FoV: Friday Night
Sep. 30th, 2009 02:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabrinamariOn Friday night, the ritual, drumming and fire teams worked together to create an emotionally charged place in which each participant could literally confront embodied demons from their past.
It offered us the tremendous opportunity to speak with our pain and choose to let it go.
{Want to know how? Come next year, when we will do something else just as gutshaking and profound.]
I was working, but I had my own demon to confront. I was fortunate and got to do it.
Next year, I want to make sure everyone has that chance to do it (or its ritual equivalent), especially the drummers, fire tenders and Keepers who work so hard to build the space for everyone else.
demon story
My demon wore the face of a man who succeeded in humiliating me badly about a year ago. It was totally unexpected and unlooked for, and he caught me completely off guard.
This man was acting from a chasm of pain all his own, but he cut me really deep, because he triggered visceral memories of the contempt I experienced at the hands of my ex-husband and raised the echoes of about 20 years of bad parenting.
I managed gracefully in the moment, but took away a bitter hatred of him despite the fact that I could see how deeply damaged his own history had left him. This man was raised by a family of human Komodo Dragons, and I see that his survival was something of a miracle. Yet I could not separate myself from the whiplash of his contempt, and I became trapped in ugliness: a fervent desire to see his slow and methodical dismemberment.
Over time, I started to get random flashes of rage, shame and humiliation at odd moments as I remembered his words and those from even further back. It felt nasty, yet somehow addictive, simultaneously titillating and repellant. He came to stand in for everyone who has ever humiliated or abused me, and when I was frustrated or angry, his image would conveniantly appear in my mind's eye to serve as a focus for my anger.
Really, really nasty stuff.
On Friday night, I understood what was being offered to me: a chance, a choice, a possibility to do/be something different. I could choose to taste that ugliness, and know it, and then loosen its seductive hold. I could let him, and what he represented, slip away. But damn...that would mean giving up my self-rightous rage, and just seeing him as another, slightly more crumpled, reflection of me.
Thinking about what I was going to do helped me to whisper this truth to each man and woman who came into my tent, offering them the same choice.
To accept a powerful change, it must first be offered as a choice. We always have a choice, and at some level, we know it. So I gave them the choice, and then waited to see what they would do.
Bodies and voices do not lie. Demons give evidence of their passing. I believe many of them chose release.
In the moment, I especially loved the ones who were utterly terrified, angry and enraged. They looked just like me. They looked just like me when I did it, too.
It offered us the tremendous opportunity to speak with our pain and choose to let it go.
{Want to know how? Come next year, when we will do something else just as gutshaking and profound.]
I was working, but I had my own demon to confront. I was fortunate and got to do it.
Next year, I want to make sure everyone has that chance to do it (or its ritual equivalent), especially the drummers, fire tenders and Keepers who work so hard to build the space for everyone else.
demon story
My demon wore the face of a man who succeeded in humiliating me badly about a year ago. It was totally unexpected and unlooked for, and he caught me completely off guard.
This man was acting from a chasm of pain all his own, but he cut me really deep, because he triggered visceral memories of the contempt I experienced at the hands of my ex-husband and raised the echoes of about 20 years of bad parenting.
I managed gracefully in the moment, but took away a bitter hatred of him despite the fact that I could see how deeply damaged his own history had left him. This man was raised by a family of human Komodo Dragons, and I see that his survival was something of a miracle. Yet I could not separate myself from the whiplash of his contempt, and I became trapped in ugliness: a fervent desire to see his slow and methodical dismemberment.
Over time, I started to get random flashes of rage, shame and humiliation at odd moments as I remembered his words and those from even further back. It felt nasty, yet somehow addictive, simultaneously titillating and repellant. He came to stand in for everyone who has ever humiliated or abused me, and when I was frustrated or angry, his image would conveniantly appear in my mind's eye to serve as a focus for my anger.
Really, really nasty stuff.
On Friday night, I understood what was being offered to me: a chance, a choice, a possibility to do/be something different. I could choose to taste that ugliness, and know it, and then loosen its seductive hold. I could let him, and what he represented, slip away. But damn...that would mean giving up my self-rightous rage, and just seeing him as another, slightly more crumpled, reflection of me.
Thinking about what I was going to do helped me to whisper this truth to each man and woman who came into my tent, offering them the same choice.
To accept a powerful change, it must first be offered as a choice. We always have a choice, and at some level, we know it. So I gave them the choice, and then waited to see what they would do.
Bodies and voices do not lie. Demons give evidence of their passing. I believe many of them chose release.
In the moment, I especially loved the ones who were utterly terrified, angry and enraged. They looked just like me. They looked just like me when I did it, too.
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Date: 2009-09-30 07:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 08:50 pm (UTC):::Thunderous, transatlantic applause:::
You are so fabulous.
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Date: 2009-09-30 09:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-01 07:58 am (UTC)*Excited*
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Date: 2009-09-30 09:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 09:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-30 10:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-05 02:19 pm (UTC)~hugs~
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Date: 2009-10-06 12:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-23 10:01 am (UTC)