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...

Layers of Mind and Feeling

I just made the difficult decision to extract my laptop from underneath Friday kitty's adorable position...he was so adorable as he sat there, covering most of the machine, as if saying "what...you did want your laptop, right? Well here I am!" Haha! And now, he is positioned partially on my other leg, under the comforter, purring wildly, but still begging with his eyes for my hands to abandon their foolishness and come to him. What a wonderful companion he is!

I am feeling an interesting combination of things right now. Not all are in agreement, either, but they are merely existing side by side within me, and I am making some effort to notice each one. The most noticeable feeling is one of joy and elation. I am feeling empowered, centered in my truth, and clear about my vision for the future, and how I can contribute to that. I am no longer lingering in a place of despair and powerlessness about my country and my culture...I feel that I do have some power to make choices and connect with people to create change, even if it is in small ways. I am grateful for my community and the sense of belonging I feel within it.

I am also feeling a sense of hopelessness, connected to the lingering presence of death's touch in my life. This part of me wonders what the point is anyway, why I should bother to try to make any change at all when in the end each of us will die to this world, pass on, and life will continue as before. And this gives me a sense of deep dread, of low grade fear. It makes it hard to enjoy any of life's gifts when haunted by this darkness. I am also grateful that in this moment, this isn't the most present part of my experience.

Another part of what I have been feeling is anger and outrage. There is a part of me that is not feeling enlightened and tolerant at all. That wants to lash out and judge harshly instead of choosing love and understanding. This part feels very much embodied in its responses, but very much mind-based overall. It is a part that is powerful, but in a power-over sense, not power-with. I let it run rampant for a while yesterday while writing in my journal, and wow, it had some serious harshness to fling about. But in the desire to honor and listen beyond the anger and harshness, I gave it space to offer its words.

One more feeling that I want to acknowledge is a lack of trust. Paranoia. The conspiracy-theory type of fear...one that only dances through the back of my mind now and then. This has been triggered several times as I have seen articles about the swine flu right now. In fact, two of my students are out sick this week with the swine flu. Apparently it targets teenagers...which makes no sense to me at all. So, my mind is off and running. I have read so much about vaccines for this illness, and how harmful and dangerous they are. I have so little faith in the western medical system - which seems to be mostly about business and making money - and it seems totally possible that this whole thing could be a manufactured illness...just another ploy to make money for the pharmaceutical companies, and to deliver even more fear to hundreds of thousands of people, making them more dependent than ever upon pharmaceuticals and vaccines and the like, to give them safety and security. Gah!!!

It is sad to me that it crosses my mind that our government would manufacture an illness and then spread it in hope of feeding much more money into the drug companies. Or even worse...one website suggested that the governments of the world have manufactured this illness together in order to control the population. While I don't tend to give my mind too much freedom to drown in poisonous ideas like these, it has crossed my mind several times. Especially regarding the plans in line for potential mandatory vaccination if the virus becomes a pandemic of a certain level. It seems to me to be absolutely unacceptable that the government would be given control over people's bodies in such a way...it is no different than rape, to me! And not only that, with so many reports of this vaccine for the swine flu being "pushed through" without adequate testing, and filled with chemicals that are potentially very hazardous...every red flag I have is raised. I have never felt clearer that I want NO part of this vaccine...

Phew...okay now...calming down...

What I am noticing behind the specificity of each of these feelings is a pattern. I experience joy when I am focused on the possibilities and creating life as I want to experience it. And I experience fear and anger and hopelessness when I focus on the problems and the ways that life controls me, and leaves me powerless to participate. And I believe in my heart of hearts that the former is the way that I want to live my life. I may not be able to change the world, or the country, or the government, or the culture, or any other human being. But I can change myself. I can do the work I need to do within myself. And I can plant my garden all around, seeing what things emerge as I continue to water them, creating the life I want to live. Power with. Yes.