We did a class exercise that explored the idea of characterizing a particular personal issue as a house, and then exploring and working with that house as a way of exploring and learning about the issue.
The last three days of classes have been intense. I presume it’s because the things we’re studying are bringing up a lot of personal issues for me, and I needed time to process them. This is good. The last thing you want is to have a client trigger issues in the therapist that he don’t know how to deal with. Ideally, of course, us therapists will have cleared out all our “stuff” before we start working with clients, but we’re human, so, there you are.
Now I see why it makes sense for the classes to be spread out the way they are, for you really need time to practice and process between intensives. For me, some of these issues are long-standing and heavy, and I would be really nice to get them out of the way. But, the way this deep stuff works, I won’t really know what’s going on until I get right down to it. I just know that something’s there and it’s messing with me. These techniques continue to bring different aspects of it to the surface. A piece at a time makes it easier to handle.
For my issue, I choose “being blocked.” I’ve been dealing with a feeling of being blocked for quite some time now, it’s like there are certain memories, abilities, and even, perhaps, emotions, that I don’t have access to, and they are manifesting physical issues and behaviors that I’d like to get rid of. So that’s where I went.
The process is to have the client (in a trance) imagine a house, as representing the issue they want to focus on. In my case, I saw a massive red brick edifice with only a single, small, black, door, smack dab in the middle. There were no windows or decorations of any kind. From the outside, I saw this huge, rectangular wall in the center, that was rock-solid, surrounded by, on either side and above, extra turrets and extensions that were faint, fuzzy and were constantly shifting and flickering in and out of view.
Going inside, I saw a medium-sized room in almost total darkness, with no furniture that I could see. The walls were a very dark red wood with black decorations. The decorations were very difficult to make out. In front of me was a long hallway with a bright light at the far end. The walls of the hallway were the same as the room. When I went down the hallway, I discovered that the bright light was a yellowish-white, glowing, sphere that was much bigger than the hallway and completely blocked the exit. At that time, I could not go into the sphere.
Turning back, I attempted to fix, clean or renovate this “house.” At first nothing happened, then it was like a massive, silent explosion. What was left, when the dust cleared, was just the stubs of walls, in the rectangular shape, filled with deep drifts of dust or sand. The only things left standing were the solid wall with the front door in it, and the yellow sphere. It seemed I was still trapped inside the ruined walls, between the door and the sphere.
At one point, I attempted to tear down the front wall by knocking a hole in it with a sledgehammer. When I did, I saw more yellow-white light on the other side, and something, kind of like a fist, came through the hole and punched me. Unfortunately, we had to leave it there because it was a class exercise and we were time-limited.
These things alway bring me surprises. I truly was not expecting to find that brick house and yellow sphere, but I’m sure it tells me something about who I am and what’s going on inside my head. At this point, everything seems to point to some, significant, trauma when I was five years old. But you never know with this work. It may turn out to be all about something completely different, and what looks like trauma, may turn out to be completely different. We’ll see. In the meantime, I have plenty to chew on in my meditation sessions.
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