RECOVERY ???
By Matthew Budd
The term recover has always bothered me. To cover means to hide, to obscure, to place a lid over. But this is far from what I see happening at the retreats. The power of the retreats is not in what is RE-Covered, but in what is UN-Covered.
The term uncover seems more appropriate to me. To me this means to reveal, to expose, to manifest. So I would call what happens at the retreats is more like an “uncovery” than a recovery, if you get what I mean.
But what is uncovered? What is uncovered is the joy, the energy, the power of the natural state of being. We naturally are alive, vigorous, curious, loving and present. Through our CT’s, developed to protect ourselves, we become angry, defensive, defended, and hidden. Our true self is lost. “I suddenly found myself in the middle of a dark wood, where the true way was lost” says Dante as he begins the Divine Comedy.
Remember the energetic day with Lora. Each of you expressed the emotions of your pain…anger, sadness, grief, frustration, even rage. Emotionally you emptied. For some time, maybe permanently, your CT’s lost their charge. The magnitude of your defensive emotions may have even frightened you. Some of you, even while watching the person on the cushion, wanted to hide, to run from the ferocity of the emotions that you saw… that were revealed to be in you also. But you stayed, you steadied, you faced it, challenged it, went through it, and on the other side something that many of you have not felt for a long time if ever emerged… your Self. And your were conscious of it, you saw it. You laughed, you reported bright colors, you were at ease and connected deeply with other people and with the world, the birds, the flowers, the clear Maine air.
What happened was an “uncovery”, not a recovery. Something that was always there, always present, but had been obscured by life trauma and your patterns of defense emerged…and it was grand, lovely, and whole. You experienced a moment of healing.
So now as you go home you know something new… you know who you are in your wholeness. But by now life has begun to barge in. The same old job, the same old people, the same old patterns may have emerged. The same old “recovery” if you get what I mean.
But now two things are different and these two things make ALL the difference. Now you know that you have patterns that “cover”, but you also know that you can “uncover”, be vulnerable but prudent, be alive and present. You know something, the knowing of which changes everything. You know that your soul is alive and well. And moreover you know that through practice you can gradually dissolve the patterns that bind your Soul in chains and Uncover.
I remind you again that it will take practice, and the practice of practices.