How to breath underwater

When I was a kid I had several reoccurring dreams that I could breath underwater, sans gills or fins or any other fish like qualities. I don’t know if this was foreshadowing or prophecy, but somehow this idea tells the story of my life as I look back over several decades where I was starved and addicted to finding and avoiding human connection. My tiny authentic self went into hiding in deep waters. You know, that version of self you keep locked away for fear or being abandoned, misunderstood, judged, or harmed. I learned how to breath underwater because the oxygen in the air was palpably thick with my fears and self-hatred. Kristmamurti famously said, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” I take this to also mean community and family, for what aspect of modernity has not been polluted by the sickness of isolation, shame, and fierce “independence?" Many of us have learned some unusual skills in order to survive.

Before I dive in I must say two things. One, I will not leave this writing without returning to some version of stable ground, though we are heading to some strange places. And two, here is your warning. To be fair, I often dismiss trigger warnings mostly because I am often slightly disappointed when I am not “triggered,” and firstly, I am usually just intrigued to keep reading. But you’ve been warned that this piece contains the ramifications of harm from childhood sexual “abuse.” I don’t feel abused, to be fair, but language being what it is, I don’t know how else to properly convey a warning. So for now, all this is to say, it is going to be a circuitous journey.

If you’ve followed my blog, or me on social media, or me in real life, then perhaps you are aware my father died. It took a while to peel back the layers of grief that settled on my life from his passing to find my love for him. Previously, numbness and anger replaced what might have been sadness or disbelief. So here is the next chapter of this story of my father: he was also a pedophile. He wasn’t the kind that would have ended up on 60 Minutes, nor was there any “evidence” of his harm that I’m aware of, save the way my body has always known something was deeply, deeply wrong. And the way sexuality has been frightening and painful. And the way I acted out like a textbook on molestation. Everything has a way of coming to the surface.

To add clarity to the conspicuous nature of my words, sexual harm lives much beyond the physical boundaries of human bodies, it is energy. I don’t remember anything of my fathers actions but my body gave clues. This has served to push me to the brink of insanity while I ignored, forgot, then circle back to all of the pieces that fit together to create a bigger narrative. Energy carries to places where hands cannot go. Dust settles in places not readily visible. So, once or a thousand times, one drop of bad intention can pollute the the whole stream, especially for the young and wildly open. Energy is meant to move through life, from you to me, to rocks, to grass, to cows, to anywhere it pleases. “Trauma” is when things get stuck. “Trauma” is where energy gets blocked from moving and there is a pile up of that particular prism of pain, like a blood clot in your thigh, like traffic after an accident on the highway. “Trauma” is what happens when shame gets mounted on wounds because you misdirect the tide into thinking you’ve done something wrong. I say “trauma” like this because I think we are culturally loosing touch with the meaning of this word and maybe sometimes we are really just talking about the laws of physics: that every action has a reaction, and my reaction to my father was to learn how to breath underwater. Plus, it feels important for me to reserve the word trauma for the situations and people who have had severe breaks with this current version of reality and struggle to function in some really big ways. The dictionary describe trauma as an experience that causes anxiety or emotional distress. The experience then overwhelms the senses and our ability to cope. So what I’m saying is: somethings happened to me, I wasn’t able to cope particularly gracefully, it altered the course of my life, and I’ve learned about creation through destruction.

Denial has had such an important role in my life. It kept me “safe” enough to allow me to survive until a time when I could fully comprehend my experience. For 20+ years I have accepted and denied my fathers conduct. Who wants to admit such a thing? And also, if it was just me I might feel different about using the aforementioned words of accusation in that specific order. I might have chosen a different sentence structure to convey his behavior. However, it wasn’t just me he acted on, but I can’t know the details of any of this except for what I’ve been told by others. Do you know how many people have told me they thought I was sexually molested as a child? Even still, denial has taken hold. But the bigger reason for my denial has to do with my own internal questioning. One single question has echoed through me for longer then I know. I placed this question 1000 feet underground in its own self-contained vault, never to be uttered or asked, and I set a timer for this query to catch fire when my spirit left this realm. And I asked: Am I a pedophile like him?

I am not. (I am not.). But can you know what its like to wonder?

I never thought I would be safe enough to find a safe answer. But few years ago I quietly broached the subject rather sideways with one of my closest advisors. As time went on I came to the present and had to ask this question more head on. This time I was able to say these words, in that order, with the confidence that comes from unbridled trust in another. My fears were laid to rest. But I thought I would never get through this questioning. I thought I would die just for wondering. I thought I was a monster just for asking. I thought by asking it was true. I have never sexually or physically harmed a child, but I wondered if I were capable because, after all, I was my father’s daughter. After all, don’t we act out what we know? After all, my father was my primary caregiver till I was 12, so isn’t it possible I am just like him? But I’m not.

At this juncture it is important to take a break and explain myself. I could have left out this self-inquiry and continued on with the rest of this piece. In fact, it would have been easier. I hemmed and hawed over this writing for weeks (months) before publishing it. I worried if I left this question maybe there would be doubt in the minds of those who read it. But I left that question because I am confident I’m not the only one who has ever wondered if it was possible to generate such harm after being victims themselves. I let my guard down because I know there are those out there who have been abused and feel like they are capable of being predators. So I left this question in here for you, as a way to pave the way between our hearts, as a way to say, you are not alone, as a way to say, I see you and I believe in what you go through. And if anyone glances at me sideways, well, that is not for me to care. I’ve shaken the core of my integrity and I open myself to your answer.

The second reason I left my process here was because I wonder what can happen to those questions that get wondered but not spoken? I believe they turn into the ghosts that nip at our heels; that they are the cognitive dissonance when we say, “Being gay is wrong,” but deep down we know we truly are. I wonder what questions you are afraid to ask. I wonder what twisted shape it has turned your insides. I hope someday you feel safe enough to ask.

Truly, I forgive my father. Beyond that, I love him. (He’s also dead so that perhaps makes it easier, to be honest, but still). This road hasn’t been easy. I joke that I need a team of people to help me get through the complications of my heart. Then again, who doesn’t need a team, or a community, to navigate an increasingly complex world? I follow my personal web of harm back to intergenerational trauma. Surely my father experienced something akin to sexual harm? But this is deeper then “hurt people hurt people.” For me, the questioning unravels into patriarchy and environmental degradation. The questioning unravels into trance states and the role of media in the modern world. Let me explain.

I’ve been following a podcast called The Emerald for sometime. There is an episode called, “How Trance Shaped the World,” in which Josh Schrei dives into, well, trance states. I highly recommend this podcast and this episode in particular, but I’m not going into an analysis of this episode so much as pull out the highlights for the purpose of talking about sexual abuse. Trance state is something foundational to all indigenous cultures across the world. Western culture, too, used to be steeped into ritual trance practices until the Church came along and began rationalizing life away in the name of Enlightenment, and actually even before. The spiritual became political. Modern psychology calls this experience of trance “flow state.” There is a biological need for humans to collectively, or independently, enter this altered conscious state. There is more here then I can go into, but essentially this deep connection into the unknown takes us out of the mind and puts us in touch with the Whole.

I think of trance state as something like watching a school of fish or a flock of birds maneuvering in unison. They are not the individual animal so much as part of a larger moving organism. There is an organization beyond what the mind can know or comprehend. Trance is also associated with deep meditation, music making, art practice, dance, sex, and so forth. Sometimes it happens in groups, sometimes in the individual, but in either case it brings us in touch with the greater tapestry of the flow of life on earth. It is the space where the connection to the whole is felt and the mind has taken a backseat to the bodies innate, erotic wisdom. Surely everyone has felt this in different ways, from time to time, in acts of holy or hell water; this heightened awareness that closes the gap of external and internal and weaves us back into the fabric of perfect union with God, or spirit, or whatever you prefer to call it. In trance state, energy flows freely from one being to the next, from flower to spider, to human to other worldly creature. There is no separation. But remember what I said about trauma being stuck energy? What happens when you are hyper-alert and this flow state becomes unavailable? (Hyper-alert is often associated with a ptsd response in which the nervous system is constantly looking out for danger. This state can make it challenging to easily sink into the deeper mechanics of flow or trance).

So what happens to a world that dismisses the importance of collective devotion to the Divine Mother while in trance ritual together? What happens to an individual whose chemical make-up forbids them to dream in concert with every living organism? What happens when sexual violence cuts you off from your own foundation, root, and creative expression, the center point in the body which allows you to fall into deep ecstatic rapture? I believe the answer falls into a loose category called the “individual,” in the most crude sense of the word. It is when we completely individuate that we believe we don’t need each other, that what happens in one corner of the earth does not directly impact another, or in a more tangible and incriminating way, we justify the rape of the mother.

Furthermore, I see trance and isolation as opposite ends of a continuum. It is of no surprise to anyone here reading this that loneliness is an endemic in our culture. If you are like me, sometimes I blame myself for my personal abundance of loneliness and then wonder why it has so easy to turn to addictions: shopping, food, drugs, people… Addiction takes us into altered states. We become enslaved to our object of devotion and are temporarily relieved from our isolation, or maybe just the capacity to be aware of it. Sexual abuse is a fast and dirty way to cut a person off from their deep personal connection to self and the divine, and facilitate a free fall into separation, which so often then turns towards addiction. As I have healed these aspects of myself, my need for addiction, isolation, and separation has lessened. It is less about running from activity to activity filling the gap so much as deeply appreciating just being. That being-ness that arises when I step out of myself and into the bigger universal consciousness. This experience happens in trance, but in smaller ways it can actually be the experience of the everyday.

Sexual harm is not separate from environmental harm. Rape of one is rape of the other. And sexual harm does not just effect the individual being violated; it penetrates an entire society and effects all its actions, motivations, and the stories it tells of itself. When we tell a single person that they have to deal with the fall out of their sexual violation without the structure of society stepping in to work it through together—without the structure of society preventing it in the first place—it creates a narrative that life is only about what happens in the supposed boundaries of our skin. This is the absolute fallacy and a crime of the modern world. Traditional ritual trance states are also “trauma” processing events without ever naming it as such because they are a way to unstick the stuck places, together. Collective movement and song clear the oppressive energies for an entire community because your wellbeing is mine as well.

And just to make this all really clear: we live in a world that inflicts massive harm, then separates people from healing communities, thereby embedding the genetic code into future generations. Or in other words, we are asked to facilitate our own healing through a maze of self-help, therapies, internet queries, disparate communities, and prayers for divine intervention. We bring people out to sea then leave them there to swim home.

And also, the world is shifting a lot. There is incredible humanity coming through the cracks of everything.

So what happens when we loose the space to communally process trauma through trance and movement? We search for other states of flow, namely, social media, shopping, and war. However, I don’t want to be too cynical here because church and dance parties and community song circles also bring us back from the emotional dead. But back to Josh Schrie for a minute because he speaks of the instagram scroll which is specifically designed to put us into a state of unaware trance. This is why it is so easy to loose minutes and hours of your life on these platforms. It offers us a sense of connection. In wrapped attention, our brains are tricked into a sense of the Whole. We are lulled into passive ecstasy. And I’m not even saying it is always this way, or that there is nothing important on those channels. Just that there are consequences we need to acknowledge because beyond the scroll-trance, Schrei speaks about how the object of our devotion is just as important as being in the trance space itself. Of course this is true. If we are entranced by battle, we will create war. If we follow the pull of capitalism, we are pulled to consume. If we end up on our knees in divine worship of the Goddess, we will find her tapping at our door.

My final thought before I close is that perhaps there is just too many damn words in the word. I contribute a lot. Words and thought are heavy and dense. The return to trance, to healing, is expansive and wordless. That is, trance brings us into the whole which is decidedly not linear and as far as I can tell, not very talkative. Before the impact of words and books and intellectual thought there was animism: the communication with other spirits beings, be they rocks or trees or animals. In an animistic world, we listen deeply with our bodies and communicate through a sense of knowing. Seriously, how else did humans learn how to cook an artichoke? Or distinguish a friendly mushroom from one that is not? Or combine two plants to create a medicine? Or learn how to live in harmony with everything thing around them? Our ancestors were proficient listeners and they learned from the ear of silence and trance.

My body learned how to breath underwater because it is smart and adaptive. I learned how to become very, very independent because I thought I was safer that way. I programed myself to believe that everyone hates me (God included) because that way I could hide and not get hurt. It worked for a time until it stopped. Our bodies are not the sum product of skin and bone but rather a melody and litany of fields and roads and natural forces all bound together, never independent. What moves through me moves through you. We are infinitely more powerful together. If our webs are connected then it matters what stories we allow to enter the universal caldron of harm and fodder. It matters that we course correct our relationship to nature and all unknown matter. It matters that we adjust our insides to align just a little bit wider. I remind myself it matters that I spent a lot of time looking at my center because I have added a lot of judgement and fear to this earthly sphere; my apologizes, my need for control was out of control and besides, I was taught self-will is what propels us forward. When I untangle the mess inside me I begin to understand what’s happening to everyone everywhere.

So to conclude, and hopefully to bring this all together, healing work is not just about the individual. Healing work is also environmental justice, and social justice, and system reform. We change what lies within so we can change what lies without. But I don’t mean to end on a note that sounds like escapism into the spirit world should happen in lieu of smashing the patriarchy or other forms of material dismantling of oppressive harm. We need all the help we can get and every hand on board. Though back to the first hand because radicalizing the world into remembering the importance of the Goddess is smashing the patriarchy, and if we entered a collective trance state of Earth-based Goddess worship, what could we do as a collective to reshape the world into a place that re-remembers the importance of Spirit and how we all fit together? We aren’t going backwards, so honestly, I can only wonder..