Sticks

When I say: “pain offers understanding, suffering happens when we lose ourselves in pain” do you think I am blaming suffering on people’s attitude towards pain?

Some do.

I don’t.

 I do not blame anyone for suffering, but – and this is a very big “but” – I do believe everyone is responsible for it. Everyone who suffers. Everyone who is in pain.

Why do I say that? Is it because I am a cold-hearted, apodictical bitch devoid of empathy and without an ounce of compassion? Possibly, but even if that’s the case, still there is more. There is that it is by taking full responsibility for the pain, the suffering, that we achieve the power and the freedom to heal it.

As long as the pain is something that happens to us, that has been done to us by others (whether other humans, faith, destiny, God) there is little we can do to change it.

And yes, sometime the pain is overwhelming and sometime it is excruciating and sometime it is unbearable and even so – what’s so is what’s so. I can only heal and transform that which is mine to heal and transform.

Before I can affect it – I have to claim it. As mine.

It’s You.

August 28, 2013

Isn’t that a lovely stick? Inspiring and uplifting and what not? Truly a stick worth posting. Yet it begun like this:

Yup. This is how I felt the last few days, the last few weeks, the last few months, the last few … well, all my life, likely. Though there were times of clarity and times of denial, times of unconsciousness and times of presence. Lately I experience times of my trauma being up in my face so strongly, so clearly, so harshly that nothing but facing it is a possibility. So I am facing.

I am facing and I see pain that dates to my birth. I saw some pain from before that, hidden all the way back in the shadowy endings of the previous life but that’s irrelevant here. What is relevant is that what happened when I was one day old comes to light and demands to be seen.

There is pain there. Pain caused by neglect and fear and loneliness and … well, pain. The pain I was born into. The pain of my parents that made it impossible for them to surround me with nothing but love. There was no love. There was no love at the very beginning of my life and I look at it (again) and see how quickly it became my fault, how quickly I became unlovable and how that burden of blame and guilt crushed me, and then I realize that…

… that it was not my fault. It was not my fault that there was no love waiting to receive me when I was born. But it was my responsibility. It was my responsibility.

And this is when the strings, the cords and strands of trauma loosen up a bit and I see that it was all me, from the very beginning. It was all me. And it still is.

And then I see that the trauma that binds me and traps me is there because I keep it there, because I believe it, because I mistake it for reality. I mistake it for life. I mistake it for the world. And then I see that this trauma’s purpose is to create life that it wants me to have. The pain wants me to create more pain. The fear wants me to create more fear and the lack of love, the loneliness, wants me to be alone.

And when I see that — the bounds fall off. They do not disappear, no, but they lose their power over my choices. They lose their power over my perceptions. I can see them for what they are now and they can no longer blind me and mystify me. They can no longer pretend to be real.

And then they leave. They are not needed anymore and I am left in the world where there is love because I am love. I am left in the world of my own creation, designed by me in the process of loving, of accepting, myself.

You Matter

August 22, 2013

“Don’t think about me. Don’t think about how I will respond or what I want you to be. Just be what you are. You have to find yourself.”

This is what my husband told me today and I must tell you, I squirmed. For a few reasons.

First and foremost — because he was right, damn him! He said it when it should have been me. Me, the terribly wise and present person who thought herself oh so … whatever … ah, in short – I was ashamed of myself. My pride smarted because I could not deny the fact that he was right and I was thoroughly messed up.

Which was another reason for squirming? I am not supposed be getting messed up anymore. I am supposed to have outgrown it.

And then there was the fact that I knew he was right because I saw it before we had this conversation, and my seeing it made no difference at all. I collapsed nonetheless. Back into my messiness, back into the uncertainty and fear, back into the endless “what am I going to do with myself” questions, the “why am I here?”, the “what is being done to me?” questions.

Questions, questions, questions that plagued me and worried me and hurt me. Questions that made me scared of life, scared of the world, scared of myself.

I’ve been lost in them for a very long time, and then I looked up for just a moment and then I was myself again. Myself. Here. I could feel myself and there were no more questions. Instead there were my choices. Nothing was being done to me anymore – I was doing. I was choosing. I was creating. What? Oh, that mattered not at all. Answers mattered not at all because I was back and I did not need to look for answers anymore.

What mattered was that I was back, me — the creator of answers. And I was safe.

You Exist Outside Of Rules

August 19, 2013

Do you know what happens when I say: “God is love. Love for everyone and everything”?

Someone immediately asks: “included murderers and terrorists?” Sometime they add rapists, too.

And I say yes, included murderers and terrorists. And rapists too.

But of course that is not an answer that would satisfy anyone so I elaborate, like so:

“God might know, you see, that you, yourself, are God. That you are love, that you are the boundless, limitless and timeless existence . God likely knows that nothing wrong can ever happen to you because you are what God is, and there is no “wrong” in God. God knows that you did not appear at birth, nor will you disappear at death, but you will simply change, shift, transition. God might know that death is as wonderful an experience as birth is — a grand adventure, a graduation.

God will likely know that the pain and fear you experience, the suffering that plagues you, is caused by you forgetting who you are, and that it will pass eventually and you will remember yourself again. Because, you must remember, God knows that you are God, even if you do not know at times. Knowing that, God might see your pain and hardships as something you created yourself as an opportunity to outgrow it. From God’s perspective, from that place, murderers and terrorists would appear very differently than they do to a human, don’t you think?”

And then, of course, the inevitable response always comes: “Um, this doesn’t make any sense,”

which is when I say:

“Of course it doesn’t make sense. Its God we are talking about. In order for God to make sense to a human it would have to be a human invention. In order for God to make sense, God would have to be subject to the rules that are human inventions.

But God exists outside of those rules.

And so do you.

All You Are Is Love

August 9, 2013

“No! I will not look there, I can’t!” my mind screamed, I screamed in reaction. I pulled back, pulled back from the pain in my being, back into the pain in my body. The pain cut and clawed and tore. There was nowhere to run. I knew. I couldn’t, I shouldn’t try to avoid this. I knew that too. I touched the pain again, tentatively, only to collapse in a wave of dizziness and disorientation. The world melted into a liquid swirling mud, it made me nauseous, It made me dizzy, it drowned me, I could not get out! I had to get out! The panic rose, my hands shook, my head pounded. I must get out of this! Breathe, I thought to myself, breathe. There is no way out. You can not get out. You must calm down, you must open, you must … no! I will not face it! I can’t feel this! But I could not give up, not easily. Reactions I trained in, the drilled responses took over and run themselves even while I drove through the night in search of drugs. “Feel. Let it be, let it open, allow the pain, ride the pain” … my mind chanted as I drove to the hospital. I needed to get unconscious. I needed to feel the pain. I needed to kill the pain. I needed to heal the pain. I needed to let it open. I needed to make it go away. I could not stand it. I had to stand it. I knew I had to. The painkiller scrambled my thoughts, turned my mind into mush that drowned the vicious pounding in my head and I closed my eyes, willing the pain, the cutting, tearing pain, the agonizing, disgusting pain somewhere at the very bottom, at the very end, at the very beginning of me, to recede. To wait. To let me sleep. I woke up to it. It was right there, right under the surface. I sat up in my bed, propped against my pillows. I closed my eyes. I reached for it again. There was no panic this time, nothing in my body, nothing in my head. Only the pain. The dark, black pit with nothing to hang onto, disorienting, groundless, endless, cold. Empty. “Feel” I thought to myself “feel this to the very end” I thought, and I moved deeper into the blackness. There is no love here, I felt, there has never been any love here. I saw it now, I saw it clearly at the very beginning of this life, at the very beginning of my being human. No one has ever loved me simply because I was. Tears flew down my face. The thought cut through the blackness with a sharp, vicious slash. I doubled over, I run from the bed, into the bathroom. I crumpled on the floor. I wept hysterically. For a while. Silently. I opened my mouth and screamed. Silently. I did not want to wake anyone. This was mine. I came back to bed. I sat up, propped against my pillows. I closed my eyes. I reached for the pain. No one has ever loved me simply because I was. Now it was a statement not a complaint. Not an accusation. A fact. I moved deeper, the blackness brightened with an orange glow. Ah, I knew this place! I was here before. I remembered being here before. No one has ever loved me simply because I was. But then no one should. No one needs to. Only me. Just me. I am love.

The orange light flashed into a brilliant golden glow and then whiteness. A blazing whiteness. An endless all encompassing whiteness. I am love. This is love. All is love. This is what I am, this is where I came from when I decided to be born. When I chose to be a body. When I chose to be a human. When I was conceived – it was when the white love dimmed to an orange glow and then died in the darkness. The black, cold darkness. The darkness of pain and fear. Love was gone. And I was gone.
Tears flew down my face. My closed eyelids could not hold them. They squeezed between my lashes, slid down my chicks, fell from my chin, splashed against my chest. I opened my eyes. I looked at Christopher. He watched me. With concern? With fear? With interest? What did he see? Whom did he see? The white flashing love I once was? The layers and layers of fear and pain and trauma that covered me up, that trapped me, that squashed me? He looked intent. Serious. “I know why we don’t remember who we are, after we are born” I whispered to him. “I know why we don’t remember where we came from. I know why we don’t remember our past lives”. I spoke. He looked at me. He listened. “It is such a shock, you see. It is such a blow to come from love, from where there is nothing but love, from where love is what we are, to a place where there is pain. Where there is fear. Where there is trauma. The shock is so terrible, so hard and so sudden, that it knocks us unconscious. We black out. After that there is nothing left but survival”. But then, I thought to myself some moments later, we are what we are none the less, and what we are will respond when called, when invoked, when invited. It does not take wise words, I thought, to bring it up again. It does not take complicated computations, unshakable truths, sacred practices, subtle philosophies nor holly scriptures. It is enough to love to invite love to open. To invite who we are to open. To let us come back to ourselves, to what we are. Ha, it just might be that all we need is love, after all.