Acts of Surrender 16: Past the Point of No Return
An excerpt from Acts of Surrender: A Journey Beyond Faith, my memoir-in-progress.
Mornings have never been my best time. I take that back. It's not mornings. It's reentry. I've never been one of those people who leaps out of bed and into the day, eager for action. Whatever realm I gambol in during sleep time must be idyllic, because I nearly always wake up reluctant to reengage with the world. It doesn't matter whether it's a night's sleep or an afternoon nap. That instant of conscious awareness is rarely filled with enthusiasm for what lies ahead.
This isn't a recent pattern, but it's one that seems increasingly exaggerated as I move through whatever journey I'm now traveling. These days, in fact, dread is a regular waking companion. More often than not, I lie in bed wondering how long I can sustain a stripping-away process that is more radical — and radically uncomfortable — than anything I have ever experienced. The stripping away is both material and emotional. So is the discomfort.
The loving generosity of friends has kept a series of roofs over my head since I left Albuquerque in August thinking I was moving to L.A. Now I'm back in New Mexico, uncertain what home even means anymore, let alone what mine might be. I've moved past the financial triage of which bills I can pay to the place where food, gas, cellphone and car insurance are my sole considerations. Soon, there may not even be a car to insure.
I've said I'd be okay if I were to lose the car, but I'm not sure that's true. On my walk this morning, I witnessed what looked like a repo and felt a lead ball drop into the pit of my stomach.
"How far from that scene am I?" I wondered.
Car aside, it's hard to know what there is of any emotional or material substance left to let go of. Yet there must be something. Through much of my life, two of my most enduring physical complaints have been related to some form of clinging: constipation/gas and chronic sinus congestion. Even during periods when I have willingly shed patterns and possessions and have leapt off cliffs, tarot Fool-like, into the unknown, there's always a physical reminder that there's still some clinging going on.
Often it's mild. Since yesterday, it's been uncomfortably present.
(Sinus issues, like all immunity-based ailments, can also relate to a profound reluctance to be embodied in the world. When we perceive the world to be a dangerous place, our immune system goes into overdrive to try to protect us. Those "protections" can be somewhat benign, like my overproduction of mucus, or deadly, like cancer.)
"Walk the earth naked, clothed only in your truth." It's been a motto of sorts since the phrase first emerged 13 years ago in my Dialogues with the Divine manuscript. Is that where I'm headed, I wondered this morning. Literally?
Am I truly prepared to go that place where it's just me and my truth? Just me and my writing?
Am I truly prepared to give up everything?
Recently, I wrote that "I'll either go splat or I'll survive the fall." To some of you reading this, I already went splat a while back and am now just writhing around on the pavement.
This morning, still in bed, I wondered whether that might be true.
Have I walked away from everything, and done it for nothing? Has this been some sort of spiritually delusional exercise in futility? Is there a way back? Or a way out?
As I wrote those words just now, the song "Past the Point of No Return" from The Phantom of the Opera
began playing in my head.
Past the point of no return, no backward glances
The games we played 'til now are at an end ...
Past the point of no return, the final threshold
The bridge is crossed, so stand and watch it burn
We've passed the point of no return.
There is no going back. I can't return to the life I left any more than I can step back into a past life I may have died out of centuries ago. Nor can I try to recreate some new version of what I've come from.
I'm not sure there's a way out, either. For all my suicidal fantasies, I'm reminded of an experience my friend Karen Weaver once shared with me. During a particularly rough period in her life, and she's had many, she declared hopelessly, "I'm throwing in the towel." In her mind's eye, she saw a towel being thrown back at her.
For all my human anxiety about a relentless journey that feels more extreme in each moment, there's clearly a higher part of me that's determined to see this one through. One night, a few weeks back, I woke up every few hours with this John Denver
lyric playing in my head:
I want to live, I want to grow
I want to see, I want to know
I want to share what I can give
I want to be, I want to live
Those life-affirming words show up again and again for me, whenever I'm at my most despairing. They showed up again this morning.
Yesterday, I was privileged to sit in on a rehearsal of Sugartime, an all-women singing group that my friend and current host, Karen Walker, is part of. As Sugartime performs most at hospitals and seniors' residences, its repertoire is largely upbeat and always life-affirming. One of Karen's solos was "What a Wonderful World." The song has never made me cry before. Yesterday it did. And this morning, in the midst of my fearful anxiety, it showed up again, playing in my head moments after the John Denver refrain.
As for moving forward, all I can do, as the Osho Tarot
kept reminding me while I was in Santa Fe earlier this week, is stay in the moment, moment-to-moment.
So what is it I'm still clinging to?
Last night I had a dream that I was in the supermarket that anchored the Montreal strip mall near where I grew up. As I stepped inside the store, Pauline Vanier, wife of Canada's 19th Governor General, stepped out of her attached apartment to join me. Together, we mourned the radical renovation soon to be undertaken on both the store and the shopping center. For Mme. Vanier, it would be the end of her tenure. For me, it would be the end of my childhood and of my past. For both of us, it would be a sort of death.
(If the Queen is Canada's head of state, the Governor General is her representative in Canada, acting on her behalf when, as is mostly the case, she's not in the country. Pauline Vanier died in 1991.)
I can't say specifically what piece of my past I'm still clinging to. Nor can I say what piece of the "old established order" (Mme. Vanier) is still in my life. What I see from the dream, though, is that they're on their way out, that it's healthy to grieve them and that, whatever they are, I must let them go.
On a larger scale, what I appear to be doing is following Christ's dictum to live in but not of the world. To use a more recent metaphor, I'm unplugging from the matrix, while continuing to engage with it, but on my terms.
I've let go many of the trappings of the outer world, including many aspects of the codependent, marginally abusive relationship I've had with creditors and official agencies. Because they hold the power of consequences over me, I have related to them from a place of fear-based self-preservation. Put another way, as I've mentioned here before, I've now declared myself sovereign — not above the law, but no longer under it.
Think of a European church that's built on the foundations of other churches, which, themselves, were built on the foundations of pagan or Roman temples. Every time I dig down to what I believe to be the foundation stones of my life, I discover earlier structures beneath them...and earlier structures beneath those, as well.
All those structures, like all the social structures we live under, have been based on fear. All of them. Fear of pain. Fear of loss. Fear of judgment. Fear of death.
What am I still clinging to? Whatever shreds of those structures still rule my life. Whatever shreds of those structures still give me the illusion of security. Whatever shreds of those structures still insist on their supremacy and significance.
What am I still clinging to? A reality that appears real but is anything but.
What must I let go of? Any and all shreds of fear, worry and anxiety. Any and all shreds of a world built on those same principles. Any and all shreds of life beyond this moment.
One of the reasons writing remains so important to me is that it helps makes sense of my world and of my feelings. Writing, as I've pointed out in coaching sessions, in workshops and in The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write, is not about regurgitating what I know (that hoary "write what you know" diktat). It's about discovering what I know. Better put, it's about rediscovering what I know at deeper levels but haven't been able to access or remember consciously. Through this writing, for example, I've gained a clearer understanding of why I felt the way I did this morning: Deeper and deeper levels of who I've been and how I've related to the world are being radically renovated. For better or for worse, the work isn't done yet.
What else will fall away? I don't know.
I can't promise I won't be anxious about it. Or fearful. I can't guarantee that tomorrow's exit from sleep time will be any easier than today's. All I can know is that the only direction is forward or, as demonstrated in another of last night's dreams, upward.
In the dream, I've been scaling a cliff. When I reach the summit, which feels like the top of the world, a sleek, sparklingly shiny new car is waiting for me: the new vehicle of my beingness.
Tesuque River and butterfly photos by Mark David Gerson.
Adapted from Acts of Surrender: A Journey Beyond Faith, my memoir-in-progress. Please share as you feel called to. But please, also, include a link back to this post.
Recent excerpts:
• October 1
• October 5
• October 6
• October 20
• October 23
Mornings have never been my best time. I take that back. It's not mornings. It's reentry. I've never been one of those people who leaps out of bed and into the day, eager for action. Whatever realm I gambol in during sleep time must be idyllic, because I nearly always wake up reluctant to reengage with the world. It doesn't matter whether it's a night's sleep or an afternoon nap. That instant of conscious awareness is rarely filled with enthusiasm for what lies ahead. This isn't a recent pattern, but it's one that seems increasingly exaggerated as I move through whatever journey I'm now traveling. These days, in fact, dread is a regular waking companion. More often than not, I lie in bed wondering how long I can sustain a stripping-away process that is more radical — and radically uncomfortable — than anything I have ever experienced. The stripping away is both material and emotional. So is the discomfort.
The loving generosity of friends has kept a series of roofs over my head since I left Albuquerque in August thinking I was moving to L.A. Now I'm back in New Mexico, uncertain what home even means anymore, let alone what mine might be. I've moved past the financial triage of which bills I can pay to the place where food, gas, cellphone and car insurance are my sole considerations. Soon, there may not even be a car to insure.
I've said I'd be okay if I were to lose the car, but I'm not sure that's true. On my walk this morning, I witnessed what looked like a repo and felt a lead ball drop into the pit of my stomach.
"How far from that scene am I?" I wondered.
Car aside, it's hard to know what there is of any emotional or material substance left to let go of. Yet there must be something. Through much of my life, two of my most enduring physical complaints have been related to some form of clinging: constipation/gas and chronic sinus congestion. Even during periods when I have willingly shed patterns and possessions and have leapt off cliffs, tarot Fool-like, into the unknown, there's always a physical reminder that there's still some clinging going on.
Often it's mild. Since yesterday, it's been uncomfortably present.
(Sinus issues, like all immunity-based ailments, can also relate to a profound reluctance to be embodied in the world. When we perceive the world to be a dangerous place, our immune system goes into overdrive to try to protect us. Those "protections" can be somewhat benign, like my overproduction of mucus, or deadly, like cancer.)
"Walk the earth naked, clothed only in your truth." It's been a motto of sorts since the phrase first emerged 13 years ago in my Dialogues with the Divine manuscript. Is that where I'm headed, I wondered this morning. Literally? Am I truly prepared to go that place where it's just me and my truth? Just me and my writing?
Am I truly prepared to give up everything?
Recently, I wrote that "I'll either go splat or I'll survive the fall." To some of you reading this, I already went splat a while back and am now just writhing around on the pavement.
This morning, still in bed, I wondered whether that might be true.
Have I walked away from everything, and done it for nothing? Has this been some sort of spiritually delusional exercise in futility? Is there a way back? Or a way out?
As I wrote those words just now, the song "Past the Point of No Return" from The Phantom of the Opera
began playing in my head.Past the point of no return, no backward glances
The games we played 'til now are at an end ...
Past the point of no return, the final threshold
The bridge is crossed, so stand and watch it burn
We've passed the point of no return.
There is no going back. I can't return to the life I left any more than I can step back into a past life I may have died out of centuries ago. Nor can I try to recreate some new version of what I've come from.
I'm not sure there's a way out, either. For all my suicidal fantasies, I'm reminded of an experience my friend Karen Weaver once shared with me. During a particularly rough period in her life, and she's had many, she declared hopelessly, "I'm throwing in the towel." In her mind's eye, she saw a towel being thrown back at her.
For all my human anxiety about a relentless journey that feels more extreme in each moment, there's clearly a higher part of me that's determined to see this one through. One night, a few weeks back, I woke up every few hours with this John Denver
lyric playing in my head: I want to live, I want to grow
I want to see, I want to know
I want to share what I can give
I want to be, I want to live
Those life-affirming words show up again and again for me, whenever I'm at my most despairing. They showed up again this morning.
Yesterday, I was privileged to sit in on a rehearsal of Sugartime, an all-women singing group that my friend and current host, Karen Walker, is part of. As Sugartime performs most at hospitals and seniors' residences, its repertoire is largely upbeat and always life-affirming. One of Karen's solos was "What a Wonderful World." The song has never made me cry before. Yesterday it did. And this morning, in the midst of my fearful anxiety, it showed up again, playing in my head moments after the John Denver refrain.As for moving forward, all I can do, as the Osho Tarot
kept reminding me while I was in Santa Fe earlier this week, is stay in the moment, moment-to-moment. So what is it I'm still clinging to?
Last night I had a dream that I was in the supermarket that anchored the Montreal strip mall near where I grew up. As I stepped inside the store, Pauline Vanier, wife of Canada's 19th Governor General, stepped out of her attached apartment to join me. Together, we mourned the radical renovation soon to be undertaken on both the store and the shopping center. For Mme. Vanier, it would be the end of her tenure. For me, it would be the end of my childhood and of my past. For both of us, it would be a sort of death.
(If the Queen is Canada's head of state, the Governor General is her representative in Canada, acting on her behalf when, as is mostly the case, she's not in the country. Pauline Vanier died in 1991.)I can't say specifically what piece of my past I'm still clinging to. Nor can I say what piece of the "old established order" (Mme. Vanier) is still in my life. What I see from the dream, though, is that they're on their way out, that it's healthy to grieve them and that, whatever they are, I must let them go.
On a larger scale, what I appear to be doing is following Christ's dictum to live in but not of the world. To use a more recent metaphor, I'm unplugging from the matrix, while continuing to engage with it, but on my terms.
I've let go many of the trappings of the outer world, including many aspects of the codependent, marginally abusive relationship I've had with creditors and official agencies. Because they hold the power of consequences over me, I have related to them from a place of fear-based self-preservation. Put another way, as I've mentioned here before, I've now declared myself sovereign — not above the law, but no longer under it.
Think of a European church that's built on the foundations of other churches, which, themselves, were built on the foundations of pagan or Roman temples. Every time I dig down to what I believe to be the foundation stones of my life, I discover earlier structures beneath them...and earlier structures beneath those, as well.
All those structures, like all the social structures we live under, have been based on fear. All of them. Fear of pain. Fear of loss. Fear of judgment. Fear of death.
What am I still clinging to? Whatever shreds of those structures still rule my life. Whatever shreds of those structures still give me the illusion of security. Whatever shreds of those structures still insist on their supremacy and significance.
What am I still clinging to? A reality that appears real but is anything but.
What must I let go of? Any and all shreds of fear, worry and anxiety. Any and all shreds of a world built on those same principles. Any and all shreds of life beyond this moment.
One of the reasons writing remains so important to me is that it helps makes sense of my world and of my feelings. Writing, as I've pointed out in coaching sessions, in workshops and in The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write, is not about regurgitating what I know (that hoary "write what you know" diktat). It's about discovering what I know. Better put, it's about rediscovering what I know at deeper levels but haven't been able to access or remember consciously. Through this writing, for example, I've gained a clearer understanding of why I felt the way I did this morning: Deeper and deeper levels of who I've been and how I've related to the world are being radically renovated. For better or for worse, the work isn't done yet. What else will fall away? I don't know.
I can't promise I won't be anxious about it. Or fearful. I can't guarantee that tomorrow's exit from sleep time will be any easier than today's. All I can know is that the only direction is forward or, as demonstrated in another of last night's dreams, upward.
In the dream, I've been scaling a cliff. When I reach the summit, which feels like the top of the world, a sleek, sparklingly shiny new car is waiting for me: the new vehicle of my beingness.
Tesuque River and butterfly photos by Mark David Gerson.
Adapted from Acts of Surrender: A Journey Beyond Faith, my memoir-in-progress. Please share as you feel called to. But please, also, include a link back to this post.
Recent excerpts:
• October 1
• October 5
• October 6
• October 20
• October 23
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