The Horse I Rode In On

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!