I heard a guest speaker “S” at the Zen meditation I attend every week.  According to the brief introduction, this woman, perhaps in her 40s-50s, was born to a poor Hindu family in India. Her mother died when she was age 5, and her father committed suicide when she was 10.  Later on, somehow, she was educated in an Islamic school, then moved to Canada.  In Canada, she was educated in a Catholic school.  She is a yoga master, and has been practicing Zen meditation for many years.  She has lived in Hindu, Islam, Catholic, and Buddhism environments.  She is so grateful about her multi-religious upbringing and multi-cultural life environment that she created a spiritual house and donated it to the community to be used for various spiritual events.

I probably did not understand 100% of what she said, due to my poor comprehension.  However, I tried to summarize her talk and it was something like this, hopefully not too far from her actual talk.

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Everybody has some kind of trauma experience in their lives.  It could be something that happened in your childhood that was so scary, shocking, or so sad….

After many years, you might not remember the particular incident, but somehow your body remembers it, and you find yourself unexpectedly reacting to it.

For example, suppose you had the experience of almost being drowned in the ocean when you were a little child, and suppose you are now a grown-up and have gone to a beach to have fun.  All of a sudden, you find that your feet are frozen, and you can’t walk toward the water.  You might have forgotten the childhood trauma, but your body remembered it.

In S’s case, her trauma of losing her parents as a child resulted in holding the strong fear of abandonment.

So…. something happens to you, and there is a result/consequence from that, and the experience becomes part of you.

Every being has vibration.  Your vibration is created by your life experience.  So, that means, your vibration includes your trauma.

It sounds rather hopeless.  How do you get rid of your trauma?

You need to rewind your life and in your own mind, re-live your negative experience all over again.  Until you overcome the experience, the reaction like your feet becoming frozen at the beach, will not go away.

However, S says, there is actually another way of overcoming your trauma.  That is to change your vibration.

It is interesting that vibrations have the power of attracting other people, places, and even events that have similar waves to yours.

You might be making friends who are similar …. you might be making similar mistakes over and over …. you might be reacting in similar ways when you face certain situations…. you might be noticing that you have been hit on by similar types of guys/girls, …. your marriages have failed and you notice that you had actually married a same person with different face(s)….

Can any of these be true for you?

When you change your vibration, naturally, your relationships with people, your environment, and what happens around you start to change.

Your life starts to change.

And, one of the ways to change your vibration is to meditate.

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When I think back on my life, there was certainly a period of time i was not happy. Perhaps it was the early 1990s. I felt like being stuck in mud and extremely frustrated. I had no sense of fulfillment, but had lots of struggles and was very lonely. During that time, surely, unpleasant things happened to me over and over.  Many people with the same purposes approached me insistently. My stress level was rising to the point my health was affected. Too bad I didn’t know about Zen.  However, I did become aware of the chain of negativities in my life, and was determined to cut that chain.  That was when I was able to change myself, and my life started to shift.

Zen meditation can bring you to this “right this moment”, from some “past” trauma or “future” uncertainties and worries.

 

毎週行っている座禅会で、スプリテイという名のゲストスピーカーの話を聞いた。ざっとホーベンが説明してくれた話によると、５０歳くらいのこの女性はインドのヒンズー系の貧しい家庭で生まれ、５歳で母親と死に別れ、１０歳で父親が自殺、その後、なぜかインドでイスラム系の教育を受けて、カナダに渡り、カナダではカトリック系の私立学校に通ったという。彼女自身ヨガのマスターであり、長年座禅も続けている。ヒンズー教、イスラム教、カトリック、仏教に通じた人物だという。そんな生い立ちへの感謝の気持ちから、自費でスピリチュアルハウスというコミュニテイハウスを寄贈して、宗教を問わず、様々なスピリチュアルな活動に活用されているという。

私の理解力が及ばなくて、１００％理解できたとは言えないけど、スプリテイのお話の要点は多分こんなことだったと思う。

ーーーー

人間誰しもトラウマの経験がある。

過去に身に起こったことで怖かったこと悲しかったことがあると体に記憶されて、何年も経ってから同じような状況に置かれた時に無意識に反応してしまったりする。

例えば小さい時に海で溺れた経験のある人は、大人になってすっかりそんな経験を忘れてしまっていても、なぜか海に行くと足がすくんでしまったりすることがある。

スプリテイの場合は幼い頃の両親の死が「捨てられる」という恐怖につながったという。

つまり、何かことが起こって、それによる結果があって、それが自分の一部になる。

人間は誰しも人生体験からくる自分のバイブレーションを持つ。つまり、自分のバイブレーションは自分が経験したことの産物だというわけだ。トラウマをも含めて。。。

トラウマを断ち切るには自分に起こった負の出来事をもう一度自分の中で再現する、そして乗り越える必要がある。乗り越えられない限り、例えば海で理由もなくすくんでしまうという状態はずっと続いてしまう。

でも実はもう一つ乗り越える方法がある。それは自分のバイブレーションを変えてしまうことだという。

バイブレーションには不思議とその波数と合う人間や場所、出来事を引き寄せる力があるそうだ。

似たような友達ばかりができる、とか同じような失敗をなんども繰り返してしまうとか、同じような場面に出くわすといつもつまづいてしまうとか、同じような異性が近づいてくるとか、よく考えてみると同じタイプの人と結婚しては失敗してるとか、そんなことに思いあたらないだろうか。

自分のバイブレーションが変わると、自然に人間関係も周りの環境も自分に起こってくる出来事も変わってくるという。

そして人生が変わってくる。

バイブレーションを変えることのできる方法の一つは座ること、つまり禅の瞑想だという。

ーーーーー

確かに、私の人生を振り返ってみると、幸福感もなく、充実感もなく、ただただ焦って、足踏みばかりしていた時期がある。９０年代前半だろうか。満たされなくて寂しくて苦しかった。そういう時期には同じような目的を持った同じような人間ばかりと出会ったし、不愉快な出来事が繰り返し繰り返し起こって、ストレスばかり積み上がっていたように思う。私は座禅こそしなかったけど、自分の負の連鎖に気がついて、乗り越える決意をした時に、私の人生も変わっていったように思う。

座禅というのは気持ちを「過去のトラウマ」や「未来への不安」から「今、この瞬間」に戻してくれる。もっと早く出会いたかったな。