After such a clear and joy filled day yesterday it was painful to wake up with what felt like bodies laying across my chest, making it hard to breathe. I called out to the God and Goddess, the Great Mother, the spirit of the universe and she sent me Artemis to reassure me that all was well telling me I was safe and protected by the spiritual warriors and to resume my holy mission without fear. In honor of that, I would like to say little and give tribute to Artemis, protector of women and children.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Eat, Love, Pray and......write?
Sister Sue has been reading "Eat, Pray, Love". "You'll have to read it when I'm done" she said when I was there last week. I had seen it in the bookstore on one of my many excursions of waffling through literary love and bargaining with myself about how many books I could actually afford to indulge at the expense of my oftem empty pocket book. It had never really called to me. Worse, I had noticed it on the favorites list of a new-agey self-help guru, to say the least, that I'd rather not have been acquainted with. That sorta sealed the deal, if she was into it, I wouldnt find much wisdom there. Yet in the middle of drop in dinners and endless loads of laundry, i took a chance and enteretained some of the pages. Today I read..
"Virginia wolfe wrote "across the broad continent of a woman's life falls the shadow of a sword. On one side of that sword lies convention and tradition and order where "all is correct". But on the other side of that sword if your crazy enough to cross it and choose a life that does not follow convention.."all is confusion", nothing follows a regular course. Her argument was that the crossing of the shadow of that sword may bring a far more interesting existence to a woman but you can bet it will also be more perilous".
Damn, I could relate to that, for that was the cliff I had been wandering along for awhile..to do or not to do, to love or not to love, to heal or not to heal, that is the question. But the truth is, as i found myself dancing within the adventures in her book, i realized yet again, i do an awful lot of "fixing" and not enough of "living".
A couple of days ago I wrote on the status line of my beloved facebook page (the only current outlet for unveiled self expression in the support of community i have had), "what kind of career path will pay you to meet a ton of interesting people, completely submerse yourself in your experiences with them and then write about it". My best friend sparks explained thats why he stayed in school, "noone is going to pay you to do that" he said, that shutter of reality breaking through my dream world again. A fellow wanderer said "yeah..let me know when you find that path, i've been wondering about it myself for years". Of course I thought, there was that ruthless dreamer in me again denying all conventional wisdom that i had been imparted on these 26 years of travelling for truth. Yet here, in the middle of Elizabeth Glibert's pages, was a story of another woman denying convention, looking to calm the valiant tides that continued to beckon inside of her, answer the bugeoning questions she had about the universe and her place in it and come to terms with her unabashedly but enduring wandering nature. Better yet, she explored it through the daily experiences of her life, an interweaviing of the dance between her internal world and the gifts the universe brought her in the external world with which to explore them. Best yet, she got paid to write about them. Aha...the writer rises again. But how does one really become a writer? Do they go back to study the art of literary prose, the dos and do nots of the buisness, instruction on style, ettiquette and sequence, only to have the creative passion born in them squashed out of them anyway? Do they wander around aimlessly, working for minimum wage by day and in the shadows of the night bring forth what lives within them? Like anything else, I'm sure the industry is messy and competitive, some over zealous tyrants worried about making the next big buck, telling you what it is that you will write about or threatening to destroy your contract. Just last year I re-acquainted with long lost childhood friend that in her love of books had idealistly entered the publishing world, only to have been heartbroken by the politics of the industry, dream shattered, tail between her legs returned to university to be a librarian.
Amidst the decision to move to BC, I remembered a medium I had seen at Lilydale (a spiritualist community, or home to many a medium for at least 120 years now) a couple of summers ago and that he had mentioned prospects of this move. Eagerly I sought out the tape and strained restlessly in the midst of a crackled, soft recording what in fact assurance he was going to provide that i was making the right decision. For the first twenty minutes he went on about my career, stating that the woman that was communicating with him in my reading, one of my stubborn spirited female ancestors more specifically, was insisting I not take my hard won rights of the feminist movements for granted. I had freedom, she insisted, freedom to learn, freedom to reproduce or not to, freedom to marry or not to, freedom to, in other words not far off from the words written by Virginia Wolfe that inspired me to write this entry. At the time, I wasn't surprised, a studious social worker steeped in the work of women's advocacy, born of a path i'm sure intended it (thats a story for another day). And just before my less conventional-defying gramdother stepped in to remind me that although divorced twice at 24, i should be stabley married by 26, she insisted I write. "Do you write?" the small magical man asked, "because she is insisting you begin writing on the internet". Write on the internet? I thought to myself, hmmm, maybe she was asking me to blog, which ironically i had only started a week before at cosmic claire's assertion that the rich tumult of my inner world would perhaps make for some interesting reading. It had only taken me three years to put into action, but I suppose it was good that my life was in it's own weave bringing forth the nudgings that i left scattered in the dust as i hurried along trying to become somebody.
Last Friday, after a week job searching and some painfully awkward waitressing interviews that highlighted the fact that i could not just put my analytical therapist role behind me and go back to a time where my mind had no awareness of such things, a little voice within me said.."Go to Gifts for the Soul". Gifts for the Soul, is a quaint little metaphysical shop I found in my early days of "awakening", offering a place of quiet solitude from the chaotic productivity that threatened to sweep me away on a daily basis in the early years post-divorce. Owned by two very different, yet equally intiguing female partners and home to the best kept women's secret, the Ya-Ya sister circle, it seemed a good idea to follow that nudging and see what came up. When I arrived, Adelle, a sweet, retired, school teacher attempting to answer her own questions of the journey she has walked informed me that Sandra (Owner #1) was away, caring for her mother and Terry (Owner #2) was in the healing room conducting a clearing. I would wait, I told her, to touch in with Terry, in the meantime loosing myself in the sweet smelling incense, rippling symphony of soul-i-tude and the beckoning of a surplus of metaphysically saturated literature.
"What are you up to these days?" she asked. Eeeek, the much dreaded question, that despite it's persistent prescence in my life, i still hadnt mustered the right methodically plotted answer to. "Well" I sighed..."I suppose I'm on a soul-a-battical". Her face lit up with interest..."ooo that sounds so interesting...are you a writer?" she asked. Half perplexed and half chuckled I cracked a sheepish grin and said "well that's an interesting question, what made you ask?". "The word you used" she said "Soulabaticcal...Where did you hear it? did you just make it up?". I laughed, I wasn't sure if I had just made it up or heard it somewhere, it just seemed a good word to describe my current place in the abyss. Where i was going to or what i was doing, all seemed a mystery, the only thing I new for sure, is at this point in my life, I was most definately lost and it seemed a much prettier way to describe the churning of my internal processes than the pragmatic day to day reality of a struggling single mother, poorer than a rusted out garbage can, attempting to justify that her direction should actually bear a purpose.
I told her about the budding practice i had just left, the place of unknowing i sat in while i awaited the move to BC with no real plan about how that was going to come together and the irony of her question about me writing. I began "It just seems like i live between two worlds.." before she cut me off in excitement. "Write a book" she stammered "just as you speak i can resonate with what your saying, which makes me think there will be hundreds more that will feel the same". Was this a nudging of the universe? Of course in my morning stress about how to go about getting some kind of short term adequate income before the move and that little voice inside asked me to go to my sanctuary of all things metaphysical, surely I didn't get any counsel for my existential abyss, practical opportunities for employment, but I did get a woman that was insisting I write a book, just weeks after the visit from my cassette player and the shaming incistence of a spirit from the women's lib, urging me to take heed of my opportunities and begin writing on the internet.
If i had a dime for every time I was told by someone brave enough to listen to the hallows of my journey in this world to "write a book" i'd have enough money to pay a writer to write my story and give all the royalties to charity. I can still remember in vivid detail sitting in the steel laminate desk in primary school, in the midst of what felt like some cosmic joke, the pleasure i took in learning each new word, the way that it came together, what it meant and how it sounded. Syllable dancing. The memoirs of my childhood most delicately illustrated in my carefully worded stories and the tattered journals that were always found in my purse through my adolescent travels. I decided very young, that it was important to keep carefully recorded passages of how i felt about the events of my life, what questions came out of them and how i sought to answer them. I told myself at the time I kept them because as i began to develop a conciousness about my place in the world there were so many questions, always left unanswered and when i would seek solace from my parents, that they too had asked themselves these questions I was often met with "I don't remember". I thought maybe, if i could record these experiences, the ways they made me feel and the way i found myself through them, that my children might feel normal when they too found themselves in stuck in the swamp of the unknown. But maybe that was really about something larger, a seed that the pragmatics of poverty, trauma and survival had stolen before it made it's way to germination. That now, even amidst those same conditions, the difference was, that I had done everything the world told me to to seek to rid me of my existential ills. I had married twice, had a child, went to university, got 2 degrees and a chance at a road out of the misery pragmatics, but yet, i still wasn't satisfied. Yet in truth, it was more than dissatisfaction, it was a complete pausing, a feeling that something bigger than myself was not going to let me rest until i made a clear stop and took a big breath before burying myself into the next perfectionistic direction of scholar-dom or productivity.
I had always written and always loved it, before "responsibility" showed it's face and convinced me creativity was best left for retirement. I thought of things in pictures best scowered with juicy words to give breath to that which only seemed a fleeting thought but could become a masterpeice. In my scholarly work, acclaimed for my writing, first pick editor in most job sites right up until my practicum supervisor in grad school stated that she thought I was more of a researcher/scholar, better at writing about therapy than actualizing the demands of a therapist. The truth is, I always did feel safer writing about it than doing it, in the comfort of a blank page, with time to take a step back, i could offer up the best explanation for what was going on in a way that almost anyone could understand, but put me there in front of the client, i felt like a clown wearing a priest outfit. "I know your suffering, because i've felt it too, more close a friend of mine than anything other along this path and ive read, learned and scowered the wisest minds of what to do about it and have yet to arrive at a satisfying conclusion so what can i really tell you?" Anything else, felt mechanistic, unreal, full of deciet and hypothetical yet packaged in fact. Yet in grad school, after my deadening "awakening" had spun me back from a slow methodical enquiry into the chaotic neruon-planet that i was, i was told my writing was incomprehensible and the culprit...too much retreat into poetic prose for the likings of the de-tached writing of good rigorous scholarly enquiry. Spirit met me again and the language of my soul was becoming born without any permission or encouragement from me. So maybe I write...for now...I need to make an income.
"Virginia wolfe wrote "across the broad continent of a woman's life falls the shadow of a sword. On one side of that sword lies convention and tradition and order where "all is correct". But on the other side of that sword if your crazy enough to cross it and choose a life that does not follow convention.."all is confusion", nothing follows a regular course. Her argument was that the crossing of the shadow of that sword may bring a far more interesting existence to a woman but you can bet it will also be more perilous".
Damn, I could relate to that, for that was the cliff I had been wandering along for awhile..to do or not to do, to love or not to love, to heal or not to heal, that is the question. But the truth is, as i found myself dancing within the adventures in her book, i realized yet again, i do an awful lot of "fixing" and not enough of "living".
A couple of days ago I wrote on the status line of my beloved facebook page (the only current outlet for unveiled self expression in the support of community i have had), "what kind of career path will pay you to meet a ton of interesting people, completely submerse yourself in your experiences with them and then write about it". My best friend sparks explained thats why he stayed in school, "noone is going to pay you to do that" he said, that shutter of reality breaking through my dream world again. A fellow wanderer said "yeah..let me know when you find that path, i've been wondering about it myself for years". Of course I thought, there was that ruthless dreamer in me again denying all conventional wisdom that i had been imparted on these 26 years of travelling for truth. Yet here, in the middle of Elizabeth Glibert's pages, was a story of another woman denying convention, looking to calm the valiant tides that continued to beckon inside of her, answer the bugeoning questions she had about the universe and her place in it and come to terms with her unabashedly but enduring wandering nature. Better yet, she explored it through the daily experiences of her life, an interweaviing of the dance between her internal world and the gifts the universe brought her in the external world with which to explore them. Best yet, she got paid to write about them. Aha...the writer rises again. But how does one really become a writer? Do they go back to study the art of literary prose, the dos and do nots of the buisness, instruction on style, ettiquette and sequence, only to have the creative passion born in them squashed out of them anyway? Do they wander around aimlessly, working for minimum wage by day and in the shadows of the night bring forth what lives within them? Like anything else, I'm sure the industry is messy and competitive, some over zealous tyrants worried about making the next big buck, telling you what it is that you will write about or threatening to destroy your contract. Just last year I re-acquainted with long lost childhood friend that in her love of books had idealistly entered the publishing world, only to have been heartbroken by the politics of the industry, dream shattered, tail between her legs returned to university to be a librarian.
Amidst the decision to move to BC, I remembered a medium I had seen at Lilydale (a spiritualist community, or home to many a medium for at least 120 years now) a couple of summers ago and that he had mentioned prospects of this move. Eagerly I sought out the tape and strained restlessly in the midst of a crackled, soft recording what in fact assurance he was going to provide that i was making the right decision. For the first twenty minutes he went on about my career, stating that the woman that was communicating with him in my reading, one of my stubborn spirited female ancestors more specifically, was insisting I not take my hard won rights of the feminist movements for granted. I had freedom, she insisted, freedom to learn, freedom to reproduce or not to, freedom to marry or not to, freedom to, in other words not far off from the words written by Virginia Wolfe that inspired me to write this entry. At the time, I wasn't surprised, a studious social worker steeped in the work of women's advocacy, born of a path i'm sure intended it (thats a story for another day). And just before my less conventional-defying gramdother stepped in to remind me that although divorced twice at 24, i should be stabley married by 26, she insisted I write. "Do you write?" the small magical man asked, "because she is insisting you begin writing on the internet". Write on the internet? I thought to myself, hmmm, maybe she was asking me to blog, which ironically i had only started a week before at cosmic claire's assertion that the rich tumult of my inner world would perhaps make for some interesting reading. It had only taken me three years to put into action, but I suppose it was good that my life was in it's own weave bringing forth the nudgings that i left scattered in the dust as i hurried along trying to become somebody.
Last Friday, after a week job searching and some painfully awkward waitressing interviews that highlighted the fact that i could not just put my analytical therapist role behind me and go back to a time where my mind had no awareness of such things, a little voice within me said.."Go to Gifts for the Soul". Gifts for the Soul, is a quaint little metaphysical shop I found in my early days of "awakening", offering a place of quiet solitude from the chaotic productivity that threatened to sweep me away on a daily basis in the early years post-divorce. Owned by two very different, yet equally intiguing female partners and home to the best kept women's secret, the Ya-Ya sister circle, it seemed a good idea to follow that nudging and see what came up. When I arrived, Adelle, a sweet, retired, school teacher attempting to answer her own questions of the journey she has walked informed me that Sandra (Owner #1) was away, caring for her mother and Terry (Owner #2) was in the healing room conducting a clearing. I would wait, I told her, to touch in with Terry, in the meantime loosing myself in the sweet smelling incense, rippling symphony of soul-i-tude and the beckoning of a surplus of metaphysically saturated literature.
"What are you up to these days?" she asked. Eeeek, the much dreaded question, that despite it's persistent prescence in my life, i still hadnt mustered the right methodically plotted answer to. "Well" I sighed..."I suppose I'm on a soul-a-battical". Her face lit up with interest..."ooo that sounds so interesting...are you a writer?" she asked. Half perplexed and half chuckled I cracked a sheepish grin and said "well that's an interesting question, what made you ask?". "The word you used" she said "Soulabaticcal...Where did you hear it? did you just make it up?". I laughed, I wasn't sure if I had just made it up or heard it somewhere, it just seemed a good word to describe my current place in the abyss. Where i was going to or what i was doing, all seemed a mystery, the only thing I new for sure, is at this point in my life, I was most definately lost and it seemed a much prettier way to describe the churning of my internal processes than the pragmatic day to day reality of a struggling single mother, poorer than a rusted out garbage can, attempting to justify that her direction should actually bear a purpose.
I told her about the budding practice i had just left, the place of unknowing i sat in while i awaited the move to BC with no real plan about how that was going to come together and the irony of her question about me writing. I began "It just seems like i live between two worlds.." before she cut me off in excitement. "Write a book" she stammered "just as you speak i can resonate with what your saying, which makes me think there will be hundreds more that will feel the same". Was this a nudging of the universe? Of course in my morning stress about how to go about getting some kind of short term adequate income before the move and that little voice inside asked me to go to my sanctuary of all things metaphysical, surely I didn't get any counsel for my existential abyss, practical opportunities for employment, but I did get a woman that was insisting I write a book, just weeks after the visit from my cassette player and the shaming incistence of a spirit from the women's lib, urging me to take heed of my opportunities and begin writing on the internet.
If i had a dime for every time I was told by someone brave enough to listen to the hallows of my journey in this world to "write a book" i'd have enough money to pay a writer to write my story and give all the royalties to charity. I can still remember in vivid detail sitting in the steel laminate desk in primary school, in the midst of what felt like some cosmic joke, the pleasure i took in learning each new word, the way that it came together, what it meant and how it sounded. Syllable dancing. The memoirs of my childhood most delicately illustrated in my carefully worded stories and the tattered journals that were always found in my purse through my adolescent travels. I decided very young, that it was important to keep carefully recorded passages of how i felt about the events of my life, what questions came out of them and how i sought to answer them. I told myself at the time I kept them because as i began to develop a conciousness about my place in the world there were so many questions, always left unanswered and when i would seek solace from my parents, that they too had asked themselves these questions I was often met with "I don't remember". I thought maybe, if i could record these experiences, the ways they made me feel and the way i found myself through them, that my children might feel normal when they too found themselves in stuck in the swamp of the unknown. But maybe that was really about something larger, a seed that the pragmatics of poverty, trauma and survival had stolen before it made it's way to germination. That now, even amidst those same conditions, the difference was, that I had done everything the world told me to to seek to rid me of my existential ills. I had married twice, had a child, went to university, got 2 degrees and a chance at a road out of the misery pragmatics, but yet, i still wasn't satisfied. Yet in truth, it was more than dissatisfaction, it was a complete pausing, a feeling that something bigger than myself was not going to let me rest until i made a clear stop and took a big breath before burying myself into the next perfectionistic direction of scholar-dom or productivity.
I had always written and always loved it, before "responsibility" showed it's face and convinced me creativity was best left for retirement. I thought of things in pictures best scowered with juicy words to give breath to that which only seemed a fleeting thought but could become a masterpeice. In my scholarly work, acclaimed for my writing, first pick editor in most job sites right up until my practicum supervisor in grad school stated that she thought I was more of a researcher/scholar, better at writing about therapy than actualizing the demands of a therapist. The truth is, I always did feel safer writing about it than doing it, in the comfort of a blank page, with time to take a step back, i could offer up the best explanation for what was going on in a way that almost anyone could understand, but put me there in front of the client, i felt like a clown wearing a priest outfit. "I know your suffering, because i've felt it too, more close a friend of mine than anything other along this path and ive read, learned and scowered the wisest minds of what to do about it and have yet to arrive at a satisfying conclusion so what can i really tell you?" Anything else, felt mechanistic, unreal, full of deciet and hypothetical yet packaged in fact. Yet in grad school, after my deadening "awakening" had spun me back from a slow methodical enquiry into the chaotic neruon-planet that i was, i was told my writing was incomprehensible and the culprit...too much retreat into poetic prose for the likings of the de-tached writing of good rigorous scholarly enquiry. Spirit met me again and the language of my soul was becoming born without any permission or encouragement from me. So maybe I write...for now...I need to make an income.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
The Blessed Standing People..
Walking into a forest is like coming home to me. Whether it was Snow White and the magic and enchantment of the birds and the bees in that darkened forest or the cold chill of Christopher McCandless' solitary hike into the wild, somewhere my spirit knows itself best there. Since my time in the Indigenous program, I re-enter the natural sanctuary each time with different eyes and each time, a little more of the colonized veil punctures and I am aware of man's dominion over rather than relationship with. It feels like such a big peice of us becomes lost in our dis-connection with the natural world, recognizing our wild nature as part of our place within this awe invoking and mysterious universe and more clearly the ways we have denied our space in it. We have done it for so long, we don't even seem to recognize that we've lost it and it's heart breaking.
On my first medicine walk, Anishnabe-que, Kathy, instructed us to give tobacco to the land before we enetered the forest. She explained that giving tobacco is a sign of respect and honors the value of reciprocity (to give before taking), and asks the community that dwells in the parts of the forest that you will be walking in, permission to pass through it's territory. I was humbled by the degree of respect inherent in this act but well aware of how awkward it felt for me to "ask permission" from a tree.
As we entered the forest, Kathy advised each of us to pick a place that we fell drawn to and introduce ourself to the community, explaining why we were there and what we were seeking. I immediately approached a tree, or as the Anishnabe of Turtle Island have taught me one of the Standing People. Again, being introduced to a tree as a Standing Person at first felt really awkward. My mind has been taught to see a tree as a "thing", with no real value or essence, nevermind "personhood". Yet as I gazed in perfect awe of the mystery and wisdom, solitude and pacifism of the Standing People as I wandered through the forest today, I couldnt imagine how I only knew this magnificent part of creation, a few short years ago, as simply a tree. A paper source, that thing that provides oxygen, a source of shade and pretty to look at. Oh no. As I reached out to touch their mosaic of size, texture, strength, shape and way of being with eachother, one at a time, the Standing People shared with me their gifts, a comforting witness to the beings that passed there, an open acceptance of what nature delivered to them. They supported eachother,
unconcerned with the entanglement of their branches, or the ways in which some leaned on others, while others were standing solidly alone. They bring life not only to us, but support an entire community of life in the eco-sphere. They teach me of a soulful surrender, allowing the breeze of the winds to sway them when it comes, sometimes breaking parts of themselves that simply get cast away and still they stand there with open arms, calling to the sun. They, birth life, allow its skin to shed when it's season has passed, await it's death and continue to grow again. All of this they do quietly, soulfully and humbly.
As Madison was keeping five feet ahead of me, excited about the diversity of sights that called her to explore their mystery, I focused on walking within the rythym the forest gave to me. Thunder Bear, one of my teachers, always reminds me to refrain from running as I walk this journey in life, to walk slowly and breathe deeply. Here, in the foilage and serenity of these wise elders, and the amass of critters, creatures, stone people and water, it takes no effort to remember Thunder Bear's words. All one has to do is walk within the rythym the mother provides, the rythym that when I look around me, most other life has not forgotten.
Still, as I felt her rythym pulsing within me, I saw signs of our disconnection everywhere. Joggers came whipping along the trails, immersed in their music and excercise routine, pausing only to smile at fellow trail walkers along the way. The solitude of the place they were in affecting only their subtle energy fields no doubt contributing to the joy on their faces, yet as the kept up with the briskness demanded of rigorous workout it was clear they had no idea how many things they were missing. I looked at Madison, in her youthfulness still experentially curious about any new little finding and as she walked through the forest, told her to pay attention to what she saw, what she heard and how things felt. When the wind shifted through in a swift but warm flutter, Madison mentioned she could feel it on her skin. "What is it saying to you?" I asked. She looked perplexed. If you listen close enough from that place we talk about that's quiet inside, you'll hear what the wind is saying to you. Everything in nature brings us a message" I said. She looked curiously around her for a moment and walked some moments in silence. It's important to me that she learns to build this relationship with the mother, while she's still young, inquisitive, interested and constantly questioning. That way, even if she abandons all of the ways in which I have raised her by adolescence, her foundation will always be strong.http://www.naturalheroes.tv/vod.html
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Meanderings Amore
The dude dropped in this eve, in one of his usual blaming, complaining tirades. I had been dropped into myself for enough hours prior to his arrival to not engage or usual drama's. In my work on the mat, Shadow Walker has talked lots about owning your triggers. "Triggers" he describes, "are yours, the charge fueling them is from your own emotional material, use them as a teacher". In the moments, where i've needlessly argued him in needing validation on external blaming, he would say "Erica, if there was no charge, you would be able to sit back in amusement".
Tonight, when the dude launched into the usual drama. I remained completely disengaged. The more disengaged, the angrier he became. In a mist of anger and frustration, he gathered his things and stormed for the door. I sat in silence. He returned after a few moments and said "your, just going to let me go". I told him he was an adult and could make his own decisions. But i watched in amusement.
This was one of my distractions, one that I was especially responsible for because I had been concious of it. Ken and I had enacted our drama's in our marriage unconciously, feeding into each others systems of dependency, powerlessness, power and control. When I left him, the cracks in the shell became visible and my anger at him slowly became neutralized. He had been a powerful teacher, I lhad learnt much about myself and the ways in which I engaged my emotional material in relationship, I was co-dependant. When i left, i vowed not to make the same mistake again in relationship. The system the dude and I have developed is no less co-dependant, except the energy manifests in different ways, I don't make my decisions around him, I've never disillusioned myself about the nature of the relationship, continue to live alone, am non-committed. I learned much in this relationship about the balance between staying in one's own integrity of other while honoring the self. I also saw much of my shadow. The powerless aspects of myself that had been victimized, in the reclamation of their power raged with avengence, releasing a long left un-expressed anger at men. He was in his own drama of powerlessness and blame and locked in, my system was the perfect sustenance to keep his alive. So, I was concious of my behaviors yes, but the hitch was strong. Not only did our relationship provide an outlet for my anger, our sexual relationship offered the perfect distraction. Somehow in all our suffering, projections, blame and despair, we found a way to perfectly unite on profound and beautiful levels, taking us to a glimmer of heaven in 30 minutes of bliss. That was the hitch and it would keep us at it for four years.
It has been time for me to take responsibility for that and choose differently for a long while. I haven't had the courage nor the endurance to withstand his relentless attempts to come back and i suppose as one of the final resting places of this stage of my journey was another good reason to move. I'm not superwoman, I can only manage what i can and i don't think there is shame in that. I know that it is not he or my ex's that have brought this pattern to me, but one of my threads, one of my long standing issues of this life wrapped up in just the right conditions of my early life to bring forth this journey. So, I am aware the unleashed energy will go searching and seethingly attempt in it's desperation for safety to latch on to something else. But i have different skills now and an ability to see into the internal abyss and the pace, size and length of it's waves, the way that it moves and a way to learn from it. I'll have to continue to work the process, but I need a new landscape to rebuild.
Tonight, when the dude launched into the usual drama. I remained completely disengaged. The more disengaged, the angrier he became. In a mist of anger and frustration, he gathered his things and stormed for the door. I sat in silence. He returned after a few moments and said "your, just going to let me go". I told him he was an adult and could make his own decisions. But i watched in amusement.
This was one of my distractions, one that I was especially responsible for because I had been concious of it. Ken and I had enacted our drama's in our marriage unconciously, feeding into each others systems of dependency, powerlessness, power and control. When I left him, the cracks in the shell became visible and my anger at him slowly became neutralized. He had been a powerful teacher, I lhad learnt much about myself and the ways in which I engaged my emotional material in relationship, I was co-dependant. When i left, i vowed not to make the same mistake again in relationship. The system the dude and I have developed is no less co-dependant, except the energy manifests in different ways, I don't make my decisions around him, I've never disillusioned myself about the nature of the relationship, continue to live alone, am non-committed. I learned much in this relationship about the balance between staying in one's own integrity of other while honoring the self. I also saw much of my shadow. The powerless aspects of myself that had been victimized, in the reclamation of their power raged with avengence, releasing a long left un-expressed anger at men. He was in his own drama of powerlessness and blame and locked in, my system was the perfect sustenance to keep his alive. So, I was concious of my behaviors yes, but the hitch was strong. Not only did our relationship provide an outlet for my anger, our sexual relationship offered the perfect distraction. Somehow in all our suffering, projections, blame and despair, we found a way to perfectly unite on profound and beautiful levels, taking us to a glimmer of heaven in 30 minutes of bliss. That was the hitch and it would keep us at it for four years.
It has been time for me to take responsibility for that and choose differently for a long while. I haven't had the courage nor the endurance to withstand his relentless attempts to come back and i suppose as one of the final resting places of this stage of my journey was another good reason to move. I'm not superwoman, I can only manage what i can and i don't think there is shame in that. I know that it is not he or my ex's that have brought this pattern to me, but one of my threads, one of my long standing issues of this life wrapped up in just the right conditions of my early life to bring forth this journey. So, I am aware the unleashed energy will go searching and seethingly attempt in it's desperation for safety to latch on to something else. But i have different skills now and an ability to see into the internal abyss and the pace, size and length of it's waves, the way that it moves and a way to learn from it. I'll have to continue to work the process, but I need a new landscape to rebuild.
Confusion says….
In his book, Jeff Brown talks about the nature of confusion that erupts on the soulshaping journey and the importance of holding space for the confusion rather than drowning it out. As I write this, my mind is questioning why I believe so strongly in his work, and it comes from a strong place of resonance, a finding myself among his pages, how can I separate my alignment with his work from my own walk, to deny the truth of his teachings would be to deny my own experience and after all..your life is your medicine bundle. My critical judge states…are you happy now that you’ve justified your position by providing rationale?
The confusion…a strong sense of confusion has walked with me for two years. Elder Becker informed me that “I am not confused, it’s just a thing I do”. Shadowwalker has suggested in my therapeutic work with him that “confusion is just a defense mechanism that I utilize when I’m failing to see the truth of what is before me”. But none of those land deeply within me, they don’t strike an absolute chord consistent with the result of an internal discovery. The confusion heightens in the moment’s I try to make premature movements in the world, just as I am about to move into the decision, the confusion rears beckoning me to allow something to be heard. It’s almost impossible to just walk through it. It’s as if you are walking across a tightrope between two spaces, and as you get into the middle the two ends connected to the opposing solids break, and all that remains is the center part that you were walking along, but you can’t just stay there because the stability of the rope is missing, ‘nor can you go back because the road to your starting point has disappeared and you can’t go forward because you don’t have anything pulling you there, in the moment before you fall, what do you do?
The space in between is what I refer to as the abyss. The abyss is sort of like a void, not black or light, just there. There is no real particular passion or attachment to anything, no real opinion on matters, goals, desires or dreams. It’s more like an open space where you’ll take whatever happens. But my mind wants something to happen, but because it doesn’t feel any real desire, intention, path or goal all it puts out is a sense of urgency about a place your needing to get to. “I’ll go, where you need me to, but I just don’t see where I am to go” comes the desperate voice from within me. This voice is also the voice that gives an emotion of helplessness is prone to panic and anxiety and insidious attempts to maintain a negative self concept. This is quite possibly the victim. Then another voice makes itself known, this one a taunter. She reminds me of how useless I am and berates me for considering the honoring of my truth. “You have a daughter to support, stop entertaining your childish fantasies, your making up a story to give you more hope and inspiration rather than face the reality of your life”…definitely the critical judge. The artist comes in whispers. Small whispers not of a particular path but of the necessity to pay attention to my creative expression, that ends up accompanied by a full bodied hunger for chanelling out the continuous river of reflection and the magnificence of it’s individual parts through, dance, painting, writing, singing….flowing with it. But just as it rises up, critical judge flies in with avengeance….”artists are struggling while being expert at their craft. You my dear, don’t even propose a practiced skill, and to start one now and than expect to make a living is sheer madness…oh and once again..you have a daughter to support”.
At this point the artist is no contender of the judge, wise and well versed in the ways of rationality and common sense. They will begin bargaining for their parts. The artist, says therapy is my craft, that is my practiced skill, I can actualize it through there. Out of somewhere in the corner, another voice breaks through.. “but how can you do that? Where is room for creativity, healing and self expression?. Your work there has always been stifled and you spend more time fighting for the permission to grow, rather than doing what your doing anyway”. The judge returns “listen to you, creativity healing and self expression, look at the world out there, who has room for that, are you really that privileged?”
That war has been in existence for awhile. The what used to be dense unconsciousness to the internal world has now become a battleground. I have choices about how to engage that battleground. I can get real busy doing people favors and sorting out their lives, I can get wrapped up in a romance that is doomed from the beginning, I can eat a bunch of junk food, smoke a lot of pot or watch a bunch of movies and finally..bury myself in a frenzy of mind blowing sex. All of these, drown out the voices of the internal world. In fact as I write it, I am aware that has been some of what has made this particular part of my path so excruciating. I have done so much work, in building up my capacity for independence and separating myself from what other people think I should be doing, but the capacity to make those decisions for myself is still such a small seed, trapped in the hunter’s snare. Fear kicks in, and I go back.
When I finished my Master’s Degree in Aboriginal social work, the final requirement was completion of a vision quest. I spent four long days and nights in the bush. No food, no water, a little cedar tea one day, no distractions, just me, my tent, some sacred items clothes and the bush. I fasted for guidance. The dream about moving to BC continued to nag at me. My opportunities for work were here, but everything else felt so suffocating. But who was I kidding, trying to solve a restless continuous internal angst by moving across the country. When I left the fast, I had bargained a deal with the inner churnings. I would take two weeks to go explore out west and feel out the land in my heart. Then I would return to Ontario to begin my practice. There was just enough money left in my student loan for 16 days of backpacking, buses and trains, carpools, hitchhiking, ferries, sheds and couchsurfing, so I went. I had never traveled alone, put my trust in strangers, or dared independently venture more than two hours from home. This was the perfect opportunity to test myself, and though fear reared its head, it felt like the right thing to do.
It was a beautiful experience, refreshing models of community and ways of being, that made me feel ordinary, but more comforting than anything I had known. But the locals of the small communities in which I encountered this ambience spoke of the same things I wrestled with in Ontario. People moving in with money, turf wars between the hippies and the rich, lack of housing and work…..some becoming touristry and loosing their once natural way of being that made people visit in the first place. The cities I went through, weren’t a whole lot different from the places I’d known in Ontario and offered little pull. But the landscape was amazing, it wasn’t a relationship like in Ontario. I wasn’t watching the beauty within the landscape as I do at home, I was one with it. Daily it took my breath away. I visited with diverse and interesting people and expressed myself in fearless ways evident when traveling in landscape you don’t call home. I was refreshed and set home energized to begin my practice.
Everything worked out how I had envisioned it. I would come home, claim a position in the downtown coffee shop with a soothing yet festive atmosphere so close to the lake and work at building up my practice. There would be lots of paperwork, a lot of initial fees and a necessity to keep a stable income while doing so. I worked forty hours a week in the coffee shop and worked at developing my groups and designing my programming. I created brochures, designed forms, consulted a variety of my colleagues and mentors in establishing. I took a business course (which I didn’t complete) arranged a space between three clinics that adored me and gave me the space to do whatever I needed. But everything felt like a struggle. Like I was dragging myself through the motions of something I no longer wanted to do. I couldn’t imagine myself any other way, so I persisted with trying to argue myself into going back into the work and doing it. My friends, colleagues and supervisors mentioned they saw my fear and wondered if my lack of commitment to it may be a fear of success…a fear of inadequacy…a defense mechanism. I continued to work though the research and necessary tasks needed to build a private practice in social work, while plummeting myself into Radical acceptance mat trips on the weekends, therapy once a week, a healthy balance of inward time and socializing time, mindfulness, journaling, seminars and talks by medicine men, authors, shamans. I learned lots about the internal struggles, the voices that lived inside of me, the ways in which my body notified me of it’s knowings, but I grew less and less passionate about what I was trying to build. A long but slow sense of suffocation was setting in, something that just wanted to break free.
The voices began to war again. “Who the hell do you think you are, entertaining “what might be” from your soul? Don’t you see the suffering all around you? The wars? The poverty? The fights for freedom on political, physical, social, legal levels? You vowed to fight this war, you spoke against people who turned their backs on these struggles, and now look at you, walking away on the childish basis that it doesn’t “feel right”.” It’s mocking ran through me. That is terribly selfish and at best surreal, people don’t understand you even in the conscious circles you lack the ability to communicate what your feeling. Maybe these are your fears of success, get out of pixieland and build that career, I thought to myself. But the waves would just not let me rest. The small subtler, quieter background voice returned “following the call of your soul, which now pulls you west for reasons you can’t explain is not an independent act. You do it for the collective. You are teacher, you must follow your call in order to help others, it is the actualization of your gifts”. But what fucking gifts says the frustration in me. My gift is as therapist, in Dr. Blair’s words… “in ten years Erica, you’ll be the best of the best”. And here I was abandoning it all with not one clear thread in sight.
http://www.soulshaping.com/flash/ss_3.mp3
The confusion…a strong sense of confusion has walked with me for two years. Elder Becker informed me that “I am not confused, it’s just a thing I do”. Shadowwalker has suggested in my therapeutic work with him that “confusion is just a defense mechanism that I utilize when I’m failing to see the truth of what is before me”. But none of those land deeply within me, they don’t strike an absolute chord consistent with the result of an internal discovery. The confusion heightens in the moment’s I try to make premature movements in the world, just as I am about to move into the decision, the confusion rears beckoning me to allow something to be heard. It’s almost impossible to just walk through it. It’s as if you are walking across a tightrope between two spaces, and as you get into the middle the two ends connected to the opposing solids break, and all that remains is the center part that you were walking along, but you can’t just stay there because the stability of the rope is missing, ‘nor can you go back because the road to your starting point has disappeared and you can’t go forward because you don’t have anything pulling you there, in the moment before you fall, what do you do?
The space in between is what I refer to as the abyss. The abyss is sort of like a void, not black or light, just there. There is no real particular passion or attachment to anything, no real opinion on matters, goals, desires or dreams. It’s more like an open space where you’ll take whatever happens. But my mind wants something to happen, but because it doesn’t feel any real desire, intention, path or goal all it puts out is a sense of urgency about a place your needing to get to. “I’ll go, where you need me to, but I just don’t see where I am to go” comes the desperate voice from within me. This voice is also the voice that gives an emotion of helplessness is prone to panic and anxiety and insidious attempts to maintain a negative self concept. This is quite possibly the victim. Then another voice makes itself known, this one a taunter. She reminds me of how useless I am and berates me for considering the honoring of my truth. “You have a daughter to support, stop entertaining your childish fantasies, your making up a story to give you more hope and inspiration rather than face the reality of your life”…definitely the critical judge. The artist comes in whispers. Small whispers not of a particular path but of the necessity to pay attention to my creative expression, that ends up accompanied by a full bodied hunger for chanelling out the continuous river of reflection and the magnificence of it’s individual parts through, dance, painting, writing, singing….flowing with it. But just as it rises up, critical judge flies in with avengeance….”artists are struggling while being expert at their craft. You my dear, don’t even propose a practiced skill, and to start one now and than expect to make a living is sheer madness…oh and once again..you have a daughter to support”.
At this point the artist is no contender of the judge, wise and well versed in the ways of rationality and common sense. They will begin bargaining for their parts. The artist, says therapy is my craft, that is my practiced skill, I can actualize it through there. Out of somewhere in the corner, another voice breaks through.. “but how can you do that? Where is room for creativity, healing and self expression?. Your work there has always been stifled and you spend more time fighting for the permission to grow, rather than doing what your doing anyway”. The judge returns “listen to you, creativity healing and self expression, look at the world out there, who has room for that, are you really that privileged?”
That war has been in existence for awhile. The what used to be dense unconsciousness to the internal world has now become a battleground. I have choices about how to engage that battleground. I can get real busy doing people favors and sorting out their lives, I can get wrapped up in a romance that is doomed from the beginning, I can eat a bunch of junk food, smoke a lot of pot or watch a bunch of movies and finally..bury myself in a frenzy of mind blowing sex. All of these, drown out the voices of the internal world. In fact as I write it, I am aware that has been some of what has made this particular part of my path so excruciating. I have done so much work, in building up my capacity for independence and separating myself from what other people think I should be doing, but the capacity to make those decisions for myself is still such a small seed, trapped in the hunter’s snare. Fear kicks in, and I go back.
When I finished my Master’s Degree in Aboriginal social work, the final requirement was completion of a vision quest. I spent four long days and nights in the bush. No food, no water, a little cedar tea one day, no distractions, just me, my tent, some sacred items clothes and the bush. I fasted for guidance. The dream about moving to BC continued to nag at me. My opportunities for work were here, but everything else felt so suffocating. But who was I kidding, trying to solve a restless continuous internal angst by moving across the country. When I left the fast, I had bargained a deal with the inner churnings. I would take two weeks to go explore out west and feel out the land in my heart. Then I would return to Ontario to begin my practice. There was just enough money left in my student loan for 16 days of backpacking, buses and trains, carpools, hitchhiking, ferries, sheds and couchsurfing, so I went. I had never traveled alone, put my trust in strangers, or dared independently venture more than two hours from home. This was the perfect opportunity to test myself, and though fear reared its head, it felt like the right thing to do.
It was a beautiful experience, refreshing models of community and ways of being, that made me feel ordinary, but more comforting than anything I had known. But the locals of the small communities in which I encountered this ambience spoke of the same things I wrestled with in Ontario. People moving in with money, turf wars between the hippies and the rich, lack of housing and work…..some becoming touristry and loosing their once natural way of being that made people visit in the first place. The cities I went through, weren’t a whole lot different from the places I’d known in Ontario and offered little pull. But the landscape was amazing, it wasn’t a relationship like in Ontario. I wasn’t watching the beauty within the landscape as I do at home, I was one with it. Daily it took my breath away. I visited with diverse and interesting people and expressed myself in fearless ways evident when traveling in landscape you don’t call home. I was refreshed and set home energized to begin my practice.
Everything worked out how I had envisioned it. I would come home, claim a position in the downtown coffee shop with a soothing yet festive atmosphere so close to the lake and work at building up my practice. There would be lots of paperwork, a lot of initial fees and a necessity to keep a stable income while doing so. I worked forty hours a week in the coffee shop and worked at developing my groups and designing my programming. I created brochures, designed forms, consulted a variety of my colleagues and mentors in establishing. I took a business course (which I didn’t complete) arranged a space between three clinics that adored me and gave me the space to do whatever I needed. But everything felt like a struggle. Like I was dragging myself through the motions of something I no longer wanted to do. I couldn’t imagine myself any other way, so I persisted with trying to argue myself into going back into the work and doing it. My friends, colleagues and supervisors mentioned they saw my fear and wondered if my lack of commitment to it may be a fear of success…a fear of inadequacy…a defense mechanism. I continued to work though the research and necessary tasks needed to build a private practice in social work, while plummeting myself into Radical acceptance mat trips on the weekends, therapy once a week, a healthy balance of inward time and socializing time, mindfulness, journaling, seminars and talks by medicine men, authors, shamans. I learned lots about the internal struggles, the voices that lived inside of me, the ways in which my body notified me of it’s knowings, but I grew less and less passionate about what I was trying to build. A long but slow sense of suffocation was setting in, something that just wanted to break free.
The voices began to war again. “Who the hell do you think you are, entertaining “what might be” from your soul? Don’t you see the suffering all around you? The wars? The poverty? The fights for freedom on political, physical, social, legal levels? You vowed to fight this war, you spoke against people who turned their backs on these struggles, and now look at you, walking away on the childish basis that it doesn’t “feel right”.” It’s mocking ran through me. That is terribly selfish and at best surreal, people don’t understand you even in the conscious circles you lack the ability to communicate what your feeling. Maybe these are your fears of success, get out of pixieland and build that career, I thought to myself. But the waves would just not let me rest. The small subtler, quieter background voice returned “following the call of your soul, which now pulls you west for reasons you can’t explain is not an independent act. You do it for the collective. You are teacher, you must follow your call in order to help others, it is the actualization of your gifts”. But what fucking gifts says the frustration in me. My gift is as therapist, in Dr. Blair’s words… “in ten years Erica, you’ll be the best of the best”. And here I was abandoning it all with not one clear thread in sight.
http://www.soulshaping.com/flash/ss_3.mp3
Monday, April 5, 2010
The Rising of the Tides
The inner tumult was abreast today, the churn of the unsettled seas coaxing me into their dance. The waves too strong for me to resist their undertow, i thrashed around in the confusion of the abyss once again. There is a war between two forces, one from the internal world and one of the external and they are loudly resisting their ability to co-exsist together. The path of integration.
It seems the last four years of my life have been concerned with de-constructing the external world that began to show holes in the face it displayed to me. This was a neccessary process to bring me into the illuminated spaces of my internal world. Yet having what feels like a good amount of time spent in response to the internal world, it is now time to bring them together. My friend jenn called it a couple weeks ago, the marrying of the earth energy with the light energy.
In one of Moji's recorded talks, he spoke about the deepening of conciousness, explaining that in some states of awareness, the concepts that meant something to the one who witnesses, would no longer hold any relevance, they would be dead concepts and not worth entertaining. I relate that to the strains on my relationship with social work. For the past few years, everytime I have sat in clinical settings or amongst fellow clinicians as they engaged in dialogue about client case scenarios, diagnosis or assessment, my internal world turns into scrambled eggs. I feel as if I am sitting in a room, with a crowd of people speaking different languages, quickly and relentlessly, that all seem foreign and overwhelming. Than when a silence intercepts and I am asked for my input, i feel perplexed and without comment just before the panic sets in that what used to come to me fluidly without question now seemed something I had only dreamed. The panic arose from the validation, skill and prowess i once delivered and was admired for. I had been evaluated as the top 5% across twelve schools of social work for my level of analysis in assessment. A case analysis was like a puzzle that i looked deeply into, examining the variance of threads that appeared to come together and reporting in good time a thorough review, analysis and plan to bring all of the peices together again. Yet the experiences of my own life in the last year demonstrated for me definitively that all was not as it seemed, the devisement of the intellect disillusioned if taken for reality on it's own, the answers to what was going on, no longer clear. Maybe that's what Moji meant, going further into the mystery drew massive crevices into what at first seemed real and now appeared no different than a cookie cutter, simple joining of dots created by a constructed lens. I suppose this heralds a success in soul step, but for me it has also meant the ripping of a well developed skill that promised a lining to the grey cloud of poverty and survival. I suppose simulteanously it also reveals the strength of my need for external validation is still alive and well....maybe just the right conditions to continue nurturing the seed of loving myself, a task that still requires work.
Yet my commitment to the honoring of my call makes peace with this sacrafice in the light of the following steps awaiting me. Except that part is never clear. There is so many threats to it's revelation, it takes real work to hold the space for truth to become known. That part...is also the difficulty. The outer world is noisy and demands time and investment in responsibilities, however few they might be. For me it's raising a daughter singlehandedly and constantly meditating the doubter who incessantly chatters about the realities of the external world, the conditioning, mindsets and governing values and how they intersect with our "modern ideas of childrearing". She taunts me with her insinuations of "bad mothering"...."get off your hippy head trip of fantasy and lore and living the questions that live inside of you, you may only be 26 but in ten years, you'll have a sixteen year old waiting to go to university on a tuition you swore you'd never make her earn". Than there's the soother who calmly steps into the chaos of the doubter and assures her that there is greater value in passing on the wisdom of engaging one's life and the honoring of her call, than discarding herself to the slavery of the herd in an effort to steep the child in excess. Madison after all, has always had what she needed, her dad and i devoted to providing that for her and in discussion tonight, he reminded me that on top of having her basic needs met, Madison was blessed to have so much community around her that loved her, people of so many walks of life that come in and out of our journey. She has been given exposure to sacred rituals and rites of passage and been raised in an openness that has allowed her to express herself in the ways that are of within her. Surely, this was the wisest path.
What seems so unsettling about following this journey with child, is that life born of the actualization of spirit leads one to avalanches with no certainty to what comes after, it could also demand sacrafices that upset the whole system of balance, but in writing it, i suppose what scares me most is the level of responsibility it demands from you. I could see as I was typing that a life born of ignorance would demand no less but would come in slower transitions and leave people free of the burden of carrying responsibility as their actions are more reactive than preemptive. But my journey has shown me that when one commits conciously, the tides move quicker, the stakes are higher and you can't really go back, however much sometimes you wish to.
Today was one of the days i wished to. There are parts of me that so strongly want to run back to the embrace of social work, to feel the joy of being there again and the passion of the struggle. Than there are stronger parts of me that know I can't. I hear the echoes of a reader that read for me 7 years ago in the back of my mind.."you will always need a place to grow and are a quick learner, you will only stay in places for a little at a time before you have mastered the skill and are called to move forward". I guess this is what she was talking about. But for a lone wolf always in search of community, it feels scary and devastating to leave "social worker" behind. It's possible as one of my teachers, Shadowwalker suggested, that growing comfortable living within the emptiness is the work that needs to be done and does not require my abandonment of my career, but for now the inner voice is insistent i take some space and i knew i had to leave the landscape here to give it the space it needs. But that doesnt mean that i am visited by the voice of fear at least 20 different points of the day....thats desperately devising a plan for my return, yet when i stop and breathe, i look back at the last four years of my life and see each step that has led me here and the small subtle quenching of every internal nuance that suggested i might need to look a different way.
It seems the last four years of my life have been concerned with de-constructing the external world that began to show holes in the face it displayed to me. This was a neccessary process to bring me into the illuminated spaces of my internal world. Yet having what feels like a good amount of time spent in response to the internal world, it is now time to bring them together. My friend jenn called it a couple weeks ago, the marrying of the earth energy with the light energy.
In one of Moji's recorded talks, he spoke about the deepening of conciousness, explaining that in some states of awareness, the concepts that meant something to the one who witnesses, would no longer hold any relevance, they would be dead concepts and not worth entertaining. I relate that to the strains on my relationship with social work. For the past few years, everytime I have sat in clinical settings or amongst fellow clinicians as they engaged in dialogue about client case scenarios, diagnosis or assessment, my internal world turns into scrambled eggs. I feel as if I am sitting in a room, with a crowd of people speaking different languages, quickly and relentlessly, that all seem foreign and overwhelming. Than when a silence intercepts and I am asked for my input, i feel perplexed and without comment just before the panic sets in that what used to come to me fluidly without question now seemed something I had only dreamed. The panic arose from the validation, skill and prowess i once delivered and was admired for. I had been evaluated as the top 5% across twelve schools of social work for my level of analysis in assessment. A case analysis was like a puzzle that i looked deeply into, examining the variance of threads that appeared to come together and reporting in good time a thorough review, analysis and plan to bring all of the peices together again. Yet the experiences of my own life in the last year demonstrated for me definitively that all was not as it seemed, the devisement of the intellect disillusioned if taken for reality on it's own, the answers to what was going on, no longer clear. Maybe that's what Moji meant, going further into the mystery drew massive crevices into what at first seemed real and now appeared no different than a cookie cutter, simple joining of dots created by a constructed lens. I suppose this heralds a success in soul step, but for me it has also meant the ripping of a well developed skill that promised a lining to the grey cloud of poverty and survival. I suppose simulteanously it also reveals the strength of my need for external validation is still alive and well....maybe just the right conditions to continue nurturing the seed of loving myself, a task that still requires work.
Yet my commitment to the honoring of my call makes peace with this sacrafice in the light of the following steps awaiting me. Except that part is never clear. There is so many threats to it's revelation, it takes real work to hold the space for truth to become known. That part...is also the difficulty. The outer world is noisy and demands time and investment in responsibilities, however few they might be. For me it's raising a daughter singlehandedly and constantly meditating the doubter who incessantly chatters about the realities of the external world, the conditioning, mindsets and governing values and how they intersect with our "modern ideas of childrearing". She taunts me with her insinuations of "bad mothering"...."get off your hippy head trip of fantasy and lore and living the questions that live inside of you, you may only be 26 but in ten years, you'll have a sixteen year old waiting to go to university on a tuition you swore you'd never make her earn". Than there's the soother who calmly steps into the chaos of the doubter and assures her that there is greater value in passing on the wisdom of engaging one's life and the honoring of her call, than discarding herself to the slavery of the herd in an effort to steep the child in excess. Madison after all, has always had what she needed, her dad and i devoted to providing that for her and in discussion tonight, he reminded me that on top of having her basic needs met, Madison was blessed to have so much community around her that loved her, people of so many walks of life that come in and out of our journey. She has been given exposure to sacred rituals and rites of passage and been raised in an openness that has allowed her to express herself in the ways that are of within her. Surely, this was the wisest path.
What seems so unsettling about following this journey with child, is that life born of the actualization of spirit leads one to avalanches with no certainty to what comes after, it could also demand sacrafices that upset the whole system of balance, but in writing it, i suppose what scares me most is the level of responsibility it demands from you. I could see as I was typing that a life born of ignorance would demand no less but would come in slower transitions and leave people free of the burden of carrying responsibility as their actions are more reactive than preemptive. But my journey has shown me that when one commits conciously, the tides move quicker, the stakes are higher and you can't really go back, however much sometimes you wish to.
Today was one of the days i wished to. There are parts of me that so strongly want to run back to the embrace of social work, to feel the joy of being there again and the passion of the struggle. Than there are stronger parts of me that know I can't. I hear the echoes of a reader that read for me 7 years ago in the back of my mind.."you will always need a place to grow and are a quick learner, you will only stay in places for a little at a time before you have mastered the skill and are called to move forward". I guess this is what she was talking about. But for a lone wolf always in search of community, it feels scary and devastating to leave "social worker" behind. It's possible as one of my teachers, Shadowwalker suggested, that growing comfortable living within the emptiness is the work that needs to be done and does not require my abandonment of my career, but for now the inner voice is insistent i take some space and i knew i had to leave the landscape here to give it the space it needs. But that doesnt mean that i am visited by the voice of fear at least 20 different points of the day....thats desperately devising a plan for my return, yet when i stop and breathe, i look back at the last four years of my life and see each step that has led me here and the small subtle quenching of every internal nuance that suggested i might need to look a different way.
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