In Jungian psychology, we all have a shadow. I spent much of my life being too nice, too good, and basically a doormat.
I realize in retrospect, I really shocked some people in my life, especially the men, because they never imagined me being or acting the way I became. And, this takes me back to Skeleton Woman.
Skeleton Woman, in the story in Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes PhD., is a story about a fisherman who catches a skeleton woman, and low and behold and long story short, they live happily ever after. Of course, as I said before in my last blog on SageWords, sagewords.blogspot.com; this one is thenewhumanitylives.blogspot.com on which my entire novel, American Boys is written, Skeleton Woman is the woman, unaltered as she is, with all her woundedness, and eventually she grows back muscle tissue, skin and hair, blood, eyes, veins, etc..
I have been not only a doormat, but have rebelled and become the opposite. My hair has been short or long, and I have been skinny or at times needing to lose a little weight. The point is, what may have been misconstrued as meanness was really rebelliousness. When you never rebelled as a teen, or as a wife or even a girlfriend, eventually the shadow as Jung says, emerges. It emerges because it has to. She cannot go on forever the way she is. She is dying, and this is all about change. She cannot stay the same forever. It just is not possible, because she cannot grow.
In Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD., one of my favorite stories or fables with deep meaning into the psyche, is Skeleton Woman.
This story addresses Wild Man as well as Wild Woman. In all women, there is a goddess who guides us, Wild Woman. When we are in touch with our mentor, she is a sort of witch, meaning healer, young or old, in ancient tradition, (only in our culture, has witch become a bad term - I have done much wicca magic and am a healer, a Reiki Master, so in a sense I am a white witch) we have her guidance and wisdom. Witch also means wise, as in my nickname, Sage. Names are meaningful, secret names, but that is another story in and of itself.
Men must also find their essence, learn to love, live, hunt, sing, drum, hammer, but most of all to cry, to feel compassion for his own woundedness. Like Sarah Maclachlin says in her song, 'beautiful fucked up man', in Building a Mystery. This is not to say that all of us fall in love with the wounded, or must save them.
Here is the story: a man is fishing and he catches something heavy and pulls it in. It is a skeleton of a woman all twisted up on itself, foot over head, arms tangled, etc., like an awkwardest yoga position. He untangles the skeleton and she comes to life. He is somewhat repulsed. She even contains embryos and seaweed growing, and he runs in revulsion. She chases him. Eventually he cries in compassion for her, but not just that but compassion for himself. This is the short version, mind you.
Long story short, she sleeps with him, skin to skin. Yes, and they live happily ever after.
The people of the village could not believe it.
In this story once again is Life/Death/Life again, the theme of every story. There is life and then death and then life again. The Skeleton Woman thrives and once again becomes a feral, full functioning, potent woman, who can even bear children. Once again, she grows skin and flesh.
The meaning of this story is: he pulls in the first thing he finds, but rather than be repulsed by Skeleton Woman, which he is at first, and as in most relationships, the faster he runs from her, the faster she runs after him, but he eventually loves her, regardless, and in fact he is the one who untangles her, which is really significant.
Many of us in today's culture, find ourselves in similar situations, and our impulse is to run, but with all her faults and drawbacks, he loves Skeleton Woman, and this enables her to become whole and alive again, which brings us back to Life/Death/Life. We cannot outrun death. None of us can. This is the beauty of it.
The fact that the man cries is deep, because of his own compassion for his wounds and hers as well.
I would add another component, which is that Skeleton Woman has skeletons, you know like skeletons in the closet, the things we are afraid to be known, lest losing love. I know this all too well.
His love for her overrides it all, and this man and woman are together.
We do not have to run when the first thing goes wrong in love. If the person you love is not who you thought, just stop for a moment, and wait and see. Do not be so quick to succumb to the slightest red flag, because in order for love to sustain, then one must see through the ugliness. No one is beautiful every moment and every second of every day. If they have to be, it is not real love. Love is loving faults and all. This gives men permission in a sense to commit, and yes even to Skeleton Woman, because with the nourishment of his love and nurturing, she thrives and grows back muscle and skin and hair, once more again whole, just as the Handless Maiden who through great love, her hands grow back.
I hate my story, because it is so much easier than my real life. In my real life the younger son had severe asthma, and the older boy was blind as well, as a neurological problem. In the real story, Lizzy was actually legally blind. You see, Lizzy is me.
In the real story Lizzy's father is deceased and her mother and she have had relationship problems for a long time which forbid her from seeing her mother often. And, in reality, the prosperity and bourgeoisie of the parents is bullshit.
In reality, her parents got a divorce before her father died. In reality, she is half blind.
In reality, the guy who likes her represented by Charlie, is actually her boyfriend Alan who died of pancreatic cancer, was married to a woman in Germany with kids. There really is no Jim. Lizzy will never have a Jim.
In reality, Lizzy is not a bartender. She likes to go to the bar, and wishes she was sighted enough to be a bartender, even though she taught school, worked in retail and waitressed when she was very young. In reality, she was only married to one man, the father of both boys, who she tried to be the perfect wife for. She gave the perfect birthday party, kept a perfect figure, kept a perfect house, and had dinner served by 6:00 each night by the time, if not before, he arrived home from work.
In reality, Lizzy had to find herself with no man, she became a Reiki Master and treated her dying married boyfriend, Alan Ferguson when he was in agony, dying of stage 4 cancer.
It goes on and on, but American Boys, my own novel, is lame in its portrayal of reality, and what really is. I lied in this novel, to make it palpable, digestible, acceptable, but I denied myself and children, the truth. I lied to make it swallowable for the average. This was my mistake, and for that reason, I ditch this book, and someday I will write the truth.
There are similarities, I admit. For God's sake, I wrote it, but in reality Daniel going to Berkeley School of Music, is totally unrealistic financially. Believe me, reality is okay, and truthfully I am more than happy to be me, and have the family that I really have, and not be Lizzy. If I ever write again, I will write my own real truth, not the candy coated version.
Also, part of me no longer wants to write or sing. I want to paint, paint women and wolves. I did not have enough encouragement for my music or writing, truthfully, and I cannot continue. When I say I was not encouraged, I do not mean my parents or family, but mostly the Baba people in general. I was not wanted. If you say Avatar Meher Baba Ki Jai, or Jai Meher Baba, I will most certainly unfriend you, so as Leonard Cohen said in Hallelulah, "all I ever learned of love, is how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya..." Truthfully, that is all I know. If you want to preach to me, please spare me. Thanks for reading.
I know that they did not want me, because it threatened their own egos, and I could handle it, but they could not. They were not ready. When the ego is ready to die, then one is truly ready to find God, so do not fool yourselves in India, Myrtle Beach or Australia, spiritual careers are as false as advertising in illusion, just one more ego boost you will fall from. I am sorry, but it is true. Good luck on your journey, but when you finally see the false, perhaps lifetimes away, perhaps you will remember me. I know what is true.
A large part of the book Women Who Run With the Wolves has to do with women losing touch with their own wild nature, not bad, but free. I also read a book a couple of years ago called The Nice Girl Syndrome, which I read on talking books for the blind.
You see, I suffered from not only the nice girl, but the good girl syndrome. I finally broke completely, in my late thirties, when I was painfully and simultaneously involved with two men, which drove me and my guilt into a complete nervous breakdown, all the while taking care of kids and being back in college.
My problem was, I had a complex. I had always been good and virtuous, while all around me the men in my life, my husband, my companion after my marriage, did what they wanted, disregarding me, but I always had to be good. The Baba thing did not help, with all the purity around it.
Once, my brother said, "why do you try to be so good? Why are you so afraid?" You see, I was already turning bad in society's standards, because I was torn between two lovers, and not feeling like a fool, but acting like an idiot. I was all over the map, trying to escape abandonment. Looking back, I have a little compassion for myself, because I realize in many ways I was still a girl. I suppose there is something to be said to having children late, since I had my first child pretty young and my second relatively young, twenty-seven, a very average and common age for childbirth, although my own mother having had me, the fourth of four, at thirty-five, told me she was too old by the time I was born, whatever that means. The funny part is my mother's friends are always young enough to be her daughters, and she even tells me sometimes that they are her daughters, so it is kind of ridiculous, one more thing to say, "okay, whatever, about."
Although, Freud is somewhat discredited in saying that it all is caused by the mother, because mental illness such as schizophrenia is caused by an organic brain disease and many theories, even an intrauterine virus may be the cause, and he is quoted as saying, "I do not like these patients," some mental illness such as borderline personality disorder is believed to have to do with a lack of bonding between mother and child, a fear of abandonment, as well as annihilation, causing the individual suffering from this diagnosis to experience rage, risky behavior, frantic efforts to escape real or imagined abandonment, for example partners in love relationships, as well as drama. In this illness, Freud is right.
I still prefer Jung, (and I find him more in line with The New Humanity than Freud, who contributed a lot, such as psychoanalysis), because of his contributions such as the shadow.
The shadow is our dark side, our side that is not perfect, that wants to sneak, like the girl in The Red Shoes, but like in the story, the woman may want to sneak what is really unhealthy, such as excessive drinking, promiscuity, anorexia-nervosa, etc., but if women were given a healthy foundation to begin with through parenting and good guidance as well as a less conforming and forbidding society, then she would be less likely to burst like a damn, when the inevitable shadow must emerge, she might deal with it in healthier ways.
I was once told in counseling, that there were experiments done with babies, where a cloth was put over their face only for a few seconds. Some babies cried, but stopped crying almost immediately, when the cloth was removed, but others kept crying long after the cloth was removed, as though it had really upset them. He said I was the category of babies who kept on crying. I think this is because of what is referred to in Women Who Run With the Wolves as the collapsed mother. Perhaps her own mother was the same, but one way or the other this is who she is. I suppose, in a sense, this is quite Freudian, because some things do stem from one's mother.
I am healing the past, my past mistakes and suffering, some not of my own making, but reading Return to Love by Marianne Williamson again, but for the first time really understanding because of my study for years now of A Course in Miracles.
I know now what I would have done in retrospect, yet I know why I felt the way I did.
I am talking about the summer of 1996, one of the most difficult times in my life, not to mention '99 - 2000 and 2003. As I have said before, there in Boulder Colorado, this was the only book in my possession, and all I owned was in my car. I was crashing at a friend's. As I study this book more closely now, I regret that although I was trying to read it there, I was just too sick, too depressed, grieving really.
One notable thing that occurred that year, among many, was that finally I went to India, and I went for the wrong reasons. In many ways, I wish I had not gone, but at least I managed to keep my job through all these changes and going from here to there and back again. Unfortunately, I let my ex have the kids for awhile, and that was especially hard for me with my younger boy, because he was still quite little at the time, six going on seven until he was almost nine. This is my greatest regret in life, but I realize other women have had similar scenarios. This is another thing, which I really want to heal, and a huge part of my reading Return to Love again, with my heart wide open, for once seeing through the Holy Spirit, seeing differently with God's help, seeing clearly. I am healthy now, so much more healthy, and I am getting healthier each day with the grace of God. I am learning to forgive myself.
The following Autumn in India, Arnavas, being very enlightened, said one thing to me that was very Course in Miracles, although neither she or I knew that. I wanted, or thought I wanted, to marry this real jerk. I told her. She said, "go to Baba's bed and say," "I want to marry... do Your will." And I did. I ended up spending a lot more time with that man, but fortunately I never legally married him. I have only been married once by law, and that was to the father of my children.
Sometimes, I wish my ex-husband's wife was not so threatened by me. I am not a threat. I cannot have anything to do with him, not even conversations about our kids, because she feels it is inappropriate. He would, but I am respecting her wishes. Marianne Williamson says that when you are this jealous, you are preventing the healing between a man and a woman. I agree with this. My boyfriend Alan, who died last fall, was friends with his ex-wife. It bothered me, I suppose, but in retrospect of him dying, and for his children's sake, and their healing, his and his wife's, I am glad for them. It was a good thing. Perhaps my ego did not like it, and perhaps I was threatened, but God has helped me to see things differently, and even while Alan was alive, I learned to deal with that.
Getting back to Boulder in '96, when I was thirty-four years old, I could have let go of a bad relationship and moved on, I could have avoided a lot of suffering, but I did not. Still, now I feel I can let the past go, and am thankful that I am finally ready to heal, and see through the Holy Spirit rather than my ego. I must have known that ACIM would be my path some day, because I had that one precious book, Return to Love.
When I was in junior high, a long long time ago, the early seventies to be specific, what they now call middle school, we had a creative writing class for English. My second to oldest sister, Betsy, my brother Chris and I took Mrs. Southern's class here in Myrtle Beach at different times, me last, because I am the youngest.
Mrs. Southern was a born again Christian who was very sweet, but she preached to us all the time, told us rock music was the devil, kind of like Dana Carvy's character Church Lady on SNL years ago.
Mrs. Southern censored what we read. We had to read and write book reports, but she had to approve the book first. For example, she did not approve of Evenor, because it was fantasy. I read that, C.S. Lewis and Tolkien outside, and since my father was blind, my brother and I read him the Tolkien trilogy, taking turns reading, the three of us in a room together. I would get hungry... and Dad would say, "what's she eating now?" The writing about food made me hungry.
In Mrs. Southern's non separation of church and state class, which was against the law (it was public school) and I actually knew two boys who were Jewish, Frankie and Michael, she preferred we read books off of her bookshelf like The Cross and the Switchblade or The Hiding Place, about Corrie ten Boone in Amsterdam, the Christian family who went to concentration camp for courageously and heroically hiding Jews, actually a very good book, and something to learn about.
Anyway, she would show us a brief film, and we had to write on it, and then read out loud to the class. It was interesting what kids wrote. For example: after watching this film called High on Life, with sunsets and a couple kissing on the beach, one kid wrote: "life is not just about kissing on the beach..."
Wow, jaded so early.
There was an African American girl named Quana who was an amazing poetess. She would write real heavy stuff and read it fast, (way before the time of rap) like "you're just a broken doll... shattered on the wall..."
Anyway, finally in tenth grade, where as well as diagramming sentences, we wrote an essay on the movie, David and Lisa. I recall writing it at my grandmother's condo. My parents were out of town. My English teacher, Mr. Corbett wrote, "boy, can you write..." on my paper. That was the first of anyone believing in me, Mr. Corbett, that is in terms of school teachers (I did have some music teachers who believed in me and then some later in college, especially Art and a Choir teacher who wanted to feature me on tour singing Diamonds and Rust by Joan Baez, my 'signature song' so to speak, then, even got a standing ovation at a school function for it.) He also had us who played guitar come and do a concert. When I told him my uncle by marriage was Norman Mailer, he was super impressed.
Later in my adult life, I was a substitute teacher. Once I was subbing for in school suspension, a disciplinary class. The boys had dunked another boy's head in a toilet. I guess they had seen it on a cop show or Stephen Segal or something. They had to write apology letters to him. I told them to be sincere. One asked what sincere meant, and I told him to look it up in the dictionary. It was amusing that they used the word itself in their letters, for example, "I am sincerely sorry..." or "I am sincere, asking your forgiveness..." To tell the truth, I was a bit impressed and proud that they had learned something, and from me. I know what they did was pretty bad. But then, that is what ISS was for, because it was pretty boring in there. They also had to eat lunch with me at a separate table, etc. and it lasted about a week or so.
Well, so much for junior high essays.
Sometimes I wonder, "don't they see the illusion in the illusion? It's so damn obvious."
But, they don't. They won't, because they are at a place where the threat of the ego is too great.
When the threat of the ego is no longer such a challenge, then and only then, can one find the true spiritual path.
Many of us have suffered, suffered greatly. Some want to identify and make their suffering their reason to be. I don't. I do not want my story to be equated with me, who and what I am.
Our story is not who we are. If you make your story - you, this is not the truth. You are more than your story, and your story only defines you as much as you want it to.
We have a choice. We all do. We can choose the Holy Spirit thought system over self-judgment and that of others. We can choose peace over suffering.
The past does not define a person. A person is not defined by their experience, and they cannot be defined, period. They can just be, as I just am.
Jesus, our brother, is our example. In the Course in Miracles, Jesus is our brother. We can take our brother's hand and walk the walk with Him. We don't have to do it alone, but if we feel alone, it is OK.
I am not my story, not my divorce, not my children, my lost home, my mistakes. I just am. Jesus, my brother, takes me through the ruins, but there is no remorse, no sadness. I need no rescuer, lest Jesus. Those that rescue are sick too. They cannot save us. It can appear as a facade and the rescue-er may seem the hero, and yes he or she may mean well, but the only true rescue is God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit.
My training is based on the Course in Miracles, where I am only illusion as far as my body, just as in Meher Baba's teachings, but I am a mind, a soul. In the sense that I am a part of God and the Holy Spirit thought system, I am real. In that sense, yes I am real, but in my ego self, no, I am not, only in oneness, do I truly exist.
Well, actually I should call this blog, What RP is Like for Me, because although symptoms are some the same for everyone with retinitis pigmentosa, each case is unique.
For example: the eyesight is always deteriorating due to the diseased retinas containing bone spicules and atrophy, pigment which the doctor can see with a light through a dilated pupil, and the person with RP will always have loss of peripheral vision and usually one degree or another of myopia, in my case extreme. Most people will eventually lose macular vision as well, but now with 15,000 IU of vitamin A palmitate daily, some adults have found less rapid vision loss, over a one-hundred year study. Cataracts are a bi product and often the doctors say it will not help to remove. This is too complicated for me to explain, except that the retina has already had so much death of cells, and also in my case, being totally blind except light in my right eye, it may be too risky to do surgery when a person only has one eye. All I know is the doctor told me it would not help, that it was just part of RP.
When I was a child, I was legally blind in the right eye, even corrected and legally blind in both eyes without glasses. When I was in my early thirties, the doctor said I could not drive at night anymore. When I was forty-seven contact lenses could no longer correct my vision, and I stopped driving. Also, my eyes started to get infected a lot, so I had to stop wearing eye make-up for a long time.
I qualified to go to the South Carolina Commission for the Blind, which I did for a total of about five and a half months. It was a good experience and I learned a lot, and I made friends with clients and instructors.
RP is very misunderstood, because the person may have some residual central vision and not seem blind. It is too complicated to describe the way I see, so I won't, because it would exhaust me. I have had rude things said to me for tripping on things, but also rude things said to me because I was getting around so well in a well lit room.
If I go out at night, I use a mobility cane. Sometimes if I am with someone who does not mind me holding their arm, like a date or a close friend, I will not bring my cane. In the daytime, I often do not need it, but have regretted not bringing it, when I have run into things or people. Still, I do not like to look blind. I am not blind, just visually impaired. I can see to a degree. On rainy days like today, it is hard to see, especially indoors. However, ironically, bright light and bright sun, both in and out of doors requires me to wear dark glasses given to me by the CfB, because the eyes of a person with RP are very light sensitive. We usually would rather watch television than go to a movie theater, because it is hard to see the entire screen and you end up turning your head from side to side. Also, the light of the TV helps to clarify it, because movies tend to be dark. When I went to see those crazy Saw movies with my kids, it was so dark I could not see well, but that is a good thing, lol.
Someone said to me, "I'm not blind, but I have other problems."
I said, "what are you talking about? Being blind is the least of my problems." In another article I might tell you ways in which this has been a blessing, but that will take some deep thought, which I am not in the mood for now. Love to all.
Note: I used the sexy cleavage picture just to show that visually impaired people can still be sexy...
Sometimes the karma ends, but until then it is as intense as it is meant to be. I wish it were otherwise. I really do. I wish we could all just be perfect, but we are not and never were.
I have been in a long term relationship in my past that was hard to end. It could not end until our karma was finished, but I did not know this. I spoke to a psychic who told me everything, but I just kept on playing out the karma until the karma was over.
For me, the karma ended when I truly fell in love with someone else, and by then I had a seven year history with the person I needed to end all ties to. Even now I wish I could ask for the money back I loaned.
Now, in poverty I have only appealed to those I thought may listen. They don't.
When Alan (a totally different man years later) died a few months ago, it was different. I think we would have gone year after year struggling with our differences, longing for each other in some ways and hating each other in other ways, like politics. That is part of why he reminds me of 'Charlie' in my novel. I think the thought of Charlie and Alan intertwined came when one of my son's friends came over and met Alan, asking him if he was Charlie's father, Charlie being one of David's friends. From then on I thought Alan looked like a fifty year old Charlie.
I was empowered the day I told the man I had had a cruel but long term relationship with, (his name I would rather not reveal, but is a big shot in certain circles as far as the Baba world is concerned), to never call again, ever. That was when I was finally free.
With Alan, it was different. Alan was never cruel to me. I think that, had Alan not died of cancer, perhaps we would have gone on forever off and on. Perhaps Alan's divorce would have finally been final. Perhaps I'd have gained the courage to move in with him or vice versa. I will never know. I do know, however, that our karma is done for this life, and the passion between us, made him dying the only way it would have ended in this lifetime.
In terms of some relationships with jerks like I described earlier though, it is when we as women ourselves truly do not want this anymore, that we empower ourselves. Until then it is very very hard. Since then people have marveled at my detachment and ability to walk away. We walk away when we have had enough, all that we could take. It is then that we walk away, when we have truly hit bottom.
