Granted, I am an idiot in a multitude of ways… But then again, I contain multitudes…
Anyway…this is what the post is really about:
Adventures in attempting re-entry — Wow. It ain’t easy to figure out how to rejoin the “meat” world after over a decade of largely being bedridden/homebound or some combination of the two. The weirdest thing for me is that given my odd position and strange celebrity as author and editor of this site, my period of physical isolation was never done completely alone. I’ve had thousands of comrades following and walking alongside me on this weird journey of iatrogenic pharmaceutical injury and chronic illness...and I’ve been taken seriously by most of those many thousands of people, too. What a gift when most of us are not taken seriously or respected in the world at large. Yes, thank god, I know in my cells that I am not alone and that my experience is real because of all of you who also know. If I didn’t know that then the repeated gross and often humiliating and embarrassing failure at re-entry into meat world would cross the line and not be simply devastating but also discouraging to the point of absolutely giving up on humanity.
I know we’ve all come up against that place. Humanity. What a mess. But one thing we do have going for us is that having gone to the far reaches of the human psyche in pain and torture, we also understand something about every human being always. We are all equally vulnerable in the right (or wrong) contexts. We know this even if people who’ve never been tested have no clue. We know. And when they’re mean and nasty it’s because they’re terrified of that which we already KNOW.
We know about the worst of human pain and suffering and we are still here. We are still here and if we are honest and open about our experiences we scare the shit out of people. I suppose we can either get really angry and hurt or alternately start to get really soft and see how much pain these hostile people are in. (or all of the above!!) I got really angry and hurt and now I’m processing out of that. I cannot change these folks. I cannot change people who are so afraid of my experience they would have me silenced, institutionalized and drugged. I can, however, learn to stay out of their way and ultimately I hope to learn how to be with them too.
The fact is most people are terrified to an extreme but are not even aware of it. I now realize that I am tapped into the horror of the world in a sort of psychic sense. I feel it all. All at once. Our planet is operating on the fear of humanity. Humanity’s fear is destroying the planet’s ecosystem. It is making the world unsafe for everyone and everything. This is real. (there are also really wonderfully powerfully loving places in our psyches, but they cannot be honestly inhabited unless we also understand and embrace the darkness…for if we do not love the least among us we are not loving, period. This is because in fact there is no “least” among us and those perceived as “least” are often busy holding all the shadows that privileged people are projecting outward and away from themselves. We are one. When we turn others into “less than” we diminish our entire species and ourselves.)
When we feel it honestly and see it for what it is we see that most people are infected and projecting their terror outward…what is happening on the planet is totally out of control and no one wants to face it. That’s not really all that hard to understand. We all feel pretty helpless on our own so ignoring it and pretending we’re all-powerful in some sort of way seems to work for a lot of people in the short run.
And so, when some of us own and discuss our painful experience as human beings it’s simply too much for people who are in denial about their own terror.
Someday, I hope to have cleared enough to be able to say to the people who now silence me, “I see your fear. I feel your terror. It’s okay, I’m not a threat.” Until I know how to do that, however, I need to keep myself safe from others who cannot see how nasty and cruel they’re being in their fear.
Everyone really just wants to be okay in their great terror. Every human being is facing the same difficulty really…though it manifests in endlessly diverse ways. Some much harder to cope with than others. — “What are we doing here? What is life? Why do so many people suffer such abject horror in their lives? Why do I suffer so much? Why do relatively privileged (mostly) white people have such an aversion to sharing what they have with others who aren’t as fortunate to be born into privilege? Why, on a planet, where there is plenty for everyone do only a few hoard everything to the detriment of everyone else? Why on a planet with such a wealth of natural beauty is there no will to protect that natural beauty and wealth? Why?” — Sometimes, too, I can cease all the questions and just be with what is and that too is something that helps at times, but when the questions arise naturally they need to be honestly dealt with. We all wish we could know the answers to these ultimately unanswerable questions. I think with the questions ahead of us we can meet the world in ways to help answer them for ourselves. The answers can become apparent as we learn to love in this world that is generally too terrified to know what love is.
It’s so simple, easy and beautifully fulfilling to share what we have with others and yet most people only want to grab, keep, grasp and hold onto whatever it is they think they have…this becomes a contagion. The poverty in our hearts is the biggest poverty on this planet.
It seems that maybe I need to let go of this dream of community, yet my heart wants community. Individual isolated relationships with lovely human beings are amazing and maybe even rare in this world. I’m grateful for those that share with me in such ways and yet, I want more. I want the village. I want community and extended family in a world where that doesn’t exist anymore. I thought I was working on re-inventing how such collections of humans might be manifested, since clearly, the traditional village is gone and not likely to be resurrected. There are a lot of people wanting this these days, really and many are doing interesting experiments with community some of which I hope are successful. Right now I’m not sure there is a place for those of us who’ve been injured in this manner, those of us who are the most sensitive. I’m tired.
And so, right now, in this moment, I am left with the poverty in my own heart to deal with. It’s really the only part of the problem I can actually do something about. And so I continue on this healing journey to see what will be revealed next. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be as I continue in surrender.
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Posts that deal with fear and anxiety and terror.
See also: Fear and anxiety: coping, reframing, transforming…