Sad=Mad

The main theme for my learning today is that I have been an expert at converting anger into sadness.  I had some huge processing in front of the group about my life story I told last night.  And then I also had to process later after lunch with a woman and tell her I resented her for something she did that had been festering in me and I was scared as shit to say so.  We all agreed to tell the truth here, and that includes not withholding.  We are being trained to watch our minds and as soon as possible get a reality check on things that we are starting to tell stories about.  So I knew as I was feeling pissed and scared and persecuted and sorry for myself that I was going to have to come out with it, and soon before I became too convincing to myself!  I had a breakthrough in expressing anger with her when she told me that she likes it when people yell "fuck you, I resent you for..." to her, it's a thrill for her.  I appreciated her for saying that, I imagined it gave me the courage to really go for it, afterall, she likes it!  After yelling at the person you check in and notice how your body feels, and maybe rate the amount of rage you feel on a scale of 1-10.  I was having a hard time rating my anger because I was feeling sadness.  So she agreed to give me a pass on rating my anger and instead rate my sadness considering it as a sort of translation of my anger rating.  We had to end on a "3" and then she expressed her resentment to me, we both expressed appreciations, and we walked off to dinner much much happier and lighter, which... I would get checked for saying "happier and lighter" because they are stories/judgements and not describing reality; it can feel like going through a language land mind, but I'm starting to get it!  Brad Blanton says you're healed (my word, not his) when you're down to being dumb and making the simplest observations: "you're a man! my heart tight! you have a shirt! my face hot!"  Well it's working because I can barely form sentences when talking to others.  I'm again so exhausted, I feel emptied of a bunch of shit, and my body is sore.  Good night!

Yes, AND

Bad feng shui, but it's my little space

Hoo eee! Today, day 1 of RH, we’re introducing ourselves to the group sharing: Name; age; where we’re from; net worth; debts; income; what we don’t’ want to share; how we shoot ourselves in the foot; what we hope to get out of this workshop.

What if I am a drama queen? 

4 people into introductions I finally got my turn, I had been jetting my hand for 3 of those before I got in.  Just like in my Forrest training when we did truth speaking circle and I was half way around a circle of 30ppl, the energy and sensations in my body were feeling overwhelming and out of control.  I could feel their pain and torment vividly.  I worried that when it came to me there would be no me left in it and just a jumble of things I can relate to and feel but cannot affect.  Brad coached me toward blubbering, which I began rather easily, but not all the way, I only had 10mins.  I opened with my confession of being clairsentient and feeling overwhelmed in the moment with everyone’s feelings and stories.   Here’s a paraphrased sample of the dialogue:

“Where do you feel it in your body?”

My heart, my solar plexus, pressure in my head, my throat, hands activated in a tingling sensation up my arms and through diaphragm

“How’s it changing now?"

It feels like a big… [gesturing with hands down I was seeing a black hole beneath me]

“Not what it feels like, that’s a thought, how does it feel?”

--this went around a few times before I came to:

Numb

“Where”

From the waist down

“Good.  And now what do you feel”

Early morning view from my little tower.

Flush of heat down my arms and face

“Awe, good, you feel the heat”

Yes, you can see it, I know. (I was quite flushed)

And, as always, the coaching is around ‘it’s not about them or us, it’s about you”.  Yes, and everyone else too.  I feel like this is so taken for granted that it is assumed that shutting it down  [my perception that not everything I feel is me] that it is not even questioned… except by me and others who understand me (few), but it’s like we have to go underground.  It’s funny because while it’s said ‘don’t take responsibility for others’ it’s also saying take responsibility for what you feel –so if I feel others and I take responsibility for what I feel then I’m taking responsibility for others.  Yeah, that’s it! (Indignant tone, I’m making a joke)  One woman came up to me afterward and validated me, said she understood what I felt and we had an intense whispered conversation about feeling and knowing things that maybe aren’t expressly ours.  And don’t get me wrong:  it’s all both and.  AND: I am feeling resentful for the lack of consideration that there might be some truth to what I’m sharing about my experience that is not all a fucked up story to avoid taking responsibility.  It’s becoming clear I have to take a stand for myself and no one may understand, most will think I’m being a drama queen and just resisting the growth.   Or something completely unexpected and wonderful could happen!  I certainly do have resistance going on and pent up anger, resentment, bitterness… yes, AND.

After my turn and all the crying and sensation tracking in my body, I did not have that problem of feeling overwhelmed by other’s stories.  I feel exhausted now, maybe I just didn’t have the energy or I shut it down somehow or it just worked.  There definitely is something to this work that is working (workity work work, ha-ha! no editor here), and I feel just so tired and antisocial now.  People are hanging out having intense conversations, and I usually love that kind of thing, but now I need to discharge and rest.  That’s what I’m doing, writing here in my springy cot in the weird little Denver window room. 

It’s really going deep for me right now that this is all being filmed.  I’m being asked to bear all, and I thought I was willing, but with the cameras rolling it completely raises the bar.  The idea is that by the end of the workshop you don’t care who knows anything about you at all.  There are also people here who are on their 2^nd, 3^rd and 26^th times.   Already we are giving each other strength to keep opening and letting go.  Brad said I am too smart and hopefully by the end of this retreat I will be much dumber (others had a similar diagnosis).  It feels awkward to hear stuff like that because I totally agree with it and I teach a lot of it already.  I crave the recognition that I know and I really get it,  while feeling like I’m being called a hypocrite for teaching something I have not mastered myself.  They don’t know what I teach yet, but I will be teaching some morning classes while I’m here.  I’ve been going over and over this for the last couple of years with teaching because my lessons come through when I teach others.  I do a good job too, but I’m not a master of them, I’m more like a scrappy guide who forges through the swamp offering my example and cheering us forward.  By the time I’m a master of something it’s too boring to teach, I want to be on the teetering edge and I don’t want anyone to tell me I have to know where I’m going with it or what will happen.  I want to trust the process, and when I do, it works.  So why do I muck around trying to explain it?!  I want someone to say what I’m doing is okay, and my sense is that rather than finding the recognition and validation for what I’m doing from any of these people (or any of you readers) that I will probably find it in that numbness below my waist.  I’m going in, but first I’m taking a nap.

Human Design

Snowy view from my BnB window and the RV/ Party Bus that picked me up from the airport filled with aspiring honest people from all over the world.

I have another powerful tool for self knowledge that has come into my awareness lately: Human Design.

Human design is a system for self-knowledge that has elements of Astrology, IChing, Kabala & Chakra systems, yet is it’s own unto itself.  I serendipitously purchased a book about how to read a Human Design chart back in October during a 99cent Kindle edition sale on metaphysical personal growth books.  I got my free chart and then started deciphering my type.  There are many different elements and variations between each individual, but there are 5 main types.  My type makes up about 20% of the population and from what I’ve read,  we only just started being on the planet in the late 1700s. 

I’m a Projector.  Projectors have the ability to channel other people’s work energy in powerful unsustainable stretches and to see deeply how others can succeed.  Though my type, when channeling other’s energy, can work circles around anyone, we are not designed to work in the way our culture proscribes and can burn out very easily, usually around 40 years old (though my first burn-outs began in my late 20s).  Another really interesting aspect of the Projector is that we are here to serve other people, giving us a propensity for leadership and vision, though we are usually only successful at helping others and ourselves if we are invited. 

Every type has a strategy and the Projector’s strategy is “wait to be invited”.  One of the common experiences for Projectors that is eerily familiar for me is having deep insight and clarity into another person, opening my mouth to share it, and either being ignored or pushed away… because I was not invited to share my wisdom.  I have been battling the bitterness of seeing people deeply and wanting to help and then, rather than listening to me and being grateful, people resent or ignore me.  Anyway… there is a lot to ponder here and I am very new in talking about it, but my essential point in this post is that I am not sure how to navigate Radical Honesty AND wait to be invited at this point.  I feel it is beneficial to everyone for me to not share my insights or offer my services unless asked, and yet I feel I have a lot of unexpressed thoughts and feelings, especially from the past when I was going around triggering others with unsolicited advice, and in-turn getting triggered myself for being misunderstood and unheard. 

I hope through the Radical Honesty workshop to “clean out” back logs of bullshit and bitterness.  I know this is going to change me forever and as I teeter on the edge of the unknown I am trying to create some certainty of what I’ll do, what I’ll decide, who I’ll be when I get through it.  This gritty mystery is beaconing me to ease into grace, allowing my path, my own unknown plan, to unfold in it’s own time.

It will be documented!

I feel excited and almost desperate for this work: that was a little too solid of ground, though.  Last week I got an email saying that one of my fellow attendees is a documentary film maker working on a film about Truth that will include following her journey, and the other attendees, through the Radical Honesty workshop.  Today she emailed everyone and asked that we take “selfie” videos on our phones and answer some questions before we get to Denver.  Shit has just been taken to the next level!  All the camera people have done the workshop and have worked with Brad Blanton before, but dang, still… wow.  I must admit, I wonder if the presence of cameras will inspire me to affect my projection of who I am at all.  They said that when they have done this before the cameras fade into the background and soon we aren’t even aware they are there.  I hope so. 

How did I come across this retreat?  And why on earth would I want to go? 

My friend Mo, a new but dear connection, was moving and threw a party for herself to say goodbye to her old home and honor the passage to the new home.  She had a bunch of stuff against one wall that she was getting rid of and offering to the guests.  I picked two things to adopt: Radical Honesty by Brad Blanton, and an amazing pair of fuscia feather earings rendered asymmetrical by some missing feathers on one.  The book is what catalyzed my desire to attend the retreat, and the earings I wore in my recent yoga photoshoot liberation in the Laguna de Santa Rosa.  I’ll be posting some of those pictures here.  My first post to this blog there is one of the last pictures we took that day of me resting in an envigorating savasana in a fresh puddle in the laguna.

I had come across Radical Honesty before, and now I would say, I have been Radically Honesty-curious for awhile, but there are many many trainings and retreats and systems of healing I’d like to partake in and this one slipped into the crowd of waiting modalities yet to be explored.  Although now that I’ve read the book and will be attending the workshop, my examined memories about coming across it before Mo’s house have a sort of fateful urgency that I could not see at the time.  So when I found the book in Mo’s stuff there was momentum and a tug and all I did was follow it and actually go with the flow.

Why?  It resonates and I want to experience what it’s like to be around people telling the truth all the time.  I want to be seen and see others without the silently agreed upon tongue-biting we all do.  I want to “workshop” my own boundaries and get clear on what it means to me to be professional and if that is at all different from who I am.  I want to stop trying to control other people’s reactions and allow myself to BE.  I want to come out and be the most vivid version of myself so that the people who like me that way can recognize me and come over and play.  Being a healer is pretty much spirit’s invitation to play with boundaries and the absence of them.  It’s maddening for me some days, feeling an urge in my gut and truth in my throat and everything and everyone around me seems to be saying: keep it to yourself or say it in a way we will like.  And yet I feel a duty to share what is inside me, uncut.  I also keep having the experience of trying to soften or shape information I fear will be triggering to someone/people and then feel completely misunderstood or I somehow take responsibility to continue to be the steward of the information for others.   I want to trust that others will be okay to handle their own responses to who I am and not take responsibility for anyone but me; I think that might be what actually creates space for real healing. 

Financial Transparency

An old selfie, sitting on the old toilet :)

 In the book Conversations With God, the author Neale Donald Walsch asks about what a good economic system would be given what we (humans) say we want to do/be, and God said: Complete transparency.  Open books.  Tell everyone what you make and what you spend, companies and individuals.  It sounds shocking from where we are, but why not?  Why keep that information but to deceive?  We are so built up on our lies that we imagine they are rights to survival.  I call bullshit.  At the Radical Honesty Workshop it is said that by the end of the 9.5 days everyone is completely in love with each other.   As terrifying as it feels to be radically honest,  really:  we get this, right?  If we just tell the truth, initially we will have to walk through fire and some card castles will fall and reveal their nature, it will be painful, but then we will be free and in love with EVERYTHING and EVERYONE. 

I'm chickening out in this post on being financially transparent, but I endeavor to eventually post it on the internets. I'll give you a clue, though: it's paltry.

Morbid Curiosity

Let’s face it together: morbid curiosity brought us here. 

Once from in my house I heard a terrible heart-breaking cry out on the street and rushed out to see who was hurting.  It was part compassion, part morbid curiosity that drew me.  I found a woman, a mother, crumpled on the ground.  I approached her and asked her if she was alright with my heart open and my mind suspicious.  Her two little boys, one old enough to be embarrassed/shut down/tough and scared, the other young enough to be scared and silent for survival.  She smelled unbathed and had the energy and unstable temperament of someone who has done hard drugs.  She sprung up, scooped up the little one and launched into a panicked emotional hurried complaint/request that her car was broken down, her friend had kicked her out and wouldn’t give her a ride, she needed a ride and no one would help her.  I was slow to respond as my instincts cued me: move slow, speak slow, think slow, breathe deep… and slow.  Despite this, things were going very fast.  I did not even have an opportunity to pause before responding and she had whipped around on her heels, stormed off down the street in a rage ranting and crying about how no one would help her.  I said “wait”, and “I’ll give you a ride”.  And I did.  It occurred to me today as I sobbed on my bedroom/bathroom floor and said to my swollen red face in the mirror “I need help and no one will help me, no one will be with me in this”, that if I went and cried out on the street, someone would come along and help me. 

Going to Radical Honesty Workshop is my attempt to get the affect of sobbing on the street, without actually doing it.  This blog is perhaps closer to sobbing on the street than going to the workshop, hence I have been putting it off and may never even publish a blog about this journey.  But then again, by the time you have hit bottom enough to wail on the sidewalk, who fucking cares?  When I am here I am reminded of the evolutionary emergency feature of women’s tears lowering men’s testosterone, and so in war times you will often see women sobbing out in the streets.  What would it be like if we all did all of our crying out on the streets?  Our tears healing the concrete laid by war?

I feel like I was born into a war zone.   Not because of my parents, they were born into a similarly hostile environment.  It’s the collective state we’re in on this planet, each us created it however innocent we may seem or feel in a really messed up game of forgetting who we are.  When I was a teenager and I began thinking critically along with my awakening empathic nature.  I would look out on parking lots and shopping centers and my heart would bleat for the nature once there, suffocated by concrete.  I grew up as environmentalism emerged more into the main stream, yet it still somehow does not feel it’s in the main stream, though it is more so. Maybe it’s because environmentalism has become it’s own war among all the other kinds of wars that are killing off our beauty and health in these bodies, homogenizing and numbing us to extinction on this celestial body. 

I was in a fighting mood in my adolescence, I could afford to fight and have a magical perspective, though mostly I was just looking for contact of any kind and recognition of the insanity we accept as normal.  But as I became more and more overwhelmed by the evidence of war, grief, destruction and suffering, and not equipped with mentors to guide me in my feeling gift, I worked hard to cultivate the numbness I saw all around me as normal; it was an act of survival.  It is among my biggest challenges to recognize that I chose to be without a mentor to shape my own growth and I still fantasize about if I had had a guide.  I recall in my early twenties deciding to start to muffle my light, to do more of what is expected of me, to pretend to be normal and fine, and to give up on being an artist –not that I was any good at it (muffling my light and acting normal, that is!).  It hadn’t really occurred to me at that time that I was a healer too, so my growth went underground.  I continued to learn and remember who I am via my sensitive body getting sick: my spirit’s own evolutionary emergency feature through the archetype of the wounded healer.  If I would not step into learning healing ways, allow myself to be seen with my eyes open, seeing others and helping them awaken, remember and heal, I would do it in my own body until I had the courage to look around me and realize that much of what I feel does not belong to me.  Ultimately, it does not even exist, but that’s for a later letter, right now I’m writing from this dualistic existence that allows us to experience the greatness of us as well as the not-so-greatness of not-us.