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THOONK! An empty silence filled the kitchen and dread immersed me within its hairy tentacles. I had finally done it: splotches of applesauce on the kitchen floor, its loosened cap still in my hand.
With breakfast completed, I decided to put off the clean-up—however I would manage it. After sipping some lemon water at the sink, my not-fully-awake hand knocked over the pitcher onto the counter and floor, soaking my furry slip-ons. I was done.
Yet, instead of calling for my neighbor, I began to strategize: paper towels, a wet dish rag, my indispensable grabber, my bare feet, and my stool. No matter that I was weak and short of breath, I would take the needed time, apart from my routine. It would work, and it did.
So, what does this say about my commonsense, about my need for help, yet, going it alone? Often, I find myself in problems of my own making, the residue from decades of living in denial. Happily, this condition is lessening due to my continuing decline. Neighbors are only too delighted to help out whenever I ask.
Yet, doing it my way is still rooted in my psyche and speaks to an essential trust seamed with cracks and debris.
I’ve still much to learn about letting go and letting God take charge. My transition requires it, or at least my willingness to learn with each spill, of whatever kind.
At 7:10 A. M., I awoke with this shocking dream:
I’m alone, watching a horrifying scene: a bald nude unconscious man, with pasty skin, lays on the ground surrounded by enemies, their steel-toed boots kicking him. One of them covered his privates with a rag when a cameraman came by and began taping.
This dream from the collective unconscious still shivers my innards—more visceral than accounts of Nazi and Soviet torture that I’ve studied over the years. Even the morning spent at Germany’s Dachau concentration camp was tamed by the sense of it being a tourist attraction, with informative signage.
Stunned, I still shudder. Long ago, I learned that the Dreamer tells the truth: hatred, anger, and penchant to retaliate—even with violence—behaviors I would never own in the conscious world, hide within the shadow of my psyche.
But such behaviors come with being human. Following the collapse of inner restraints, instinctual madness zings through dripping caves like bats: their mayhem terrifies. We all have breaking points, and I have mine, whether expressed or not.
The concentrated negative/evil energies, all masculine, also suggest the collapse of my own, in the face of my mortality, given the minuscule increase in my symptoms, from month to month. No longer is it appropriate to remain passive, unconscious like the victim. I am still breathing and the Twelve Steps of CPA are still to be practiced.
The antidote to this insanity is found in Step One: humble acceptance of my powerlessness and the acceptance of the unacceptable; then on to the cleansing and forgiving Steps, with Higher Power’s release of noxious energies and restoration to wholeness, until the next time.
It takes daily practice…
“Let’s have a look,” said the serviceman from Arenz Pest Management as he knelt down, flipped on his flashlight, and poked through the dark stubble massed in the corner of my back porch. I looked over his shoulder, eager to have expert eyes analyze this disorder that had reappeared since last week’s vacuuming.“I don’t see this very often,” he said squinting, adjusting his uniform cap. “You’ve got lots of spiders in your attic—having a bash. What you see on the floor are the remains of dead insects they spit out. See that opening in the joint, above the windows? That’s where they’re having the bash. In time, the spiders will die off, and so will your problem. Keep vacuuming in the meantime.”
As I reflected upon this experience, a metaphor surfaced. The spiders are likened to covert spin-doctors, propagandist experts, and masters of media distortion; they take a truth, chew through it, and spit out what is foreign to their ideologies. What remains is deadly and creates havoc within the populace, asleep with their eyes wide open. In no way can societies live in harmony. The sickness even permeates those in leadership roles.
On the other hand, “the clean of heart,” simple, humble folks, often poor, are like trained servicemen and women who adhere to the whole truth in their psyches, name the half-truths in our maniacal culture spinning around us, and find solidarity with the like-minded.
There is a way out, but it requires consciousness and work. In the meantime, as counseled by the Arenz tech, “Keep vacuuming!”
Heart Whisperings 