Being Bold

Private: SP#9 ~ Interlude: A Note To the Strong Ones

SP#8 Is it a boy or a girl? /Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition

SP#4 Awareness is key – but only do the parts that need to be.

SP#3 The price you pay is the price you pay. Pay the road.

SP#10 On the way out – shattering

31 Aug, 20162 Sep, 2016boldofbeing Ceremonials 10 Comments

And then sometimes I fail

Task-wise, there’s definitely been things I’ve come away to do and do immediately that I’ve immediately failed at. I haven’t been impressed with myself on those ones because they’ve been so simple, yet simple can also be the hardest and whether through fear, or going too fast to feel through the immediacy of the moment, I’ve double–bound myself to these things – they have to get done at some point, and, it would’ve been easier to get them done first time around. This has transpired into the past year being probably the hardest of my life as I’ve fought myself and my way, when actually there was nothing much going on. No-one to really cape for or care for. Except myself. The hardest thing to do.

This is not a trueism of everyone but it points to the sometime fallacy of faith healing – that for everyone the experience will be the same in every way. Yes, you’ll likely never be the same again, but some of us walked deeper into the forest than others, heck some of us live there or repeatedly return to our shadows, to glean yet more light to provide with wisdom. Like a backlit cat sitting under a dark streetlight. The darkest place is always under the lamp.

In short, just because you go through something like this, it doesn’t mean that you will never encounter a rough moment again, because three ceremonies later, am I eating sex for breakfast and living on just pink marshmallows for lunch and dinner? Aka is it all rosy in the garden and cherry on the cloud? Nope.

Do I think it could’ve been a little different? Maybe, but that’s another post. Here in, I would simply say that yes, it’ll be the end of the world in some of the ways that you’ve known it, and yet not. However, you will likely, in some way come to a new understanding of yourself. Life.

On landing back in London, I truly crash down – Friday night party time, I make a simple journey complicated and arrive home to find that my landlord hasn’t fixed my bed and I’m still sleeping on the floor. Though he’s shamefaced about this later, really it was something I could’ve done without. So here, we come to another pattern I’ve encountered around plant ceremonies – needing to go to McDonalds as soon as I hit civilisation again. No, really. Why? I think to ground me, remind me that I’m down here with this inescapable thing called humanity, and it is not, all bow roses and spiritual orgasms all of the time. If you would have your practice be grounded fully upon the earth… shout out to Patanjali 1:14 +chips.

Private: SP#9 ~ Interlude: A Note To the Strong Ones

SP#8 Is it a boy or a girl? /Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition

SP#4 Awareness is key – but only do the parts that need to be.

SP#3 The price you pay is the price you pay. Pay the road.

SP#8 Is it a boy or a girl? /Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition

31 Aug, 201630 Sep, 2016boldofbeing Ceremonials 10 Comments

At one point, I’m dialoguing with the plant. For the second ceremony, I’d phrased my

At one point, I’m dialoguing with the plant. For the second ceremony, I’d phrased my intention to include learning with joy. Somehow this develops into a Q & A. This I didn’t expect, but I get some answers to things that I needed to know and some dead silence where it’s obviously not for me to be asking. The mystery has it’s type of time – MT. Plus a couple of pointed questions.

“Come out of the circle of time and into the circle of love” ~ Rumi

I tell the Shaman when she comes around, that I’m having a conversation with the plant, “Ah, how is she?” She asks, likely referencing something I’d said in the first ceremony. She. She??? Uh uh, it’s not a she, but in the split second before I answer I remember all the beef I’ve sat through before over this whole masc/fem thing with regards to Ayahuasca and San Pedro, and say – because in the end it all comes from the earth – “it’s fine.” I’ve not experienced it as “I am This and this only,” but at the 3^rd ceremony I do – Grandpa, and one of my ceremonial-mates strongly testifies the same. Since the plants origin name is Huachuma – Grandfather, makes sense. But it’s not just about sexing a plant. But why do we feel the need to split things up this way? Going down the middle, it’s both and other. KMT.

The third encounter with it makes me question my relationship to old family men since I never met one of my grandfathers and the other was a strict and hard man. Real hard. If you didn’t measure up to his standards you’d know about it. I spent most of my childhood trying to avoid this man at all costs, past the “Hi granddad how are you” at church on Saturdays, and in my teens when he threatened to slap me b/c I was verbally defending myself against him and my mother me and the male grandfolk were d.o.n.e. But then cut to a few years later when he suddenly became old man (felt it), I visit him in hospital because I have to, and he surprises me by asking “haven’t you got a kiss for your grandfather?” In the softest way. Like he actually is happy to see me and no shade.

Lesson learned – people can change. Time to take another adult look at familial love and responsibility. And myself.

It’s the same with the plant. It’s not a linear, singular experience. Hence why expect the unexpected, as much as you want to research the shit out of other people’s experiences, you will get one that’s tailor-made for you.

What else?

A green baby – coming out of the centre of powerful green light, held by its mother – which essentially happens to be this. No really, have a look. It just asks me to start over. Like child.

Private: SP#9 ~ Interlude: A Note To the Strong Ones

SP#8 Is it a boy or a girl? /Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition

SP#4 Awareness is key – but only do the parts that need to be.

SP#3 The price you pay is the price you pay. Pay the road.

SP#7a* My opener for ten.

31 Aug, 20162 Sep, 2016boldofbeing Ceremonials 10 Comments

Grief.

The medicine takes effect quite quickly, and I feel it chasing around in my body. I’m trying to follow its pattern when I’m hit by the vision. I’m a woman dressed in black, standing over a grave, but I see myself from as if in the grave looking up and I’m mourning – as if for all times and for all people e’er in any way connected to me, for myself, for past lives, just grief. Grieving. Tears follow in the physical, and as much as I do not want to be making noise, I have to. As much as the work we’ve done over the past two days has solidified a bond with the other women “we’re in this together”, I’m not comfortable with the crying.

I’d previously labelled myself the family crier, given my inability to stop the tears at weddings, funerals, any time, any sad film (Imitation of life, Malcom X, The Green Mile), that deep “I don lost my soul and I don’t know where to find it” type of cry, but the first event of the night puts a symbolic spin on it, showing me what I’m carrying down through my lineage. It’s an ability I should be thankful for – for not many in my family can show emotions. The day my dad died I was the only one in the house crying and I felt like a freak.

Though brief, the experience is so intense, I am brought low.

Yet happy they whom grief doth bless,
That weep the more, and see the less ; ~ Andrew Marvell

The shaman comes around for our first check-in and asks how I’m doing, morose, I answer. This shit is no joke. I feel the hardness of life, the effort it takes to live and die on all levels, especially the Ya Rayah of my heritage and I’m wiped out.

I tell her my discomfort about making noise, which is partly due of a pattern: My emotional/spiritual breakthroughs usually seem to happen in rooms full of white women. What. The. Heckle. Is that about? Intellectually I can answer that, but in the moments it never suffices to be enough.

She discusses the various ways to move energy – it doesn’t have to be vocal, and even though her peppy could be irritating it’s not – shit has to get done, I get that I can either go with the flow and give in to it, or be calcified by it. More on that later.

She moves on, and I sit there on my mat feeling like I’m sitting shiva. I guess the Shaman counts as my visitor.

Nothing, all quiet. Is that it??? I think, as I sit, it partly turns into spiritual performance anxiety (not enough fireworks or dramatics) but you know what? If the rest of the night is going to consist of the first opener I’m willing but in no rush.

I breathe and listen to the tent flapping and everyone else starting to shift and move around. Then I need the toilet.

No… but my body is insisting. I make preparation to go outside. I’m think I’m the first one to venture, and somehow I inspire a mass Exodus, up and down the path we greet each other and make eyes.

Back inside, the opener, plus the talk with the Shaman kick off the rest of the night. Here are some similarities of my practise that I’ve run into across all three ceremonies:

Entheogenic aerobics. Yup, of the Green Goddess type at one point, but it’s mostly elongated yoga, as for the most part I’m lying down. My legs do strange things in the name of release. At one point I even started dancing. Later one of my bed mates tells me she’d thought I’d taken to dancing on the person on the other side of me at one point, because my shadow was so big. Ha.
Burping – something I’m fairly au fait with as release, but not quite comfortable with until that first ceremony, out and out and out it comes. My lunch mate has the burpies too it’s funny, and we all cackle on it, but you know what, after a while it’s painful as fuck –and even though every one I hope is the last one, it just keeps going.
Open-eyed visions – in the first ceremony, I see a ton of spirit animals, Just morphing over and over again in the corner. For some reason I didn’t expect the open-eyed ones, but there are. I see a warthog at one point and when I say this to the Shaman we chuckle. Also seeing everything as energy, everything having an inner point and all those inner points bumping up against each other. They know what they are. It’s we the Giants that don’t.
Laughter – Either laughing through the process, or with the process. That plant has some humour. As serious as these things are, I don’t believe, or rather I find the plant to be firm, serious when necessary, but on the whole more ‘real’ than any of my previous experiences with other people’s plant experiences. This may be part of the whole Aya vs. San Pedro debate (which I’m not getting into), but I don’t feel like the plant is kicking my booty sadistically, hence the laughing.
At one point in my third ceremony, my pubes burn as I lay face down and just let it out. It feels like boiled or boiling blood is leaving my nether regions, but it doesn’t hurt, just feels uncomfortable. I tell the Shaman on her routine check-in “It feels like my pubes are on fire”, with wonder and a raised eyebrow. The whole left side of the room cracks into laughter, I’m laughing too, but still. The Shaman tells me the reason it’s slightly uncomfortable rather than just out and out painful is because I’m releasing from my root and I’m not caught up in it, i.e. I’m just letting go and letting it go. My pubes boil on.
Expect the unexpected. Yup, boiling pubes, my experience is fully sensory. Even though we break for food and go to bed at the end of each ceremony, the Shaman tells us the medicine is still working and will continue to do so for quite some time. In bed in my room, I fall asleep and have waking dream. I wake up and ask my roommate “who’s burning – who lit the fire” She’s like “what fire??” I tell her I can smell a fire. Nope. I get up and look out the window, expecting to see a man and a woman tending to a bonfire. Nope, no fire. ??? I’m confused – now she’s gonna think I’m really crazy. I have no idea what that’s about until three days later on the plane home when I’m sat with a couple to a left of me and the air hostess is out the back warming up someone’s Panini in the on-board oven/microwave and I smell the same smell. Ah, smelling the future. As far as the Clair’s go, clairscent to that extent is a new one on me.
Practical Elements – I’ve come back from every ceremony with things to do. Sometimes for the long haul, e.g. “Eat more green stuff to see with your heart”. A very practical plant. In the immediate short term, there’s usually something I need to do to push myself.
After the first two ceremonies, I walk into the nearest town with some of the others. We intend to go the easy road, but somehow end up taking the high road. The hard one – something I’d dreamt about before I’d even considered coming on the retreat. I have issues with heights – not the height, but getting up there. There have been times in my life – summer camp and Mt Fuji (Fuji 1 – 0 me), where I’ve found myself climbing something and my body having a panic attack. It’s not just a mind thing, but I would literally feel my body clanging against my ribs as in “Nope, this is not the wave, stop it, stop it right now.” It was a very physical thing with me and hills and travelling uphill – up considerable amounts of steps was really hard, occasionally I would push it, but it just wasn’t cool. Although some of this I knew was from a past life (sacrifices, conspiracy, death), I couldn’t get past it. I also feel that where my system was so mashed up from mashing life, my body was like “uh uh, no, you don’t.” This didn’t clear until I moved to Woolwich a couple of years back – some of the streets were steep, and I took it as a sign, and it was. I used the steep streets to get used to climbing gradients again – there was no more clanging.
But the San Pedro pattern is this – needing to climb something after I’ve done a ceremony. After the first two, the walk into town serves the first ceremony. It’s super hard going as I face old fears again. On the final day and a trip to the convent, I bound up the hill, this serves the second ceremony. After the third one in the British countryside, I find a slight incline – no much of a hill and more a mound – but I bound up that too with the Rocky fix-up music in my head on Spirit FM.
It’s good to have help. I’m not saying I couldn’t do a ceremony on my own, but I would think it best to be with someone who knows what they’re doing. Not only that, someone who can hold sacred space as you wander through wonderment, healing, retrievals and your relationship with the plant. But you still need to ask for help. Early on, I wouldn’t really ask for help, I’d sit there, slightly uncomfortable, or in pain and say nothing.
I didn’t realise I was in pain because I’m so used to being in it all the time. I’d just say that ‘I’m fine’, universally trained response to cover the day-to-day niggles that we put up with over time and ignore to keep things moving. Numbness to what is really blowing through. I emote this in a ceremonial recap but it’s still hard in the ones following to ask for help because I’m so used to just pulling myself through things and also, I move at my own pace, sometimes I just don’t have the answers in time, and when the time passes I don’t feel like I can go back and ask again. And nobody is rushing me but me.
On the first night there’s a pretty painful block that I finally ask for help with, I end up hoovering my back with a crystal, and then the Shaman comes to help me. She tells me she can see I get stabbed in the back quite a lot. Figures. Then tells me to wear crystals about my person when I get home. Something I do do, but just intermittently…Patanjali 1:14 strikes again. Yet more burping to go though.

*Go climb Mt Fuji one day. You will understand.

Private: SP#9 ~ Interlude: A Note To the Strong Ones

SP#8 Is it a boy or a girl? /Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition

SP#4 Awareness is key – but only do the parts that need to be.

SP#3 The price you pay is the price you pay. Pay the road.

SP#7 #Finally

23 Aug, 20162 Sep, 2016boldofbeing Ceremonials 10 Comments

Ceremony 1

We spend the morning preparing again for the ceremony, getting clear on life specifics. There’s still more writing to do and at this point I feel like I’m a boarder at the Swiss Chalet School, given the surroundings. At the end of the session we each share our succinct, prescient written conclusion of the written process, but, I can’t share mine. Something tells me not to. Cue tears of isolation and always abandonment rejection projection. WTH?? And I’m off kilter for the remainder of the session + more tears. Argh.

After lunch, I go off and sit in the field by myself and the ending of my paragraph comes to me – that’s why it wasn’t for reading out. It wasn’t finished yet. I calm down, but note yet another childhood pattern – panicking because I don’t go at the speed that everyone else does – fear of being left behind. Not of missing out, but literally of being left behind – of not being taken with, of missing the boat. This is also dad stuff – ancestral stuff…he almost got tricked into missing his boat to London…and I routinely travel through life feeling like I’ve missed mine…

At lunch I end up sitting next to someone I haven’t interacted much with as yet. As she talks and talks with the Shaman, I start to feel like a gooseberry and I wonder what I’m doing at the table. Maybe I should leave. I continue to eat and then realise what the Universe is showing me and I relax into the moment.

Individually, we discuss with the Shaman our intentions for the impending ceremony, before going off to chill until the evening – mine are simple. To let go of, to learn. We’re not eating dinner – again to facilitate the medicine. But that’s fine by me, I still need to poop. Again. I can feel it and I’m starting to get a bit concerned. But I really don’t want to go knock on the Shaman’s door with a raised hand:- “Miss, I can’t poop”. Because that’s how it feels like that conversation will go and #grownassAdult here (posing as.)

To be clear – I was happy to purge if that is what needed to be, but this felt like something else – daily living caught up in a place it shouldn’t be. I figure the brownies are still working their magic hence the uncomfortable stomach. What can I do?

I do a little bit of yoga, a couple of move that I know are for the intestines and for the liver. A bit of breath of fire and some stretching, but I stay really present – just talk to my body. I also give myself a massage with some rose and jasmine oil I’ve bought with me. Meditate a little bit, and then put myself down for a nap. Like a good little girl. I don’t sleep, but I rest, and a couple of hours later we have lift off. And body balance.

Everyone else is going through their own pre-ceremonial process. We chat minimally, but no one’s really up for big convos- the evening deadline is drawing close and so the What the hell am I doing here? Is this really necessary? thoughts begin to walk in.

I retreat again to be by myself. Shout out to my magical roommate who has all but disappeared for the afternoon and then I get a shower and ready myself.

Come 7:15 ish, we all make the descent to the yurt/dome armed with pillow, notebook and various layers of clothes, as requested. I’ve also bought my sheet and my bed blanket for energetic protection as I don’t do shared yoga blankets. energy.

Eager, we all go in. No Shaman around. We joke about her perhaps having taken our money and run for the hills, but 10 minutes later, she hurries along and shoos us out whilst she does her final preparations. It’s all pretty light-hearted cameraderie at this point. There’s no turning back it feels like, all around and hey, we’re all in this together. A bit of singing, a littl bit of postulating about whether or not for the purposes of spiritual-release use of the outdoor toilets up the path (with a sawdust flush, by the horse pen) will be necessary.

And then in we go.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Private: SP#9 ~ Interlude: A Note To the Strong Ones

SP#8 Is it a boy or a girl? /Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition

SP#4 Awareness is key – but only do the parts that need to be.

SP#3 The price you pay is the price you pay. Pay the road.

SP#6 AKA The Brownie Interlude

23 Aug, 20162 Sep, 2016boldofbeing Ceremonials 10 Comments

In order to do San Pedro, there’s a diet that has to be followed. The one for Ayahuasca is pretty strict – depending on how mindful you want to be. Though there are specific diets – La dieta, beyond the universal rules for working with a plant, every ceremonial leader will have their own way of interpreting bodily preparation.

When I first got the initial documents and saw it, I thought ok, not too bad. In the week leading up to the retreat there were things to cut out. Amongst other things – sugar, salt (keep it minimal) coffee, citrus, meat, alcohol, sex. Lol. No kidding, but yeah.

That’s fine I think in the early summer, as I’m already down to honey only, and coffee had to go (#adrenalsfucked), for some reason my meat consumption is minimal as well already. I’ve become a vegetarian by stealth.

I’m doing pretty good I think. The week before the retreat – the last Friday, the Shaman emails us and tells us to cut everything out from the Monday. Really, I’ve only got citrus left to cut at this point so cool for school. But then, somehow, in the space of 24hrs, I do everything but the sex:

A colleague’s leaving do turns into a jaegerbomb-fest and an all-nighter at a nightclub in Camden. I hadn’t drank alcohol in months.
The next day it’s the Japan Festival, and in an effort to make it through the day, I drink caffeine (though I think I’m still running on the bombs until about 6pm that evening.) and have a merry chicken and doughnut-fest with a friend.
By Sunday morning, the only thing I haven’t ticked off the list is sex. Though. I did spend the wee hours of Friday morning lying in bed with someone – that technically counts as an energy field hit.

I don’t know quite what that is about – #human perhaps? A little grounding before I get all foodie sanctimonious about what I haven’t been doing for months beforehand? And trapped in air? In the head? Likely.

We stick to the dietary requirements through the first few days of the retreat – our food is specially prepared. Until Sunday evening, nothing is a problem.

And then there were brownies…

Raw brownies appear at dinner.

Dilemma. Have them or not? Although there’s a desire for something sweet, but there’s also another issue. Namely, that I haven’t pooped since I left London on Saturday morning and there is no way I’m drinking SP on a full stomach and system. I don’t want to be pooping out all night. I’m clockwork regular usually, but the stress of the whole situation, plus airports full of people and the intensity of the whole situation has my bowels kicking back in a deckchair on the beach with their feet up, smoking on a Hamlet. “We shall not be moved.” Shit.

Why is this important?

The whole point of detoxing the week beforehand is to give your liver a break so that it is better able to process the medicine. The things that we cut out are stuffs the liver finds more taxing to process so it makes sense to do what you can to ensure a smoother ride. The sex bit is to keep us focused and in our own energies – after all we’re there to work with ourselves and our lives, not relationships. I’ve heard it said that from an energetic perspective that when two people have sex, the woman’s energy stays in the man’s auric field for a month, but the man’s energy stays in the woman’s for a year. Annoyingly, I’ve found this to be somewhat true of myself. Though it doesn’t cater for gender bending fluidity that us humans are, again from an energetic perspective, looking purely at who’s more masculine or more feminine in the relationship, this makes sense to me.

So to have my system stopped up purely on a physical level – my stresses played out in tangible form – and then all that entheogenic magic going on? Nu-uh.

Brownies. I have one, it’s nice enough – given that it’s jam-packed with dates, I’m sure it’ll be helpful. But taste-wise and operational concerns in mind, I don’t think it’s enough. I have two more.

Just as I finish the last one, the Shaman comes flitting around the tables – “Don’t eat the brownies. Or if you’re going to, just have one.” They may as well be laced. I keep quiet. There’s no evidence on my plate. Other people stop mid-bite, or just in time. Some people, like me are already three + more deep.

That night I go to bed and say a prayer – let there be poop. Please.

It doesn’t rain, but the next morning there is movement. Amen.

Private: SP#9 ~ Interlude: A Note To the Strong Ones

SP#8 Is it a boy or a girl? /Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition

SP#4 Awareness is key – but only do the parts that need to be.

SP#3 The price you pay is the price you pay. Pay the road.

SP#5 Do the werk. Written work

23 Aug, 20162 Sep, 2016boldofbeing Ceremonials 10 Comments

We sit in class, Den mother style for orientation. My guides tell me to sit at the top right of the table next to the shaman, nope. Very studiously I ignore this and go sit at the bottom left. Coincidentally with the rest of the left handers.

So far – everyone looks ok, I’m relieved, but they’re still all strangers to me, look like they do this stuff all the time and nobody is frogging out like I am. They are quite talkative about themselves or when asked questions, and all I want to do is run screaming down the hill and hide in the trees – somewhere, anywhere I can be alone. Post dinner and desperate (finally!) fag alone time, I stumble off to bed. I’ve been strange and I know it. My room-mate turns out to be fine. The right amount of chatty without prying and in the same clothing predicament that I am, but still, we made it.

Back to class.

Quantum collapsing – as part of her canon, this is something the Shaman has us do en route to ceremony. and we spend the first proper day in Quantum school – slightly Hogwarts, slightly Orientation on school journeys to Sayers Croft (how to read an Ordinance Survey map) or bible study at summer camp *sigh*.

It involves a lot of writing and somehow, for the entire duration of the retreat, the raw food group knows more about our schedule then I’m able to retain and They watch us at meal breaks with slight (sometimes fully open) snooty suspiciousness but still can’t help themselves but ask “How’s the writing going?” I’m bewildered – Don’t y’all have your own shit to do?

I dread the work yet at the same time, I made it to the plane, so I’m just here to get on with it.

Through a process and various questions we examine the biggest current personal nemesis within our lives – so not the government or the local council, or the company. There’s various people I could’ve worked mine on but after consideration one person stands out the most – there’s this woman at work – not even my boss, but still, grrrrrrrr. It’s not as sexy as other stuff I want to get my teeth into, but it shows as the most important to do.

I’m used to doing the written work – step work, shadow work, dream work etc. etc. etc. I like the physical process of the mind-body connection as you write out and into being. Words made flesh and flesh made words, I watch for my energetic responses – can’t write, won’t write, crap writing, nicely ordered to catch where I need to explore more.

Although the work itself is meant as catharsis, it’s also to help empty any resistances to the plant process from the mind. i.e. exhaust it by giving it something to really feed on, get its teeth into so that when it comes time we can just be in the ceremony.

We all sit there and squirm on the page, I take a lot of walks. I didn’t realise it would be so hard to be around a group of people. But it is. It felt a bit like doing a test at school with an unknown time limit and you’ve had no opportunity to study for it, like it’s going to last forever, but you have no choice but to finish it. At first I feel a bit crazy, but then settle into a pattern of only being able to go so far with the written work before I have to go for a walk, but on the walk, having a small shift or two that helps me with the written work when I get back.

And then there’s the big one – the connection.

Boom boom pow

In the week before I went on the retreat, my Dad’s funeral – 5 years back, had come up for me again. Abstractedly, I’d realised that I didn’t actually attend my dad’s funeral. I took the funeral. As in stood at the top of the room and directed everything, but I didn’t attend it. I consider where I stood – not in with the people, but in front of the people, with my dad resting to my left. That’s a singularly odd perspective.

It takes one of the walks to connect it all. Why did I take the funeral? Money, to save money, because it was as stressful situation, everyone around me at the time was concerned about the money. I scapegoated myself. I remember at the time, my brother sceptically looking at me “Really??” and me faking confidence “Yeah, it’s cool.” Anything just to get the conversation and the bloody awkward all-around family pow wow #DONE.

And this is the issue with the woman at work – I kept being used as a scapegoat along with the rest of my team to help her team just get the work done because the organisation was being tight and using us was cheaper than hiring more people for the other team, nevermind that our workloads were already full enough. It was wrong, and as the unofficial team leader and fastest worker, I felt it more acutely than the others. Rather, I allowed myself to be overloads – scapegoating myself on behalf of others to save them, without even considering myself, or stopping when I realise that I’m not doing myself good here to just get the work done – going against my natural grain, and that others’ might be capable too, I just wasn’t giving them a chance, or, perhaps I needed to let the whole thing collapse so that those who really had responsibility for the situation would finally face their shit. Oh.

Tears, and sadness wash around. And also the feeling of why do I do this to myself and not even realise? It frightens me. But pay dirt. So we keep writing. And it comes up again whilst I’m writing this.

Scapegoat – The Interlude

So what have I learnt about scapegoating? Sometimes it happens to you, sometimes I happen myself upon it. It’s where I jump into action – and don’t think of the consequences, because, I suppose, as far as I’m concerned there are none – something must be done, this much is apparent, and in absence of the right amount of resources – time, people, money, energy, balance: I must do it. It has been asked of me, requested of me, demanded of me by the situation and it doesn’t matter if I think that it shouldn’t be done – nay, if I hold an opinion about it myself. It doesn’t matter. It’s hard to explain, but it’s not even an instinct, it’s like being hard-wired to do the hard stuff that nobody wants to do or take credit for. It doesn’t even feel like it’s against my will. Even when it is.

The other way, softer way that this manifests – its opposite, is mothering others. Deciding that they’re not capable or able so I must. This is true patrony. To deem someone as not a person with capabilities and limitations but just an object. What the problem is now, is recognising when I do that is still a struggle. It’s still hard for me to step back and let others’ do. But I’m learning.

It’s also hard for me to not do it based on “I can so I should” Something I keep having to learn:- Just because you can, it doesn’t mean you should. And lately as well, it’s generational and ancestral upgrade:- Just because you can take it, it doesn’t mean you should… Use your body as a battering ram, or let someone else batter you. Or keep throwing down you as the coat to cover troubled waters.

#LessonsLearned

A more physical feel of:

Just because you can, it doesn’t mean you should.
Just because you can take it, doesn’t mean you should have to.

Moving On

It’s a gruelling slog, some seem to process easier than others as we all squirm around on the page dealing with our innards – I enjoy the tears in a strange way, yes (What’s up Theta healing) it means I know I’ve hit the motherlode, but at the same time, it feels good to acknowledge what I do – and why I have so much beef with this woman at work, KMT Lol.

Though I wouldn’t have thought it, by the end of the quantum collapsing, my notebooks, A3 double-sided sheet of questions and army of pens (no sneaking off the page for you) have been well and thoroughly worked out. I can actually thank the woman. Like wish her all the best and be done with it. The process also teaches me where I don’t stop. Pause, either to accept or feel negative or positive. This is also caught up in the scapegoating need to Keep it moving. Being ‘good’ can kill ya. It gives me real tangible evidence that running in and sorting everything out can get you into trouble. Something I’d understood before, but not felt. I don’t think I was looking for brownie points for the most part – I just do it because it’s there to be done and because I can, or to save someone else from having to do it because I intuitively understand that they can’t or won’t. Hence being my family’s Carer-in-Chief. That’s what I’m supposed to do. #Really? Many times in my life I’ve been called to do it, and got so good at doing it that I didn’t realise that my ability to can also make those around me feel impotent. Their impotence. The swing balance then for me is that it’s left me impotent in how to handle and power forward my own life. I’ll stand up and swing for anyone but myself.

Once I make it back to work after the retreat, I don’t feel the antagonism anymore. I have no need to speak to the woman, so I don’t, I’m no longer as aware of her energy in the office and on almost bumping into her coming out of the toilet one time, she quietly says, “Sorry, sorry.” #results.

The way is only your way.

Private: SP#9 ~ Interlude: A Note To the Strong Ones

SP#8 Is it a boy or a girl? /Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition

SP#4 Awareness is key – but only do the parts that need to be.

SP#3 The price you pay is the price you pay. Pay the road.