As I write this here in the fall of 2004, we’re in that time known as the Time of Falling Off and Dying. When we go deep into ourselves to see what’s there. I’ve been doing my best to make friends with the denizens of the Underworld. They’ve pulled me down into their realm quite a lot in the last few years. It’s been hard, and it’s been so healing as well. It’s amazing what you can find when you let it happen in the natural flow of things. I’ve had parts of mySelf come together in ways I never thought I could do. In one journey I actually did a soul retrieval and joining for mySelf – something that’s not so easy to do on one’s own. The little boy in me that was sundered so long ago, the part sent to live in the Underworld and the part here in the light of day – the two came together in an experience of such viscerally awe-some tenderly gentle union and

I’ve been different ever since then.

More Whole. More who I Am.

So much healing in the dark. When I think of seeking Enlightenment, it’s not how most folks think of it. For me, it’s using the Light to see what’s there. It may be of the Light or it may just as well be of the Dark. We need them both. With the light I can see to sort out what needs to stay there to keep me in balance, and what’s reached the time to fall away and into that space where it becomes CosmicCompost, from which the new life of the universe arises. It’s as Sacred as anything. It allows us to learn what bits of wisdom may come our way. It’s not easy. it’s really very challenging. And I’ve had so many challenges in my life. They’ve taught me to be so much more compassionate and for all the pain and suffering I think I’m a better person for going thru it all. Of course I’m writing this when I can feel the energy of Spirit flowing freely thru my veins, when I know I’m filled with what some call Divinity. I call it the Spirit that moves thru all things, the energy that animates the galaxies, that comprises all life as one by it’s very nature.

It’s what we mean when we say holy –

Whole, not split into shattered pieces that have lost their sense of connection. 

And we are all connected. I’ve been going on about myself but it’s true for all of us in the ways each of us must learn it. My way is not for everyone. Oh Fuck it’s not. But it works for me, I guess anyway. So hard to tell…. I try to stay in touch with what’s going on in the world – there’s so much Danger out there for my queer and bipolar kindred. We need to know what’s going on – in our own communities and in the world as far as we can know it thru the distortions of the mainstream media, and even the slants the alternative sources share. But I can only take so much. I can’t watch the news. I just cry and cry. I don’t even need to watch it. I can feel it anyway. I’m so empathic. A Gift so dear so much of the time, yet so difficult to bear when you can’t shut it off. One of the “gifts" of having a chronic illness, especially one like the Manic Depression I get to experience life with,  is that life changes all the time, and the extremes are enormous. What I feel and say right now may be totally different than what I feel in an hour or so, or a day or a week or a year. It’s so unknown. I continually try to dance on that razor’s edge. It lets me experience things that most people never get to know. I go so high sometimes – way up into that great Mysterious that is the universe – raw and untouched by the human illnesses of greed and corruption – pure in it’s pristine beauty, vicious and cruel in it’s constant dissolution and destruction. A gift I say, but so many times a curse.

One thing is for sure –

you see how truly precious life is when you spend much of your time feeling suicidal.