha Nature. Buddhist dharma would teach that we are all born with Buddha Nature, or that all beings are born inherently good, worthy and OK (think prince/princess state) and nothing can take that away. No amount of external circumstances can change this. We just need to remember that our true nature is lying beneath the detritus of life’s struggles, and through meditation, we can access this.

In terms of my own two feet and the fundamental okayness that they are planted in, both my physical self and my psychological self are OK. Thankfully, regardless of the heartbreak, the loss, the trauma that I have experienced over the last few years, I am not feeling very reptilian or frog like. Instead, there is a part of me that is untouchable from the suffering that I have endured and will most likely continue to endure. This feels like as good of a place as any to start taking baby steps forward as I reengage with my learning journey.

This week, I thought it might be helpful for us all to remind ourselves of our true nature and return to our own fundamental okayness. On Tuesday morning at 10am Irish time, we will be doing a meditation where we explore what it might be like to touch in with the part of us that is untouchable by our external circumstances. The part of us where we are just fine as we are. If this speaks to you, I invite you to join us. You can access the session through the link below.

-Jane

Click here to join me at the Sanctuary’s online community meditation this Tuesday at 10am.

To listen to and practice a meditation that focuses on our basic okayness (very much inspired by Rick Hanson), click below: