Primal Screams & Thresholds of Death
Come mid-autumn, something inside of me, something in both my genetic substance and my subtle conscience, wants to dissolve, to break down, and to be consumed by the earth so that it can alchemize and transform. Last year when this happened, I was terrified, distraught, crying in public places without warning. This year it entered a crucible when my body released a primal scream one evening while I was home alone, facing old narratives that had to die, and had been controlling me for far too long with their wormtongue subtleties. I realized I had continued to listen to them because if I didn’t listen to the old narratives that once-upon-a-time kept me safe, then who or what would I listen to as a guide to safety and security?
When I screamed from a depth previously unknown to me, I knew I was at the threshold of an abyss. Everything I had believed about myself before this moment shattered into useless bits, elemental remains, that I had to re-integrate and alchemize into an entirely new story--an elixir of a regenerated myth about my life, what it means, and where I am headed. I did not immediately feel the bliss of freedom from the corroded and familiar narratives. Rather, I dropped into a pit of emptiness for the next 24 hours. Yet, somehow, in those 24 hours, I stumbled into an old friend: faith, rusty but strong. Faith in me, in my winding and surprising path. I grabbed faith’s hand, and asked her to hold me as I took some time to breathe. She not only held my hand, but she pulled me closer and began to whisper in my ear, “what you want, what you long to be in the world, what you desire most to give, is on its way to you. It will all arrive in a moment, surprising and undeniable.”
When we allow the corroded stories to shatter, to break down, to die, we cross a threshold into an abyss of nothingness. A blank slate, more often than not, doesn’t begin as a relief--we tumble into an unfamiliar and dark landscape where we must begin to find our way without the familiar guideposts. This is where terror can either paralyze us or motivate us to begin now, this very moment, to find a way through. Once we begin to move, to find a way through the dark, we start to develop trust in our senses, our intuition, our own authority. None of our previously acquired skills are useful here, and so our intuition comes to the forefront and we begin to pay attention to its wisdom, nourishing its seemingly mysterious and irrational processes with imperative faith.
Faith. I have lost my mind. In the hours leading up to my primal scream, the surrounding circumstances were not devastating, but were merely disappointing as plans were simply delayed to the next day. So why the primal scream? In the midst of this minor disappointment, a deep and corrupted story was brought to the forefront of my mind and overshadowed my flexible and understanding heart. I can now see that this corroded story had been subtly making its way to the surface for weeks as I found myself less and less motivated to tend to the basic tasks of living. This minor disappointment released the warped narrative through my body with a dark thundering sound I have never made before. Losing my mind, allowed me to open to the possibilities that I so deeply desire.
Faith. When I realize that all the doors are open, and have been all along. Already, I see where doors opened for me and I didn’t recognize it as a step closer to my desire rather than a setback. Faith. A reckoning of all that I have been given and how it has refined me, carving away at the heavy layers of vigilance I added through years of trauma. That’s it. The opposite action of faith is vigilance--vigilance to prove and to earn my worthiness. I have been keeping vigil to my worthiness for a very long time, and that primal scream snuffed out the deceitful light that continued to cast shadows of my distressing past on everything I saw and felt. Faith reclaimed me from the depths with a resounding thrashing. The return of my faith did not come gently as one might imagine, but she returned as a sovereign warrior with a battle cry of inevitable, terrifying, and wondrous beauty.
At that moment of the primal scream, I remember thinking, “I have lost my mind!” And then I repeated that thought again, but this time aloud, “I have lost my mind.”. And I realized that this is exactly what I’ve been needing for so many years--to lose my mind. My mind has had a death-grip on the narratives and tools that kept me safe in a traumatic childhood. A death-grip. These narratives know that they are destined to die because they understand the power that they guard will obliterate them. These narratives have been resisting with a strength that is fierce, but unsustainable. With all this resisting, they have become brittle and fragile, lacking the nourishing elements that only my sovereign warrior has the wisdom to cultivate. Once the narratives blew up in one primal scream, I had to take a look beneath the surface of my life. I am beginning to see how these narratives cause all sorts of disconnection and fragmentation in my life. Most of all, this corrosion has stunted the flow of sweetness.
Somehow there was sweetness in the terror as I faced an unknown abyss of nothingness. This dying is a threshold I do not deliberately cross, but one I seem to inevitably fall into--tumbling through a dark tunnel completely unaware of where I am going or what is in store. Bits of my ego are falling away as the earth mercifully asks me to soften, to open, to ripen, to hang heavy with sweetness rather than remain high on a branch, destined for bitterness.
I did not realize it then, but the old corroded stories built up and created the release of the scream. Which means that the new stories, the new myth, will build up and create the release of the life my heart desires. Like the scream had arrived unexpectedly, my desire will arrive with a surprising celebration. And the secret potion that will revive my faith, and get the gears of my sovereign power going again? Sweetness. Not to be confused with niceness, naivety, and all things sunshine and ease. No, sweetness that breaks down beneath the earth’s surface to give roots the pleasing qualities of consumption. Sweetness that comes at the end of a season filled with storms and relentless sun. Sweetness that captures and fascinates and enchants. Sweetness that requires darkness as much as it requires light. Sweetness that feels pleasure and pain, that knows pleasure and pain. Sweetness that commands attention when she is ready and ripe, not a moment sooner. Sweetness that sits with heartbreak, loss, and the torment of the soul. Sweetness that bestows faith on friends and family who offer me sweetness. Sweetness that trusts resilience and regeneration. Sweetness that laughs with generosity rather than chastises with shame.
Now that I have reopened the flow of sweetness, this does not mean that corroded narratives will never build up again. I am not immune to the cycles of human nature, nor do I want to be. I want to be part of the process, paying attention more and more to my relationship to myself, to others, and to the natural world above, below, and within me. I will continue to become conditioned to tools and methods that serve me for a time, until they don’t. But hopefully, as I develop my attention, my compassionate and curious attention, I will recognize the leaks and stresses before they escalate to catastrophic shatterings. As I heartfully pay attention to the habits I am forming with each new phase, I want to continue to tend to any minor wounds with sweetness and faith rather than with shame and vigilance.
Shame and vigilance are the language of a traumatized and wounded mind while sweetness, compassion, and faith are always the language of the heart. I want to become fluent once again in the sweet and trusting language of the heart in order to restore the language of the mind to its constructive employment. When my mind is employed by my heart, rather than working for itself and thinking it owns my destiny and success, my devotion to the life I am creating becomes infused with a magic and powerful torque that feels effortless.
My mind, my ego, thinks it knows what it wants, but it doesn’t. It thinks it wants predictability and values a limited number of resources which it hyper focuses on, narrowing the possibilities I pay attention to. My ego, my mind’s wormtongue, had to be cast out with an undeniable and thunderous call to stand back and to recognize the power and sovereignty of my heart. The ego had to die, once again. But it never really dies. It gets cast out like an exile and hides away for a bit, but will slowly find another way back into my mind. Our minds are simple like that--easily deceived as they latch onto patterns and shiny things. When I cross the threshold of death, breaking the grasp of my ego, my heart is renewed and restored to its governing throne. It is a holy throne, a hallowed throne, that commands reverence and awe. My mind wants to serve the heart. Truly. The heart has ancient wisdom the mind will never comprehend. As I remind my mind to trust my heart, and simply do as it is asked, the sweet flow of faith will carve out the life I know is my birthright, and I will remain sovereign and enchanted.
