Somehow I had missed this entry of yours when I was reading your other blogs. You know how appreciative and impacted I am by your potent, skillful, poetic, penetrating, vulnerably real, and vitally important sharing through the power of words, which can in there own way be initiatory. Of course the whole gestalt of the story is incredibly rich, and I was also struck by your comment: “So I let go and fell backwards like off a tall building. I cried out in surrender and exploded in whirling lights and sounds and vibrations and shuddering spasms of death that was not death but a return to life.”
What a powerful example of being taken to the edge of the abyss and ‘trusting your surrender.’ In Christian language ‘a leap of faith’. And something about that edge if so filled with mystery and terror. Was the availability of staying with your loving grandmother, that when things got really bad you would request her aging hand upon your head [as if being anointed] just a lucky accident? Was being drawn to that book on the shelf just coincidence? I don’t think so. I think there is some kind of guidance system, call it what you will, that provides seeds or clues for navigating the labyrinth. The heartbreak is that some may not recognize them, or not follow through in allowing themselves to trust the next step [trusting your instinct to not call emergency, or picking up the book and opening its pages].
Something about your sharing of this personal story reminded me of the most potent moment [for me at least] in the movie ‘What Dreams May Come’ when Robin Williams decides out of love to stay with his wife in the domain of her hell, to keep loving company with her there rather than to abandon her and return to his own ‘clarity’ and ‘safety’ of ‘sanity’ and ‘wholeness’. And how that act of ‘sacrifice’ was so complete, so powerful, that it shook the very foundations of her reality, and I think that domain of existence, that allowed freedom to occur.
Your story reminds us that there IS a way out of hell. Even if we don’t see the path clearly, believing and hoping for, and perhaps even loudly invoking the seeds and clues to assist our navigation does much to support the journey of our healing, whatever that may be, expressed in all its various emotional tones, all its mental agitations and insights, all its soulful longing, all its ultimate mystery as us.
With love, respect and blessings
Thank you Becca for this offering. I do consider it an offering: to the memory of those you love and left through the act of suicide, to those who are still alive and suffer from their own experience of depression and may also be contemplating suicide, to those frustrated and angry with the multi-layered disfunction in today’s world, to those seeking ‘first person’ education and guidance not imprisoned in the limitations of clinical jargon. There are many ways your sharing in this blog can and does make a difference. So many notes within this disturbing symphony that you touched upon, and the deep, seemingly unanswerable dilemma of how we can somehow affect the dissonance [internally and externally] to shift, inspire, create more harmony. It is an ongoing challenge. It takes something that might be called a ‘warrior spirit’ to meet and work with that challenge. Sometimes that necessitates feeling the anger and having the heat of that fiery energy focus and direct action. That action can be dedicated to ‘building’ something, or ‘destroying’ something. You seem dedicated to building. I’m glad. I also think and feel the greatest ‘acceptance’ allows for all feelings with equal curiosity. Know that your journey makes a difference. Blessings.
This was awesome Lauren. I’m going to the eCPR website to learn more and hope to take a weekend course. Thank you for this lovely and inspiring p[eace].
David,
My first response to your comments here is “WOW”, my second response is “YES”. What a deep offering to contemplate. “Extending consciousness sensation, finding the words or images, means grasping the nuances of fleshy grammar and alphabets.” Beautiful! Are you familiar with Eugene Genlin and his work with ‘focusing’?
Michael,
Thank you for writing and sharing this most amazing experience filled with pathos and insight. I heard your interview on Madness Radio and then wanted to check out your blogs [and others] on the MIA website. Dionysian themes show up in the mythology of my horoscope [if you find any relevence in astrology], and I certainly can see various ways they have played out in my life. One aspect that had me so excited in reading your offering is that I’ve been working on a play for the past two years [nearly completed] that explores the world of psychosis, but from a perspective of ‘dionysian initiation’ as well as what is referred to as ‘spiritual emergence’, without limiting the aspect that would include childhood trauma. I will obviously read this article over several times. But in the meantime it served as a ‘sign post’ that my perspective on the subject was not just whistling in the wind. There were so many aspects in your blog that were insightful and thought provoking, your insights about Jung being most powerful. Incidentally I’m reading now [as part of the many books I’ve been exploring over the past year] two books by John Weir Perry. I remember how affected I was in reading Jung’s DM&R several years ago and specifically remember that dream. How affirming to receive the relevent dionysis connection. I also thought your comments pertaining to Christ very provocative. I have personally contemplated the mystery of connection between the two, it was as if they were indeed brothers and different sides of the same coin. Thank you for sharing this very personal aspect of yourself. You’re definitely someone I’d love to have a more detailed conversation with re: the play. Let me know if that’s possible.
I look forward to reading your other blogs.
Respectfully,
Michael Edan aka starbody
Hi Faith,
I just read this article and wanted to say thank you for the thought provoking perspective. I am gaining so much expansive and clarifying insight from reading the blogs on this website. I found yours particularly meaningful along with the discussion threads via the comments. Also, my mind and heart was deeply affected by your poem, I found it quite exquisite, powerful and moving. Do you by any chance have a book of poems published?
Yes words can never adequately describe who we are, or what makes us who we are, but sometimes they can evoke, with varying degress of clarity and feeling, the awesome mystery called you, me and us in relationship to life and each other.
Hi Michael,
Somehow I had missed this entry of yours when I was reading your other blogs. You know how appreciative and impacted I am by your potent, skillful, poetic, penetrating, vulnerably real, and vitally important sharing through the power of words, which can in there own way be initiatory. Of course the whole gestalt of the story is incredibly rich, and I was also struck by your comment: “So I let go and fell backwards like off a tall building. I cried out in surrender and exploded in whirling lights and sounds and vibrations and shuddering spasms of death that was not death but a return to life.”
What a powerful example of being taken to the edge of the abyss and ‘trusting your surrender.’ In Christian language ‘a leap of faith’. And something about that edge if so filled with mystery and terror. Was the availability of staying with your loving grandmother, that when things got really bad you would request her aging hand upon your head [as if being anointed] just a lucky accident? Was being drawn to that book on the shelf just coincidence? I don’t think so. I think there is some kind of guidance system, call it what you will, that provides seeds or clues for navigating the labyrinth. The heartbreak is that some may not recognize them, or not follow through in allowing themselves to trust the next step [trusting your instinct to not call emergency, or picking up the book and opening its pages].
Something about your sharing of this personal story reminded me of the most potent moment [for me at least] in the movie ‘What Dreams May Come’ when Robin Williams decides out of love to stay with his wife in the domain of her hell, to keep loving company with her there rather than to abandon her and return to his own ‘clarity’ and ‘safety’ of ‘sanity’ and ‘wholeness’. And how that act of ‘sacrifice’ was so complete, so powerful, that it shook the very foundations of her reality, and I think that domain of existence, that allowed freedom to occur.
Your story reminds us that there IS a way out of hell. Even if we don’t see the path clearly, believing and hoping for, and perhaps even loudly invoking the seeds and clues to assist our navigation does much to support the journey of our healing, whatever that may be, expressed in all its various emotional tones, all its mental agitations and insights, all its soulful longing, all its ultimate mystery as us.
With love, respect and blessings
Thank you Becca for this offering. I do consider it an offering: to the memory of those you love and left through the act of suicide, to those who are still alive and suffer from their own experience of depression and may also be contemplating suicide, to those frustrated and angry with the multi-layered disfunction in today’s world, to those seeking ‘first person’ education and guidance not imprisoned in the limitations of clinical jargon. There are many ways your sharing in this blog can and does make a difference. So many notes within this disturbing symphony that you touched upon, and the deep, seemingly unanswerable dilemma of how we can somehow affect the dissonance [internally and externally] to shift, inspire, create more harmony. It is an ongoing challenge. It takes something that might be called a ‘warrior spirit’ to meet and work with that challenge. Sometimes that necessitates feeling the anger and having the heat of that fiery energy focus and direct action. That action can be dedicated to ‘building’ something, or ‘destroying’ something. You seem dedicated to building. I’m glad. I also think and feel the greatest ‘acceptance’ allows for all feelings with equal curiosity. Know that your journey makes a difference. Blessings.
This was awesome Lauren. I’m going to the eCPR website to learn more and hope to take a weekend course. Thank you for this lovely and inspiring p[eace].
David,
My first response to your comments here is “WOW”, my second response is “YES”. What a deep offering to contemplate. “Extending consciousness sensation, finding the words or images, means grasping the nuances of fleshy grammar and alphabets.” Beautiful! Are you familiar with Eugene Genlin and his work with ‘focusing’?
Michael,
Thank you for writing and sharing this most amazing experience filled with pathos and insight. I heard your interview on Madness Radio and then wanted to check out your blogs [and others] on the MIA website. Dionysian themes show up in the mythology of my horoscope [if you find any relevence in astrology], and I certainly can see various ways they have played out in my life. One aspect that had me so excited in reading your offering is that I’ve been working on a play for the past two years [nearly completed] that explores the world of psychosis, but from a perspective of ‘dionysian initiation’ as well as what is referred to as ‘spiritual emergence’, without limiting the aspect that would include childhood trauma. I will obviously read this article over several times. But in the meantime it served as a ‘sign post’ that my perspective on the subject was not just whistling in the wind. There were so many aspects in your blog that were insightful and thought provoking, your insights about Jung being most powerful. Incidentally I’m reading now [as part of the many books I’ve been exploring over the past year] two books by John Weir Perry. I remember how affected I was in reading Jung’s DM&R several years ago and specifically remember that dream. How affirming to receive the relevent dionysis connection. I also thought your comments pertaining to Christ very provocative. I have personally contemplated the mystery of connection between the two, it was as if they were indeed brothers and different sides of the same coin. Thank you for sharing this very personal aspect of yourself. You’re definitely someone I’d love to have a more detailed conversation with re: the play. Let me know if that’s possible.
I look forward to reading your other blogs.
Respectfully,
Michael Edan aka starbody
Hi Faith,
I just read this article and wanted to say thank you for the thought provoking perspective. I am gaining so much expansive and clarifying insight from reading the blogs on this website. I found yours particularly meaningful along with the discussion threads via the comments. Also, my mind and heart was deeply affected by your poem, I found it quite exquisite, powerful and moving. Do you by any chance have a book of poems published?
Yes words can never adequately describe who we are, or what makes us who we are, but sometimes they can evoke, with varying degress of clarity and feeling, the awesome mystery called you, me and us in relationship to life and each other.