Barcelona, May 1, 2014
Yesterday morning I found these words in my heart, wanting to be written:
In a few days it will be Buddha Shakyamuni’s birthday. As this joyous occasion is drawing near, this year, Queen Maya keeps coming to mind, in particular the effect her death shortly after giving birth to her son had on his life.
In my work as a DFA practitioner of somatic pattern recognition and archetypal pattern analysis, I have the chance to observe the patterns that evolve out of the early conditions of my clients’ lives. Since humans are born before gestation is complete, it continues in the womb of the family, as biologist Adolph Portman put it. During the first year of life, primarily the right hemisphere of the brain evolves. It organizes sensory perception and combines huge amounts of bits of sensory information into images that become the material we use to weave our life stories, even before we have words to associate meaning with the experience reflected in those images. During that time the infant’s nervous system continues entangled with that of his or her mother. The child depends on the mother’s ability to manage the flow of her sensations that help her to adequately take care of her son’s or daughter’s needs.
When there is a premature separation from the mother due to sickness, death or any other circumstance, the nervous system protects the infant against the full impact of the trauma to assure his or her survival, isolating the unbearable aspects of the loss of connection and keeping them underneath the threshold of conscious experience. In a manner of speaking, the parts of the organism occupied by these unbearable sensations do not participate in the development of the rest of the organism and, thus, these sensations remain forever underlying the experience and decisions for the rest of the person’s life. Sooner or later, they will surface in one way or another, giving the person a chance to integrate them later in life and recover those parts of the organism from the isolation they had been in. Invariably this is experienced as disruptive and human beings usually try to avoid it.
The buddhist master once said that Shakyamuni Buddha had been quiet, very studious, and somewhat sad as a child. It seems highly probable that Queen Maya’s death shortly after giving birth to Prince Shakyamuni must have had a bearing on his decision to leave his life as heir to the throne and seek a solution to human suffering.
My father was separated from his mother for the first three years of his life, because she had to be hospitalized due to complications of a difficult birth. My father’s greatest wish had been to study to become a gynecologist or, if that wasn't possible, a forestry engineer, because he wanted to help make sure that women would not have to undergo the troubles his own mother had had in giving birth to him and he wanted to take care of nature. But he did not have the strength to resist his father’s command to take over the family business, as Prince Shakyamuni had had. He did bring up his daughter with the awareness of being one with nature, though. And his wish lives on in her. Not because he actively instilled it in any way; the only thing he ever told me he wanted me to do is to get clear on what I wanted to do in life and then go ahead and find a way to do it. It is a great joy for me that my work as a DFA practitioner of somatic pattern recognition and as an archetypal pattern analyst fulfills my father’s wish, including the one great wish he had not been able to carry out. Especially grateful I am for Shakyamuni Buddha's example and teachings as well as the master's and the great guidance they offer me in my personal and professional life.
We are told that on the morning when Shakyamuni Buddha saw the morning star and became enlightened, he withstood the assaults of Mara who tried to distract him from his clear purpose. I am sure that the desire for fusion with the all-embracing feminine, born out of the premature disruption of the natural state of entanglement with the mother during the first year of life, and the terror resulting from this disruption were Mara’s main arms. But the Buddha did not let himself be carried away with desire nor did he recoil from the terror, but he remained quietly seated, watching the parts of his sensory experience that had up to then remained in the darkness of the unconscious unfold, so he could gain an understanding of his own nature and human nature in general. Like this he recovered the access to the experience of being a part of the whole that had been interrupted when his mother died, but with a nervous system that was now mature enough to be able to integrate the parts that had been cut off. And he discovered how to relate to the whole in such a way that, instead of suffering, he would enrich it in every way he could. Like this he found eighty-four thousand ways to explain how to recognize suffering and its causes and teach us that it is possible to end it and ways to do that.
That is what my father would have wanted. In his life, the trauma of premature separation from his mother in 1928-30 in Germany was followed by others resulting from abuse of power, both on a personal and a collective level. Nonetheless, he met and loved my mother. I am fruit of that love. Life tends to always find solutions for the difficulties that appear in its evolution towards greater complexity and diversity, and, thus, the unresolved traumas of my parents and grandparents took shape in my body to give me the opportunity to develop ways to resolve, or rather, dissolve them, instead of transmitting them.
I feel truly fortunate to be able to follow the footsteps of Shakyamuni Buddha and on the occasion of his birthday I would like to express my deepest gratitude for the guidance of the master I had on this path. From the bottom of my heart, I would also like to thank Annie B. Duggan and Janie French for teaching me their approach to somatic pattern recognition, and to Michael Conforti for teaching me his approach to archetypal pattern analysis. From all of them I am learning to relate to the whole in such a way that, instead of suffering, I can endeavor to enrich it in any way I can.
Many thanks to all my teachers, those named here and those whose names and faces remain silent in my heart.
And happy birthday, Buddha!
Truly,
Realize Flower - Brigitte Hansmann
Este comentario ha sido eliminado por el autor.
ResponderEliminarToday's commentary is practically the same as the one I just eliminated. I eliminated it because I could not find the way to correct a mistake I had deteced.
EliminarThe gravitational field of our planet and archetpal fields are aspects of the absolute, the truth. I have specialized in recognizing patterns in the body and in behavior in relationship to these fields. In this sense I consider the work within these fields to be an expedient means, because it allows me to also teach people who are resistant towards any kind of organized religion or spiritual practice, to become aware of how they relate to the absolute, the truth, i.e. physically in relationship with the gravitational field and in their behavior, feeling and thinking in relationship with the archetypal fields they are in at any given time. Archetypal fields is a term that denotes any tendency, property or proclivity that is inherent in a particular function, like mother, father, daughter, son, teacher, student, etc. and a particular stage in life. Fields have poles and so it becomes possible to orient within these fields.
EliminarI do not mean to imply that somatic pattern recognition or archetypal pattern analysis are the same as Buddha's and the Buddhist masters’ teachings. But they do allow me in a very specific manner to help people become aware of the depth of what they are as living beings, of the way they have organized their experience, of the tensions they are holding in their bodies and how these tensions keep them away from experiencing the connection with the whole they are a part of. These methods allow me in a very specific manner to help them learn how to experience the support of the gravitational field within the very depth of their being and the benefit of orienting their behavior, feelings and thoughts in coherence with the properties, tendencies and proclivities that are archetypally inherent in the function they fulfill and the stage of life they are in. I must admit I feel that, like this, I am leading them onto the way to practice becoming aware of things as they are, without any reference to Buddhism. But it is not because I don't want to credit Shakyamuni Buddha’s great teachings or that of the masters in his lineage. It is rather a choice I make to remain in the specific area I have specialized in.