I am happiest when I am quiet, when everything is quiet, and listen best when there isn’t much visual input. I close my eyes a lot to focus.
I have trouble watching plays — too much going on at once. If I am listening very intently to you, I may turn my head away.
Both my traveling companion and my housemate in Portland find it baffling when they tell me something and I don’t understand it, and the reason is because the radio is on in the background, and I am overwhelmed by sensory input.
All this to say that I am most emphatically an auditory person…
Not only do I orient towards words and sound, but add to this HSP empath, and kind of witchy, and what you get is someone who a) can access more intel than a lot of people, and b) this happens in the form of words.
Sure, sometimes I see and feel things too, like when I found a nest in my ovaries, or the time a wall inside of me melted.
If you’ve read those pieces though or any of my writing, you know that the vast majority of my processing happens through listening, allowing things to be revealed.
Seeing.
Five weeks ago I entered some new internal territory (hello, Year of Releasing) which includes chronic pain, among other things, and another interesting piece to this is that now I am seeing things instead of hearing them.
Today I wanted to share some of what I have seen in the past couple weeks.
The copper bowl in the wrong place.
I was doing a Tami Kent exercise which I learned from Danielle Cornelius. You sort of imagine clearing out your pelvic bowl.
I saw the bowl instead of what would normally happen which would be feeling the bowl and then the bowl would talk to me.
It was a large copper bowl, in a wide open clearing in the forest, and it was in the wrong place, but I didn’t know the right place, and I wasn’t able to do anything with that other than receive it: this isn’t the location. This was the for-now location.
I was sweeping out the bowl with a broom, and the broom and I had a little laugh about how this is kind of like the secret purpose of a witch’s broom: clearing things out. The flying is a disguise. Or maybe flying is another form of clearing things out and releasing.
Wolves.
The wolves came then and circled the bowl. They couldn’t get near it because the bowl is protected, but this felt so very familiar.
Predatory energy. It just is. It’s everywhere and always has been.
I didn’t have to do anything about the wolves because some wise elders, women, from my lineage were there — clear, zero tolerance for bullshit. They just pointed towards the forest, and the wolves immediately slunk away, slightly apologetic, as if they’d already known they weren’t allowed near me or my bowl.
One of the women showed me how to point like that, with authority and a total lack of concern for what the wolves think they want.
You stand very tall, and you get very grounded, and you look both strong and bored at the same time. A comfortable, careless, sovereign knowing: this is no space for you, wolves.
The anger cauldron.
I found a cauldron inside of me and it was boiling anger, and had been for a very long time.
Probably anger about all the constant bullshit I deal with from wolves, past and present and theoretical and just the general culture of that. And the injustice: why is our world built to support the desires of wolves and not the safety and protection of bowls.
It was uncomfortable being home to an anger cauldron. The cauldron was heavy and old, and so many things had boiled down inside of it that it was coated in charred bits of old recipes.
I pointed out that once our bowl finds its right home and I get better at this authoritative pointing thing, we won’t need to cook up anger anymore, and then the cauldron seemed to feel relieved, and it left on its own.
The gazelle and the flower.
A gazelle came by and circled the territory of my right ovary in a loping gait, graceful, powerful, at ease. My left side bloomed with pale pink-purple flowers.
Everything felt calm.
The temple of yes.
It’s an altar of stones by the ocean and it is the place of yes.
I put flowers around it and hung out there for a while.
The ocean was peaceful and spacious and it told me to come back soon.
A conversation with a special table, and then more sights.
A few days later I was getting some physical therapy in Salt Lake City, on a very unusual table.
I asked the table what it wanted to tell me, because clearly it had things to say, and because I am a person who hears things. The Table said:
STOP CARRYING.
Put everything down. No, put everything down. Really and truly everything.
(You can pick it back up later if you choose to, but first you have to experience what it is like to not be holding it.)
Then it asked me to just watch. So I watched.
The table stopped talking, and for the next hour it just delivered images…
First the cages.
Giant wrought iron bird cages and then small ones.
These were guilt. Ha, I just now got the pun. Guilt/gilt.
Normally I would have gotten that right away because I would have received it as a WORD.
This was image, followed by feeling. I saw the cages, a procession of them, and then I knew what they were.
Guilt cages.
The cages demonstrated the uselessness of guilt. It can’t be contained, so you just end up caging yourself. It limits freedom but it doesn’t hold anything in.
The cages understood that they were unnecessary: I let them go, and they let me go.
Stacks of boxes.
Then shame: messy looking cardboard boxes, like moving house, all shapes and sizes.
They were taped up tightly, some with messages scribbled on them. Most of the boxes were falling apart, a little damp, moist, old, ragged. Enough boxes to fill a supermarket.
The thing with shame is that it doesn’t need you to look in the boxes. It’s the not wanting to look that strengthens it. It doesn’t really matter whether you look or not, since lugging the boxes around is a futile pursuit.
I followed the table’s advice, and let the boxes go.
Back to cauldrons.
Once the guilt cages and shame boxes cleared out, I was able to see how much anger I’ve been holding onto.
Cauldrons of all sizes, black, iron. Old potions had been cooked and forgotten, coating the insides.
I didn’t want to let the cauldrons go yet, but then I remembered the part about how I can reclaim anything I want later. The purpose of this was to discover who I am when I am not living on a slow burn of fury at the world for what is and what has been.
The cauldrons marched themselves away when I agreed to let them go.
Let it burn.
What happened next was a series of surprises. I expected the room might get cooler when all my internal cauldrons left me, but it actually got hotter because suddenly there were fires everywhere.
The fires were fear. Forest fires of fear. This made no sense to me, it didn’t fit how I experience fear. And it wasn’t what I thought I would find beneath the anger.
I circled the fires and the fires circled me and I didn’t know what to do. I felt helpless.
The Table said: Let them burn themselves out. Don’t feed them, don’t worry about them, don’t be afraid of them (because that’s feeding them). Trust them. Trust their work of burning. And trust that this fire cannot hurt you, it’s just a process of endings.
LET EVERYTHING BURN, said the Table. And so I did.
Once everything was black and charred, a breeze came and lifted it all, and then there was nothing.
That was when the grief came but I didn’t cry.
I sat where the fires had been and let bowls fill with water, and let them empty.
Grief, grief, grief: rituals of releasing.
Then the horns.
After grief was another surprise: Regrets.
They were musical instruments, and there were so many of them. Rows and rows and rows of French horns. Then saxophones and trumpets and drums and all manner of things, but mostly French horns.
Not being played, just placed down. So many of them. Like watching an airport parking lot fill up with instruments.
I saw a house from my memory, and remembered what the regret was.
I wanted to touch the instruments, ask them why, but the purpose of this was to let them go, so I said I LET YOU GO, and an entire airport parking lot of French horns floated away.
Places and roses.
I waited for more emotions to come to me in unlikely shapes, but that part was done.
The table showed me all the physical places in my life where bad or unpleasant or unhappy things have happened, and I was asked to turn these into rose gardens or let them become rose gardens.
It was surprisingly easy, now that I had let everything go.
All I had to do was agree: This space can now become a rose garden.
Four summer camps, six cafes, apartments, book stores, street corners, buses, trains: all rose gardens now.
Then I became a rose garden.
Bowl.
The table told me that my only job from now on is to live in my garden and tend to my garden.
I walked through my garden and in the center was a beautiful elaborate labyrinth made of small stones. And the center of the labyrinth was my copper bowl. It had found its home.
I practiced pointing but there was nothing to point at because wolves don’t know about my garden.
The bowl asked me to wander the garden and remove any machinery or any “gifts”, anything that does not belong there because it is not mine. Things people want me to store for them because they feel safe with me.
I found objects belonging to former clients and internet people and people who have had crushes on me and former bosses and my ex the Spy, and all of it had to go. WHOOSH GOODBYE.
Stop caring.
When the garden was happy because all of the not-belonging-here belongings were cleared out, I sat down next to the bowl and waited for more information.
Here is what came:
STOP CARING
What?! Why? Why would I want to stop caring.
I didn’t understand.
The bowl said, sometimes caring is another form of carrying.
A door into glowing.
The bowl explained how this works. Stop caring means:
- Stop caring what people think.
- Stop caring about how you look.
- Stop caring in the sense of over-empathy with all the bad things, where you feel the pain of the world and it becomes yours, where you get so upset with injustice that you can’t function.
- Stop investing in other people’s opinions, philosophies, judgments.
Caring makes it real, and it’s not real.
It is a beautiful illusion. So stop carrying and stop caring.
Also this means stop caring in the sense of worrying, for example, the way I am currently all worked up about my illness right now This whole experience of pain is just a door to get me centered, grounded and focused downstairs, it is healing all my tendencies to float around in my head.
It is MOVING ME downstairs (a parallel to what is happening in my actual home because The Havi Show is the funniest), and this experience will help me be a better healer, dancer, writer and glowing flowing person.
That’s what the bowl said: Trust. No more carrying/caring. Let yourself care less and be more.
Next.
The treatment ended and I asked the table what is next. It said:
YOU ARE HEALED AND WHOLE.
YOU ARE HEALED AND WHOLE.
YOU ARE HEALED AND WHOLE.
And then after that.
And then that evening I got angry with my lover for the very first time, and then we made up and then we watched a movie, and there was a spectacular releasing of grief, which lasted for hours, undoing and undoing and undoing some more.
And then after that.
I am practicing.
Practicing looking in addition to listening. Noticing if and when I’m carrying/caring too much. Bringing my attention downstairs instead of just living upstairs.
Being curious about what I can put down and how that might feel.
Letting “healed and whole” be an option as a thing that is possible, even when I am in pain and in process and figuring stuff out.
Allowing airport parking lots to fill with French horns, if that is what is needed.
Giving permission for things to move and change, and for me to ease-and-release my way through it, to rest my way through instead of fighting my way through.
What would you like to stop carrying? Come play.
Keep me company!
Anything you would like to set down and let go of: it’s the month of releasing in the year of releasing, this is as good a time as any.
Other things that are welcome: hearts, pebbles, warmth, sweetness, any sparks sparked for you while reading,
As always, this is beautifully safe space, and we are able keep it that way by the intentional practice of not giving advice and not going into care-taking mode. We remember that we all have our stuff, we’re all working on our stuff, it’s a process.
We meet each other (and ourselves) with as much love as we can.
Follow
<3 <3 <3 <3
Thank you as ever for sharing these internal voyages.
I would like to stop carrying the guilt and shame I hold about the fact I am human and imperfect. I would like to release assessment, comparison and judgement as such significant methods I use to navigate the world. I would like to ease into curiosity, acceptance and discernment as alternative practices.
xoxo
Wow. *Wow*. There is tremendous treasure in this post. Thank you so much for writing it, and for sharing it.
One of the hardest things for me to release is the perceived need for love and approval from others. I want to see if I can let my own love and unconditional acceptance be enough. It’s a practice. I can play with this.
Sending love and gratitude to you for sharing your adventures. <3
I have been struggling so much with the month of release. This came as a real surprise to me, because I loved May, the month of reverberation. I gave myself the best care, and I was able to receive it completely. I got clear and beautiful images at every shavasana, and I was feeling pretty great. This month, though, release has been so painful in every way. I became aware of a pattern (not dissimilar from the one described in the blog) in which I treat self-care as a way to get myself back to work so I can work even MORE! And get even MORE done! I had been telling myself that I had this MORE! MORE PRODUCTIVE! attitude because I am in a terrible, complicated work situation and I cannot extricate myself until I get certain things finished. I believed I would stop treating self-care the way professional athletes treat cortisone shots once the terrible thing was done and I could move on. The month of release has made it clear that this attitude is more than just the miserable work thing. There are a lot of things I am holding on to so tightly it actually hurts, and now I know that I can’t keep doing self-care just so I can keep clutching these things. The most difficult part for me is that I recognize many of the things I’m holding on to – and I thought I had let them go already. I badly want to let them go (fling them away from me and run the other direction, more like), but I am also trying to respect that these things have new lessons to teach me. I read an article this week about children who have someone close to them die, and this psychologist was saying that children have to go through the grieving process again at each new stage of their lives. I wonder if all pain is like that.
I am grateful for this wonderful blog and the thoughtful commenters and the invitation to set everything down. I am grateful for the radical idea that my self-care is for the hard work of letting go and setting down, and hopeful that this leads me to a better relationship to my working-for-money work (even if I cannot picture it just yet).
-o-
??????
A dear friend of mine told me recently that love isn’t the same thing as caring in the over-empathizing, carrying-all-the-bad-things-and-all-the-bad-feelings sense of caring. This was honestly one of the most shocking things I’d ever heard in my life. I’d spent so much time thinking that love is holding other people’s pain and feeling other people’s pain as deeply as possible, as if feeling everything would help me understand them and help them grow and help me grow with them.
I like the image of the garden. Love isn’t putting other people’s things in your garden and stacking them up and up until there’s no more room for you to walk around. Maybe instead it’s helping others organize their stuff in their own garden. Or it’s carrying something for just a little while, and then returning it. Or it’s simply saying “wow, that is a beautiful garden you have. Please tell me all about it.” Or more than one of those. Or something else. I don’t know the answer yet, I guess.
Not sure why it says my twitter is blauralum. It’s literalshipley 🙂
This post was an amazing journey – thank you for sharing it.
I want to let go of… (ironically) letting go of things that hurt. Instead, I want to welcome into my life things that feel good/are satisfying.
I have realized that I need Work (even if it’s not paid employment), because that’s where I derive most of my life’s satisfaction & challenges from. I need to be good at something that other people value. I need to find what that is.
I love you, brilliant, beautiful witchy one.
So many surreal-but-lovely images in this post, btw.
I am so utterly lost for words right now. I’m a long-time lurker (gotta find me a nicer word for that!) here but this post and your last one have resonated so strongly with me that the vibrations have forced me to break my silence. I am sending you infinite hearts (which, of course, you are free to then release / let go of) in gratitude for all that you share here and for all the chords that your writing strikes inside me. You’ve inspired me to embark on an odyssey to find my bowl and return it home. I have the teensiest inkling that it is a crystal singing bowl deeply embedded in a solid granite boulder. I wish for a pick axe of truth to help me excavate it and the superpower of melting millennia-old solid things that appear to be utterly unmeltable.
May it be so! What a beautiful image: that feels true. I am rooting for your truth bowl and your truth axe. <3
Now I’m intrigued what this unusual looking talking table looked like! I love old furniture, but I never thought of asking it questions… Well to be honest, I’m rarely asking anything & anyone questions, which is something I would like to learn from you. To listen more.
Things I would like to release…
– The need for outside approval of any kind. I would love to experience what it’s like to not hold it.
– Caring/carrying for other people’s problems that I’m able to fix because I have the knowledge and experience, but I don’t have the time or energy. I would like to be able to gracefully say no and accept it’s not mine to deal with and that anyone can learn what I learned.
– The guilt I feel when putting up boundaries that makes me accept all sorts of uncomfortable things like unwanted physical touch, or even talking to people I really don’t want to be around at all.
– The shame of all the things I’ve done and allowed when I was 10 years younger, barely more than a child really, and I know I didn’t know better and how much more I was worth. I know I cannot learn to love the downstairs until I’m able to release this shame.
Thank you for this opportunity to share our releasing wishes, and thank you for shearing your releasing rituals with us.
Hearts & sparkles for you ? ~ * ~ *
Hands-down one of the most beautiful and powerful posts I have read.
As Selma used to say, “!!!”
I love this post. It’s like a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Without the hell bit.
“With authority and a total lack of concern for what the wolves think they want.” Wow. I love this. I can actually picture myself doing this, too. Like, literally. To point and say “Git!” Ha!
And a labyrinth! Of course!
I have a sad trombone to put with the French horns. It’ll be OK there.
Oh, and It Is Not Safe To Relax, who is a monster in the shape of pressing your thighs closely together. You’re among friends here, lil dude. Thank you for all you’ve done for me.
You can go free now.
This was so sparkly beautiful. I have been doing Tami Kent meditations for several years now but that was the most beautiful way to experience them – this gives me a new perspective on how to sink in and allow the meditation to show me what’s there. I want to release caring so much about the emotions I encounter at work, at the emotions I feel about when my body is not aligned and tight, and all the emotions I’m feeling about having people help me after a wreck. So much love to all of you.
The words I want to say don’t seem to want to form. So I will leave a heart here, and include within it all the words that aren’t forming, but want to.
<3
glowing appreciation for this post
and smiling about the gilt/guilt cages. word play = delicious. (me i see my guilt as a quilt sometimes.)
oh and gasp! about the rose gardens. so beautiful.
<3 for Havi, and
<3 for all who need one. There are enough!
I want to release problematic associations. I've noticed that some artistic media/techniques/practices tend to be surrounded by a culture of… meanness. Elitism. Sexism. Unsovereign behavior that's definitely not okay. Some of these media/techniques/practices are appealing to me, and I want to explore them. But I keep getting derailed by my WUSIT reaction. I want to release the art from the dysfunction of (some members of) the community surrounding it. I can play with my art by myself without involving those people, or their limiting beliefs, or their troublesome behavior. So yeah. Free the art. Release the associations. Send the monsters who are no longer needed off to color on their own.
May it be so.
Letting go of fear and rage and guilt and shame. There is SO MUCH I feel wants to release but that I’m afraid to release.
I tried to do an Ideal Day visioning the other day and I was consumed with terror. That feels like a clue, but I’m not sure what to do with it or where to even begin the work of releasing.
<3
Love and Hugs to everyone (including me).
This just showed up from a friend – all in perfect timing: http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/riveting-story-behind-that
Wow, the imagery there is amazing! <3
Boxes: I wrote a piece many years ago on packaging up old feelings into boxes when they're no longer useful.
The table: I named my blog "I'm a table" because it can be whatever you want/need it to be at any given moment, depending on what you add to it.
Wolves: There are a few wolves lurking nearby in my life at the moment; your image of pointing Sovereignly at the wolves to banish them is a wonderful (and very helpful) way of looking at this problem. Thank you!
xx
Thank you Havi, and yes to stopping with the caring and the carrying, yes to burning the cleansing fires, yes to finding the cauldron in its true home.
Such perfect timing this post and perfect timing when I read it because I am also HSP and empath-y and a little bit witchy. And I told my husband today that I no longer care about what other people think about me OR my uterus and what we decide (my uterus and I) about what will happen next. And I said also that I don’t want to share anymore because too many people (although well meaning) have no clue what it’s like to be me or how to take care of me and that’s okay, only I know that information and that’s okay too. And I said it’s time for me to listen more and talk less because that’s how I get the messages, although I usually see the messages and lately it’s been the opposite, I get quiet and I can hear them. Thank you Havi! So much of what you say sounds so much like me and it’s so helpful and comforting to know that I am not alone, that there is indeed someone else out there like me. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
So interesting to read this magical post and all the comments. It intrigues and mystifies me that we can all have these similar experiences when we are at the edge of what can be said about them. I’ve been imagining a self-help book called ‘How not to care’, which might have told me what I’ve had to stumble through. But then, I find that I can hardly learn this stuff from the outside in; it is more like recognising it in someone else’s words and then stretching into the space they’ve made, and getting clues on what direction to head next. It is so very hard to get used to letting other people’s feelings be their business and not my secret responsibility. But here we all are, so far on from where we were, from what we were given, from our survival strategies, from what has been convenient for others, from the best we could think of, and I know because we can understand each other. This week I want to enjoy my life. My determination has come back after the concussion but my energy has not, so I want to direct my determination into enjoying my life, just exactly as it is today and this week. Here’s to the mystery.