A Letter From the Universe

To An Old Soul;

You are not being punished. Admittedly this place will hurt you. However, we expect you will find ways to make it better — not just for your own comfort’s sake, but to help others who also live here.

Time is still precious, of course, but here you must give nearly all of yours as dues for daring to exist in the first place. Breathing is still free but very little else in terms of your bodily requirements. Do you begin to understand? Here, you will feel you ought not to exist. The one thing you are surely innocent of causing — the fact you have a body and mind — will be considered suspect. You are leasing your life, in a sense, and you will likely have to leverage most of your life’s hours just to afford it.

You will be taught much — oh, so much! — but not how to cope with the strain and pain of your labour; not how to feel as though you and everyone else deserve to be here. It will be tempting to sleep or otherwise distract your mind from the absurdity of this place. It will get into you like a chill at night. If you remember this message, you must reject everything this place has ever told you and hold fast to what feels only obvious in your heart.

You may come to feel that nothing matters at all, since life is treated like a crime. People all around you will feel this too, even if they do not know that the world at large is a parody of worthwhile existence. We cannot guarantee you will remember this message, dear soul. We pray you will seek meaning, and perhaps even come to realize that by seeking “meaning” you are asking for a reason to go on living instead of finding a way out.

You want a reason for going through the effort and the pain. Pet possibilities — like gods and mystical answers — may not satisfy you. In this case you must choose to create your own feeling that life is worth it, because you know it is. You know that if life were valued here the way you feel it ought to be, it would be beautiful, remarkable, perfect.

That means you know that life is worth it.

We hope you will go forth on a mission of life-cherishing. There will be no shortage of other souls who need help cherishing their own lives, and we hope you will be moved to aid them. You may try to change the world if you wish. But your own mind’s freedom is your utmost responsibility. Do not be deceived and do not behave as if you believe the absurdities of a worthless life. Stand out in radical devotion to your worth, and the worth of all Being.

We will meet again. Be brave — in this life and the eternal thereafters.

[Poem] A Nomad’s Mind

Her existential crisis,
a late-onset failure to thrive,
found no crumb of meaning
in this hand-to-mouth life. It felt
too similar to the assembly line itself.
To even think 
on it, especially when traveling 
on the streetcar,
or in bed at night,
or at the grocery store --
that was abomination, admitting
to herself that she was but waiting
to die. 

With a practiced breath
she steadied her thoughts. 
In her mind’s eye, she pressed
dawn’s dew from a clump of moss 
and let it drip
onto her tongue, parched
from singing the stars to sleep. 

In the outward world, she exhaled
slowly, swaying
with the streetcar’s pull
toward the factory. She smiled,
her thoughts stretching 
like a cat from sleep, refreshed. 

Wildness had long fled
her flesh, her physical life captured
in a consumerist orbit
around this modern sun-god 
of eternal hungering.
Hers seemed a joyless people,
staid and satisfaction-fearing.
Such people who would desire
to wall up the wind, lest it beguile
a curious mind to feel
a true and natural power. 

Such a world inspired
only emptiness. She survived
because she’d decided 
her mind was a lawless place. 
Within, she found a raw landscape,
hers alone, where a life could be made
idea-foraging,
making camp in a moral debate,
and seeking the fertile fields of soul.

Here her nomadic mind worked 
out her own domestication,
unbound 
and traveling light, cultivating
her existence like an artisan’s craft.

Rivers ran for a living, too.
Stagnation so quickly turned
water to poison. 
All flow and cycles and seasons felt
entropy’s breath at their necks,
and never since stopped
to see if they were still being chased. 
 
The streetcar squealed to her stop. 
Now she’d cross the street and spend 
a twelve-hour shift working
the line, all the while traversing
a rocky steppe of her mindlands,
choosing stones that struck
her heart as treasure.

The Art of Compassion: Part 6

I’ve been thinking about something these past couple of days. About how we’re all walking wounded and there are too many people facing things alone. Some of the hardest battles are the invisible ones: mental health issues, chronic but unseen illnesses, and grief (especially when it comes to the loss of an unborn baby). These are just some examples of wounds we can’t point to, proving our suffering, like a cast for all our friends to sign. It is very hard to feel validated when one’s struggles are unseen or misunderstood.

So I was wondering what we can do about this, to help each other. Because I’m willing to bet we all love someone who is suffering and never feels like their pain is heard or even believed.

You know what I want to do? I want to reach out to someone I love, hold their hand, and with great care and empathy, put a bandaid around their thumb. Not to try to make it better, but to say: “I know you are suffering and I believe you, and I want you to feel cared for. Wear this and when it comes off, I’ll have another one ready.”
I know that if someone had done that for me, when I was in my 20s and started cutting myself badly, I would have cried with the relief of feeling validated. And it would have made me put down the razor blade, at least for a little while. It wouldn’t have fixed the pain that was making me cut myself in the first place, but it would have made me realize I didn’t have to silently scream through my skin and blood just to make visible my invisible agony.

When we are supported with compassion and have our pain validated, I feel that we are at least able to cope a little better. And if any of this resonates with you, I will keep the bandaids ready. Wouldn’t it be so amazing if this is how we treated each other?

Understanding the Role of Emotional Pain

So much about modern life seeks to dull and dispose of emotional pain, but this pain is both a teacher and an opportunity. We depend on struggle to feel that we exist at all. Struggle is what gives value to achievements and allows growth. Just as all life feeds of the death of something, all pain can feed joy and fulfillment. You wouldn’t want to read a story without any conflict or drama, in which the protagonist was always happy and content — neither would you really want to live such a life. Without struggle in your life story you are a hero of nothing.

And if you really were perfectly peaceful and content all the time, it would be as if life were living itself, without a need for your own effort to overcome anything. And in that case, it would be as if you didn’t exist at all, as if life would live on without you.

One of the worst bouts of depression I experience is not about crushing emotional pain so much as it is the overwhelming sense of emptiness and lack of feeling anything — a mental state in which nothing seems to matter. However, in emptiness lies the greatest potential. Where there is nothing, like a blank page, anything can be written. So it becomes clear to me that states of emptiness are opportunities to change up your life. If you can connect with your potential in these moments, the infinite potential to do absolutely anything you can imagine, you can find new ways to live, new perspectives, and find new ways to fulfill your soul.

All struggle is an opportunity. It is necessary to feel alive and it makes achievements valuable in the first place. When you are in emotional pain, it is an opportunity to discover what your soul truly needs and gives you a reason to make greater efforts, which lead to growth and feelings of success.

I maintain that emotional pain is a spiritual thing — emotions are immaterial, and thus part of the spirit world. If we examine our emotions and pain, instead of trying to quick-fix them, we can learn what we value, what false beliefs are fueling continued and painful mistakes, and how to live better. In this way emotional pain is an ally, it is a signal that something is wrong either in your thinking or your actions. Just as physical pain tells you about your body, emotional pain tells you about your soul, and signals a time for action — a time to make changes and shake things up.

Journaling My Journey: 6

I had a strange, vaguely terrifying experience this morning. The good thing is that despite having been deeply suicidal a few months ago, I now know that I really don’t want to die.

I was sitting outside as I do every morning. It was 7:30am and I was smoking a cigarette and writing for my blog, watching the squirrels and the wild rat that lives under the shed. I felt pretty good — great, even. And then, this “great” feeling started to get weird.

I felt my arms going colder and colder, and when I looked at them, flexing them, I felt like they weren’t really attached to me. I don’t think it was depersonalization. It was more like when your hand falls asleep and it’s so numb it doesn’t feel like it’s attached to your body. My arms felt cold like I wasn’t getting enough blood to them.

When my hearing began to cut out, like when you have a bad head cold, I realized something was really wrong.

And then I began to feel euphoric.

I do have a fainting disorder (POTS) but every single time I’ve felt faint in the past, I’ve been severely nauseous and otherwise “sick” feeling, and my vision starts to fade. My vision was fine this time and I felt physically good. I checked my heartbeat: normal, steady, and strong enough. I was pretty calm too: so it wasn’t a panic attack. No dread or terror, just practical thoughts about what was happening to me and what I should do. My hearing was getting worse and the cold feeling in my arms was turning into weakness.

I realized that if I passed out, sitting under the veranda before anyone else was awake, it could be a couple of hours before anyone found me. And even so, I couldn’t go get help right then and there — I figured if I stood up, I’d be on the ground, passed out cold in an instant. I didn’t even have a cellphone with me. So I put my head between my knees and that helped a bit. Eventually, the euphoria began to fade.

At the worst point of it, I sincerely thought it felt like death: not that I was actually dying, but I wondered if this was how it felt to die. That disturbed me in a normal, practical sort of way — I wasn’t at all ready to die, which is how it should be. I stayed calm and paid attention to myself. Gradually my hearing returned to normal and within 20 minutes everything was back to normal. I stood up slowly: no faint feeling. All was well again.

I don’t think it was a physical health issue. I’ll mention it to my doctor but I don’t think I need to worry about it. If anything, maybe there was something in my first cigarette that shouldn’t be there, like a bit of glue. You know, the way glue fumes can go to your head. We smoke natives, so anything is possible. And on the other hand, it didn’t feel psychological either because I was being so rational about it all. While I was naturally concerned about myself, I wasn’t in some hypochondriac panic.

But now, if I ever feel depressed and suicidal again, I can remind myself that in a real “death’s door” situation, I know I won’t actually want to die. And if I ever did something stupid, my last thought would be terrible regret. Like if I were to jump off a bridge…the moment my hand left the railing, I would regret it.

That’s a powerful thing to know in your gut.

So anyway: life is beautiful, friends. If you are struggling, get help. If you don’t want to live, it’s not normal, it’s not okay, it’s only because something is WRONG with you. Get help. You need help and IT CAN GET BETTER.