I love to blog, seriously, but it’s been out of my regular time frame for a few years now. Partly this because I’ve been working through some major transitions in my life and the time just wasn’t right. But more importantly, I was dissatisfied with the direction the form had taken for me. It’s simply not enough for me to stay on a single topic and the perfection game of previous projects is stupid, so like the Great Transition this represents, when something no longer serves, kick it over and be done.
Through the work we’ve been doing together so many of my lost passions have been returning, and with this last grand adventure I finally feel my writing is again ready. For this post, rather than something that everyone might read and find interest in I’ve chosen to write to you 6 companions, because you were there and it seems that presence is required in understanding the revelations I want to talk about
Being careful of what you wish for is so true its cliche. less well known but possibly more true is being careful of what you evoke, and sitting between Emilie and Travis on the cusp of their great adventure I couldn’t help but see us held in embrace of the Mother and the Father. It was a theme that ran through the entire experience for me and one that I called out to repeatedly, and that obviously has a power. And I feel certain that all of us played host to those particular archetypes at some point in the night.
The other great power that held space with us was the Earth her self. Through the repeated form of the pentagram and the crystalline structure of everything I saw, she was the driving force in all that I was to experience. Indeed, another Mother to hold us as we Change.
Finally, I brought the I Ching, which goes everywhere with me and provides deep insight into the nature of the world regardless of the substance in my blood or the state of my mind. On my way in, I consulted Change to ask what images I should hold in my mind and body throughout the night. The response was the same as Mat’s from earlier in the week. 42, Augmenting/ The Blessing. Though doubtless to a different inquiry, the response for us was: Increase, Expand, Develop, Pour in More, Fertile and Expansive, Ancestors send their Blessing, Rain Spirits, The site of creative transformation.
As always, Change was direct and correct.
I sort of always expect to have my ass handed to me when I trip these days. It’s likely a hold over to the younger days when that’s exactly what it did, regularly. Through my work with the I Ching though I have more fully learned to yield, to my mind, to the medicine and to my situation, making that fear pretty unnecessary. As always the trip itself was bursting with Love and Bliss. I am always so content and happy to find myself in a body when the Magic hits the Blood, all I wind up doing is playing, this time in the dirt, for a good portion of the time.
It was the later portion, after most of us had bailed on the evening, that things really opened up for me. Mat is wanting to study the I Ching, and one of the things I learned early from my teacher in the Sangha is that you must have a personal relationship with an ancestor to use it safely. For me this was simple since that kind of veiled presence is just a part of how my family dynamics work. I learned it as a kid and it has always been a part of the working of my mind. How then to help open up that relationship for someone who has never learned that aspect of human consciousness has been a problem that I have been carrying around with me since Emilie first asked if I would be willing to teach Change in a workshop through Everyday Adventures.
So Mat and I talked about it, our ancestors, our ghosts, about loss and grief and sorrow. About the trauma of those things that have shaped us as people and what it might look like if we were really able to heal. And I opened that shit up all the fucking way, telling my dear and trusted friend things about myself and my lost relationship to my father that I’ve never told anyone. Not Roshi, therapist, lover or child, deep secrets that I myself have only been able to really see clearly since I’ve been hearing the Gong. It was a healing and miraculous conversation that I will never forget. And at the end of it, when we had rolled over to rest a bit as dawn filled the sky, I had a clear insight, In spite of the horrors that shit bag subjected me to, I still love him, deeply. I will never not love him.
Subdued Sunday came, we cleaned up and went our ways, for me that’s back to being alone. Truly I am a person that requires a shit ton of alone time and aside from missing the conversation and the sharing a bit I was content to sleep, do the laundry and feel really happy to have such amazing people in my life that could hold space for such a beautiful experience.
It wasn’t until Monday that I really felt the force of opening the Dad Jar like we did. Fully back on my bullshit, my most frequent thought was an intense wish for death.Through the process of working with my ancestors and a good studio sesh with Travis that evening I was able to turn my mind around enough to rest and wake the next morning with a better question.
It must have been in the unsettling dreams I had that night that I realized that I was cutting off the Love I had discovered that magical night. Not allowing love for that shitty old man is a reflex so strong I don’t even realize I do it, but it had been so many years since I had admitted my feelings for him that it simply wouldn’t go peacefully back in the Jar. So there I was, filled with feelings that I didn’t know how to allow or to deal with, stuck in the office and going half mad. So I went to the only place for help that I could, to my ancestors and asked ” Letting my heart and mind run away with Love. How do I keep myself healthy in the midst of exploring Love for the things and people I fear? How can i be true to my heart and my life at the same time? Loving my toxic father and all that Love touches?” Cause inappropriate touch is at the heart of the thing of course.
The response from Change was 40, Deliverance. I’m including a link to it here, since there is so very much to each of the hexagrams, but the line that stood out for me at the moment and opened my experience of our time together was “Containing your fear and impulse now brings a liberating awareness of the whole”. So I worked on containing my fear and my impulses and just let the thing open up. stayed with the uncomfortable love and listened to what it might teach me.
Through this meditation I have begun to really understand why i am so bad at relationships and why I have held myself alone for so very long. How could I ever have had real love with half the light of my heart buried under darkness and pain and fear? The trauma of parental abandonment teaches us as children that our most basic nature, that of Love. is not safe and must be suppressed for continued survival. And while I have gone on to have a life, until this wound is healed, all my relationships are a shadow of what they might be with the full force of my great heart unleashed.
I don’t turn my back on people I have loved. I may not actively have them in my life but my love lasts for ever, no matter how hard the circumstances. How could I have imagined that turning away my father, my first lover and my most intimate friend could have worked? Actually it didn’t work at all and nearly cost me my life a million times over. Regardless of the horror, in spite of the wrongness in the whole relationship, I will no longer hold my heart away, hoping to keep it safe from the pain of living a life. Through this act, I not only will heal myself but my father and my children as well.
We don’t have to be pals, and in fact I have no intention of seeing him, but I will no longer lie to myself about the way I feel. It’s poison and it doesn’t work.
So that’s my revelation, but I don’t want to just leave it there. I feel a need to sanctify the whole process of lost years and unhappy love. I want to allow it to grow into something that we can all use and benefit from. So I am proposing we continue with the night and move it into a season.
I’m sure you all heard me talking about the pit firing that I want to do down on my land this fall. I propose each of us use the opportunity to do the transformational ritual of turning a ghost into an ancestor. The planning is sketchy in my mind still but I am thinking that we begin on the equinox, working with Change and the spirits and making pots in the studio for the firing and bringing the process to a close on Samain (Halloween) with a firing and a shared meal (the medicine) with the ancestors. I know the weather is uncertain that time of year and it may be a freezing ass cold shit show but I sort of like the challenge of that and there is no better time to contact the other side than during that particular cross quarter.
I offer this freely as you are free to refuse, this type of work is not for everyone but if you choose to come with me I will provide lessons in clay and the Change as we go through which will allow me a bit of a buffer as I head back into my process as a teacher. But ultimately this is my offering and I renounce the results of my actions completely.
I love you guys so much. Thanks for holding this space with me
