Melty Brain Part 7
This particular post is deeply personal. I will delete comments on it that make me feel uncomfortable and I will probably not be able to handle being teased about it later.
I will, however, try to answer honest questions about the experience.
I am not likely to have rational answers.
That said, this post is mostly a description of a meditation and the impact of it. You could skip this post entirely if you are only interested in the oneness teachings themselves. I will take up my notes again in part 8.
One of my favorite Daisy Mayhem songs, which is in turn a re-do of an old spiritual has lyrics that go:
I got oil in my vessel,
My lamp's trimmed and burning.
I want to be ready
when the bridegroom comes.
Because of the rich bhakti and ecstatic sufi poetic traditions, I myself tend to think of the Divine as The Beloved, and much of what I have written about being merged with that Presence casts the Divine as a lover in my work.
So when they lowered the lights and advised us to imagine ourselves as children walking the long hallway from our heads down to our hearts, I dressed myself in my meditation in a child's dress up bridal gown.
In my heart I found a dusty room, and I was advised to clean it. So I spent time sweeping and dusting, although apparently I still don't do mopping even in my heart. Cleaning that space felt vivid. I could smell cinnamon, lavender and mango in the cleaning products. My heart space was round, like the inside of a hobbit hole, complete with round door barred with iron grill work to enter. The walls were translucent and the light from the outside bled through the fabric of my heart; the empty space gleamed warmly. Then we were advised to decorate our heart rooms, leaving a space in the middle clear.
Starting from the left of the door, I created a dress up closet filled with costumes, hats, fairy wings, ball gowns, swords, tuxedos and armor. On the left of that I created a sacred words spot. It had low bookshelves, a pillow pit, a writing spot and hundreds of beautiful books. To the left of that was a yoga studio. Then a large comfortable bed with thick sheets, pillows and a feather bed. A snuggle spot. Then a kitchen, fully equipped. The kitchen even had it's own well. Then to the left of that I built a hanging wall garden, succulents embedded in a matrix of dirt, turning a section of my heart into a living breathing wall. At that point I had made my way all around the circle, and I was back to the round door. Then Doug told us to put in currently empty center of the room a throne.
And it was then, precisely then, that I lost it. So many things came together for me all at once. I was currently in the body of a child, but I was wearing a wedding dress (a little dirty now for cleaning while dressed in it). I was to enthrone my King. My bridegroom. How many times had I been here? With a king and my yearning to be one with him. I knew at that moment that somewhere in this space was the reason why my friendship with Jared had fallen apart. I had made him my king, in my heart, and the magic of the reign had worked, but when he proved in time not to be my divine, as Shannon had proved not to be my divine before him, that link between my true king, my Beloved, and I had been broken. Tears started to pour down my face.
So I made my Beloved a throne. It was woven together with living willow branches, and decorated with moss, earth, mushrooms, fairy lights and leaves. Spider's silk was used for the pillows and arm rests, and it smelled of green growing things and life.
Doug told us to go to our door, open it, and call for our divine. I did. My shoulders were shaking. I was weeping as I did it. Crying with all my heart, all my longing for him to return.
I could feel him, a long way off; he was coming. Out of the sun he strode, so he was back-lit, his shadow his form, male, bare chested and crowned with antlers he came back to me.
Oh my Beloved, my Cernunos, my Divine. He that is mine as I am his.
I took his hand, helped him across the threshold, his great hand in my child sized one.
I showed him the house, each small nook, each treasure. I fed him, I gave him water from my well, I had him sit in his throne.
Then I crawled up in his lap and told him how much I loved him and how much I needed him to stay. We made vows to each other. He would stay, be my king, protect me, guide me, heal me, nurture me, provide for me. I would stay with him, I would always invite him into my presence in my experiences of being embodied. I would talk to him. Remember to ask him for help. Pray. Love him with my all. He told me he loved me. Unconditionally. Dirty wedding gown and all. I buried my head in his chest. I could smell the maleness of him, musk and sweat. I could feel the wiry hair on his chest crushed into my cheek. He held me with fatherly hands, not sexually, not even sensually, just holding me. I felt comforted. Safe.
On the one hand I wanted to ask, how did he know how I needed to be held, how I needed to be healed, but the answer was self evident. He is the divine.
And then I told him my prayers. The details of those are between he and I.
Then Doug took us out of the meditation and dismissed us until after dinner. Matt helped me stumble out of the room. I was joy filled and but also exhausted from weeping. I don't even remember the next few hours. My love had come back to me. I felt whole, but as wrung out as a sponge. I wanted to sleep for a week.
I found out after the weekend that Matt's vision of the divine was different than mine. I am sure there were, in that packed room, people who saw Christ and Buddha and Mohammed, the goddess, Krishna and even burning bushes. Whatever form they can most closely relate to, what form they can have a loving/best friend relationship is what they saw.
For as long as I can remember, my vision of the holiness and of true spiritual experiences involves running through the woods with the leaves whipping past me. The green of growing things is blurred by the speed of my running. I have dreamed about this vision over and over again. When I was young I could see it in my head when I closed my eyes.
The first time I ever saw a depiction of Cernunnos, the celtic antlered god, my whole body rang like a bell. My Christian friends will probably find this disturbing, that my visual of the divine has horns like the devil. All I can say is culture can often blind and make us fear a truth when it is presented to us. My divine is part man part stag. The wild in the woods. The king of the forest. He is the one who leads the hunt, the chase. He is of the body and sex and the senses and of our animal natures. Feeling his presence is a wonder and a terror that makes me feel intensely alive. Loved.
When I was in college my roommate asked me, exasperated, why I could not just be a Christian like everyone else. She saw my understanding that godhead takes many forms to be rebellious for the sake of rebelliousness. An artsy defiance of convention. It was never that. It was just... Jesus never came calling. (He knew where I lived too, I did grow up in the South after all).
I was brought to a personal understanding of god through this strange and beautiful form.
I can not help what called me. But I am grateful to have been called.
In the past though, he was always over there, in the woods. Other. Apart from me. I was to seek him out in the untamed spaces of the world. He is a wild god and not to be kept like a pet. I did not control him. He came when he came, and when he left I would yearn passionately for him to return.
But now, now he is inside me. Deeper than any lover. More intimate. More present. Sometimes I can hear him laughing at something particularly funny in my life. When I am sad I can feel his hands wrap around my rib cage in comfort. He's still not a tame god, but I have a light inside me now, and I am whole. There is no need for yearning. He is here. We are one. Always.
I am filled with joy. Sometimes even if I am arguing with my husband or am butting heads with someone at the office, inside myself I am grinning with happiness. I am sure I must look like an idiot sitting there smiling while we are getting into it. But...it's hard to take the argument seriously. What is there to fight about? What is there to win? Nothing. Nothing is as important is that sense of the Presence inside me. And the Presence is so big, is so much larger than me, is so vibrant, so alive that I know... I KNOW that the idea if "me" is irrelevant. Is an illusion. I am not arguing with anyone. The person I am talking to is another aspect of the divine. As we talk/argue... we are just processing the details of our interaction. If I "loose" the argument, I am not diminished. I am not there to be diminished.
How does the divine loose an argument? Especially with himself?
Hilarious.
And this is where we devolve into not making any sense anymore. Sorry. Some of where I am does not make any rational sense, but rational thought is a product of the brain. As Doug pointed out the brain evolved over thousands of years to help us interact and manipulate the outside world. That which is external to the form of us. And it is very good at doing that.
It is very bad at interacting with the internal world. It has not evolved to do so.
Or as Emo Phillips said: "I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in the body. Then I realized who was telling me this."
Words are a product of the brain, and they can mislead if they are not tempered with the wordless wisdom of the heart. Much of the experience of being at one with the divine is inexpressible. The act of writing it down makes it less of what it really is, because while defining what it is, it also breaks it down into defining what it is not.
And being one with the divine is not the experience of being broken. Unless it is being broken open.
Eggshells
Being closed around a kernel of hurt is not the path.
Open through your fear.
Open though you shudder.
Open, and if in opening you break
give thanks for the shattering.
It is only though the wreak of our
eggshell perceptions
that we can step forward
and fly.
I will, however, try to answer honest questions about the experience.
I am not likely to have rational answers.
That said, this post is mostly a description of a meditation and the impact of it. You could skip this post entirely if you are only interested in the oneness teachings themselves. I will take up my notes again in part 8.
One of my favorite Daisy Mayhem songs, which is in turn a re-do of an old spiritual has lyrics that go:
I got oil in my vessel,
My lamp's trimmed and burning.
I want to be ready
when the bridegroom comes.
Because of the rich bhakti and ecstatic sufi poetic traditions, I myself tend to think of the Divine as The Beloved, and much of what I have written about being merged with that Presence casts the Divine as a lover in my work.
So when they lowered the lights and advised us to imagine ourselves as children walking the long hallway from our heads down to our hearts, I dressed myself in my meditation in a child's dress up bridal gown.
In my heart I found a dusty room, and I was advised to clean it. So I spent time sweeping and dusting, although apparently I still don't do mopping even in my heart. Cleaning that space felt vivid. I could smell cinnamon, lavender and mango in the cleaning products. My heart space was round, like the inside of a hobbit hole, complete with round door barred with iron grill work to enter. The walls were translucent and the light from the outside bled through the fabric of my heart; the empty space gleamed warmly. Then we were advised to decorate our heart rooms, leaving a space in the middle clear.
Starting from the left of the door, I created a dress up closet filled with costumes, hats, fairy wings, ball gowns, swords, tuxedos and armor. On the left of that I created a sacred words spot. It had low bookshelves, a pillow pit, a writing spot and hundreds of beautiful books. To the left of that was a yoga studio. Then a large comfortable bed with thick sheets, pillows and a feather bed. A snuggle spot. Then a kitchen, fully equipped. The kitchen even had it's own well. Then to the left of that I built a hanging wall garden, succulents embedded in a matrix of dirt, turning a section of my heart into a living breathing wall. At that point I had made my way all around the circle, and I was back to the round door. Then Doug told us to put in currently empty center of the room a throne.
And it was then, precisely then, that I lost it. So many things came together for me all at once. I was currently in the body of a child, but I was wearing a wedding dress (a little dirty now for cleaning while dressed in it). I was to enthrone my King. My bridegroom. How many times had I been here? With a king and my yearning to be one with him. I knew at that moment that somewhere in this space was the reason why my friendship with Jared had fallen apart. I had made him my king, in my heart, and the magic of the reign had worked, but when he proved in time not to be my divine, as Shannon had proved not to be my divine before him, that link between my true king, my Beloved, and I had been broken. Tears started to pour down my face.
So I made my Beloved a throne. It was woven together with living willow branches, and decorated with moss, earth, mushrooms, fairy lights and leaves. Spider's silk was used for the pillows and arm rests, and it smelled of green growing things and life.
Doug told us to go to our door, open it, and call for our divine. I did. My shoulders were shaking. I was weeping as I did it. Crying with all my heart, all my longing for him to return.
I could feel him, a long way off; he was coming. Out of the sun he strode, so he was back-lit, his shadow his form, male, bare chested and crowned with antlers he came back to me.
Oh my Beloved, my Cernunos, my Divine. He that is mine as I am his.
I took his hand, helped him across the threshold, his great hand in my child sized one.
I showed him the house, each small nook, each treasure. I fed him, I gave him water from my well, I had him sit in his throne.
Then I crawled up in his lap and told him how much I loved him and how much I needed him to stay. We made vows to each other. He would stay, be my king, protect me, guide me, heal me, nurture me, provide for me. I would stay with him, I would always invite him into my presence in my experiences of being embodied. I would talk to him. Remember to ask him for help. Pray. Love him with my all. He told me he loved me. Unconditionally. Dirty wedding gown and all. I buried my head in his chest. I could smell the maleness of him, musk and sweat. I could feel the wiry hair on his chest crushed into my cheek. He held me with fatherly hands, not sexually, not even sensually, just holding me. I felt comforted. Safe.
On the one hand I wanted to ask, how did he know how I needed to be held, how I needed to be healed, but the answer was self evident. He is the divine.
And then I told him my prayers. The details of those are between he and I.
Then Doug took us out of the meditation and dismissed us until after dinner. Matt helped me stumble out of the room. I was joy filled and but also exhausted from weeping. I don't even remember the next few hours. My love had come back to me. I felt whole, but as wrung out as a sponge. I wanted to sleep for a week.
I found out after the weekend that Matt's vision of the divine was different than mine. I am sure there were, in that packed room, people who saw Christ and Buddha and Mohammed, the goddess, Krishna and even burning bushes. Whatever form they can most closely relate to, what form they can have a loving/best friend relationship is what they saw.
For as long as I can remember, my vision of the holiness and of true spiritual experiences involves running through the woods with the leaves whipping past me. The green of growing things is blurred by the speed of my running. I have dreamed about this vision over and over again. When I was young I could see it in my head when I closed my eyes.
The first time I ever saw a depiction of Cernunnos, the celtic antlered god, my whole body rang like a bell. My Christian friends will probably find this disturbing, that my visual of the divine has horns like the devil. All I can say is culture can often blind and make us fear a truth when it is presented to us. My divine is part man part stag. The wild in the woods. The king of the forest. He is the one who leads the hunt, the chase. He is of the body and sex and the senses and of our animal natures. Feeling his presence is a wonder and a terror that makes me feel intensely alive. Loved.
When I was in college my roommate asked me, exasperated, why I could not just be a Christian like everyone else. She saw my understanding that godhead takes many forms to be rebellious for the sake of rebelliousness. An artsy defiance of convention. It was never that. It was just... Jesus never came calling. (He knew where I lived too, I did grow up in the South after all).
I was brought to a personal understanding of god through this strange and beautiful form.
I can not help what called me. But I am grateful to have been called.
In the past though, he was always over there, in the woods. Other. Apart from me. I was to seek him out in the untamed spaces of the world. He is a wild god and not to be kept like a pet. I did not control him. He came when he came, and when he left I would yearn passionately for him to return.
But now, now he is inside me. Deeper than any lover. More intimate. More present. Sometimes I can hear him laughing at something particularly funny in my life. When I am sad I can feel his hands wrap around my rib cage in comfort. He's still not a tame god, but I have a light inside me now, and I am whole. There is no need for yearning. He is here. We are one. Always.
I am filled with joy. Sometimes even if I am arguing with my husband or am butting heads with someone at the office, inside myself I am grinning with happiness. I am sure I must look like an idiot sitting there smiling while we are getting into it. But...it's hard to take the argument seriously. What is there to fight about? What is there to win? Nothing. Nothing is as important is that sense of the Presence inside me. And the Presence is so big, is so much larger than me, is so vibrant, so alive that I know... I KNOW that the idea if "me" is irrelevant. Is an illusion. I am not arguing with anyone. The person I am talking to is another aspect of the divine. As we talk/argue... we are just processing the details of our interaction. If I "loose" the argument, I am not diminished. I am not there to be diminished.
How does the divine loose an argument? Especially with himself?
Hilarious.
And this is where we devolve into not making any sense anymore. Sorry. Some of where I am does not make any rational sense, but rational thought is a product of the brain. As Doug pointed out the brain evolved over thousands of years to help us interact and manipulate the outside world. That which is external to the form of us. And it is very good at doing that.
It is very bad at interacting with the internal world. It has not evolved to do so.
Or as Emo Phillips said: "I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in the body. Then I realized who was telling me this."
Words are a product of the brain, and they can mislead if they are not tempered with the wordless wisdom of the heart. Much of the experience of being at one with the divine is inexpressible. The act of writing it down makes it less of what it really is, because while defining what it is, it also breaks it down into defining what it is not.
And being one with the divine is not the experience of being broken. Unless it is being broken open.
Eggshells
Being closed around a kernel of hurt is not the path.
Open through your fear.
Open though you shudder.
Open, and if in opening you break
give thanks for the shattering.
It is only though the wreak of our
eggshell perceptions
that we can step forward
and fly.