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Not up to the Magnitude of the Pain

Posted on June 14, 2023 by jenny

My sweet companion Mocha has been diagnosed with a condition that will ultimately paralyze her back legs. I am overwhelmed with pain and grief. I am not being able to carry this pain with joy.

“Let go of any bitterness that may have come because you were not up to the magnitude of the pain entrusted to you.

Like the mother of the world who carries the pain of the world in her heart, each one of us is part of her heart, and therefore endowed with a certain measure of cosmic pain.

You are sharing in the totality of that pain. You are called upon to meet it in joy instead of self-pity.”

-Sufi master Pir Vilayat Khan

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The Real Universe

Posted on June 5, 2023 by jenny

From my journal for June 3, 1996, and posted in May 2010:

But the truth is, going over the whole thing in detail again again, writing down exactly what the fear feels like and then seeing how it matches my childhood, results in me feeling much less fearful, much more stable, seeing beyond the shoulders of my parents’ shadows to the possibility of a real Universe, big enough, wild enough, creative enough, compassionate enough, to meet my Soul’s need.

I hardly can believe that I wrote that so long ago, while I was in a state of hypervigiliance from the bad experience on Paxil. I wasn’t yet on an anti-depressant that worked, I had no idea about the trauma, and yet I was able to state exactly what my life is about: the search for Truth, for that real Universe.

Today, after reading the Tosha Silver book called Outrageous Openness, I felt how easy it was to hand everything over to the Divine. After all, I’ve been able to say “Thy will be done,” for quite a while now with great relief at handing whatever it is over to a being larger and wiser than I. She calls the One she relies on “Divine Beloved.” That name helps give me a sense of a big friendly universe.

Here are some quotes from Outrageous Openness:

Page 58
Life changes radically if you know you’re a conduit for what wishes to happen as opposed to the one making it all occur.
Use me, whatever I have to give, for the highest good. Just let me be helpful and contribute my all.

Page 71
Let what wants to come, come. Let what wants to go, go.
If it is mine it will stay. If not, whatever is better will replace it.”

Page 93
I’m moving from a place of ease and effortlessness, allowing things to happen as they wish to happen.

Page 114
Let things happen as they are meant to, in the highest way for all involved.
Divine Order always brings the right solution at the right time. You learn to relax and follow the cosmically ordained route when it appears. You won’t miss it.

I think of how the Universe guided me to Stonehenge, and how astronomy and the sacred calendar and folk dance and Stonehenge were all there in that year I graduated.

I also see Neskaya as the result of this process. In 1994 I wrote: “Understanding that we are building a cathedral allows me to let go of the money, be willing to spend what we have to. I have just the barest hint that this is god acting through me and therefore correct, but it’s confusing because all I have to act on is the inner sense of knowing or wanting or willing, but no outer sense that I am pleasing some great being “out there” who really wants this done.”

In March 2022, I’ve been reading Cynthia Bourgeault’s book, The Wisdom Way of Knowing. She describes a process she calls “being a midwife for the Divine.” It’s similar to Tosha Silver’s process. I see that it also describes how I made possible the creation of Neskaya.

That big, wild, creative and compassionate Universe I described in 1996, turns out to be the REAL THING.

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Working to remember “My Prayer”

Posted on June 1, 2023 by jenny

This morning I woke up feeling utterly unloved and hopeless, in a world where there is no spirit. The song in my head is “Diamonds and Rust,” Joan Baez’s amazing song about her love affair with Bob Dylan. I listened to it recently, but it was a couple of days ago. But yesterday I watched a woman talk about growing up feeling unloved by her estranged father, and after he died finding he had kept her high school photograph and a lock of her hair. She realized she had always been loved, and it changed her life. I’m so jealous of her, because she found evidence. Never happened to me. This morning I’m feeling about as unloved and unlovable as I ever have in my life.

I couldn’t get “Diamonds and Rust” out of my head, and I remembered I had a prayer to say when I was feeling bleak. Don’t remember when I stopped doing that, but I knew it was in my blog, so I looked it up. It’s called My Prayer/Vision. I wrote it down to help me relearn it.

“I choose to trust that the wider, more inclusive, participatory, sacred cosmos is alive and intelligent and works with us to create a better world for all.” That’s the shortest version and easier to remember. It’s interesting that it went through several stages, which I describe in this post.

I had finished writing this, saved it, previewed it, might have posted it, but I saw that I had email. There was something from the Daily Good that is SO APPROPRIATE. It’s called “A Primordial Covenant of Relationship” By Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee. He says:

This is the story of our time, this story of forgetfulness, this story of unraveling. Because the heart of the climate crisis is not a crisis of emissions—it’s not even a crisis of capitalism and greed. Those are all expressions of what happens when we lose the most essential nature of a connection, a relationship that has existed since time immemorial—the sacred connection between us, as human beings, and the living Earth.

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“Bombed-out Village,” reprise

Posted on May 29, 2023 by jenny

Originally posted in November 2018

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Thinking about talking with Erica about starting to tolerate — and even enjoy — the ordinary. For most of my life I was in too much psychic pain, I needed something fairly intense to hold my attention. Erica said something about “living on a battlefield.” Yes, part of me is keyed up, waiting for the next bomb to drop. Reminds me of that session with Debbie when I became aware of the bombed-out village. The worst of it is that instead of having people around who are also in the bombed out village, so we can comfort and support each other, I am surrounded by people who are oblivious.

March 17, 1989 Work with Debbie

I told her about the sadness that I had been feeling, even read part of what I had written (and that sad high voice appeared, with some crying.) I also told her what I told a friend, that it felt like being part of a group of refugees leaving their bombed out village, and having to leave behind beside the road those who can’t make it — no time for mourning or burial, just having to walk on, dry eyed, because of the necessity of survival. Debbie said “That’s what your life has been, and now you’ve finally got to the place where you can mourn, and you are also sad that it had to be that way.” At first I felt resistance, no my life wasn’t that awful, and then I realized she was right, in the necessity of survival there had been no time or space for mourning my lost innocence, my crippled creativity, and no room for anger about my sabotaged power.

My memory of this session is that I was so confused when I left that I couldn’t remember Debbie’s name. So it was a surprise to find that that didn’t happen until six month later. Now I understand that it took that long for the understanding to percolate downward and become experience rather than idea.

September 8, 1989

At Beverly’s after “emergency” session with Debbie. Having trouble remembering. Couldn’t remember dream to be able to work with it, it became just a bunch of meaningless words. Images from other dreams perhaps floated through my mind and disappeared. I sat in the ruins of my bombed out house and cried. Still baffled. A fragmented

September 9, 1989

“A fragmented session with Debbie” I was going to write when distracted by Beverly…

The session with Debbie was very confusing. I told her the fragment of the dream, but it didn’t mean anything. Other dream-like fragments floated through my mind, but couldn’t be grasped. I felt the whole time like I was in two places at once, massive sense of deja vu — haven’t we already talked about this — then fragments of dreams — or dream-like fragments — dreams, memories of the past? “floating in wide orbits with no center.” When it was time to go I couldn’t remember the date, the year, or Debbie’s name when writing the check. I felt completely disoriented and fragmented and it persisted for a little while at Beverly’s. But I can’t remember what happened in the session well enough to write it down.

I think what happened was Debbie’s validation of the shift from seeing myself as a monster to seeing that my inner environment is what is monstrous — something I internalized at a very early age, something that felt a lot like living in a bombed out house. No wonder I had all those dreams of the A-bomb falling on our house, it matched my inner environment. No wonder the planes upset me so much, they remind me that I’m living in a bombed out house, a violated body, an invalidated psyche, and I’ve been trying all my life to pretend that’s not true.

The upset about the planes was my extreme reaction to the noise of the small planes towing the gliders out of Franconia Airport. I suffered from it for 14 years.

At this point, in 1989, I had no idea that I had been traumatized, but the experience of the “bombed-out village” certainly suggests trauma. Amazing that as a child I had dreams of the A-Bomb falling on our house. I was three years old when it happened, but I somehow knew that it was some kind of major disaster for all of us.

“Floating in wide orbits with no center” was an early attempt to describe what happened when I fell apart. Probably in the 60’s when I was in California.

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From 1994: Mom playing “Good Mother”

Posted on May 22, 2023 by jenny

November 1994

I made an appointment with a psychic and told her a little about what I was wanting, especially that I wanted to cut any strings remaining with mother. Within the hour, the phone rang again and a familiar harsh voice said “Daiva?” It was Mom, intending to call Jack. It was a very odd conversation. I said almost nothing. She talked on and on, how good it was to talk to me, how sorry she was that she hadn’t called any of us, “I know I should have had a plan, but I didn’t expect to fall, and really, I just couldn’t think,” she said Jesse said we were all upset, “You will forgive me won’t you,” she said she was bruised all down one side (never mentioned the ribs) and her heartbeat was irregular (“I’ve never had any trouble with my heart”) so they kept her in much longer than she thought was necessary. She kept repeating how good it was to talk to me, that she wished we could have a long visit, “but I know it’s hard for you to travel,” that she wished we could find a time to talk regularly on the phone. (I made no suggestions.) I felt bad to be unable to say anything, felt like I was being cold and rejecting, just kept saying “uh-huh,” I couldn’t think of anything to say that would be both honest and warm. I kept thinking she would perceive my distance and be hurt, but no, she kept on talking, giving an excellent performance of a mother who’s been a little out of touch. I realize that she paid no attention to me, to what I said, asked no real questions, was content with superficial answers. It just amazes me that she can say how wonderful it is to talk to me when I haven’t said a word — but of course what’s wonderful for her is her own talking. Well, I wish I could “behave better,” though I don’t know what that would be like, more graciously is perhaps what I mean, but then, she doesn’t really notice. It’s just a duty call and she carried it off equitably. What a shock when it was me instead of Jack! Poor old Mom. If she knew how much I pity her she’d be furious.

The next day: Thinking about it some more — I have to think about it a lot — Mom really puzzles me, she sounds so sincere, and then I feel guilty for not responding to what might be a real opening. But this morning I saw that of course she enjoys talking to me, she is enjoying her own performance of what she thinks is a good mother. She doesn’t really want to have a “nice long visit” or talk more often on the phone, she even makes my excuses for me. She felt guilty because she only called me by accident and she can’t stand the image of a mother who only calls her oldest daughter by accident, so she has to do this fancy dance to recover her image. The performance wasn’t even for me, because she didn’t pay any attention to my response, the performance was for herself.

What a brilliant example of not being met by Mom. No wonder I have attachment trauma. Very interesting that she called me right after I made an appointment to have the strings cut between me & her.

I notice that I give her as little information about myself as possible. Back in the past, I remember deciding to “never give her a target again.” This is why I said as little as possible.

When a post is material from the past, I think it’s a good idea to put that in the title. sometimes people have been confused and thought it was the present.

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My Life as a “Great Adventure”

Posted on May 18, 2023 by jenny

Written in writing group on April 24.

I remember how it used to upset me when people talked about “being grateful for the gift of life.” I felt like the “gift” came to me smashed, it wasn’t a gift at all. And my long struggle to “prove I deserve to live” also suggests that I didn’t feel it was a gift but something I had to earn.

That’s all changed. It was just a couple of weeks ago when Alice said she liked the honesty with which I wrote about myself in the Residents’ Biography book. I talked about my alcoholic parents and having been traumatized as a baby. I remember someone in charge asking me if I wanted to take anything out, or if I was really comfortable with everything. I said I was fine with how it was. But nobody else wrote about anything negative.

The second thing was being introduced to the work of Nic Askew who filmed people in black and white and somehow got their real selves to appear. Then there was something I was typing up from a month ago where I said something about “trying to be who I really am” and it was so clear that “trying” was not the way to get there. So I just relaxed, and it was the most amazing thing. I was able to experience myself as the person I really am and not Mother’s shadow that she projected on to me. It’s been clear for a long time that the person other people see is not who I experience myself to be. But that’s all changed.

Another piece was having the music to a dance pop into my head. That was actually weeks before these other things happened. The music was St. Francis’ Canticle of the Creatures, sung by Angelo Branduardi. By “creatures” is meant all created things: Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Water, Fire, plants and animals. The dance to it is simple and joyful and I started doing it, and it made me so happy. So I’ve been so happy for almost two weeks now, and looking back my life looks like a great adventure not a dismal waste.

I think of the things I’ve done, and I feel good about them. I wrote a book expressing the two sides of the brain on left-hand pages and right-hand pages. The right hand pages are linear and logical with footnotes and bibliography which is the left side of the brain, but our experience is that it’s the right side of the body. The left-hand pages are much more creative. I also created a slide show which involved pictures I had taken of megalithic monuments and sacred sites in the Celtic countries. It was a lot of work because I had two slide projectors and a fade-dissolve unit to crossfade the slides, music, and a script. I had a career plan of taking the show on the road and selling books at each showing. But I never got there. Severe depression rooted in early trauma sabotaged my ability to carry it out.

Then I was part of Journey Into Courage.

And I built Neskaya.

Note: going back to look for the day Alice talked to me, I discovered that the previous post was “Choose to be Happy” in which I show how that attitude is not helpful. Made me laugh.

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“A deep well of sadness”

Posted on May 17, 2023 by jenny

Writing done in group on Monday, May 15

A well of unprocessed grief

“To be met!” That’s what I said when I was doing somatic experiencing with Peter Payne. He also did body work and I was sitting on his table with my knees drawn up. He put his hand on my leg just below the knee and said “Push.” I pushed and he held me, stopped me gently and pushed back. I pushed forward again laughing. He pushed back. I laughed harder. We did it for a while until I collapsed laughing. Later I thought about it, why was it so wonderful? I realized with Mom & Dad, they would either stop me dead, or not stop me at all and let me fall. I had never been met, there had never been a conversation, a back and forth negotiation, mutual response.

I remember another time, it was about the Robert Frost poem where he says: The sun was warm but the wind was chill. You know how it is with an April day… I said one of the lines trying to join my father in something I knew he loved. But we stumbled around at first. Then he said “You started me off wrong,” and went on with the poem. He had somehow missed that I was trying to join him in something he loved.

How do you grieve something that didn’t happen? If you have something and lose it, you know what you’ve lost. But if you never had it?

I remember when Erica started giving me positive feedback, detailed positive feedback, like “your hand is holding your face in such a gentle way.” At first I wanted more, but then I couldn’t handle it and started saying Stop! Stop! Erica referred me to Francis Weller who talks about what he calls the five gates of grief. One is what we should have had and didn’t get. Every child, growing up, needs positive feedback and support for learning unfamiliar things.

I have been feeling a lot of sadness this past week. Sadness mixed with delight in the beautiful spring flowers, the greening grass and trees.

After I read it, I said it was “dead grief.” Judith asked what is dead grief? what would it say? I think I meant grief that couldn’t be processed. I’ll have to explore it more.

I notice that when I wrote about it the next day, I said “a deep well of sadness,” and had to check my notes to see that wasn’t what Erica said. What’s the difference? “Sadness” is tender, a kind of dark background that can give depth to a bright present. “Unprocessed grief” sounds like a mass of stuckness — actually, unprocessed grief can be a source of depression.

I see that I’ve done some earlier posts about grief this year:
Needing to find a way to grieve
Let grief speak
A well of unprocessed grief

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From 1994: Needing to prove that I am “really sick”

Posted on May 16, 2023 by jenny

From my journal for 11/30/94

Talking to Dana this morning about the “unfairness” of having my life be so restricted by illness, and how unhappy it makes me, and how it would be easier if I could just accept it — but writing it down, I see that the real “unfairness” is that I blame myself, as though it were my fault that I’m sick so much, or as though I weren’t really sick at all but just morally deficient and lazy, that “if I really wanted to, I could clean up the house, get to sleep easily,” etc. O gosh, it’s the old laziness/lethargy conflict again. It just doesn’t quit. When I can understand that I am really sick, I don’t give myself such a hard time.

Read this piece of writing to Dana, who said that he thought that the desire to “prove” that I was “really sick” is something that just keeps me caught in the judgemental system. It makes me think of Talking to Yourself where she shows the many ways in which the judgemental attitude can pervade all attempts to help oneself. In fact initially I heard Dana saying that if I could just get rid of the emotional overlays on the issue of being sick, I would be able to see what was wrong and fix it — which wasn’t at all what he was saying.

I said that I could see that one thing that’s operating is the belief that left to my own devices I would never get anywhere, which is why I push myself, manipulate myself, and generally don’t trust my own process, my own commitment. Dana said it wasn’t so much a matter of trust as of a belief that I don’t have the power to commit myself to anything and have it make a difference. That phrasing was exactly right, I suddenly saw Little Jenny breaking her heart trying to get her parents to wake up, be there, respond to her, stop drinking, and learning that all her powers of energy and passion and commitment were worthless because nothing changed. Dana also said that one reason I feel so compelled to prove that I’m physically sick is that physical sickness is the only excuse that will satisfy that judgemental attitude, and the corollary of that is that me and my own feelings are not important.

Actually sickness is the only excuse that would satisfy my mother. I remember her saying “You can’t be tired, you haven’t done anything,” if she needed me to do something. Yesterday I was feeling hopelessly inadequate, which I think is the same dynamic. But yesterday I was responded to with love and gratitude, that what I had done had helped just fine.

Learning that all my “powers of energy and passion and commitment were worthless because nothing changed” is something that continues to handicap me. The things I managed to accomplish: the book, Journey into Courage, and Neskaya, were things where I had supportive help. In writing The Feminine of History, I showed my first efforts to my dream teacher, Charles Ponce, and he said “You’ve really got a book here!” Journey involved the other women and Bess O’Brien. For Neskaya I had Dana, and then all the people who came because it gave them something.

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Quote from Etty Hillesum and Synchronicity

Posted on May 14, 2023 by jenny

“People sometimes say, ‘you must try to make the best of things.’ I find this such a feeble thing to say. Everywhere things are both very good and very bad at the same time. The two are in balance, everywhere and always. I never have the feeling that I have got to make the best of things, everything is fine just as it is. Every situation, however miserable, is complete in itself and contains the good as well as the bad — all I really wanted to say is this: ‘making the best of things’ is a nauseating expression, and so is ‘seeing the good in everything.’

She is writing this is Westerbork, a transit camp from which people were sent to Auschwitz.

Synchronicity — I was looking for a quote in Ritual Year, and when I opened Spring it was at this entry in May, titled “Real life is bigger than happiness.” The writing is from May 93, when I’m having a bad time with the airplanes. The full entry is here.

Do I want to leave this world — the world of goldfinches and apple blossoms — has it become “unspeakably dear”? Or is it still a place of horror — a rotting corpse under the apple tree, and death-dealing planes sending daggers of pain through my heart — a world I would be glad to leave? The truth is that it is both at the same time, and I am torn apart by the contrasts.

I offer myself to this process. By an act of will I set myself to believe that there is meaning here, that the forces that tear me apart are divine, that the purpose is transformation. Only by being eaten and digested does the mouse become eagle.

I feel a pain in my heart, enormous pain — I am afraid to give myself over to it for fear I would be ripped apart and die, and at the same time a part of me invalidates the pain: “Who are you to be unhappy? A lot of people would like to have your life.” “Why don’t you choose to be happy?” “You’re just wallowing in your pain.”

And I say no, this is real life. Real life is bigger than happiness. Real life is to be torn apart by the contrasts. There are corpses under all the apple trees, if you choose not to see them, then what do you have? Mourning and rejoicing are both appropriate, death and life are inextricably mingled in the tapestry, you have to accept it all, or you get nothing. “This beauty comes out of a great heart.” Yes. And that heart is open to include everything.

Later: I lost that glorious & painful sense of wholeness, that sense of holding together the two halves of the world: the corpse and the blossoming tree. It occurred to me driving to St. Johnsbury that all the soil is made up of corpses, the decayed dead bodies of bugs, animals, plants, that all the grasses and blossoming trees are rooted in corpses. And it occurred to me that the enormous sweet pain I feel tearing my heart open is love, love for the tree and for the corpse, love for life which is inseparable from death.

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“Both very good and very bad”

Posted on May 13, 2023 by jenny

From my journal for Saturday, May 13

So much color in the world! Flowering trees — dark pink flowers with dark red leaves, white flowers so thick they hide the leaves — alas I saw no bees today. Tulips, so many varieties from the simple cup — two color, open with striped petals, double flowers. Then all the wild things enriching the grass: dandelions, violets, lots of plants with a variety of foliage. At the same time I’m aware that the lack of bees is a disaster, that the overwhelming abundance of white flowers may signal a tree getting ready to die. There are trees which have only a few wide open leaves and mostly bare branches. They have worried me. Now it looks like they are filling out, but again I worry that the tree may be near its end. I look at Mocha and know that she is on her way out, and feel how much I love her. Saw the waning crescent without any trouble, I just looked up and there it was. I feel like I am in the place Etty describes: Things are both very good and very bad at the same time.

Note: Etty Hillesum is a Dutch Jew who died in Auschwitz in 1943. Her complete journals and letters were published in 2002. The quote about good and bad is in a letter to a friend, An Interrupted Life, p 254

Didn’t say how odd I felt watching A Man Called Otto in a friend’s apartment. I was in her recliner and Mocha didn’t come near me, ended up on the couch. My friend was at her computer playing a game. I felt so strange. Maybe a sense of a lot of beings in a room together and not connecting. A sense of not being met.

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