I Wrote a Song

I wrote a song. Not too surprising, I’ve written many. But was one of the better ones. I know that because I was inspired by a combination of something I’d read and something I heard. What I read was a poem Voices by Diana DeLuca, about women’s struggles with abuse and our misogynistic, patriarchal, culture. I don’t remember what the song was, but immediately afterward I heard the first verse of a song, based on Diana’s poem, in my head. Over the next few weeks, I wrote the two verses, set them to music, then got the full text of the poem and wrote more verses, added a bridge and finished the whole thing up. That’s the way it seems to work for me, music I have to work hard on turns out forgettable, while the stuff that just “comes to me” is by far the best.

Ah, but that’s not the whole story. You see, something about those words really got under my skin. While I was writing it, I started feeling off, but I really know something was wrong when it seemed that I couldn’t feel any emotions at all! It was like my brain was covered with a thick, white, blanket, and everything was numbed out. It was pretty weird. I knew that my emotions were there, I just couldn’t feel them, and that had me worried. I spent some time in meditation, trying to understand what was going on, but it wasn’t until a couple of days later that it hit me: Working and performing that song had triggered unconscious memories of my own abuse and my automatic defense mechanisms had kicked in. I had detached completely and numbed out all emotions.

Friends tried to help me “cheer up,” but it didn’t make any difference. I wanted to care, I did! But feelings just wouldn’t come. I was torn between wanting them to just give up and go away, and a tiny fear that they actually would. The logical part of my mind knew that this was really messed up, but I didn’t know what was going on. Nothing undermines your sense of self like having your feelings betray you! I’m on the upside now, but I have a ways to go. The key seemed to be the realization, once that happened, the blanket began to lift.

This whole episode was a real surprise, and, maybe, a gift. The process was uncomfortable and a bit frightening, but it had given me an enormous respect for how far I’ve come over the past 50+ years! My friends are fond of telling me how much I’ve changed in just the past couple of years, but that’s nothing compared to what it was like to be nearly emotionless, as I was in my twenties! At the time, of course, I had no idea what I was doing. I had shut things down so early that I had no memory of any other way to be.

Looking back on it now, it looks like a kind of hell: A place where you can’t allow yourself to feel anything but fear, fear of being caught caring about something that could be turned against you. You can’t be passionate about anything, or anyone, and you have to watch people who might want to care for you, get frustrated and walk away, because you won’t ever respond with honest love or affection.

This is a situation, writ large, that happens to all of us, all the time, in the small. It happens to all of us every day, and we are so used to it that we don’t even notice. We hear a snatch of song that makes us happy, or sentimental, or we see a face that makes us nervous or afraid, and we accept those feelings without a second thought. Those feelings are real, they are never questioned! But what if we did? What if we stopped assuming that feelings have any kind of reality to them? What if a feeling was just a feeling, and not a fact? How many times have you had a feeling about something that turned out to be wrong? What would our world be like, if we didn’t allow every person with a scary story, tell us who to love, who to hate, who to trust, who to betray, what to do, what to think? I imagine it would be a very different world, wouldn’t you?

As always, I welcome your questions and comments.

Take care.

Rearranging the Deck Chairs

I had a dream a few days ago. It didn’t mean much at the time, it just seemed silly, but the meaning became clear yesterday. I had a lot of dreams that night, but this one is the only one I remember. That seems how dreams work for me. when I wake up, I can remember snatches of many different dreams but only one is clear enough and detailed enough to recall.

This dream is set in sunny California in the early 60’s. The whole thing looked like a 60’s glam movie, with long, low convertibles, beautiful people, and bright sunshine with saturated colors. It took place in a large parking lot, mostly full, that seemed to be at the beach. I watched it all in third person, the person I take to be me was driving this blue convertible. The “me” in this dream was a “Rock Hudson” type with a pretty girlfriend, at least that’s what she seemed, she came a went throughout the scene. Everyone seemed happy, almost movie musical happy. You’ll see why that’s weird in a minute.

The whole parking lot was flooded with water. Over the doorsills in some places, a little lower in other places. Nobody seemed to care. My car was full of water that sloshed around as I drove. I didn’t look like I cared, smiling and happy. I drove around the lot for a while then found a new parking space where the water was a little less deep, actually below the doorsills. Maybe I thought that the water in the care would drain out. After I parked, the girlfriend re-appeared and I sat there, with my arms wide open, face up to sky, eyes closed, smiling like this was the best day ever. I watched this from above, like it was the ending of a great movie. Roll credits.

Yesterday it hit me, what it means. The water is the “sludge” in our lives and we spend our lives “being happy” and trying to find a place where the “sludge” is, perhaps, just a little shallower. And we celebrate if we find such a place. 

I was struck by the superficiality of the whole thing. Beautiful people, fancy cars, beautiful location, nice clothes, but we all ignore the sludge, for the most part. But we do spend a lot of time “driving around the parking lot” looking for a place with less sludge. Nobody every tries to leave the parking lot. Funny, huh?

What is “sludge?” All the crap that weighs us down, fills our time, yet, ultimately, never adds anything to our lives. Worries: About money, about what people think, about things we can do nothing about. Fear and hate: About just about anything. Fear and hate are two sides of the same coin, you distrust what you fear, you’re fear what you don’t like. 

We are all afraid of stuff, whether we admit it or not. (Not afraid of anything? What about “uncomfortable?” Are you uncomfortable around certain people, in certain situations, with certain subjects? “Discomfort” is mild fear, it doesn’t take a whole lot to turn “discomfort” into something far stronger.) The common way you’re supposed to deal with fear, is that you find the source of your fear and remove it from your life. Then you will “feel safe,” right? Except that doesn’t actually work. No matter how hard or how far you push your fear and discomfort away, it always finds you. I know how that works. I’ve lived in “unsafe” areas, then I get a chance to move to something better, and, for a while, I feel much better. Then, I begin to notice things, and hear things, neighbors talk, incidents on the news, and before long I feel “unsafe” again.

What are you afraid of? People different from you? Be it appearance, income, education, age, beliefs, clothes? The government? Liberals? Conservatives? The rich? The poor? Climate change? Poison, in your food, water, medicines? Look around you and you’ll have no trouble finding people who want to stoke your fears, for their own ends, and once they’ve go you hooked, truth no longer matters, facts don’t matter, all that matters is the “it” that “they” want you to fear. And it’s so easy, because the fear is always there, inside you, just waiting to be pointed at someone or something. What fear? The fear that they will all find out those things we hate about ourselves.

Ever wonder what the fear-peddelers get out of it? Think about it, they all want something and are willing to scare you into giving it to them. They want your money, time, support, or just the attention. There’s always some hidden motive, because, if they were on the up-and-up, there’d be no reason to use fear to sell you their agenda. The thing is, the world has a lot of problems, but none of them are unsolvable! We have the knowledge and technology to solve or, at least, mitigate, everyone of the world problems, and the only reason we don’t is fear: Greed is fear of not having enough. Conservatism is the fear of change, or losing what you have. The need for power comes from fear of loss of control. Bigotry, of all kinds, religious and racial, including misogyny, is fear of anyone who is different. There is enough of everything for everyone, money, food, living space, if we could only get over all the fears. 

So, in my dream we were all perfectly happy, walking and driving around shin deep in sludge. We enjoyed the sunshine and our fancy cars while carefully ignoring the mess and the reality that the sludge was rotting out the cars, inside and out. We cope by vying for better parking spots, with less sludge, but nobody considers leaving the parking lot. That would require leaving behind your car, your status and the “parking place” that you have worked so hard to secure. In the real world, things aren’t so cut and dried. Getting rid of all your material things, and walking away from you responsibilities and obligations doesn’t free you from the sludge, It’s not even a necessary step. The sludge is inside and, once you start cleaning that up, what you manifest on the outside will naturally follow as a natural consequence of your new values. In all things, it doesn’t matter what you have, or what you do, it’s why you have it or do it. Intension is everything. 

In my journey of a thousand miles, I have faced and expunged many hidden fears, small and large. They are usually linked to traumas, so the fears vanish when the traumatic emotions are acknowledged and released. This is difficult for us Westerners, we are taught to “forget about it,” and suppress any hurt, “get over it, nobody wants to know.” We are so uncomfortable with feelings. Or we dwell endlessly on how we feel about what happened, which just reinforces the trauma. Neither of these is helpful. It always comes out and haunts us, making us easy prey for any fear monger that comes along. It doesn’t matter how smart and logical we think we are, or how confident we are that our religious or other beliefs protect us, our sludge is there, effecting every decision and coloring every opinion.

The solution that I teach is to use a combination of tools and practices, including hypnosis, with meditation, shamanistic and other traditional and new-age concepts to discover, uncover and release the trapped emotions that keep us stuck in past events. This removes the “scales from our eyes” and allow us to see the world as it is, not as we feared it was, and the fears begin to melt away. This process takes time, and that’s good thing, for having too much change all at once would be a tremendous shock to our system, but it’s not so bad because it pays dividends all along the way. The slow progress allows you to adapt your lifestyle and values as your inner landscape changes. Many people want a new life, without, you know, actually, changing their life. They want to world to treat them differently without changing the way they view and treat the world. That, of course, never works. The simple and powerful fact is, you change yourself, you change the world. Anything else you do, from success seminars to positive affirmations, is no more that driving around the parking lot, or, as some say, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Maybe it looks good, and may even make you feel like your acomplishing something, but it's untimately fultile if you're expecting any real change in your life.