THE TAO OF TAPAS
by Steve King
I had wondered about the significance of Tapas Fleming’s (the
originator of Tapas Acupressure Technique) name, and it was only
recently, upon reading Rudolph Ballentine’s book Radical Healing, that I found an
explanation. It turns out to be one that truly fits with the concept of
acknowledgment, but without letting an urge move one into the addictive
action step.
Tapas involves arousing play an
energy-invested impulse, …and then
electing not to express it in routine
or habitual fashion. Tapas is not suppression
or denial, which are ways to avoid
experiencing the urgency of the
impulse. You experience it fully and
powerfully and yet--despite the
discomfort of its urgency-- you
choose not to act on it. You pass. You simply
decline to be moved by it. You
intentionally contain and accept the
discomfort of the building
energy/impulse and wait for it to find a new course.
It’s like an internal version of
Gandhi’s passive resistance strategy. You refuse
to be moved, and the immense power
that is mobilized around that refusal
tends to get transmuted.
At some point the energy you’re
choosing not to express finds another route.
What typically happens is that you
feel a sudden heat. The word tapas
carries the connotation of burning,
and it’s perhaps from the use of this
technique that we get the idea of
"burning off karma". …. The energy isn’t
denied here - or the action it’s
trying to push. You’ve just made a
conscious decision to deactivate a
particular habit.
As a result, your actions will enjoy
a freshness and genuine spontaneity
that makes each moment surprising for
you. Without this, what passes
for spontaneity is only a
counterfeit. It’s not the adventurous creativity that
is the essence of life, but is
instead the dull routine of ingrained habit
carrying you toward ennui and loss of
vitality.
Although even your most genuinely
spontaneous response is to some degree
a reflection of your unresolved
issues, what is creative about it is the way it
contributes to living through the
experiences needed to move past those issues.
Without employing some version of
tapas, you remain prey to habits you
wish you could change because they
carry you nowhere. Without some
radical measure, those habitual
patterns, rooted in the unconscious,
are continually reinforced by the
actions they prompt, so that the lion’s
share of your energy is tied up in a
circular chain of action, reaction,
frustration, and resentment. Breaking
out of this requires only a bit
of skillful attention. (pps.
432-4)
Ballentine also mentions an example of how a form of tapas was helpful
to his son who had come down with a severe case of chicken pox. I have
used this story in a metaphorical form and it has been very helpful in
assisting clients to understand the process, and why it is a healing
move to acknowledge and work through something rather than to avoid,
deny or stay in negative habitual limbo.
Knowing as we do that scratching the chicken pox postules on the face
will leave scarring, one is therefore faced with a choice. You can
either scratch, and get some instant
gratification for the itchiness,
but with the guarantee of life-long scarring, or you could sit with it
for 10-12 days without any scratching and have the delayed
gratification of coming out the other end both healed and with
no
scarring.
Many have experienced and
endorse the concept of owning, acknowledging and verbalizing the desire
or urge to use alcohol, drugs, food or other addictive substances or
processes, though without acting upon it, as a means to deal with them.
They have experienced the moving of the energy from an undercurrent
through to full-blown desire but have sat through it, and by doing so
have realized that they didn`t die and nor were they overwhelmed by
anxiety or the doom that seemed so impending just moments beforehand.
When my Wife quit smoking
many years ago she would often state how much she would give for a
smoke, but gradually the urges waned, her determination strengthened
and it is now only occasionally that the urge or "Addictive Voice" will
surface and she has the wisdom to know "this too shall pass".
Ballentine further states that disease is tapas thrust upon us when we
have put it off endlessly. In any case, it’s the transmutational
process of tapas that is the essence of the healing experience, whether
it’s the transformation and healing of a psychological disorder or the
resolution of a physical illness. A magical confluence of polar
opposites mix together here to create the mystery of healing. The
process hinges on your being fully in control, totally able to make a
choice about how you deal with the crisis; at the same time, illness
gives you the gift of helplessness - the overwhelming awareness that
your way of being has, at least in some respects, failed. You have
pushed to your limits and you have come up empty-handed. This creates a
moment when you are receptive to a spontaneous response from a much
deeper level of being - what one might call grace, an inspired vision
of the heretofore unimagined.
It seems necessary to experience a certain sense of giving up, of
surrender, in order to discover a totally new way of being and
functioning. (ibid., pps. 436-7)
For some, the only thing left to hold onto is giving up!