Wednesday, January 23, 2013

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.” ― Mary Oliver

I have been playing in my subconscious mind a lot lately, thanks to some inner work I’ve been doing, and I realized the other day that one of the things that attract me to a class or workshop are offers to transport me out of ordinary reality and into non-ordinary reality. I’ve never met a naturally achieved altered state I didn’t like, except for cannabis ~ cannabis and I are not friends, but drumming, chanting, meditating, guided journeying, shamanic journeying, fasting, any kind of intuitive work, ritual, dance, red wine, feasting, hot sex…give me those and I am a happy boho hippy paint spattered girl!

Classes, workshops or experiences that allow me to safely enter my own internal landscape, or better yet, the world between the worlds (which may also be a part of my internal landscape for all I know, but I digress…) are my go to classes. I can’t resist them. If a class promises to walk me up to my box of darkness and assist me in unpacking it? I plunk down my cash and do a little kermit flail. Because that’s MY kinda class.

It’s true I like technique classes, too, but not as much, and I don’t tend to throw myself into them as deeply as I do those classes that feel like soul work. They feel more like ‘work’ work, whereas the classes that include spiritual practices or trance induction or accessing intuition feel more like sacred play. I take them on as ‘calling’, as ‘vocation’. I invest. I commit.

One of The Bod Squad (what we call ourselves in Book Of Days Premium), Raine said in response to a post I put in the Facebook group:

“You’re really all about the inner excavation, aren’t you? That’s so admirable…not an easy path. You most certainly aren’t coasting through this lifetime!”

My response?

“Hah! Easy is boring!”

And I had to do a bit of a double take.

Is that true? Do I really believe that? Or do I justify how difficult it has been for me to be alive on planet earth by puffing up and standing tall and scorning easy? 

You should have seen me! I was making this face

o.O

as I asked myself this question:

Would I prefer easy?

And here’s what I concluded. If I could get the same results from ‘easy’, I’d do easy. BUT, and it’s a big one! If easy meant that I didn’t get to engage life in any meaningful way, if it meant that I skimmed its surface, if it meant that I didn’t get the serendipity and the AH HAH and the art and the epiphany and the sense of *knowing myself* and the experience of *loving the world*, well fuck easy. 

Because, at the end of the day, I want the whole buffet that life has to offer. I like cotton candy, and now and again, I’m not opposed to eating too much of it, but I want the meat, too. I want the roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and home baked bread. I want the hand churned butter. I want the aged whiskey and the old cheddar, and the things that take coaxing and patience and time.

And work. I want the work. Because it seems to me that everything that comes to me through right work, through good work, feels amazing, whereas whatever I’ve happened to stumble across just isn’t all that big a deal to me.

Give me my box of darkness. I love it. I love pulling whatever’s in it out and into the light of day.

***

I’ve been pinning a lot in an attempt to know my box of darkness better. I started a board called “Inner Landscape”. You’re welcome to peruse it if you like.

Print PDF

You Might Also Like...