Several people have suggested to me that I had to change my story about being traumatized very early. I thought they meant I was supposed to make it be that I hadn’t been traumatized at all. This shift to seeing that trauma was necessary for my vocation came about partly because of the Mark Matousek exercise I did on August 14. What I wrote is in the previous post. The shift might also have been helped by my understanding that my spirit knows how to use everything that happens to bring about healing and growth. That’s from Richard Rohr on August 21.
Looking back in my journal, I find that I saw that the low thyroid difficulty with thinking, actually made it possible to perceive deeper truths in a new way.
From my journal for Wednesday, September 7
One result of this bout of low thyroid has been increased access to — what shall I call it? — another mode of perception, cognition, understanding. It’s not the rational intellect, maybe it’s a form of intuition, it’s not whatever form of intuition is signaled by the felt sense. It’s how I perceived the “Goodness beyond Goodness” and the Foundation. I think about the prayer/affirmation I’ve been saying “My spirit knows how to use whatever happens to bring about healing and growth.” I can see that it does, even when my cognitive self has no idea and feels helpless. In fact it was my willingness to feel helpless that allowed me to say Thy will be done, to hand it all over to a Higher Power and then came my ability to forgive Dana and Mother. And even how easy it was to find compassion for Jenny who had gotten so angry at Mocha.Thursday, September 15
I have been angry that I was given so much, intelligence & money, but then sabotaged by trauma so I couldn’t do all I had in me to do. Now I’m seeing that the job I really came to do, or was sent to do, was to work on the collective trauma. And I’ve been doing that, in therapy, tho it’s also true that Neskaya is a container for healing trauma. Suddenly, I’m feeling enormously grateful for my life. And the sun came out shining on bits of trees in the quad.Looked up Donovan song “Happiness runs in a circular motion … everybody is a part of everything anyway…” It came into my mind after I wrote about accepting my life as a gift, seeing how it was perfectly designed to do the work I am called to. or chose. Somehow I no longer see a difference. Happiness runs also reminds me of the end of the performance of The Madwoman of Chaillot at Davis. At the very end the characters froze, the lights changed to brighter and bluer, as they began to reach out and take hands the music started and they began to dance in a line on & off the stage. “Countess, the sky is blue again!” Because they had sent the oil magnates and their hangers-on down into the cellar, the underworld.
This performance at The University of California at Davis, which is the agricultural school, was done around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970. They had some beautiful little touches that made the play contemporary.
One thing I find very interesting in this is my use of “the job I came to do, or was sent to do,” and “the work I was called to do, or chose.” Though they seem to be different I can see that in some sense they are the same. Erica says this is the mystic’s perception, seeing something that can’t be expressed verbally.