Awoke one morning last week with this message, “there are things worse than death”.
And instantly felt the truth of that statement.
Memories of brutal times clicked into the contrast-logic of “yeah…worse than death”.
I think that we innately have a sense of what “being alive” is - for each of us - and sleep/wake/eat/breathe is not enough.
What that threshold is for each, I don’t know. I don’t even know where the exact tipping point is for me…when I realize I’m no longer moving through days with “vitality” and somewhere along the way the scales tipped to existing…whatever that means.
As a blob of conscious awareness, and its accompanying unconscious groupie selves, I can appreciate the flashes of epiphany that come with messages of life. LIFE.
Redirecting, destabilizing, shaking things tf UP!
At this crossroads of what I consider to be my “life”, I see the truth of the nudging, tugging, the thoughts-on-the-periphery whispers…the truths I can’t validate. Can’t cross-check with references to demonstrate proof. Can only choose to acknowledge, or choose - CHOOSE - to dismiss.
For me, the dismissing of a truth felt in my bones means disowning a real part of me - that part is moved offline into a non-living limbo, a '“death”.
The entirety of who “I am”, an unfolding discovery it seems, feels like a patchwork of vibrant squares energized by consistent attention, mixed in with places switched off to keep the defined edges of me in line with external direction: early on from my parents, then teachers, bosses, lovers, children, friends.
Those rigid barrier rails to keep my being on the routes well known to the collective felt so real for so long…as did the inescapable pain carried on this Highway to Hell.
The stuck place between fearing actual physical death, and living a “life” with unconscious agreements not to “live” as oneself is paradoxically the exit point - the escape hatch from a matrix of internal untruths.
After the above “aha”, the exhale moment was realizing that in these brief butterfly wing beats of “time” awareness in this body of mine, I can choose to live.
Which is vastly different than the “being alive” delusion of the matrix - a default normie lockstep with “don’t ask don’t tell” credo tattooed on one’s heart.
A dear friend and fellow feeling spelunker joined me for soup and tea yesterday, and in our words spilled the question: “is the wallowing over?”
“Wallowing”: the negatively-connoted leaving of oneself in a place of intense feeling without direction for remedy - like drinking infinity poison that never finishes the job of actually killing you.
Wallowing to me maybe more of a plateau or resistance to even deeper surrender to intense emotions - maybe unconscious desperate clinging to prevent the tumble into the abyss where one is powerless… until at last one can embrace every last truth calling out from long-stuffed crevices to be seen and heard. Life demanding to be lived.
Almost a detour from known “life” into an unpredictable, unable to be controlled rapids in a river of previously untapped and left capped energy.
We talked about the sensation of “spent” - no more tears to cry, exhausted from the struggle in the rough chop of emotional truth waters.
And wondered “maybe there is a ‘done’ point? A reaching out to the other side of the river, feeling the earth of the shoreline, a pulling onto dry land, feeling of the sun drying the tattered remains of you that survived the maelstrom?
“Yes”, we decided.
The ‘done point’ is the choice to stand up, after climbing onto the dirt of a new world. With the entirety of the river in one’s backdrop as a reference, there is a deliberateness, a decisiveness in one’s steps forward into “life”. A paradox of understanding the “more” of oneself simultaneously with the always-to-be-discovered truth of every moment “alive”.
The newly acquired knowing that to “live” with the internal truths untold, parts of self abandoned, is choosing death before death - hell on earth, in a way.
And the choice at whatever level of conscious awareness to stay in one’s assigned seat instead of vibrantly dancing with the life given form in you or me, is choosing death over life.
Two weekends ago my loverman and I went to soak in the sun filtering through leaves of trees lining one of our city’s greenways. We ambled along the course of a local creek, on a paved path dotted with info stations describing the transformation of the land and water into the vibrant ecosystem oasis we were witnessing that day.
Photographs from past decades showed cement swaths where the creek ran, describing how for years surrounding parking lots and commercial properties flooded when rains overwhelmed the “capping” done to the river years ago.
I was astounded by the immensity of the project to remove the “capping”, reveal the waterway below, and return the land cushioning the creek to balance - fish, insects, trees, grasses…life flowing with the waters they freed.
Maybe there is a metaphor weaving these stories together - the need to uncap the waters that can never be fully contained. Rivers, creeks, floods of emotion and feeling that will swell up and overwhelm even the most carefully constructed “life”, until the flow is acknowledged, uncovered to be discovered in its entirety, and supported to move in balance with all that is.
That beautiful re-storing of wisdom, grace, and truth providing a path to connect us all, a place of direction after we are ready to move out of the turbulent waters of change, or the stagnant waters of paralysis, or the still quiet waters of the soul’s depth.
Knowing now we can be the receiver of the messages of the waters, the infinite complexity of viewpoints, and also the single point of decision for moving forward in a life of one’s own truth.
“The way out is through” is a catchphrase I’ve read in many different forums, usually referring to navigating tough emotional challenges.
Many earlier posts detail my own journeys “through”, the self-validating nature of the process in which this “going through” appears to have given me insight, clarity, growth, peace. And the frustration and confusion with the endless looping of “going through”, as if with each plateau mistakenly viewed as summit, I thought the journey through emotionland finally concluded, hoping for some rest.
Applying a variety of schema to make sense of the repeated travelling…maybe another “lesson” to learn, “insight” to glean, “wound” to heal?
These last few weeks the patterns of my living and relationships, like road maps written as historical accounts of trips-already-done-and-done-again, were laid out transparently in such a way that there was no need for the emotional messaging.
No need for that energy-motion to push or pull me, as the trust in my soulGPS is inviolate now.
The door that waits when this physical form and sidekick conscious awareness “dies”, whatever that means, holds no more than curiosity now. I have already experienced death after death after death in this “life” of mine, and mined its gifts: the simple truth that “I” am “here”, “now”, and the conscious choice to live.
Writing this post, working on mastery of mastering (music production), performance shed on the awesome tunes below, catching up with my big brother on the phone, having a cup of mudwtr/coffee (the shame! yes adding instant coffee to mudwtr ;), and enjoying the sounds of the city streets, feel of the cold rainy first November day…
That is how I lived today.
Let me know how you lived today, in your own Living Room.
thumbnail photo credit Kohlpaper