September 22, 2015 – Lying down with the shadow

Listen to this post:

I’ve hit another patch where I’m not sleeping through the night, which has me so appreciate how important it is to sleep well. I woke up groggy, and instead of getting up to write as I do on Tuesday mornings, I have been walking around the house in a fog. For the first time since I’ve started posting every week – almost a year ago – I’m at a total loss as to what to share with you today. I am sitting down and writing, and I have no idea what’s going to come out of my fingers. So, I’m starting with right where I am. I took 2mg of melatonin last night. I’ve never taken more than 1mg at a time. I have an extremely sensitive system, I guess, because I learned first-hand that one of the side-effects of taking too much is nightmares. After lying awake for what felt like a couple of hours, I got back to sleep and I had two very short, terrible dreams – they were short because they shook me awake!

The first one was the strangest experience. I was with Joe in our kitchen and (in my dream), realized I was having an out of body experience – I was watching myself as I was talking to him. Then, the strange part: what I can only describe as “dark energy” overtook me. It was as if I was being taken away – like I was being sucked into a black hole. I wanted to scream but couldn’t. It was fear more intense and powerful than I’d felt in a long time, if ever. I woke startled, but less than I’d expected I would. My heart was barely beating any faster than normal. What I was most struck by, was how not upset I was. I was aware of how consumed by fear I was in my dream, but also how totally safe and ok I felt lying in my bed warm and cozy, Bo’s fuzzy doggy-body lying up against mine on top of the covers. I was really fine. I had the thought to go crawl in bed with Joe for comfort, but I really wanted him to sleep.

The next thing that came to me was – that what I experienced was “the shadow.” Shadow exists in me, in my consciousness, in its most intense form and I fell into it, right in my own bed. And the next thought was of ISIS in the Middle East, (I know! But it’s where I went.) which to me is the most intense expression of the shadow these days. But it’s not isolated there – it’s in everything and everyone – violence, illness, disaster, fear. I’m still on the email prayer chain from the church I used to go to. In the past few days, the number of emails asking for prayers has surged – most of them are for people with terrible health problems. There are the fires in Lake County – I hear every day of someone who knows someone who lost everything. My uncle just asked me if I was concerned about the Syrian refugees, that are pouring into Europe during my upcoming trip to Paris. Everywhere we turn, there is suffering.

In the midst of all of this, I’m preparing to leave a week from tomorrow for our Pilgrimage to Paris. I bought a new raincoat, some new, stylish low-heeled booties and a whole bunch of new clothes yesterday – my wardrobe needed French-ifying! I’m going a couple days ahead of everyone else, so I can get things ready for them. I’m emailing with my old friends I used to work with there. We’re going to get together and catch up on each other’s lives. It’s all so wonderful. This trip is dream of mine realized. And the group of people going are all SO excited too, so looking forward to an incredible trip – “the trip of a lifetime” a few are calling it.

And there’s the art that’s coming through me. Somehow it seems to me that it’s becoming more luminous. It feels funny to be saying this to you, but I am. I look at “Douce” the painting I most recently finished – hanging on the wall in my mom’s office – our studio for part of the week. I see the space that the glass and flowers occupy. I see the light gleaming through – all in a way that doesn’t exist in my earlier work. Or at least, not as much. I had a conversation last week with my friend Vicki about all of this. I have this nagging sense that what I do is trivial in the light of all this suffering. She said, “oh, if we all stop making beautiful things because life is too hard, then we are lost! We need you.” I’m so grateful for my friend.

Vicki left on Saturday for the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She’s there to teach trauma healing, to the survivors of the worst sexual violence on the planet. Suffering in the Congo really is everywhere. Before she left, she was very anxious about her role, comparing herself to others who are great at fundraising and making logistical stuff happen. I told her she will be bringing a kind of light with her that is priceless. She woke her first morning and sent me this via email:

“I was lying awake this morning (it’s morning here) in rapture. I know I am divinely led, not by anything I understand or want to name, but my being here and whatever comes out of it, is exactly what I’m supposed to be doing…I know my words, and know they guide me: Transcendent, joyous, joyful, happy, excited, connected, wisdom, knowing–is there a word for being one with the universe, being in sync with all that is, in the flow? I think it’s GRACE. Because that’s where I am. And I remembered what Manuel Rodriquez encourages, that when you feel this grace, this wonderful affirmation of who you are, and all that is good in you and in the world, you spend time letting it sink in, really experiencing the physicality of it, the juice of it in your veins.”

I think we spend a lot more time paying attention to our experience of suffering. It’s natural to do this. Our suffering has a place – that is to get our attention – something needs attending to! And if we don’t there can be dire consequences. But where I’m looking now after sharing all of this with you, is that the idea is to contain the suffering in a larger space, a larger consciousness. What Vicki is talking about, letting grace seep in, experiencing the “juice of it in our veins,” grows in us the capacity to hold it all – the beauty and the suffering. I recall having bad dreams in the past, not even as intense as this morning’s – and having been shaken, so much that I felt outside myself. I see my own evolution, in how right-in-my-center I felt as I was jolted awake this morning.

There is a part of me that is protesting posting this for you – and anyone on the internet – to read. One could say it doesn’t seem quite aligned with “life in full color.” But, it actually is – full color is all color – life as it is. To me it’s the only “right” way to respond to all the suffering that happens around me, and in me – to share it as I experience it, not to avoid the truth of it. And then keep making beauty as if life depends upon it.

Love,

Cara