I need to do that post on Bamboo that's swimming around in my head, because when all this discussion is done, it relates to what I'm about to say, here.
I had a moment yesterday morning as I was waking, where a fissure in the iron armor suddenly appeared. Like a pressure cooker, a stream of Via con Diablos spewed forth, catching me off guard. B-u-r-n-i-n-g the shit outta me, I might add. White hot.
We have these corners of our minds - the blighted slums of the psyche built up from our formative experiences - that are so infested with peril we have stuffed them way down deep. Because our lives - our equanimity - depend upon doing so. We encase them in a sarcophagus so rigid, so steeled, so reinforced that it is a still and silent structure. The sarcophagus becomes a mirage of the psyche. Apparently quiescent, it begins to blend in over aeons of time, and we wittingly ignore its presence, shrouding it in the overgrowth of denial, in the landscape of our minds.
Trauma and recovery initiate tremors of the psyche. They quake our infrastructure in the most basal way, leaving hairline cracks. Radiation begins to leak, the poison spreads. It's one of those snowball phenomena, where it gains momentum and gets beyond our control too quickly - jettisons us back to Step 1 in a flash.
For myself, there's no eidelon that the 12 Steps are a once-and-done process. I know my psyche, my resistances. This will be a lifelong process, ever cycling in tautology. When I suck myself from the slough of denial, I fumble around in the process, groping, feeling the hard edges of that sarcophagus, and become afraid, very afraid, of its power.
I wanted to bolt to the keyboard, encode the crux. I discussed with one of you lately those moments where the compulsion to write comes, when you want to capture something before it slips from your mind as a dream does upon surfacing to consciousness - leaving you in its wake, feeling only a ripple of what has left you.
But, life got in the way, and it faded. So instead of that white-hot moment, you are getting the cool-down, which, in retrospect, is much more prudent.
I went through a certain series of thoughts and raw feelings - a mind maelstrom if you will - that led me to a mini-break down and - damn - recycling to Steps 1-3: a session of wailing, an anger-fest, a pool of hatred, and, finally, to an amazing revelation. Something that had never occured to me, before.
Be careful what you wish for, because if you ever by chance get it, and it's all that you dreamt of, and then it's taken away, it's the biggest mind-fuck, ever. When that ol' Higher Power starts re-arranging the life, to make His point. To tell you that His way is better. To make you what He wants.
And damnit if His way doesn't hurt like fucking hell, to get there. I will say I've had enough experiences by this ripe age to now know that the arrival point is worth the painful journey, in the end, and His concept of what is better is invariably better than what my paltry imagination can come up with. I'm not old enough for it to change my willfulness, yet. Not where The Dream is concerned.
Sometimes, we believe in something. We believe in it such that we remove our walls, our boundaries, are roaming freely, reveling in it, unguarded and utterly exposed. And when we do, we set the inner child free. Our inner child gawks in wonder, frolics in joy, takes in the scenery with the most essential virginity. And when we experience our inner child in such a manner, it is the fulfillment of the yearnings of the psyche.
And to have life rip such a Dream from our grasp in a trauma sends shock waves that will crush, cripple a psyche. Especially when it comes out of nowhere, with no prodromal symptoms. No spiral, no indicators, no scent of what was to come. Of course, as I process the grief, the denial will fade, and the indicators will present themselves. But, damnit, Time is moving so slowly. And wallowing in the acid of pain and grief seems endurable only so long, before we simply cannot endure, any longer. I have to pass out, and let God. I still cannot Let Go.
Such a mind-fuck, on an armored mind as mine, causes a prolongued bottom, a Step 1 where, like a wild mustang colt at the end of a lasso line, I choke myself by pulling, and yet I pull, until I drop from lack of oxygen. Refusing to Accept such a mind-fuck, integrate it into my new reality. My Now reality. No. No, God. I don't care Who You Are. Not my Dream. Bludgeon my knuckes, but I won't Let Go.
And it sent me to an epic battle of selves. One self wanted to fight, turn back the clock and re-constitute what was, fight it out with God, what Should be. One self want to go forward, but was left with the choice of Surrender, or Self-navigate. We all Self-navigate, don't we, until we have exhausted every corner of the maze, and finally just break down. We must get to our elemental state, broken to pieces, before we can Surrender.
The epiphany is coming in all this, but it's getting too long, so I'll stop here for today, and continue in Part II.
-The Traveler
I had a moment yesterday morning as I was waking, where a fissure in the iron armor suddenly appeared. Like a pressure cooker, a stream of Via con Diablos spewed forth, catching me off guard. B-u-r-n-i-n-g the shit outta me, I might add. White hot.
We have these corners of our minds - the blighted slums of the psyche built up from our formative experiences - that are so infested with peril we have stuffed them way down deep. Because our lives - our equanimity - depend upon doing so. We encase them in a sarcophagus so rigid, so steeled, so reinforced that it is a still and silent structure. The sarcophagus becomes a mirage of the psyche. Apparently quiescent, it begins to blend in over aeons of time, and we wittingly ignore its presence, shrouding it in the overgrowth of denial, in the landscape of our minds.
Trauma and recovery initiate tremors of the psyche. They quake our infrastructure in the most basal way, leaving hairline cracks. Radiation begins to leak, the poison spreads. It's one of those snowball phenomena, where it gains momentum and gets beyond our control too quickly - jettisons us back to Step 1 in a flash.
For myself, there's no eidelon that the 12 Steps are a once-and-done process. I know my psyche, my resistances. This will be a lifelong process, ever cycling in tautology. When I suck myself from the slough of denial, I fumble around in the process, groping, feeling the hard edges of that sarcophagus, and become afraid, very afraid, of its power.
I wanted to bolt to the keyboard, encode the crux. I discussed with one of you lately those moments where the compulsion to write comes, when you want to capture something before it slips from your mind as a dream does upon surfacing to consciousness - leaving you in its wake, feeling only a ripple of what has left you.
But, life got in the way, and it faded. So instead of that white-hot moment, you are getting the cool-down, which, in retrospect, is much more prudent.
I went through a certain series of thoughts and raw feelings - a mind maelstrom if you will - that led me to a mini-break down and - damn - recycling to Steps 1-3: a session of wailing, an anger-fest, a pool of hatred, and, finally, to an amazing revelation. Something that had never occured to me, before.
Be careful what you wish for, because if you ever by chance get it, and it's all that you dreamt of, and then it's taken away, it's the biggest mind-fuck, ever. When that ol' Higher Power starts re-arranging the life, to make His point. To tell you that His way is better. To make you what He wants.
And damnit if His way doesn't hurt like fucking hell, to get there. I will say I've had enough experiences by this ripe age to now know that the arrival point is worth the painful journey, in the end, and His concept of what is better is invariably better than what my paltry imagination can come up with. I'm not old enough for it to change my willfulness, yet. Not where The Dream is concerned.
Sometimes, we believe in something. We believe in it such that we remove our walls, our boundaries, are roaming freely, reveling in it, unguarded and utterly exposed. And when we do, we set the inner child free. Our inner child gawks in wonder, frolics in joy, takes in the scenery with the most essential virginity. And when we experience our inner child in such a manner, it is the fulfillment of the yearnings of the psyche.
And to have life rip such a Dream from our grasp in a trauma sends shock waves that will crush, cripple a psyche. Especially when it comes out of nowhere, with no prodromal symptoms. No spiral, no indicators, no scent of what was to come. Of course, as I process the grief, the denial will fade, and the indicators will present themselves. But, damnit, Time is moving so slowly. And wallowing in the acid of pain and grief seems endurable only so long, before we simply cannot endure, any longer. I have to pass out, and let God. I still cannot Let Go.
Such a mind-fuck, on an armored mind as mine, causes a prolongued bottom, a Step 1 where, like a wild mustang colt at the end of a lasso line, I choke myself by pulling, and yet I pull, until I drop from lack of oxygen. Refusing to Accept such a mind-fuck, integrate it into my new reality. My Now reality. No. No, God. I don't care Who You Are. Not my Dream. Bludgeon my knuckes, but I won't Let Go.
And it sent me to an epic battle of selves. One self wanted to fight, turn back the clock and re-constitute what was, fight it out with God, what Should be. One self want to go forward, but was left with the choice of Surrender, or Self-navigate. We all Self-navigate, don't we, until we have exhausted every corner of the maze, and finally just break down. We must get to our elemental state, broken to pieces, before we can Surrender.
The epiphany is coming in all this, but it's getting too long, so I'll stop here for today, and continue in Part II.
-The Traveler
1 comment:
The funny thing about this kingdom of blogs is that I find myself dropping in on someone in mid thought and I have to go back and find the beginning of the thread. That's what I'm doing here. I read your most recent entry with the intriguing title and I felt the need to go back to the start. or in this case Part I. Now, I'm off to Part II.
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