Yesterday, I awoke with something that I hadn’t bad conscious access to for 17 years.
I got up and showered in the dark. I didn’t turn on my lights. The night before, we had gone out into the desert in the darkness to speak of shamanic practices, share some of our fears, and learn to be in the dark and recognize and feel the power of the darkness. I felt a continuation of that quality even in my hotel that morning.
I begin thinking - in my unquestioned way - about my body. Too fat. Too flabby. Need to workout. Need to get rid of these unpleasant wrinkles. Unsightly sunburn. Unattractive. Then I noticed another thought pattern in reply to the first; which was new and unusual. Oh, you are are stingy! What do you know? This is the body of a Greek goddess. That is the sun’s kiss. Would you wish away the affects of having received Father Sun’s affections?
I stood, startled. I had not questioned the first voice, but this voice, which I recognized as not my own, had much more reasonable things to say. I recognized even in the moment, not only the falsity of the first voice’s content but also it’s source. It wasn’t mine. Neither was the second.
I got in the shower. I thought about this stinginess that the second voice claimed. What right to call the shots in my life- to judge and tell stories- did that first voice have?
And I saw a vision. It was snow coming down hard on my windshield. Wind drove the snow against my car like enormous wings. I saw a snowy owl come down out of black night where all the snow appeared from, and swoop low and close in front of the car. I felt scared and had to pull over. I was distraught. It was about the 5th or any number of a handful of eerie, nearly impossible things I’d seen. I was so tired. I hadn’t slept in a day.
Another vision, as I’m driving home on another night, and I am pulled over by a cop. I am once again distraught. Incredibly tired. Ateung out from seeing eerie ahit that doesn’t make any sense. That should not be possible. It was then that I vehemently wished I didn’t see such things. That I perceived it as such an incredibly unbearable burden that I was becoming dysfunctional. Just as I was trying to become and adult and function in the world, this seeing I perceived, was creating an impossible obstacle.
So I wished it away.
And it went.
With it went also all my memories of all the things I had seen. All the memories of my sight of things that were seen through that lense. I took off the lense but also with it the capacity to see it again in my mind or in my memory. All the time I spent unaware of having seen, or being able to see, were the Denial Years.
But, it did not erase the feeling of having seen.
Throughout my Denial Years, I lived in rank contradiction with my feeling body. This I suffered from tremendously. I kept myself from examining these contradictions by the first voice; stingy and judgemental. But, I could function in the world. I was an effective adult. Successful, if not happy. Independent, if not suffering. The first voice gained it’s right through my permission for it to keep me from remembering, and therefore, seeing.
It was a trade-off. I had no way to manage or to support my ability as a child or fledgling adult. I felt very alone. I felt isolated, victimized by these perceptions and by my family. I had no sense of any warmth or love that would ever hold me through. I had to figure it out on my own. I just had to claw my way through into the world. Alone. Wishing away the perception of things which didn’t make any sense to me was necessary for my survival on my own, alone.
And through my Denial Years, I went deeper and deeper into materialism. Into denial of spirit. I became an atheist. I became ever more a tyrant and a tormentor of my feeling body. My feeling body remained in it’s purity; in contrast and contradiction to my mind. And eventually the disparity became to much.
Or, maybe it was simply time enough. It was time to find my way back.
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