An Essay A Day For A Year
By Roe
Day 10, January 10, 2012
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I hope today was a good day, because I really like good days. I say I hope because I often don’t appreciate the goodness in any particular day until after the day is gone. Today felt like a “good” day, as opposed to a “bad” day, so I’m sending a message down under that I vote for “good” today. When I say “down under” I wish I meant Australia. I like Australia a lot and what is neat about Australia is that it is friendlier and easier to visit than my own “down under”. When I speak of my own “down under” I speak of my unconscious heart and mind and self. I really like my unconscious self a lot too, but it is a lot harder to visit than Australia. So again, I hereby send a message from my conscious Roe to my unconscious Roe, “hey you, mysteriously running around in there, I think “we” had a pretty good day, and I vote for a pretty good day, what do you feel?” I probably won’t get a message back right away, or at all, the mail service to my down under is kind of like voodoo science, sometimes the answer comes back instantly, the rest of the time I haven’t a clue. I get responses and questions all the time from things I said and felt in 1963 the year I was born, and I don’t even remember sending them, so that is voo-doo indeed.
Every time I speak of my, or especially your unconscious mind, people get all crazy on me. Are you going to get all crazy on me? If you are that is OK, I think I had a pretty good day, and on pretty good days, just like I like Australia, I like crazy. So I say “hello crazy!” And me?, well I’m crazy too, and to prove it I’ll repeat that I’m pretty sure I had a good day, but I’m waiting for feedback from the rest of me that is hiding from me down under. As an example of my craziness, while your hobby may be hiking or armchair traveling or shopping, mine is mining the underside of my own personal iceberg. I have found it to be the most rewarding of all crazy endeavors, and the most voo-doo. Voo-doo mining the underside of my own iceberg has to be the scary height of crazy.
Here is how I explain my very serious crazy hobby that is so difficult, and yet so rewarding:
I, like all people, am like an iceberg. Everything I know, think, and feel of “me” is the tiny icecap protruding through the waterline. The 90% of the rest of me lies like a massive frozen monolith invisible to me and forgotten by me below the waterline. And the waterline is the division between my conscious and unconscious selves. What is down under the waterline of “me” is every millisecond of my life that has needed to be forgotten or denied, or hidden from knowledge because the pain of it threatened my very life. I have learned to really love myself and miss myself hidden from me down under that mysterious voo-doo waterline, and so I have become my own self proclaimed miner of my down under hidden iceberg world. It feels hella scary and mysterious every time, and I feel crazy most of the time, but it’s the best I can do to find out: “did I really have a good day today?”
This is the spot where I get 1001 arguments from so many of us well meaning fellow icebergs out there. “I believe this, or I disagree with that, or I am an abc, and you are a xyz!” I always feel crazy puzzled since their reply and mine zig zag back and forth like self assured snowmobiles on the tiny icecap of our known selves, and the rest of the truth, mine and everyone’s, lies voo-doo mysterious under the surface. How in the world would I really know if I had a good day or bad when 90% of me and my life are hidden from me, when I block or forget or deny 90% of what happened to me in the 7 billion gigabytes of life that is frozen below the surface? How in the world would I know if what I or you say is true when I am 10% functional and 90% amnesiatic? That is why I mine my own iceberg down under, I am determined to find and retrieve and know about the rest of the 90% of me so I can feel and think and live in wholeness.
Here are some of the things I have found deep in my own voo-doo ice caves, and wonderful and joyous, yet harrowing and sad things for me to write about in the year of essays ahead:
Lots of really bad shit happened to me and all of us, and we hid it from ourselves to survive.
We have survived.
What we hid from ourselves to survive when we were dependent and helpless and needy babies and children, and what we hid would have killed us had we let ourselves know it.
We are still terrified that if we find out what we hid from ourselves we will die and the world will end. The boogie man and woman is hiding in there and we must not go there.
There is no boogie man or woman in there, only our own lonely lost selves and the rest of the 90% of ourselves that we miss so much.
We never did feel what happened back then, it is held in frozen arrest in case it destroys us or our world.
We will no longer die and the world will no longer end if we brave to finally feel what happened to us. We can now face our own self guarding boogie boys and girls.
We want to go back there so very badly. We are calling all the time “help!” “please remember me!” Healing attempts of our wounded hearts never, never give up.
They only way to begin the ice diving process is to welcome and allow and trust feeling “bad”, and this is why I only think I had a good day or bad day, since I naturally tend to not like the “bad” and may have it blocked or repressed or temporarily forgotten.
After feeling bad comes the healing process of the emotion of the arrested feeling, and eventually tears, and grieving, and finally recovery of “me!”
Once the hidden painful memories are felt and processed and integrated into the icecap for the first time, the water line receeds! Yey!, Now I am 11% “aware” and 89% voo-doo amnesiatic and improving all the time. I have more places to go now with my snowmobile!
And there is even better stuff down there too in our ice caves!
We use 100% of our brain all the time contrary to the well repeated myth, but 90% of us is afraid to come out and play! The more you mine the more you play. And on and on!
There is no collective unconscious (sorry Jung) The unconscious is simply the “top secret” place called you! Only you are in there and no one else, even though there are a lot of lonely icebergs in this sea of humanity, and we play hide and go seek in similar ways.
But we do have a collective “heart”, and it precedes and out loves everything that happened to us that we loathe to mine, and this collective heart is beautiful and loving, and once reclaimed into consciousness it is infinitely connected to everything and everyone in the universe. (right on Jung!)
Spirituality and enlightenment and happiness for me and you and us all is not “out there”, or in any book or belief or practice. Religion is you down under, enlightenment is you down under, and happiness is your down under, all when you are fully reunited with your whole self.
In closing, come to think of it, I would welcome if I had a bad day, I would welcome to receive a letter from my down under that says, “wow you up there, what a sunshiny laughing day you had today, and you feel so happy, and that reminds me down here of thousands of days we dreamed of this, and how awfully sad it was to not get it, and how we hid that knowledge here under the water so we don’t have to hurt and die of sadness. Won’t you please feel bad so we can remember this and cry together? I really miss you and want to come home to you!”
Have you ever been so happy that it hurt and made you cry? Well today, me too. I hope for a message down under to help me learn why. May we all welcome that feeling and cry ourselves into the frigid waters of our forgotten selves and reclaim our true happy and whole selves. Besides, I could use some company here down under!
See you tomorrow.
yourpersonalmuse@gmx.com
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