Suicidal Thoughts, Distractions, enlightenment, dark night of the soul

Have you ever had the experience of watching your own actions and hearing your own words, and observing these as well developed repeating patterns? I have been experiencing this on and off for many years. Lately, my conscious watching and listening has been very keen. I know many people have written about this phenomenon of self-observation, I’ll leave the details of that to your own reading list for now.

I am giving a little back story so that I can share how I came to see the ways of distraction. Suffice it to say that I have been in a deep process of self observation for several years. Also, I have recently moved from one city to another, thereby separating myself from familiar people, places and experiences. I had an intention to change my behaviors, change my life.

Pretty much immediately I was challenged to notice my perceptions and reactions to people and events. This has been an intense journey. I would love to write about it, but not today. I will say that I have had a first hand experience of what I think it might have felt like to journey alone through the desert for 4o days and 40 nights, sit under a tree and welcome the demons to tantalize me….if you get my meaning. This is where the metaphors begin and end. I am a contemporary gay woman, living in the U.S. My demons are unique. My demons have the names and faces of family members, lovers, friends. My demons look and sound like me.

I am thankful to the people who have willingly and unconsciously helped me face my own ‘enlightenment’. Without them, I could have continued to smudge my personal imagery so that I could go on believing that demons are others, outside me.

And I have done quite a bit of spelunking…into depths of my self, and also the collective self. There were times that I wanted, truly, to end my life. Again, I will leave this part of the story for another time. I will say for today, that thoughts of suicide did not come from that deep place, as many myths and stories may suggest. These self destructive thoughts are more like a swarm of killer bees, buzzing from, in and around the mind…not the same as depth work at all. Rather, when I got to the suicidal stage, I had wandered too far away from body mind integration, and my thoughts were attempting to save themselves in one last ditch attempt to avoid the overthrow of their power over me. Well, I won. They lost.

It was a fair battle, and I have needed to spend precious time in rest and recovery. And then, as many people throughout history have probably experienced, after fighting inner or outer wars, I must look toward the future. How will I fashion my life, after having endured such a harrowing experience, after having won? How do I pick up the pieces of my life, while building new and inventive aspects with the knowledge gained and all that has been lost in the melee? How can I act graciously toward the losers? (My own thoughts).

And this brings me to the present inquiry. What is my path in the way of distractions?

Come to think of it, I am talking about something that is sooooo personal to me, yet we are all experiencing it on the plane of real war, aren’t we? I love when that type of synchronicity reveals itself. It is Golden.

What do I mean by distractions? Good question. The answer is a vast chasm. Today I want to talk about distraction as a way to avoid my own truth: deflecting my real goals, and veering away from direct interactions with other people, because I am feeling attacked, afraid or unsafe.

There are myriad tactics that I have developed to distract myself. Prioritizing mundane daily chores over passionate adventures or artistic expressions. Looking at my body as an unfinished and inferior beast of burden, rather than a sacred vessel brimming over the with ability to create beauty, experience, relationship, peace, thankfulness and passion. Acting in accordance with the belief that money is power and without it I am powerless. Pining for love and self expression, and then stuffing myself with inner and outer ’stuff’, so that there is no room for anything or anyone to come in or go out. This is the short list.

Does any of this resonate for you?

What I want to say about distractions is that they are not all bad. I have come to see the inner workings of my reactions and behaviors. I have come to see how they began, how they received positive reinforcement to continue, how they became symbols for my ‘branding’ of my identity and of reality (please refer to the blog, “Reality is a bandwidth…”). I and my thoughts have been supremely creative. Even as I have gone through what some have called ‘enlightenment’, others the ‘dark night of the soul’, I continue to observe my distracting ways. As I observe them, I am thankful to them for having protected me, and for giving me comfort, and for helping me to feel secure. Yet, they are still distractions, the ones that lost the war, and they need to be employed differently in my new inner world order.

As I said, this is a vast chasm to travel in one sitting, and I want to hear from others, who may have been in the wars or are in them now.

The war metaphor seems valuable and I’ll speak through it. Remember I said that I noticed that I use distractions to avoid my own truth. This is another topic worthy of more in depth discussion. For now, I am thinking of how much I have acted from a deep belief that I was unsafe, and could not speak or act out of my own truth. Many of my distracting ways have been employed because I have felt that war is the order of the day. Can I disagree with this person? Can I say what I want? Can I get what I want, even if this person will judge me or hate me, or not get what she wants? Can I hear this other person, really listen? What does she want? What does she want from me? Am I willing to give it? Do I choose to give it? These are all very possible and practical ways. Yet, if I believe that relationships are always hierarchical, and that one must win, while the other loses…

Do you see where I am going? I must respect myself and must respect the other. Also, I must learn to do this within my inner ‘wars’. I must respect my ‘distractions’, not only because they were once mechanisms that I created to protect (and define) myself… also because they present a dialectic. “I can go this way, or I can go this way. Which do I choose? And when I choose- rather than perceiving that I am choosing an authentic way or a distracting way (take away the hierarchy), there is a relationship between the choices that is offering me an opportunity to know myself better. Whichever way I choose, it is I who have chosen, and I who act on the choice and I who I bring with me on the journey. I can respect and listen to my distractions, even as I can respect and listen to another person.

So, distractions are not necessarily taking me away from myself. They may be ways for me to understand aspects of myself that I have not yet come to know or accept.

Whew! This is leading to unchartered territory for me, in that I have not hitherto attempted to verbalize this. So, I hope to get some folks to read this post, and help me- ask questions, share insights and experiences.

Out you go—