I’m about to sit down and snuggle with one of my Christmas presents. It is a book by Sigmund Freud called ‘The Interpretation of Dreams.’ I’d imagine it will hand me another key to my perception of reality, which I’m so looking forward to.
I love that sort of thing. Pondering the universe and the nature of reality. A lovely friend of mine calls me a ‘contemplative mystic’, and I quite like that term, actually, when it comes to the parts of me that like to wonder.
I have been wondering all my life. It’s a beautifully rich way to be, and I know it’s where I truly belong in the world. Swimming the deepest oceans, stirring up the kelp and sand.
When I contemplate, when I analyse people, I tend to analyse them energetically more than anything. Most people likely look at a person and wonder who they are. I look at a person, and tend to know who they are already, to a degree. They feel a certain way to me. Some people feel safe.
Some people feel unsafe.
I tend to think those must have been the ones among us who haven’t had the nicest lives.
I’m a big believer in the theory of a unified field of energy connecting us all. That we are this field. All of us. Energy at the core, connected simply because there is nothing to seperate massive clouds of energy, when you really think about it. Quantum physics, and this unified field theory explains, for instance, why so many of us ‘resonate’ so deeply with the exact same ideas in life.
It’s all really fascinating to me, especially as a creative who feels the energy of my creativity move within my body as I create.
They were tears like rain. The sort of rain that brings your soul to life as you feel it hard and cold on your skin. Refreshing. Beautiful and nourishing, were those plentiful tears of mine.
I was meditating. It was early afternoon and the baby was sleeping. I’d set the intention to heal my heart, and to clear whatever stuck energy might be blocking me from achieving my highest purpose in life.
I still don’t know what the exact blockages were/are.
But I know that by the end of the meditation, I understood why several of the most heartbreaking things that have happened in my life had to happen. And that they had to happen so that not only I would grow in love, but also, so that others might grow in love, too.
Isn’t that the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard? Firstly that this sort of divine intelligence lies within the very skin we wear. But also, that even the bad things in life serve their specific purposes for the good of universal evolution.
Of course, I could have been making it all up.
Of course I could have been.
But the tears that smashed down my neck and the knowing smile that lit my whole being told me otherwise.
We are a tapestry. Not one of us leaves the quilt without touching another.
I’ve become an expert in solving problems that may or may not occur. It’s both a wonderful and a terrible thing, depending on the perspective you take. Problems do not exist, for instance, until the moment they occur and are perceived, and yet in my world they both exist and are solved in an invisible home of my own mental creation…before they’ve even happened.
Often times, they never do happen.
And yet, because I have perceived them, and mentally lived their many aspects and outcomes, they are as real as the real, real thing.
No wonder my nervous system is a little frazzled.
Apparently this sort of hyper vigilance is a result of early life trauma, and although I had an absolutely beautiful childhood, and was extremely loved and well cared for…I was, for whatever reason, highly sensitive. My teen years were dotted with trauma. My early adult years were flooded with emotion, confusion and anxiety. And all the while, every little eye brow raise came to mean something frightening to me, and so you can imagine the aches felt when I truly was being attacked by life.
Enter problem solving territory. I learnt to recognise and run from the beast before he’d even thought to attack, which I gather is quite a common thing among human folk, actually. Probably more common than most choose to admit.
Obviously, this sort hyper-vigilance has caused quite a few issues in my life, and relationships, so I’m learning to become aware and catch myself in moments where I am constructing a damaging story for myself to pre-live. And yet, I’d also say that having the ability to pre-think situations has added to my spiritual tool kit.
It’s allowed me the extra space needed to find the beauty in even the most disastrous of situations.
It’s acted as a rehearsal period for the painful moments of life, and I’m grateful for this, despite psychologists and spiritual kings out there declaring ‘now’ is best.
Of course now is best.
Now is the only truth.
And yet, while we are human…now is just another dimension of the everything reality is made of.
We will never understand the fullness of the universe.
But we can live bits and pieces of it, and pick up its interesting, thoughtful breadcrumbs along the way.
No one would have seen it coming, least of all me. His death was inevitable: that part we all knew was coming.
But no one would have foreseen my reaction to it. Not the way it happened, not the way the emotional slideshow of me slowly played out like a blocked garden-hose building in pressure, waiting for the almighty explosion that eventually would come.
My Dad told me: ‘Aaron’s died.’ We were on our way home from our shared workplace, an hour and ten minute drive from the city to the country, where we lived. He did a good job, my Dad. Quiet. Calm. Matter of fact, but caring. My Aunty was the one that received the news. He’d been ill, which on top of the cystic fibrosis had finally proven too much for his already fragile body to handle. Someone should tell Brooke.
I’m not sure why Dad chose an hour long car ride to do it. Perhaps he and Mum felt it would allow me time to let it wash over me, I’m really not sure what they had expected. But one thing I do imagine they expected were tears.
There were none.
Not a single one.
When he’d broken up with me, I’d constructed a wall about a million miles high, and equally as wide to protect me from both the feeling of being rejected without proper means, and the feeling of loss I’d surely feel in the face of losing him. We both still cared for each other very much. Very much. Though, for family reasons that are a little too personal to share, here, he felt it best he protect his final years as best he could. By saying goodbye to me. I understood. Still, it hurt.
On New Years Eve (his very last one, as it would turn out) he called me at my Aunties house, where I’d escaped the boring walls of home for a much needed holiday. ‘Is Chookie there?’ he asked, to my Aunties amusement. I took the phone, smiled at my Aunty, and fell into our world, again. He’d missed me. I’d missed him, too. We laughed and chatted for a bit. Finally, we said goodbye.
A few months later, Aaron was gone. He was about twenty, from memory: I was eighteen. And I didn’t care at all that he was gone, and I absolutely would not be attending his funeral, so they could all just go on and forget about that, ridiculous nonsense.
The day of the funeral came. I got up, as usual, and made the long trip in with my Dad where I began my daily routine. Pick, pack, tape up the box. Pick, pack, tape up the box. I’m not sure what part of the work induced the explosion. Perhaps it was the ripping sound the tape makes when it whirls off the tape gun, or perhaps it was simply the fact that I was at work, in the first place. All anybody knew was that one moment I was fine. The next, I was wailing. Sobbing in the most out of control fashion I could muster.
My Dad took me to the train station. If I caught the early train, I should make it to the funeral on time, and so I boarded the V-Line back to the country and off I went to say my last goodbye to Aaron. Technically, not my Aaron, anymore. But, according to my heart…still very much, my Aaron, apparently.
The train ride was interesting. The poor lady across from me did her very best to pretend my dark sunglasses hid my tears (and quietened the accidental sob that sometimes escaped me. Meep.) The dusty town I arrived in was quiet, too. No one would notice as I wandered along the streets, searching for a church I’d never been to before, in a town I’d never been to before.
I wouldn’t ask for directions, either. More accurately, I couldn’t ask for directions, on account of me being that odd girl: too shy to talk to any human outside of her comfort zone. So I asked the universe for directions. My plan was (and this is no joke) to follow whichever direction my hair blew in the wind, because certainly whatever higher forces I was connected to would get me to the funeral. Bonus points if they got me there on time.
I walked. And walked. And walked.
Finally, and with no thanks at all to my hair, I found the church. A little late, but early enough. The funeral had just begun.
‘Chookie,’ Aaron’s beautiful Mum said, after the service, as she wrapped me in her arms, and thanked me for coming to say goodbye to her baby boy. She seemed happy to see me (really, really happy) and in that moment…I knew the explosion of me was meant to happen, that I was meant to be there. For Aaron, but for his beautiful family, too.
They may not have noticed my absence if I’d not gone: the church was overflowing with hundreds, all of whom, apparently, Aaron had touched with his cheekiness, joy and boundless wisdom, too.
But I was there. And his family did notice.
I was grateful.
Grateful the morning had brought about the most unexpected emotional explosion, ever to have rocked my world.
I never did stop escaping. A sensitive little girl, a face and a voice unkind: I escaped. I never did stop escaping.
*
I am safe and loved in this place in the sky. I am safe. And I am loved, so loved, without a thought, without a care. I am me, and this is the sky. We are here. We are here.
*
I never did stop escaping. All around the children played. They showed me their world, and I made it what I needed it to be. I made it magic and I made it kind. They didn’t know their world was magic and kind. I did. I knew.
*
This is where my real friends live, where my heart lives. I can make the world what I wish it to be, here. The unkind of the outside feels like ice on my skin. I wish only for sun. I ask only for sun.
*
I never did stop escaping. They called me names, they spat on me, and for those moments I was there. But I never did stop escaping. I never did stop escaping.
*
This is where I am. This is me, so beautifully. The deepest ocean, the saddest stream. This is where I am.
The memory was of a young girl me, walking home from school with my Mum. We’d taken a detour to the supermarket. The familiar supermarket— that was very much like my second home—felt odd. There was a heaviness in the air. A darkness. And that’s when we noticed the white chalk outline on the pavement out the front. A human body had laid there only an hour or two earlier, and it hadn’t been alive.
I won’t go into details about the conversation that was had between me and my Mum because, honestly, I can’t remember. All I know is that when the memory came up for me the other day: I was there in that street again. Little girl me, feeling the violence of the scene within my body. At the time, as I stood observing the chalk outline (in an otherwise ordinary, empty street) it had felt as though I was within the violent scene, watching it all unfold. It felt like hatred. It felt like fear. It felt like confusion. It felt like murder— and that’s where I’ll stop with the details.
It’s the way I experienced it all as a feeling that has me fairly well flabbergasted, and tends to explain why it feels like my sensitivities have been ‘muted’ for a great deal of my life. Because to feel to the degree that my body was clearly capable…little girl me obviously had quite the time digesting the harsh realities of the world. No wonder my protective mechanisms chose to shut it all down, to a degree.
That day, I felt the heavy ache in the air. I felt the violence that took place out the front of the supermarket, I even ‘saw’ it on the blank screen of my mind, even though the violence was long over with by the time we had arrived on the scene. How could my Mother have possibly made all that big stuff feel better for me when she had no idea what was going on inside of her little girl. All she knew was that the questions started firing (and let me tell you, they fired. For hours after, they fired.)
There is no point to this post. Only to say that I think I’ve found another healing breadcrumb which has opened up an even more miraculous can of worms for me to work my way through.
I also want to take this opportunity to encourage you all to be gentle with your own yucky memories as they arise. And to tell you I’m here, guys. And I see you. And I really do think they’re all better out than in.
So much mushy (we’ve totally got this) love. xx Brooke
Well it’s not so secret anymore, now that I’m telling you about it, is it? The language that lives within me that I don’t even understand yet. But post spiritual awakening there has been a distinct shift in the way my body and brain process information, and it’s all so fascinating to me I thought I might share it with you all.
Some of you may remember the blog post I wrote a few months ago about the new way I’d begun to release stress, that being: I visualise a black cloud of gas (stress) streaming from each of the energy centres in my body while I meditate. This seems to both calm me and make my physical body lighter, and so I use this ‘visual’ method to help move stress and anxiety to the place they truly belong (cough: not within me.)
Another interesting language of me made a comeback today, after my initial discovery of it in the very early days of my awakening, that being a language of both visual and feeling elements mixed into one.
In the early stages of my awakening, I began to experiment with Tarot cards and was blown away by the fact that reading Tarot seemed to physically move energy to different places within my body in order to emphasise certain messages within a particular spread. For instance, if the spread was talking about a powerful person, the energy within my body would feel very heavy and low while I was trying to decipher the message. This added physical element seemed to give me more information about the message the cards were asking me to deliver, which was both super cool and pretty handy, indeed.
It was a similar visual/feeling team that made an appearance within my body today while I was speaking with my new post-relationship counsellor, a young woman who also seemed to know quite a bit about this new woo woo world I’ve been thrust into. I told her the whole story from start to finish, from awakening to marriage separation, and as we began the tennis match of a conversation, I realised that my brain was trying to work in a visual/feeling method, once again.
As I began to describe the issue at hand to the counsellor— one which has been causing me great distress and confusion of late—I saw a dirty brown colour surrounding a visual scene in my mind’s eye. I described it to the therapist as feeling ‘dense and muddy’. This issue presented itself to me visually to my left, and down low (as if it were playing on a TV screen at my feet, just to the left of me.)
In the next instance, I compared this muddy issue with another scenario, and when I did, I instantly felt this as a lighter energy within my body (a little like the feeling of the wind that sometimes flows through me when I play or hear certain songs). The colour surrounding the visual of this scene was silvery-white— a fascinating contrast to the muddy scene I’d just experienced. This lighter scene appeared in my minds eye also, but to my right-hand side, and up high. (Thank goodness the therapist seemed well versed in talk of spiritual awakenings, otherwise, she might have thought I was a little bit (cough: completely) nuts, watching me point from left to right, down to up, trying to explain the invisible scenes laid out before me.
The interesting thing about this new me language is that it allows me a clearer picture of the way I feel about certain life events in comparison to each other. By adding a physical element to the scene I was describing, I found that I was able to gain a more accurate idea about how I really felt, and which issues I obviously need to work on some more in order to clear them up within me. Obviously, the lighter feeling felt better for me, and so I’ll now be able to go away and really look at how I might get more of my issues looking and feeling a little more like that.
Anyhow, I hope some of that makes even just a little bit of sense to you guys. You are more than welcome to think I’m absolutely nuts. If I wasn’t me, I’d think I was nuts, too, so you’re very welcome to swing that way if you’d like. Otherwise, this may encourage some you to pay a little more attention to the way that your own brains and bodies work together to help you deliver all your inner business into the outer world.
You never know what magic you might find under your own bonnet.
It’s a confusing time, to say the least, because suddenly I live in a world where the choices are mine to make, and the healing of all my most painful inner wounds must be done by me, and nobody but me.
I used to ask others to fix me. In fact, I was so dependent on others that, up until the day the universe tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Omg, girl. You need to be waking up right about now,’ I continued to think that everyone else was probably right about just about everything, which of course meant that I was probably wrong. Such is the slippery snake of low self-esteem. The particularly cruel thing was…when self-esteem issues lived beneath my surface, never once did I think that anything was amiss. Until, at last, I did.
When I ‘accidentally’ embarked upon this ‘awakening’ journey— this epic road to self-love and acceptance—I had no idea what was happening me. I was just happily going along in the world ‘being me’: writing my novel, being a Mum. Not much was different apart from the fact that maybe I kind of liked trees a little bit more than usual, and that the sky colour had changed from ordinary to brilliant, for some weird and wonderful reason.
That’s when the odd pull to exploring spirituality happened. I was particularly taken by the way energy lives in this world and the different ways energy works within the universe to link and move us all. It was all so mind-blowingly fascinating to me, and it only became more enticing when I discovered the ability (an ability we all have) to move this energy to wherever I wanted to move it in my body. Like, omg. Guys. It was like finding wonderland after never having even heard of it before.
(Side note: If you’re interested in trying to feel your own energy, it’s as simple as relaxing and thinking the energy into a particular area of the body. The foot is a good one to try. You’ll likely feel a heavy sensation, and maybe a bit of a tingling or vibrating.)
Of course, that version of me who was just ‘having fun’ with exploring my energy—including my psychic skills and all the rest—really had no idea what was about to begin, and that, actually, by entering into this process, I would be setting myself up for the ride of my life: the making of an almost entirely new human being.
‘I’ was no longer ‘driving’ me. That became obvious very early on, almost as soon as I’d made the decision to let my intuition (or, the soft girl, for those of you who are long-time readers of this blog) come out to play. I began to give in to the woo woo of it all, to listen to the ‘signs’ and follow my natural urges. It was like the universe was the fridge, and I was the magnet. It was not letting me go.
As a result, I found myself experiencing the past all over again, this time for the purposes of healing. I hadn’t even realised how much pain lived inside of me. I hadn’t wanted to realise, more accurately, because knowing it was there would mean I’d have to face it. Now, I did not have a choice. It was coming, and it was coming in the form of bucket loads of tears (not to mention ALL the MILLIONS of poems. lol. Have you noticed those, yet? 😛 )
Sometimes these wounds would surface in dreams. Sometimes they would be triggered by others. Sometimes I’d just naturally find myself thinking of something from my past, and just knowing that I had to figure out why that particular memory had surfaced after so long lying dormant. I intuitively knew these inner pains needed to go, and so I got rid of them; through meditation, through music, through nature, through talks with friends and my counselor.
As a result of all this ‘facing the music’ I am not the same person I was two years ago. I am better by far, and I am worse by far, too, and ultimately that’s the balancing point I sit upon right now. I can’t go back to where I was before all this began: that is the only thing I know for sure.
From the very start of this process, I’ve had the very clear knowing that this is all leading me somewhere, and the ego hasn’t liked the vague timeline it’s been given to work with one little bit. Where on earth am I going, universe? And how will I know when I’m there? But If I’ve learned anything of this process it is this: the universe absolutely knows where I am going. And I am absolutely not meant to know.
Yet.
A wonderful friend of mine, who often drives me absolutely batty with the simplicity he lives his life by, says to me this: ‘You think too much. I just pay attention to where my feet are right now. That’s it.’ I envy him this freedom, the freedom to be whoever he needs to be in any given moment.
And, actually, I know with all the deeper parts of me that he is right. Life really is in the moment that I am living right now, and funnily enough, reaching that conclusion on a more concrete level is very likely where all this is likely to end for me. If I’m brave enough to let go of the ways I’ve previously known to be true.
brooke-cutler.com 