"At any rate I'll never go there again!"
said Alice, as she picked her way through the wood.
"It's the stupidest tea-party I ever was at
in all my life!".
[Lewis Carroll - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland]
I can't help but think that there is something wrong with the grammar in that quote. Anyway, that's beside the point I want to make. My point after a week of intense elucubrations and note-taking is that I do not want to go back. Actually, this is not entirely correct. My intention, for now, is to use this space to explore past events and steps and to recollect my thinking process. So, I was there, at the stupidest tea-party ever, which basically lasted the whole of my childhood, and now I am trying a different door. I am aware none of this is making any sense, and pls note that I am perfectly aware of it. It doesn't make much sense to me, either. Let's start again: my point, after a whole week of elucubrations and intense note-taking, is that I am ready to drop the weight I have been carrying all these years.
Imagine this: there is a sailing boat, a sort of tatty oldish Comet, a 15 m. Comet, diesel inboard engine, preloved, which is tightly moored on the outside of a concrete breakwater, fully exposed to the elements, the waves and the storms. The mooring lines, old, in hemp, are almost choking her. Squeakly so. She is there and full of boxes, and crates and weight and... stuff. So much stuff. It weighs her down so much that her floating line is well below sea level. Still, she is there, like an old mule, doing what she knows best: floating, staying. Her left side is scratching against the cold concrete of the wharf. Docked and forgotten.
And now, this old beautiful boat has dropped all that excessive weight and has set sail because a sailing boat can only do what she knows best which to sail and the safest place for her is out at sea.
Well, one of the first thoughts that I had was: why do I always reference sailing boats, in my life? My visions, my dreams, my instinctual images often go directly to beaches and sailing boats as that image of the floating throne and as much as the metaphor of my Being on a sailing boat in the middle of the ocean, with no wind whatsoever [this was... back in the days]. So, sailing boats! Then, I realised that there is literally a part of me that is ready to let go of so much baggage I did not realise I was still carrying with me; namely: shame. And not just mine, but crates and boxes, and suitcases and containers filled with shame. My mother's shame and my father's shame and my shame of them and my shame of me, and just some other generic shame. You would think that I worked on this before and I put everything to bed, but I didn't. I was at a CPD event yesterday and I could feel an intense wave of shame creeping in and I just stood there and observed it until I named it and wrote about it in the notes while the speaker was doing her thing. I found it painful, yes, but also fascinating. It feels as if I did part of the work previously, but not thoroughly, like when you clean the kitchen and you leave a couple of spoons in the sink coz you know it's ok and you are tired and you'll wash them later. So, here I am yesterday, looking at these two metaphorical spoons and I decided to pick them up and clean them, polish them, dry them and put them away.
This morning I took my journal and the trustworthy Celestine Prophecy out again, at the 6th Insight chapter and decided to look at my parents and their lessons and connections specifically with my own spiritual evolution. I realised how cocky I have previously been, bypassing that chapter as if I already knew everything; as if I didn't need to revisit what I lived. Well, this was fun, today. I read every single line and word. Underlined where needed, stopped to absorb, reflect, check my bodily reactions. Then I took my laptop and answered thoroughly every question they asked, filling 4 pages of memories, facts, reactions. And there I realised the amount of shame I am still carrying. And the moment I named it, I felt my parents were not my parent's at all. They were just like carriers who allowed me to come to life, detached from me, something I "used" to be born, to learn and now that the bulk of the pain was gone, I could see them without any emotional attachment and codependency, but as an adult, grateful, but also ready to go. Like if I shed some very heavy skin. I don't know exactly what happened nor do I know how I will feel tomorrow. I can tell you though that this experience has been cathartic.
This has also helped me to redefine my Basic Life Question, which has always been v hard for me to pinpoint. I believe that I was born into that specific dynamics in order to find out and follow a spiritual path that is shameless, as in not shaming others, freeing, empowering; a practice that places the human being at the centre as a visual embodied projection of the divine; a place where we do not blindly succumb to authorities; a path that is acknowledging and validating the individual, and which frees the creative, artistic and thinking mind.
Now that I feel I have my main Life Question / Purpose clear, I can then refine my current day-to-day questions which should align with the main one. For example: where shall I move? How shall I be an instrument of such a path?
Well, let's wait and see!
onwards + upwards,
mx