Subsistence Farming - Hawaii

working with and watching the nvc material has turned some things upside down in my life. for example, scott and i have been doing a process called couple’s council for some years. once a week we create a sacred space, lay out the talking stick, light a candle and dedicate the council to the highest good of our couplehood. then we take turns with the talking stick.

the only “rules” are to only talk when you have the talking stick, to speak from the heart and for the listener to refrain from giving any kind of feedback to the talker (including smiling, frowning, nodding…). our councils have been fundamental to our relationship. some have lasted 9 hours. once we sat and stared at each other without either touching the talking stick for an hour. we both considered this format successful for us.

since practicing nvc i realized in council that i was unable to find a way to say what i wanted to express AND express it using nvc. how do i “convince” scott that some behaviour of his needs to be changed…. you can’t tell your “story” using nvc. there is no language for blaming someone else, defining someone else, holding someone else responsible for your feelings or your needs. you have no authority in anyone’s life but your own.

intellectually i understood and believed this but when it came down to living it i was so frustrated at times i wanted to explode. i was like a pressure cooker with all my compelling stories building and building in my head but with no outlet. it just didn’t cut it for me to take a novel’s length story i had created about scott and pare it down to “when you blah blah, i feel blah blah, because i am needing blah blah, are you willing to blah blah?” i so needed to add the juicy details the evidence the irrefutable data… but mostly i needed to have this incident be the exception to the rule: “of course i am responsible for my feeling BUT in this case you gotta understand that he had no right to ….. studies show that men who …… oh how my life would be transformed if only he never ….” the lag time between hearing something, thinking you believe something and actually walking the talk seemed to me to be measured in light years.

i wanted to drag a huge magnet over my head and erase all the data in my brain. how could i rid myself of an entire lifetime of depending on a system of punishment and reward, victum and oppressor, right and wrong, appropriate and inappropriate? it was as if those original ideas were in every cell of my body. i wanted to exorcize them. the idea of some slow steady process of chipping away at them seemed unbearable. i wanted an epiphany.

so. there in our fridge was a year old jelly jar of ayahuaska brew that people in the neighborhood created months ago. a shamanic medicine used in south america.

i just put an ounce or so in a clay cup, took it to our sleeping space and swallowed. this initiated a solo ayahuaska journey which brought me some new perspective. i had reached a place where i could see that my patterns and beliefs and system of thinking was going to kill me. how can anyone keep up the image of “squeaky clean” without it taking its toll?

i deeply visited the idea that i have to appear more together, more evolved, more confident, more successful, more in control, more of all the “good” stuff and less of the “bad” stuff than i really am. I really got it that my only freedom is in telling the absolute truth. I can’t hold myself responsible for other peoples reactions, patterns, projections AND i have to start holding myself responsible for my feelings and needs. of course i “knew” all this but it really came to a head in the past few days in my relationship with scott/myself.

he is a remarkably clear mirror for me. we are so alike and it is so infuriating sometimes when i recognize something in him and not in myself. i get mad at him for correcting me and then turn around and correct him for correcting me. in one moment i am correcting and the next i am justifying why the correction does not apply to me. how embarassing. if it weren’t so painful it would be funny.

the message i got from the journey was “believe yourself, believe what you feel energetically, believe yourself always, and act powerfully.” the message was about believing myself and it being ok even those timeswhen i was not believalbe as if i had to build up a kind of trust muscle in myself before i would ever be truly trustworthy. if you are going to err, err in believing yourself.
i felt the connection between freedom and responsibility. i didn’t just think it i felt it in my whole body. that seems to make a difference for me. i often resonate with some concept and never really integrate it even though i think i have. right now i have an exhaustion and a throbbing head, neck, jaw and sinuses (some crying happened). i feel some excitement and fear about letting go of squeaky clean, but what makes it easier is the realization that i was only fooling myself. right?