clearingthecloset

The next step on the path seems to be trauma therapy. I don’t think this is optional; I think that with the destruction of the neutron star of self the traumatic conditioning has lost the gravitational pull that held it in place. It will surface whether I want it to or not.

The last few days have seen nighttime anxiety and fear. Not debilitating but noticeable, observable. The suttas and contemporary commentary talk about this; the falling away of sankhara or unraveling of other conditioned responses.

Last night when I sat to meditate I ended up going fairly deep despite being in a dark-night kind of mood. I sat for 55 minutes after 15 minutes of vocalisation and toward the end my mind drifted to people branding me as crazy over the last few months and proceeding to ignore me.

Then it went further back, to school. Being headbutted in that lesson, out of the blue, and having the girls at the back of the class dive in with calls of ‘he’s crying’ while the teacher just sent me away to clean the blood from my face before being punished equally to the attacker.

It wasn’t the violence so much; it was the fact that it was coordinated by girls who I had never done anything to upset. The unprovoked and vindictive nature of it. The fact that they only laughed harder when I said ‘I’m not crying; my eyes are just watering’ as blood gushed from both nostrils. 

I got a C in that class. My automatic venetian blind worked well and was the most ambitious of the lot, but the documentation wasn’t up to scratch. 

I was so disappointed by the schooling system. The claims of ‘it takes two to tango’ when someone gets hit in the back of the head or headbutted in the face when both hands are full. The fact they didn’t tell my parents when I was knocked out by that brick. The fact the teachers moved me into a different class, away from all my friends, because I would ‘be able to handle it better than the bullies’.

Oh - I had a dream about one of them last night, I just remembered. Johnny. He wasn’t even a bad guy; he just had really bad adhd and a traumatic early life. He was friend, and he also threw the chairs. But then he was a friend again, until the really bad ones sucked him in by approving of the violence. He ended up in jail. The bad ones ended up there too, or hooked on heroin, or in deepest Russia.

Johnny wasn’t a bad guy. I keep coming back to him for some reason. I’ve dreamed about him several times now, and every time it’s been a case of meeting him as an adult and making up; acknowledging that it wasn’t our fault.

I also dreamed about the trauma protocol in more depth. How it’s a step-by-step guide to changing your programming.

It’s not really fair, is it? You’re born a certain way, the schools do nothing to help, you learn to cope, you fight through for 41 years, and then when the dam finally breaks all the people who liked your dance label you crazy and drop you like a sack of shit. These people being the ones who told you to go to the doctor in the first place, and the doctor being the one who gave you drugs that make it all collapse.

I’m happy it’s collapsed though. It was horrible.

Life has always been this way. I’ve always been alone. Fighting. Even when I hit my awakening I had no idea what was going on and was held in a kind of psychosis because the drugs meant I couldn’t ‘step back’ from my brain state. I couldn’t just stop meditating when it got too much. 92 hour half-life and 3 weeks to leave the system.

It’s a bit disappointing that I have to do all of this myself again. That I nearly lost my family in the process; nearly lost my mind.

But this is how it goes. ‘You, yourselves have to strive; the Buddhas can only show the way.’ 

I’m done with this conditioning. I will remove it. I will become a better father for my children and beak the chain. I have already moved to another country so they will not have the violence I had. I will watch them and help them when they struggle, and work on myself so that I am not irritable or harsh because of some hidden demons from my past.

I will also work so that I am not attached to them and I can allow them to grow into who they were naturally supposed to be. It’s very much bittersweet, as I keep saying, but in order to live in the moment you have to also let the moment go. I’ve let too many moments go already without living in them.

I will instigate more somatic actions in my work for this next phase. I was very still last night when sitting, and it was good, but the emotions worked themselves out through twitches and jerks; knotted stomach and tensing shoulders. I think that yoga will help them release.

And I’m looking forward to my bike trip. This should be a good place to process a lot of the junk that is working its way up. The junk that made the soldier; made the fighter. That guy is finally gone, laid to rest, and it’s time to clear out the closet so the new one can make a home.

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