A Day of Piecing Myself Together.
Relapse-dissolve, surreal-miasma, sort-twine — >transmute; a play of words. Alchemy.
First, a non-apologetic explanation to the weary text skimmer.
This isn’t your cup of tea.
It’s wine mixed coffee. Grief drunk, will to sober, spark the neuron’s story.
This is how we deal with trauma — disassociate, hide soul-spark, come back in broken pieces, stitch ourselves together.
Every genesis starts in chaos. Tohu wa-bohu, confused, shattered pieces, a suggestion there was something before.
Find yourself, breathe into the ocean waves, feel the yarn ball tangle of Tiamat’s cat, these strings of life, Indra’s net.
Grab a thread, begin to weave.
This story starts two days ago after a surgery and a friend’s overdose. (You can read my thoughts on grief and providing support for those wrestling with mental illness and addiction here.)
Yesterday, I wrote an article on soul loss. It wasn’t that great.
I wrote it from a place of loss, bits of myself were missing.
Editing, I noticed entire simply weren’t there. The work was a misspelled jumble of half-formed ideas.
I felt tired. My eyes were dull and when done, I said goodbye to the world for several hours and relapsed into my own addiction. My own descent.
Today I am piecing myself back together. What you read is an example of the mind returning, the soul returning, it’s a demonstration of the process, a performance ritual, a journal entry.
It will get clearer the further you go. That’s how the mind and soul work when returning from pain and descent.
They’re dazed at first. Scattered. They don’t care about the rules because they just need to live.
In time, they bring themselves back together and remember the labels of “I” and “You” and the many ways we structure the conversation between.
I’m reintegrating, so it’s choppy at first. It’s how these things go.
The soul doesn’t heal in linear lines.
A nod. A hint. Open surreal gesture.
I woke up and sought to dream. Googled “surreal generators.”
My eyes were dull from the pain and addiction. We’ll get to that later. Here in ache and hollow there is no time for todays or tomorrows.
No moment to be seized, just the hollow bone and the flitting hint of bird crumb trail.
The winged path through amygdala rested on surrealism.
I went fishing still in bed. Summoned titanic strength to click, click, click the word generator as I watched worlds pass by.
Each vanished unseen, birth and apocalypse in less than a breath, returning back into the nether until I stopped clicking and caught rough beauty.
It took polishing, some hitting of [delete] and a letter here or there but we arrive with this:
i draw angry tongues beside the sky.
taste evil eruptions in the mist.
Be transparent. The King is good.At how many harbours
your brother
looks for landmarks
never knowing how?— Language is a virus.
Yes, my day started with surrealism but amidst the swarm of fish winged butterflies the meaning making power of mind caught a clue and told me this:
“We’re in the pleroma, the state of chaos before creation, before change.
“You have poured yourself out. You have made room for new growth.
“Embrace the chaos, the hollow, and then act. Set yourself against it.
“You are flame. You are diamond. You are mirror.
“Set your body of facets, your burning faces against the world.
“Watch the play of prism. Breathe.
“You will birth life within your chest before this day is done.”
Relapse-descend-dissolve.
Our stories are like viruses. They are shared, they change parts of the mind and our expectations. They reproduce.
Monday’s story of relapse got caught and processed as my own.
To be honest I didn’t spend much time with my friend who passed but I know his family well and remember him clearly.
I feel the grief has much to do with his smile, the one I’m holding in my head beside the image of him cold and still, the needle, and his mother bent double, weeping.
It is reflected in my own addictions, in our shared challenges of mental health struggles and my memories of friends, loved ones, and clients.
These images build a mystery, an initiation to witness the zeitgeist of addiction. This pained turmor weeping in the world soul.
I don’t know if it is part of the human condition or a unique aspect of my own arrangement of stars and experience but there is a process I go through when I risk the inner world’s initiation.
Something happens in life or a sensation starts form in the pit of stomach.
I get a glimpse of what’s coming. A revelation or an integration of the soul, the mystery’s initiation, but I get nervous and run. Often to my addictions.
The unconscious wishes to be conscious but it is also scared to be seen. Its flesh is tender to the light and so it strives to be acknowledged even while it hides.
Often times that descent into the addiction, that rut of chaos opens the door for further understanding of myself and a mixing of the cosmic revelation to come, the human condition of pain, running, and f*#&ing things up sometimes.
With time I’ve been able to shift the running. Reduce the amount of time it takes. Choose healthier addictions. Reduce their damage.
When I’ve worn myself out from the running and I’m tired and hollow I come to the point where I’m ready to say “save me, know me, hear and speak. I am ready to be filled.”
On Monday I did my best to process, to face the initiation head on and skip the running. It was a mix of writing and weeping.
It was the grieving of my friend, his family, and the witnessing of the zeitgeist behind the personal story, the addiction epidemic given face with all the weight of its pain and trauma.
On Tuesday I woke up empty. It was too much. I wrote my article from a hollow state and looked at my day without a clue of what to do with no soul to do it.
So I slipped into one of my old addictions. Porn binging. Specifically finding other people to binge porn with. I think it comes from a mix of loneliness, and easy access to a shallow, and yet oh so personal interaction.
And yes there are places on the internet to do this.
I haven’t done that in ages. Don’t even watch porn anymore but this is what relapse looks like.
I used to get pissed at myself afterwards for wasting time, for feeling so drained but I think I’ve dealt enough with the relapse in others to realize it happens. So I made space for myself.
I wonder if it was a piece of the brew I needed for mixing, a dash of addiction, of human experience, some room, some space to bring the parts together again.
What I know is it left me emptier. A sensation that lasted until I dined with my Balinese family. We talked about Bali, the US, and our names. Our names and their meaning.
Plant a seed and go to bed.
I set the intention yesterday to make offering and prayers today in the family temple.
I asked what would be necessary at dinner last night and if there was a certain way I should do things. They told me to do what is right for me.
So I set myself to this, planted the seed and let it grow in my sleep.
This morning I woke up and felt horrible, emptier. I looked at my task list and wondered how I’d ever get it done…
Thrust yourself into the world and buy some flowers.
They sell the flowers, baskets, and rice cookies used for offerings in the market here.
I really don’t like the market. It’s busy and people are so desperate to sell you anything that I feel it in my chest, in my gut, it’s draining saying no to such a real need.
My friend offered to go for me but I felt I needed to collect these offerings, these regents on my own.
Make of it a pilgrimage.
I braced myself for the trip. Prayed for help at breakfast and imagined myself as a flower folding up, hiding my tender places in a bud that could stand against the wind.
I put on my headphones, sang my music and wove words here and there to call on God and ask for help today.
The rhythm of my step felt good. My gate was stronger than I felt and I realized “I am stronger than I feel.”
I asked the still calm voice within how many of the baskets of flowers I should get and heard the number “five.”
Five had been important to me when I first had my breakdown — spritual-crisis — call-it-what-you-want nearly a decade ago.
Fives were everywhere then. They were the time, on friend’s doors, the turn of a page, and I found them echoed in the five souls of middle Egypt as well as the Jewish Kabbalah.
Five to me came to represent the soul. Just a couple months ago a numerologist friend ran my name and whatever else she checks and said five was the number of my soul.
(I never mentioned five to her before.)
She said five was chaos, the reordering of the old. Stepping into something new to see what we would find there.
That’s certainly what my breakdown was, the dying of the old, a search for the new.
Connect the dots of stars.
On my task list today is the writing of a piece on the New Moon. For those who enjoy their skepticism I like to say astrology is a means of projecting our inner world on the stars and seeing what we find there.
Of course the theme I found was similar to my morning.
“We are walking into the unknown. Him into death and you into the hollowness of grief and post addiction.
“Play the Sun and Moon in Sagittarius, find meaning, light the spark.
“The danger is in the ocean waves. Mars and Neptune in Pisces, this drowning.
Will it be in inspiration? Revelation? Delusion?
“The surrealists are all around you. Find the threads and awake your meaning.”
Which is exactly what I set about to do in the market.
Tell Chaos your name.
I invoked my myth, my personal story. The ways the Mystery has saved me. The ways I have overcome so many other addictions and pieced myself back together after the breakdown, after the twenty years of depression before, the suicide attempt.
I invoked my myth, my mystery, my name.
In the conversation last night with the family we talked about the meaning of our names.
Here in Bali the naming of a child is a complicated process layered in traditions. In America you just choose and my dad chose names with meanings. Set his own rules.
He insured they all had twenty one letters because he loved his threes and sevens and so I became Joshua Leonard Burkhart.
A message, a testimony that God saves with a lion’s strength. That God is as strong as a castle.
I hated my name growing up.
As my friend shared last night about his name it was too much of an expectation. A burden.
I love my name now, because my story, my mystery is that God does save, just in mysterious ways.
The mystery doesn’t have to be called God but something inside and out moves, weaves together, links synchronicity to synchronicity, creates change if we reach out from the hollow and watch, listen, wait.
It can be as simply as the words of a friend which inspire and give life new direction. It can be as grand as a vision that changes everything.
My parents don’t agree with me but I have to live my name and the way I was gifted my salvation.
This gift to me was a gift of life. It gave me meaning, taught me to see myself as a vessel of experience, of awareness, a crucible to mix the experiences of life and God within.
Mix, mix and stir.
When I walked into the market, into the swirl of scent, of food and incense, into the hum and drone of voices, all the colors and shiny plastics, I brought this knowing of God with me.
This organizing principle hovering over the chaos of the deep.
I reminded the chaos of my name, my story.
I am here to be the crucible, alembic. Here to mix the regents.
Here to take the image of a lost smile, of a mother and a needle, of the zeitgeist beyond, the pain, this personal experience of addiction and trauma, the hollowness and you oh chaos, here to mix it with this source of life within and without.
To be the vessel of the alchemical brew.
To wake from the miasma, the hollowness and bring forth some gold, some insight, some transmutation of it all. Perhaps it will be an act to help another, a poem, a story, the ability to say I see you, I have been hollow too and let me tell you “we grow, we awake, we live.”
Sort & twine the pretty flowers.
I bought my five offerings and some extra flowers, rice cakes, and incense. There was some haggling involved but it actually felt good.
I knew the local prices so when a man asked for 250,000 rupiah for something that normally costs 5,000 I was able to say no.
It takes life to say no and I felt that life stir in the hollow of the chest.
In the end I paid thirty. My friends would say it’s too much but people need money. I’s not too much to give for the experience of flowers and a no that wakes you up inside.
I made my way home, showered, cleaned, prayed at my own alter. Asked to be guided through this process.
We don’t have many rituals in the states. Not holy ones, so I am left piecing together bits from here and there much like I have pieced together bits of my soul through the years.
I still felt like shit. Empty. Hollow. Slow of thought but I was preparing myself and I was driven with a purpose beneath it all.
The thought had been brewing that “all this is alchemy.”
In the great work you dissolve things back into chaos, the hollow empty. Then you dissect them, separate the peaces and finally bring them back together.
Here I was separating the pieces into ritualized acts. Thrusting myself out into the world, gathering my components, remembering who I am and why. Cleansing and calling on the mystery.
I dressed up in the traditional way. Finally tied my sarong the right way without help. Chose my blue shirt because small voice inside said “we like you in that,” and I laughed at being a man with voices in his head.
I went to the family temple and asked if it would be ok to pray out loud and sing. They pray silently here and I don’t know if the gods get offended. Of course, as beautiful souls they said to do what is good for me.
They have many alters here but the ceremony I had been brewing in my mind all morning knew which ones to use.
One set of offerings for the divine ancestors, which to me represent the mass of chaos, all that comes from before, all the mixing and tangling of stories, cultures, DNA, and history.
Which led to the next alter dedicated to Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma. Destruction, Sustaining, and Creation.
This is where my mind placed the piece of alchemy, the transformation from the mass of strings and stories through these processes of cutting away what is no longer needed, maintaining what serves, and creating the new that is necessary.
From here I chose to leave an offering at the altar of Acintya, the One God, to which I imagine these processes take us into a greater perfection.
(The mystery being that this same perfection generates the many threads to begin with, the threads we set to weave.)
I broke up the five offerings for the three altars and arranged the flowers and incense. The grandma of my hosts loved it and was delighted in what I was doing. She gave me a giant stick of incense for Acintya that says right there on the package “burns for five hours.”
I didn’t think much of that then.
Pray. Watch. Listen. These are verbs.
I started with the ancestors, the net of Indra, and the chaos of our karma.
I sat with the hollowness within and prayed that it wake up. That our karma wake up, that our unconscious actions be brought into consciousness and we live as a world awake.
I prayed for all the aspects of my friend whatever they are, one soul, all soul, dirt and memories. I prayed that his bits and pieces be gathered up. His thread be found within the pleroma, amongst the dead, and be lifted up and embraced.
That is when I felt something rise. It had been brewing for a while. It’s what I ran from Monday.
In the pleroma, the tangle of threads, we have all the gods and archetypes. Lately, with the chaos of the world I have been looking for justice, an end to the tyrants.
This has left me with visions of Moses, of hail and fire. The death of an empire.
Today, I caught of the Redeemer, the love beyond it all.
I don’t know if I could have seen this without the earlier look at the fierce justice, the rage of our wounds.
It’s a part I needed to integrate but it shadowed the Redeemer found in societies all around the world from Yeshua to Buddha, Job’s Redeemer, Shekinah, Heracles, Persephone, Mercury.
I was raised with Jesus but there was so much suffering I needed some distance. The clarifying of the world’s pain and call for justice has allowed for the mutual clarification of the Redeemer image.
I could feel the closeness of Yeshua today.
I could feel this presence within my chest, within the knot of threads and karma. I could see this Redeeming presence find the thread of my friend and hold him in embrace.
When I felt it was time to move on I went to the altar of the three. I invoked the need to destroy the old that no longer serves, to create the new that is necessary, and to sustain what must be sustained.
I was reminded that Buddha is believed in hinduism to be the incarnation of Vishnu. I’d never felt that close to Vishnu before. Sustaining is good I guess, but why not destroy evil, create something beautiful?
Suddenly though while praying, Vishnu was Buddha, was Yeshua, was more than the status quo, became instead the hero, the rising narrative.
The three became the past, the present, the future, became the path of my friend into love, into the arms of the Mystery. The three became the path within, from hollow-dead, to living alembic-crucible, home of the divine mystery play.
The three became the way the world and the zeitgeist of pain and trauma will be transformed, changed.
I saw the three narratives, the work within, the story of my friend, the prayer for his peace and the peace of his family, and a greater change within the world.
At that point someone came to leave a rice offering. They do this about three times a day and normally with three little offerings at time. There should have been six but one had fallen earlier so that there were five.
That’s when I remembered the incense and I smiled and felt my soul wake up.
The universe was answering back. It heard my prayers.
I meditated on five. 3+2, 4+1?
The three modes of destruction, creation, and the active living, plus what?
Perhaps the mystery, the chaos, the unknown, and the direction, the flow of where they are going.
I saw the shrine to my right, the ancestors, the past, and the tangle. I saw the shrine to my left, the One, the rising, the awakening. This became to me 1+3+1, the way I had arranged my five offerings.
Then another image stirred, the four directions, the compass, the place that we are. It made some leeps in the world within, flashed images like lightning. That compass, a throne like Ezekiel’s, four as stability, a bubble in the swirl of chaos, the creative property transforming chaos.
It became the image of existence all around and at the same time witnessed and held within this vessel, within me.
I rededicated myself to this act of transformation, from the chaos and the unknown to the shaping of a better world. I thanked the gods for the tools they have taught me and asked to sing their blessings.
This singing was a gift from my breakdown. The ability to weave a song on the spot. I know I’m aligned when the song weaves perfectly, melody, lyric, rhythm.
I ask the spirit to sing through me and when it does I know I’m “there.” I can’t say it’s me because it doesn’t always work but when it does the results are powerful.
I sang the praises of the process, the three and the mystery, the Redeemer and the lives that allow this work to be realized, these threads to be woven.
I then moved on to the One. By now I was living again inside. I was waking up.
I prayed that all parts of my friend be raised into the highest good. I thanked God for my name, for this life, for my work.
I thanked God for waking me up. For healing me. I invoked my name and praised God for saving me.
I felt myself come alive. I felt my eyes brighten. My thoughts started stirring. Article ideas popped up into my head.
I laughed, noticed the beauty of the stone altar. The beauty of the incense. The Sun actually came out from behind the clouds and radiated down on me.
I breathed, smiled, thanked God for my friend, felt peace within, and dedicated myself again to the Mystery that saved me.
Life is a work of alchemy.
We mix thoughts, emotions, our memories, acts, and decisions. We step into the chaos, find it inside and transform it into something new.
The question is what are we creating?
What is our philosopher’s stone? Our Opus Magnus?
And what is our process? How do we remember ourselves when we fall apart, become hollow, forget?
We need our names. We need our stories, the things we scream into the chaos. The mysteries we invoke as we see the world change as we act upon it our meaning.
Love and share.
I’m starting something new. Writing every day as I put my random thoughts on binary paper.
If you’d like to join me on this journey you can sign up for my email list here.
