Linking Energy and Language
Firstly, I want to acknowledge Jeff Carreira, whose eight month “Intensive” ended with a four day retreat last weekend (June 7-12). My book was an “articulation project”, which each participant created in some form. Writing it, and presenting it at the retreat, has left me with an experience of a deep emptiness. At this point Becoming’s urgency, at least as I had encountered its most intense aspects, has vanished from my experiential environment.
On the last day of the retreat, Jeff had us go for a “saunter” (R.W. Emerson style) with a partner and share the history of our spiritual path. One thing I’d forgotten in my reporting, but came at the end of the walk, was that at times when I was very young I often felt like I was at the bottom of a vortex of energy, much like water going down a drain. It seemed inescapable, as that intense flow was driving “me” downward. The experience was what I would describe as depression. On occasion, however, I’d drop into a deep silence. I was safe there, but the world always called me out of that space – for dinner, chores or just the noise of parents and 5 siblings – and the doorway out of that space led me back through the depression energy.
When sharing this with my partner, what came to me was that I felt very much in tune with that silent space and that the energy of wanting to be a recluse, which has been growing very intense over the last 6 months or so, was the call to go “home” to that silence. My retirement is approaching and represents a time that I could actually do that for the first time in my life and I can remain there if I so choose, though I was not conscious this connection. What came up in thought form was “I want to go home”. It brought me to tears both the moment that I saw it, and when I shared it with the group shortly thereafter. What is most curious now is that the intensity of the pull to be a recluse disappeared for a time. I am having sensings of it, now and then, since the weekend but the cognitive understanding of the link quickly releases its gravitational pull.
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