Starving in the “first” world.

July 10th, 2017

I remember when this table was new. I bought it, on sale, but with hope: That I was making my new home. And my new home would carry the vibration of clear blue skies. And fresh air that I can breathe. Air, that doesn’t suffocate, though I did not yet know what that meant.

Grueling. Starving. Thick black tar. This past winter and spring have been darker than dark.

It has become obvious. Glaringly obvious. That I’ve spent most of my life starving in a way that protein shakes and bone broth and supplements and even home cooked meals don’t even touch.

There’s no better word to describe what my body and heart have been going through that my mind has not really been able to understand. I have felt, actually, like I’ve been losing my mind. Until the clouds part for a moment and I get just a sliver of vision of what has truly been brewing underneath. It has been so huge, that I think it would have been too much for my mind to understand while I’ve been integrating.

I’ve spent this year partially freaking out and partially mourning. I now get that I’ve been not just watching, but literally feeling and sitting in a pool of death. I feel the death of a large part of our country’s culture, the death of what Boulder was when I moved here 22 years ago as the income gap has exponentially increased and people are fleeing, the death of the Integral center which has been my home for the last 3 years, and finally the death of the last stage of my life as I knew it. This pool of death has burned away the wool over my eyes even further than it already was.

The funny part is: I did not have the capacity to feel this much death a few years ago. It would have been too debilitating and too terrifying. I’m pretty sure, that with the added physical health challenges I’ve had, I would have found some kind of a way to bypass all the feeling because the other option, frankly, would have been suicide.

A few years ago I had never had the experience of feeling loved and supported in a way that I’ve honestly never felt… that I now get to feel almost daily. It’s been confusing. until the veils clear and i see that what’s going is that I’m just barely safe enough to be able to actually stare some cold hard realities in the eye. What is and is not cruel is no longer confusing. I feel so increcibly sad for those that are still arguing that productivity over connection is not cruel. That they haven’t even had the chance to experience the opposite.

And drowning in sorrow over…

The reality that our culture values productivity over human connection and had left me lonely and depressed for an entire lifetime or more. Even enlightenment is really just another form of productivity.

What’s so funny is that both are needed for even basic survival. We cannot survive without taking care of each other. Tho I see our country trying… all we got as a result is rampant depression and I see worse coming.

Not only has this caused cultural depression, both are needed for survival.

In this world where we’ve deemed ourselves “first! World” which is only based on rating ourselves through money and productivity. Human connection, or rather connection at all, isn’t even part of the world rating system.

The whole idea that we’ve rated ourselves as first (no bias here!) is just fucking ridiculous at this point.

And I’ve been a part of it all along. My body literally can’t do it anymore.

In my book, I don’t live in the first world because I’ve felt like I’m starving most of my life. I’ve been baffled by this for years.

And I wonder if this other idea,.. that there’s another form of enlightenment THROUGH human connection. Long term connection. Is it real? Is there any hope for us? I would like to think that this is the only thing that might save us.

Can’t we do beingness with each other instead?