Sweat Lodge

I am transformed here, and stripped bare.

…now when I think of all the red inside me,

I understand that I don’t bleed; I burn.”

–Cindy St. Onge – “Poems From the Grotto”

I participated in my fourth Inipi cermony yesterday. The number 4 is important in Lakota ritual, and my life path number happens to be a 4.  I should have been prepared for something auspicious.

I hadn’t drunk enough water during the day. That probably partially accounted for how miserable I was into the second round. But as that round got underway, I thought to myself, “this is never as bad as people say it is. what is the big deal? I’m fine. I can handle this. It’s a piece of cake.”

I could hear the arrogance in my own thoughts. The Inyan Oyate , or Stone People in the center of the lodge glowed red hot, and I thought about their suffering, their sacrifice. I was humbled.

This isn’t about how tough I am,  I thought, or about how much pain I can endure for the sake of endurance. It’s about being vulnerable and open and flawed and ultimately purified. I thought that if creatures as sturdy as stones could suffer the sacrificial fire for the sake of my transformation, the least I could do was admit that I was uncomfortable.

And that was all it took. By the middle of the second round, I was nauseous, light-headed, and felt like I would pass out. How hot it was in the lodge wasn’t even an issue by this time. I was at my limit. I was on the verge of asking that the door be open so I could leave.  But this is the purpose of the Inipi ceremony, to inhabit these borders, to push beyond what the body can endure, and to challenge what your mind has always defined as possible and impossible.

When I closed my eyes to try to think of something besides how dizzy I felt, I wanted to go to sleep, but I was afraid I wouldn’t wake up. So I struggled against the heat, and wanting to throw up, and almost losing consciousness. This is where and  how the heat and the prayer transforms the pilgrim. The lodge was pitch black, but I kept looking in the direction of the door, a way out I couldn’t see, but knew was there.

The second round was mercifully divided into two mini-rounds because the heat was excruciating. After I had cooled down some, I realized that I had only experienced external discomfort in previous sweat lodges. This was the first time I had felt that misery on the inside, viscerally.

There were still two more rounds to go, each hotter than the last. At some point during the third round, which I’ve always called the  Skin Searing Round, ancestor spirits present in the lodge were sucking me into Lakota folklore as I envisioned the Great Mystery and Tunkasila playing tether ball with the planets.

This was the spiritual ass-kicking I had always believed the Inipi ceremony to be, but had never experienced until last night.

I am humbled and grateful.

Mitakue Oyasin

W. Was a Decider; It Can’t Be That Hard.

We agonize over which direction to go, which step to take first, because we want to make the ‘right’ choice. As we mull over our options, we get bogged down  in the emotional language of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. In the process it becomes difficult to sense what we wanted to do in the first place.

I think that in many cases, we’ve  not asked the question we really want answered. If we haven’t asked the question, we can’t get the information we’re seeking.

When we say we want to make the ‘right’ choice, what we really mean is that we want to make the ‘easy’ choice—the decision that will have the fewest ramifications and require the least amount of work, hassle, and explaining.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

So if what we really want is to make the easiest choice, then we should ask that question  to get the answer we need in order to proceed. There is nothing wrong with wanting to walk the path of least resistance. It’s efficient, clean, and direct. No judgment there. When we ask the question this way, we’re not cluttering the decision making process with our ideas about right and wrong, and about all the different  consequences with their attendant judgments. If we want to proceed in the direction that will get us to where we want to go the fastest, with as few obstacles as possible, then we must ask that question specifically. “What is the easiest thing I can do now?”

I’m trying to eliminate the word ‘right’ from my vocabulary. True ethical dilemmas aside, this word is rife with judgments and baggage, and part of the baggage is the word wrong.

We move forward or don’t based on our judgment of pain and failure, versus pleasure and success. Both success and failure are temporary, so why judge them and make the feelings associated with any experience linger long after it naturally passes? This again requires diligent presence and awareness of the moment. This is what the energy of the number 5 (in numerology) teaches us. To remain emotionally supple and open, letting experience pass through us instead of closing around it, blocking off possibility.

There Are No Good Or Bad Decisions

 …Just different outcomes.

Choices and their consequences have been on my mind lately.

I’ve been immobilized by the fear of making the wrong choices most of my life, so I opt–usually, to not take risks. True to the adage, I have ventured little and have gained little. But what have I lost? Faith? Trust? Opportunity?

Perhaps.  But can I change this reptillian-brained need for security and step outside my comfort zone? I’d like to. I keep falling into that self-sabotaging excuse, “Once this and that are in order, I can then take this particular action.” I’ve convinced myself, as so many people have, that unless certain things are in place, certain other things cannot be undertaken.  “I shouldn’t quit my job unless I have another one lined up. Otherwise, I won’t have any money coming in, and the bills won’t get paid, and I’ll lose my car and house, etc.”  Or, “I don’t want to start dating until I’ve lost 15 pounds and have cured my acne, because I’m not lovable just as I am.”

I’ve created a story of consequences, which may or may not happen, and am losing the best years of my life to conditions instead of experiences. If all experiences, illusory as they are, pass through us and from us, then why become attached the outcome, especially before we actually experience the outcome? Instead of dwelling in defeat or gloating in success, we can consider that  each moment, each consequence is a question asking: What will you do now? What will you do with this information? This gift?

We judge results based on how they make us feel, and then either complacency or fear keeps us from flowing into the next lesson, relationship, adventure. We judge ourselves as well, not wanting to be perceived as foolish, moving through life so very measured and calculated for the sake of appearances. What if nobody is watching us? What would I do if I thought no one was keeping score?

My determination for the New Year is this:  I will take more risks and I will make decisions based soley on my wishes.

There are no bad consequences; just new information that I couldn’t have gained without committing to one action or another.

Happy New Year

Breaking Down

Last week at work I reached a breaking point. I wasn’t sure why, and I don’t remember what I was doing, but I just started to tear up and had to fight to keep from exploding into a sobbing fit. I’m unhappy with the pace and content of my life right now, and at that moment I couldn’t contain my despair any longer. It took me by surprise, but I guess I should have seen it coming.

My body has been breaking down these last few weeks. I’ve had joint pain and stiffness that doesn’t go away, I’m grinding my teeth again, and am becoming increasingly weary of the daily tedium.

So as I sat at my desk fighting back tears, tyring to regain my composure so that no one would see my moment of weakness, I thought about what it meant to break down. If I want to know who I am, and what I’m made of, maybe the best way, or maybe even the only way, is through disassembly. It’s hard to say what makes me me, and it’s difficult to define those things that drive and motivate me, when they’ve become tangled together over the years.

Once the facade falls away, the components of the individual are exposed. So what are the building blocks of Grizelda? Hope, fear, love, hunger, desire. Now I see what I have to work with, and can begin to rebuild.

Faith vs Superstition

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I wanted to explore the aspect of allowing versus action, touched upon in my previous post. When people practice the tenants of their chosen or inherited religions, they’re placing their faith, as it were, in the prescribed bowing, chanting, recitation, confession, fasting, or other practices.

What does facing east five times a day, or kneeling and bowing one’s head have to do with the truth? If the truth isn’t enough on its own merits, then what could one possibly accomplish with obsessive practices supposedly attached to the insights, wisdom, teachings, theories, revelations or whatever the conceptual ideas are at the center of a given religion?

Admittedly, it’s not enough for me either.  The personal revelation I experienced last year that I needn’t know what to do or where to go is very difficult to trust. I feel like I have to do something to advance on my path. But usually, I either don’t know what to do, or I’m afraid to move in any direction. And certainly, it would be so much easier to offer  token gestures such as lighting candles or abiding by feng shui edicts or burning a particular incense, than to step off the comfortable and familiar ledge of life as I know it, and take courageous action, like going back to school or canceling my cable or actually writing a blog post every day.

If our lives move in an orbit of some kind, like everything else in the universe governed by the known laws of physics, then why is it so hard to trust the path and natural movement of our lives?

Maybe even in our hesitation there is still some kind of progress. But what would life feel like without doubt?