Different Ways #17, Sound of Silence, Part One
This might be the most important chapter in my memoir. It is the most telling regarding the inevitable aftermath of such an extreme experience as an emergence when it is not received properly. Perhaps this is the story that I am alive here to tell; the story that holds the most significance. What happens after such an experience? Evidentially, there is a lot of domestics to be done if one wants to stay in love all the time. It has less to do (at least, for some) with organics and the downward dog than it does with getting down and dirty with one's past...the lies, the deceit, the addictions, the violence...all that shame.
Real life for me after that was ever present - babies, bills and obligations remained right where I left them, pre-nirvana. All of my yet undefined and repressed sexual abuse and abandonment issues and the corresponding shame was rising within me to be healed. It layered right underneath all the free floating anxiety I sported over being a young mother with responsibilities and rent to pay. It showed up in ways I was reaching out to this mysterious friend who, for whatever reason, chose not to respond promptly fixing me to wait in my own stew. All things happen as they should and, I sincerely believe they happened for me and my children in the best way possible given the emotional mine field I was attempting to navigate.
Thank you for listening.
Different Ways, Chapter 14, The Sound of Silence, pp 100-102
I recall the eighties in California when I was around people who were "seekers" of enlightened states. Tofu and vegetables and macrobiotics were consumed in large quantities by many. I presume this was to purify the body in preparation for some kind of expected cosmic transformation. Long meditative states and yogic practices were dutifully maintained by many. I recall thinking (though I never said a word) "What the fuck do they think is going to happen to them?" It was my thinking that if they actually knew what they were in store for, they would bum a smoke and go back to reading Bukowski in a heartbeat.
At the time, I was jaded though attracted to the enlightenment trend. I had hidden the beautiful, sacred experience that I had no idea what to do with and I was afraid of it , too, because of the terrible slide back into my before life. For all I knew these pilgrims would actually have an experience like I did and know what was happening. Maybe they would not have to suffer such darkness as I experienced...though I doubted it. I felt spiritually betrayed. I was not able to understand at the time that there is no returning from such an experience without acknowledging the changes that I needed to make in receiving the gift of it. I was still stinging from my own brush with the cosmic because trauma was the price in a punitive mind set. Punishment was the only way I knew to frame it at the time. I thought my descent was a punishment for being fiendish in some way. I would have to wait for the alternative ways to envision a human life to be revealed to me so I could get over that.
Music: This mashup flew into my listening radar just as I decided not to add a song to this post. After I saw the video, I decided to go ahead and add it. Visually and audibly, it is accurate when two diametrically opposite images and sounds (in theory) are superimposed upon one another. The two songs are wildly different yet somehow - maybe by virtue of their familiarity - they work together seamlessly in the mind. This kind of chaos is something of what it was like to slide from an enlightened vibrational state and descend into a very carnal and linear vibrational reality. The counsel I received was like a melody arriving in a sinister costume mixing up what I knew all too well with what I thought could be possible and being unable to tell what was correct. This is what it looked and sounded like sliding into my darkest hour.
"Look out helter skelter
She's coming down fast
Yes she is
Yes she is coming down fast..."
Helter Skelter, The Beatles with music of Whole Lotta Love by Led Zepplin Mashup
Thank you for joining me here. The memoir Different Ways: Revealing the Feminine can be purchased through my website using a link to Village Books at AlltheDifferentWays.com. There will soon be an eBook version available with an independent retailer.
The BlogCast that outlines my intentions for this series of readings from my book, Different Ways, Revealing the Feminine can be found here in the post, Between the Lines.
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