me too - what's next

 
     Some inner contractions just take time to reveal and to heal. With the inquiries I know this means welcoming sensations, images and thoughts without judgment or any need for resistance, even though this too can be held with care.  This spiraling release is happening for me, a layer at a time, and it has been quite a ride thus far.  
     Many, many years ago I went to see a photographer at Carnegie Hall to take what are called head shots for my portfolio at the time. He came highly recommended and the price was right. I arrived at the scheduled time and at some point, during our initial conversation as he was showing me the photos of famous actors and musicians that he had taken, he gave me a glass of ginger ale.  It was not a closed can, and frankly, I thought nothing of it. Shortly after drinking however, I began to feel fuzzy; different. In the end, I lost about seven hours that day, the contents of which seemed frozen and untouchable in the furthest tundra of my unconscious body and mind.
     Over the years I tried many modalities to help my body unwind the little I consciously knew of what happened. Nothing worked and nearly 40 years later, things have finally begun to unpack and clear. I want to share a few things that led up to this unwinding. First, that I had been practicing inquiring and looking almost every day for about four months. And that I had attended a five-day meditation retreat during that time in which I experienced an expansion of pure consciousness, an awakening experience that seemed to make every cell in my body sing with acknowledgement. In addition, the day after the retreat I was in my car listening to NPR when an interview came on with a woman who wrote a show about her experience with a date rape drug that HBO picked up.  I believe all these events were in perfect timing for what came next: As I was listening my body began to shake, my abs became hard as rock, my hands were clutching the wheel for a sense of stability. I had to pull over and surrender to the movement that the intelligence in my body knew to do. 
     Thankfully, I resourced all the skills I had learned – releasing narratives and expanding Awareness throughout my inner and outer body with gentle care. This shaking pattern repeated over the course of several days and was the focus exploration in my practice inquiries.  After my body had apparently completed its shaking off of fear and shame, I reached another layer that I sense is quite important in all trauma work. And this is the direct encounter with the experience of horror. What I knew until that moment was to hold the feeling of horror at bay, to be horrified at it, put it outside of my mental experience and react to it. Deny it, be angry at it or anyone who acted horribly. I could see the projection quite clearly:  It was easy to be horrified at others so that I did not have to feel the horror within me.
    Big breath.  Here we go.  This is the ‘what’s next.’ In yet another inquiry, I discovered that pure, open consciousness can hold the depths of terror and horror without falling apart.  I discovered a unity between perpetrator and perpetrated, for in the moment of that act, he entered me not just physically, but energetically. I felt my horror and his. His shame was my shame and yet, finally, as the horror became infused with consciousness, I could honestly feel compassion for this man. The ‘what’ next is not the speaking of what happened, for surely that I have done, but encountering the felt sense of horror that has no solution. Pure horror infused with consciousness is yet another experience no longer denied by layers and layers of defense, rejection, projection, hidden agendas, cultural resentment and the like.
  I wrote the photographer a letter as there were things that I did want to say, not to my therapist, mentor, husband or practice partners, but to him. We are, as they say in quantum physics, observer participants, and this was also my way of participating.  I never heard back from him, and did not expect to, but I can now hold the predator and the prey, the victim and the abuser, the horror and the grace of healing in me and in us.