It was clear I was in hot pursuit of a shamanic initiation of some sort. And I got one. Actually it was a really good one, too. I'd had this star bust of tremendous heroism appearing above me, when I was a child, and it had kept me spell-bound, really to such an extent that I could have remained in the aura of good fortune and magical good luck for the rest of my life had my own ground not been ripped away and energies depleted. And the only way to get one's power back is through an initiation of some sort -- doesn't need to be shamanic. It could have been a social initiation if somehow I had burst through onto the scenes artistically and this had changed my groundless being into a substantive one. Things didn't work out that way. Instead I dragged depleted limbs around and concocted specialized redemptive potions on the move. I was always on the move. I could never stand still, because the ground had been disturbed from under me, and nothing was really solid anymore or made sense.
But that ongoing process of not knowing and somehow not even being, whilst addressing all my energies to targeting my states of pain was somehow good for me. It got me thinking really deeply, as, after all, what else was there to do? And suddenly I was in the eye of the storm whereas I had been on the outside of it before. I remember walking down the street to work, and I was in trouble, grave, grave, trouble, in the workplace. I crossed a street and as the crowd and I were almost over, an old woman I'd been watching, who was square and grey and dressed in black, began to fall. I noticed her descent in slow motion and ran to have my hand under her elbow at the moment that she hit the surface of the road. So, everything became slow motion for a while.
And I was calm because I'd crossed a line where nothing mattered. Rhodesians aren't supposed to be offensive in the workplace, but this is how I was being set up to seem, so now I was on the side of evil, and felt quite comfortable and lost a lot of my stress. And the quiet in the middle of the storm kept me focused so I lost less energy.
And I imagined in a way I was a kid tangled up in a bicycle with mangled body parts, and I would send my double out to get help. I would come back, and once I'd figured it out, I would redeem myself. But the chronic fatigue syndrome had come back by now and I was the only one who could figure it out.
I really was weary, weary and stessed and I had a definite knowledge that whatever I would do would automatically be deemed wrong. Indeed, I was increasingly ordered to pull myself together -- as if everything could be that easy. Instead, I had to double myself and become a ghost in relation to myself, much like an extreme mind-body dualism, and go and get some help.
I had to convince myself that the only way my body could get help was by my not inhabiting it, because if I did then I would stress out my internal organs and my senses with so much rage and confusion that I'd never gather all the strength I needed to recover. One does not need an angry spirit inhabiting the body. So I kept it on the outside -- that's to say, as much as possible.
That was easy enough to do, as I have a severe capacity for self-control. In fact my self-control had been to blame in letting things get out of hand. I should not have persisted with a bad situation as long as I had, to the point where I seemed permanently injured. But I'd had my pride and I kept pushing at all things, with a sense of trying to see what was behind them, and that was my urge to try to get something beyond myself -- some initiatory knowledge.
And somehow the spirits were kind because this fight for myself and redemption of myself was actually possible. I didn't like being pulverised and mashed, but somehow I began to restore my broken sensations. I got feelings into different parts of me.
I realized that for years I hadn't had much feeling of anything at all -- that I had been unwittingly sacrificing myself. It was only when I was attacked that I stopped during that.
And subsequently every little further attack bought me closer to my senses. I'd been spell-bound by the aura of Rhodesian Christianity, but now it seemed like a funny joke. If the authorities were great and put in place by some majestic deity, why were they bent on attacking me? Looking at the problem from all angles, they could not have been put there by a God. I must have just imagined it. Picture corrected. And if men were better than women, because they were more noble, why were they also making similar errors of judgment? Could it be that my original version of things was manifestly wrong? And if so there are parts of me that I don't mind being broken, like my faith in God and things. The more attacked I am, the more I get a newer vision.
But knowledge was noble and so was truth.
That was the part of my life that felt like a comedy, and lasted about 15 years (about the length of my initiation). All the time, there were attacks on the edifice of Christian ideology that had kept me prisoner. I couldn't believe my luck. People just seemed to be freaking out and attacking themselves -- or at least my respect for them. Everyone seemed hell bent on blowing up the metallic bars around me, the ideological edifice that kept me trapped in a mode of narrow compliancy.
It was like seeing a clown pull out a pistol and shoot himself in the foot for real.
I saw it again and again.
It was glorious!
But that ongoing process of not knowing and somehow not even being, whilst addressing all my energies to targeting my states of pain was somehow good for me. It got me thinking really deeply, as, after all, what else was there to do? And suddenly I was in the eye of the storm whereas I had been on the outside of it before. I remember walking down the street to work, and I was in trouble, grave, grave, trouble, in the workplace. I crossed a street and as the crowd and I were almost over, an old woman I'd been watching, who was square and grey and dressed in black, began to fall. I noticed her descent in slow motion and ran to have my hand under her elbow at the moment that she hit the surface of the road. So, everything became slow motion for a while.
And I was calm because I'd crossed a line where nothing mattered. Rhodesians aren't supposed to be offensive in the workplace, but this is how I was being set up to seem, so now I was on the side of evil, and felt quite comfortable and lost a lot of my stress. And the quiet in the middle of the storm kept me focused so I lost less energy.
And I imagined in a way I was a kid tangled up in a bicycle with mangled body parts, and I would send my double out to get help. I would come back, and once I'd figured it out, I would redeem myself. But the chronic fatigue syndrome had come back by now and I was the only one who could figure it out.
I really was weary, weary and stessed and I had a definite knowledge that whatever I would do would automatically be deemed wrong. Indeed, I was increasingly ordered to pull myself together -- as if everything could be that easy. Instead, I had to double myself and become a ghost in relation to myself, much like an extreme mind-body dualism, and go and get some help.
I had to convince myself that the only way my body could get help was by my not inhabiting it, because if I did then I would stress out my internal organs and my senses with so much rage and confusion that I'd never gather all the strength I needed to recover. One does not need an angry spirit inhabiting the body. So I kept it on the outside -- that's to say, as much as possible.
That was easy enough to do, as I have a severe capacity for self-control. In fact my self-control had been to blame in letting things get out of hand. I should not have persisted with a bad situation as long as I had, to the point where I seemed permanently injured. But I'd had my pride and I kept pushing at all things, with a sense of trying to see what was behind them, and that was my urge to try to get something beyond myself -- some initiatory knowledge.
And somehow the spirits were kind because this fight for myself and redemption of myself was actually possible. I didn't like being pulverised and mashed, but somehow I began to restore my broken sensations. I got feelings into different parts of me.
I realized that for years I hadn't had much feeling of anything at all -- that I had been unwittingly sacrificing myself. It was only when I was attacked that I stopped during that.
And subsequently every little further attack bought me closer to my senses. I'd been spell-bound by the aura of Rhodesian Christianity, but now it seemed like a funny joke. If the authorities were great and put in place by some majestic deity, why were they bent on attacking me? Looking at the problem from all angles, they could not have been put there by a God. I must have just imagined it. Picture corrected. And if men were better than women, because they were more noble, why were they also making similar errors of judgment? Could it be that my original version of things was manifestly wrong? And if so there are parts of me that I don't mind being broken, like my faith in God and things. The more attacked I am, the more I get a newer vision.
But knowledge was noble and so was truth.
That was the part of my life that felt like a comedy, and lasted about 15 years (about the length of my initiation). All the time, there were attacks on the edifice of Christian ideology that had kept me prisoner. I couldn't believe my luck. People just seemed to be freaking out and attacking themselves -- or at least my respect for them. Everyone seemed hell bent on blowing up the metallic bars around me, the ideological edifice that kept me trapped in a mode of narrow compliancy.
It was like seeing a clown pull out a pistol and shoot himself in the foot for real.
I saw it again and again.
It was glorious!
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