I have a gift. Some people would call it a curse but I have come to see it as a gift. I experience things in my body in a very visceral and intense way. As I have learned to perceive my body as an oracle, I can now translate bodily symptoms and receive information, insights, and powerful teachings.
This summer in Ireland I was in a lot of physical pain in my spine, my lungs felt crushed, my head felt like it was being crushed and I was coughing and feverish but with no fever. This is what I learned from my body's symptoms:
I am the weight of oppression. It crushes me from the top, the bottom, from all sides, and mostly from the inside. I am both the oppressed and the oppressor and yet I don’t know it. I vacillate between identifying with one, then the other and I don’t realize I am, in actuality, both.
The weight of being both takes my breath away, tons of weight on my rib cage, crushing me. In my confusion about my true identity I side with the oppressed. I think I am just that. When I am the oppressed I feel the weight of hopelessness, of so much ignorance for so, so long.
I identify with the oppressed. I say: I AM oppressed. I feel the shame of being dehumanized in every possible and wretched way. Somewhere I begin to think they are right for oppressing me. Somewhere deep underneath my cries of injustice, my rage, my grief… I am ashamed to be me.
There must be something wrong with me.
Then, suddenly, a shift. From the feeling of deep shame and being wrong, the fire of rage starts to burn stronger. How could they? How dare they? This is not right, there is no justice. They must be stopped. They must pay for what they have done. I could kill with my rage and I reign down my terror onto the oppressors: the bad guys, the racists, the sexists, the colonizers, the rapists, the thieves, the abusers, the murderers, the evil ones.
I become the oppressor but I don’t admit it.
I don’t even see it.
I am both the oppressed and the oppressor and I am starting to see it. I vacillate between identifying with one, then the other and I don’t realize I am in actuality both. The weight of being both takes my breath away, tonnes of weight on my rib cage, crushing me.
I can hardly breathe now, the weight is so heavy. But something is starting to shift with the awareness that I am both oppressed and oppressor. I can no longer rest my identity on one side of this illusory dichotomy.
Something is happening, my breath is coming back now. I am finding the strength to stand up. I see these two identities as weights that I am holding. One in my left hand, one in my right hand. I outstretch my arms to the right and left to make space between the weight of the oppressor and that of the oppressed.
I find myself standing in the shape of the cross. Both of these identities are being crucified in this moment. I AM both and I AM neither. I AM here in the center point between both. I AM.
And I am looking out at all of humanity and I am imploring:
Please let us stop identifying with the oppressed and the oppressor, the victim and the perpetrator.
Please let us see that they are one and the same.
Please may we step into the center, in the not knowing, into the void between Right and Wrong, Right and Left, Good and Evil.
Please let us admit we don’t know.
Please may we rest in the discomfort and utter vulnerability of not knowing.
Keep resting here and wait.
And as we rest in not knowing may we cry all the tears we have, feel all the grief, pain and crushing weight. May we have the courage and strength to feel it all while not taking a side.
Just resting in this not knowing. And now even all these words start to dissolve away.
And then, something begins to stir…something new is emerging: Wisdom.
Wisdom is born from not knowing.
Wisdom that is beyond knowing and will not yield to the rational mind.
Wisdom in Living.
Wisdom is the Feminine.
Let us make space for Her. Let us listen to Her. Let us allow Her to heal our misunderstanding and mend our broken hearts.
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