Expert: Joe McSorley - 5/23/2009

Question
Joe,
Can meditation alone help resolve a person's past grudges and trauma that have been buried deep and long within us? How so?

Answer
Dear Choo,
    How you look at this depends on what you consider meditation to be.  If it is sitting detached, as it is in many traditions, it might make you feel detached from your problems but I don’t know if the problems will actually be resolved.  A grudge is a mental state that is fed by thought and conditioning, it cannot survive without the mind reinforcing it.  There are other types of trauma that are cause a deep physical and mental reaction and seem to go beyond reflective thought.  Someone who has been in an accident may react to anything that reminds them of the accident without any conscious thought of it.  They have been deeply conditioned by that trauma in a way that goes beyond thought.  There are animal studies done that suggest that this is the way animals learn what is dangerous and to avoid it in the future.  This is not a matter of conscious memory but of the brain recording this event to protect in the future.  In the human brain we replay this event over and over again in our consciousness and an animal does not do this.  It is possible to recognize this process through meditation, mindfulness and other practices to overcome it.  If we can recognize it then we can have an effect upon changing it to some extent.
 Unlike the trauma a grudge is more of a mental construct, something we consciously hang on to.  I know people that have had grudges for years that have crippled their lives and ability to live fully.  When some of these people have later come face to face with the person with whom they had the grudge they are often shocked at what power they gave this person by holding the grudge.  I knew a woman who was abused as a child and in her late twenties confronted the man who had done it.  He was feeble and old and she was shocked that he had no power over her but that she had, herself, maintained that power by having the grudge.  This does not mean that her pain was not real but that she kept it alive in her mind when she could have been living her life.  Meditation can help us to see just what it is that our internal dialogue is doing to recreate our problems.  Done correctly it can help us to be in the present and enjoy life as it is now and not muse on how it hurt us in the past.
   There is a story about training an elephant, that when you first train it you put a chain around its leg so it can’t run away and be free.  After the elephant is trained the chain is replaced with a rope.  The rope is not strong enough to hold the elephant but the elephant does not see what is now but thinks it is the chain.  So it remains bound not by the strength of the chain but by the conditioning of its mind.  Meditation can help us see the chains that bind us from the past and hopefully dissolve them in the present.
  I hope this helps you.  Take care,
         Joe