I Have a Face and I Have a Voice
Well, I was The One in the group of seven on that most recent Saturday morning. I thought that I was complete with the conversation and, then, I was triggered by a story that carried mammoth implication for me in terms of how I had lived my life. The tears and the noise inside of me came in the torrent of a tsunami and all I wanted to do was to collapse my body into myself, in the recoil of certain nausea. However, I knew that, if I went into that place where it is so easy to hide my face, to not be seen, to stifle the noise, I would likely die…again.
The paradox is that, in the hours following – more than 24 hours to be exact – dying, as a means of getting away from ME, again (I have lived this so many times before) seemed like the easy way out, relative to other options unknown, out of mind and not considered. Dying to save my life? Some genius, I think.
I could not stand the intensity of the fire that was running though me – felt like scorching embarrassment, shame and shunning myself – me as fractal of my own family system – for, yet again, my perceived impropriety of arriving for my own life. Huge grief fuelled by seething rage underneath it all.
I am not, yet, fully done with it… I know that there is still more to be metabolized in itself. Good thing. Nothing for me to do but to choose to stay present to the reverberating feelings of chaos – what feels like the terror and rage of humiliation inside – and to breathe. In this dynamic tension that has felt like the death of me, I am choosing to feel, hear and see the GodForce that I am. There is always, in all ways, more.
What occurred to me, as I breathed myself through this state on Saturday past – God, it was ugly – was that, yet again, in the face of others, I had dropped into feeling inappropriate, small, insufficient. Neurological entrenchments run deep… until I, as my own new, gleaming shovel, uncover myself to wake up to pathways that I can now see.
Later, as I stayed present to the huge movement inside of me, I continued to run that pattern of dying, in the many following hours, as the easy recourse for safety as an inside job. I have raced that track all my life; I learned well from my mother, who would lean up against the fridge, when I was growing up, her forehead resting on her arm, and ask, ‘Why can’t I just go away?’.
Well, the truth of it is that she did… her compliance to propriety compounded to her own regret was the cancer that killed her. I don’t care how one chooses to look at it, it was the genius of suicide to me. ‘What genius?’ you ask. How many of us will die to be right?
Dreaming the dream of living a full, exciting and joyful life – and choosing death to change it for the better. Craziness! I do not believe that, in physical space and time, it works that way… or maybe it does… if one considers that creation ultimately propels itself by the void contemplating itself. The void is considered nothing material and all things potential. Paradoxically, ancient space knows that I AM both physical and potential, at one and the same time. It helps when I remember that; when I remember whom I AM.
Double binds of our own making – damned if I comply and damned if I don’t comply. A prison in and of itself – and a death sentence. I think that the Maori have got it right! Live fully, live alive, live awake, mindfully live both your entrance and your exit and everything in between as a celebration, then leave the planet as the Joy that you are. Nothing proper nor improper about that. It all just IS.
So, I thought I was done. Then, this afternoon, when I read Louise’s blog that spoke to regret for a life not lived in respect – for me, not rigged (rig = Louise’s mnemonic for respect, integrity and generosity of spirit), for both its physical presence and its potential, the wave of tears moved again.
Only this time, it’s different; I am allowing myself to stay present to the absolute rage that I am evoking as I am reminded of the shame, the disgust, the powerlessness that I have felt over the duration of my life – and in those moment’s, as well, on Saturday, when many, I believe, simply wanted to escape the truth of their own experience in the presence of mine; and, who, in the face of that, chose to hang out with me. On the holodeck of my life, I have created some stunning projections.
I have a face and I have a voice. It is not important to me that you know that. It is important to me, alone, that I know that… and that I claim it… that I now ‘grok’ it for me and in me.
I see you. I hear you.
I see me. I hear me.
Posted: May 7th, 2009 under Uncategorized.