What’s the point of looking this pain in the eye – again? Why can’t I just numb myself and pretend not to feel anything? Why, even when we know all the theoretical frameworks about psychological suffering, do we still have to wade through the mud of heartache when it shows up?
It’s heavy sometimes. Exhausting. It takes so much energy to honor the trajectory of grief.
But tending to the Garden of Grief nourishes the Garden of Life. [This is a full moonlit continuation of a previous post.]
There’s medicine to be found there for every heartache, if only you dare to look.
A refusal to enter the Garden of Grief has dark consequences. One can forge an existence out of that denial, without a doubt. It’s been done before, millions of times, during millions of lives. But all the pain we refuse to look at out of fear doesn’t magically disappear. It simply gets dumped into the hearts of our children, our lovers and loved ones, our relatives. It dims the light in our eyes as it blocks full access to the Garden of Life. The colors seem less vivid. Certain plants simply won’t grow. It’s a garden that feels like it has potential but never really blooms.
The Garden of Grief holds medicine for every heartache. The Garden of Life holds elixirs for every possibility.
Often when I am sitting in the Garden of Grief, my eye lands on some glimmering mushrooms and I feel called to ingest them to let them collaborate with my cells. The spores track my history, break down my blockages, mend the holes in my perception, rewire my mind. It’s not an easy ride. Never recreational. It’s a sacred surrender to whatever lives inside of me. A method for being exposed to myself. It’s part of my toolkit for taking responsibility for my own pain, so nobody else has to carry it for me.
Last week I asked for help from the fungi realm. The psilocybin showed me all the beauty and all the possibility and the utterly lighthearted nature of someone I love. The pure frequency of the connection. The undeniably sweet and spirited cord between two souls. Yes, I protested, I know! But what’s the point of all of this love if it cannot live in the Garden of Life? What am I supposed to do when fear takes over and sabotages all of this potential, once again?
The psilocybin dropped a clean conclusion about such resonant encounters:
We are ancient friends
And we are supposed to play together
There is no point in us meeting
If you are not going to press play
To evolve
In the somewhat altered state of consciousness, handwriting is a bit of a challenge, and so play morphed into pray/play – as if those verbs are related somehow. To be an active participant towards our co-evolution and to humbly ask for support as we evolve, in the same movement. To act from our agency and to accept the aid from our selected (super/natural) allies.
The line that’s been echoing loudly through my mind in the days that followed:
There is no point…
There are spiritual trainings you can go to where they charge you thousands of dollars to end up with this lesson: There is no point. Everything is meaningless. And…
It is meaningless that it is meaningless.
It’s a lesson in non-attachment. It can serve as some relief to counter the weight of our turbulent existence.
I have never been too impressed with lessons in non-attachment. I understand the state of nondual nothingness, or everythingness. I’ve hovered around there. It’s cool, and possibly even our final destination. However, having been born into a mammalian body that needs attachment to exist in this particularly sensual form, I don’t suppose attachment is the fundamental problem here. In fact, it may be the nature of our very purpose – to exist amongst one another. We’ve got a life to live, after all, for better or worse, together. I think premature detachment, a move often made to survive trauma, or to bypass pain, is the suffering that keeps perpetuating our collective heartaches and disconnections.
There is no point, if…
There is no point
To anything
If we waste the opportunity and the invitation to grow here. To grow through our experiences and through each other’s presence. And growth, in this sense, doesn’t mean some relentless increase of our human output on steroids. Growth means a deepening of our relationship with our own interiority. A removal of the blockages that stand between us and our lives being lived fully. It’s organic and undoubtedly daunting at times. Whatever that looks like for any particular person. So then, to forgo life itself is a sin in the sense that it’s “missing the mark” – the etymological origin of the word “sin”. Even still, it’s totally possible to live half a life. To do a 5% lifetime. To check out on arrival. Sometimes for very good reason. The cards are not always stacked in our favor. And each and every person has the one card that trumps all the other cards in the deck of lived experience: Free will.
To recognize the invitation and say: Nope. Not now. I am too afraid. I don’t think I can do it. It’s too risky. I’m not ready. I’ll do it some other time…
And that’s ok.
It sucks. But it has to be ok.
And if I love you, unconditionally, I have to accept whatever you decide to do with your free will. Even if I don’t agree with it. Even if it hurts.
And my free will? The only place where I truly have agency and can actually make a tiny difference to our shared human endeavor? My free will chooses to feel through everything completely until the emotional waterworks run clear. So that I can actually be free to dance in the Garden of Life with my sovereign heart and eyes wide open and nothing to hide from.
Press play, the mushrooms implore, and watch how the garden grows.
Some additional chunks of medicine that have been helping me lately:
- Listening to the new Aldous Harding album.
- Watching these wonderful magicians talk about spell casting and the power of imagination.
- Dancing with abandon in a dark corner of a concert hall with a dear friend to a live performance of Mammal Hands playing music from their new album.
May it stir something up in you as well.
Metaphysical Mulch 