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.

…and waiting

I prayed to God, asking for a sign one way or another about my decision to become an atheist.

I’m still waiting for an answer.

Like Attracts Like: Law or Lever?

I have decided after some years of trial and error,  soul searching, and observation, that the ever popular New Age darling of the moment, the Law of Attraction, is nothing more than a marketing ploy, and not a “secret” law of prosperity and happiness.

 Granted, positive thinking can improve how you feel about your circumstances. We always have a choice of how to react to a situation, and to look for the positive in any circumstance will open the heart and broaden one’s perspective.But talking yourself into being happy about something in your crappy life doesn’t change your crappy life.

 

 The claim that our thoughts— at least those that are driven by strong emotions and beliefs, will manifest as real things or events is not a demonstratable, repeatable, proven phenomenon.And please don’t tell me about Lynn McTaggart’s Intention Experiment. Have you read the list of criteria that must be in place in order to send out one’s intention? She advises her readers to check NASAs weather report about the sun’s activity, and to make sure your environment has enough negative ions before you set to task. Funny; gravity, which is a pretty weak force, seems to work without much preplanning and ceremony.

I’m not ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater, though. The principle that ‘like attracts like’ is not a law, but a tool that some people can use effectively some of the time. It may be a lever that some people can pull, but it’s not a law that applies to everyone in all situations. Otherwise, I’d be in a relationship with the man in my visions,  and I’d be pulled over for speeding all the time, not to mention that my fear of dying in a car accident would have at least brought about a fender bender. I’ve had ‘unwavering faith’ that I would have won at least one writing contest and been published.  I’ve been certain that I would have received at least one unexpected check in the mail. But none of these things have come to pass. Not one. 

As I stated in the updated post about LOA and depression, if the law of attraction were impartial and constant, you know, like a real law of physics, then people suffering from psychoses would, in reality, be chased and hounded by real demons and other creatures. People who believe that spiders are crawling underneath their skin would actually manifest spiders. These people really belive these things are happening to them–but they haven’t manifested their beliefs for all to see. They are delusions. This could open up a discussion about subjective reality, but I’m talking about objective, observable facts.

Proponents of the ’secret’ promise that one can manifest money, cars, health, relationships–things that are observable. They don’t promise that ‘it’ll seem real to you, and that’s all that matters.’ Hell, LSD could do that.

 The folks that have made the ’secret’ to prosperity and abundance work for them are the people who’ve written books, made CDs and DVDs, who offer ‘life-coaching’ and workshops to those of us who just haven’t figured out how to make the LOA work. And they’re not giving any of this prized information away in spite of the fact that they could theoretically manifest all the money they want just from applying the LOA.

 

 So what kind of control do the rest of us have on our lives? Perspective is always in our control. How we see things is always a choice. How we react and the action we take is always our choice. We can be grateful for our crappy lives, or we can blog about them.

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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.