(Written in January 2007)
Got the usual invalidating message from R telling me that pain doesn’t exist and I can choose not to think those thoughts. My first reaction is to want to die. My second is to get in touch with my anger at his failure to understand what my life is like. I understand why someone would fly an airplane into a building. First I imagined beating R to a pulp with a baseball bat. Then I imagined smashing a person-sized piece of pottery. Nope, not violent enough to relieve my feelings. Then I imagined driving my car head on into a truck. Still not there. Then I imagined driving my car (smash!) into a rock wall. Then I imagined flying an airliner full of people into a sky scraper — Ahh. Satisfaction.
The pain of having one’s feelings and needs ignored and invalidated. So if this is the helpless angry pain that produces terrorism, my willingness to feel it and refusal to act on it is one way of stopping terrorism. Perhaps the only way. This is work worth doing, worth staying alive for.
Dear Guides & Guardian Spirits, I’m as bummed out as I’ve ever been, I’m completely discouraged and I want to die. Please help me.
Dear Jenny, you don’t want to die — what you really want is a life that works and you have no idea what to do to make that happen. Dear One, we love you and we don’t want you to die. You are needed on the planet at this time. Your work in witnessing these feelings of despair is necessary to help shift humanity from the path of vengeance to the path of healing. Remember that the despair you are feeling is that of a child who has tried everything they know to change things, to fulfill their needs for affection, acknowledgement, comfort and support, only to find those needs completely ignored by the adults they are dependent on. This is one of the worst pains a human being can feel. Staying with it helps all those children trapped in that despair now, and the child you were who suffered this way in the past. Do not give up. All those children need you and we need you too.
My intent is to help the earth, my prayer, my vision, is that people will live sustainably on the earth, that no more children will be abused and no more wars will be fought. We will find ways to live together in peace and harmony and creativity and celebration. That’s my intent.
Guided meditation on going to the most painful place: I went to myself in the yurt wanting to die after reading the letter from R. The being who came to the door was Kuan Yin, and I didn’t feel any different when she inhabited my body, but when I wasn’t paying attention she started building a wall. The gift she gave me was a sword and shield and she said: “Never be afraid to stand up for yourself, never be afraid to protect yourself.”