REPHRASING OUR "SIN" NATURE, OUR DARKNESS: IT'S JUST A BANANA SLUG (In LIGHT of Boston)

“Because we are creative beings, we are INTIMATE with our capacity to destroy…with our capacity to make ugly what is totally beautiful.”  

Sophia Diaz on a conference call with Sara Avant Stover on my course for “Reversing our Curse”

This post was to be a very different post.  This post was going to originally share that while I was wanting to write today…that I was by no means breaking my vow of hibernation in order to share my findings.  This post was to share that I am LEARNING and growing in so many amazing ways…and that I am seeing my path with what I have been gifted to learn so I can teach and bring it to y’all.

Yet, I stalled on writing…and now I know why.  In the meantime, the tragedy in Boston has occurred.  And it reminds me of another tragedy that happened last than 6 months ago…and I asked when is enough going to be enough?

Well it seems that as a society – enough still is not enough.

So, instead of jumping on the band wagon and getting all fired up on the heels of another needless, heart wrenching tragedy….I think I will try a different approach.

See, I keep running into people that – in my opinion – have replaced the idea of the Rapture and 2nd coming of Jesus and the urgency I used to feel with that message – well I have found other ways that this same tune is being preached yet in different words – such things as conspiracy theories and evolutionary crises.  While I do not wish to demean or come across as putting down theses brilliant wise men that share these views I have come across…

...I just wish to be a voice of love and life…

….and pointing to death and destruction, or urgency and crises I feel is a double edged sword that does us no good if we really wish to change our world.

THE SCIENCE OF THE BRAIN/BODY
While we are dual creatures with very real dualistic natures…I think the one dualism we cannot wrap our evolved minds around is the idea that first we are “sinful“, that we are born into “original sin”, that we are “evil”, etc.  ~ and then in the next beat ask our minds to find a positive solution for that dire mess of our nature that we have labeled in such awful, horrible ways.

I believe the science of the brain also points to this: basically, I have learned that once the psyche, the soul has been traumatized by rejection (and I believe that labeling ourselves “sinful” or “evil” leads a psyche to rejection)…, the person rejects themselves. Rejects themselves as a valid, worthy person of anything but rejection.

Furthermore, I know for myself  – I haven’t heard this from science, I just can FEEL this in myself – that when I feel rejected… I go into defense mode.  When I go into defense mode, essentially I go into “fight or flight” mode…my stress hormones kick in, I’m stuck in my small mind …and wham – I’m now making choices not based on my evolved big brain – but I am just making survival choices.

In this state, I might be able to make small changes that last a few hours, days or maybe weeks…but in the end, once I have calmed down – those changes are not lasting and I revert to my pre-defense mode change.

Taking this above example even further, I know for me these same stress hormones get triggered when I start hearing people talk about “crises” and “urgencies”, when people start “prophetizing” the extinction of the human race, etc….so I cannot help but think this is why the prophets of old perhaps never saw really lasting changes….not even Jesus.

To further complicate this matter, starting either around the time shortly after the death of Jesus or at least sometime between then and the time Constantine acquired the Church…this idea of Original Sin came into being.  Instead of being creative beings with the ability to create – either for good or bad – by the idea of free will, by the idea of having choices….the human population increasingly bought into this idea that we were not born into free will, into choice…but into sin.  To top it off the word “sin” has become increasingly more “evil” in its connotation.

THE PROBLEM WITH LABELS
UNTIL a psyche deals with aforementioned rejection it cannot ever “hear” or “understand” a message of love and hope.   It cannot understand a way out of the dire mess our world is in…because that soul/psyche has been rejected…by itself…and thus it rejects the “evil” and “sin” out in the world as well.

If one cannot see their own Other side and integrate it – then one cannot see the Other outside of them either – and the propensity to continue to use their creativity, their choices for destruction instead of life – either internally or externally – will be perpetuated in our society.

I believe that part of us that we call “sinful”, “evil” or “dark”…the part that has been rejected – it is looking for a home some how, some way.  It wants to be seen, to be known.  It wants to be held and told – just like a wounded child – that It is okay to be here, It is okay to be alive, that It has a purpose.

Until It knows It is accepted as part of us, while It might allow us to “hear” the story of love the Divine is…It will continue to keep us in our “small brain”, in our “fight or flight” stance whenever we hear messages about “evil” and “sin” and “crisis”and how there is an urgency that we need to change.

Why?

Because It Itself is that part that we label “sin”, “evil”, etc…and It does not want to be labeled that way.  It will not allow the rest of you to see It if you continue to label It with negativity…and as a society we will continue to see the tragedies that we are seeing.

So – not until we learn to label our “sin nature” as something that we can actually get comfortable enough to see…not until then will we really – as a society – be able to make the changes we wish to make.

Not until we are in enough pain as individuals, not until we realize we can no longer ignore, dismiss or shun our own rejected “sin” will we begin to see the Shift I believe we all wish to see deep within our hearts, our subconscious.

IN ORDER TO SEE OUR OTHER SIDE
These ancient ancestors also knew the potential of the “ugliness” that resided in one’s own psyche or soul – and that if that “ugliness” was not integrated into the entire being – that it would end up being killed or destroyed.

Think of Medusa…a woman so ugly that if you looked at her you would turn to stone.  She was created by the ancients so they could tangibly “see” their own “ugliness”…and in doing so, whomever wrote the story must have been paying attention to how ugliness in the outside world made them feel on this inside world.

For when I saw my “Medusa” today – in the reflection of a banana slug – I felt an immediate repulsion in my upper body and an immediate stone-like reaction in my gut.  I was out in what has become my manifestation of my internal world on the external – nature herself.  And as I chose a site to sit down and just be with the running water I looked down and saw the slug – with some strange green stuff on one end – which I couldn’t tell which end it was.

Yet, since I have made a conscious effort to work on seeing my “invisible”, “dark”, “sinful”, my “other” side – I decided this is RIGHT where I needed to sit…and maybe work on turning my head to actually look at the slug every few minutes.   But I wouldn’t get too comfortable with this…for the internal revulsion was still there…making my insides crawl with the thought of being that close.

Yet, as I thought back to listening to Sofia Diaz (quote from above) yesterday talk about our Dark side and our Shadow selves and how spiders and insects can represent these aspects of ourselves to ourselves…and as I thought back to my admission that I  HAVE FOUND my dark side in my own sexuality and that I am working with her and trying to integrate her…and as I thought about how I allowed myself to fully break down in the midst of my Ecstatic Dance Community yesterday, to loudly sob while other women came to be with me…

…as I thought about all this I decided my work at that moment was to sit and “see” my ugliness by “seeing” this icky, slimy, blob of a mess…and to think about how this was the “icky, slimy, blob of a mess” in me that wanted to be seen and held and loved.

I cannot say that I fully accomplished my work in one session…but I can tell you this.  That as I sat there quietly pondering this experience…I decided to use my rephrasing technique yet again.  As it became evident that the leafy green spikes sticking out were in the “mouth” end and as I saw this slug begin to eat, I quietly started saying internally, “I see you.”  Then, I started saying it quietly outside, over and over and over again.

The amazing thing that happened – physically on the inside of my body – is that as I said this over and over, my upchuck reaction calmed down and relaxed…and my gut-of-stone began to loosen, and my root chakra actually began to “feel” energized and “happy”….all the way through my solar chakra.

ITS JUST A BANANA SLUG
I have no idea if any of this post will make sense to you.  I have no idea if it will help the “craziness” of the world we live in to become less “crazy”.  I have no idea if the sun will rise tomorrow or if I will get up.

But this I do know – that I cannot and will not use the approach of focusing in on the destruction in this world in attempts to ask others to wake up.  I will not do this, for it gets me all worked up and in my small brain – and if my own writing does that to me – then I can only imagine what it does for others.

Instead, what I will do is to continue to do my own work, to stand present and erected in my attempt to learn how the power of rephrasing my mind changes my body…allowing me to see my own Medusa, my own ugliness so that I can be a small part of the Shift in this world.  I have and I continue to be a vessel to move the pain through me, to allow the “cries of childbirth” through my very body so that IT can be felt, seen, heard and witnessed.

I will no lovingly refer to my “sin nature”, to my “dark side” as a banana slug – at least for today.  And in doing so, I will allow myself to see the part that wants to be seen and held and heard.  I will do it for myself and I will do it for the world…with prayers that I am bringing life and healing and health to our world.