Cocooning

Back in 2008 I worked as an academic advisor for an expensive proprietary school. I had been there for three years and I wasn’t happy. Rather than helping students through school and to achieve their goals, my job was to keep them there even against their own best interests. It was not what I set out to do in life, I had no intention of hurting anyone. If the situation called for it, I would advise students to take some classes at a community college until they figured out what they wanted in life. If they still wanted to go to our school, they could come back after taking their general education courses, which were probably about 20-25% of the overall bill. I kept this to myself as I couldn’t imagine that the school would smile upon this practice. Though I only did it if I felt the student really needed help and they weren’t doing well in our classes.

boringMeeting-538x218During registration time, the other advisors and department chairs would sit around a table and literally would go through every single student that hadn’t registered for class yet. The Director of Academic Affairs would preside over each minute details of those students. Did the advisor assigned to the student call them? Did they send out emails? Did they try to track the student down in class? Did they text the student? Did the department chair get involved and reach out to the student? It was some form of strange, ritualized stalking that was sanctioned by Corporate. If the student was hospitalized or homeless, we were asked what sort of resources we could provide for them. We would give them numbers and websites for food banks, hostels, and missions. We would give them information for counseling. This was not bad in and of itself, it may have even helped some. But so many of them needed healthcare or help with bills and these were things we couldn’t help them with outside of resources like a nurse hotline. But at norecession time would it ever be suggested that the student shouldn’t be in our very expensive school. Too many had dropped and we had to staunch the blood flow. The Great Recession began only a few months earlier and students simply couldn’t pay for an overinflated education that they likely wouldn’t ever be able to pay back.

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The Tower of Babel

One night I had a dream of a giant ziggurat that reached into the clouds. It housed an entire city of people. It looked like a cross between the Tower of Babel and Minas Tirith. I was flying over it and at first it looked impressive, but in the dream I understood that it wasn’t real. I can recall saying, “This is a virtual city!” The more I looked at it, I came to understand that it was a false construct and that there were faults in the structure. It was crumbling because there was no meaningful upkeep. When I flew close to it, I could tell it wasn’t built from real stone, it was plaster and had been worn by water and wind erosion. It wasn’t going to last long.

During one of those meetings, my mind drifted back to that dream. The only thing going through my mind as other advisors were talking about their students not yet registered, was that the meeting, the school, and everyone in the building were wrapped up in an illusion. The system was crumbling all around them, and no one took notice of it.

If there is a moment where I could pinpoint when I started to Wake Up to Reality, it was in that moment.  Today the school no longer exists, my intuition about it was correct. But I left long before it closed.  Once I made the realization, I had to get out. I never said anything about my thoughts to my co-workers, but I felt exposed all the same. Like I was wearing an “Imposter” sign on my back. I wasn’t of them.

What happened after that was an eight-year cocooning. I taught philosophy and comparative religion courses online to pay my bills. I didn’t get out of the house often and I built walls around myself. Quite literally. While I didn’t develop into a full-blown hoarder, I could have easily. I turned into a clothes horse and I couldn’t get rid of old ratty things that were twenty years old. It was like I was building up a barrier between me and the rest of the world. I felt hurt from the experience and I did not want to go back out into the wild.clothes hoarding

During this time, I didn’t do much to build on that awakening. It’s taken me ten years to realize that it frightened me and that it was a painful experience. Awakening hurts because it puts us at odds with the rest of the world. I began to see that I really do not fit in with what most people call “normal.” I don’t even understand it. What seems obvious to me, so few others see.

During my time of cocooning, two decidedly bad things happened. I closed myself off from the world, and I began to let my ego grow. It seems paradoxical, but it’s actually quite common. I looked down on those that couldn’t see what was so obvious to me. This refusal for others to open their eyes was destroying the world through climate change, economic depression, political apathy, unethical corporate practices, economic injustice, and so forth. It’s only recently that I’ve been able to see that we’re all on our own path. We’re all doing what we need to do to get by in this life. And it’s only recently that I’ve been able to rejoin the world.

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“Be careful not to wear spiritualism as a badge to decorate your ego” –Unknown

U2FdIahI did return for a short stint to academic office life, which was a disaster for me. About eight years after I shut myself off from the world, the classes started to dry up. Student enrollment was down and I wasn’t going to meet my bills much longer. So, I took another job as an advisor for yet another proprietary school. I was desperate for a steady job.  This lasted for two and a half years, and I even received a promotion. The set up was actually worse than the previous job, and once I was promoted I felt like I entered hell. What got me through this time were the people I worked with on a daily basis. They were wonderful, caring, helpful, and family, some of whom I am still friends with now.

I feel that I was there to meet one person in particular who changed my life. His name was Art. He had an indomitable spirit and he brought life and light to everyone he encountered. He was a light worker and a spirit warrior. He was a Sun Dancer. He was half Lakota Sioux and he did a lot of work with the water protectors at Standing Rock. He was going to cleanse the new house my partner and I were about to move into when he got sick. He had an upper respiratory illness which kept getting worse. This went on for over a month. And then one day in late April 2017, he died.sundog

I was fortunate enough to be at the hospital with him on the day he died. He was surrounded by his family, his tribe, his friends, and his co-workers. There was drumming and chanting, and people speaking to him with love and light in their hearts. I witnessed the most beautiful process of a person transitioning from this life into the next.

I decided that day that I wasn’t going to waste another minute on a life that wasn’t mine. It was the dawn of my Second Great Awakening, and I set up a six-month plan to raise the money I would need to quit my job and transition to my new life. I walked out that October.

I’d like to say that it was easy and life’s been a breeze since then, but a few woes unto each of us must fall. I entered a period of cocooning again. Though this time it was a much shorter duration and I didn’t remain on autopilot. I started to research Hermeticism, meditation and paganism more. I already had a decent understanding, but I wanted to learn more. I wanted to understand it as a practitioner, not just a researcher. I dove into these ancient teaching. I starting to find the Divine in everything and everyone. I started making plans with a close friend to start a business! I went back and forth between thinking I was crazy and embracing this new life. I had several meltdowns, but I kept getting back up.

There was some back sliding, I wrote about the lost job opportunity on this blog back in July. That came from fear. Not losing the job, but rather trying to get it, as that is not my calling in life. It was another distraction.  But the other night I sat on my back porch and started to meditate. I asked myself if now, after all I’ve been through and all I know, could I go back? After my Second Great Awakening, with all the research, knowledge and understanding of the universe and Divine I have now, could I actually go back to my old life and the cycle of work, burnout and cocooning?

No. I can’t. There is no going back to that now. And so…

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The Lunar Eclipse & Letting Go

This month has proved to be a rocky one for me. I’ve heard it’s been pretty intense for nearly everyone. Certainly, the majority of my friends seem to be experiencing upheaval in their lives in unexpected ways. If you follow astrology, July and August are filled withLunar Ecplise NASA intense astronomical activity. Between July 12th to August 19th there are three eclipses and three major retrogrades. These are powerful psychic forces whether one views them as cosmic reality or as symbol and metaphor.

This has been a month of severe anxiety in my life. In my mental life, I’ve been forced to examine and reexamine a lot of my past and how it relates to me now. There’s been a lot of meditation, but also a lot of groping and searching on my part. Often times there’s been a lot of frustration, which is characterized for me by the process of digging in the dirt (remember that Peter Gabriel song from the 90s?). It’s messy and painful, but also necessary. It’s a part of the shadow work I mentioned in a previous post.  The digging, the clawing, the groping, the pushing and pulling, can be metaphorical – a mental exercise – but it can also be quite literal. Some people may engage in cleaning their house or digging through old photographs boxed up in their basement. Some find garden work, Rug pulled outwhere they actually are digging into the earth, to help them visualize and feel the process.  For me it’s mostly been mental. And just when I think I’ve figured things out and the light is about to dawn, I found myself falling backwards, the rug ripped out from under me. And I was the one doing the pulling on the other side!

It’s easy to just give up. I’ve done it in the past. But what I am finding is that I learn so much more if I push through it. It sometimes feels like I’ve lost control of my bike heading down a steep trail in the woods and I’m banging into every tree on the way down (I’ve actually done this in my youth). It hurts and there are cuts and bruises and new scars being born, but I rise stronger and more mentally able to meet new challenges. And there are a LOT of challenges ahead, so I better prepare myself for them.

But this month, it wasn’t just a mental struggle, it was a real-world struggle as well. I had been working on  a new job opportunity since April. I did all the things one is suppose to do when on a job hunt. I studied up on the employer, I knew all of the functions of the job and the department. I read up on all of the people I would interview with for the position. I bought a new suit, I did the hair, I matched the perfect accessories to the overall look. And I had FOUR interviews with them between April and June. After each interview, I followed up with personalized “thank-you” notes to each of the committee members. It felt like I had the job.

On July 26th, the day Mercury went retrograde, I received an email. They thanked me for my time but informed me they were going with another candidate.

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Just FYI – Never hurts to be prepared!

Initially I felt crushed. I felt all of the things one typically feels when they put their heart and soul into something and then don’t get the payoff in the end.

So, I meditated and did some long, hard, soul searching. And what I discovered about myself, is that the type of position I was going after in my life, no longer resonated with me. In fact, even during the early days of the job search, I lamented the idea of going back to office work. It felt stifling and the very idea of it hurt. I wanted the job, not because I really love that type of work, but because I was afraid due to financial concerns and this type of work was comfortable for me. But the idea of the daily grind was painful. I couldn’t even visualize myself there.

The lunar eclipse this month is about letting go of the things that no longer serve us. It’s about letting go of what came before and embracing a new beginning and journey in life. And this eclipse seems especially brutal (at least to Aries) because we’re not being given a say in the matter. The Universe is saying, “ENOUGH!” In this respect, it’s actually a kindness. I didn’t have the will to just walk away from something that wasn’t working Let-Goout for me because I was afraid. It had to be done for me. I’m now free to move on to something I feel an affinity for in my life. I can see where stagnation kept me from higher, more important achievements. I was able to see this because of all the meditative pre-work I did for the past few months. Once the decision was made for me and I got over the initial shock of it, I was almost immediately able to let it go and move forward. I feel in my heart, things will work out for me if I stay on this path of self-discovery and transformation.

Just to illustrate how powerfully chaotic this month was for me, even my flower garden was wiped out in a freak and terrifying hail storm that came out of nowhere this week. But even that had a positive effect. I didn’t really know what I was doing when I created the first garden. I placed things next to each other that didn’t have a mutual benefit. One side of the garden thrived while the other limped along.  I cried when the garden was destroyed. It felt like God stomped on it to add insult to injury this month. But in reality, I can now replant the garden with more knowledge of what I should plant. I plan to dig up the remnants and begin anew next week with more confidence and knowledge.

It’s time to transmute that shit into something beautiful.

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The Cycle of Negative Thoughts

My current project is to eliminate the cycle of negative thoughts from my mind. Or more precisely, I don’t wish to be controlled by these negative thoughts and emotions any longer. I began this process back in April when I had my moment of clarity. I realize then that much of my depression and anger was due to painful events in my past that I never addressed. I didn’t even realize how much of my past I carried with me every day. I started to see that many of my friends were going through a similar experience and working through them in various ways – some more successful than others. But I read an article by Johann Hari in the Huffington Post that triggered me, The Real Causes Of Depression Have Been Discovered, And They’re Not What You Think. I cried when I read this article. I realized that many of my behaviors that were keeping me from living a more productive, healthy life were tied to bullying and abuse during my adolescent and Screen-Shot-2017-10-06-at-4.02.31-PMteen years. And much of that stemmed from earlier childhood health problems (a duration from age 3 to 5 years old) which made me stand out more as a target. I developed learning disabilities and had severe coordination issues from that illness. I was also an introvert. I don’t know if I would have been so introverted had I not had such serious health issues, but I do not remember a time when I wasn’t an introvert.

I was in the second grade when I started to notice there was a problem. My best friend in school stopped talking to me regularly. She began hanging out with the cooler girls and would barely acknowledge me. Most of the boys made fun of me. I didn’t understand why. My best guess is that I must have behaved awkwardly. Or at least I gave the impression that I did. Enough for it to have social consequences. Though a few years ago, my sister, who is three years older than me, told me that she had some of the same issues because we didn’t live in the same neighborhood as most of the kids in our class. We e855c3dc9d625b713948fbbef643e98flived in the suburbs and they in the city. Part of it may have been due to lack of proximity and that they viewed us as snobs (or perhaps their parents did and that perception transferred to the kids). My mother confirmed this was a problem she ran into at the school as well. Whatever the actual reason was, I was bullied from the age of 7 to 14. I was thrilled when I left that school behind and went to an all-girls high school. I remember those three years with much love, because I was finally able to have peace away from that abuse. Unfortunately, the school closed and I had to serve out my senior year with some of the same grade school kids that bullied me. One in particular was so bad that I occasionally still find myself thinking of ways to humiliate him.

I didn’t connect all of the negative behaviors I developed to this time in my past until I read the article. Now I see it as obvious. Little things I do to sabotage myself from breaking out of the cycle I am in are very clear to me now. This year on my birthday, the universe gave me a powerful download that made me realize that I’m carrying around painful baggage and I don’t have to do that. I never had to do it. The coping strategies that I developed to survive bad situations are no longer needed. I can let those go and choose something different now.

So, I set about changing my thoughts and ending the negativity cycle that I often get trapped in because of inertia. It’s easier to live on autopilot, but there are great consequences to that way of life. Growth doesn’t come out of that. The first step I took was to embrace my past and to start connecting parts of it with behaviors I developed. I needed to visualize the negative situation, the behavior I developed to cope with it, and then to see how the behavior was specialized to that situation. I could then see that today, that situation was no longer an active part in my life, so the behavior no longer served me.

I started to meditate daily and question everything that I said and did. I actually started to see some of the positive things that came out of my past in shaping who I am today. That was the real breakthrough step. As difficult as my life has been emotionally and physically, I cannot deny that much of it lead me on my path to discovery. My work in philosophy and religious studies is a direct result of my turn inward. My ability to think critically and to question the world and authority around me came out of a dissatisfaction with the mainstream world. And it is because of my spiritual journey that I can now pull myself out of the mental rut I’ve been in for decades.

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It’s also clear to me now that I developed a lot of insensitive and hypocritical tendencies that were rather self-serving and dismissive of others. I believe this is because I was so nullified as a child. So now, when I’m annoyed or find the actions of someone questionable, I first ask myself how I would act in the same situation. Do I do this myself? Are they being reasonable and am I annoyed or angry because it’s an inconvenience to me? Am I being unreasonable because my hormones are in flux? I run through a complex series of questions in my head. But here is the most important thing – if my answer is no, I listen to my inner voice now. I don’t make the assumption that I am wrong or invalidate my own experience, but rather I make room for the possibility that I am wrong and then I assess the situation.

Daily meditation allows me to be an observer of my thoughts. I can see them. I can see the little buggers that cause problems and I can opt to follow a different line of thinking. This has given me the ability to start the process of removing what no longer serves me.

Since I’ve been doing this, I’ve found that my depression is lifting. My interactions with my partner are far more positive and less contentious. I can actually see a positive future ahead of me with so much more to discover. It is early in the game. I do realize that it’s only been four months. But I also feel that my spiritual quest to eliminate the cycle of negative thoughts has given me new tools to cope with what life throws at me.

 

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For more information on stopping bullying, go to: https://www.stopbullying.gov/