Loosing my shit…. Viva, NOT Vegas!


Where am I at, where am I at? Let’s see…. Here’s what’s been the what over on Lincoln Street for the past 7 days:

Last Monday, June 9th, I Completely Lost My Shit. Lost It Big Time.

Things had been more than just a little fucked up over here the previous few days…and by ‘over here’ I mean ‘in my head.’ Just little by little I could feel the pressure building, you know? it goes hand in hand with the type and style of spiritual work I practice – which makes it seems so arrogant to say – but it is true. We watch our ego’s relentlessly, watch how they move, how they dance, how the seemingly separate force of ego even seems to jump from person to person… we watch how it drives us around like robots. Watch how we can be aware of it one second and completely back in its control the next – It isn’t MY ego! I’m ITS human! Anyway – when you do this and you watch it and it becomes aware that it is being watched it gets angry. Now think about how your mind treats you even when you are no threat to it, when it is pretending to be your friend, when you are unaware of it’s hold on you – think of your self talk and how you treat yourself in the shadows of your own mind… now imagine it is actually pissed at you! This may sound completely insane, but babies I am telling you the truth! It, your ego, is separate from you and it is not your friend.

One weapon mine has always held over me is anxiety and meltdown. I’ve really had some incredibly intense breakdowns in my life – over family, drugs & alcohol, lost relationships, health and food. A few have rendered me pretty useless; one even had me in bed for a couple of years. Because of that it has a pretty strong weapon… when I start to feel squirrelly, or get to close to come Truth I feel the pull towards depression or anxiety or loss of control… and I my inclination is to resist, right? To react to it by trying to control whatever is happening. This trick of the ego accomplishes two things: by reacting to a situation you make it real, especially with resistance (picture finger traps), and it is a total sidetrack! Arg! You can lose minutes, hours, days or weeks when you get caught up in a good reaction – and then you’re like (slaps head) “DOH! What was the original issue??”

So last Monday, after a couple of days of building pressure and increasing tension (watching the ego while sitting in the heart creates a tension – a split – from which amazing things can arise) I completely lost it. Stephen was getting ready for work and I was getting more and more funky and slamming things around and starting to feel anxious and sad (ego’s big weapons for controlling me). As Stephen started to walk out the door that voice in my head was telling me how wrong I was to feel what I was feeling and that I better not ‘go there’, and that I should let him go and if I said anything I’d be weak and bad and on and on and I just I sort of unconsciously decided to stop resisting it all. Hell! I leaned into it and gave it all I had…

I don’t know why I am blogging about all of this, other than that is what I do and who I am – I tell the truth to a fault, and the truth is that I had a meltdown last Monday that was so bad that Stephen ended up staying home from work and I think he was like on suicide watch or something. He stayed home from work, afraid to leave my side – and honestly I was afraid for him to leave my side. I think he spent a good hour just holding me down on the floor I was so completely losing my shit. I leaned into that downward slide and I completely exhausted myself and Stephen. And a part of myself was separate from it all, watching calmly, not caring what was happening…. So the part that used this very thing as a weapon with which to keep me in line had lost its power.

Again – why am I blogging about this? Hell if I know. Oh wait! I know! Because now that evil voice in my head that tells me that it was all wrong, and that I should be ashamed, or at the very least embarrassed, that I am stupid and alone in this, and it doesn’t want me to. It wants me to think I am alone in all of this – this reality of it’s creation – and I’m SO not. Every time I tell my truth I end up finding out I am, in fact, not alone.

So just in case you’ve been, or ever have, felt so crazy you thought you were going to turn inside out from crying – know that you are not alone.

I calmed down after an hour or more, and spent the rest of the day with Stephen watching movies on the couch – completely blown-out-exhausted. My dog, Bella, does this thing where she just looks at me. Right in the eyes. She sits around and stares at my face and waits for me to look at her and she looks right into me – hungrily – like I am her God, her Universe – and I know that I am. I sometimes wonder if she knows she exists if I’m not looking at her. That day that is how I felt with Stephen. I felt so light and lost – floaty – if he wasn’t looking at me or touching me I felt like a balloon someone had let go of. So he just kept his hand on my leg all day. It helped. The next day as I got ready for work there was a sketchy moment of ‘how can I take care of people today?” But once I got rolling it went great – and in fact my blow out Monday seems to have bought me 4 or 5 really good free days. I’m sure my ego was just regrouping, looking for the next way to try and control me. And by Sunday he had and the pressure started to build again. But I learned to Lean In. Whatever it trys to scare me with, Lean in. Take away its weapons. None of it is Real anyway. Luckily I have a partner who understands the work I’m doing because he engages with it as well. And I feel I have a safe and non-judgmental place from which to try to wake up from this dream.

Couple other things happened from that meltdown: I was supposed to leave today for a week in Las Vegas for the I-ACT (colon therapy) convention, and I was absolutely dreading it. I had been vacillating for a month. The thought of going was forced and met with much resistance I kept trying to lean into and work through. The thought of not going filled me with relief, and yet I continued to try to make myself go. I kept asking for guidance and intuition and I guess my dread wasn’t answer enough. During the meltdown I entered a moment of absolute clarity, like the eye of a storm, and I absolutely knew with perfect clarity that for my sanity I could not go to Las Vegas. It was an eerie creepy calm that came over me, then I went back into the storm.

I’ve also started eating like a crazed person. This is another of my ego’s weapons. Right now, it is retaliating for my having gotten out from under it for a few days. It is a punisher! So I shovel the food in and watch the weight return and try to stay happy that at least it is raw. I feel a couple weeks of juice coming up, but not yet. Too soon. I have another couple of days of eating to blow through, to sidetrack my ego so my emotional stuff can settle down and balance out. If I juice tomorrow I’d be doing more emotional damage than physical good. I know this.

I also came out with a slight identity crisis… not really a ‘crisis’ ’since identity is all ego and I wanted out from underneath it anyway…. But more like how I was feeling, my internal changes, didn’t match what I saw in the mirror anymore. So I cut off all of my hair. Yep. Not quite another ‘tattoo’ move, since I had been wanting to try shorter hair for years. 11 inches gone. Not quite the cut I want although it is cute. But the image I see in the mirror still isn’t quite matching with how I feel… it more matches a weird cross between my mother and my senior high school photo – and it is quite disconcerting actually. Who knew cutting your hair would make every trip to the bathroom mirror an opportunity  for forgiveness work with your mother? Sort of cool, but I’m still going back for a re-cut friday. I’ll let you know how it goes.

SheaShayShā