The Dark Cave of the Wounded Heart

By Pamela Stockton
Somewhat wistfully I recall a Brigids Place workshop many moons ago, facilitated by
Paula DArcy. The topic was something like Entering the Cave of the Heart, and I felt
unaccountably uncomfortable throughout the event, judging that bothering with the
heart was not just silly and frivolous but also disloyal to the much more important
project of rigorous feminist scholarly scrutiny of the Christian tradition and womens
suppressed and nearly lost participation in its origins.
How sad that seems to me now, as I look back on the defended heart my intellectualism
and obsession with rationality was shielding. Some part of me smiles at that earlier
version of myself, pleased to see the growth that has taken place since then, and
indulgent toward the way-station that academic pursuits provided, a safe harbor against
the emotional torrents of self-discovery.
Thomas Keating, the great architect of Centering Prayer, has referred to it as a
heartfulness practice, distinguishing it from the Buddhist-derived mindfulness
orientations so much a topic of research and discussion in contemporary psychology.
While Buddhist meditation practices certainly include the body, the linguistic distinction
highlights an underlying contrast between two critically important ways of knowing, one
centered above the neck and the other, more uncertain, non-verbal, and diffuse. That
second way, though not unknown to me, was unfamiliar and forbidding in those days,
and for good reason. Entering the world of feeling brings perils and a potentially dark
passage toward unknown truths and psyches shadows.
When my Centering Prayer practice encountered Holotropic Breathwork, something
Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield has likened to meditating on a freight train, these two
previously fragmented segments of my noetic faculties began a tentative, and ever-sodifficult, reconstitution. A rendezvous of thinking and feeling that has brought with it
tremendous insight, along with a significant share of regret and sadness.
In Dark Night, Early Dawn, religion scholar Christopher Bache contrasts daytime and
nighttime consciousness, illuminating the reality that the glory of the nighttime sky is
always present, but obscured by the glare of daytime sunlight. In the same way, the
dark of night does not eliminate what is present in the day, but opens our frame of
reference to a fuller expanse of the cosmos. He likens ours to a civilization so lost in
daytime consciousness that it cannot see the larger perspective of our interconnection
with the universe.
The over-focus on rational consciousness, the light of logic and intellect that fueled
much of my lifeand, especially since the eighteenth century, our western culturehas
given way, in recent years, to an openness to all that is implied by what is non-rational,
intuited, and felt in the body. The balance between reason and feeling, rationality and

the knowing of the heart seems as elusive in our culture as it has been in my own life.
But as I near the mid-point of my seventh decade, I recognize the imperative to discover
the essential unity of these two orientations toward life. Not so much to correct my
previous imbalance of night with day, but to bring the cave of the heart into my
awareness, to wed the dimmer light of inner sight with the stark glare of reason. In
these days, toward that elusive union, the watery unconscious and the shadows of the
hearts cavernous depths, the felt over the seen, call my attention and energy.
Toward that end, it is my privilege to offer Holotropic Breathwork workshops, in the
hope that others may benefit in a similar way to the enormous gift I received, opening
to their own inner well and connecting with the intrinsic healing intelligence that lives
within each of us. The Holotropic paradigm that Stan Grof and his late wife Christina
developed has no dogma other than a deep trust in the wisdom and powerful drive for
wholeness hidden deep within the soul. With attention it comes into awareness and a
new level of aliveness, offering with precision and perfect timing the experiential lesson
most appropriate for the condition of the moment.
Again and again on this path I have seen that with a bit of trust and willingness, the the
water of life is poured out, the wisdom teacher appears, the light shines to illumine
what needs to be seen, and a healing direction opens. These principles also inform my
psychotherapeutic work, an approach focused not so much on what is wrong or needs
fixing, but instead on what is inhibiting the flow of this power within and where the
energy of life is calling for a shift of orientation, re-direction, or a new connection with
what is felt in the bodys wisdom.
And belatedly, I offer deep bows to Paula DArcy for creating enough turbulence at the
surface to impel me to take a deeper dive, and begin my journey toward that
subterranean entrance to the cave of the heart.

In early 2000, Pam and the late Fred Eckert began a weekly
Centering Prayer group that is still meeting today at its
original time of 11:15 a.m. each Monday and, at least until
the Hines Center opens its doors, gathers in the Cathedrals
Mellinger Room. Today, Carole Pentony, Ph.D. co-facilitates
the group, which has grown significantly in recent years. All
are welcome to join, no experience required!
For information on Holotropic Breathwork