Where the Wild Things Go

Downpours, Sunshine, and Fire

The first time I felt my heart was at the end of a month long Vipassana meditation. After trying to use different objects of attention for years; myself, partners, family, it was this puppy that opened my heart. I miss her, her joy, and unconditional love.

Depression can be sly, subtle and tricky to recognize. It’s a parent opposite joy often lives off the radar while depression dominates in a power over since. I’m not sure what that means other than it can feel like a powerful wet, heavy blanket holding you down it’s controlling too. Depression doesn’t want you to risk being seen at least in the rage that’s being suppressed by the blanket. “not me. I’m a good person. I don’t have rage,” says the one under the blanket as they pull the wall over their eyes. and until joy pops onto the radar she’s practically invisible at least on a felt sense level. When we’re depressed, it’s easy to believe that this is all there is.

Less like dormancy, yet that fits in a way, but more like an aspect of the soul’s desire to actually live- tethered, orbiting the body waiting for the capacity for self-love to expand and generate a temple sweet enough for this angel of joy to land that’s why I say it’s more like tethered than dormant because of my experience she comes in from the outer part of the energy body like an essence returning to a flower.

On a call with Trish Blaine this winter, I had an emotional realization. My life completely fell apart when I was 13. I didn’t realize it when it happened and I never grieved my losses. That’s when Joy left me. My dog who was one year older than me died. I was an only child at the time, he and the cats were close companions my cat, who I got when I was two died a younger cat got leukemia died in the third cat ran away when we moved out of the house I was born in.

All the pets passed, seemingly at once, my parents divorced, and we left the land I was so familiar with. You could say that I pressed the emotional pause button on life at least on feeling emotion. I wouldn’t cry at all until I was in my 30s. Just couldn’t, I tried. (Minus a few times when I was drunk). I cried when it all came together in my mind on this call with Trish. I’ve been crying a lot since it’s been good.

This week Joy came untethered and found my heart again. It wasn’t loud, but it was distinct and I’m in a process of cultivating the joy I found. Realizing the depression that’s been here for decades is like waking up one day with someone else in bed with you but it’s you and now that you see them you realize they’ve been there all along. With joy it’s similar just that in my case, they crawled into bed with me in the middle of the night and that’s how we’re meeting for the first time it feels risqué.

It’s counter-intuitive to think feeling rage can lead to feeling joy. It’s also counterintuitive to think compassion might be an unconscious strategy of a hopeless idiot who always wants to be at the center of attention. The through line here is the repressed rage. And until lightning strikes and joy re-enters the heart, it’s a squirmy ride on the struggle bus to relinquish the false security of that weighted blanket and it’s familiarity stitched with the sad comfort of depression. The blanket inhibits both energies; rage and joy.

I just moved across the country into an apartment and out of the van. Sleep has been disrupted so I try to employ healthy habits like exercise, meditation, prayer consistently. Besides the terribly uncomfortable process of committing to a lease and the other inner work, I’m doing on myself, I’ll be facilitating a men’s weekend in New Hampshire with a number of friends at the end of the month then I’ll head over to Sundance after that.

One thing I’ve noticed is the correlation between ceremony and prayer and my health. It was only when I left Oahu that the toxic black mold symptoms arrived. When I left the island, I left my community and stopped going to consistent sweat lodges and my health at the skids. Funny story, I just went to my first sweat lodge in a while and when I arrived I didn’t know where I was going so a woman showed me the way. Her name was Joy.

My thought about rage is that it needs an outlet. Sometimes expressions of rage come out sideways. Rage is fire and it needs to burn. War isn’t the only outlet for rage. Prayer in a hot womb is another, healthier version. Maybe why it was illegal for so many years. Realizing this made it all click, I’m able to burn off my rage in a healthy way while praying and singing in a hot lodge. If I don’t have that outlet, my system gets sick. Again, that’s why it was made illegal. It’s like clearing the pipes before they burst. I’ll do that today and then go to church for the blissful rapture of gospel music tomorrow.

Out with the rage in with the joy!