Naked Like Water

[Guest]

A Dissonant Body

My jaw feels sprung like some kind of rusted trap; at any minute, it seems, it could burst open with a metallic shriek. I wish it would, actually, I’d love to know what secrets I’d spill. At the moment, this tension I’m feeling is a mystery; all I can intuit is there is something buried in my body and it feels dangerous.

The tension, which is strongest in my face, shoulders, neck and stomach, has been in my awareness for as long as that awareness has been steady enough to feel it, but has been aggravating of late. I can only suppose that something is surfacing because I am finally giving it permission to: I have been challenging myself to be more present recently with a strict prohibition of distractions and a new programme of nothing in particular. In these meandering last days of supine inaction, I have appeared to passing dog-walkers a mascot of peace, sitting motionless by gurgling brooks. And yet, fierce currents have been sweeping my mind off course as I struggle to sit with this dissonant body. For weeks my meditations have been haunted by cold waves of ugly emotion. What wraiths are hiding under my skin, rattling my bones like some voodoo omen?

I feel compelled to try and exorcise them, but without knowing what I’m up against I can’t risk an error of timing. I have my ways of elucidating the matter, but I don’t want to open a can of worms. I have enough on my plate right now.

Most likely, the tension is a hangover from the devastation of my most recent clash with reality. To summarise a saga of neurosis, my current dharma and the apparent will of the absolute is that I return to the desolate tedium of work as a software tester. In reality it seems I have little choice if I am to act in love and truth, but the ensemble of mewling voices in my head have nevertheless reasoned, begged and snarled to keep me from letting go of my dreams of personal glory. I find it hard to accept that selflessness is taking me somewhere where I can have such little influence on the perishing world I yearn to somehow rescue. Returning to work that truly broke my spirit first time round is no easier. Evidently, I am working through these layers of ego with gritted teeth.

Edited April 15, 2018 by Stretch

[MisterMan]

meditate to this bro, when you have the chance.

 

 

[Guest]

@MisterMan Thanks, it's a good guided med

[Guest]

Shell Shock

These mental battles have left me dazed. Voices twitter around me, but I’ve lost interest. It’s a quiet spell at the drug project, a moment of peace punctuating the chaos. I welcome the break, I was left to run this place singlehandedly again this morning. A knock at the door. I pull myself up and dig deep for what feels like dwindling reserves of empathy. A feeling of guilt surfaces, and I hasten to remind myself that feeling burned out under these conditions is as natural as spring erupting in the square outside. I long to blossom like the beech trees, to find secret colour in my dull husk. Earlier, like some desperate scientist fudging his numbers, I tried yet again to devise a way I could continue this line of work. A few hours later, I’m not even sure why. It’s this turbulent capriciousness, reflected so fittingly in the madness of the drug project, that leaves me in this state. All I can do, as always, is try to stay present.

Edited April 16, 2018 by Stretch

[Guest]

Alchemy of In-Action

I melt into the delicate glow of my bath; scent of bergamot and orange in fragile wisps of steam. Even this modest comfort has proven to be a crutch for me, but after a day of titanic discipline I softened in the late evening and am now savouring a hard-won reward. The last 24 hours have been a blitzkrieg of cravings. Fantasies of grease, sugar, nicotine, orgasm, rum and other thrills have been hovering, slick and shady, in my mind. They make outrageous promises I know they can’t keep, in my weakest moments when I’m almost willing to believe them. It’s a strange alchemy that with the simple action of doing nothing the weakest moments can become the strongest ones. A strange truth that the strength found in doing nothing is a greater reward than all the sumptuous titillations my imagination can conjure. I am growing stronger every day, and as I grow my hunger for the void grows with me.

[Everyday]

I really like your writing style. It resembles Jack Kerouac`s style. Check him out -I bet you`ll love his books. 

https://www.amazon.com/Lonesome-Traveler-Kerouac-Jack/dp/0802130747/ref=la_B000APV9LY_1_15?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524237543&sr=1-15&refinements=p_82%3AB000APV9LY

Edited April 20, 2018 by Everyday

[Guest]

21 hours ago, Everyday said:

I really like your writing style. It resembles Jack Kerouac`s style. Check him out -I bet you`ll love his books. 

https://www.amazon.com/Lonesome-Traveler-Kerouac-Jack/dp/0802130747/ref=la_B000APV9LY_1_15?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524237543&sr=1-15&refinements=p_82%3AB000APV9LY

Thanks Everyday, that's a lovely compliment - I love Kerouac!

[Guest]

Growth Edge

My partner’s spiritual mentor uses the term ‘growth edge’ to describe the single most significant emotional challenge one is facing at a given point in time, implying a unique opportunity for ascendance within and through the suffering. I’ve been using the concept as a compass in recent days of restless drifting, where the muddy remains of my path, lashed by savage rain, have faded away. The shadow puppet inside is afraid, and while his pain is heartbreaking, in moments of lucidity I pass my hand through him, and find comfort in the knowledge that I’m still here, and the drama isn’t real. I’m beginning to see what I need to let go of, and what my growth edge could be, if only I could surrender to it.

[Guest]

Reality's Cradle

It begins in the morning, first thing. I’m meditating through boiling emotions, fierce electricity convulsing my body. A familiar ordeal, but today I’m determined to remain passive, like a leaf fluttering in the tyranny of a winter gale. I try to relax my shoulders, which are seizing up as a harsh energy is pulled up towards them from my abdomen. I know I need to allow this storm its moment. This goes on for some time, until eventually a breeze of stillness begins, for the first time in weeks, to fan through the turmoil. I watch it indifferently, as I watched the gale. Something in the air has changed.

Later, I’m revisiting my notes on the Bhagavad Gita and a biography of one of its human avatars, Mahatma Gandhi. Dormant concepts begin to mobilise in my mind, and I find myself contemplating my life’s purpose with a new limpidity. Several things now rise to the surface. I realise how out of alignment I have been with the plain truths of the present moment. I realise how I have been clinging to dreams, with a bitter nostalgia of missed opportunities and foolish decisions. I realise how refusal to let go of those dreams has manifested an apathetic and immature refusal to invest in any career, weakly justified by a narrow prioritisation of self-ascendance and a listless yielding, disguised as surrender, to sitting mindfully in a meaningless doss job. I realise how, if I am to keep my integrity and keep my loved ones close, my options for the next twenty years aren’t many, and I begin to feel a soothing lull in my belly at the admission that that’s just how life is right now. For me to yearn to be a starving poet, a simple farmer, a wanderer, a troubadour, a healer, or a hermit would be no less preposterous than a serf’s dreams of kingship. I realise that I will be doing one of my few options, and I won’t be doing the things I’d prefer to, but I can still channel the next twenty years of my inner resources in the direction of truth and love. With these realisations I feel a huge weight being lifted from my abdomen and my whole body hums with delight.

Edited May 6, 2018 by Stretch

[Guest]

The Medicine Woman/ Rumblings of Kundalini

I’m hunching over a constellation of tarot cards, spread amongst slender crystals on a small table belonging to Nicky, a medicine woman. I came on a recommendation, perhaps out of desperation, dubious but prepared to lay my doubts aside. Now, with every new insight that spills into my thought stream as we discuss the enigma before us my skepticism crumbles away crumb by crumb, and I rub my chin in stunned wonderment mumbling ‘yes, that’s right’ and ‘wow’ and ‘that makes sense’. Fantastical characters and symbols seem to arrange themselves intelligently, casting a vision of my life more clearly than I could have articulated it myself: the magician, the moon, the reaper, the high priest. We dig deeper. A new constellation exposes more secrets; we uncover a hidden pain appearing disguised in unexpected corners of my life, and its relationship to my current dilemma seems suddenly crystal clear. Our time is up, we finish and I go to the bathroom. With cool water rolling off my hands, my inner currents begin to shift. I begin to feel a cascade within me, and suddenly a deluge of emotion tears through, flooding my being. Shaking, I return downstairs.

Nicky says I can stay for a while to sit with the pain, so I spend twenty minutes or so sobbing and shuddering in her garden before she comes out and puts a soothing hand on my shoulder. She suggests I lie on the grass and invite the earth to assist in my healing. I do as she says and she begins to sprinkle over me what I later learn is water collected from a sacred well. The emotions continue to churn for a while, until they gradually begin to transform into an explosion of energy radiating out from my shoulders. Nicky has me stand up, and my body convulses as if possessed. I let go as deeply as I can and allow my body to do anything it needs to. I groan, shudder, whimper and writhe. This goes on for a long time. Eventually there is a pause, and we take the opportunity to finish. I thank Nicky profusely for her compassion and time and head to the nearby woods to continue the work alone.

The emotional and energetic torrent doesn’t stop for over a week. In addition to the episodes of deep hurt and the involuntary movements, which evolve into flailing arms and whole body spasms, I experience feelings of electrical, magnetic charge in my hands and neck, nosebleeds, headaches, moments of expanded perception, feelings of unity and an afternoon of feeling quite spaced out. This is enormously challenging, not least due to juggling this with my job. My work week involves responding to a heroin overdose, listening to an audio recording of live domestic abuse, and the suicide of a well-known client. I get through the week, though, and the symptoms slow down until sporadic shuddering during meditation is all I’m left with.

I spend hours researching, trying to work out what happened. It appears this is the first rumblings of kundalini. Most likely, the energy radiating out from my shoulders and arms was the current spilling out from my heart chakra as the freshly loosened pain was unblocking. This is new territory for me in so many ways, and I’m still adjusting to a growing array of concepts I would have regarded as quackery only weeks or months ago. I’m embracing the learning with an open mind and heart, and embracing the journey with excitement for whatever mystery next finds me.

Edited May 27, 2018 by Stretch