Recently, at a private session with
an extraordinary healer and teacher of Energy Medicine, I expressed my
frustration at how much, after a lifetime of personal work of all kinds, I
still suffer. For all the healing work I’ve done, I can, on a daily basis, fall
into states of self-hatred that seem like it’s all there is, was, and will ever
be. And while I know this is a feature of clinical depression, I am remarkably
high-functioning for that to be an accurate or complete diagnosis. It’s as if
it’s my default setting — triggered by the slightest breeze that might ruffle
the forward movement of my day…. letting the oatmeal catch, not getting the
laundry done, finding an hour has passed when all I meant to do was glance at Facebook; or, if nothing in my
local life gets me there, thinking about the rich getting richer, about war,
global catastrophes, my mother, and all the other mothers and fathers, in
dementia. There is always something.
My teacher said to me, “Riva, you
came in on the Suffering Line.” Oooof. The feeling of a blow to the solar
plexus, but then, the exhale of recognition, the light of understanding, of
hearing Truth. I understood her to be saying that it’s my design to see through
the lens of suffering and that it’s
my lineage, it’s in my DNA, the collective memory to which I am most powerfully
connected. And then she asked me this: “So who are you?” Typically, this sort
of question brings me to a deer-in-the-headlights state of being. Frozen
terror. She spoke some more, describing her own experience — who she is in
relation to her lineage story. She said, “All those who came in after me on the
same line as I did are able to change the story of that line because I did.” And then, with an easy certainty
that is also ferocious and always
gets my attention, she said, “I did
that.”
What we do and who we are as
individuals impacts everything.
For all my mystical ways and my belief
in magic and the unseen, my habit of mind when I feel “caught in the headlights”
is to try to figure my way out of the oncoming danger with logic and linear
thinking. In this case, I put together a quick analogy that looks something
like this:
My teacher’s lineage is to who my teacher is as my
lineage is to who I am.
Resting in the logic for a moment,
a clever formula that I imagined would yield up a result and answer the question “Who am I?” without my having to suffer and struggle, got me unfrozen. I took a breath, still hoping that before I'd even taken in the full import of what I'd just learned, a story to match hers would
emerge.
And then she went on to say that we must start our healing work from
where we actually are. “Most [which included me — and oh how I hate to be
typical], begin at a distance from the true starting point. She said, “You must start from where you came in.”
Reframing it for myself, I thought, “I must tend to the horse I rode in on,” and
as a person with 4 planets, including Sun, Moon, Mercury, and Chiron, in
Sagittarius, it’s really a pretty good way to frame it.
So, I make a beginning at learning
who I am, having come in on the Suffering Line. What I know for sure is that I
am a gifted and accomplished sufferer. And I am also someone who can see/feel
when others are clinging to their suffering stories like it was the only thing
keeping them tethered to life. Every once in a while, I am able to shine a
light on that clinging in a way that helps them loosen their grip and to shift
the suffering as only compassionate witness can. So there’s that. Without having
consciously known why suffering is such familiar ground for me, this
familiarity, coupled with a pretty good, if dark, sense of humor, has fueled
the service I do for others. Perhaps, to begin at a slow, steady walk down this
road, the better question might be “What are the gifts of my lineage?”
The horse I rode in on — the
lineage of Suffering — when I bring my awareness to her, when I take time to
tend to her coat, lovingly stroke her beautiful face, give her a tasty apple — I see she carries with her certain other qualities, easily missed in the compelling pain of the suffering. What I see is Survival, Empathy, and Compassion. I can work with this. I can honor
the truth of the suffering. There is, after all, reason to suffer. But just maybe I can
change my relationship to the suffering when I pay attention to its fruits. Taking a page from my Buddhist sisters
and brothers: There is suffering.
I am an expert. Now What?
Mounting up and ready to ride!
