The Human, The Fish, and The Ocean

Like boulders placed on bony shoulders

Laden with the crushing weight

I shout out against the pain

Knowing not that I am mute

Comes on the rope

Strapping these stones to me

"Hold onto them for dear life

Not a single one shall drop" I hear

If I’m not to break the ice

And tumble into unforgiving waters

Time passes

Aches of both the cold and stone

Turn numb with frozen air and frozen feeling

I float further and further

From those who tell me to desperately grasp the stones

On my island of ice, in callous seas

A lone baby fish,

Accompanies my ride, showing me the freedom of ‘swim’

So small

Without burden or weight

And although I may see it's immaculate state,

My ravenous being reaches for the fish

And grabs it with both hands

Takes it out of the water

Puts it back in

Takes it back out

Puts it back in

Takes it back out

Puts it back in

Despite the glimmer of it’s beautiful scales

On the surface of the ceaseless waves

Some force in me desperately craved

Power in my alone helpless state

As if some force in me, swallowed in the numbing pain,

Would do anything to feel some sense of control

To relieve the holding of stones 

Causing anguish to my soul

The fish swims away

No surprise 

For suffering I have caused it

And how hilariously terrible,

And not funny at all

That now the rocks feel bit

By bit

By bit

Heavier

As I approach slightly warmer waters

The aching returns once more,

Stronger this time

Upon my form

And I feel no longer

The desire to escape this powerless state

Instead that I deserved the weight of gravity

In the first place

I lay on the ocean

At peace with my assumption

That this is the meaning of my life

To hold a burden,

Then a greater one

So that I may instead deserve all pain which comes to me

At peace with my assumption

That my life amounts to no more than weighty rocks

Atop a human lost at sea,

The mind stops

Taking my emaciated body to eternal rest

Relieving the world of a shameful birth

Until I awaken to find my island

Has greatly shrunk in size

And that now the heaviness of stone

Pulverizes my flesh

Pressuring my body to fall through

The thin ice which has carried my doom

I will sink, no doubt

With the rope tearing at my skin

Swallowed into the sea below

Now is only left the waiting game

A final breath meekly fills my chest

As the ice breaks

The weight of this human

Plunges into the abyss

Alas, my eyes open once more

To finally allow salty tears

Hidden for so long

To meet the dreaded salty water

But instead of crying in tortuous remorse

The eyes instead silent themselves

Watching the scene around them

And the mouth speaks out instead

In choking sobs

For the water does not painfully pierce the skin

For the view is not without light and shrouded in darkness

For the waves are not menacing and harsh

The warm blue around my immersed self

Reveals to me life

Kept concealed by my only seeing the surface

How the fish of fuchsias and indigos

Of arylide yellows and brilliant carnelians

Of chartreuses and cinnamons and rubies

Of shimmering diamond skins and satin lilac

Embraced around me, so eloquently

I forget my body

Settling at the bottom of these shallow tides

And instead thank the universe

To have never known this peace

Apart from the peace of accepting a meaningless life!

To have never seen such beauty

And believed beauty was in accepting worthlessness

With the stones I let lay upon my body

And ache my soul

When, truthfully

Had I untethered them

And let them roll off me

One by one plopping into the water

I may have not drown here as I am

And sailed to this wondrous grace sooner

Unbound by heavy stones

And still have gone to the same place

That all the adrift and lost

That all the shameful and numbed

That all the pained and laden

Would find themselves

I sleep now, calm with the waves

But find myself now a fish

And swim to a drifting glacier

To speak to a human laden with stone

And remind them of the beauty awaiting them

And although they punish me

Numb with the pain of their own heaviness

Although they take me out of the water

Put me back in

Take me out

Put me back in

Take me out

Put me back in

Although I have shown them the freedom of ‘swim’

They, too, have shown me

That my journey was not to be regretted

For this human
Had no conception of the far-off colorful scene

For this human
Was afraid

For this human
With stones of grief
Starved for the power of love and beauty

Aside from acceptance of worthlessness and meaninglessness

I swim on

With the ebb and flow of the current

Knowing now the greatest beauty

The unimaginable expanse

And unity and community that is

'Ocean'

The Sky is Rumbling (The Human Body and Trauma)

I've realized I have this weird thing with my stomach. I get hungry, and then I re-experience emotional numbness. Then, after I eat, I experience my emotions again, which are often grievous.

Emotional numbness has been recurrent for me. As I'm sensitive to energies around me, I used to be a great (how should I say this?) "feeler". I felt the energy of everything and everyone I met. It was a great to be feeling, whether the energy was something I liked or disliked. But it's become harder to do this. Mostly because my emotions were put down. I felt misunderstood.

This is not to call out my parents or my caregivers, but to some extent, every child coming into this world will feel invalidated in one way or another. It is an inevitable since we experience contrast in order to learn and grow.

As far as how this relates to my stomach... one thing from child which might have inspired this (Because I wasn't always grumpy-hungry or emotionless-hungry, haha!) was a general anxiety surrounded acquiring food. It's not as if food was ever withheld from me, no. Somethings I may not remember myself, but I have heard stories to which I think... "Well, my family doesn't really have any reason to lie about this." One such is that when I was about 2/3 my aunt came over and the parent I lived with was still sleeping and said I could get some chips out of the cupboard or something for breakfast.

Of course, though... I'm still someone that likes to rely on my own first-hand memory and experiences. More recently, when I was about 12-16, grocery store trips were craziness. You see, the parent I lived with hates going to the grocery store... and spending money in general. Who can blame her, really? But it caused a scenario where we would only go every 3 weeks, and at times it even became a month. We did go out to eat, and that made up for whatever we would run out of at times. But other times, especially being a vegetarian and recently vegan the options became bleaker and bleaker (we would often go to the same places, and sometimes they weren't very vegan friendly). When we did go, I found myself throwing so many things into the cart like I would never see food again. And I would watch my parent become more and more and more stressed as this happened, so I felt even worse in my need. Of course in the end, I obviously ate... but it was how I ate and what I associated with it.

Because there is divorce in my family, there seems to be a split right down the middle. There's been "sides" to some extent, and it's not something I really like. However, sometimes I would go to visit the other side of the family which lived, I suppose, in a way what people might normally expect. They got groceries as frequently as they needed them and there was never this fear--albeit subconscious--fear of 'running out'. In fact, this side of the family, sometimes sorry for the situation with this parent, would cater to me in any way I wanted. In a word, I was spoiled. I don't know, maybe 'spoiled' is not the right word... because I too believe children deserve anything they want. Just that they need to learn that they have the means to provide it for themselves too (as someone who believes in the law of attraction). But that aside, when I would eat at the houses of this side of my family, I would stuff myself so full like I needed to store it somehow. (I also felt bad for wasting.) Although, I know this is a somewhat later trauma because when I was younger I hardly ate at all, haha. Only gaining my appetite around 7...

Given this extreme of eating every meal until I was full, then having days where I ate only 1 meal, I feel I have created this polarity or division in my stomach. There is a healing technique which has been particularly beneficial to me regarding my body. Our bodies are very much like eco-systems, and so... I ask one part of this ecosystem, when it's not functioning perfectly, "What do you need to tell me?" I also ask that part of my body, "What do you mean to me? How do you sustain my life?"

Short story: I have used this technique for self-healing a few times. Two stand out specifically. The first was when I studied abroad in Portugal, and I had a terrible migraine. My host family (the first one I was living with at the time) gave me a pill, but I didn't take it. Instead, I laid down in my bed, closed my eyes, and focused all my attention on the migraine. Which intensified at first, but then slowly eased out and it was gone.

A second, more recent attempt was last fall when I had some lower back pain that was traveling down my legs. I asked my legs and lower back what they mean to me in my body. What do they support, how do they sustain my life? I got the answer: Strength. The ability to run. The ability to hold myself up and pull it together. The ability to stand tall. After identifying this, I focused on those abilities and thanked my legs and lower back. I told that part of my body, I understand... this has been difficult for you. (I had been having a particularly rough time.) After which, I began to focus on the future and what I what activities I was inspired to do which related to these body parts and their meaning.

One shadow I have is that of doubt/skepticism, even in the face of great evidence. I know this, which is why I will say here that the attitude of skepticism will not yield results in this method. I am also not a health professional, and I encourage you to seek out greater help for true health problems. Even people who believe in natural healing, must remember that medics and science are also tools of the universe which can be used in both beneficial and detrimental ways.

As far as the stomach thing. Well, since it kicks up emotional numbness when I am hungry, I figure the best way to solve this shadow is after I eat so that I may listen to and integrate the grievous feelings. I have yet to resolve this issue entirely, but life is a process. Identifying some root causes as I have, I may be able to work through and with these feelings so that I'm not an emotionless-hungry anymore!

It's not a diet thing. I eat very well, being vegan and almost completely organic. If anything, it may very well have more to do with the traumas, as well as the amount of eating that occurs, or perhaps the speed at which I'm eating. I've also considered the idea of nutritional deficiencies although I believe I'm competent at acquiring nutrients.

For today, this I will try:
-slowing my speed
-eating more or less depending on what my body is telling me
-figure out just exactly what food my body is asking for (and why)
-integrate childhood anxieties surrounding food

I tried researching this a bit too, and sadly all that comes up are diet plans. I feel so sad seeing this, especially because people put all this pressure on themselves to "fit-in" to the perfect body image. There is far too much emphasis on weight in our particularly western society, rather than on true health. We will find, that if everyone ate healthily (and of course, this is tailored to each person's dietary needs--also according to their level of awareness), there would be no need to find beauty vs. non-beauty. Health is beauty, whatever weight you may be at your optimum health!

So stay healthy, stay beautiful, stay happy!

Peace.

Letting the Wind Flow (Automatic Writing)

I tried automatic writing last night, or rather... it came upon me as I had been writing a lot that day. I figured I would share what has come to me. I was thinking myself about what it means to be observational vs. judgmental. I find we hold too much judgment in our lives, but it is not as if we can squander this judgment. Instead we must learn from it about ourselves. Here is something I wrote:

Observation is about the action. Judgment is about the self in relation to that action. Perception is our own personal association with the action.

The difference between observation, judgment, and perception in my eyes is similar to the difference between guilt, shame, and self-awareness.

Guilt is about an action which occurred that was unfavorable--a mistake.

Shame becomes when we make this action about ourselves. Shame is when we define ourselves by what we have done, and not who we are. Shame is not about "I made a mistake" and is instead about "I am a mistake." Self-awareness is the byproduct.

We come to understand our actions through admitting to what has happened, owning our part/emotions and nothing more.

I was also thinking about understanding the difference between an action taken from an authentic space, versus one that is taken to avoid something else. It has been a struggle for me to tell the difference, because us humans are so inept at self-awareness that I often find myself questioning/second guessing myself and my motives for any action. Question everything, yes, this is good. However, it can also inhibit your ability to embrace those things which are taken from an authentic space. Here is a conclusion I came to:

Authenticity is love then the reward of action. Inauthenticity is action then the award of love.

We can see how each affects us differently, are we doing something out of love for our being and the action, or to acquire that love we want. At the most basic level, we feel the difference. Sometimes I feel it can be a combination of the two. In which case, we must address what part of ourselves is holding us back from loving that action/part of ourselves fully and completely.

This led me to thinking that some of us develop habits to get love, one being a search for pity. But what then, is the difference between Pity and Compassion. Here again is what I have discovered:

Pity is felt for what we do not have, have not experienced, cannot lend our understanding. Compassion exceeds pity. Compassion is a form of love that lifts up without hold or limitation. Compassion is given to others once we have given it to ourselves. Compassion sets us free from our past, and liberates others from a place of forgiveness.

I thought about the various tools we use to try and organize ourselves and our lives: meditation, self-help books and teachers, therapy, and realized this is a means to an end. However, here is where more automatic writing came over me, explaining the nature of progression in the realm we live:

We begin on the most basic levels in our spiritual journey--the ability to manipulate our reality by giving it tools to help us. But this is only the first step of the journey. In what is to come, we will see not only spiritual comprehension, but the evolution of thought. The tools we now use and possess are the byproducts of our current manifested capabilities, but will be rendered obsolete as humans realize their innate connection to the abundance of information which is available to them at any moment.

Not sure who this being was, or if it was a byproduct of my subconscious, or what exactly. I did have a vision of a scene with a figure in sandy gold room with sunset lighting and brown shadows. However, this is all I have to share on this for now.

Peace!