Madison awoke this morning letting me know the snow dropped on everything. I awoke to an icy glazed road and chilled morning air. I was up late and probably shouldnt have watched that alien clip with the eeery undertones right before bed. It made for a sluggish morning.
I arose got her off to school and turned back in to my freshly linened bed. My dreams were scrambled, a mixture of all things distressing, very little memory of the actual events. What was obvious was my brain was attempting to get something sorted.
I awoke again at 10:30, just in time to make my routine call in to the office and identify with the boss the top priorities for the week. I showered, coffee-ed, the road defrosted and I was off to the farm to buy my weekly produce.
Food shopping is a different experience for me in BC. There is something unusually comforting about driving along a country two lane highway and arriving at a chilly farm house, filled with bundled up cheery farm workers and vibrantly colorful farm fresh and local produce. Being there somehow makes me feel closer to the land and lends a much deeper appreciation for the color, diversity and beauty of so many of the earth's gifts. I bought my leeks, broccoli, cauliflauer, alphapha sprouts, pears, apples, bananas, carrots, rosemary, potatoes, spaghetti squash, lemons, kale, bok choy, cucumber, tomato and peppers and set off on my way. A quick stop at the grocery store to grab some organic coconut skin care and some broth bits, i was home and ready to get my cook on.
It's amazing to look inside my fridge and cabinets and find them bursting with fresh veg and whole grains and realize how very different they look from the cabinets and fridge space of my house in ontario. I surely have come a very very long way from the way i used to eat and the most brilliant beauty of it all is that much of it has been a very natural process. As i spend hours pondering over recipes and home made meals cooked from almost the very scratch there is a different feeling of nurturance and care for the body. That in building those nutrients from their very foundation and taking the time to work with each one of them, I am demonstrating such a strong dedication to myself and a loving act of care for this body that has remained loyal despite my total ignorance of it.
Many moments throughout the day i am filled with fountains of gratitude for all the magnificence in my life. It was only ten months ago that i focused that intention that so humbly arrived on my altar, asking for a job that would give me the flexibility and income to attend to myself, meet my basic needs while also holistically attend to our needs for creativity, self-development and following our passions. I find myself today in this intensly flexible and do-able job situation where i make just enough to pay our bills, give madison swimming lessons and skating and provide myself with my shamanic apprenticeship, a meditation class and to regularly visit a traditional chinese medicine doc for accupuncture and support. We have absolutely everything i have asked for. This is a peaceful time, a reneweing time, an immensely satisfying whole and creative time... And a strong teaching that everything, absolutely everything needs to begin with an asking and a strong intention.
Humbly grateful to be receiving and in service....with love for all <3
Monday, November 21, 2011
Saturday, November 19, 2011
To Feel You Again...
For those moments the violinst played, healing hands on my skin, a deep connection with a terrain that had been lost to me emerged and she began to dance again. Her movements were graceful, eloquent and poised. I could see her so clearly, transparently moving herself within the rythym, a beautiful symphony of a reunion, not yet realized event lost.
I feel as if I am a child discovering parts of myself for the first time. Yet as i approach them i am familiar with their memory. That as I move close to myself, a soft pristine solitude of union emerges. To take care....of a body that holds within it the map to my un-doing. The wild unleashing of espression with reckless abondon, gently bubbling away just beyond the surface.
Back for my routine chinese medicine appointment, i laid on the table awaiting our usual exchange about how my condition was sustaining itself, gently awaiting the quiet interjection of the needle that would open me up and let what needed to seep out. My inner thighs had swelled far more than they ever have and was informed called for a more aggressive treatment. I dis-robed, laid on my stomach and placed my face down into the head rest.
My very Chinese doctor, says very little as he discerns the direction of each session we embark on, yet i see by his eyes that he is always scanning me for changes in layers unobserved by the conditioned naked eye. I feel his commitment to addressing this source of dis-ease that has permeated me for so long in a way that is human but not attached.
I go every week never really knowing what to expect from each session or really understanding how he is choosing the treatment he is. There is a wholesome trust i am putting into his care for me, that leaves me feeling one day there will be an end in which we will both know we found our way down a long road racked with obstacles, stresses and challenges but by continuing to meet eachother in this space, we will know we have forever changed what was for me once a helpless situation.
Today was a painful session. The accupuncture needles unexpectedly were peirced directly into the abscesses causing knee jerk and sudden movements of my entire being. Dr. Zhou then proceeded with cupping, my body tensing to silently withstand the pentrating pain, the burning and heat of this tender inflammation carried with me for the last month.
When the session was over and I returned to the office, Madison commented that my entire face was red. I felt dizzy, like i had experienced a profound movement within my body, a releasing of something I didnt know i carried. After paying and waddling my way down to the parking garage, just outside of my car, i broke down and cried. I cried for the pain, but i also cried from a deeper place for no other reason then these tear drops that were gently escaping me seemed to have been stuck right there, amidst all the toxins that seemed to leak out. "Take out the toxins"..Dr Zhou kept repeating as he continued cupping. I cried for not knowing that those tears had needed to hide themselves, I cried with humble relief for their escape.
Madison and I got to Lolla's and I was set up for my Indian head massage. Her fingers grazed my skin with so tender love and care, my body wanted to react to the intimacy in a passionate way. "Oh dear body" i whispered within myself "it's okay for you to be touched gently and affectionately...it's even more okay for you to receive it. There will be no need for payback, you will not have to offer up your loincloth in receipt for a long over due sharing of nurturance".
My body did not respond in it's prickly prtective and tense manner that is custom to receiving something soft and good hearted. Instead it soaked up the embers and tunnelled within itself. It was then that I saw her. That graceful and eloquent ballarina making her way across the room, with sharpe and gentle turns to every turn of the violinist chord. It was me that was she and iwas dancing freely and phonetically aware of every aspect of myself.
It is only rare that she rises to the surface to make herself known and even then very rarely allows herself to be soo exposed. But she is not so different than the very healthy and physically in touch woman with the lovely strong body and long dreadlocks hanging over glowing skin, that i meet in my journey's to the authentic self.
As the music continues and my body continues to receive, flashes of creativity, diverse forms of expression being cracking open within me, as if secret doorways that have been closed for a long time are airing themselves out if only to be cleared. As my body expands, cleanses and detoxifies, so does my creativity and the freedom of being within what felt like a prison.
To feel you again...
I feel as if I am a child discovering parts of myself for the first time. Yet as i approach them i am familiar with their memory. That as I move close to myself, a soft pristine solitude of union emerges. To take care....of a body that holds within it the map to my un-doing. The wild unleashing of espression with reckless abondon, gently bubbling away just beyond the surface.
Back for my routine chinese medicine appointment, i laid on the table awaiting our usual exchange about how my condition was sustaining itself, gently awaiting the quiet interjection of the needle that would open me up and let what needed to seep out. My inner thighs had swelled far more than they ever have and was informed called for a more aggressive treatment. I dis-robed, laid on my stomach and placed my face down into the head rest.
My very Chinese doctor, says very little as he discerns the direction of each session we embark on, yet i see by his eyes that he is always scanning me for changes in layers unobserved by the conditioned naked eye. I feel his commitment to addressing this source of dis-ease that has permeated me for so long in a way that is human but not attached.
I go every week never really knowing what to expect from each session or really understanding how he is choosing the treatment he is. There is a wholesome trust i am putting into his care for me, that leaves me feeling one day there will be an end in which we will both know we found our way down a long road racked with obstacles, stresses and challenges but by continuing to meet eachother in this space, we will know we have forever changed what was for me once a helpless situation.
Today was a painful session. The accupuncture needles unexpectedly were peirced directly into the abscesses causing knee jerk and sudden movements of my entire being. Dr. Zhou then proceeded with cupping, my body tensing to silently withstand the pentrating pain, the burning and heat of this tender inflammation carried with me for the last month.
When the session was over and I returned to the office, Madison commented that my entire face was red. I felt dizzy, like i had experienced a profound movement within my body, a releasing of something I didnt know i carried. After paying and waddling my way down to the parking garage, just outside of my car, i broke down and cried. I cried for the pain, but i also cried from a deeper place for no other reason then these tear drops that were gently escaping me seemed to have been stuck right there, amidst all the toxins that seemed to leak out. "Take out the toxins"..Dr Zhou kept repeating as he continued cupping. I cried for not knowing that those tears had needed to hide themselves, I cried with humble relief for their escape.
Madison and I got to Lolla's and I was set up for my Indian head massage. Her fingers grazed my skin with so tender love and care, my body wanted to react to the intimacy in a passionate way. "Oh dear body" i whispered within myself "it's okay for you to be touched gently and affectionately...it's even more okay for you to receive it. There will be no need for payback, you will not have to offer up your loincloth in receipt for a long over due sharing of nurturance".
My body did not respond in it's prickly prtective and tense manner that is custom to receiving something soft and good hearted. Instead it soaked up the embers and tunnelled within itself. It was then that I saw her. That graceful and eloquent ballarina making her way across the room, with sharpe and gentle turns to every turn of the violinist chord. It was me that was she and iwas dancing freely and phonetically aware of every aspect of myself.
It is only rare that she rises to the surface to make herself known and even then very rarely allows herself to be soo exposed. But she is not so different than the very healthy and physically in touch woman with the lovely strong body and long dreadlocks hanging over glowing skin, that i meet in my journey's to the authentic self.
As the music continues and my body continues to receive, flashes of creativity, diverse forms of expression being cracking open within me, as if secret doorways that have been closed for a long time are airing themselves out if only to be cleared. As my body expands, cleanses and detoxifies, so does my creativity and the freedom of being within what felt like a prison.
To feel you again...
Thursday, November 17, 2011
The Artist Without a Brush
In early September I began having re-occuring dreams of pregnancy. I had a consistent feeling of being full, filled with so much wisdom and valuable teachings that i have had the blessing to acquire over the years from so many teachers, life experiences and an unwavering commitment to personal growth and spiritual development, yet the bridge to share these with the world could not be located. After a shadowed and forlorn journal entry of this agonizing deprivation, I made an appointment with my shamanic teacher and in trying to relay what was going on with me, the only words i could say was .."I feel like an artist without a brush".
It is now mid-Novemeber. I have returned to part-time work, finished my first year of my shamanic apprenticeship and have been initiated as a MoonCarrier given the moon rites that accompany this responsibility.
In early fall, the abscesses familiar to my diagnosed condition of Hidradenitis Supprativa were in full force, rapidly spreading and causing discomfort in almost all of my extremeties. My body had been calling out for me for a very long time..our relationship is still quite tenuous but we are definately working on coming together and falling in love after a long life of physical self-punishment, characteristic of those who were taught at a young age that their body had no value. For me this came through the childhood trauamas of sexual abuse, overshadowed by the guilt of overt religious indoctrination. I am only coming to realize now, that long after the abuser had gone, i took over his role and each time someone hurt me, or i perceived criticism, i violently punished my body temple, unconciously of course, but none the less made every effort to shut it down. With no answers to the manifested condition of this from western medicine, i began seeing a Chinese medicine doctor which would mean a complete lifestyle overhaul, weekly accupuncture, a pure diet, desceration of my vices (which i havent yet acheived), a stronger awareness of this relationship i maintained with my body and the daily administration of chinese herbs. This journey continues..
In early November I attended my last class of year one of the Celtic Shaman Woman Apprenticeship. Our teacher explained that medicines could be thought of as a balance or equilibrium that is unique to each one of us. That although every individual comes from the same oneness, we each have our own unique medicine born of the unique and individual path we are to walk in this world. A primal or original medicine is our unique essence that we come into this world with, yet as we continue walking through the journey of our life we also weave in skills, knowledge, and learned gifts born of our relationships, our communication with our ancestors in addition to acquiring some of our strongest medicines from our initiations or challenges that we meet along path or through dedication and powerful initiatory rites, such as our vision quests, naming ceremonies, rites of passage or initiations such as the Moon Carrier. She went on to explain that a very important part of understanding our medicine is to understand that the medicine we carry to the world is extremly unique and stressed the need for it to be in the world, no matter how humble we judge it to be. Not dissimilar to my teachings from the Annishnabe on personal gifts being the belonging of the community and expressed through the individual.
Complimentary to the idea of medicine, is the essence of power which she defines as the means we use to direct our medicine in the world, involving the ability to take action derived from experience, skill and knowledge. In recent days i have discovered that it is here where some of my blocks occur, the feeling of fullness being the recognition of the ripeness of these burgeoning medicines i feel within me that comprise my own individual art in the world, yet the brush representing to power of action for some reason undetectable.
Angela explained to us, that although we come into the world with this original/primal medicine is not uncommon to lose our way in the world and find ourself charting away from our original path. The medicine names we were given in the summer post-vision quest served as a map to show us where we fell away and provide direction about how to come back. My medicine name is StarFish, representing the union of the energies of the sky and the sea and telling a tale of severance between my heart and mind, that until i could find a way to unite these two and have them walk together, blocks continued to accessing this power. Her suspicion was that this severance occured when i was married to Ken, that in falling into a marriage of deciet and abuse my mind began to distrust my heart and in doing so looked down at it as a victim, the weak part of myself that could not be trusted. My suspicion today however, is that sever started long before i arrived in this experience and perhaps at that time was finally successful in breaking apart completely.
My mom has shown me in several ways and at several different junctures over the last several months that the spiritual or healing gifts of mine are repetetively kept underwraps. This was not something i was able to see before. More recently in conversations with some of my very good friends i have also witnessed that not only am i quick to devalue these personal essences in the world and instead hide behind grand spiritual philosophies derived by "worthy and credible beings" in the world, i also say very little of this colorful and talented history i have within the performing arts.
For as long as i remember i was rasied around music. My dad was a past choir director and whether he was cooking, shopping, cleaning or otherwise he was always singing. Naturally, i always sang with him and to him, although he regularly pointed out that i was incapable of harnessing the energy from within my diaphragm and instead sang from the fron of my mouth, something that obviously would need to be corrected. I remember dancing with him around the kitchen, standing on his feet as he directed the steps. I went on to become a ballet dancer, where for seven years, i was passionate about the stage and actually quit because there was too much practice and too little stage time. I sang solos at all our family events, performed solos in school competitions, was in 3 school choirs, was student choir director in 8th grade in addtion to being part of a professional children's choir, difficult to get accepted into and travelling with them on performance tours. In my youth i had strong musical peer groups with whom we made music together almost everytime we gathered, i was in musicals and drama and somehow when i got on that stage and opened my mouth, my reality slipped away, i went deep into myself and popped out again at the end of the song realizing that yes, i was in fact on earth and i was in fact in front of people. I sang the duet at my 8th grade graduation and all my endeavours in music supported all of those years in which i was being sexually abused. At the age of 12, i remember looking down at my swollen pregnant belly, that noone knew about in the middle of choir practice and belting out the rythyms that somehow continued to keep me healed. I continued to sing for about a year after the abuse ended, the abortion complete and somewhere for some reason, i developed a severe anxeity disorder and my performing stopped. My love of music was replaced by a burying, drugs, premiscuous sex, survival. My musical friend groups slowly dissappeared and the closest i got to it was my singing in the house, ferociously in the car, never to perform publically again.
For years on this spiritual journey, knowing full well that the path of the spirit belongs to the artist, that the creative spaces within us are the same spaces from which we feel and unite with the Goddess, our ancestries and the great song of creation, i have searched tirelessly for my medium, coming up time and time again feeling empty. I felt the artist within deeply, longfully and mournfully, but somehow her brush had gone missing. In it's abscence this strong therapist that has been born of the time of my traumas until this part of my life continues to rip me apart and look for the cause of my malady, correct the dysnfunction and take away the numbness that repetetively visits.
Following the last class, I asked a friend from our group to conduct a journey on what exactly was happening with the dis-ease withim my body. She came back with a valuable vault of knowledge about the detoxification, purging and cleansing my physical body was going through and also shedding light on one significant peice of information from the haling grandmother "she hasn't yet put her feet down". It sounded strangely familiar to my previous teacher, ThunderBear's observation and curiosity about why i "don't just jump off the cliff". And also to the request to do hands on healing for 3 members of the community at the request of one who i gave a short "underground" treatment to, which i quickly subverted letting him know that part of me is not public and also to the request of the local social work faculty for me to come and talk about the Indigenous worldview and my work within it, which i also shut down, once i realized my casual conversation had erupted in an invitation that bring too much exposure. This friend of mine said.."is it possible that you have performance anxiety?"
Immediately i was faced with a series of flashes of different moments in my life, the womens group i spent a year creating and designing and when just at the time for registration i shut it down. The private practice i set up, working through all the the agaonizing legalities, paperwork, buisness advertisements and fees and just as i received my first two clients, escaped it and moved out of province. The recognition of all of these trainings and teachings i have acquired that upon completion and filled with an overbearing state of unpreparedness search for the next teacher to inform my quiet learnings, the only time feeling confident to come forward through the use of academic writings and analysis of these concepts i hold dear, because they can be written in secrecy and process and by the time they make it out to the world, a faceless person resides beind the penmanship.
I told these stories to my friend who journeyed, she recognized our similarities and called me a long lost little sister. She explained that our teacher helped her lessen this anxiety by reframing her shamanic work as the work of an artist, which brought comfort to her as a musician and vocalist in the world. That's when i told her, my performance history and the lightbulb went off in my head. Performance Anxiety. Not only had this controlled my work in the world, it also spoke of my long lost history...i had stopped performing because of my social anxiety...all of this was wrapped into one large block. It was no wonder the artist had lost her brush.
Two days later I had a dream about a very dear friend in my history i met as an adult that i still struggle with the abondonment of. The most significant part of our connection was our dear love for music. In the dream he had come to visit and as he went off to visit with Madison, I went outside to bask in the sunlight and enjoy the serenity of this point in time in the world when a stern old woman approached me and placed a withdrawn and subdued baby swaddled in white knits into my arms. Hesitantly, confused and scared, as she began to walk away i asked her who this baby was and why she was leaving it with me. She abruptly walked back looked sternly in my eyes in a powerful way that left me speechless and shaken "this is my grandchild, his parents can not raise him, he is your responsibility to raise". With that she walked off poignantly and confidently. I looked down at this strangely withdrawn child, in his carefully put together white knits and searched my surroundings anxiously. I didn't want this child, where would i put him, had people seen this?, would i be accused of stealing this child? was this legal? I frantically went back into the house and asked my friend to call the police, apparently they were closed, i went into the very back room, took madisons doll out of it's basinette, layed the child within it and tucked it away in the back of the room and left back outside trying to find a direction of what to do. A group of cheerful and laidback youth in a cafe next to my house had seen what happened, she knew this woman of the village and the parents of this child, they joyously and freely told me that if i decided to return this child or made any attempt to call authorities or childrens aid or locate the parents, this old womans wrath would fall upon me. I was anxious and unsettled the bind had grown even more unsettling, i went back into the house and into the back room and found the child had rolled out of the basinette and landed face down on the floor. It did make a sound or a movement in its subduement, but i was horrified that i had put it there and left it without any such care or regard. I picked it up again and awoke.
As i was recording this dream, the symbolic significance began to speak to me. Was this old woman a representative of Calleaich, the baba yaga, stern and sharp returning this new part of me that was also indeed connected to the old? Did this baby that was subdued and withdrawn represent these performing artistic capacities that i had "shoved into the back room" and remained afraid of "people becoming suspicious" and did it connect with my body whom i am unravelling this great disdain and uncare for? Specifically, the hiding of this baby in the backroom reminded me of the journey i had conducted last class centered on medicine gathering, which when i had gotten to music, the helping spirits showed me that it was shut down at 16 and they showed these gifts being placed within a box and buried deep within my unconcious body.
Further, how did these recognitions relate to my medicine name of Starfish? When i realized these things I do not talk about despite my outgoing and openly expressive adult self my mom and I had a conversation about what happened in the early years of counseling post my sexual abuse. She said the counselor i had was moving on and was talking about a referral to one of her colleagues. They decided this was not a good move, with the counselor having cited that i talked endlessly about life at school and issues at home, but refused to say anything at all about my sexual abuse. The counselor said to my mom that perhaps i had shut that down and buried it if only to survive and that pushing me into talking about it would be dangerous, instead she best leave it until a natural opening happened when this information came to pass. I think i was well into very late adolescence before i even began to acknowledge or talk about how these experiences impacted my life. If my singing and performing which came from my heart was what nurtured my survival through this time, is it possible that when i decided to shut down the reality of the trauama and how they affected me, is it then also possible that i shut down my heart too pained to feel and being so connected to my music, shut that down too?
It is now mid-Novemeber. I have returned to part-time work, finished my first year of my shamanic apprenticeship and have been initiated as a MoonCarrier given the moon rites that accompany this responsibility.
In early fall, the abscesses familiar to my diagnosed condition of Hidradenitis Supprativa were in full force, rapidly spreading and causing discomfort in almost all of my extremeties. My body had been calling out for me for a very long time..our relationship is still quite tenuous but we are definately working on coming together and falling in love after a long life of physical self-punishment, characteristic of those who were taught at a young age that their body had no value. For me this came through the childhood trauamas of sexual abuse, overshadowed by the guilt of overt religious indoctrination. I am only coming to realize now, that long after the abuser had gone, i took over his role and each time someone hurt me, or i perceived criticism, i violently punished my body temple, unconciously of course, but none the less made every effort to shut it down. With no answers to the manifested condition of this from western medicine, i began seeing a Chinese medicine doctor which would mean a complete lifestyle overhaul, weekly accupuncture, a pure diet, desceration of my vices (which i havent yet acheived), a stronger awareness of this relationship i maintained with my body and the daily administration of chinese herbs. This journey continues..
In early November I attended my last class of year one of the Celtic Shaman Woman Apprenticeship. Our teacher explained that medicines could be thought of as a balance or equilibrium that is unique to each one of us. That although every individual comes from the same oneness, we each have our own unique medicine born of the unique and individual path we are to walk in this world. A primal or original medicine is our unique essence that we come into this world with, yet as we continue walking through the journey of our life we also weave in skills, knowledge, and learned gifts born of our relationships, our communication with our ancestors in addition to acquiring some of our strongest medicines from our initiations or challenges that we meet along path or through dedication and powerful initiatory rites, such as our vision quests, naming ceremonies, rites of passage or initiations such as the Moon Carrier. She went on to explain that a very important part of understanding our medicine is to understand that the medicine we carry to the world is extremly unique and stressed the need for it to be in the world, no matter how humble we judge it to be. Not dissimilar to my teachings from the Annishnabe on personal gifts being the belonging of the community and expressed through the individual.
Complimentary to the idea of medicine, is the essence of power which she defines as the means we use to direct our medicine in the world, involving the ability to take action derived from experience, skill and knowledge. In recent days i have discovered that it is here where some of my blocks occur, the feeling of fullness being the recognition of the ripeness of these burgeoning medicines i feel within me that comprise my own individual art in the world, yet the brush representing to power of action for some reason undetectable.
Angela explained to us, that although we come into the world with this original/primal medicine is not uncommon to lose our way in the world and find ourself charting away from our original path. The medicine names we were given in the summer post-vision quest served as a map to show us where we fell away and provide direction about how to come back. My medicine name is StarFish, representing the union of the energies of the sky and the sea and telling a tale of severance between my heart and mind, that until i could find a way to unite these two and have them walk together, blocks continued to accessing this power. Her suspicion was that this severance occured when i was married to Ken, that in falling into a marriage of deciet and abuse my mind began to distrust my heart and in doing so looked down at it as a victim, the weak part of myself that could not be trusted. My suspicion today however, is that sever started long before i arrived in this experience and perhaps at that time was finally successful in breaking apart completely.
My mom has shown me in several ways and at several different junctures over the last several months that the spiritual or healing gifts of mine are repetetively kept underwraps. This was not something i was able to see before. More recently in conversations with some of my very good friends i have also witnessed that not only am i quick to devalue these personal essences in the world and instead hide behind grand spiritual philosophies derived by "worthy and credible beings" in the world, i also say very little of this colorful and talented history i have within the performing arts.
For as long as i remember i was rasied around music. My dad was a past choir director and whether he was cooking, shopping, cleaning or otherwise he was always singing. Naturally, i always sang with him and to him, although he regularly pointed out that i was incapable of harnessing the energy from within my diaphragm and instead sang from the fron of my mouth, something that obviously would need to be corrected. I remember dancing with him around the kitchen, standing on his feet as he directed the steps. I went on to become a ballet dancer, where for seven years, i was passionate about the stage and actually quit because there was too much practice and too little stage time. I sang solos at all our family events, performed solos in school competitions, was in 3 school choirs, was student choir director in 8th grade in addtion to being part of a professional children's choir, difficult to get accepted into and travelling with them on performance tours. In my youth i had strong musical peer groups with whom we made music together almost everytime we gathered, i was in musicals and drama and somehow when i got on that stage and opened my mouth, my reality slipped away, i went deep into myself and popped out again at the end of the song realizing that yes, i was in fact on earth and i was in fact in front of people. I sang the duet at my 8th grade graduation and all my endeavours in music supported all of those years in which i was being sexually abused. At the age of 12, i remember looking down at my swollen pregnant belly, that noone knew about in the middle of choir practice and belting out the rythyms that somehow continued to keep me healed. I continued to sing for about a year after the abuse ended, the abortion complete and somewhere for some reason, i developed a severe anxeity disorder and my performing stopped. My love of music was replaced by a burying, drugs, premiscuous sex, survival. My musical friend groups slowly dissappeared and the closest i got to it was my singing in the house, ferociously in the car, never to perform publically again.
For years on this spiritual journey, knowing full well that the path of the spirit belongs to the artist, that the creative spaces within us are the same spaces from which we feel and unite with the Goddess, our ancestries and the great song of creation, i have searched tirelessly for my medium, coming up time and time again feeling empty. I felt the artist within deeply, longfully and mournfully, but somehow her brush had gone missing. In it's abscence this strong therapist that has been born of the time of my traumas until this part of my life continues to rip me apart and look for the cause of my malady, correct the dysnfunction and take away the numbness that repetetively visits.
Following the last class, I asked a friend from our group to conduct a journey on what exactly was happening with the dis-ease withim my body. She came back with a valuable vault of knowledge about the detoxification, purging and cleansing my physical body was going through and also shedding light on one significant peice of information from the haling grandmother "she hasn't yet put her feet down". It sounded strangely familiar to my previous teacher, ThunderBear's observation and curiosity about why i "don't just jump off the cliff". And also to the request to do hands on healing for 3 members of the community at the request of one who i gave a short "underground" treatment to, which i quickly subverted letting him know that part of me is not public and also to the request of the local social work faculty for me to come and talk about the Indigenous worldview and my work within it, which i also shut down, once i realized my casual conversation had erupted in an invitation that bring too much exposure. This friend of mine said.."is it possible that you have performance anxiety?"
Immediately i was faced with a series of flashes of different moments in my life, the womens group i spent a year creating and designing and when just at the time for registration i shut it down. The private practice i set up, working through all the the agaonizing legalities, paperwork, buisness advertisements and fees and just as i received my first two clients, escaped it and moved out of province. The recognition of all of these trainings and teachings i have acquired that upon completion and filled with an overbearing state of unpreparedness search for the next teacher to inform my quiet learnings, the only time feeling confident to come forward through the use of academic writings and analysis of these concepts i hold dear, because they can be written in secrecy and process and by the time they make it out to the world, a faceless person resides beind the penmanship.
I told these stories to my friend who journeyed, she recognized our similarities and called me a long lost little sister. She explained that our teacher helped her lessen this anxiety by reframing her shamanic work as the work of an artist, which brought comfort to her as a musician and vocalist in the world. That's when i told her, my performance history and the lightbulb went off in my head. Performance Anxiety. Not only had this controlled my work in the world, it also spoke of my long lost history...i had stopped performing because of my social anxiety...all of this was wrapped into one large block. It was no wonder the artist had lost her brush.
Two days later I had a dream about a very dear friend in my history i met as an adult that i still struggle with the abondonment of. The most significant part of our connection was our dear love for music. In the dream he had come to visit and as he went off to visit with Madison, I went outside to bask in the sunlight and enjoy the serenity of this point in time in the world when a stern old woman approached me and placed a withdrawn and subdued baby swaddled in white knits into my arms. Hesitantly, confused and scared, as she began to walk away i asked her who this baby was and why she was leaving it with me. She abruptly walked back looked sternly in my eyes in a powerful way that left me speechless and shaken "this is my grandchild, his parents can not raise him, he is your responsibility to raise". With that she walked off poignantly and confidently. I looked down at this strangely withdrawn child, in his carefully put together white knits and searched my surroundings anxiously. I didn't want this child, where would i put him, had people seen this?, would i be accused of stealing this child? was this legal? I frantically went back into the house and asked my friend to call the police, apparently they were closed, i went into the very back room, took madisons doll out of it's basinette, layed the child within it and tucked it away in the back of the room and left back outside trying to find a direction of what to do. A group of cheerful and laidback youth in a cafe next to my house had seen what happened, she knew this woman of the village and the parents of this child, they joyously and freely told me that if i decided to return this child or made any attempt to call authorities or childrens aid or locate the parents, this old womans wrath would fall upon me. I was anxious and unsettled the bind had grown even more unsettling, i went back into the house and into the back room and found the child had rolled out of the basinette and landed face down on the floor. It did make a sound or a movement in its subduement, but i was horrified that i had put it there and left it without any such care or regard. I picked it up again and awoke.
As i was recording this dream, the symbolic significance began to speak to me. Was this old woman a representative of Calleaich, the baba yaga, stern and sharp returning this new part of me that was also indeed connected to the old? Did this baby that was subdued and withdrawn represent these performing artistic capacities that i had "shoved into the back room" and remained afraid of "people becoming suspicious" and did it connect with my body whom i am unravelling this great disdain and uncare for? Specifically, the hiding of this baby in the backroom reminded me of the journey i had conducted last class centered on medicine gathering, which when i had gotten to music, the helping spirits showed me that it was shut down at 16 and they showed these gifts being placed within a box and buried deep within my unconcious body.
Further, how did these recognitions relate to my medicine name of Starfish? When i realized these things I do not talk about despite my outgoing and openly expressive adult self my mom and I had a conversation about what happened in the early years of counseling post my sexual abuse. She said the counselor i had was moving on and was talking about a referral to one of her colleagues. They decided this was not a good move, with the counselor having cited that i talked endlessly about life at school and issues at home, but refused to say anything at all about my sexual abuse. The counselor said to my mom that perhaps i had shut that down and buried it if only to survive and that pushing me into talking about it would be dangerous, instead she best leave it until a natural opening happened when this information came to pass. I think i was well into very late adolescence before i even began to acknowledge or talk about how these experiences impacted my life. If my singing and performing which came from my heart was what nurtured my survival through this time, is it possible that when i decided to shut down the reality of the trauama and how they affected me, is it then also possible that i shut down my heart too pained to feel and being so connected to my music, shut that down too?
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Hold up there Horsey...
Angela and Lori of WhiteBone held a two hour time block for those who have had issues in making their tools (drums and rattles) to come in and get some assistance with fixing them up. I went in on sunday, after facing the resistance of taking apart my drum and soaking the hide again in order to be properly re-attached. As Angela was assisting me on stapling the hide round the base, she asked about my part-time job. When i told her the conditions of it, her and lori reacted with some unexpected enthusiam, while angela affirmed "your spirits are takign care of you, Erica, your definately getting what you need". I told her i was still sitting with some dissappointment about losing the other opportunity which she quickly dismissed and said "well, thats just your ego, you told me back in january you wanted a job that would help you heal...Isn't it funny that when we get close to approaching the work of doing our healing how much we attempt to get ourselves busy with other things in order to distract ourselves out". Of course, my big brain and its talents at negotiation and analysis wanted to break that one open into a full fletched break down of the different conflicts arising in me, but instead i sat with the confusion that amounted in it's landing, a sure sign i have discovered in my own walk, on something truthful landing which i would need to sort out.
The entire drive home, i ran what Angela said through all the different layers of the process i was experiencing about this especially after what felt like some crystal clear clarity the previous day in my writing on needing to build the bridge from here to there, by making some real money. IT's so funny how one new drop in the pond when mixed with everything already brewing inside can actually help one change the complete direction of the water, as opposed to receiving the drop and allowing to see if it flows in the direction of the current it already finds itself in. It is true that at some point soon, i will have to make real money in order to build a pragmatic bridge from here to there, but angelas statement "you wanted to do that after what you've just been through" brought me right back to the real recognitions i have had about what part of the inner hearth needs attending at this time. When my ego attempted to dispute with the financial concerns, Angela again brought it back, reminding me how when we tend to the inner work, to bring it in alignment with the outer goals, its amazing how we are then in a place of attracting exactly what we need to grow internally while also rooted within what needs to grow externally.
Last night i re-visited the intentions for employment that i set upon my altar when beginning the search of considering returning back to my professional work amidst the layers of trauma i was feeling from the increased sensitivity of my spirit re-awakening within the dense traumatic environments of working front line with people knee deep in sometimes catastrophic suffering while my hands remained tied although placed in a position where i was supposed to help. It sometimes makes me feel like i was a bound and gagged prisoner, watching in horror at the many desperate souls that seemed to grasp at me, but all i could do was witness them in a powerless desperation. And so, what were those intentions of attempting to meet both the needs of my trauma and of my financial concerns?
"Yet at this time, my plea in moving towards these ends is to request your assistance in ascertaining safe, sustainable and abundant employment and money. That in receiving these I may be able to adequately meet, nurture and nourish the holistic needs of my daughter and I to essentially further me on this quest. I ask that the doors that may open to me in this domain come from a place of respect, honor and inherent integrity that while i be in that space to earn an income I may do so without feeling abused, anxious, scared or that will cause further lacerations to my being. I also ask that the income produced be abundant enough to feed us adequately, nurture our bodies, provide access to resources that nurture and heal our minds and spirits. That i may go to therapy, provide madison with opportunities for her own growth/exploration of passions and more importantly that all that is given to me serve to further my purpose and in doing so be a great act of reciprocity. Finally, i ask the terms of my employment allow me to remain whole at the end of the day, deepen my ability for self-care, give time for rest, creating and in line with the schedules i require to continue being a solid parent to Madison. I trust that as this request has been made from a pure heart with the highest intentions for the good of all that you will open those doors that need to open and keep ones closed that will not serve me".
It occured to me quite quickly, that although i am still unsure of what income will be produced the terms of the employment, mainly that i will be doing something i am rather well versed at, for a very small grassroots organization that is heavily connected to the surrounding community, with a population that is not severly traumatized, working out of my home at part time hours and flexibility of scheduling is way more than i had hoped for in ensuring that there are no further lacerations, the will give me time to work around madisons schedule and afford the time to rest, create and take care of myself. Had i been given the other position that would have challenged me in many ways intellectually and intrapersonally at full time hours, although the more than adequate income would be there, my efforts at healing and self care and more importantly nurturing the small space where new creative efforts have just begun to be born may have been compromised. The spirits of place, my ancestors, helping spirits and the great mother at large had answered my call. What an abundant gift and solidification of what im working through at present, what is being born and what is yet to come, after all these are all only spaces or moments in time occuring to heal what we have come from and help us grow where we are going.
Today i will visit the anchoring tree again, to serve another offering filled with gratitude for the gifts that have been given to me. In these moments on the path, where the journey crystallizes and a bunch of meaning comes out of it, serves to remind us of how much larger these little moments of our journey are, how the plan for us is always far bigger than we can ascertain or realize in the little moments we walk along the way and ultimately helps us renew our faith and trust in all that is, regenerating what may have been lost in the winters of our life, where the bleakness and the stench of death and decay of the parts of us that are falling away makes it hard to always remember, we are always being tended to. As osho has said in my card reading yesterday...
"We may feel there are too many things to do at once, but get bogged down in trying to do a bit here, a bit there, instead of taking one task at a time and getting on with it. Or perhaps we think our task is "boring" because we've forgotten that it's not what you do but how you do it that matters.
Developing the knack of being total in responding to whatever comes, as it comes, is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. Taking one step through life at a time, giving each step your complete attention and energy, can bring a wondrous new vitality and creativity to all that you do." ....
For now, this is the task before me <3
Saturday, April 16, 2011
The Bridge from here to there...
I've lived in British Columbia for nine months now. A single mother that made the decision to move on welfare with no concrete options in sight, somehow managed to make it out here, unravel a bunch of trauma, clear away a bunch of anchored emotional debris, dis-engage from many self-destructive patterns, continue to search for a direction, get lost in falling debris, re-surface again. Things are generally peaceful when compared to the rough and wide tides of home in ontario, sure there is dark and lonliness, moments of isolation and feelings of being buried in a cave that was supposed to be wrought with waves of openness, excitement and discovery. But, there is a larger prescence within of being able to face and hold space for the unravellings of each new day, than there was back home, there is never feelings of homesickness or longing for the places of yesterday, just a bit of unpatience in how i want my current reality to unfold, a true opportunity to begin walking with the rythyms, or learning the spirit of the waters, which the ancestors told me would be held in the rattle i just made for White Bone.
I've managed to solidify a home, re-cover christmas homelessness, build a few relationships that sustain the pressing needs. I've stabalized my parenting, madison continues to grow more beautifully expansive and independant everyday, she makes more room for me and i for her, we too have found a rythym to our relationship. Mary jane has become an occassional visitor rather than a best friend and i seem to be really growing in areas of self-nurturance and respect and less dependant on external fillers. Within it all, there are hundreds of baby steps, all really important to the process of growth, recognition of personal truth, healing cyclical patterns, opening (safely) dense imprinted wounds. Yet in the troughs of the everyday shuffle and many times incredible struggle, the blue linings of my dreams remain, the crystal clear waters of which i am fearlessly surfing against the hot hot sun, a log cabin, perhaps a hippy store filled with all things cultural, beautiful and expansive, with some healing rooms alongside. A place where i sink into comfort, medicine for the soul, surrounded by everything that is beautiful to me and contains the very ingredients for outpouring everything that is beautiful within me as my own unique contribution to the world's healing. Sometimes the far away realities of those visions fill the present day with an emptiness, a head full of self slandering insults and a dreariness that makes it hard to get out of bed. But somewhere in there, there needs to be a bridge. Reclaiming the spirit is an incredibly lost and almost absent part of the puzzle, but amidst all our cravings when first re-acquainted to get completely lost in there, remains the truth of the walk back into a wholistic being, that it remains a part and just as the medicine wheels of virtually every indigenous culture on earth suggests, there are four components/faculties to our being, where our job often involves strengthening and nurturing the parts within these components that are broken, spliced or gaping and bringing it back into the whole, continuing to tend to the circle as it continues to turn and expose more and more blind spots.
The last few months, i have been visited by many crows. Almost every morning they would awaken me, sitting on the lamppost outside my suite, cawing their message. I see them everywhere and each time something important to my spiritual life has taken place in the last few weeks, one is near. When i made my drum and went for the initiation, Angela told me, that the attunement showed bird medicine and initiation.
An initiation, on the path of shamanism, is an event that challenges us in different areas that need to grow/heal with the purpose of calling us into our power and moving closer to our individual paths of truth and authenticity, unique to the experiences, patterns and conditions from which we are here to walk. Christmas homelessness was one of those initiations..would at the first sign of trouble on foreign soil run home to safety, let it serve as proof that the risk was not true to my path, or would i realize i had the power to walk through it powerfully and independantly, would i be able to take each painstaking step of anxious shame and desperation or would i run back to the way things used to be. Angela has said her theory of these initiations is that we can choose to respond as we would ordinarily do or we could rise up to meet the pattern in a new way, kiss it goodbye and release it onward. I arose.
But the bird medicine..well there were the crows yes...then there is the fact that my spirit name is White Owl and i am now only for the first time according to ThunderBear (the bearer of the name) inhabiting it's power now. Then of course there was the reminder by Lori at it's revelation that of course in my first class of shaman, i spoke about a journey where there were birds everywhere. Then there was a call from SeaBIRD Island band, an indigenous social work position, asking me to come in for an interview and provide two presentations to a panel in a social work ministry office. I was terrified, even intimidated..so much of what has comprised my traumas, my feelings of inadequacy, my fears of having a strong advocacy voice only to be silenced by a bunch of suits embedded in their ego-driven dramas of success and survival. Then of course there were the shames of my whiteness, evidence of my extreme privelege occupying yet another space of power where an indigenous face should be. Not to mention the very first prospect i was faced with a green ticket out of poverty row, a chance at a pension, a priveleged income, benefits, opportunities. There was the terror of course of meeting the interview, soon followed by the terror of what it would mean to do the job and concluding with the terror at what a life free of poverty might look like. First of all what would it mean for me not to have to beg for everything i had but perhaps even give back and secondly would accepting it mean i was throwing in the towel for everything i have claimed to stand for, for more than half of my life.
After some paralysis and adrenaline rushing, some contemplations of good excuses to back out, 5 very long conversations with people close to me, some seeking from those more knowledgeable then me, i set out amidst 36 hours of sleeplessness and mommying in between to prepare for the demands of those presentations. I had to break through several layers of buried knowledge to access the parts of me that knew how to work this process, re-cover some language and theoretical analysis that i was almost certain i had lost for good. After a couple breakdowns, some more paralysis and a little more breakdown, i began to put things down on paper. Throughout the process, after returning from a smoke, a little person spirit for the first time revealed itself to me with crystal clarity, only for a moment before running back to a room and evaporating into the silence. Was this a child you will help? suggested my mom, or perhaps one of your helpers. I was tooe exhausted to be as afraid as i usually am, another sign of the importance of this initiation.
Interview day came, i became nervous and wanted to cry again, as i bustled to get madison to school, ensure i had all my materials and make last minute corrections. On the drive over, my heart palpitations intensified, i wanted to back out, instead i turned the music down and talked aloud to the traffic, to the silent car, to the pretend audience that was hearing why i was qualified. It seemed to calm me and give me a little more grounding. I hit grid locked traffic, continued to talk, arrived at the ministry office, and as some panic and old resnetful feelings began to rise to the surface i took a deep breath, gathered my things and walked in. I would wait ten minutes before being introduced to the panel, four women, all white except one. I began by speaking from my heart, before confidently settling into my power, speaking with a sense of power, knowing and authority on the matters i spoke about, answering their questions with an authentic truthfullness but a sense of confidence, relaying my presentation earned of 36 hours of sleeplessness that never got a voice. I left the meeting feeling i had met the challenge before moving on to the second interview with the literacy council, completely unprepared but having compassion on myself for it and feeling as if i almost most definately blew that interview.
Another week of crazy anticipation passed. Midway, the ministry called to ask a few more questions and to double check references, 2 painstaking days later i heard from the references they had been called and gave exquisite responses. I knew i had the job in the bag, friday morning while anticipating their call, i went easter shopping for madison and as i confidently walked along my morning in the burning warm sun, began to dream up all the ways the newfound spring of wealth would be used, all of them productively of course and in recognition of the things given to me, all of it acting as a bridge from here to there. Until of course within 30 minutes i was informed i didnt get the position..that it was a "dragrace and i lost only by a hair" but with a request to forward on my resume a genuine beleif in my gifts and the skills i brought to the table. I called mom immediately and had a little cry, before ten minutes later being contacted by interview number two to be informed that position i had gotten.
A crack in the foundation opened up and i had fallen in, self-depreciating thoughts ran wild again, energy drained from my body like a vortex magnetically pulling it into the earth. I was lifeless and sad, despite the recognition i had another position for the interim, one that initially i was more interested in, or the comfort of cosmic's package that had brought me a wellspring of joyful emotion just a few short moments before. I was confused by all the synchronicities that had visited with this call and all the ways it intersected with my initiations, did i once again misread? I had so much to be grateful for how could i feel so devastated?
It was a sunny day, but i couldnt face her. I pre-occupied madison, had a visit with maryjane, ate some mcdonalds and turned to the usual coping mechanism, movies in bed, the perfect distraction from everything that for the moment i just couldnt face.
This morning when i awoke, i still didnt feel like facing the day. I called mom and gave her a brunt of my frustration at constantly being poor. She listened, just like i needed her to. So yes, i did meet the initiation by interacting with this ministry that once tore me down and that once i gave my power too with a sense of self-assured but still truthful power and confidence and for the very first time was recieved gracefully for. But this initiation also opened up a bunch more conflicts, questions long standing dilemmas. My friend michelle reminded me through this process, how this process was very much about the process and not the outcome, which appears to be true, not only on the level that it happened but also in the way of what it opened up as a result.
Is this the time, i interface with my sense of poverty conciousness? Is the work at this part of the journey to realize that at the root of my poverty which up until now has been seen as a radical revolt against all the things in the world that seek to destroy us and the great mother, really resisntantly so an intersection of self worth tied up with a bunch of fear about stepping out in my power, in ways that will ultimately also give me more power in navigating through this world, retaining the things i need and bridging the here to there. Brdiging the poor, optionless, waiting for self care handouts, to having the ability to attend to these needs and ultimately move toward that inner vision that continues to burn but is always so far from my reach. What always stands in the middle... money.
But what would that mean for my principles, my values, my radical and somewhat anarchist political stances against the system, the rape of the world, the disposeable attitude toward humanity, the injustices in almost everything we do and in the ways that we do it. Wouldnt me going through the motions for a time in an effort to bridge these divides make me no different than the people i have resented for the dammage they have created? Or does it remain a key part of my lessons, growth and opportunities for actually creating what i need to create in the world? If i go forward will i lose myself there? will i become too passionate again at the expense of what is the founding aim? Will i create more dammage along the way and will i be able to live with myself?
These are the questions my life is beckoning be lived at present, again, i need to search for the right answers with the best place being in the ways that help me see more clearly the inside...
Monday, February 28, 2011
Committing to the Shamanic Path...
In her teachings around the Celtic Drum, Angela told us today that by making our drums, which as i was taught previously, hold their own spirit and become part of our medicine bundle, we are affirming to the universe that we have now committed to walking the shamanic path.
I have been in a flurry of creative activity, tunneled in within myself, visioning, creating, spinning the intangible into a tangibility that brings with it affirmation, not only that i am exactly where i need to be, but that i am not indeed crazy. That all those visions of women in community, priestesses and ritual, were not solely born within the imagination, but instead my spidey senses had been alerted and i was definately onto something. The inidigenous program at this point feels far more initiatory than it was foundational. It took a whole two years of whipping everything i had identified as authentic to the wind, and scuffing my way through a very long integration process before arriving here, where i do feel developed enough to begin lying the bricks and mortar of the foundation of what i am here to do. This week, i began by making the drum.
As lori said tonight, this path is all about trust. When beginning to journey, angela gives very little instruction, does not question and takes the results of our journeys when shared as a factual account of our experience. For much of the time in class in the beginning, i wondered if i was indeed "doing it" correctly, but as angela began to nurture this environment of trust, i too began just allowing what came, recording and working with, so much that now it directs my creative work and here and there the universe sends me indications that i am right on the ball with the journeys i am conducting. It allows me to feel a strong anchor in my personal power, a renewed sense of faith in my purpose and as such much more patience in allowing the mystery to dowhat it needs to do to bring it all about, while i just patiently move with the rythyms and allow it to be. I am so inspired, so regenerated and blissfully grateful.
Last week I conducted a journey to the spirit of the drum, requesting that it reveal itself to me and show me the energy that belongs to it's purpose. In the journey, i appeared without my cloak, instead i was wearing a maiden-esque royal blue embroidered dress, from a medieval era. I thanked my power animal for taking me to the centre to meet the spirit of the drum and he took me on his back up the spiral mountain staircase. Yet this time as we ascended i noted that the steps were no longer rock but instead a bright shiny white ivory. When we got to the top, we continued to move through this vibrantly green, plush and magically alive rainforest, with monkeys swinging from branch to branch over head. We were arriving at a clearing within it, with nothing but a burning fire within a circle of stones. I was directed to step right into the fire, and with a moment of hesitation i did so. As soon as my feet were planted in it, a drum popped up and appeared above my head. I saw myself being shapeshifted into a variety of moving images, in the elixir of the fire beginning with a butterfly, moving into the face of an old woman, then the maiden and the mother, an eagle, a tree, mountains, the earth, the skies and the cosmos. It was showing me the interconnectivity of all things, how i was part of all of it and it was part of me. A voice in the darkness explained that the spirit of this drum is about stepping into the fire, alchemy, transformation and power embued with the purpose of healing the deepest parts of the collective divine feminine. This was symbolized on the drum by the different blues in the crossbars and wrapped with the spirals of sweetgrass.
The sweetgrass was intended to represent the weaving of the different stories in life that create our reality, the waking dream, the sleeping dream and the journeying dream, together in the braid they symbolized the union and harmony of all 3.
At the centre was shiny white ribbon representing my white owl spirit, with a blue medicine bag for women's healing. The trim of the drum was filled with dancing firey flames, a symbolic representation of each face of the feminine collective at the west, north and east directions, while the south had a place waiting to be filled. In the centre of the drum was a small black circle which the voice explained was the dark fertile void to which all things grow. The beater was represented as a tree.
This journey was incredibly fluid and incredibly powerful. I got the feeling that i would need to follow all the guidance in this journey in creating the drum, that this drum would symbolize something far greater than a completion of an art project for a course underway. In my mind's eye the image stayed with me and i saw myself healing people with it, it felt like through it's construction and my attention to it's detail it would harness very strong and powerful medicine for the work i have seen myself embarking on. No wonder my outward helping is underground at the moment, i am most certainly preparing for a battle, one in which my medicine and my tools will need to be keen and sharp. My fight, is for the women, that the women will heal themselves from all these centuries of patriarchy, conquest and colonization.
That they will resume their roles as the wisdom keepers, the visionaries, the healers and medicine people, that in doing so they will also begin the healing of our great mother, our relationships to the cosmos, our children, tribes and community. And in shifting all of that energy, that we may as a collective move back into the balance and harmony with the feminine and out of our imbalance in the masculine, embodying the energy of surrendered receptivity, as opposed to distractive doing, to once again begin to honor the feminine traits in all things. This is the duty i have been charged with, this i know for sure.
So i began preparing for the making of the drum. I had planned on painting the flames on, until recieiving word from Angela, that
fabric would be needed to cover the staples. So i configured a way to create flames with fabric and sew together a beautiful, raw and process evidenced trim that will be glued around the outside of the drum. I had my mom help me with braiding the sweetgrass, attempting to monitor my thoughts and breathe and pray my intentions into the strands, as the women of old did, that as the intentions get weaved into the creation, in the end, that drum is embued with all of that medicine. I bought the paints for the cross bars, some decorative items to add my creative touch and began preparing. There is still a ways until completion, but i have been somewhat awestruck by how similar that tangible result mirrors the way i saw it in my journey. It brings with it a confidence and an excitement of things to come.
When we received our frame of maple wood and chose the elk hide that called to us, we laid down to journey, one hand on the frame, one on the hide and the beater stick laid across our chests. Our journey at this time was one of gratitude and honor for the helping spirits that had sacraficed their lives in physical form for the creation of this drum. Angela spoke about these creations as being the destiny of the matter forms that had made their way to us, which signalled the importance of meeting the spirits of these items to determine what wisdom they may share for us in ensuring their intended purposes are honored.
I had arrived in my power spot, wearing the white shiny cosmology cloak, ellie for the first time, had a matching white bloth across her back and was wearing the diamond jewel on her forehead. She mentioned that our dress indicated the degree of sacredness found within this journey. There was no travelling in this journey, the fire of the clearing appeared at my power spot and the spirit of the maple arrived in the west doorway, the elk in the north and the spirit of the beater stick which came through as a fir tree appeared in the east. Nothing again in the south. I began to dance around the fire but in front of the spirits and circled 3 times before stopping in front of the maple tree, placing tobacco at it's roots and draping my arms around its large trunk, filled with gratitude and love for her contribution. I thanked her for her sacrafice and asked if she could offer me any wisdom to ensure she remained honored in the drums creation and uses. She said that i was to always keep the drum near my heart and to remember that the drum belonged to the heart of the people. I vowed to remember this, thanked her again with another embrace and left one of my tiny purple goddesses' in her roots before moving on to the elk. In front of the elk, while lovingly feeling his body i thanked him for his sacrafice to the people and asked him how i could continue to honor him. He replied that i should use my drum with great bravery, courage and confidence. I also vowed to do this, placing a purple goddess on a chain around his neck, before moving onto to fir and placing tobacco yet again at her roots. When i thanked her and asked the same question, there was nothing but silence for awhile. Than she stated "everything in the universe is given and nothing can be taken away, it is all interconnected and intended to continue to regenerate the whole." I looked a bit perplexed but with no more sign of explanation i hung the goddess on one of her branches and proceeded to dance again around the fire 3 times, before stepping back into the fire. Once in the fire, i looked again at the fir tree and she said, use the drum to stay connected to the silent place from which all things are born". I felt that the message was finally complete and with that, each spirit dissappeared into the air.
I have been in a flurry of creative activity, tunneled in within myself, visioning, creating, spinning the intangible into a tangibility that brings with it affirmation, not only that i am exactly where i need to be, but that i am not indeed crazy. That all those visions of women in community, priestesses and ritual, were not solely born within the imagination, but instead my spidey senses had been alerted and i was definately onto something. The inidigenous program at this point feels far more initiatory than it was foundational. It took a whole two years of whipping everything i had identified as authentic to the wind, and scuffing my way through a very long integration process before arriving here, where i do feel developed enough to begin lying the bricks and mortar of the foundation of what i am here to do. This week, i began by making the drum.
As lori said tonight, this path is all about trust. When beginning to journey, angela gives very little instruction, does not question and takes the results of our journeys when shared as a factual account of our experience. For much of the time in class in the beginning, i wondered if i was indeed "doing it" correctly, but as angela began to nurture this environment of trust, i too began just allowing what came, recording and working with, so much that now it directs my creative work and here and there the universe sends me indications that i am right on the ball with the journeys i am conducting. It allows me to feel a strong anchor in my personal power, a renewed sense of faith in my purpose and as such much more patience in allowing the mystery to dowhat it needs to do to bring it all about, while i just patiently move with the rythyms and allow it to be. I am so inspired, so regenerated and blissfully grateful.
Last week I conducted a journey to the spirit of the drum, requesting that it reveal itself to me and show me the energy that belongs to it's purpose. In the journey, i appeared without my cloak, instead i was wearing a maiden-esque royal blue embroidered dress, from a medieval era. I thanked my power animal for taking me to the centre to meet the spirit of the drum and he took me on his back up the spiral mountain staircase. Yet this time as we ascended i noted that the steps were no longer rock but instead a bright shiny white ivory. When we got to the top, we continued to move through this vibrantly green, plush and magically alive rainforest, with monkeys swinging from branch to branch over head. We were arriving at a clearing within it, with nothing but a burning fire within a circle of stones. I was directed to step right into the fire, and with a moment of hesitation i did so. As soon as my feet were planted in it, a drum popped up and appeared above my head. I saw myself being shapeshifted into a variety of moving images, in the elixir of the fire beginning with a butterfly, moving into the face of an old woman, then the maiden and the mother, an eagle, a tree, mountains, the earth, the skies and the cosmos. It was showing me the interconnectivity of all things, how i was part of all of it and it was part of me. A voice in the darkness explained that the spirit of this drum is about stepping into the fire, alchemy, transformation and power embued with the purpose of healing the deepest parts of the collective divine feminine. This was symbolized on the drum by the different blues in the crossbars and wrapped with the spirals of sweetgrass.
The sweetgrass was intended to represent the weaving of the different stories in life that create our reality, the waking dream, the sleeping dream and the journeying dream, together in the braid they symbolized the union and harmony of all 3.
At the centre was shiny white ribbon representing my white owl spirit, with a blue medicine bag for women's healing. The trim of the drum was filled with dancing firey flames, a symbolic representation of each face of the feminine collective at the west, north and east directions, while the south had a place waiting to be filled. In the centre of the drum was a small black circle which the voice explained was the dark fertile void to which all things grow. The beater was represented as a tree.
This journey was incredibly fluid and incredibly powerful. I got the feeling that i would need to follow all the guidance in this journey in creating the drum, that this drum would symbolize something far greater than a completion of an art project for a course underway. In my mind's eye the image stayed with me and i saw myself healing people with it, it felt like through it's construction and my attention to it's detail it would harness very strong and powerful medicine for the work i have seen myself embarking on. No wonder my outward helping is underground at the moment, i am most certainly preparing for a battle, one in which my medicine and my tools will need to be keen and sharp. My fight, is for the women, that the women will heal themselves from all these centuries of patriarchy, conquest and colonization.
That they will resume their roles as the wisdom keepers, the visionaries, the healers and medicine people, that in doing so they will also begin the healing of our great mother, our relationships to the cosmos, our children, tribes and community. And in shifting all of that energy, that we may as a collective move back into the balance and harmony with the feminine and out of our imbalance in the masculine, embodying the energy of surrendered receptivity, as opposed to distractive doing, to once again begin to honor the feminine traits in all things. This is the duty i have been charged with, this i know for sure.
So i began preparing for the making of the drum. I had planned on painting the flames on, until recieiving word from Angela, that
fabric would be needed to cover the staples. So i configured a way to create flames with fabric and sew together a beautiful, raw and process evidenced trim that will be glued around the outside of the drum. I had my mom help me with braiding the sweetgrass, attempting to monitor my thoughts and breathe and pray my intentions into the strands, as the women of old did, that as the intentions get weaved into the creation, in the end, that drum is embued with all of that medicine. I bought the paints for the cross bars, some decorative items to add my creative touch and began preparing. There is still a ways until completion, but i have been somewhat awestruck by how similar that tangible result mirrors the way i saw it in my journey. It brings with it a confidence and an excitement of things to come.
When we received our frame of maple wood and chose the elk hide that called to us, we laid down to journey, one hand on the frame, one on the hide and the beater stick laid across our chests. Our journey at this time was one of gratitude and honor for the helping spirits that had sacraficed their lives in physical form for the creation of this drum. Angela spoke about these creations as being the destiny of the matter forms that had made their way to us, which signalled the importance of meeting the spirits of these items to determine what wisdom they may share for us in ensuring their intended purposes are honored.
I had arrived in my power spot, wearing the white shiny cosmology cloak, ellie for the first time, had a matching white bloth across her back and was wearing the diamond jewel on her forehead. She mentioned that our dress indicated the degree of sacredness found within this journey. There was no travelling in this journey, the fire of the clearing appeared at my power spot and the spirit of the maple arrived in the west doorway, the elk in the north and the spirit of the beater stick which came through as a fir tree appeared in the east. Nothing again in the south. I began to dance around the fire but in front of the spirits and circled 3 times before stopping in front of the maple tree, placing tobacco at it's roots and draping my arms around its large trunk, filled with gratitude and love for her contribution. I thanked her for her sacrafice and asked if she could offer me any wisdom to ensure she remained honored in the drums creation and uses. She said that i was to always keep the drum near my heart and to remember that the drum belonged to the heart of the people. I vowed to remember this, thanked her again with another embrace and left one of my tiny purple goddesses' in her roots before moving on to the elk. In front of the elk, while lovingly feeling his body i thanked him for his sacrafice to the people and asked him how i could continue to honor him. He replied that i should use my drum with great bravery, courage and confidence. I also vowed to do this, placing a purple goddess on a chain around his neck, before moving onto to fir and placing tobacco yet again at her roots. When i thanked her and asked the same question, there was nothing but silence for awhile. Than she stated "everything in the universe is given and nothing can be taken away, it is all interconnected and intended to continue to regenerate the whole." I looked a bit perplexed but with no more sign of explanation i hung the goddess on one of her branches and proceeded to dance again around the fire 3 times, before stepping back into the fire. Once in the fire, i looked again at the fir tree and she said, use the drum to stay connected to the silent place from which all things are born". I felt that the message was finally complete and with that, each spirit dissappeared into the air.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
To Help me Remember....
A Note from an Ally...
I think we are revolutionaries, Erica. I believe that there are a LOT of people who are sympathetic to what we can share with them.... but they don't have the words for it or the way to speak about it. The gift we can give the is the gift of honouring their experience. So few do---because of the light-obsessed and light-fixated nature of our culture and spirituality. People tend to follow crowds and create the herding behaviour we see in what is "popular."
But what is popular is not always what is best or what is right or what is good..... or what is true experientially.
The truth is I am tired today. I feel like I am in constant struggle with philosophical forces that provide the basis for the colonizing institutions that have a direct impact on EVERYONE's life now. For me the battle I am called to fight is to expose and undermine those philosophical foundations so that the institutions crumble under their own bloated and fall.... so that something more humane and dignified (and based on people's experiential foundations) can took root again.
The forces we are up against are insidious and manifest in every area of cultured existence. We can deal with them one by one or we can deal with the foundations upon which they are supported.
The truth is there are not many doing what we are doing. We will find more and more people who resonate with what we share and express (because it is their direct experience as well). Just as we will encounter those who have a lot to lose because they have profited from the "system" as it is and will look to us and our languaged experiences and understandings as literal death threats.
I know I will wage this battle my whole life. I know I will take up this struggle and that is why I am here. I know this.
And yet.... today I am tired of it.... and wearied by it. ♥
I think we are revolutionaries, Erica. I believe that there are a LOT of people who are sympathetic to what we can share with them.... but they don't have the words for it or the way to speak about it. The gift we can give the is the gift of honouring their experience. So few do---because of the light-obsessed and light-fixated nature of our culture and spirituality. People tend to follow crowds and create the herding behaviour we see in what is "popular."
But what is popular is not always what is best or what is right or what is good..... or what is true experientially.
The truth is I am tired today. I feel like I am in constant struggle with philosophical forces that provide the basis for the colonizing institutions that have a direct impact on EVERYONE's life now. For me the battle I am called to fight is to expose and undermine those philosophical foundations so that the institutions crumble under their own bloated and fall.... so that something more humane and dignified (and based on people's experiential foundations) can took root again.
The forces we are up against are insidious and manifest in every area of cultured existence. We can deal with them one by one or we can deal with the foundations upon which they are supported.
The truth is there are not many doing what we are doing. We will find more and more people who resonate with what we share and express (because it is their direct experience as well). Just as we will encounter those who have a lot to lose because they have profited from the "system" as it is and will look to us and our languaged experiences and understandings as literal death threats.
I know I will wage this battle my whole life. I know I will take up this struggle and that is why I am here. I know this.
And yet.... today I am tired of it.... and wearied by it. ♥
Held in the Palm of the Divine Mother's Hand....
A couple of days ago, my mom shared with me her recent writings and drawings from the visioning space. Some of them spoke of a time of great devastation which lies on the horizon, her writings a recollection of some of the moments alive within her memory, those to which she continues to grieve, those that remain somehow unreachable despite the rich aliveness within her memory, some still filled with much pain about a life she feels still remains unlived. Her words `somehow everything i did, i managed to fail at`. I asked her when she was going to set about embarking on reframing those supposed failures, to the inititiations that they were possibly meant to be, most of all i questioned her as to how she had so much faith in what i was here to do, despite the similarities of `failure`that she evidences in her own life, somehow not so different from the experiences in mine. Out from deep within me, a pool of grief, fear and inadequacy came to visit.
I spoke to her about the fears i had about mothering alone, whether i would remain stable enough to do so, as so much of my outer life seems to continually rescind and my inner life stays hidden behind the walls of my art, my writing, the space i have come to call home.
I spoke of he lonliness of this path i call my own, how it continues to take people from me, passions that once promised a much grander ability to support madison`s wellbeing and my passions in the outer world. I spoke of never belonging, finding parts of community that spoke to some singular threads within me but always revealing there was never a reflectionary composite out there of what lived in here. I spoke of my longing for the divine partnership, my fears of having no more children, or partnering too late and not wanting to bring little people in at that time. I spoke of my professional concerns and whether i would ever keep this house a float or continuosly just scrape by, i spoke of feeling invisible most of the time, grief.....fear....pain...despair. She bore witness to my outcry that seemed to continue for hours, like flood gates had opened and the rushing waters burst forth. Until the moment came, the well had dried up, there wasn`t much more to say, and so i said i was tired and headed to bed. I wrapped myself up in my blankets, held on to my elephant tight and softly fell into the dreamworld again. I seemed to dream all night, all though the details are no longer clear. The predominant dream was my wedding day. I was to be married in someone`s backyard, there seemed to be some shoty carnival going on in the background, my family was missing and claire`s parents were sitting at a picnic table. It seemed they were in the dream replacing my own. `Claire was at my side through all the preparations, reassuring me things would play out okay, despite an ongoing discovery of things that had gone wrong. I remember looking down at my faded yellow dress, somehwat old fashioned and in some weird lace, a burn hole i found in the fabric but didnt seem to mind. I`m not sure who i was marrying but for some reason i knew all the things that had gone wrong in the preparations, all the imperfect surroundings all didn`t matter, i was finally getting married, even the burnhole in the dress didn`t seem to phase me.
I awoke feeling like i had been well nurtured by the dreamworld, with an avid desire to return to bed soon and keep dreaming. I`m not sure what that dream meant, but i felt it neccessary to record it anyway.
I have been thinking about my life as of late and it`s relation to my ancestral beginnings. I just have this desire to attened to the hearth, bring more children into the world, continue sewing, painting, dreaming, journeying, writing, loving, dancing and come out of the hearth to commune with the sunlight, celebrate in community, be one with all that is. But isnt that the way my ancestral mothers lived? Wasn't all of those things part of their visioning and wisdom in attending to the needs and direction of the community.
My journey to the spirit of the drum was about stepping into the fire and healing the collective feminine, one of the things i wrote after journeying was that this part of my life was a defininate change in the energy of the masculine or doing and a move on into the feminine and one of receptivity...yet still i feel quilty for not being productive in the outer world, still i worry about the way in which i will support us, all of these questions that will for at least some time remain unanswered, so for now i continue to write, to dream, to commune, to sew, to breathe life into the future of this vision....
Sunday, February 20, 2011
The Dark Man Dreams...
When i first read Clarissa Pinkola-Este's book "Women who run with wolves", I was first introduced to the concept of dark man dreams. In her book Clarissa explains the connection between Dark man dreams ie nightmares and different aspects of the women's soul that is continuing to be held in captivity. I had a hard time re-collecting these dreams in my memory, yet sure enough in this space of my life i am visited by them often. My teacher of the White Bone has asked that we keep a living record of these dreams, alongside our journeys in the other worlds, and their weaving reality within our waking dream. So this will be the first entry in which i attempt to do so.
I have been haunted by an ebbing of lonlineness as of late manifested as a longing to finally partner again with someone cut from a similar cloth. I fear regularly, given my past experiences in relationships and my continued sense of alienation from the world that this may never happen for me. Sometimes these fears make their ways deep into the tunnels within me as different thoughts of self-destruction ie how i'm not loveable enough or desireable enough, or maybe losing my mind. At the heart of things however i know this isn't true. I know myself to be a special breed, special yet not ordinary, i like to think of myself if you were studying a statistical map as an outlier far off on the corner of the page. I spent the great majority of my life trying to re-make this outlier within me, to re-shape it, cover it in different jewels and materials, make it consistent with homogenous boxes. All of these attempts were miserable failures. I mean i did find love yes, and at times feel like i loved quite intensly, but wheteher i was ever really truly loved back is an entirely different question all together, how could i have really been loved for who i was when the make i had been portraying was not really me at all.
To date, i refuse to modify this collage of parts, some less neat, some well ordered, some chaotic and creative, some interesting and well rounded, some dysfunctional, some functional, because all of these parts are indeed me. Some of them are in need of a little shining, a little healing or working through, but none the less they are mine and gifted to me for a reason that i have yet to seen through, so my days of pretending they arent there, or sacraficing them for a larger investment ie attempting to find love have indeed ended. Addditionally, as i continue to uncover, embrace and explore all these different parts of myself, i find my margins of acceptance for acquiring a romantic partner to become slimmer. I am not interested, nor passionate or inquisitive about those others who wear false faces and fit within boxes, i wish to find another who resembles some of those mis matched parts of me, but also has their own unique embroidery to their own quilt, lives with their own questions that the continue to deepen within themselves and see through in the world that surrounds them. We are a different breed, not found everywhere and sometimes well disguised, so i imagine it will be some time before i fall into that experience. Patience would be fine, if the fears didnt consistently creep, the questions around if im aging too quickly, or if i will lose my youthfullness before the person arrives, will it be too late for me to have a baby? So within these questions, sometimes a sense of desperation arises, at times with an energy so great it's hard to not follow it through, but of course the desperation doesnt take me any closer to what im looking for, for its appearance is a sure thing that the sacaraficial lamb is alive and well and looking for it's slaughter.
All of these energies visited me last night, as i continued to also question a connection i had with one of these vibrant men a few years back who does his best to avoid contact with me. I wondered if he actually did in fact hate me or have some great disdain, rather than come from a place of protecting his vulnerable heart as he had said so many years ago. Most of all i wondered what in me thoguht it was okay to continue to set myself up for this rejection...please notice me...please forgive me...please see that i too am good. If i was strong and self assured wouldnt i infact say "well if you cant see me or want to value me, i will collect my energies from here and move on, should you ever get the need to re-visit this, surely i will hear from you". Likely a compounded trigger..
And so while i wrestled with these energies last night, i prayed to the spirit world for some sense of resolution. As my eyes lay closed and my body slowly drifted to the dream world, i called out for a healing dream..."Send me a healing dream so that i can be at peace with my relationships...". The dark man visited.
The Dark Man Dream
Claire and I were in a fairly large house. I called it my grandmother's house, although it certainly wasnt my lviing grandmother's and it had some resemblances to my fathers house in the way that the doors and locks appeared, but it certainly wasn't his either. A group of young men in their late teens to early twenties had picked this house to break into and hold a group of young people captive. For noe it was only claire and i. I'm also nto sure how i knew this crowd was among us, I did know however that i needed to lock the doors, call 911 and grab my "grandmother's" rifle. My first attempt to safety was to call 911 as i asked claire to run downstairs and lock the side door. The phone wasn't working, there was a dial tone, but the numbers wouldnt dial. I ran to an upstairs bedroom and pulled an old phone out, by the time i had it int he wall, it had become clear the phonelines were cut. We had managed to lock the doors but the intruders came in through the garage, how exactly i wasn't clear. There must have been at least 10-15 intruders, they were all really young, soem male, some female, all dressed in black. I had the rifle behind my back, but before they sited it was able to ascertain it was of no use to me. I'm not sure if it had rusted out, or if bullets were lacking, either way it would nto be an aid in this fight, i inconspicuously placed it behind the couch in the rec room. When they made their way in, a woman held claire and i in a rec room, while the others fleed throughout the house, doing what i didnt know. Yet as time wore on i was aware we werent the only prisoners in the house, there too was a group of us, all young people, male and female being held in different rooms by different captors. Our captor was a blonde woman in her mid 20's fairly sassy, firm but also in a way understanding. She explained that there would be a series of questions given us in this room and all we had to do to save ourselves was to answer honestly. She warned that if she was able to see that we were lying within our eyes then we would be shot. In the distance there is this remote memory of a young man being used as an example of this and was shot in the head before us, but this happened more in the communal area than lets say our specific room. I remember trying to figure out in my head what these questions would be about, and whether my answers in honesty would furhter incriminate me or get me of the hook while also trying to devise a plan that would potentially save me if in fact i had to lie..how would i keep the lie from showing in my eyes, would the risk really be worth it? Each person was asked a question, all of them answered honestly and were spared. When it came to me the woman said "What were your experiences with Christianity in your early life"...Claire let out a sort of chuckle and said to the woman well your definately asking the right person that question. Yet just as i was about to answer, also perplexed these questions were of such a personal nature, a ring leader dude was summoning the captivity leaders to switch arrangements. She left the room breifly, there was some chatter amongst the captors, my mind was workign feverishly to figure out exactly what was going on here, why and what the outcome would be. When she returned, she indicated there was a change of plans but she wasn't sure what that would be so essentially indicated a period of limbo that we would just need to sit through. With her arm across the couch she casually looked back and saw the rifle pushed back there, and anxiety filled my body while trying to utter out some excuses. She smiled and said...i understand, a bunch of people break into your house and your life is threatened your going to grab a rifle". I was relieved and also perplexed about how unthreatened she was and in a way kind,, she was our captor after all. The door to our room was open i saw a lot of the boys taking their laundry out of the washers and dryers and examinign whether colors had ran, i was watching them curiously...did they break in to do their laundry? I was fascinated by examinign all the different threads and colors within their blankets. Just some commotion in the house, me drowning most of the noise out and watchign with an alertness to what exactly was going on in this house.
A young dude (also quiet kind) but being a gangsta in the pack of course, came and asked me if i could drive. I respoinded that i could and so he asked me to go with him and 2 other captors to drive them around the block. I only drove him around the block, just once, the block seemed to resemble the one i grew up on. While we were driving his kindness shgowed and he softly said to me "you are a really good driver you know". I said thanks. When we pulled up on the street close to the house again. The mob of intruders and captors were making their way around the corner. The dude that had us had a bit of panick in his voice saying he missed a direction, seemed nervous about what the result of that would be. He got us out of the car and asked us to sit on the steps of the porch while he found out what was going on. Claire and i were sitting on the steps, i wondered why in fact these guys were walking everyone in public, was their a method to it? werent they afraid of getting caught? I also wondered why claire and i were sitting on the step and not trying to make a run for it, we had the chance of course...i was busy trying to asess the risk by potential gain, our dude came running back, the group, was coming around the corner...he told us the dudes had taken some of the women into a back field to rape them. You missed that part, he said assuringly....why were we spared i wondered?
Angela has told us that when dreams don't neccessarily make sense, we could journey into them and ask for more information from the other worlds...i plan to do this...stay tuned...<3
I have been haunted by an ebbing of lonlineness as of late manifested as a longing to finally partner again with someone cut from a similar cloth. I fear regularly, given my past experiences in relationships and my continued sense of alienation from the world that this may never happen for me. Sometimes these fears make their ways deep into the tunnels within me as different thoughts of self-destruction ie how i'm not loveable enough or desireable enough, or maybe losing my mind. At the heart of things however i know this isn't true. I know myself to be a special breed, special yet not ordinary, i like to think of myself if you were studying a statistical map as an outlier far off on the corner of the page. I spent the great majority of my life trying to re-make this outlier within me, to re-shape it, cover it in different jewels and materials, make it consistent with homogenous boxes. All of these attempts were miserable failures. I mean i did find love yes, and at times feel like i loved quite intensly, but wheteher i was ever really truly loved back is an entirely different question all together, how could i have really been loved for who i was when the make i had been portraying was not really me at all.
To date, i refuse to modify this collage of parts, some less neat, some well ordered, some chaotic and creative, some interesting and well rounded, some dysfunctional, some functional, because all of these parts are indeed me. Some of them are in need of a little shining, a little healing or working through, but none the less they are mine and gifted to me for a reason that i have yet to seen through, so my days of pretending they arent there, or sacraficing them for a larger investment ie attempting to find love have indeed ended. Addditionally, as i continue to uncover, embrace and explore all these different parts of myself, i find my margins of acceptance for acquiring a romantic partner to become slimmer. I am not interested, nor passionate or inquisitive about those others who wear false faces and fit within boxes, i wish to find another who resembles some of those mis matched parts of me, but also has their own unique embroidery to their own quilt, lives with their own questions that the continue to deepen within themselves and see through in the world that surrounds them. We are a different breed, not found everywhere and sometimes well disguised, so i imagine it will be some time before i fall into that experience. Patience would be fine, if the fears didnt consistently creep, the questions around if im aging too quickly, or if i will lose my youthfullness before the person arrives, will it be too late for me to have a baby? So within these questions, sometimes a sense of desperation arises, at times with an energy so great it's hard to not follow it through, but of course the desperation doesnt take me any closer to what im looking for, for its appearance is a sure thing that the sacaraficial lamb is alive and well and looking for it's slaughter.
All of these energies visited me last night, as i continued to also question a connection i had with one of these vibrant men a few years back who does his best to avoid contact with me. I wondered if he actually did in fact hate me or have some great disdain, rather than come from a place of protecting his vulnerable heart as he had said so many years ago. Most of all i wondered what in me thoguht it was okay to continue to set myself up for this rejection...please notice me...please forgive me...please see that i too am good. If i was strong and self assured wouldnt i infact say "well if you cant see me or want to value me, i will collect my energies from here and move on, should you ever get the need to re-visit this, surely i will hear from you". Likely a compounded trigger..
And so while i wrestled with these energies last night, i prayed to the spirit world for some sense of resolution. As my eyes lay closed and my body slowly drifted to the dream world, i called out for a healing dream..."Send me a healing dream so that i can be at peace with my relationships...". The dark man visited.
The Dark Man Dream
Claire and I were in a fairly large house. I called it my grandmother's house, although it certainly wasnt my lviing grandmother's and it had some resemblances to my fathers house in the way that the doors and locks appeared, but it certainly wasn't his either. A group of young men in their late teens to early twenties had picked this house to break into and hold a group of young people captive. For noe it was only claire and i. I'm also nto sure how i knew this crowd was among us, I did know however that i needed to lock the doors, call 911 and grab my "grandmother's" rifle. My first attempt to safety was to call 911 as i asked claire to run downstairs and lock the side door. The phone wasn't working, there was a dial tone, but the numbers wouldnt dial. I ran to an upstairs bedroom and pulled an old phone out, by the time i had it int he wall, it had become clear the phonelines were cut. We had managed to lock the doors but the intruders came in through the garage, how exactly i wasn't clear. There must have been at least 10-15 intruders, they were all really young, soem male, some female, all dressed in black. I had the rifle behind my back, but before they sited it was able to ascertain it was of no use to me. I'm not sure if it had rusted out, or if bullets were lacking, either way it would nto be an aid in this fight, i inconspicuously placed it behind the couch in the rec room. When they made their way in, a woman held claire and i in a rec room, while the others fleed throughout the house, doing what i didnt know. Yet as time wore on i was aware we werent the only prisoners in the house, there too was a group of us, all young people, male and female being held in different rooms by different captors. Our captor was a blonde woman in her mid 20's fairly sassy, firm but also in a way understanding. She explained that there would be a series of questions given us in this room and all we had to do to save ourselves was to answer honestly. She warned that if she was able to see that we were lying within our eyes then we would be shot. In the distance there is this remote memory of a young man being used as an example of this and was shot in the head before us, but this happened more in the communal area than lets say our specific room. I remember trying to figure out in my head what these questions would be about, and whether my answers in honesty would furhter incriminate me or get me of the hook while also trying to devise a plan that would potentially save me if in fact i had to lie..how would i keep the lie from showing in my eyes, would the risk really be worth it? Each person was asked a question, all of them answered honestly and were spared. When it came to me the woman said "What were your experiences with Christianity in your early life"...Claire let out a sort of chuckle and said to the woman well your definately asking the right person that question. Yet just as i was about to answer, also perplexed these questions were of such a personal nature, a ring leader dude was summoning the captivity leaders to switch arrangements. She left the room breifly, there was some chatter amongst the captors, my mind was workign feverishly to figure out exactly what was going on here, why and what the outcome would be. When she returned, she indicated there was a change of plans but she wasn't sure what that would be so essentially indicated a period of limbo that we would just need to sit through. With her arm across the couch she casually looked back and saw the rifle pushed back there, and anxiety filled my body while trying to utter out some excuses. She smiled and said...i understand, a bunch of people break into your house and your life is threatened your going to grab a rifle". I was relieved and also perplexed about how unthreatened she was and in a way kind,, she was our captor after all. The door to our room was open i saw a lot of the boys taking their laundry out of the washers and dryers and examinign whether colors had ran, i was watching them curiously...did they break in to do their laundry? I was fascinated by examinign all the different threads and colors within their blankets. Just some commotion in the house, me drowning most of the noise out and watchign with an alertness to what exactly was going on in this house.
A young dude (also quiet kind) but being a gangsta in the pack of course, came and asked me if i could drive. I respoinded that i could and so he asked me to go with him and 2 other captors to drive them around the block. I only drove him around the block, just once, the block seemed to resemble the one i grew up on. While we were driving his kindness shgowed and he softly said to me "you are a really good driver you know". I said thanks. When we pulled up on the street close to the house again. The mob of intruders and captors were making their way around the corner. The dude that had us had a bit of panick in his voice saying he missed a direction, seemed nervous about what the result of that would be. He got us out of the car and asked us to sit on the steps of the porch while he found out what was going on. Claire and i were sitting on the steps, i wondered why in fact these guys were walking everyone in public, was their a method to it? werent they afraid of getting caught? I also wondered why claire and i were sitting on the step and not trying to make a run for it, we had the chance of course...i was busy trying to asess the risk by potential gain, our dude came running back, the group, was coming around the corner...he told us the dudes had taken some of the women into a back field to rape them. You missed that part, he said assuringly....why were we spared i wondered?
Angela has told us that when dreams don't neccessarily make sense, we could journey into them and ask for more information from the other worlds...i plan to do this...stay tuned...<3
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
The Should Be life...
The very seclusionary religious community that i was raised in taught me early that a woman's role in life was to be married to a strong christian dutch man somewhere between the ages of 18 and 22 and to get busy on bringing up a large dutch family. Children should be spanned somewhere between every year or every other, most of us would go on to have at least 4-6, some of us would have 9-11.
When i look at many childhood pictures that my mom saved in a big blue rubbermaid box, many of them were focused on bride's and bridegrooms, their eternal love, little innocent hearts chiselled everywhere around them. For as long as i can remember romantic love was a fixation of mine, up until the last five years of my life, there was hardly spaces in between boyfriends. I wrote about love, sang about love, longed for the fated truth i had been told was my own, a husband that would love me deeply and for eternity, and the magical moments i would experience raising strong healthy children. I tried desperately to make this a reality, pregnant by 21, divorced twice by 24. The problem was, the reality of marriage never reflected the vivid romantic imaginings i had envisioned most of my life. Marriage became a symbol of suffering, a prison of control and an acceptability of abuse. The first love, abondoned me when parts of who i was began to glisten, when troubles made themself known, he wasn't going to stick around to help me figure it out. My heart bruised and broken i walked right into husband number two. He would spend the majority of our marriage, emotionally de-tached, oblivious of my need for emotional intimacy despite my consistent giving and vocalization of these needs and later quite comfortable with dragging me across rooms, throwing me on top of trucks, dis-connecting phone lines when the state of emergency got more severe and sleeping with other women when the stress at home became too intense. When i finally had the courage to put him in jail, i was met with silence and shame by my father and told that despite the fact that i had no longer been safe in the walls of my own home, i should never have proceeded with contacting the authorities, instead i should have just gotten better at keeping my mouth shut.
It was here, that the desire for marriage, for life long companionship died. I was determined to never sacrafice myself again for the guise of romance and to build a life of independance that would ineveitably instill a different set of values in my own daughter who would be watching how i lived my life and interpeting it as the "new normal".
I have been single for five years now, have grown in many ways and learned many things. But still a silent weeping of this aloneness continues to seep out of me. I have gotten very good at being alone and in the limelight am quite confident that the constructs of marriage and relationship as we have defined it, is nothing less than a complete sham, a mockery of what we perceive and call love. Yet sitting in the bleachers at Madison's skating lessons, surrounded by the mothers and the fathers arriving just a little bit late all dressed in their buisness suits, small pains begin to make themselves known and i am aware despite the hard shell i have constructed to deflect these things, deep deep down there is still a soft calling, a longing to again experience "my one special person" in the world, a companionship, an intimacy, a relationship that spans the years of a lifetime....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoNtYC_XDC8&feature=related
When i look at many childhood pictures that my mom saved in a big blue rubbermaid box, many of them were focused on bride's and bridegrooms, their eternal love, little innocent hearts chiselled everywhere around them. For as long as i can remember romantic love was a fixation of mine, up until the last five years of my life, there was hardly spaces in between boyfriends. I wrote about love, sang about love, longed for the fated truth i had been told was my own, a husband that would love me deeply and for eternity, and the magical moments i would experience raising strong healthy children. I tried desperately to make this a reality, pregnant by 21, divorced twice by 24. The problem was, the reality of marriage never reflected the vivid romantic imaginings i had envisioned most of my life. Marriage became a symbol of suffering, a prison of control and an acceptability of abuse. The first love, abondoned me when parts of who i was began to glisten, when troubles made themself known, he wasn't going to stick around to help me figure it out. My heart bruised and broken i walked right into husband number two. He would spend the majority of our marriage, emotionally de-tached, oblivious of my need for emotional intimacy despite my consistent giving and vocalization of these needs and later quite comfortable with dragging me across rooms, throwing me on top of trucks, dis-connecting phone lines when the state of emergency got more severe and sleeping with other women when the stress at home became too intense. When i finally had the courage to put him in jail, i was met with silence and shame by my father and told that despite the fact that i had no longer been safe in the walls of my own home, i should never have proceeded with contacting the authorities, instead i should have just gotten better at keeping my mouth shut.
It was here, that the desire for marriage, for life long companionship died. I was determined to never sacrafice myself again for the guise of romance and to build a life of independance that would ineveitably instill a different set of values in my own daughter who would be watching how i lived my life and interpeting it as the "new normal".
I have been single for five years now, have grown in many ways and learned many things. But still a silent weeping of this aloneness continues to seep out of me. I have gotten very good at being alone and in the limelight am quite confident that the constructs of marriage and relationship as we have defined it, is nothing less than a complete sham, a mockery of what we perceive and call love. Yet sitting in the bleachers at Madison's skating lessons, surrounded by the mothers and the fathers arriving just a little bit late all dressed in their buisness suits, small pains begin to make themselves known and i am aware despite the hard shell i have constructed to deflect these things, deep deep down there is still a soft calling, a longing to again experience "my one special person" in the world, a companionship, an intimacy, a relationship that spans the years of a lifetime....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoNtYC_XDC8&feature=related
Thursday, February 10, 2011
The living dream and the living nightmare....
There were some undeniable experiences in my spiritual life and the subsequent inner work that followed that proved the universe a mysterious place, ripe with alternate realities somehow withheld from the mundane thinking brain that led me on this exploration into the variety of screens demonstrating the wealth of different realities. It was a time of awakening in my life that somehow proved to be a remedy for all the hardship, all the trauma, providing a meaning to the abhorrent life experiences I seemed to continually be met with and offering a ray of hope that it was these experiences that had given me a glimpse of a different reality rich with respite from the darkness i had always known. It was a time of excitement over new possibilities and a naieve assumption i had somehow found answers that may lead me to a potential end. A discourse i could add to my work within a system full of corruption and human and ecological devastation. I had an answer, a remedy, an argument to fight for to call out the sinister power puppeteers and finally provide a way to freedom for the oppressed like me that i had pledged my life to serve. It was a long awaited answer that came just in the nick of time. My mission: do the inner work. Remove the obstacles that clouded my being so as to make my channel to the other worlds clear and fluid. Create a strong relationship, where continual answers may arrive and then fight for it's right within the spheres i once beleived were there to educate me.
Four years later, i find myself with a pretty severe case of apathy for both the good work i conducted in social work once bursting with passion and also a keen cynicism about the work of spirituality. I've read all the books in both arena's. They proved to be a variance of ideologies i fed my brain with the intention of growth awareness, yet i fear they instead have acted as some sort of poison, an other delusion serving to obstruct my view from reality. Informing the mind in my view is a decision to proceed with some sort of brain wash it's just a matter of which form of poison you wish to feed it.
There is still a gap between what both arena's of information feed me and what i have actually experienced in my lived experience. At this point, the safest bet is to allow my lived experience to be the clearest channel of truth. Yet, i am also confronted with the idea so common in many spiritual practices and orientations to the world, that my lived experience is simply a part of my story, a living dream, isolated to the realm of further delusion to which i have grounded myself. It is between these spaces, this conflict i continue to wrestle in which i find myself, apathetic, passionless, directionless and curious as to whether this will remain to be my continued sense of self despite my greatest efforts to temper it, or if in fact this is another chapter of the seeding which at some point will burst me forward into another realm of full bloom. I suppose all of it is a mystery.
I continue to see my life through a spiritual lens and continue to study shamanism providing a grounded approach to working with my inner being, my own life experience and relating to the cosmos, despite my thinking brains skepticism and sometimes cynicism about what it is exactly that i am doing there. Am I entertaining another fairytale, a hope to escape the terrors i have seen in this world and malignantly going through the motions of another realm of bullshit serving as a good distraction from all of that which many parts of myself feel no longer strong enough to see? Or am i continuing to entertain an actual truth, a pearl of wisdom within my being that continues to drive me forward despite my blindness to the purpose/meaning of it all, with hope that somewhere within all of it, the rabbit hole will open up again and i will be reminded of those many realities i once saw glimpses of but now seem only a product of my imagination. In any case, it still seems a valid enquiry, despite that i wouldnt dare lay any truthful claim to it and bring it to the world at this point. I;m not sure anymore of what truth is really truth and so i continue to lie within the abyss while moving through the motions of creating a should be life.
There is still a perpetual dis-association, a looking for some kind of mirror in the world and continually comign up short handed. The world of the spiritual, the intellectual debates and fancy language that happen there, sometimes feels no better than the joke of wisdom pranced around in academia. Sometimes it appears as if greek to me, where i have lost an ability to interpret, although i have this memory of when i was so versed and able to fluidly protaganize the best of arguments. Then there is the world of academia, also once a close friend of mine. A place where my sense of passion and self-empowerment was fueled, also a sense of meaning/purpose was created and i had a mission in the world that i cared deeply about and felt my voice/knowledge would make an impact. I naievely entered this world and brougth great harm to my being. People don't really understand what they're doing there, the system continues to wreak havoc and great abuses against mankind and operating as a part of it, made me feel little more than a co-conspiritor, a position i could not live with.
There is a definate reality to that part of the world. The corruption, mind-fucking and continual abuse, that if your recognize will simply make you a target of some form of delusion. How could i continue to support and rehabilitate the clinically insane, delusional and paranoid, when most of their accounts of reality, often delusional to the unaware mind, seemed more an accurate perception of the reality i had witnessed in the system that those who were in charge of diagnosing and treatment. |It was after all the clinically insane that in many ways helped me to realize how distorted my own interpretations had been or how i had bought into the dogma that was fed to me about my own imbalances. There is that world where police officers abuse and beat women and racial minorities and are continually curtailed from being exposed to the general public or any sense of recourse for their injustices. There are the feminist organizations that treat women as uncapable and mentally ill, delusional and crazy, yet claim to be in the buisness of advocating for their equality. Whose equality? The middle class, that remain sheltered and unscathed from the horrors of the street, or being sexually tortured and abused by your father and brothers that will continue to manifest in the victims coping skills as an adult. There is a reality to the pathetically corrupt and injust game of criminal justice, that protects the criminals and punishes the victims and offers neither of them any route of healing to cessate the violations in the first place. There is a reality to the underworld of all these things being manifested in the entire ways in which we do things, the systems of operation we create and have founded our societies upon and that are often present in the very people we have given the authrotiy to make our decisions for us.
Finally, there is a reality to how we have consturcted a system that silences, kills, diagnosis or medicates any one of us who may be aware enough to recognize these crimes against humanity and ecology and deems us the crazy ones, rendering our insight unvalid, our rights limited, our deaths more than a possibility. |These dark reflections that continue to live and breath inside me, i still remain afraid to speak aloud as a result of all of the aforementioned factors, so here for the first time i make my voice known.
As much as spirituality and inner work offer a new way, a fresh paradigm or living entity that creates new avenues of hope, i wonder sometimes if it also acts as a blinder, a way to pretend these ugly scars are no longer there, a white washing of everything real into some better intended reality, especially when we can just chalk it up to someone's projections within their living dream. How do the two unite? Or better yet, how do i begin to bridge these divides in order to carry forth the truths that remain important to me. As much as i would like to, i still carry a strong resistance to sitting on my meditation cushion and chanting away my pains in the midst of these everyday realities that continue to be experienced by so many. For now, i am a bit immobolized and realize that before anything can ever be brought forward from me, i need to heal some of the far too open, far to bruised and annihlated parts of self, build the resiliency neccessary to walk forward in wisdom and not naiveity, that i may walk in confident knowing as opposed to offering myself up as the sacraficial lamb. The work has to be done carefully, meticulously, with the wisdom of the white owl indeed.
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