Death, Death, Death and Rebirth

Drawing by Kalil Cohen, CC BY-NC-SA

In the past year and a half that I've been rewiring my brain, the fruits of my labors grow juicier and more abundant, however the journey continues to get more difficult rather than easier. I attribute this to building capacity, to being able to take on the harder stuff I knew was waiting for me as I began this process but wasn't yet ready to deal with. When I am able to maintain this perspective on my experience, it feels really exciting and affirming that things are getting harder. At the same time, things are really fucking hard right now, and god damn it if I don't feel resentful about that. I've been fully committed to this healing process and diving deep for this long, so when is it going to get easier?

Many years before I started this process it felt like I was dying every single day. Every moment was a struggle, a conflict between my soul's truths and the world I was surrounded by. Eventually this faded back a bit to where I felt like I wanted to die most of the time, but it didn't feel like I actually was dying in the present moment. This was due to addressing certain major issues in between me and my true Self, including transitioning my gender and articulating and beginning to live my radical politics. For a while this felt okay, like a resting place in which I felt comfortable. Then my life began to fall apart around me again as my soul yearned for something more - for a more full expression of my true Self in the world. This is when I began this blog, began a new process of intentionally rewiring my brain. The underlying goal was to alleviate that feeling of wanting to die every single day, and for a while it worked. I felt more centered, more grounded, more connected to my emotions and my body. I had a greater understanding of my issues from childhood, of my triggers and areas for growth, a growing acceptance of my flaws and pain. This gave me respite, courage, faith, and deepened my commitment to becoming my true Self, to continue peeling back the layers of self-protection and hiding in between my soul and my current reality.

I turned to face the truth of my deepest grief, greatest rage, and looming fears, and that's when all hell broke loose. Here were the issues I had been running from for 30 years, the struggles that haunted me from birth, the reasons I had kept my emotions repressed for so long, had denied contact between my body and conscious mind. Suddenly, it feels once again like I am dying every day. It feels like the grief is too great to bear, like the rage is infinite and uncontrollable, like all my fears are coming true in front of me. I kept myself in tight control because I feared intense pain for which I would be unprepared. Now, as I loosen my grip, this is exactly what I'm experiencing. The deepest pain I've ever felt, and no certainty to cling to, no belief system that can make it alright. I am dying right now - my old self is dying as I write this, as I reveal this truth to you. Part of me believes this is happening because I am ready for this false self to die, and that it is making room for my true Self to be born in its place. Sometimes that explanation makes sense and brings me some measure of comfort. Simultaneously, that birthing process feels remote and unimaginable, possibly a chimera that will never materialize. I may in fact just be dying, never to be reborn, never to find roots or an anchor or solace from this pain. I know that I will probably never again have the illusion of control as a means of creating safety for myself. Can I feel safe some other way? Can I feel my own truth and my connection to the Oneness of the Universe so deeply that I am safe simply because I am connected? Can I survive this death process long enough to get to the other side? I do not know. At times I feel certain that I can and will - that I am experiencing this extreme deconstruction process because I am ready to be transformed. Other times I feel desperate and panicked, wondering if it'd be better to just die right now and get it over with rather than endure the slow and excruciating death rattles that I'm currently experiencing. Rather than death and rebirth, this part of the process feels like death, death, death and (hopefully) rebirth.

Inviting, Embracing, Accepting, Transforming

Come and Play by Robert Barber

Each new understanding I gain through my process of mindfulness, reflection, purposeful journeying and happenstance feels like a gift, a Divine offering in service of further self-actualization. As I weave my way through the uncharted aspects of my mind, my heart, my body, and my soul, I am learning to love and embrace the broken places, to invite and accept the shameful pieces, and to witness and integrate the hidden parts. Lately my experiences with judgment are front and center, and my relationship with judgment is becoming clearer, more pronounced, and more dynamically alive. I see this synchronicity of realizations as a sign that I am ready to examine and better understand how judgment has impacted me, and to integrate my memories and feelings about these experiences. Through this process, I am transforming my relationship to judgment - the self-judgment of shame, the other-judgment of criticism, and the universal judgment of misanthropy that I have carried around for so long.

We live in a judgment saturated culture - from reality TV and tabloids to standardized tests and zero tolerance policies, we all witness and experience harsh judgments on a daily basis. Yesterday, for instance, I witnessed students berated by a substitute teacher for "not having self-control" and put down for "not knowing how to think", I overheard someone call themselves "a lazy fat-ass," and saw a parent mock their child for "being too emotional". These experiences are just the tiniest slice of the judgmental states I absorb every day, and they affect me deeply. Judgment has been used against me viciously by my family, my culture, and my society throughout my life. These experiences caused me to shrink down into myself for protection and to repress the "unacceptable" pieces of myself.  I am only just starting to meet many hidden bits of myself that I squirreled away when it was unsafe to be seen, to be imperfectly me.

While it is hard to look at the vastness of the problem and the incredibly severe impact it's had on my own development, it has been equally painful to acknowledge how I took in this poison and made it my own - in the form of self-criticism and in my judgment of others. I took the weapon being used to injure me and used it on myself, then became the perpetrator, attacking others with the tool I knew so well, and which has hurt me so badly. This is nothing new - it is the classic cycle of violence we all experience in one way or another - and yet seeing it and naming it and acknowledging its impact feels significant. It is hard to admit that I have hurt others as I have been hurt, that I have participated in creating a lack of safety and a need for hiding, when I know just how painful these experiences are. I understand how these cycles happen, and I see this understanding of my own positionality as a gift, as an invitation to forgive myself for my transgressions - and to forgive those who have transgressed against me. And so I declare myself to be right where I am - seeped in judgment, poisoned by criticism, and on a slow and loving journey toward shedding these layers that keep me from myself and from those I love. I want to be a safe person for my self and for everyone I care about. I want to accept the imperfections of each of us - including accepting my judgmental tendencies and the repercussions these actions have caused. I am writing this here to be seen - to witness myself and to be witnessed by you. Thank you for being a part of my process, for listening and for reflecting on my words, for seeing my humanity and for believing in the process of growth and change.

Creating Enough Space for my Needs

Contortionist Kevin Sadrak 013 by Tim Evanson, CC Licensing

As I continue on my journey of self-transformation, change, growth, shedding, releasing, healing, and expanding into my fullness, I often find myself doing new things I never thought possible. I am slowly and tentatively beginning to stand up for myself, communicate my needs clearly, express my feelings, and assert my right to holistic wellness. All of these acts feel extremely risky. This is partly based on past experiences of trying to advocate for myself and being aggressively constrained by someone more powerful. At the same time, a large part of the fear is due to cultural brainwashing that tells me I do not have a right to take up space by having needs or feelings, that I'm asking for too much and getting too full of myself if I do so. I know that misogyny is a huge factor in why I am so afraid of taking up space, and am therefore politically motivated to defy the limitations that have been placed on me due to my socialization. This helps me understand my acts of resistance within the context of a larger process of human liberation to which I am contributing by creating more space for myself, and thereby helping others to create more space for themselves as well.

This framework does not diminish my experience of fear, however, and it does not make each moment of self-advocacy feel easier. My heart still races and the voices in my head still insist that I need to quiet down and constrict myself into the space others are offering rather than expanding into my full power. These voices shout that it's not safe, it's not reasonable, and it's totally unacceptable to state my needs and expect to have them accommodated. Even when I reach out to others for support, for assurance that I do have a right to be me, I am often chastised, doubted, and demeaned. I accidentally opened up to my family about an issue I was having and my struggle to find a way to meet my needs within the situation, and they were all very clear that it was utterly impossible to do so and that I needed to accept that reality and conform to the oppression I was facing. While the conversation was helpful in clarifying where the voices in my head originated from, it was very challenging to stay strong in my conviction that there is another possibility once I had absorbed their negativity.

Each time I manage to act in spite of my body's stress hormones kicking into high gear, in spite of  the voices in my head, in spite of my family speaking out loud those same limiting beliefs, I gain some small measure of freedom. I prove to myself and to others that it is possible to live a healthy, whole, self-realized life even within our oppressive cultural reality. These successes shine light on the small moments, the small interactions, that defy the dehumanizing reality in which we all live. These acts of self-advocacy are also exhausting and overwhelming. I hope that someday they won't each feel as scary, as potentially life-threatening, as they do now. Each time I speak up for myself and something actually changes because of it, I create new neural pathways that assure me that it is possible, reasonable, and even desirable to express myself more fully. This understanding of the positive neural impact of facing my fears helps motivate me to continue to do so, even though it takes a great deal of energy, will-power, coaching, comforting, and recovering each time I do so. I couldn't do this work without the support and guidance of others who believe in the possibility of another world. This is why having a community of people committed to self-transformation, communal transformation, and human transformation is so crucial to my own process. Thank you for being a part of that community, and for contributing to the liberation of each of us through your own healing journey, your role in my journey, and your visions for a better world!

Trust

trust yourself a little more by Andrew J Cosgriff

Trusting myself to care for myself, to grow and transform without force, control, oppression, and shame as the motivators, is so hard. Without negative motivators, will I continue to change in positive ways? Will it happen, but much more slowly? I fear that perhaps I will revert to an older, weaker, sicker, less “evolved” version of myself. As I change my methods and strategies of self-healing towards compassionate, patient, loving care, all of the repressed self-hatred bubbles up. The voices (in their high-pitched Australian accents and adorable onesies) are screaming at me to toughen up, straighten out, and force myself to be “good” through willpower and control. These are the strategies I used as a perfectionist over-achiever, characteristics I’ve been shedding for several years now. The vestiges of these traits still roam my subconscious, looking for ways to scare me into compliance, to trigger the survival-mode, panicked desperation that will cause me to revert to striving, to forcing, to pushing, to contorting myself into new and “better” shapes. I am slowly learning to trust myself instead. For instance, over my two-week winter break I made no plans to do any work and no lists of all the work I could be doing. This did not extend to my personal life, however, where I had several major projects listed as goals, including digitizing my entire filing system of the past ten years and revamping my financial tracking systems. Not that I did either of these, but the fact that I was hoping to do so is indicative of my general approach to “free” time. So yeah, I’m taking baby steps here, but the lack of work related goals on the list was a major change, and turned out really well. I spent the last two days of break camped out in the living room reading, journaling, and… doing some work related things. I was internally motivated to do them because I was feeling a bit restless, had a good solid break, and wanted to start thinking about teaching my upcoming classes. I really like my job and enjoy most of the things I have to do for it. When I was able to trust myself to choose when and how to do work, I felt naturally motivated to do so. I learned that I can trust myself to be consistent with my job, without forcing myself to do work through willpower. This month I am experimenting with extending that method into the school week, not deciding ahead of time when I will plan my lessons and do various work related paperwork, but just letting the week flow. So far this method is working out just fine. I am definitely going more slowly than I typically do, but still getting everything done on time. I am much more relaxed overall, and discovering for myself what pace of life I am most inclined toward. 

Accepting this new pace is incredibly challenging for me. This blog, for instance, is one example of this shift. I initially wrote a blog post every single day for three months straight. Then I was attempting to write once a week. Then my life got super busy with moving to a new city, starting a new job, etc. When I started writing again, I decided not to have a structure to how frequently I would write. At first it was several times a week and that felt good. I felt that being consistent was an accomplishment, and I felt proud of myself. Conversely, the fact that I haven’t written a post in weeks felt shameful, like a failure. I almost wrote a post after New Years. I even have a half-finished post about New Year’s Resolutions that I never felt like finishing.

Allowing and accepting that I might not feel motivated to write for an unpredictable length of time is a form of trusting myself – trusting that I will know what is best for me, trusting that I am still an okay person even if I don’t blog consistently, trusting that my life will not fall apart if I’m not constantly “in control”. This is a long slow process, but so worth it! When I am able to release my grip on myself I can approach each moment, each activity, each task with ease and relaxed engagement. I don’t have to bribe myself with caffeine or sugar in order to force myself to do something unpleasant. I hope I can continue to inch in this direction. There is a long road to travel from constant controlling behavior and outlook to fully trusting my intuitive sense of timing and priorities. The road itself is quite scenic, though, so maybe it doesn’t even matter how long it takes or where I end up. These ideas are truly radical for me. Maybe they are for you too?

Coping with Anxiety

Anxiety by Stock7000

As I continue to increase my capacity for different emotions such as fear, connection, grief, love, and vulnerability, I have not experienced a similar increase in terms of anxiety. Although I have always had a fairly high capacity for dealing with anxiety in the sense that I am able to continue to function and act when I feel anxious, this has also come at a cost. I have been able to function with anxiety through the use of coping strategies that I am now working to shed – numbing, repressing strategies that have allowed me to avoid the full impact of the anxiety. Now that I am slowly replacing these older habits with strategies that acknowledge, accept, and process my emotions as they come up, I am struggling particularly with how to cope with anxiety. Is it an emotion that I wish to increase my capacity for, or is anxiety actually a stress response that is unhealthy and should be avoided? I often see the word “anxious” listed as an emotion, but based on my physical and psychological reactions to anxiety, I think it is in the stress category rather than the emotions category.

I separate stress from emotions in that stress can influence an emotional response, but it is not an emotion in and of itself. It is a physiological and psychological sensation related to dis-ease that has a significant impact on my physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health, but my techniques for coping with stress are different than they are for processing my emotions. I aim to reduce stress as much as possible, and to proactively prevent stress, whereas I am trying to fully feel and go toward my emotional experiences. So what about anxiety? Should I move toward anxiety, try to embrace and understand it in myself, and invite my anxiety to be fully expressed? Or should I take more stringent steps toward preventing and disengaging from anxiety when it occurs?

In viewing anxiety as a stress-state rather than an emotion I ultimately hope to eradicate it, however there is still much to be learned from the experience in the short-term. Anxiety is a symptom of deeper unresolved issues in my life leading me to feel disempowered and overwhelmed in the present moment. This anxious reaction serves as a signpost, indicating the existence of past experiences that were never resolved, which are being triggered by a current event. While it is frustrating that I revert to old coping strategies when I feel anxious, this can also be helpful in pointing me toward places in need of healing. Part of my work recently has been reframingmy sense of failure when old habits reappear and instead embracing these moments for providing clear guidance. If I can unearth and provide closure for those older unresolved emotions, I will ultimately decrease the intensity of my anxiety and experience each life challenge as only present-moment and not evocative of past hurts or fears. Therefore, I have a long-term goal of eliminating anxiety from my life through integrating and resolving the unhealed traumas from my past, but am also hoping to enact a short-term goal of taking significant steps to reduce or redirect the anxiety in the present moment, while I continue to work on those larger issues.

Abundance of Time and Attention

Time Travel Haikus by CityGypsy11

The concept of abundance is one I have struggled with for many years – on a political level and on the level of logistics. Politically, it sounds arrogant to claim that we can all experience abundance when so many people are suffering without enough of the necessities of survival or basic comfort. It also can sound like there is no need for moderation, no need to conserve resources, no need to consider others before taking something. This seemed like the claim of oblivious, privileged people completely out of touch with the reality of most peoples’ lived experiences of poverty and struggle. After many years of encountering this rhetoric of abundance in many different contexts, however, I have a clearer understanding of what this can mean on a spiritual level. There is an abundance of love, an abundance of compassion, an abundance of respect and dignity and worthiness. These are the spiritual necessities of life, and receiving them can often lead to physical sustenance as well, but they are not material items in and of themselves. If I give you my love or compassion or respect, there will not be less of it for another person. None of these will run out or need to be rationed; none have a finite quantity that can be measured. Operating from a framework of abundance means not trying to control or limit others or myself in sharing love, respect, compassion, intimacy, and caring. Over many years of contemplation, practice, development, and experimentation with this idea of abundance, I embrace the truth of spiritual abundance, and have seen the benefits of living my life within a framework of abundance.

I am still struggling, however, with this concept on the level of logistics, especially in the areas of time and attention. While there is an infinite amount of love in the world, there is not an infinite amount of time in which to express that love. And while there is an infinite amount of compassion in the world, there is not an infinite amount of attention that can be dedicated to directing that compassion toward others. On the other hand, I do have experiences where time seems to operate on a different plane than that which I normally experience. Camping, for instance, where days seem to stretch out to unbelievable lengths and the time for hiking, sitting by the fire, chatting, and cuddling seems to go on and on and on. I also have experienced powerful, meaningfully intimate connections in a very short amount of time, such as having a 20-minute conversation with a friend that is life altering. Based on these experiences, I can see the potential for an abundance of time and attention, but am still working to truly believe this. If someone else receives time and attention, I fear that I will lose them. It seems like a zero-sum game, where one must lose for another to gain. I have begun to shift this perception, however, through deepening my understanding of how energy flows. Energy can expand infinitely when we have many deep and meaningful connections, projects, experiences, and adventures. By sharing time and attention with many people and interests, there is a greater flow of creative energy for all relationships and each moment of connection. The abundance of time and attention is actually created through the unique aspects of various experiences, relationships, and points of connection. As my understanding continues to grow, I am slowly shedding my limiting beliefs in this area.

Converting the voice in my head

As I reconnect to my emotions more and stay more present in my everyday experiences, I am faced with the cruelty and degradation of the rude, mean, shaming voices in my head. I've always known they were there, and was well aware that I was choosing to quiet them by numbing all of my emotions, but I did not believe there were any alternatives. These mean voices have inspired a great deal of art and activism, which has helped me to quiet them significantly over the years, yet I have continued to experience frequent harassment from these voices of internalized oppression. When I decided to reconnect to my emotions – going toward the discomfort rather than numbing it – I accepted that I would have to confront these voices more directly. In a recent blog post I shared a new technique to address these mean voices - giving them funny accents and oddly pitched voices to help emphasize that these voices in my head are not me, and that I do not have to take them seriously. This has been somewhat helpful, but they are still quite powerful. Next I started singing myself love songs, belting out alternative messages to outshout the mean voices. This is also useful, but only while I am doing it. As soon as I stop, they are just as loud as they were before. Now I am trying something even more absurd - co-opting religious zeal to quiet the mean voices - and having a good laugh at it all as I'm doing it.

My new method for defanging the mean voices is to convert them - sending tiny missionaries to proselytize to them about the inherent worth and dignity of all people. The missionaries in my head are mini-versions of people who love and support me, and believe that I am worthy of love. They wear cute missionary outfits, and have special "holy books" about inherent worth and dignity, and are working hard to convert the mean voices. They are preaching truth to power, and holding a mirror up to the mean voices, calling them out for shaming me. They hold handwritten cardboard signs proclaiming that God is Love and We are all One, and shout into their megaphones that shame is the product of a toxic society, not an indication of my worth as a person. These images amuse me, changing the emotional tone of this difficult work of freeing myself from the tyranny of shame, making those voices ridiculous and laughable. I still recognize the challenge, but it feels less like work/struggle and more like theater/play.