Staying Soft

One must not tell people of things they cannot grasp. There are mysteries that cannot be shared with everybody ... Some things can be told to no one and a secret told to a wrong person is destructive and even irresponsible.
M.L. Von Franz -- The Feminine in Fairytales

This, in balance with our confessional culture and lack of privacy, especially blogging during these phases of intense sorting through trauma and experience, makes for an interesting conundrum. Not to mention (uh- pun intended) the ways we tell secrets without even speaking- the level of exchange of purely intuitive knowing, in images, or subtext, a mysterious set of translations. 



The Fool, on the one hand, and the High Priestess, on the other- in what ways the two of them can make peace with each other and be friends- and in what ways would they be at odds. The Fool is at odds with many other of the archetypal cards of the tarot, but in spirit, maybe the most at odds with the High Priestess. 

 The Fool is an open book, and gives everything away. The High Priestess reveals nothing, and gives nothing away, until approached in the proper spirit of maturity, confidence and trust. Concealing is not a strong skill of mine, as those of you who know me or have been reading here must have guessed. My foolish (factually, not judgmentally) tendency to reveal much, even to those toward whom it would be much wiser to not trust, to stay concealed, to protect and keep secret, is one of my habitual patterns. On another level, even when people to whom I reveal my secrets are trustworthy, it may be that we do not share the same values. The way I feel my way through grief, for example, seems dangerous, or unstable, or repugnant. 


For me, the work is only possible because I am already steady. In unsteady times, I tend to avoid the work, or spin my wheels, or get into denial. These are not necessarily bad survival strategies, especially since the despair involved in some of this work can be dangerous. Marsha Linehan calls is "skillful avoidance." My avoidance is not always skillful, but it is usually self protective. 


In reality, when I am "going through" darker passages of integrating loss of something I cherished (someone), the steadiness is already there. It isn't the goal, but the baseline. I was raised with the cultural pressure of being functional, somewhat stoic, capable of hurrying up to get through "negative emotions": "be happy" and "move on." I grew up in an environment of unrelenting shame for having emotions. All emotions were problematic and shameful. My sensitivity was mocked and ridiculed. So it was an easy matter for me to adopt those cultural pressures to "be strong" and "get over it" and "stop being so dramatic" and "move on." My natural personality or psychic framework is in many ways directly opposite these exhortations. I see no reason to hurry, to move on, to get over it, or to force myself into some faux extrication from legitimate grief. A value that is much higher for me than stability and functionality is *authenticity*. 


But one has to pick one's spots. My authentic experience is not going to be of interest to everyone. There may be those who would like to be interested, but for whom my authentic experience is unwelcome, for many different reasons. Maybe my expression of "what I am going through" catalyzes a feeling of responsibility on their part (even when I assiduously express everything in I-statements), or reminds them of unpleasant and painful emotions they would rather not have or are just not ready or not interested in being reminded of, or in some other way feels threatening. It might just be a sense of being overwhelmed with their own urgent need to function and the immediacy of their lives. And, apart from these circumstantial factors, it may be a true difference of values. If someone values being strong and functional, my lack of interest in being strong and functional is confusing, or even repugnant. 

Today's initial hexagram. Already I can see The High Priestess wincing. "Why would you post your I Ching reading for other people to see? These are secret weapons!" This particular archetype is about the whole range of being wounded and having to go into hiding, to being savvy and concealing what one knows, to taking one's consciousness into the dark, and shining the light in there. 


This hexagram always reminds me of the old Concrete Blonde song. 

Where the clouds (where the clouds)
Pull apart (pull apart)
Where the moon changes faces
In the quiet (in the quiet)
Secret places (secret places)
Are you there? Are you there?

Shine on friend. Goodnight
Why, then, the darkening of the light?

This hexagram changed into The Well- the inexhaustible source. 

Not interested in being well, per se. But in drawing as deeply from the well as possible. Get it? 

Some of my recovery has taught me that the goals I used to have- to be happy, at ease, successful, skillful, kind- are not goals, but side effects. My own karma or whatever has this quality to it: there's no shortcut. The qualities of life that I want arise out of doing the work without trying to create those qualities. Whatever steadiness arises for me is a byproduct of being familiar with The Tower. Or any other symbol of either upheaval or loss. Grief will not be denied, for me. It was, for a few decades, and it got me nowhere. And it came out sideways and caused myself and others harm, sometimes deep, lasting harm. The complexity of this process is astonishing at times: an original trauma, left largely unhealed, that then operates as if independently, causing more trauma, left unhealed, in layers and layers. Thus, the CoDA pamphlet title: Peeling the Onion. 

I'm fully aware not everyone is under the compunction to do this process. I know several people who function perfectly well and are successful, satisfied, happy and fulfilled whose approach to loss is to get over it fairly quickly and move on without looking back. I am not thusly constitutionally equipped. This seems to just be the way it is. I do sometimes envy the people who just wash their hands of heartbreak and buck up and smile their way forward. I have the ability to get to that sunny and optimistic place, of course, and have authentically spent a lot of my life with a truly sanguine and upbeat disposition, but it has always been true that I have to muck through without shortcuts for it to be authentic, and to be sustainable.

 And sometimes, I'm reminded that my unfinished business goes very far back- and I think- "I have already processed that," and no, I haven't. I have to go back to the well and draw deeper this time. 

A new (to me), tremendously powerful tool in meditation is the tonglen practice- in its simplest form, allowing all of the pain and suffering of oneself, one's loved ones and the world in, with each inhalation, and exhaling compassion. The first aspect slowly erodes denial and gets my heart in touch with the truth of suffering. The second aspect alchemically processes that experience into an encounter with the possibility of healing and freedom. This practice has been a perfect complement to the forgiveness meditation I wrote about a few days ago. Pema Chödrön writes at length about tonglen in her book, Start Where You Are. 

I highly value staying soft and tender. All of the ways that heartbreak and loss work in my life tempt me to get walled off, armored, to protect myself. My experience of that is that the price is very high. Bitterness, mistrust, aversion to the suffering of others, contempt for my own "weakness." I would much rather not be well and remain tender. This puts a high value on resiliency, rather than strength. I want to stay capable of love, in spite of my past unskillfulness, disappointment and pain. I want to grow into more non-codependent love, which is the opposite of being walled off and protected. 

The heart, stripped of muscle and fat