Radiohead’s epic Karma Police. For some feels around losing oneself to karma, click to listen. Doesn’t sound that attractive an offer, I know, yet everyone has to take the ride.
The event described below is unimpressive at a surface level but it was a line in the sand on my journey of finding myself. I was sitting alone in a waiting room, about to have an ITA energy alignment, after another day in the office. I was easily on time for a change, and found myself with a chance to close my eyes to relax before the appointment, casting aside thoughts on what to buy and make for dinner that would be quick so the kids wouldn’t eat too late.
Sitting quietly, unexpectedly I felt the swelling of something good inside me – an energy of peace and strength rose and held me, so strong and deep. Even as my mind started questioning it – what’s this? why’s this happening? how long will it last? - I was unbothered by the barrage of thoughts this time.
This is merging with my soul, I realised. Like I’d come within range of the magnetising light and was drawn in with gentle suction. It took no effort.
As a meditator I had many times experienced how my mind, my fear, would stop this fall into the abyss of trust where my soul awaits my realisation that I am it.
This time the connection was so strong and effortless that even my hectic thoughts had no power over me. I felt such relief.
Then out of the corner of my ear I heard Radiohead’s Karma Police come on the radio.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a fear – black, heavy, dense, buzzing, a horrid furry anchor, pulled me and consumed me in dread.
Alarmed and ambushed, and already well experienced with these jaws, I felt terror that evil was attacking me. Something horrid that would stop at nothing to prevent me from getting further towards meeting my soul. A force that wanted to keep me lost in hell and to think I could never escape it. This was my particular brand of shadow – grandiose, yes, compared to some other descriptions of fear, but that’s how it was after years of working on freeing myself of less extreme fears. The song played on –
For a minute there I lost myself I lost mysellllllllffffff The terror swamped me so strongly I couldn’t stay still. I nearly leapt up to my feet to take my stance against it, but knew that kind of drama would only feed it.
Instead I opened my eyes and thrust my arms above my head, for some reason that helped, like an animal that puffs itself up when under threat, and began reciting in my head the mantra that works - you have no power over me. Always this took a huge focus and strength to say with commitment because the swirling thickness swamped and confused me.
So many times the fear had flooded me – deep and dark and unstoppable. For me, the bully was fear, for others it’s grief or emptiness or worthlessness. What’s your poison?
There was a time the same fear had come close to destroying me, but I’d gotten through it and out the other side. So now, as I’d stated with well-earned authority that this energy had no power over me, I felt my self-control returning.
I’ve mostly mastered the fear of what others think of me. I’ve mastered expressing truth when it’s so hard. I’ve come through the breakdown that nearly took my mind. I’ve stood up in empowerment to symbols of the patriarchy. I’ve learned when to fight and when to flow. I’ve learned what’s giving myself away and what’s simply giving. All these masteries and more, hard won victories of self.
My last mastery was what I think of myself. I was at the point where my shadow gives all it’s got – which is a lot, commensurate with my light, just like yours – to keep me from the leap into wholeness.
Oh, the stories it tells. For me, they were of the rage and devastation of the feminine wound, with plenty of details. Behind all that was fear that I deserved the wound because I wasn’t good enough.
My spiritually correct mind knew all life experiences are part of a grand plan of evolution, one that my astrologer’s and spiritual philosopher’s brain has studied ad nauseum.
But to my true feelings, that belief was whitewashed and callous. How could I say it doesn’t matter to me, say ‘yeah, it was painful but it’s all perfect in the grand plan, how wonderful it is.’
I couldn’t jump straight to the acceptance that history was part of a beautiful divine plan. I had to participate in those stories, and face how they are part of me, uncover my feminine pariah and resuscitate her, settle my inner patriarch and save him from the destruction of my woman’s fury, until the war within began to wane and the two of them sought some peace. In my efforts to protect myself from being diminished, my rage swamped my gentleness. For other women, it’s the opposite.
Now, at this juncture, my shadow was scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to keep me identifying with the wounds. The biggest bully – my own shadow though it feels as if it’s external - says I’m not whole enough to pass.
Self-flagellation…self-crucifixion. I’d openly scoffed at it…those priests whipping themselves, people of puritanical mania being so hard on themselves. But I was doing it to myself. The martyr, willingly going to the pyre for my godly goodness. Willing to suffer, to be sacrificed. That if I was in hell, I deserved it so I should surrender to it like a good girl.
Karma police – so terrified of you I was, feeling you’d come to get me for all my badness, my dirtiness, my impurity, my rotten soul.
The fear I’d lost myself forever. That I’ll never find myself again. That shadow taunted me and drove me back into the hell fires. I’ll never win against it and I don’t deserve to anyway.
We all lost ourselves for a long time. After the experience of losing myself, diving in to a world of opposites and getting stuck at the shitty end of love and fear, rich and poor, joy and grief, for many lifetimes, I am now on my return to self.
I’ve already stepped over the threshold. It’s inevitable now. Always was. Accepting the higher perfection of the game of evolution was only possible after I let it be dirty.
Commenti