What's Beyond Mindfulness? by Stephen Fulder

Author:Stephen Fulder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Watkins Media

CHAPTER 25

LEVIATHAN: LIBERATING THE LIFE FORCE

Mindfulness practice, meditation and inner work raise awareness of mental patterns and tendencies, memories and fears, and not infrequently touch our limitations and difficulties. We learn to allow whatever arises to arise and to be what it is. We meet our host of friends and relations with varying degrees of readiness, insight and coping. However, we must also ask what happens to the material that does not reach awareness. This is material that we usually don’t encounter, either because it is too painful for us, or because it is so ubiquitous that we don’t even notice it. It is the buried stuff. Narratives, images, scars, voices and deep memories that are running in the background but don’t emerge into the light of day. We all can think of personal examples. Some common ones would be: “I am not good enough”; “Life is against me”; “I am just a servant to my children/husband/society/boss”; “I am destined to be … (fill in the blank)”. We aren’t even aware of the existence of such narratives until they suddenly pop up because of some circumstance or event. The narratives, hidden underground, are connected to our longings and hopes.

They express deep and frustrated desire for purity, love and perfection. They are the life force imprisoned. And because this is a power chained, it is scary, something big under the surface. As in the saying – if you put a cat in a box, it turns into a tiger. It can be imagined as a monstrous leviathan (the old word for semi-mythological giant sea creatures) representing inflated issues lying beneath the threshold of our consciousness, issues that we are unable to direct or control.

Some of our greatest well-hidden narratives lying under the surface of our ocean are of course connected to death. The denial around death is endless. One example of this denial is the glorification of youth and health. Though it seems perfectly natural, it is in fact an expression of the leviathan concealed in the depths of our consciousness, in this case our fear of growing old, and of losses, endings and deterioration. In Jewish society, a potent example of the way a death-related hidden narrative lives powerfully within us and controls us from deep down is the Holocaust. It is running in the background all the time in the Jewish individual and social mind, and can produce a subtle restlessness, as if constantly alert as to where the next threat might be coming from. It is one of the psychological underpinnings of the intractable conflict in the Middle East. Behaviour can be deeply influenced by this narrative, even if we aren’t aware of it. It can be lurking at the back of the German consciousness too, sometimes stealing the joy of life. We need to invite such undersea monsters to reveal themselves and then to meet and befriend them – “Come out of the depths, my friend, and dance with me in my life!” How can we do

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