Raging to See the Truth of Who I Am

I’ve hired a trusted man to help be an anchor in my life. That is to say, in the traditions of peace tending, a person who is an anchor in your life can catch your stories, ask good questions, and guide you deeper into the mystery behind your shadows. As my friend Jon Young likes to say, an anchor is a person who throws flour on the “invisible man” to make the invisible visible, the unconscious conscious, and if they are really good – they help us surface and allow us to see and name in ever more accurate ways those parts of ourselves that act on us unconsciously.

Now, in indigenous times you wouldn’t hire someone to be this for you in your life, you would have lots of “aunties and uncles” or grandfathers and grandmothers around you all willing and waiting at the fire for your story. But alas, the world is a bit amiss at the moment and we don’t all have this luxury, if we are lucky we might have a few close friends, but even those are getting rarer these days.

So this man, his name is Mark Tollefson , went out to his sit spot last week and created a beautiful, safe container for me to feel my grief within. He met my stories, shared some of his own, read me old tales of poetry, and held me as I went deeper.? At some point, I felt rage in my body, not violence but just the energy behind the grief that wanted to be expressed beyond tears. At the end of our time together he gave me an assignment to hold at least 3 rage ceremonies this week.

For today’s rage ceremony, I am going to combine my 5 Rhythms movement practice with my rage practice. Meaning, I want to experience rage through the 5 different rhythms, such as:

• Flowing – How does rage flow through me? How do I feel it (inner tracking sort of thing)
• Staccato – What is the push-pull feeling of rage in my body
• Chaos – Well, that’ll just be pure rage through dance expression
• Lyrical – How does rage integrate into my body after being outwardly expressed
• Stillness – How does rage live in me when I have died to?it,?surrender?

As the music began, I lay on the floor on my back and asked myself, “Where does rage live in my body”. I wondered where do I feel it, how do I feel it, and how do I connect with it in a healthy dialog. Doing a body scan, I felt the bulk of rage in my solar plexus region, that space between my belly button and my heart center.

Then I started thinking about rage as an expression of love and wondered where else I might feel it through that lens... I thought about rage in sexual desire, an orgasm, or raging to birth a child and bring life into this world, and felt my pussy in rage. Then I felt rage in love with another, when I got hurt or dropped, or when I couldn’t feel you, and I felt rage in my heart. I thought about when I suppressed or pushed down rage, and I felt rage choking me in my neck. And when I am all caught up in a story, projecting my shit onto another in a mental masturbation of intellect, here is where I felt rage in my mind.

All this was happening inside of me and we had barely even begun our 2-hour practice!

Gratefully with the music now in a “Flowing” melody, I decided to start moving around because I could feel myself getting stuck in the manure of rage and not wanting to do this practice at all. My bratty inner teenager was like, “I don’t wanna do this, it feels heavy and hard and you can't make me” (insert foot stomping and arms crossed bitchy tantrum)!

Just then I moved past the side of the wall that's mirrored but has a sheer curtain over it so you don’t see your reflection. I stopped at this and stared at the curtain and now I am thinking about the wall of grief, that tsunami of our life wounds that lay just beneath the think veil of our skin and I’m thinking that there is just a sheer thread of cloth between who we project ourselves onto the world as (our facade) and who we truly are – but are we willing to see, to know, the truth of who we are?

Suddenly I became aware of this visceral, full-body fear that has now entered my consciousness with terror. I realize that as I am looking through the sheer curtain, I have a fear of what is looking back at me. What if what meets me, or worse yet who meets me on the other side is the truth of who I am... is me reflecting back onto myself?? And in that very moment, I realized that I feared I might go insane. All this felt too big for me to take in at that moment, so I turned away and kept moving. But the thought never left my mind... or my body.

As the music started transitioning to the “Staccato” beat, I began feeling the push-pull tension of rage in my body. I wondered what is my story of rage. Is it bad or taboo, unsafe? Or is it healthy when not too much? But what is too much? I didn’t like this feeling but the music seemed to drone on forever as I felt the buildup of energy in my body wanting to move into chaos to free me from this tension.

At some point, I came up to the mirror again, but this time I got behind the veil and looked at myself in the mirror. I looked into my eyes and saw worlds within worlds looking back at me. I was not one person, but an infinite gaze upon eternity. I was captivated to see myself looking back at me. I didn’t see a human looking back at herself, I saw life itself looking back upon itself and I was mesmerized.

Eventually turning back onto the floor, the melody of “Chaos” is now in full gear. I suddenly felt rage in my full body as a primal expression and I got down on the ground, thrusting the rage of a disconnected culture, of childhood wounding, of forgotten children, of dying elders... and each and every expression wanted to burst out of my body. I could hear guttural cries from my mouth as I thrust and swirled my legs, my arms, and my head. Whatever part of my body could move, it shook violently and it felt like an eternity as I moved the chaos of rage through my body.

I could feel my consciousness dissolving as the energy kept moving through me and I ended up in front of the mirror once again. This time I raged at the mirror and in my reflection, I saw the Tibetan deity Mahākāla. The one with the power to dissolve time and space; who exists as the void at the dissolution of the universe.

Finally, I could feel the chaos moving into a “Lyrical” melody as I began spinning around in circles like a Sufi whirling dervish. Around and around and around until I fell to the ground unconscious, though I felt my body bounce off the hard floor.

The next thing I knew, I was weaving my body back together with this energy that was flowing out of me in a language I spoke, but did not know what I was saying. It was as if something else was coming through me, re-membering my body as I sewed myself back together.

The melody was now moving into “Silence” and I lay on the floor in prayer and gratitude to the keeper of this practice. I am trying to relax into my incredibly exhausted body when all of a sudden I begin to shake. Not trembling per se, but it is as if my nervous system is off-gassing some energy. I don’t know how to explain it beyond this other than they say that this shaking or trembling, which comes from the?limbic brain?(the part of the brain that holds emotions), sends a signal that the danger has passed and that the fight-or-flight system can turn off. They are literally finishing the nervous system response to release the traumatic experience from the body.

Animals often die if they are unable to shake off the trauma, but in humans, it may evolve into mental or physical illness. Humans also shake off trauma, but for some, the shake-off response isn’t available thus the trauma is held in the body.

But today, in my willingness to show up and face myself in my rage – in the mirror to see the truth of who I am – I must have released some really old, really deep, ancient perhaps, trauma.

If I worship you from fear of hell, burn me in hell. If I worship you from hope of Paradise, bar me from its gates. But if I worship you for yourself alone, grant me then the beauty of your Face. – Rabia Al Basri