Context

Here’s what I was holding onto, to hide from terror, while I was writing that first substack:

Have you ever run down a wilderness trail? After hiking up the mountain? Then you let yourself go, go down, heavy booted feet and all, and run?

It’s a blast. Adrenaline, wind on my face, animals. As I’m running, I’m alive, in the wilds, with unknowns: alert! >< Iguana, sunning itself. I half leap, half stretch, over him, clearing him. Running downhill, sudden stops are not an option.

At the bottom, standing still now, it feels like I’ve left a version of my body behind. I feel that/my body arrive and flow right through me. Another rush. A rebound, it bungees back in and through me, behind me again. Keeps yo-yoing, rather ecstatically, for a long time.

And, what does this have to do with the Rascal?

I am sobbing on the floor: On days when I don’t get even a half hour, 30 minutes to engage with something worthwhile, it is truly heartbreaking. 1

That takes me right into the full experience and Act 1, the first 3 months, are even more raw. I clearly wanted to skip that. In my Mutant perspective I hold this more positively—it is, can also feel very like the mountain-running, yo-yoing experience.2

Pain and fear

Out of heartache
Along with fear
There goes the fear again
Doves. There goes the fear.

On the floor is actually a terrifying time: slate it away, hide from embracing the fear, shove him the Rascal aside. I was doing that and fooling myself when I thought Act 2 The Rascal and the Mongrel was actually the first act, Just the Rascal.

Separation peril

Embrace ecstasy? Easy! E.g. I’ve been skiing deep powder in the big mountains today. And, as my dear friend Teresa Zimmermann so accurately puts it, there are:

few things as close to sex as skiing

I know, with ecstatic feelings, to let my awareness rest there. To wait for my bodies to arrive back from the mountain, sinueuxing their way down. Back, I can feel this, vividly and viscerally, a version of me is arriving, flowing through, with:

A snaking, fluid rushes as I arrive and then flow past. I feel the rhythm of my breath, shallow and panting. Deep breaths, afterglow.
My legs, a lovely sense of jelly and strength, they are still powering and powdering, both in my physical body here and catching up from the mountains.

Yet, there is danger in the mountains. Late yesterday I set of an avalanche. This time, however, I did not hide from terror. As Teresa so articulately puts it, I:

Purposefully let myself roam the wilderness

Initially, somewhat intuitively, I left the shocked version of myself stay back up on the mountain. While doing that, I was gifted David Deida’s outrageously wonderful insights of why this is so important.

Deida adds some meaning to my intuition: It’s easy (for me) to be calm and blasé about something like a small avalanche. That’s to say easy not to notice the fear or a frozen self. And that is a mistake:

Open and feel all experience, exactly as it is—and also act in the most beneficent way. Otherwise, even if you take the right medicine, your closure to experience will re-enforce your habit of separation.^

says David.

My natural reaction is to ignore fear.
In the moment, at the time, that’s really useful:

ACT.
Get out of the danger zone. Srsly, you don’t want to be on a slope the top slab is fracturing off.

But:

Your heart will feel a little more unquenched, your self more solidly knotted in a depthless world with less love available as you withdraw from the spontaneous display of now’s deeply open whole, as it is.^

Animals don’t close. They shake, violently, post fear.
We do too. But, I am programmed to think of myself as separate from animals. I was socialised to think I should be able to overcome everything. If not? Programmed to think ‘inadequate’. That programming helps withdrawal.

Then:
Your separative resistance as you pull away from feeling any experience creates the habit of solidifying a “me” and its subsequent ripples of loneliness, alienation, futility, meaninglessness, and the lack of love.^

A version of myself, on the mountain, spent the night breathing. Fear, air, life, love, meaningfullness, connection.

Cause we’re connected, oooh…
All tangled up like spider webs…
Can you still hear that cosmic spark?
Dark
Luke Dick, Connected

I will totally take that.

No more hiding from him, the Rascal. The real Act 1 is here>.

You

And how about you, do you hide from pain?

What happens inside as you explore that over time?

^ I am deeply indebted to my dear, dear friend Teresa Zimmermann including inspiration for titles, to write, comments, to integrate the songs … and so much more.

^ David Deida, Waiting to Love: 13. Gritting Teeth and Love’s Yawn. https://amzn.to/3GTdzMd or public library

^ Picture: Festina Lentívaldi, (be) Benevolution. Reuse: Creative Commons BY-NC 3.0 US.