Best, Sam

Reading “Sleeping Beauty”, I was reminded of an interesting encounter I had yesterday. I was on the street heading to my hair stylist’s for my subseasonal (in this case Lughnaghsadh) haircut, when I was waylaid by 3 Christian college students hawking, of all things, Christian cookbooks. They had other obviously right-wing apocalyptical crap as well, and wanted me to take their screedy pamphlet with the authoritarian Jeebus on the cover, but they were kind and the info in one book about healing foods was pretty decent. They were asking for $40-50 donations for the cookbooks, which is exorbitant for me right now. They were doing this for some strange scholarship thing that I didn’t understand, but I didn’t want to spend lots of time with these kids so I listened respectfully but I shared a little of my own story about having lost 100 pounds and having learned that my body is always telling me things like “Turnips. Eat turnips in your next meal” or “salmon yum–go someplace where needed.” (And yes, my body/fetch does communicate like Bam-Bam Rubble.)

Well, they were most impressed and asked how I had come to accomplish this amazing feat, and I told them about Compulsive Eaters Anonymous HOW, and that it was about a personal relationship with powers (e.g., Hekate, Shango, Kali) greater than myself that could restore me to sanity and proceeded with a couple of other 12-step spiritual elements that would at least help them to understand that where addiction is concerned, while I might not necessarily come from the exact same place as them in terms of spirituality–and I did say I was pagan–that it was a miraculous occurrence that was unfolding in my life to this very day.

Well, they asked me if I helped anyone along this path, and I said I sponsor people, but that this is something you can’t push on people till they’re ready. And the way I got ready was that I got the gift of desperation. I see that in relation to these affairs of crisis unfolding, I’m opening my eyes, and I’m making lots of mistakes and yes, continuing with some of the same dysfunctional behaviors because in some fashion, I myself am only “willing to be willing.” Yesterday, I had to unfortunately put my groceries on a credit card. I just got a raise, and I still have to do this, because I made a mistake around my Saturn return of getting student loans to go to grad school in playwriting, thinking “Sure, I’ll make lots of money and pay these back, no sweat.” $45,000 later, I’m still paying to Moloch, Citigroup Subsidiary, and prices are going up, and I am now taking a mood-altering drug to “cope.”

Reading your post, and being in this spiritual process, I realize I’m becoming willing to have the Gods & Goddesses transform these character complexes that keep me stuck. And then to humbly turn my will over to co-creating powers to manifest some new and fragile and hopefully eventually resilient arrangement with other like-minded shamans-in-training (thank you Paul Levy) that will in turn inspire others?

I don’t know. In watching and listening to different people spouting off their faith in the myths of science and technology, I smile and nod, and don’t say anything because I know they’re not ready. Ever since I was little I was skeptical of the nationalist-drunks that I grew up around in Colorado, just like I’m aloof around all sorts of people with belief-toxins skittering through their grey matter. They haven’t hit that wall, they haven’t hit their first bottom with all this mishagoss like I did. I’ve had several–trying to fix my family, then booze, then food, now debt and scarcity-consciousness. And they’re already berating themselves much more harshly than I ever could. I know–when the finger points at me, the 3 fingers hidden in that pose point back to them. Childish, I know, but children have lots o’ wisdom, at least according to Steiner, Montessori and the folks at the Sudbury School.

I recently read Charles Eisenstein’s “Ascent of Humanity” (which can be downloaded from his website or purchased in paperback if you’d rather), and I like that he talked about not deriding the tech-science story/program or the revelation/God will get you for that program which is where we came from, but seeing the current paradigm as the womb at that stage in the pregnancy wherein the baby-to-be-born comes to feel it is becoming inhospitable to its needs and starts to want something different, just as the womb starts to prepare itself for birth. In 12-Step parlance we will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it, but reframe it as something we went through that has a treasure trove of information to relate to other sufferers.

I guess, long-story-short (I hate it when people say that, but here’s the “money” paragraph), I see my current Work as embodying a spirit of play and curiosity to see the possibilities in the crises emerging all around us, and to widen some of the cracks where I can, where I see that a vital possibility of fertile abundance might be possible. We’re all going to need a sense of humor and an openness to grace to get through each day. “This too shall pass.”