Vision Fast – Page 3 – Karen's New York Love Affair

The medicine walk: ceremony with the inner masculine

I have been writing about my medicine walk in Eureka Valley, California, last October. After I completed the north shield ceremony, which involved gathering the bouquet of flowers and making gifts for my people, I felt that I wanted to do an east shield ceremony. I didn’t know what form this might take, but considered doing work on what I was projecting onto a man I currently felt very drawn to. Or perhaps I could do a ceremony with the little boy inside, or lizard man—two east shield figures I have done work with in the past. Or maybe I would be drawn to do a ceremony on something else that is creative, joyful, and the breaking down of old forms.

In keeping with the movement of this day, I decided to move further down the wash for the final ceremony. I gathered up my pack and jackets, as I still felt the heat of the afternoon and wasn’t wearing all the layers I’d started out with that morning. I began walking down the wash, looking for a place where I felt drawn to do my ceremony. When I came to the small waterfall (now dry), I picked up the bouquet I made earlier. I didn’t quite find a spot that felt really good, but eventually saw a place to put down the bouquet on a flat rock. This became my altar, and I arranged my ceremonial stones for the four directions on it, with a tealight candle in the middle.

I wanted to find a form in nature to represent my inner man so I could talk to him. I scanned the cliff that formed one of the canyon walls, and looked at the boulders in this area, but nothing seemed quite right. Since I couldn’t find a life-size figure, I made a figure of a man from smaller flat pieces of rock, which I laid out on a yellow towel. (Yellow for the east!) First I found a red and white stone to use for the heart, then a big round white stone that I felt inspired to use for the head, and then some flat pieces of slate to use for the torso, arms, legs, and pelvis. I found some dried branches to use for hair, and a yellow stone from the buddy pile to use for the penis.

I offered tobacco from Dirk, the sweat lodge fire keeper and water pourer who had given me this gift in Arizona at the wilderness guides gathering. I sprinkled the tobacco in the four directions, offering thanks to the spirits and asking them to be with me in this ceremony. At first I felt a little shy talking to this figure I had created to represent my inner man, and I sat across the altar from him. Then I stood up to talk to him, and danced to some songs in my head—You Sexy Thing and Beast of Burden.

To be continued…

The medicine walk: bouquets and gifts of the north

For the next part of the medicine walk I’ve been writing about, I wanted to do some work in the north part of the wheel, which involves giving our gifts to our people. It can also involve making gifts, doing concrete physical tasks, craftwork, and so on.

I walked farther down the wash, and found a nice big boulder to lean against, which gave me a bit of shade, but not too much. I wrote in my journal about what had happened so far. Then I went down to the place where I had seen the yellow flowers. They were in a flat area nestled among boulders above a drop in elevation, which would be a waterfall when the rains fell in this dry desert place. Possibly a small pool formed here before spilling over, allowing more moisture to remain here, quenching the flowers with the water they needed to grow. I marvelled at this miracle of life in the desert.

I gathered a bouquet of the yellow flowers, adding some pale green leaves that had a band of red and yellow tips on them, and a sprig of a lush reddish plant. I gave Reiki to each plant, thanking them for these gifts of beauty from their bodies. I bound the stems together with a strip of faux red suede and some black thread. It reminded me of the bouquet my buddy had made for me and left at the buddy pile the first time I fasted in the desert. I had carried that bouquet in my car for about a year after the fast.

I thought of leaving this bouquet on the buddy pile for the faster I was buddying from base camp. Then I thought maybe I should give it to my inner man, to woo him and deepen my relationship to him. At this point I still didn’t know who I would give it to. I left it in a safe place by the yellow flowering plant, because it might get wrecked if I put it in my pack.

I came back up to my nice boulder spot and made a ring of gold and purple for my little girl. The first day the fasters went out I had a long meditation in base camp, and the colours purple and gold had infused my soul. I had somehow chosen these colours of beads to bring along on the trip when I had been packing in Vancouver. I also brought the colours of the four directions.

So now I made the ring, contemplating my association of this particular shade of purple, a mauve colour, with mourning. I had experienced it when mourning at Auschwitz about the loss to the world of the gifts and love of all the people who were killed there. I now felt the mourning of the gifts that were lost to the world because my little girl was hurt and it has taken so many years to heal and begin bringing her gifts into the world. The gold was a celebration of her beingness and our connection, which I had experienced when we interacted by the golden cholla cactus—a merging bliss.

As I worked on the ring I acknowledged and honoured the way she HAS brought her gifts into the world, struggling all the while but doing it in spite of the immense obstacles. She shared her love of beading with the world (through writing the book Complete Beading for Beginners), and this earned awards, recognition, and even enough money to buy a car. That’s a helluva accomplishment for a little girl!

Then I made beaded bracelets for Larry and Ruth, using the colours of the four directions—white, yellow, red, and black. I also made one for my buddy, to leave on the buddy pile. I selected purple too, for Ruth’s bracelet, gold for Larry, and green for the faster. I loved the pattern that emerged from the selected colours, and the mathematical element of combining the beads to make the right length of bracelet. When I was finished, I wrapped these gifts in scraps of the faux red suede, with a small stone for each. Then I noticed a beautiful dried flower that seemed to be a kind of daisy. I snipped its stem, using the scissors on my Swiss army knife, and took it down to add to the bouquet.

It felt so satisfying to create gifts of beauty to give to my people. The knowing of how to do it and the tools to use was very north shield. But the creativity involved was east shield. My thoughts turned to the east shield now as I contemplated the ritual I wanted to do for the east part of my day walk.

The medicine walk: cholla cactus and golden braids

If you have been following this story of the medicine walk, you might be wondering what my longing for a loving relationship has to do with the intention I brought on the walk, and why I chose to ask the lizard that question. I can tell you two things about this. One is that the question arose spontaneously, as did the entire interaction with the lizard. And it is this spontaneous arising in nature that is part of the gift of the medicine walk, vision fast, and other work in nature. One never knows what is going to happen. And what happens is outside the realm of our usual experience. This is why we go to nature in the first place—to gain insight and understanding from a place that is different from our usual thought processes and ways of interacting in the world. As my story continues I will draw together all the pieces of the events on the medicine walk into a cohesive whole that makes sense.

The second piece about asking about my desire for a loving relationship is that this is part of the work with my inner man. I mentioned previously that I am claiming my inner father. Yet the inner masculine is also my inner lover. And the type of relationship I have with both these aspects of my inner masculine will affect the quality of relationships I have with men in my life, especially in the area of intimate, romantic relationships. Looked at one way, this means that the desire for a great romantic relationship is a strong motivation to do the inner work to have good relationships with the inner masculine aspects. But that’s kind of a backwards way of looking at it, as you may know if you are involved in inner work yourself. The gifts of looking within are the goal of the work, and the benefit this may have in our outer lives and relationships is secondary. (Or so the theory goes!) But the truth is, our relationship with ourself is the one constant that is there throughout our life, while outer relationships come and go.

So, to continue my story, I left off at the point where I was sitting near the golden cactus. I noticed it was prickly, to keep other creatures away (like me). And beautiful, to draw them close (like me). Suddenly I wanted to know what it would take. If only I could DO SOMETHING, like flog myself with the cactus, cutting my arms, or run across the desert for miles and miles, to make it happen. I felt my powerlessness. Do I have to move to California or New York to improve my chances of meeting the kind of man with whom I want to have a relationship, who is as deeply committed as I am to the inner journey? Does he have to be on the same spiritual path, or can it be someone like Larry, who runs and meditates and has a deep inner awareness, and holds the sacred ceremony of the vision fast? He can sense himself and his unfoldment, though his inner work has been on a different path than mine. And then there is that mysterious factor of strong physical attraction, which I would want to feel with my mate. When will I find all of this in one man, I wondered.

I felt into the sadness in my chest, and the longing to be seen, regarded as special, loved and cherished—from a lover man whom I felt passionate about. And I felt the helplessness and hopelessness about ever having that. I believed I don’t get to have it, won’t ever get to have it. The hopeless sad powerless longing felt like when I was a child. And cactus was saying don’t look outside for what you want, just do your inner work. (And I remembered Larry saying what we all want is on the inside.) That felt frustrating and unsatisfying too, but I also noticed the feeling tone of feeling powerless to ever have what I want, and hopeless, felt like when I was a little girl, wanting mom and dad’s love and attention and for them to think I was special.

I remembered being about four, having these feelings. Longing for love, closeness, attention. Feeling ugly and unloveable. The hurt of it all. So I started talking to little Karen, telling her I could feel her hurt, and I was there for her, loved her, thought she is beautiful and precious, and that I cared about how she felt. I asked if she could hear me, but she seemed pretty absorbed in her hurt and sadness. She didn’t seem to be aware of me. With my eyes closed, I imagined drawing her near to me, and I unbraided her two braids. I touched her hair, telling her that her hair was beautiful, soft and wavy from the braids, and that she is special. I could see her uniqueness and the qualities in her that are different from most little girls. This showed in her face as a seriousness and strength.

I held her close, telling her she is special, and felt a very full, loving feeling, deep pink, in my heart. The pink fullness was also between us and through us, a unified field of it. Then I saw her as free to be who she was—happy and light, a tremendous force of nature, running through the landscape.

Although this experience wasn’t the union with the masculine that I longed for, it was very satisfying, and seemed to be a piece of the puzzle of healing so that I am ready for a relationship. Reparenting my inner child, releasing her pain, allowing her to be free to be herself. With this work done, I no longer needed to seek someone on the outside to give her the love and attention she had been longing for. To honour and mark what had occurred, I did a small ceremony. Earlier, when I crossed the threshold, I had a nose bleed. I buried the kleenex with my blood on it at the base of the cactus, as a gift of thanks from my body to the earth, and a symbol of letting go of the suffering from the past. I marked the tiny grave with a black stone, and placed a piece of the cactus that had broken off on the flat black stone, together with a tiny red stone.

This concluded the second part of my medicine walk, which I thought of as being related to the west side of the wheel. The inner masculine work is the work of the west. But clearly the work with the inner child is the work of the south. Ruth reflected this back to me later on when I told the story to her and Larry. And she made the beautiful piece of art pictured here, showing the hands loosening the braid.

The work with the little girl seemed like a possible completion of my medicine walk. It was so wonderful to have cared for her in such a way that her suffering was relieved and she was freed to be her true, magnificent self in the world. As often happens when fasting, my thoughts turned to food and I wondered if I should call it a day and go back to base camp to eat! But I had it in my mind to do some further ceremony for the north and the east…

The medicine walk: cell phones and lizards

After the ritual of the south I felt it was time to move. I couldn’t get comfortable in this place. It was too hot in the sun, too cool in the shade. All the rocks felt rough and uncomfortable to lean against. So I gathered up my things and headed down the wash.

I saw a spot with red rocks, which I had noticed on the way up. It was at the mouth of another wash that led to a plateau high above the valley floor. I continued down the wash a little further until I came to a beautiful big golden prickly cactus. I took its picture, remembering another faster who had taken a picture of the same type of cactus.

I wanted to check the messages on my cell phone. (Not a very ancient ritual, I’m afraid!) Leaving my pack and extra clothes near the cactus, I took my cell phone and climbed up to the top of the red rock wash. I looked around and saw a faster below, in another canyon. I retreated below the ridge line to turn my phone on, got a minimal signal, and stood up on the ridge line again to check voice mail, but it didn’t go through. Aha. So this is what the spirits of the place had to say about modern communications!

I climbed back down to where I’d left my pack, and noticed a flash of movement. I’d startled a lizard, who had darted under a little plant. I looked at him and noticed he was a collared lizard with two black stripes around his neck and orange in between. The rest of his body was coloured a softer orange with a grey pattern. He was quite big, and had a long, slender, flexible tail.

I really wanted to give him some water, so I poured some into the lid of a water bottle and sat very still, waiting to see if he’d drink it. I was facing down the wash, with a wonderful view across the basin floor to the mountains on the other side. I tried to be patient and just wait. It seemed quite a while, and I could see the lizard under the plant, absolutely still, with one eye facing me. Eventually I saw his tail moving, flicking slightly back and forth, and then he turned fully towards me.

He came a little closer, looking right at me, only about 18 inches away. He flicked his tongue at me, tasting and sensing me. I looked at him too, and then he went over to the water in the bottle cap. He looked at it but didn’t drink it. Then he scampered over my pile of black jackets, pausing and continuing until he was right up close to me. He looked at me again, straight on. Then he jumped off the pile and ran away, off to my left.

While we had this contact I had been asking the lizard what it would take to have someone love me the way I want to be loved. He seemed to be showing me something about curiousity, getting to know someone, check out what’s offered, and then decide whether it was what I wanted. In the case of the water, it wasn’t what he wanted. And then he took off, after his curiousity was satisfied.

To me, lizard is the creative masculine of the east. But exploring my desire for a loving relationship with a man seems very west. Hmm! This is one of the mysteries of the wheel, how the two opposite poles are related to each other.

I didn’t feel fully satisfied with the lizard’s answer about finding love, so I decided to continue the exploration by having a conversation with the golden cactus. To be continued…

The medicine walk: hiking up the canyon and the ceremony of fire

I have been writing about the medicine walk I went on in the Eureka Valley in California, east of the Sierra Mountains. So far I’ve described the process of mirroring for intention. The intention I formed was “I am mother and father to myself. I have the strength and take the time to care for my hurt self.” Now I’m going to tell you the story of what happened when I went on the medicine walk.

I set out shortly after dawn, with the intention of staying out until dusk, and fasting from food, human company, and built structures. So this medicine walk was like a mini vision fast. I had a sense of the supportive presence of Ruth and Larry in base camp, and all the fasters hidden away in the hills and canyons around the camp. I decided to hike up a canyon where I knew no other fasters were staying.

Walking up the canyon, I created a beautiful threshold crossing once I was out of sight of base camp. I made two cairns of stones to walk between, marked with vials of sparkly red glass beads. I was worried about not being able to find the threshold when I returned, especially if it was dark, so I retraced my steps after I had crossed the threshold, and noted markers in the landscape to help me: creosote trees and the tip of the ridge. I also noticed that the threshold was slightly to the left of the centre of the wash.

I noticed I was walking into the east, and partly up the wash I came upon some bushes with beautiful yellow flowers. Flowers always seem like such a precious gift in the desert. This dry wash must collect enough rain once or twice a year to allow these flowers to grow and bloom here. Further up the canyon I saw three yellow stones on the ground. Another sign of the east. I picked one up and tasted it, wondering if it was sulfur. It tasted salty like the desert and had tiny crystals in it. I gave Reiki to the earth to thank the land for this gift.

At the top of the canyon was an amazing place with tiger- and leopard-patterned stone walls, in orange and yellow and black. There were lots of little hidey-holes for rodents. I noticed two crazy webs that could be the work of black widow spiders. Very sticky, with strands in three dimensions rather than the flat, neatly patterned two-dimensional web that most spiders make. I found a place in the shade to keep the water I’d brought for the day. Then I looked around for a good place to do my first ceremony, working with anger.

I found a gravelly place in the wash that was quite flat, and dug a hole in the gravel using a larger stone. I set up four coloured direction stones around me, and the strands of coloured beads for each direction that I carry in my medicine bear-pouch, Graham, whom I claimed and named in a trip to the desert several years ago. Maybe I’ll tell you that story one day. I meditated for a while, turning so that I spent some of the time facing in each of the four directions, sensing how the energies felt in each direction.

I’d brought a letter that I’d received from a friend right before the trip, in which she had said many hurtful things about me and my anger. What timing! This was someone I’d known for twenty years, and had shared the deepest parts of myself with. I had felt very hurt and upset by her letter, as well as angry. So I began speaking to this woman, telling her how I felt about the letter, and the hurt I felt that she didn’t know me after all these years. I told her the hurt I felt that she didn’t care about me. I told her all the things I’ve felt frustrated and hateful and angry towards her about.

When I’d been talking about the letter with Ruth and Larry I’d wondered whether I should read it again during the ceremony. Ruth asked me “Would you read this letter to your inner child?” What a brilliant question. Of course I wouldn’t read a hurtful letter to a young child, and I wouldn’t dream of re-hurting the child by repeating something hurtful. So this guidance helped me learn something, and I knew I didn’t want to read the letter again. So when I’d said everything that’s been unsaid, including my caring about my friend over these years, and holding space for her, I said I was giving her back the shit she’d put on me.

Then I used the element of fire to burn the four or five pages of the letter, along with some sweet grass and a tiny bit of cedar and sage from my medicine pouch. Once the letter had burned to ash, I repeated my intention, thanked the spirits of the land, and covered the hole with gravel.

I felt satisfied with the beauty and simplicity of the ceremony, and connected with myself and the land around me. It seemed that this ceremony to deal with my anger was a significant step in changing my behaviour. It also seemed like a celebration of the aliveness and life energy that the anger brings. I wasn’t denying the anger or suppressing it. Rather, I expressed it in a way that did not hurt myself or anyone else. In this way, I claimed the strength of the red. Beginning with the red beads that I used to mark the threshold, and culminating in the anger ceremony, this part of the medicine walk was my ceremony of the south.

My intention was to do a ceremony in each of the four directions, moving around the wheel as the day went on. This way I would be invoking the energy of each of the directions to help me claim my intention. I’ll tell you what happened next…

Mirroring for intention: putting it all together

I’ve been telling you the story of how Ruth and Larry mirrored my intention for my day walk, also known as a medicine walk or contemplative walk. Mirroring for intention is an important part of the vision fast ceremony. This process usually begins months before a participant’s fast, with a statement of intention in the application letter the participant prepares.

Once the guides and participants meet in the place near where the fast will take place, a key part of the preparation in the days preceding the fast is to clarify the participants’ intentions. If there is a group of fasters, they sit in circle together and listen as one by one they tell their stories of why they have come to the desert or mountain to undertake this rite of passage. When there is a solo participant, the guide or guides have the luxury of more time to spend with the faster, helping to clarify what the faster has come to claim.

To help you understand this process, I have been telling the story of a recent trip I took to the California desert. I was apprenticing on the vision fast, and while the fasters were out, the guides and I mirrored each others’ intentions for a solo day walk. I have been delving deeply into the story, so that you can understand the way that this type of work can help a person learn and grow.

Here is a list of the entries I have written about the mirroring process. You might find this helpful to read before turning to the story of the actual medicine walk.

Taking the time to care for the hurt self

I have been describing a process of exploration and healing that occurred on a medicine walk in Eureka Valley. There is one more piece to the puzzle that arose as I explored my intention with Ruth and Larry. I’ve already talked about the defense of anger, and how I was using that to protect my hurt self.

As I described various incidents to Ruth and Larry in which I’d felt hurt, another theme that emerged was time: I felt like people didn’t care about me because they didn’t give me time. They didn’t want to spend time with me, as in the case of the friend who had put me off three times when I wanted to get together with him. And they didn’t give me enough time. This had arisen in a small group meeting with my Diamond Approach group, when the teacher had said I could work for 10 minutes only. I had agreed to the time limit, but it hadn’t been enough time and had led to deep feelings of shame when the time was up and I needed more time but the teacher didn’t let me have the time I needed. And time has often been a sore point in my interactions with friends, when they take up all the time we’re together by talking about themselves, leaving me to feel like I don’t matter. So TIME is an issue, or at least TIME is the way that Being was trying to reveal a truth to me, through the persistent feeling that there is not enough time for me.

Ruth and Larry noticed this theme as I spoke, and drew it to my attention, and this became the final piece of my intention: I am mother and father to myself, and I have the strength and take the time to care for my hurt self. This last bit, taking the time to care for my hurt self, was a crucial piece of the puzzle. For it is I who am responsible for taking the time I need, and asking for the time I need, in my relations with others. But even more importantly, for making this time for self-care in my daily life. It is up to me to value myself enough to attend to my self with curiosity, care, and compassion when I am feeling upset about something. And even when I am not upset about something!

So this was the intention I took out on my walk. I am mother and father to myself, and I have the strength and take the time to care for my hurt self. Next time I will tell you what happened on the walk—how I worked with the intention, and how nature interacted with me to bring healing to my hurt self.

Clarifying intention – caring for the hurt self

I have been writing in the last few postings about my experience working with anger on a medicine walk in nature the last time I was in the desert. A friend from Ireland sent me an email about this topic, and he said something very pertinent about anger: “It really scares people because when you are angry a person becomes very unpredictable, unmanageable for want of a better word, and most people handle interpersonal conflict very badly. They just want to escape from the source of the conflict and anger.” As I cast my mind back over the last five years or so, I can see this has played out in my life repeatedly. When I have expressed anger, most people do what is called “cut off,” responding in such a way that our contact is severed permanently.

Looking out the window at the heaving, wind-tossed waters in the Burrard Inlet, it seems the stormy, helpless frustration I have felt is reflected perfectly in the steely waters. The outer reflects the inner in the mirror of nature.

The most recent loss of friendship occurred in August-September this year, and it was this event that prompted me to renew my efforts to look at how I handle anger while I was in the desert. A friend whom I have known for 20 years, who said he appreciated me and was glad I am in the world, kept putting me off when I asked him to get together with me at the summer retreat. Three times, I approached him to set up a time and he said he couldn’t talk about it then. Several other times I approached him to chat and he fobbed me off on other people. Then he said he was going to warn his friend that I was dangerous!

By the third time I specifically asked him when we were going to get together, and he said he couldn’t talk about it then, I was feeling really hurt. I owed him $11 and change for a domain name he’d registered for me, and that was part of what we were going to talk about. So my brilliant, hurt, and now defensively angry self wrote “Fuck you. Forget the whole goddamn thing” on a $20 bill, and I gave it to him. I admit, I felt some pleasure in expressing my anger in a way that discharged my debt but would cause him embarrassment if he tried to use the money. I saw a little humour in it, too. What I really expected was that he would realize he’d been acting like a jerk, apologize, and make some time to get together. What actually happened was that in the absence of his apology, I later phoned to apologize to him, left a message of apology, and he sent me an email saying he didn’t listen to my message, had blocked me on Skype and email, and didn’t want me to contact him. Cut off.

This made me really question how important my friendship was to him. Not very, I had to conclude. This was a deep shock, and I think it’s better to know the truth. But it was also painful, and it led to this exploration of anger that I’ve been documenting here. The brilliance of that note was to reveal the truth, and I’m still glad I wrote it! My sorrow is that I must have hurt him, and I regret not honouring his innocent, radiant being, which is a much deeper truth than the surface interaction of our egos that I have been describing. As Walt Whitman said, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” And at this point in my journey, the ego heap is still bigger than the heap of my true nature. Rumi said “Pay Satan heaps of gold for pain!” I am grateful for the learning.

Writing about this story now, I see a little more deeply into the original template for this defense mechanism. As all little girls do, I wanted my father to love me, care for me, and protect me. Unfortunately, my father had an uncontrollable temper and was both physically and verbally abusive. The hurt I experienced as a young child was much more than I could cope with, and the one who I wanted to turn to for comfort and protection was the one who was hurting me. This is an impossible situation, and the young soul finds ways to cope that build lasting impressions in the body and in the behaviour patterns. For example, a defensive way of curving the shoulders inwards, and the defense mechanism of responding to hurt with an angry outburst designed to push the other person away, which I have been exploring here.

What I have deeply longed for is that when I respond to a hurt with anger, the person who is behaving in a way that hurts me would realize how I felt, and turn to me with love, caring, and acceptance. I wanted my friend to hold me and soothe me. When I was a young girl, after my father beat me, I would lay on my bed crying for hours. Sometimes, eventually, he came into my room to soothe me and comfort me. I had forgotten that part of the pattern until now, so this makes a little more sense to me now. After the big storm, sometimes there would be a tenderness. This helps explain why the pattern has been so persistent; occasionally, at the end, there was a pay-off of love after the suffering.

You might be wondering why I am sharing this here. My intention is to help you understand the type of healing that can occur through doing work in nature, like the vision fast or a medicine walk. So I am giving you an example from my own life, and, miraculously, my understanding is deepening through this process of describing it to you.

So, back to the Eureka Valley, October 2009, with my guides Ruth and Larry mirroring my intention for the day walk I was going to go on. I had been talking about the anger, and made the connection about the steps I go through (which I described last time), and how I needed to change the order of events by inserting the step where I care for my hurt self. I forget exactly how it happened, but I’d also been talking a bit about the work I’ve done relating to my inner man (which is also work of the west shield) and Ruth suggested that I need to be both mother and father to my inner child. This was a revolutionary idea! I had never thought of the inner man as a father. I’d always related to him as a lover. But what Ruth suggested made total sense the moment she said it: what I needed to do was be both mother and father to myself! The idea of being father to myself had truly never occurred to me, and I could see how this was what I’d often wanted from the men I’d been in relationship with. I often chose men who were great fathers to their own daughters, in that unconscious way that we all have of trying to work out our unresolved issues through relating to others!

So part of my intention was this: I am mother and father to my hurt self. But this still isn’t the whole story. There was another piece in the mirroring of intention, which I will talk about next time.

Understanding the cycle of anger

As I mentioned last time, when they mirrored my intention for my day walk, Ruth and Larry helped me clarify something about anger. I have long understood that when I have a very angry, charged response to a situation, it is usually because I am feeling hurt about something. The anger is a defense, which for me feels more comfortable than the feeling of hurt. (This is not so for everyone; for some people feeling angry is a very uncomfortable feeling, and they might have a different defense mechanism for helping them not to feel angry.)

So I have learned that anger is the clue that I am feeling hurt. It also provides the strength I need to take care of the hurt, as well as to respond to the outer situation. So I have known this for a long time, but since I don’t like to feel the hurt, I usually still go with the automatic response of the anger, discharging it to try to get rid of the person or situation that hurt me, rather than attending to the hurt. It’s only later that I get around to feeling the hurt, and maybe calm down and talk to the person in a constructive way.

Anger diagram 1

event that hurts me – angry outburst – go away and be alone – feel the hurt – understand what happened – apologize to the person and try to undo the damage of the outburst

Sometimes the final step is expensive, if I actually damaged an object, and sometimes it is not possible to undo the damage and I lose a relationship. It is also interesting to learn over time that the “event that hurts me” is often not as bad as I thought. Due to my own history, I can interpret things inaccurately, feeling hurt when there was objectively no hurt intended. As I described this sequence of events to Ruth and Larry, I could see that I need to make a change in the sequence.

Anger diagram 2

event that hurts me – go away and be alone – feel the hurt – take care of my hurt self – understand what happened – talk to the person if necessary, saying what happened, how I feel, what I need, and what I want from them (this last point describes the four steps of non-violent communication, by the way)

So you can see that the angry outburst is missing from the second diagram (darn!). Instead, I take care of my hurt self. Also the nature of talking to the person at the end is different, since it is not about damage control but about asking for what I need.

So this is part of what emerged with the mirroring process. But there’s more to the story, and I’ll tell you that next time!

A lifetime of anger – breaking the cycle

As I have written previously, the south is the place where we feel our emotions and act on them in an unmediated way. When we mature from childhood into adolescence, moving around the wheel from the south to the west (from summer to fall), we start to be aware of the effects our actions have on others, and gain deeper understanding about why we feel the way we do, and who we really are.

I’d like to illustrate this movement by sharing something of what I have learned working with anger. This has been a long process of discovery, involving years of healing and deepening understanding. My latest trip to the desert to assist at the vision fast brought a new layer of healing, growth, and maturity. So over the next little while I’m going to share with you what I have learned, both because it may be useful in your own inner exploration of anger, and because it illustrates so beautifully how the ceremony of the vision fast and the teaching of the four directions can help us on our inner journey.

Intentions and claiming

When people go on a vision fast, at least in the form of ceremony that we use at The School of Lost Borders, they state the intention of their fast before they start their solo time. Usually the guides will spend some time with each faster, helping them clarify their intention until it is in the form of a sentence or two, beginning with I am a woman… or I am a man… and followed by the qualities the faster is claiming.

During the time in basecamp, Ruth, Larry, and I worked with each other to clarify our intentions for a solo walk that we took while the fasters were out fasting. So when it was my turn, Ruth and Larry listened while I said what I wanted to claim, and they helped me clarify my intention. This was a magical process, because through talking and exploring with them, a clarity and understanding of what I needed to do emerged that was completely unexpected…

As I have mentioned previously, I went to the desert hoping to do some work with my anger. I have lost friends in the past when I expressed my anger, probably because I didn’t do it skillfully and it scared them, or hurt them, and the feeling of fear or hurt was stronger than the feelings of caring for me that they might have had. The fascinating thing about this is that my anger usually has arisen as a defense because I was feeling hurt or afraid because of what the other person had done! So it is perpetuating a cycle of fear or hurt.

But, I also want to remind you that anger also contains passion, aliveness, and creativity. So although expressing anger in an unmediated way (yelling, swearing, throwing things, hitting a rock with a hammer, thrashing around in bed next to your partner, kicking or punching the wall) may have undesired consequences, it also has a hidden treasure that is worth retaining. I feel the excitement of the passion I feel for this treasure as I write, and look forward to continuing this exploration over the next few postings. More to come!