We ended on something of a cliffhanger last time. So I should probably give you a tiny bit of background.
The very short version is that I talk to walls. And myself. And a duck.
Really, if you keep reading now, you’ve no one to blame but yourself. 🙂
The short-ish version is that I started talking to the part of myself which keeps me from moving forward (that was Part 1) … which resulted in (Part 2) me having an awkward and uncomfortable conversation with my fear.
Which you’d think would be bad enough.
But no. Apparently, the only thing that would satisfy my fear was more wackiness.
Just how wacky? Here’s where we left off:
I asked about what was going to happen next and my fear said I had to go do some deep work with my second chakra and then I rolled my eyes and then my fear called me a pussy.
It was delightful.
And really, that’s when everything went crazy and the seriously weird stuff started happening, but we’ll have to talk about that next time.
I told you it was going to be weird.
I mean, it was hard enough with the fear and the blocks.
So if you have no idea what the hell I’m talking about, you’re in pretty good company. This wasn’t making any sense to me either — but don’t worry about it.
I’ll just tell you what happened.
Me: “Hey, you in there. Um, it’s me, I guess. No, it really is me. I just feel kind of weird about this.”
Body: “Do you want something?”
Me: “Well, this is sort of awkward. It’s just… apparently I’m supposed to be having a conversation with my second chakra or something.”
Body: “Knock yourself out.”
Me: “Aren’t you going to help?”
Body: “Dude, I’m right here.”
If at first you don’t succeed ….
Me: “Okay. Fine. So here’s what I know about second chakra.
It’s located in the lower abdomen and associated with reproductive organs. It’s the symbolic center for things like relationships and sex and money and things that have to do with give and take.
It’s about exchange. It’s about flow. It’s about movement. It’s associated with water and with the color orange. It’s about creation, procreation, giving birth to ideas…”
Body: “Knock it off with the yoga teacher routine, would ya?”
Long pause.
Me: “Okay, this stuff wasn’t even my idea. I don’t even want to be doing this.”
Body: “You know what this is about? This is the fear thing again. You’re petrified. And you’re avoiding me so you won’t have to have the stupid conversation.”
Me: “Yeah? So what?”
Body: “Just have the conversation. Get in here and have the conversation.”
Me: “I’m not even sure I want to go in there right now.”
Body: “I know, sweetheart. I know.”
Going inside.
So I went in. But I’m not stupid.
I lit candles. Some incense because yeah, I hug trees and I live in Portland. I wrapped myself in blankets and put Selma on my lap. And I started talking to myself.
I reminded myself that I am never alone. I reminded myself that I have huge reserves of safety and comfort and support.
And when things finally started feeling safe I said, “Let’s do this thing, baby.”
So we did. And it was horrible. I mean, not really, but at first glance. Ugh.
The first thing I found was an enormous pile of worms.
Big, fat, black, slimy, oozing worms. A massive tangle of worms. Moving slowly and steadily, climbing over each other in a pulsating mass of ew.
Instantly the fear showed up. I could feel my fear, poking me from behind.
Insinuating that it had been right all along. That there were things to be afraid of … and that these things are inside of me right now.
Gross things. Unhappy things. Painful things.
In fact, hinted the fear, it’s probably cancer. It’s probably destroying you. It’s probably too late.
I clutched my duck, and took a deep breath.
Me: “Hey, fear? This is so not helping right now.”
Fear: “But but but but! WORMS! Inside of you!”
Me: “I can see them, yes. And I’m terrified, yes. Here’s the thing. We’ve talked about this. When you put in me in fear-mode I get so paralyzed that I can’t act and I can’t help us.”
Fear: “WORMS! Run awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!”
Me: “I know you said you’d come with me, but what I really need right now is support and encouragement. And strength. Because otherwise, I may never find out what I need to find out.”
Fear: “Sorry, sorry, sorry. Force of habit. I’ll shut up now.”
Me: “Thank you.”
Fear: “But you know…”
Me: “Support and encouragement and strength, please.”
Fear: “…”
Me: “Thank you.”
Finding what’s there. Learning what I need to know.
I looked at the worms.
I really, really wanted to run away. Or throw up. But whatever, I’ve come this far. I had to ask.
Me: “So … hey there, crazy stuff happening inside of my second chakra. I don’t know what this is all about, but I’m feeling really nervous about it. Can I have some more information please?”
The worms all seemed to stop moving at once.
I wondered out loud, “Do these worms even need to be here? Is this what I’m here to see?”
And then they all disappeared. Gone. And I saw what was beneath all of those worms.
What I found was a nest. In my ovaries.
The nest in my ovaries had been built with what appeared to be feathers. Old, black, decomposing feathers. It was an old nest. Actually, I got the feeling that it was tired of being a nest. It was very tired.
Me: “No wonder you got filled with worms. You’ve been decomposing for a long time, nest.”
The Nest: “Yes, I seem to have forgotten my purpose.”
Me: “So you sent for me.”
The Nest: “I have been waiting for you for a very, very long time.”
Me: *bursts into tears*
We all forget our purpose sometimes.
Me: “Oh nest, I want to help you. I really want to help you. I’m so afraid that I won’t know how to help you.”
The Nest: “It’s lovely that you are here. So … what would you like to have from a nest? Maybe that’s my purpose.”
Me: “Well, I don’t know. A nest could be shelter. It could be a place to hide. It’s also a place to grow. And to store things for the future. It’s like a tiny little home for hope.”
The Nest: “I like the sound of that.”
Me: “I thought you might.”
The Nest: “I’m so glad you’ve come. And now I really have to go.”
Me: “What are you talking about?”
The Nest: “Goodbye, my dear.”
What happened next …
I waited.
And I thought about my nest. I thought about how it had a purpose once, but then that purpose had disappeared. The nest had been abandoned. And it forgot who it was.
Part of me was sad for my nest. And sad for me.
But then this other part of me was kind of thinking about how that is the way of things. You know, they grow and shift and change and die.
Next thing I knew, my fear was sitting next to me again. But this time it was quiet. It seemed as though it was thinking. Which was odd, because it’s usually so damn loud.
Me: “Oh it’s you again.”
Fear: “I have so much love for you. I don’t want to see you covered in worms.”
Me: “Yeah, me too.”
And then my fear was gone again as quickly as it had arrived.
The space felt bigger and lighter. More expansive. I wondered what I was waiting for. And then it came.
I found myself in a gigantic wooden bowl. But it wasn’t really a bowl. It was a new nest. Made from wood. It smelled a bit like cedar. It was clean and welcoming. I mean, for a bowl.
The question.
Me: “Are you my new nest?”
The Nest didn’t really say anything but it kind of beamed at me.
Me: “I feel comfortable here. I feel safe. I think I like you.”
The Nest: “I will be here for as long as you need me. You know my purpose and you know where to find me.”
Me: “Wow. Trippy. I’m going to write this down, but this is way too crazy for a blog post.”
Fear: “No kidding. No one will ever read your blog ever again if you write about this stuff.”
Me: “Oh, you’re back.”
And that’s where we left it.
Is it crazy? Yeah, kind of. I mean, absolutely. But that’s what happened.
It’s not like I’m done talking with blocks or anything, but I’m feeling more comfortable with the whole thing.
And I guess maybe my fear isn’t as impressive as I thought it was — those worms didn’t even scare me half to death. Though I have to say, I’m glad they’re gone.
My fear is still around. My old companion. It’s just that things are different between us. Less fight-ey.
I don’t know when I’ll be visiting my nest again, but yay — it’s there. It’s mine.
That’s a start, at least.
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And a wooden bowl nest seems so much more durable than a feather nest that rots. that is such a nice image.
And it’s nice to know that sometimes just looking at hte worms and not being afraid of them makes them disappear.
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Hi Sweetie,
I’m just loving these posts about your inner journeys and the worms and nests and bowls and walls and watching you transform your relationship with your old pal, fear. And I don’t know where you get the idea that you are not a visual person, cause those meditations you have been sharing with us are like watching a movie! I mean , man oh man, the way you described your process I could SEE those worms, and the moldering black feathers and the warm and shiny wooden bowl.
Just sayin’.
Also just came across this quote on Twitter today. It reminded me of what you are always saying about our “Right People.”
“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” Theodor Geisel
Love you bunches,
Chris
chris zydels last blog post..CONQUERING THOSE NASTY, INNER CREATIVE SABOTEURS
Here’s to the awesomeness that comes with big, clean smelling, welcoming nests. And talking to blocks. And saying buhbye to scary piles of worms. (And for making it totally ok for all of us to do the same thing.)
I thought this was very profound. It’s amazing when you reach that space, and it’s wonderful watching you make this progress – it’s inspiring!
Joely Blacks last blog post..“Seriously? You were OK with it?”
Wow! What an awesome post!
This is really powerful shamanic work you’re doing! Thank you for sharing this!
I’m currently working through an amazing book that links to the kinds of conversations you’re having with your psyche. It’s called THE POWER OF STORY: Rewrite Your Destiny in Business and in Life, by James Loehr.
It’s all about discovering the old, disempowering stories that invisibly shape our lives, and then consciously rewriting those stories to serve us.
(I saw your link to this post on twitter. I’m @royblumenthal or http://twitter.com/royblumenthal.)
Blue skies
Love
Roy
Yaay, Havi, and clean wood bowl for a new nest! 🙂 You’ve made such beautiful new nests in the past few months. Happy House. Kitchen Table. Rest for your wrists. No-email nest. Time-for-you nest.
Wishing you love and shelter and safety for your tender heart, and for all that’s gestating in your beautiful belly.
Love, Hiro
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Havi:
You certainly didn’t lose a subscriber here (as you posted on Twitter). I’m still digging through the dirt to get to the worms that I know are there, waiting for me. I hope to work with/through them as well as you did. You’ve made a milestone. Congraatulations!
Please keep talking to your blocks out loud?
It makes me feel less insane when I find crazy purple boxes living in my heart. Or that my internal thermostat of normal-ness is actually a snooty butler named Jeeves. (Yeah, that one surprised even me.)
This is beautiful. And open and vulnerable and wonderful. It made me cry and smile.
I hope you and your nest are very, very happy 🙂
Sarah Marie Lacys last blog post..Sooner or later.
Thanks for having the kahones, or should I say “nest,” big enough to be to real and transparent out here. Whenever I’m feeling like I want to be opaque, or I think I might be happier turning invisible, I know I just need to stop by and read any post to get all inspired and goosebumpy about transparency all over again.
I visit here more often than I comment.
So on days like today, when my brain wants to scream that I’m a total idiot who has so very wrong ideas about this whole “I’m choosing to be the person I want to be” thing, you are a calm voice of reason. Even when you talk to a tangled pile of oozing worms. Especially when you talk to them.
Thank you.
[Charlene]s last blog post..On The Road. Again. Still.
Hi Havi!
I’ve done dialogues with various parts of myself before and always am so amazed when I hear these various voices within … one of the most surprising was when I talked to my Fat … I heard the most loving, motherly voice. Not at all what I expected! I renamed that part of me Fat Mama. And, even though the voice was loving, I don’t think I can trust it.
I’ve found dialogues to be so helpful and revealing, and I’d love a way to go deep like you did here … I’m curious about your process … it didn’t sound like you were journaling, but meditating, perhaps, or visualizing, with those vivid images. I find that I sometimes lose track of my thoughts or myself when I’m visulalizing or meditating, so I tend to stay on paper … does the focus just come?
I’m not sure if I’m asking this quite right or clearly, or even what I’m asking. But, maybe someone will hear something in here and answer. Maybe it was enough to just put the thoughts out there …
Thank you Havi for sharing this.
Sarah
I’m so thankful you shared your journey, your fears, & your worms. I love your wooden bowl nest too. I’ve got a very old antique wooden bowl that I use for creating home made bread. I’ll be looking at it as a nest now. 🙂
Keep doing good work!
Ah man! I love this post, it made me laugh, jump (literally, those worms – ugh no wonder you were scared) and get all choked up and feel all lovely. That’s a lot to feel from just one post.
Can I just say (again…) you’re about my favouritist fear spokesperson ever. You have so much grace about it and more than a mountainful of compassion for yourself.
You kinda blow my mind. Thank you 🙂
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I was thinking along the same lines as Chris above, that your real people will get what you’re doing when you talk to blocks (even if you start talking to cement blocks). If the role call for “your people” changes, that’s because it needed to.
Terry Heaths last blog post..Rampant Creativity and Capitalistic Tinkering
Wow, this was great. Sometimes I wonder if it’s just me, who has all of these weird internal analogies/events and stuff. But apparently not, yay!
I don’t want to poke about your nest.. but the first thing that came to my mind was that a nest is the place where you raise baby birds. Maybe it’s other people looking up to you (ie. kitchen table people), or your own potential for babies. Ovaries and all. Just saying.
And you totally did not lose my as a subscriber. (Yay Twitter!) I hope your MacSpeec Dictate keeps you writing these awesome posts, without hurting your wrists. 🙂
Walking with you on your journey has helped me with mine. You’re helping me see that my fears about an event scheduled for very soon are really deep protection issues that have taken on a dark hurtful energy of their own. They’re hurting me by over-protecting me. I’m not sure how to turn them off. I listen to your Destuckifcation mp3s and they help, but those fears are powerful. But, at least, I see them now for what they are. Thank you for sharing.
Oh my, I love the bowl. Makes me think salad which makes me thing a combination of a bunch of distinct parts, very different from soup; but all of which go well together.
You’ll not lose readers. Promise. Well if you do they were never meant to be here anyway. Keep on keeping it Havilicious.
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I’m so glad that your nest healed itself and became stronger. How do you communicate with yourself like this? I wish I could do it too.
This is so interesting (oh, ‘interesting’, look at me go with the brain over the heart again, hello, comfort zone). I associate the second chakra mostly with ‘home’, and ‘home’ is something I have a great need for but don’t always know how to do – along with ‘safe’ – fairly obviously because my childhood home didn’t really feel like home, and certainly didn’t feel safe.
So I could do with a lovely internal wooden nest of my own, but I seem to find even the thought quite scary – I think it’s a fear of relaxing and letting my guard down.
Thank you for sharing this stuff. It is inspiring and encouraging and gives me all kinds of ideas for new ways to get on with my own fear and stuckness.
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not going anywhere, h.
I hope you take this as a compliment. . . Made me think of Shel Silverstein and the Giving Tree. Good Stuff.
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Wonderful! You are doing such great personal work, Havi. Making friends with all parts of one’s self–this is the Great Work of authentic transformation.
I love how strange and wonderful the unconscious is sometimes, with the nest and the worms and the bowl. I have some seriously strange parts too–fun to hear about other’s!
Duffs last blog post..Transformation by Donation
Thanks for sharing these dialogues. Here’s a poem that bowl reminds me of so much:
ADOLESCENCE–III
Rita Dove
With Dad gone, Mom and I worked
The dusky rows of tomatoes.
As they glowed orange in sunlight
And rotted in shadow, I too
Grew orange and softer, swelling out
Starched cotton slips.
The texture of twilight made me think of
Lengths of Dotted Swiss. In my room
I wrapped scarred knees in dresses
That once went to big-band dances;
I baptized my earlobes with rosewater.
Along the window-sill, the lipstick stubs
Glittered in their steel shells.
Looking out at the rows of clay
And chicken manure, I dreamed how it would happen:
He would meet me by the blue spruce,
A carnation over his heart, saying,
“I have come for you, Madam;
I have loved you in my dreams.”
At his touch, the scabs would fall away.
Over his shoulder, I see my father coming toward us:
He carries his tears in a bowl,
And blood hangs in the pine-soaked air.
Thank you for sharing this post with us.
I’ve had some interesting meditation experiences, but I’ve yet to talk to my fear… Which probably means I’m afraid of doing so..
Thanks for another wonderfully insightful post and I’m glad you’ve come to a compromise with your own fear.
~Rose.
.-= Rose´s last post … Minimalism =-.
I’ve been trying to talk to some parts of me, but I keep stopping after one or two questions/answers. So, clearly I’m not getting very far.
After reading this, it occurred to me that I might just start by asking about that.
– Why don’t you want to talk with me?
** I don’t know you and I don’t know what you want.
– Oh, I can understand that.
** There have been times in the past that we have talked with other people we didn’t know and then we’ve gotten in trouble — even when we were telling the truth.
– I’m sorry. I can imagine that was really hard. You’re being honest and then bad things seem to happen.
** No, bad things DID happen.
– Right. So you’re worried that that could happen again.
** Obviously. We’d rather just keep to ourselves than open up a can of worms and get in trouble again.
– Did you always get in trouble when you shared the truth before?
** Well, no, not exactly. We weren’t punished directly, but we definitely suffered as the consequences of what we said rippled out.
– Ugh. So frustrating.
** Yeah, I mean they do all this stuff to warm us up to them so that we’ll share, but they didn’t say anything about what was going to happen afterward, so it was a giant (terrible) surprise.
– Sounds like it made you feel tricked and then regretting that you had talked to them in the first place.
** Yeah, that’s pretty close. I didn’t want to talk to them, and then they kept pulling it out of me, and then I did talk to them, and then I suffered for a lot of years afterwards.
– Do you think they wanted you to suffer and that’s why they were trying to get you to talk?
** Ummm. No, I don’t really think that was their intention. They were really just trying to help.
– That’s interesting. Sounds like they were trying to look out for you and make sure everything was okay.
** But they didn’t make me feel safe before getting me to talk. They whole time I felt scared and frozen and wanting to leave the room. They didn’t even offer me a cup of water or a teddy bear to hold or anything.
– Awww, I’m so sorry. I totally understand you wanting to feel more at ease before talking with them. Is there anything you’d like right now to feel more comfortable in our conversation?
** Ummm. Yeah, I’d like a purple blanket and a Tropical Capri Sun, please.
– You got it! Here ya go.
** Thank you. -smiling and getting settled-
– You’re so special and I really like being with you. Thank you for letting me know what would make you feel more comfy.
** I feel better now and like talking to you, too. Is there anything else you wanna talk about?
– Not right now, hun. Let’s just sip on our Capris Suns and we’ll talk more later.
** Okay. I like that idea. *sip sip sip slurp smile*
Thank you for your blogs. I’m a stuck writer and they’ve made me feel a lot better about my process and also given me inspiration to go and have a chat with my own second chakra. ????