Darkness.and.Dawn.

One of my two best friends from rehab killed herself a few weeks ago.  But for our alcoholism, our lives would have been parallel lines that never met.  Instead, the trajectory forms an X; life lines meeting briefly in the middle.  Such disparate beginnings, such opposite ends, stumbling into each other in our drunkenness, gliding away from each other with promises and high hopes.  I cannot decide if our paths were preordained, an effort of will, or simply random float.  I cannot comprehend how one of us ended there, and the other, here.  Why mine became sobriety and hope, while hers remained misery and darkness I continually ask.  It is easy to claim that the wings of some sort of spiritual grace have flown me here; it is easy to denounce the existence of that grace in the face of her continued wretchedness.

I lay aside the constant question, for I cannot find an answer.  Instead I ask for the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.  I cannot change her pain, her loneliness, her struggle, and I cannot change her death.  I can somehow find my own serenity in the middle of it all, though sleepless nights are more inclined to contemplation than serenity.  It is easy for me to recognize that we collided in pain, that the string of melancholy running through and underneath and slipping to the surface of both of our lives is what bonds us together.  But perhaps I can begin find our connection in joy.  I wrote the other day that I was so grateful for the darkness before the dawn, because the dawn is so beautiful right now.  I didn’t even realize as I wrote it that perhaps it was my answer – my friend’s name is Dawn.  So once again, I let go, I surrender into her darkness, knowing that it helped to bring about my dawn.

Sacred Valleys. Sacred Journeys.

Matty and I spent last Tuesday at Waipi'o Valley - also known as the Sacred Valley of the Kings. It was a soul-changing day of gorgeous scenery and incredible people.  

Waipi'o begins with a tiny, one car-width road carved into the cliff.  It travels straight down an incredibly steep path into the valley, dropping 1,500 feet in 1 mile.  The right edge of the road overlooks sheer cliff, the valley looming below.  The descent felt like dropping into some forgotten Eden, a midway point of sorts in the journey to the Underworld.  Surviving the rugged road, you must then maneuver through what should be puddles in the road.  In realty, they are more aptly described as ponds or pools of perhaps shoulder-deep water.  As you round the bend, the valley opens to the right.  You are hit with breathtaking expanse, a gorgeous black sand beach and the pounding ocean waves; back to the left is the valley itself, tucked inside 2,000 ft cliffs, rich with green green green vegetation.  We picnicked on the beach, frolicked in the surf, and began our hike. 

Access to the trailhead first requires a mile slog through the black sand beach.  The deep black sand is soft and light, an almost fluffy consistency.  You can feel the sand exfoliating your feet as you walk, slewing off layers of dirt and skin, years of pounding through life is released into the sand.  Its fluffiness also causes you to sink deep with each step, using muscles you didn't know you had to pull yourself out and into the next sinking step.  You hike along the beach heading straight toward the base of a cliff jutting into the ocean - an imposing and masterful sight.  When you arrive almost face to face with the cliff, you take a sharp left, and find the trailhead into the valley.  

After walking only two minutes, you forget that you were ever on a beach, for suddenly you are in the densest of rainforest vegetation.  It's barely a trail, surrounded by thousands of varieties of trees and plants and flowers and fruit.  It's dark, almost muggy but not quite.  And now you feel as though you are entering the mouth of a cave made of vegetation, a cave that leads you into the dark Underworld, the place of Gods and spirits and overwhelming power.  The trail winds along the base of the cliffs along the outside edge of the grassy valley.  Occasionally the leaves break, and you can see out into the spectacular expanse of green that constitutes the valley floor.

The valley has a long history - it was home to Hawaii's kings, and was once the center of civilization on the Big Island.  Within the valley still exist numerous temples and burial sites from its days of splendor, along with many shacks and small farms, the only remnants of a once thriving farming economy.  Taro (the main subsistence crop of Hawaii) farming flourished here until a massive tsunami hit in 1946.  Since then, the valley lies largely dormant, interspersed with the remaining farmers alongside communes of the hippy Rainbow People. They forsake the modern world and choose instead to live secluded and simply within the forest.  As you forge your way along the often barely existent trail, almost hidden gates and pathways emerge to provide glimpses to small shacks and farms.  The occasional rusted out truck sits on the hill, part of the forest now, with vines entwining its crevices and sucking it into the forest.  As you travel deeper and deeper into the darkness of the vegetation, the very existence of the outside world begins to fade, to seem impossible.  The valley pulls you in, coaxing you into relinquishing that ever-vanishing world of technology and fastness.  I considered renouncing - joining the Rainbow People, never to be heard of again in the trifling digital land of blogs and facebook and cellphones.

 It was as if I could feel the sheer cliff walls and the valley itself breathing. 

After about an hour, the trail dead-ends directly into a 1,400 ft waterfall that falls in about 7 sections.  Only the bottom three falls, cascading into gentle pools, are visible from the ground. The rest of our party decided to brave the cliff and climb up into the ascending (or I suppose descending) waterfalls and pools.  

While spectacular, the journey into the valley was also one of emotional heaviness for me.  I was in the peak of working through feeling ugly, small, inconsequential (see previous post).  On the trail in I both was and felt alone, trapped between the young men who were eagerly forging the trail far ahead of me, and the older adults huffingly bringing up the rear far behind me. I felt like a three year old again - wanting so badly to keep up with the big kids, but my little legs just couldn't carry me fast enough.  I was in no man's land, physically and emotionally.  On top of that, I was being eaten alive by mosquitos. I had to laugh: I've been battling with being The Sensitive One - often sickly, everything affecting me more than the normal person.  I spent four days in the hospital shortly before we left for Hawaii, and had determined that on this trip I would find my strength, power, adventure.  I cursed the irony that even in the middle of the Hawaiian jungle, soaking in spiritual power greater than I'd ever felt, I was still the sensitive one, the only one of our group to get any mosquito bites.  No matter, I trudged on.  When we reached the waterfalls, a little voice inside told me that instead of the forced aloneness of the trip in, I could choose aloneness for the trip out.  So while everyone else climbed up the waterfalls, I turned back, and braved the trip alone.

It became akin to a journey out of the underworld - I left behind any need for encouragement and validation, to instead forge my own path.  As I breathed with the valley, I breathed in peace.

It was an incredible experience to be alone in that expanse of sacred land.  I came upon a troupe of wild ponies (who have proliferated after being left behind from the tsunami).  Graceful white birds alighted on their backs while they chomped the thick grasses.  After emerging from the forest, I sat on the lava rocks along the shore of the ocean, and watched the sky change from piercing blues to soft rose and peach, all the while the surf pounding the shore with both spectacular force and soft grace.

It was a glorious experience.

 

White.Blue.Blonde

The white skin, the blue eyes, the blonde hair.  They have afforded me so much in this life.  By their birthright acquisition, my existence has been privileged in a way I may never understand.  There is a gulf between my white and blue and that of the dark and brown.  Simple colors, vast dichotomy. 

When I was very young, the world around me was a place to manipulate with my imagination.  I spent blissful years - remembered only in faded feeling - living connected, living wondrously free.  That moment came though, that moment in which we become aware of The Other.  Instantaneous in that first awareness comes a second, the awareness that The Other judges us – not for the quality of our imagination, our wonderment at the world, our kindness or joy, but for the externals, the visuals. The cruelty of visual judgment must have hit me hard.  Not because the judgments I received were cruel – my white, blue, blonde must have afforded me positive judgment, but because my sensitive soul felt deeply the unjustness of the existence of that judgment.

I would later spend years obsessed with that judgment.  I made every attempt to favorably control it, as if by (visual, behavioral) perfection I could insert my hand into your mind, and wiggle my fingers into the creation of a positive ruling of me, by you.  The privilege afforded me by my features was one so complete that I was oblivious to it, only able to see those features as not enough, as lacking.  The blonde wasn’t blonde enough, the skin, once creamy, was now pasty to my own cruel, judging eyes.  I began to manipulate my world again, not through imagination this time, but through hair dye, self-tanner, and behavioral masks.  I manipulated my visuals to look however The Other had deemed it best to look - tan, blonde, skinny.  I behaved how The Other had decided it is best to behave - quiet, nice, compliant.  Every ounce of my energy went into the creation of an appearance, through which I hoped, believed, convinced myself would result in positive judgment.

I received a lot of confirmation in my quest – initial confirmation at least.  I acquired superficial attention that left me feeling empty inside.  It created a greed, a constant need to fill myself up with the superficial, the external, but as it always left me emptier than before, I always needed more.  Finally, exhausted, drunk, and lonely to my core, I gave in.  I gradually let go of my need for You to judge me.  Over the past two years, I’ve let go, piece by piece.  The behavioral masks went first.  And now, the visuals.  Which are proving much harder than anticipated.  I stopped buying the self-tanner. I force myself to let my hair air-dry, wild, free and half curly.  I leave the makeup in the bag, the curler and straightener on the shelf.  Grudgingly, I apply sunscreen.  I have promised myself that my physical manipulations will cease, at least temporarily, and I force myself to sit with the discomfort, the pain. 

Even as I write, I am cruel to myself, a voice that I am just now beginning to realize I don't have to listen to, is telling me that I cannot write this, I sound superficial and silly, and will be judged as such by you, The Other.  But I know that it is more than superficiality, it is a journey towards letting go of my need to be judged by you in order to exist.  It is deciding that I will exist on my own terms.  I will decide that I am pretty, not because of the blue, the tanned white, or the white-blonde, but because of my imagination, my wonderment, my kindness and my joy.  I will decide that even those parts of myself that are unattractive are worthy of love.  I will sit through the pain of feeling small, ugly, and inconsequential, knowing that the only way out is through.

Waist Lake

Collapse.  Flowing downwards and outwards into a puddle.  I can feel the essence of me, wanting to release, to flow down into collapse. Icy blue, clear liquid.  Strangely (or not so strangely) reminds me of vodka.  Liquidy, but viscose.

I fear that to let go means to collapse into the other.  To fall apart, let go of all the boundaries and containment, flow out into a puddle, and let someone else contain me in.  The ache for the comfort of someone else’s arms to scoop me up and hold my essence together.  It gets awfully tiring holding it all together myself.  I’m too weak, too fragile, too small.  I’m the ethereal myth.  The glass unicorn.

To hold on means striving, willing that essence strictly upwards.  The fear of letting go is immense, and I wasn’t even conscious of it.

On one side, there exists heated red energy directed upward; it is controlling, containing, holding.  Constantly moving forward, learning, growing, facing the battle.  There will be no collapse!  The opposing force is liquid, clear blue, wanting so very badly to fall down to earth, to be let go of, to spread out.

In combination.... First one, then the other. Back and forth, back and forth, until the edges blur.  A misty purple appears.  Heat flowing down one leg, cold flowing up the opposite arm.   From upward and downward, they meet in the middle, and go – outward.  Suddenly, I have a lake encircling my waist perfectly contained as if in a big white ceramic bowl.  A lake in a bowl, and I’m in the middle.  Suddenly, I realize, I can let go without collapse.  I can spread out within my own containment, without needing to become a victim and make someone else pick up the pieces. 

Floating on my back, propelled around the lake by my legs, kicking lazily.  My arms behind my head, nonchalantly.  And for the moment, I like being all alone in my lake.

Spiritus.Contra.Spiritum.

Does love equal pain?  I was determined to write a blog entry today (and was doing a fabulous job of procrastinating by checking facebook every two minutes) when I saw a friend’s status update that read – “It is amazing how quickly the mind can turn pain into romance.”  An eloquent statement of the issue I’ve been contemplating. 

           

            I’ve always lived in that region below (or above) the surface – the region where the colors are more vibrant, the emotions more intense, the connection deeper, darker, and lighter all at the same time.  It is a fantastical, vivacious, and awe-inspiring place to be.  It is also a dark and wrenchingly painful place.  Eventually, the pain became too much, and I faced a choice: slow (or maybe quick) alcoholic death, suicide, or getting sober.  You’d think of the three alternatives, the choice would be easy, but it honestly took a lot of deliberation.  Getting sober required letting go of the intensity - my greatest fear was that I would lose the vividness, that life would become … suburban, beige, normal. 

            Jung’s writings to A.A.’s founder Bill W. reveal that he viewed alcoholics as those searching for a connection to Spirit (to the Divine, to God); alcohol provides a version of that connection, but perverts and twists it, until you find yourself in hell.  In his words:

            “His craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in mediaeval language; the union with God. . . . You see, Alcohol in Latin is ‘spiritus’ and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison” (CG Jung, 1961). 

Therefore, the only solution is to find a real (real meaning non alcohol-induced) connection to Spirit.  As Jung said, “The helpful formula therefore is: spiritus contra spiritum" (Ibid).  Which translates to using spiritual communion against the addiction to alcoholic spirits.  And for me, Jung was right.  His formula worked.

            So here I am, almost 21 months sober.  I walked through my fear of beigeness, and let go of the vivid colors, trusting (against my better rational thought) that the real connection, the real Spirit, the real Divine would have colors brighter and more alive than any drunken facsimile could have ever provided.  And yes, it got beige sometimes.  It still gets beige sometimes.  And I struggle.  For I have grown up with the belief that those colors don’t exist without pain.  The belief that connection, that love, that the juice of life is inextricably tied to anguish.  I am (slowly) beginning to see that real love (both human and divine) is not the fantastically romantic ache that I thought it was.  That there can be love without drama, without the epic, mythic proportions of Romeo and Juliet.

            It is easy to fall into my old underlying belief patterns, and the voice of that mischievous spiritus archetype starts cooing to me again, and I become nostalgic, turning pain into romance.  So I let go, a hundred, a thousand, a million times.  I struggle through the daily beigeness because I have seen glimpses of the true colors, and they are incredible.  For me, now, the true colors happen in a quiet, unassuming way.  They are no longer fireworks, but they also do not burn me.  And in their quietness, I find peace. 

Spiral.Way.to.Wisdom

“Far away from Demeter . . . the daughter was playing . . . gathering flowers . . . There were irises and hyacinths and a narcissus which Gaia grew as a snare for the girl. . . . And then the girl too wondered at it, she reached out her hand to take this thing of such delight, but [as she did] the earth gaped . . . and He Who Accepts So Many, the lord of the underworld, sprang upon her with his immortal horses . . . and caught hold of her . . . and took her away, weeping in his chariot of gold.” – Homer, Hymn to Demeter

            In his Hymn to Demeter, Homer tells the famous myth of Persephone, whose abduction and rape by, and subsequent marriage to Hades, made her the Queen of the Underworld.  The child bride was eventually rescued by her mother Demeter, but because she had eaten the fateful pomegranate seed, was condemned to return to Hades and the Underworld for three months every year, incurring the dark, cold winter above.  The myth is classically interpreted as an explanation of the seasons, but is also an allegory for the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.  In Jungian terms, it is an example of the journey into the depths of ourselves and our shadows to become reborn again in the light.

            “In response to loss, powerlessness or abuse, many descend as Persephone into their own wintertime of shadows and depression, to a darkly lit journey of the soul, struggling with a profound sense of betrayal and lost innocence. Triggered by divorce, rape, or an invasion of boundaries by a toxic circumstance, the archetypal experience of Persephone's journey challenges us to go within our deepest Self, to re-evaluate, and grieve our losses. Depression is a natural response to soul wounding experiences, and if approached without judgment, much healthier than denial. Often the only way through – is down. This is the spiral way to wisdom. Into the dark and unknown" (Kari Ann Allrich).

I now have no doubt that my journey through the underworld was transformative, although at the time it felt only like anguish.  I spent those years walking with my demons, my nightmares, my self-imposed shame and guilt.  A little like living in the seedy underbelly of a circus, replete with wacky funhouse mirrors and murderous clowns, only more … alone.  Visceral loneliness.  Combined with constant drowning.

            I can’t say why I started breathing again, and floating to the surface.  Perhaps I’d finally spent enough time with my demons to have absorbed from them what I needed.  Perhaps it was the breath of the Divine.  Probably some combination of the two, but the exact ratios and formula remain a mystery to me.  I can’t say why anyone emerges when they do, but I believe there is a spark of Divine Grace contained within that moment, and it is a beautiful thing to watch – the breath of new life reviving someone.

"The alchemical journey of Persephone is the journey we all eventually embark upon; often kicking and screaming in protest. We may not willingly enter our shadow selves, endure depression, or confront our fears and the meaning of death, yet such an exploration leads us to uncover our spiritual center. It challenges our beliefs and pushes us to deepen our awareness, to question our values, and to discover our innate connection to the divine. It leads us to soul. And soul leads us to magic. Magic happens when we align our true intention with the divine spark within. Ego and will may dictate our desires, but soul work beckons us to discover our authenticity. Magic happens when we open our hearts in compassion and allow the divine to gift us with insight, synchronicity, and grace” (Ibid).