I have been meditating since my mid-20s, though initially it was a formless practice, which I hadn’t even realised was meditation. In my early 30s, I became a Reiki practitioner and that really started my seeking and spiritual path, however I felt quite ‘lost’ in the spiritual wilderness for years. Until in 2009, I found a Buddhist Group, and knew I had found my spiritual home. In 2010 became a friend/mitra in the Triratna Buddhist Movement.
Initially as a Buddhist, I was very much a faith-type, with a close connection to Green Tara. Then in 2013, I came across Liberation Unleashed, and became interested in wisdom practices. Thanks to working with an online guide using direct pointing techniques – I found there was no controller of life’s experience, and it turned life as I knew it upside down. After an experience of bliss lasting a couple of months, I started to ‘flip-flop’ in and out of it. However, my understanding of the chanting Heart Sutra had changed, from being an intriguing poem, to an explanation of an experience.
After that initial insight, there were a few more years of exploring, until seeking stopped and to all intents and purposes, suffering stopped. Though around 2020 a load of unintegrated trauma came to the fore, which I guess until that point I’d been ‘spiritually bypassing’, not wanting to engage with old stories….until I couldn’t ignore it any longer. I’ve spent the last 3 years working on unintegrated trauma, releasing/integrating that, and letting go or understanding how to work with habitual responses – such as my tendency to ‘freeze’ . I have used various forms of emotion/body processing. e.g. Root Cause Therapy, Living Inquiries, Embodied Processing, Emotion Code etc. I’m not suggesting all these different types of trauma release are needed, I just accepted help from different friends who kindly offered their help at different times. Every now and then more trauma arises, but I now know how to be with and work with such ‘stuff’, when it arises. I am okay with feeling vulnerable, and allowing emotions to just flow through without being attached to or identified with them.
Let’s make things clear: This doesn’t mean that life is always satisfactory, nor that I am always well and pain-free. Nor am I the perfect person with perfect speech – in fact old habits still seem to get me into trouble speech wise, and sometimes oddly, there are conversations where people think I’m taking things personally, when I’m actually just trying to understand my habitual traits, or caring about my effect on others.
What I can say though, is that contentment is my general experience, I am at peace and have found self-acceptance.
I am not special, but understanding the Heart Sutra is, and that is why I’m writing this book.
Peace & love, Lake
