Feeling Lost

I don't like spending time with the dark parts of myself. I am a being who is usually very much drawn to the light. I'm not talking about day and night here, but inner realms and experience. I am not drawn to negativity, pessimism, depression, or hopelessness. Not that I don't experience them in my life, because surely I do. But I am naturally drawn to joy, optimism, love, and effervescence. Angela "Blueskies" is hugely fitting to the state of being that is most natural to me. But it's been quite a while since I inhabited those states of being on a regular basis. My name right now may as well be Angela "Thundercloud."

Anger has been barging its way into the hopelessness and sadness these last few days. At first, I thought it was coming along with my cycle, the usual anger and aggression that often accompany it. But this has lingered and intensified. There is a track in my mind that feels like a tiger, waiting silently, patiently to strike to kill anyone who crosses me in the slightest way. This part imagines confrontations, and imagines scenarios and outcomes that involve tremendous violence in words and actions. Now, I haven't been acting upon any of these scenarios, but I have been watching them, especially these last couple days. I haven't even seen any point in leaving the house. It seems that when I do, unbelievably frustrating things happen.

The question that has been a recurrent mantra in my mind has been "what is the fucking point of any of this?!" I feel like a hamster stuck on a wheel, or at least in a little shitty cage. But I KNOw that I'm that hamster, stuck on a pointless fucking wheel, inside a prison of a shitty cage, and I KNOW that there's more outside of it, and yet I can't seem to find the way.

I have experienced firsthand - in ceremony and in meditation and in community - the most incredible beauty in this world, in this life. I have felt the sublime power of love. I have felt held in the womb of Mother Earth. I have seen things I couldn't have ever believed, and felt things that called into question everything that I have ever known. And in spite of all of that, the death of Familiar kitty has marked life with a heavy darkness. And part of that darkness has disconnected me from those truths that come from living in the Light. I remember them as a novel right now...characters and scenes from a life that are bound to the page, yet not my own.

I posted a question on Facebook the other day: "What gets you out of bed in the morning?" The answers that I received were depressing beyond my imaginings. I also had included an aside to that question, "besides the alarm clock or coffee," hoping to suggest I was looking for the *meaning* of getting out of bed in the morning. Not once person who answered went there. The answers? The dog, the cat, the kid, hunger, needing to pee. And honestly, these are the things that I have been feeling in my life, lately, too. Never before have I felt like I got out of bed for food or a piss. I got out of bed because the light of day pulled my spirit into the world to LIVE. But right now, I am feeling that I, too, get up to eat, poop, and sleep again. And after living my life from a place of intense meaning and connection, living with these things as my drives is the most devastating thing I have ever known.

I cannot wake up in the morning and get out of bed if all there is to my life is eating, pooping, making money, and sleeping again. If that's all there is, then let me die right fucking now.

I already know, somewhere deep inside of me, that there is way, way more to life. But when I try to go there, it's as if I'm dumb or something. Like the part of me that knows that has been blocked off somehow. And yet the question, the longing remains. I know that a new pair of fuzzy boots is a great thing, but it doesn't give meaning to my day. Stuff doesn't give meaning to my day. Material things don't give meaning to my day. Their absence can be a pain in the ass, for sure - as it was tonight, when I discovered that the tape deck in my car no longer works, and that is what I use to play my Ipod - but that's not living and dying. It's a fucking tape deck. And the boots are fucking boots. I also know that getting rich and buying a fancy car and house won't give meaning to my life. It's just more stuff that might make me "comfortable" and make me feel "abundant" but it's essentially just more garbage.

What about finding a partner and having a family? While these things certainly do add some sense of meaning to life, undoubtedly, and provide some sense of structure to daily living that is rooted in living communally, when it comes down to it, unless the deeper meaning of life is clear first, these things just become another path toward material living. Getting the right stuff for the couple, getting the right stuff for the kid. And good god, raising a kid in a material paradigm? That makes me want to die, too...

Anything external, really, is guaranteed NOT to add meaning to life. Those things are just distractions. It's the inner stuff that really gives meaning to my day. And it's relationships, too, the ways that these inner worlds of people (and animals) come together and create the world together. And right now, I am feeling betrayed by that. All those years of loving, and one day it's all gone. It's as if it never happened - except in my heart, that is. How is that fair??? When I go down this track of thinking, then I feel like there's no point to life at all, we're just waiting around to die. And it's no fucking wonder that all the religions have made up things like "heaven." That's the greatest comfort ever, believing that at the end of the line, we'll be reunited all together in one big angelic party, with harps and clouds and that crap. I don't buy it for a minute.

The Buddhists really do lay it all out with no bullshit. Change happens constantly, and there is no external God to believe in. All we can do is accept that everything is going to fall apart, and love in spite of that, with as much compassion as possible. Life is going to pull the rug out from under us again and again. And eventually, it will be our very own body that has the rug pulled out from under it. As much as I try, I can't find anything in that that encourages me to embrace a spiritual path even more fully than before. If anything, I feel inclined to come back to my original question: "what's the point anyway?" I don't buy into any of that heaven and angels crap, and haven't since I was a child. The coddling of religion offers me no solace at all. But I have been spiritually motivated for years - right now, I can't even feel connected to that.

Well, at least I am walking in circles with the question...

No Escape

Today, after a long and powerful acupuncture session, a bright rainbow emerged outside the window. The sky changed from blue and airy to a dark, bruised shade of gray, and there, in the midst of golden afternoon sunlight, this bright rainbow emerged. The light at the end of this dark tunnel for me? God, I sure hope so.

From the way that my acupuncturist, Star, described the treatment, it was basically a long process of clearing out energy, followed by a Chinese medicine version of the Soul Retrieval. I think she called it a "shin disturbance." And I was there for nearly two hours. What a blessing.

This summer in ceremony I found the part of myself that is just waiting for "it" to be "finished." I would find myself sitting in ceremony, which I had willingly and joyfully chosen to participate in, and there I would be, cringing and holding on for dear life, wondering when it would be over, bracing for the worst. And I would work to relax that reaction, calming myself down, reminding myself that there would be incredible wisdom in the process, and trusting that it would not kill me. Indeed, it didn't. And as has been the case so often in ceremony, what I learn within those sweet hours is infinitely important to integrate into the ways that I live in my daily life in the world.

All of this crossed my mind as I was laying there in the treatment room, with needles down my back. If this is ceremony - which ALL of life IS - what is it that I am being asked to learn and know and feel?

I am sitting with this in truth for the first time right now. What is it that this flatness and fear and meaninglessness and powerlessness are trying to teach me?

The first thing that comes to mind is how I am always looking for a way out. An escape. The part of me that believes there's an expiration date on how long suffering should last, or believes that I should be able to just push it aside. And god knows I have lived that way for much of my life! Fear is cowardly, sorrow is weak, and the rest of it is just plain inconvenient. But I know that these are merely harsh thoughts that don't want me to experience life as it is showing up. And the truth is that what is showing up right now is pretty damn persistent. Thank god there is acupuncture and massage and aromatherapy and Friday kitty! These things really do help. But the truth is this - I want out. I want to move on from the pain of heartache, but my nervous system just can't shake it all off so quickly. This sorrow that has come from the loss of a significant life companion will not pass with the sunset. And as long as I resist what is true, it will push back into my life. Can I honestly just show up and feel what I feel, let it exist for as long as it needs to? Today Star said, "what you are feeling is exactly what you need to feel." Wise words, words that I have often spoken to myself. But in the midst of a huge spin, these things seem too scary. And the more I withdraw from them, the more powerless I feel. The more powerless I feel, the more my mind reacts, and the more meaningless my life seems.

There is another part of my mind that has emerged in ceremony, too, that is involved here. The part that is afraid to be trapped on a hamster wheel, and says "oh, god, is this happening again? Will it always be this way?" This is another part that wants to flee, that feels like there is no growth, no change, no possibility. That part keeps wondering, will I always feel like this??? Will my heart always feel heavy, forevermore? And if it does, I just can't stand it!! But the truth is that change is always happening, I am never in the same place twice, and what will I do if it never, ever shifts...

The power comes in my choices. I can choose to accept exactly what I feel in each moment. I can choose to explore that with curiosity, and without labels. I can also choose to stay connected to the love and divinity beyond this momentary experience of discomfort. Instead of sitting around waiting to die, and waiting for everyone and everything around me to die, I can go dance or sing or play or watch the clouds in the sky. The truth is that I am dying in every moment, and so is everyone else! So???

I feel like the secret is in embracing my feeling in my body in every moment while not allowing the mind to dominate with its fears and imaginings for even one moment. Freedom to the body and heart, discipline to the mind...yes.

Dancing my way Whole

I have never been much on dancing. Sure, there have been times here and there when I have felt drawn to get all decked out and head to a club to dance - usually with all my favorite gay guys. These dance nights usually involved alcohol, and were filled with techno music about love and sex and the like. And while I have gone along with those dance nights, they have never felt comfortable to me. I never craved them. There was something raw and animal that was very alive in dancing in those environments, but the undercurrent of sexuality was always somewhat creepy to me. I never wanted to go dancing to check out men, and sure didn't want them checking me out too closely! As a larger woman, dancing has always made me feel like hiding in the corner. I mean, if dancing is part of the whole "meat market" of "hooking up" - as it has felt to me - then of what value am I, a larger woman, in a sea of skinny, "hot" chicks?

Well, I am endlessly grateful that I have been letting go of this kind of thinking over the last few years. Through Kundalini yoga, I began to release my fears about what would happen if someone saw my curves jiggling so much...and it has come in deeper and deeper to my way of life. As I have come to accept and love my body more, I don't feel so much like hiding. And tonight at the Dancing Lodge, that has been transcended more than ever before.

What a brilliant - if not new - possibility: that dancing could be a celebration of life in a much deeper way, of connecting to the Great Spirit that flows livingness through each of us! Tonight I *loved* dancing. Loved it. Completely. Uninhibited. Free.

If I am able to accept myself fully and completely, then I will be able to show up in my life without being afraid of how others will feel about me, how they might judge me, and *everything* is better. And if I am able to allow my body to be free to express itself without any fear of judgement, then I will inhabit every beautiful corner and curve and twist and turn and feeling that comes through this physical form, beautiful as it is.

Dancing solo. Dancing and moving, finding the ways that the body can move when given space for that expression. Patterns emerge, patterns are broken, moving and stillness flow one into the other, sometimes without warning. There is a kind of knowing that is within the body that is deeper than the mind. It is primal, instinctual, intuitive, it is its own rich expression of living. And to explore space - within and around me - was a beautiful adventure. The conscious choice to leave behind fear, to leave behind thinking, to just feel and move. Incredible.

Dancing in partnership. The beauty of being held and received as my body expressed my experience in this day. If my mind had had any opportunity to consider it, the answer would have been "fuck! I don't know how to do that!" And yet, given no opportunity to *not know* meant that the body had the chance to express itself before the mind could enter. What power there is in allowing dance and movement to tell this story. And moving into partnership, into trust with one person, then another, then another - oh, how many ways there are to dance with others in this world! Twirling one after another into the center of trust, letting life carry us forward with no fear, no question, only moving and connecting. I was deeply moved - in fact, I now feel like I know what trust actually means in a much richer way.

Dancing in community. Holding space. Aloneness and togetherness, dancing in rhythm. Oh, the joy of moving together, of savoring each person's sweet jewel of being. And to come together without the story, without history, without names, without reason, only to share in that togetherness. And even being alone is held sweetly within community. There is space there to be alone without being isolated - and that is a true gift. How many ways there are to dance, walk, sing, create, be in this world! To come together to embrace those different ways of showing up in all their beauty - oh, yes, this is the world I want to live in!

Dancing to the Great Spirit. Body as prayer. Motion as prayer. Breathing, sweating as prayer. Surrendering everything as prayer. This is holy, this is sacred, timeless, transcendent. And this is what I have been longing for deep in every cell in my body.

What if we could show up together, bringing all of our presence, and sitting aside the details of our lives, and embrace each other for no other reason than our shared humanness? What if that shared experience burned away the ordinary boundaries that keep us living in such separation? What if I could openly and freely express huge, powerful LOVE to a room full of beings without having any motive other than loving them, and loving myself? This is the world I want to live in.

Tonight I prayed with tobacco, asking that this heavy, tight, sharp heartache would be lifted. I prayed that this time of sorrow wouldn't shut me down further, protecting my heart from more pain from loving and letting go. I prayed that my heart would be stretched ever wider, so that I would be able to love even more, even deeper, so that I would gladly and willingly accept the pain that may come from loving so completely. I prayed that my heart would let go of this protection that has come through my nervous system, trying to keep me able to function in my body, in my world, in a time of such intense sorrow. I prayed that the fear that has been knocking at my door would be washed away in a flood of love and dancing that tonight's sweet Dancing Lodge Ceremony was sure to bring. And I showed up, fully ready to surrender everything to the fire of dancing.

I moved in more ways than I ever have before. I felt the sweet gift of bare feet on the floor, and sweat trickling down my back. I felt the joy of sisterhood, sweaty and swaying in a flow of connection. I felt the power of masculine energy, and the power of feminine energy, and the incredible appreciation we share for each other. I felt rose petals under my feet, dancing the joy of peace, and of living rich and fully alive. I danced the overwhelming sorrow of loss, and the blessing of a love that is so huge that this much pain could be possible. I danced in connection to all that I know, all that I love, all that is true and holy in this world.

And for the first time in almost two weeks, I felt really, really happy.

I prayed once more, after the ceremony had ended. I prayed that when my time to leave this sweet Earth comes, that I may be so completely centered in love and in the ways that I may serve this world through that love, that there is no room left for fear.

Gratitude to my Plant Teachers

I can hardly believe how chilly these mornings are becoming! I am sitting here on my porch, wrapped in a blanket as I write. Puffy white clouds are floating by, and there are four graceful birds soaring on the highest wind currents. Turkey vultures. Such wicked, gnarly looking creatures! And yet, as they fly far above, they seem to be one of the few species of birds that are floating for pleasure, riding the waves of the wind without hurry or imminent purpose. Of course, they are scouting for dinner, but with what abandon and ease!

The sun is bolder today, and I am yearning to feel it on my body...not much sun on the porch until mid-afternoon, unfortunately. The pink cones on the Magnolia are looking fuzzy, and turning a duller shade of pinkish-brown...oh, how this evolution thrills me, day after day, to watch the world changing in front of my very eyes! It's so easy to believe that things are the same, day after day...but when major change comes, it feels epic, catastrophic, or completely unheralded. But sitting here on my little spot on the porch, I am grateful to watch the world around me changing every day, little by little.

And as I contemplate the neverending flow of change, I, too, am remembering the space of Mushroom Medicine. It, like the other plant medicines I have worked with, takes me into a space of timelessness. When the intensity of the Mushrooms comes into me, I am tuned into a sound that I call, "the sound of eternity," a symphony of perfectly orchestrated birdsong, rushing water, and wind in the trees. This sound calls to me to leave behind the time-bound world that I inhabit in my normal waking life, and to sink deeply into the space of eternity...a place where change occurs on the microcosmic level, but where the constant is livingness, aliveness that persists beyond any brokenness, decay, or semblance of death. Aliveness that, too, transcends the apparent differences of trees and animals and rocks and earth and being human.

In my last ceremony with this medicine, nearly three months ago, I faced this truth - that Life - God - Universe - is indifferent to my little life and place in the cosmos. And it came to me in a vision that showed me the world as a two-dimensional grid of existence that was NOT beautiful or connected or alive at all. This, followed by an intense encounter with Death, sent me into a time of existential crisis. Everything that I felt connected to became distant. My spiritual path made no sense. I was filled with fear and meaninglessness, and felt lost, completely lost. Now, looking back on that encounter, I am grateful beyond words.

I grew up in the South, in the Bible Belt, in a culture that was infused with fear-based views of God and Jesus, and a lot of unquestioned attachment to the mythology that accompanies that way of life. I never felt comfortable within those circles of religion, but knew no alternative. As soon as I moved away to college -
Baltimore - I met people who held different views on life, on what was holy, on the nature of reality. What a blessing it was! I walked away from the Christianity of my childhood without thinking twice, and was grateful to shed such a limiting view of the world. Leaping forward to the ceremony above, what I have come to understand is that while I walked away from the religion and culture of my childhood, and changed my mind about so many fearful, dogmatic beliefs, those things still existed within my body. My entire way of being for the first 18 years of my life had not only created my mind, but had become part of the very structure of my body, too. And up until this past summer, I had only walked away from beliefs and feelings that didn't fit. I had never gone deeply into the way these old ideas lived on inside of my very cells.

In that Mushroom ceremony, I was shaken and unravelled beyond anything I had previously experienced. I now see that the worldview of my childhood was being shaken and unravelled out of my body. My cosmology was being brought into deep alignment. And all those old beliefs - that God exists outside of me, the nature of life and death, the meaning of prayer, and my connection to the divine - were being vigorously uprooted. What a blessing, but what a difficult process! And now, as I sit here on my porch, I am not unconsciously ruled by those old beliefs that color my experience.

I am endlessly grateful for the powerful plant teachers that have changed my life. I don't think anyone ever suggested that living a deep path of spiritual awakening could be like this! A process of meeting God by truly meeting myself. Of letting go of beliefs instead of adopting new ones. Of embracing my true nature instead of breaking that nature into something more manageable, less sinful, or whatever. Of relaxing into myself, of resisting nothing, of allowing my heart to lead me. Of being who I am, instead of creating a better version of myself. Of abandoning any path of seeking outside of myself, and allowing the revelations to come from within, and trusting that with all of my heart. No, no one ever told me that if I wanted to meet God, that I would find that presence within every cell in my body, and within every living thing upon the Earth. And truly, no one ever told me that knowing these things would bring me more humility and compassion than anything I could imagine those words to mean.

Cycles of living and dying

It's a cool day, really feels a lot like fall right now. The sky has gone from cloudless and blue to a bit overcast, and as the wind blows the trees - and wind chimes on the porch - a few more leaves are falling to the ground. There is a fragrance of surrender in the air, something sweet and soft, and I feel it in my body, too. I think one of the reasons I love the "between" seasons the most is this feeling of constant change in the air. Winter often feels like it will last forever, cold and dark, keeping me inside. Summer also feels timeless, hot days by the river, I wish they would last forever. But Spring and Fall really speak of the fact that *nothing* lasts forever. Flowers erupt from the ground with a force that is awe-inspiring, bringing life and beauty to land that was recently frozen, barren. And Fall bows in graceful surrender, that none of this brightly burning livingness could return unless there was a time of letting go, of dying and returning to the Earth.

Death and dying have been on my mind recently. In the summer, for sure. But really, death and dying have been on my mind since I was nine. That winter, my grandmother passed, and I began to understand for the first time this strange truth that people are born into this life, and that they eventually leave it, too. This summer, death and dying became real to me in entirely new ways.

In this moment, I am remembering my friend Laura, who passed in August. After a particularly long struggle with cancer, she surrendered, and I got the emails from her family in her final few days. When the day came, I was far, far away, in Peru. And I felt such a mix of things. Grateful that she had come to the end of a long time of suffering. Sorrowful to know that she will not walk this Earth again as she was in this incarnation. Also, sad that it had been so long since I last saw her. I still remember it well. The last time I hugged her and told her how much I love her was in February 2008 - at my graduation from Goddard. In my speech, I shared a quote from Joseph Campbell, and she had loved that quote. She had looked stronger, healthier that day.

Earlier in the summer, I had come into my own encounter with death. In my ceremonies, I had occasionally experienced a powerful death encounter. And in my own life, I have had a couple of close brushes with death, too. But one ceremony this summer really brought me to face death in a whole new way. In that particular ceremony, I was facilitating, and I now realize that I should not have been. Regardless, I found myself deep in the woods, deep in the throes of the journey, and then it began to rain. In the midst of a ceremony, there is no sense of the passing of time. What is happening in any one moment feels like eternity - and that is one of the blessings of the medicine, for sure! But the rain that came in this particular journey was very strong - a cloudburst. We were more than 30 minutes by foot from "civilization," down a rather secluded trail by a river. There were only a couple of people who knew where we were, and there was no cell phone signal. The rain was cold, and I began to panic. I was shivering fiercely, and recalled stories of people foolishly going into nature without enough clothing and gear...my shivering intensified, and I feared hypothermia. I panicked, and foolishly decided that we needed to leave the woods. In the most intense part of the ceremony, there we were, walking hand-in-hand through the woods, walking in circles. And the fear rose within me, it threatened to swallow me whole. I knew that my time had come, that death was breathing down my neck, clawing at my throat, pulling me into the ground. I have never felt so clearly that I was going to die. Every rope I reached for - hoping to pull myself to safety - fell to the ground in front of me, frayed and severed...metaphorically speaking. We did eventually make it out of the woods, and I clearly survived the event. But death haunted me for weeks.

In a profound ceremony earlier in the year, I had been asked right-out: are you ready to die? I declared that I absolutely was not! But the way it was shown to me is this - there are two responses to the question, "are you ready to die?" First one, and the one that I clearly faced in the above ceremony, is struggle. Responding in fear, resisting the inevitable. When are we EVER ready to die, really? But when the time comes, the choice isn't really whether to die or not, but how to face death. The other response? Surrender. Not the weak, collapsing, abandoning oneself to death that I had imagined. No, the medicine helped me to redefine surrender - a fully present, wholly conscious process of leaning-in to the thing at hand. Gracefully bowing to death, no resistance. In that particular ceremony, I was shown how to do this. Much harder than it sounds for sure. My ego had often claimed to have no fear of death. But I have learned through experience that the fear is there, and it is very real.

Fall seems like the perfect time to contemplate this kind of thing. Death doesn't always offer a season of preparation, sometimes it comes out of nowhere. But fall is the perfect time to enter into the truth that living and dying are the essence of the cycle of Nature. I am not separate from that cycle, I am intricately woven into it.

My Theory of Isolation

Yesterday I had a startling realization. I have been a devoted loner for much of my life. I have valued my alone time, and have guarded it pretty fiercely for much of my life. I have spent many a weekend night alone in my house with my cats, wearing my pajamas, relishing the treat of it! Ah, to have no commitments, to have no plans, oh the glory of a night alone at home, relaxing, doing only what I want!

When I was in college, I would regularly be visited by moments of panic while out with friends. Not that there was any uncomfortable situation that would arise, I would be hanging out at a bar or cafe with my nearest and dearest friends, and out of nowhere, I would have the urge to flee. And a good deal of the time, I would! I would bolt with little explanation. Social anxiety? Too much sensory stimulation? Self-esteem issues? All of these were possibilities in my reasoning, but I could never see clearly enough in the moment. I would just give some cursory reason, and bolt.

And yesterday, I had a startling realization, indeed: I am no longer a loner! Here I am, writing daily, talking daily of my deep yearning for community! I *want* to be with other people! What the hell happened to my intense need for solitude? When did this all change? What a surprise!

Right now, I honestly can't recall the feeling inside of myself that used to pull me into spending so much time alone, resisting spending time in the company of my other humans. What I am realizing is beautiful and totally new. The more comfortable I become in my own skin, the more I love and accept myself fully, unconditionally, the less I need to isolate myself to recharge. The less I need to be alone to be who I am. This is amazing!

Could it be that all these years, the reason I was spending so much time alone is that I couldn't be myself around other people? That I was so busy being who I imagined they would want me to be, that I was too busy figuring that out to enjoy myself, and that I would inevitably need a lot of alone time to make up for all that time play-acting? God!! I never really considered myself a phony, pretending to be someone else, maintaining a facade. But maybe I was. I definitely see the ways that I have held back pieces of myself, believing that they were too much to share with the world, that I was too much. And what a drain! To restrain myself from being who I am whenever I am in the company of other human beings!

Now I'm beginning to see the real fruit of my labors in ceremony this summer in Peru. How to truly accept and love myself...not just words, but the real thing. How to live in harmony with my nature as a human being, as a woman, as a spiritual being. Not, as I have so often done in the past, trying to create the version of Angela that is the most perfect, presentable, evolved...whatever. Can I love and accept exactly who I am, no resistance, no hesitation, no compromise, no matter what? Hell, yes! And this, it seems now, is the very secret to living in harmony with my fellow human beings as well. Or at least the *desire* to live in harmony with them.

How many of us "introverts" and "loners" and "sensitive empaths" are merely people like me, who on some unconscious or subconscious level are not able to just be exactly who we are without any pretense, effort, or fear of rejection? I can't speak for anyone but myself. But what I find now is that the things that used to drive me to flee just don't have the same power.