We have this saying when someone dies – it happens in threes. Bundled tragedies. Endings, stacked end to end, so similar it’s – poetic.
Like all good cliches, this idea came to be because it is, in fact, a little too true. We’re in the middle of a trio of tormented, drug-addicted, famous young + beautiful Hollywood boy deaths. It’s just another striking pattern that shows us how connected we really are.
In my own sacred circle, the same cycle is illuminated. Someone I can say I have loved more recklessly than any other is apparently in that state – and he’s destructive enough to do the deed. The kind that will either end things in a dramatic, self-induced blaze, or will snap like a dried-out twig and ascend back up to absolute greatness. He’s been there before, but under false pretenses.
Then there’s another soul, a Shaman friend, who has sent not-so-cryptic messages hell bent on giving up.
As if we need more proof that even our mere thoughts are cataclysmic to the whole grand scheme. We are so foolish to think that we live in these invisible silos, convinced that it’s perfectly fine to destroy ourselves, because no one else (or very few, anyway) will ever be harmed.
As one of these destructive beauties used to say to me all the time – get your head out of your ass. It’s all completely contagious – darkness, light, and everything in between. The moment you take on your own self-healing, it ignites the fever for countless others. And the moment you decide, fuck it, I’m ready to passively (or not so passively) end my selfish misery, the domino effect hits, full tilt.
There are. No. Walls.
I say all this with with complete love and empathy for those contemplating the ultimate exit. I have been seven minutes away from such efforts – so said the ambulance driver. Someday I’ll be able to put into words what it felt like to lay on a stretcher inside a speeding, screaming little truck, four faces looming above me, shoving down tubes into every conceivable body part, making jokes about their wives and telling me how close I came to success. Or failure. However you slice it.
I didn’t know then that I was spreading my disease. I gotta believe most of us don’t. It just makes survival all the more pivotal. We’re not doing this just for our immediate circle – it really is universal. It really is the only way to say I Love – to take care of yourself. To take on the task of intensely painful, mind-numbingly difficult healing.
I am in the thick of it. I am trying to reject the purest love I’ve ever known, outside of the Divine, because of my insistence on projecting my fears, while keeping up the arduous task of punishing myself for unknown atrocities.
But the mere fact that I am aware of these efforts – it’s a miracle. And it, too, is contagious.
I know that I’ll emerge, that proverbial Phoenix, and take thousands of others with me. I know that I am ascending, even in the wake of this new wave of mad destruction, because others are doing the same. I don’t have words for how grateful that makes me feel.
If enough of us say – I am Love. I choose to Heal.
Than those who refuse to make the choice will soon have no choice. There’s no where to go but up.
Separation doesn’t exist – it never has. In the old days, this would have been a profoundly horrific realiziation – I couldn’t bare the cosmic pressure, so the Universe kept the truth from me. I found out in a shamanic circle, purging layer upon layer of self-hatred, and discovering my light – and thusly, my power. I have no more or less than anyone else, but the fact that I Know now – it shoulders an immense responsibility.
Yes, I concede that I am in darkness this eve. The kind with sparkly stars (I swear I can see Orion looming just above my crown).
I will find a way out because I have no other choice. There will be no tragic three for me – it’s the only thing my spiritual self asked that I give up. I can admit that tonight I miss Her – the chance to indulge in self-destruction (an idealized task I loved so fiercely, I named her Consumption). I would love to once agian pretend that I can abuse myself at will, and no one will know, or be affected. But tomorrow, when the sun blasts into my heart again, I will be joyful for a chance to keep healing – myself, and everyone else. No more delusion.
Who knows, maybe we can make a new cliche.
