Freaking you out

One week into a cleanse, and a week since a shaman/naprapath dug into my old wounds and adjusted my 'bodily' alignment, and I find myself trudging through an old mental swamp. Amazing how our minds and bodies are so intimately linked, and how trauma we think we process, we think we're over, can lurk somewhere under your shoulder blade or in your neck. So to fix my neck, said healer began aligning my body, a mix between chiropractic work and massage, really getting into the connective tissue. I was a mess that weekend, but even now, as the cleanse should make me feel lighter, I feel heavy with the pain and confusion I felt a year ago.

I've talked with quite a few people, now, slowly, about the wreck I was in last February. I didn't know how to talk about it then. I thought I would worry people. I felt completely in every atom and every way estranged from friends and life here in the US. Most close friends I tell will later come to me: "You really freaked me out." No, no, they insist, its not bad don't be sorry. Well how should I feel? Who do I tell? What should I say?

So I realize a year and a half later that my "keep quiet, keep humble, keep calm" method of handling trauma has managed to push all my fears into my connective tissue, down somewhere in the body mind ether where it can continue to pop up and scare the shit out of me. Since no one really knows about this blog yet, I'd like to take the opportunity to scream to the world what freaks me out.

I'm terrified that I'll die an abrupt and violent death while traveling. I hate flying. I hate trains. I hate buses and Indian drivers. I'm furious that I was in such a serious accident and felt so cut off from friends. I'm deeply hurt that I wrote to some friends from university who never bothered to respond. I thought, 'maybe its too much for them to handle, maybe they missed the email', and then they write me later, saying, "I want to hear all about India! You must be totally enlightened." :o No, I'm not enlightened you ignorant shit. I'm traumatized and where the hell were you? I hate that I felt so alone out there, that because I didn't want to scare people or freak them out or introduce the existential dilemma into busy American lives, I subsequently didn't get concerned phone calls, letters of support, or love.

I'm overwhelmingly grateful for the support I found in India. Friends, angels, and teachers gave me a new home. They gave me love, and more than that, a framework in which to understand what had happened to me, and what happens to all of us. I was able to process this mess in Bodhgaya, where the Buddha attained enlightenment, and one of the holiest places on earth. I had just converted to Buddhism several months before, and the accident truly forced me to examine my source of refuge: What and who could help me handle my overwhelming awareness and fear of death? Would it be my drinking friends of past? Would it be a cigarette? Would it be my family and friends?

I missed all those earthly refuges then. As an all time low, I started drinking Nescafe to substitute for my main addiction, good coffee. I ate too much chocolate and samosas and longed for the day when I would again dance in New Orleans. But in the meantime, I studied the teachings of the Buddha, was surrounded by kind practitioners, and practiced intensely. Those months gave meaning to my life that I had never before had. In light of my experience, I began to forgive, to let go of a great deal of judgment and pain from my past.

The difference here is that these earthly comforts, so abundant in New Orleans, are designed to cover over all our uncomfortable feelings. Of course its great here. I make elaborate costumes for carnival. I dance like a circus freak in the street. I garden and make good meals with friends. So maybe these things don't cover our pain, but we, obviously, focus on the joy. I needed that, and I'm so grateful to experience it now, here.

As I prepare to leave for India in a few weeks, my mind, and apparently my body, remembers that experience--the accident and how I felt after. The child in me doesn't want to go. She wants to stay here and drink gin and tonics all summer and lounge and listen to the blues. She wants to have craft nights with friends. She doesn't want to remember.

The difference, I think, in these different sources of refuge, of comfort, is that one is lazy while the other is challenging. Its the love of a dog versus the love of a strict parent. New Orleans, a dog, will love me no matter what. She'll let me relax and enjoy and play. The Buddha, the dharma in India, sees the reality of my suffering and the pain I cause, and makes me take grown up steps to cut that out. Yes, I had an amazing sangha in India. It was without a doubt the most meaningful year of my life. But it was also the most difficult. To quote Paramahansa Yogananda, in the Autobiography of a Yogi (51):

"I have long exercised an honest introspection, the exquisitely painful approach to wisdom. Self-scrutiny, relentless observance of one's thoughts, is a stark and shattering experience. It pulverizes the stoutest ego."

Thats what happens in India; you get pulverized. You become acutely aware of your mortality, of the tentative nature of your existence. Then the questions arise: Why? How, then, do I live? If there is a cause of suffering, how do I rid us of it? What does that look like?

Last March, I was exhausted. At age 22 I felt 40. I was lethargic under the weight of existence and fear. I came to terms with many things, and have been doing extraordinarily well for many months.

And now I'm going back.