Learning the language of our own mysteries
Photo by Annie Spratt edited with a drawing from my journal, March 2021
I feel a rumbling from within, a shaking deep within my core.
When I close my eyes, I see ripples, pulsating and stretching out.
I can hear the rhythmic lapping of water.
What wants to be unearthed here? What wants to be held?
“It is me, the voice within, trying to speak with you,
trying to traverse time and space so you can hear, at least, this murmur.
Will you answer me from this far? Will you continue the conversation?”
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Although I didn’t fully understand these words or the imagery as they came to me, I recorded them anyway in my journal back in March.
Around that time, a number of things seemed to converge: my mother’s heavy diagnosis, the Atlanta spa shootings, not to mention a global pandemic was (and is) still very much a reality. I was also preparing to open my books as a hypnosis practitioner and feeling insecure about how others might receive my work.
Looking back at the entry — along with other seemingly “random” words, drawings and dream recordings in my journal — I can see a subconscious expression of the dissonance I was experiencing, as well as a desire to nurture and maintain an intimate connection with myself despite a dizzying external reality.
Whether through journaling, hypnosis or other creative practices which can allow us to deeply tune into ourselves, I am learning how non-linear communication with myself allows me to find my own language to describe my experiences. This self-intimacy — i.e. being more in touch with the subconscious, or that which is not fully accessible from our “everyday,” rational awareness — allows me to better see, hear and feel myself without necessarily needing to measure my experience against the more prescriptive, pathological, linear and purely intellectual lens of dominant Western culture.
A questioning of conventional thought is fresh on my mind considering how, according to the Gregorian calendar, another year is ending and many of us may be reviewing the last year in terms of performance and productivity. Our approach to articulating our experiences may unconsciously take on this structure, where we may evaluate our progress in the language of timelines, milestones, successes or failures. But I’d like to relinquish the pressure of the linear, the rational, the purely intellectual.
I want to understand myself at my most rested, relaxed state. I desire to reclaim my dreamier, starry-eyed self. I want to learn the language of my own mysteries. I wish to tune into the deeper, non-linear, subconscious, liminal parts of myself. I want to find more creative, sensual, intuitive, truthful ways to express my experiences. I want to speak for myself.
I wonder about the ways we may neglect intimate, internal communication and about the ripple effects of this neglect on our relationships to ourselves, others and the ecosystems of which we are a part. I can say that when I trust my own voice and can acknowledge and engage with my inner experiences — whether through open-ended journaling, hypnosis, music or other practices — I find more space to surrender to my own natural rhythms, visions and resources.
From this place of agency, things tend to feel more spacious, as though there are more options and possibilities about how to navigate my relationship to my external circumstances and to those around me.
Some questions to consider:
Could denying the reality of a pandemic be a privilege of the able-bodied?
Could the desire to “go back to normal” / “business as usual” reveal the ways we’re unconsciously tied to time & thinking as defined by capitalism (Harvard Business Review said “getting the job done on time is the primary capitalistic driver of being first to market. It often takes precedence over whether relationships may be negatively impacted. Time often literally equals money, in terms of costs, profit margins, and beating the competition for market share.”)?
What if we couldn’t “go back to normal” and had to face our own humanity — our own choices and our solitude — then what?
What if our fear of the world “shutting down” is in part a fear of opening up to our own unexplored, vast inner worlds (including all dark and shameful stuff)?
What if we released the comfort of “what has been” and looked toward what could be, what wants to be expressed, what has yet to be imagined?
What if there’s more truth than what we currently allow ourselves to see through a linear, western, purely intellectual lens? What if there is more to experience than we intellectually “know?”
What if I told you that while we may not have all the answers, we could begin to feel, hear and sense into them? (For me, it’s flowers/sunset/honey-ochre/a wind picking up/the stupor upon waking/a choir of voices singing in the distance/inner child/a forehead kiss/a warmth from belly moving up into my chest, trying to drip from the throat…& & &)
*I am grateful for Ari Felix's (Saltwater Stars) work as a queer astrologer, community bruje and planetary priestess. Listening to this lecture as well as being present in this workshop that they offered, allowed me to distill this month's musings with greater clarity and confidence in my own voice. Ari has taught me that “we must answer to ourselves” and trust in our own inner authority.
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