Full Circle

For the ones who healed and the ones still hurting -- a message:

May 13, 2024

I once heard someone say, “When the same song that made you cry now makes you dance, you know you’ve healed”. Allow me to elaborate.

We’re going on a journey:

The song is not so important here as are the memories / emotions they bring. Most notably, our attachment to them and the narratives our perception creates.

This is what causes most suffering: Attachment and our assigned narratives, the ones that typically don’t serve our highest good.

So, the song:

There was once a song I loved, but it was attached to a chapter in my life that would later bring a level of agony I don’t have words for.

In the aftermath, I could no longer listen to the song. It would immediately trigger a physical reaction if I heard it, a combination of falling into a bottomless pit mixed with something stabbing you in the heart. Needless to say, it was removed from my Spotify playlist.

Spoiler alert: Seven months later, I’m listening to this song as I write this article, and I love it again. There is no pain. Only the emotions in which the song was intended for — joy.

Isn’t that interesting? The song never changed, the attachment to the painful memories (and their accompanied narratives) did. One result brought extreme joy, the other extreme pain.

So, Full Circle:

Tonight, the song came into my head.

It came up during an experience that brought a lot of joy and freedom, I’ll leave it at that. The song no longer was a reminder of pain and imprisonment and trauma — it had returned to its original form.

A lot of work has been done to create a new life and to heal from the old one, and the fruits of that are showing now. But I’d be massively out of pocket if I didn’t credit The Great Force we often call God, and whichever personification of this infinite force we choose to connect with, honor and pray to.

Without that, I doubt I’d be alive. With that, well, I’ve seen way too many legitimate miracles to ever doubt it.

Prayer no longer feels like phoning a busy signal or yelling into a static void. It’s now a call and response.

And sometimes, you are shocked by how fast the response comes, and how much more this Power graces you with than you prayed for.

This is available to anybody, regardless of belief.

We are all gods with amnesia, and we all have the ability to connect to the Supreme Reality — we are of it, not separate from or beneath it.

The saying rings true.

Be it a place, person, activity, or song — if it once reflected some of our greatest nightmares, then returns later to reflect an answered prayer and renewal of the heart, mind, spirit — holy shit.

If you can now dance to what used to make you feel like you’d have a panic attack if you heard one more second of it — you’ve come full circle.

Months ago, while I was in the middle of extreme grief and hopelessness, my uncle told me that soon the next chapter would come along, and I’d forget all about the last one. He was trying to cheer me up, but I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t possibly see how that would work.

He was right.

The painful things lose their hold on you. They lose their emotional charge.

The attachment to the idea that things will never get better because pain feels like a bad song on repeat gets severed.

And yes, this is an attachment. If it’s a repeated belief / narrative that we tell ourselves in the wake of any failed or “dumpster fire knife party from hell” chapter in life, it’s an attachment.

This probably sounds like common sense to some people, but when you’ve been in a pit so deep that suicidal thoughts become frequent (or even daily) guests in your mind, for periods of years or decades, it can be impossible to see beyond them.

I am one of those people who has had suicidal thoughts as headspace house-mates for decades (since age 10, and this weekend I turned 35, so you do the math) — and yes, life gets A LOT better.

I have so much to be grateful for today it’s unbelievable, especially with how fast life transformed. It seemingly came out of nowhere - but when we’re doing the work in those dark times to survive, that adds up.

So these things don’t really come out of nowhere, they appear when we learn whatever that hell was there to teach us.

To keep it simple, I credit the relationship I have with the Divine, the one with many names but no name, the one that can only be experienced, never explained.

With that said, I have one other message for you tonight:

To anyone who is suffering now,

I hope you believe these words:

I know it feels impossible and I know you feel alone. I know you feel it will never change, and some of you may feel the only solution is to permanently disappear.

Some of you may pray and beg for the mercy of Death, because no matter how hard you try, you are body slammed into the pit of hell and faced with tragedy, deception, trauma, and betrayal like clockwork.

And no, I won’t even get you started on what your head tells you, because I know that’s even more of a nightmare, and even harder to explain. I know how unseen and misunderstood you feel; I know that isolation.

What I can say is: I GET IT. I have been there for so many years, and I have no idea how I didn’t end my life, especially given a few attempts in doing so — I was unsuccessful, and I’m glad I was.

I don’t have the answers of why this shit happens. But there are others out here, and a lot of us are coming out of the dark after crazy long periods of it. If you are not among us today, YOU WILL BE.

We are the ones who found God in Hell. You are among us, even if you are still in hell and haven’t found anything else yet. See the linked poem as a reminder, or just something to hold onto when you have nothing else.

A prayer or mantra you can use:

Sometimes we have no ability to conceive of anything different than pain, because we haven’t experienced it before, or much of it at least.

So, you can try this prayer or mantra, it came to me during a dark time and it actually did work.

I didn’t have the ability to “manifest” or whatever the hell people try telling you when you’re in that space, because I couldn’t see beyond hell.

The prayer / mantra that came to me that I began saying OUT LOUD (this is a key part of this) and I repeated it for months:

Things are about to get so good in my life that I can’t conceive of it, because it’s better than anything I’ve ever experienced before.

Then the second part (this is to be said even before it has happened, otherwise you’ll always be in the anticipatory state):

Life has gotten so good it is better than anything I could have ever imagined, because I have never experienced this before.

And if your head gets in your way, try the Set Aside prayer:

God (or whoever you pray to, if you don’t like the word God you can say Universe or whatever you want): Please help me set aside everything I think I know, for an open mind and a new experience.

You can also elongate that prayer to say “please help me set aside everything I think I know about (insert all the things that create suffering or anxiety here) for an open mind and a new experience.”

I haven’t been on Substack much due to several reasons, the analog life has required my full attention, so haven’t had the bandwidth for anything digital.

However, I had some bandwidth tonight, and I wanted to share this. I hope it was helpful.

Please feel free to share your experiences with life surprising the shit out of you with the things your heart always wanted, but you were too afraid to ask for, or thought you’d never experience. The stories about overcoming hardship that seemed to have no end in sight. The stories about coming out of hell.

It’s good for us to remember, and it might save someones life who needs to hear your experience right now.