AD.

WALKING ON THIN ICE

Recap on three years and my impetus for change

It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged on walkingthinice.com for anything other than a poem or some event on which I’d worked on getting out the word. I’m decided to blog here now on a weekly schedule as much as I reasonably can. I used to blog on WTI every other day, particularly when we were on our most excellent foreign adventure. My life since then has not really been less adventurous; I think I’ve taken home some of the adventure with me in terms of activism and a new-found spirituality.

In the last three years since we’ve returned to the States:

  • I’ve become an activist.
  • I’ve worked on my professional skills.
  • I’ve had several intense, unfortunately incapacitating spiritual experiences.
  • I have many more less intense, yet empowering spiritual experiences.
  • I’m working on creative projects–finishing some up, starting up some new ones.

The most interesting part has been the incapacitating spiritual experiences. During these episodes I’ve not been able to work much as the experiences have been so strong with profound connectedness and bliss and yet also sometimes profound agony. One might connect some of the symptoms of this with symptoms described by the label “bipolar disorder,” but I reject this label. I know my experiences are real, not delusional. I mean, because they are relatively new to me I had a difficult time understanding what was going on at first and so there was an issue of interpretation. But I’ve got more of a grip on this now, more understanding.

The experiences have catalyzed me to become an activist. One day stands out in particular–last year, February 23, 2011. I was in the midst of one of the unfortunate, more strong experiences which had been going on for about a week. That particular day I had forced myself to go into the office to handle my work responsibilities–I feel it important to do as much as I can muster.

So I was sitting there, trying and trying to work. I’m a web developer, and so I must have fairly constant connection to the Internet in order to work. Well, whenever I’d try to go to a website to check my work, my connection wouldn’t let me do it. It would only let me go on Facebook and news sites. Also, my head would not let me handle complicated tasks–I’d lose track of where I was and could only focus on the immediate, overwhelming stimulus around me such as the sighs and creaks of the room and my iPod player and how everything synchronizes to the thoughts I have. Or perhaps my thoughts synchronize to the sensory data around me. Anyways–a bit too much Oneness that day.

So I had my iPod player running on “random shuffle,” and the songs it was selecting were more and more irritating to me–somehow ominous. My head felt like the volume of air in the room was pressing in on me, and I couldn’t get anything done for work out of confusion and being blocked when attempting to go to work-related websites.

The sensory data was overwhelming, music reaching some kind of crescendo from the iPod, pressure on my head, hurt in my heart… and then I checked Facebook and saw that someone had posted an article: the town of Christchurch, New Zealand had been struck by an earthquake the day before.

I hadn’t yet heard of this news and I figured Reality was trying to get my attention. As soon as I read the article, it was like something had been released. The pressure dropped in the room and we lost our Internet connection for the day.

I couldn’t think of a more clear signal Reality could give me to indicate, “Hey, something’s up, people of Earth. We want you to take better care of things.”

I mean, maybe it was God/Goddess doing it, maybe it was just part of God, maybe it was the planet. Because of its name, I find it particularly interesting that the planet/God/Goddess/whatever-it-is picked the town of Christchurch.

Then in March I had another intensely uncomfortable experience at the same time as the Fukushima disaster (also an interesting name). I’ve noticed that the uncomfortable experiences usually correlate to earthquakes, hurricanes, or agonizing over my expression.

So, this is where I’m at with the data as I see it: I’m working as best I can on respecting Reality more by taking care of anything it might be wanting from us such as taking better care of the planet, being kinder to each other and animals, being more spiritual and/or religious yet with less hypocrisy, etc.

So since these episodes, I’ve picked up volunteer duties with the Sierra Club and the Occupy Movement and have been working on every aspect of my life as best I can to be more attuned to Reality’s needs. And I’ve noticed that since I’ve worked on ordering my life better towards Reality’s possible needs, I’ve been much more functional at work and have not experienced confusion.

~ Lady