so the line on the wall said. It is merely the absence of it.
Wise words for a graffiti artist in the mission. But then again, a graffiti artist can appreciate this, the way sunlight or the absence of obscures, changes, illuminates their work of art. Or the way a dark cloud or passing truck temporarily blocks the light; bringing darkness.
There’s an idea I read recently, in physics, about the known unknown. That is, we can understand fully what happens only in the places that light can reach. We can understand what happens on the borders, where light stops. Furthermore, we know that there is something,theoretically, beyond the range where there is light but we cannot know what that something is. Light, vibrating waves or beaming photons(depending on how you look at it), is the thread of space and time. Without light, there is nothing.
I had a personal experience with this recently. I took a course in Vipassana Meditation, a form of buddhist meditation where the goal is insight, deep wisdom about yourself and the world. In this technique,the first focus of your wisdom is yourself. To observe, objectively what is happening within your body. You observe your body as if it were something external from you, arms legs, torso. “no me, no my”. You observe and you observe and you observe curious things. You observe areas or your body that feel somewhat nice, the subtle sensation of vibrations, tinglings, warmth, energy flowing like water passing over rocks in a river. You observe areas where there is intense sensations like pain, burning, stabbing, a leg falling asleep, sharp tinglings where you want to itch and itch and itch. You’re taught that these are distractions, the seeds of misery and suffering. To react would only multiply and further the suffering and misery. So you sit and just observe. and then you notice other areas where you feel…. nothing. A whole section of your face, missing. Some fingers, missing. A whole foot, missing. What a curious thing. You saw yourself in the mirror earlier that day and were sure that you looked whole, complete. There were no holes in your face, you ate breakfast with all your fingers, you walked on two feet. But internally, there is nothing.
And this nothing is not the opposite of something, for that too would be something. It’s not numbness I’m talking about, numbness is certainly something and for sure, there is numbness in places. What you experience is the absence of something and what that absence leaves; nothing.
I wasn’t surprised by this. As a Hanna Somatic Educator, I’m very familiar with Sensory Motor Amnesia;a forgetfullness of how to voluntarily move and consciously feel an area of your body. My intellectual side was fascinated by this phenomenon of my nervous system. What sensory motor amnesia means is that movement and sensation are linked together. Meaning; as movement decreases, as an area of the body becomes rigid, sensation decreases as well. When the flow of energy and movement no longer reaches certain muscle fiber, it’s as if they cease to exist. You can feel the areas around them. If they are rather superficial, lieing close to the surface, you can touch them with your hand. But until sensation is recovered, voluntary movement cannot happen. Until movement is returned, it’s as if they are gone.
and I see this quite often in my work with trauma recovery. A person has been injured, suffered abuse, broken bones, surgery and in a protective reflex has blocked themselves from feeling certain parts of their body. They do this instinctively by freezing the affected area. If you touch a hot stove, immediately, your hand is drawn back into your center and will remain tucked into your side, frozen, until the pain is gone. A soldier, shot in the stomach will reflexively curl up, clutching the wound as they hobble off to safety. A victim of sexual abuse may disconnect from their pelvis, tightening the muscles around their groin and lower abdomen.
In a normal, healthy world, these postures, these reflexes would only last as long as it took the person to get to safety and consciously feel that they are free from harm. But in a world where we are constantly inundated with trauma, stress, sensory overload sometimes we forget to let go. We keep holding on to our wounds, protecting them from further injury.
And in this way, our own bodies become the dark clouds that obscure light. In this way, over time, the borders of where we exist start to draw back and darkness, the absence of light starts to creep towards us.
But also in this way, with understanding or natural process, we can proceed. Venturing forward with the knowledge of what is and what isn’t, we can start to move with the light, knowing that all we have to do is bring light and the darkness will peel away. With the guidance of a Hanna Somatic Educator, trauma victims can recover pain-free movements in areas of their body and in this way recover their sense of wholeness, of light shining throughout all parts of their inner universe.
And so back in my meditation I sat further and observed these borders of my inner darkness. And bit by bit, little waves of sensation start to creep over the borders. And bit by bit what did not exist springs into being with the vibrancy of a young flower breaking through ground cover. Bit by bit, light returned to what was once dark and there was knowledge and there was life and there was intense sensation and deep ache of old trauma, but at least there was not nothing.
And back on that Mural, the sun rises and a grafitti artist’s words spring into being, into action, into the mind of a writer, the research of a physicist and the reality of our universe.
