Navigating the Abyss

The substance of my crisis, long-sustained beneath the surface—and more recently bubbling up as courage to depart—was hardly what I was taking it as. And with the decision done and my pushing towards the exit, crisis was roiling forwards, cast in fearsome shapes I had no competence in identifying. I was scared, and denying it—too busy blaming the world I was turning away from to give my fears any time of day.

Stripping one skinny layer of outside identity was not to change me into a butterfly. But it did do something. As the gesture that it was, I had demonstrated myself willing to enter into that terrifying mystery of the unknown: the deep dark Abyss. Not that I was at all aware of my new commission—if anyone had told me I was commencing what would become over a decade of unemployment, I would not have believed them. I did not know how to believe such a thing; it did not fit into the self-image bewitching me of what it was to be strong, smart, and capable woman, let alone a strong, smart and capable anything.

I do like to imagine I would have understood what such a drastic premonition was really saying: that I would be ok. That I would make it that far, sticking to this hazy, ever-morphing inner star of "discovering my true purpose." But familiar with my back-then self, I am not sure I would have trusted this as possible without certain material assurances beyond what I was equipped with. Moreover, if this purpose were to have prematurely revealled itself—that I was to fall into such open, intimate intensity with this alleged Abyss I could teach its navigation—I would not have understood. I would have needed someone to painstakingly lay it out for me, inch by inch, and since I had no such someone in my life—only invisible helpers—I had to, inch by inch, painstakingly become her.

It is such for us all. Sometimes the only way we can trust where we are going is by walking in blind.

~ ~ ~

Purpose and meaning surround me everywhere.
EVERYWHERE.
I do not know this to be true when I close myself to Spirit, where in turn, I shut down my Will.

Which I cannot wholly do. Everything, technically, is Spirit, and everything is also Will. This dance of life is the interaction between these two poles—Spirit as life’s impulse, and Will as life’s potential. The only reason I do anything is because my Will and Spirit align to deliver.

So when I experience myself as not meeting life in the ways I envision, it is because I am not conscious.

The last thing I want to admit to is being unconscious.
I refuse.
But until I do, I will not recover what I have lost, that is the flipside to the whole shameful state—that is, being awake.

And I WANT to be AWAKE.

But the shame is unhelpful. Unconsciousness is a fact of nature. I need its mystery the same as I need my blood.

Which does not mean I let it be.

"Crossing the Abyss" is taken to mean making the unconscious conscious. But more functionally, I have to construct a CONSCIOUS RELATIONSHIP with my unconscious. The agency behind all of my decision-making exists in this unconscious place I cannot see.
And how do I acknowledge such a thing?
That my unconscious wins in all my choices?
To what my choices even are?
Or how MUCH I am consenting to in every single moment without my even noticing?

NOTICING CHOICE IN PROGRESS is the absolute key. And for this I need my Will, because I do not know what lies beyond the boundary of what I am used to.
And yet, I can tell: this unknown beyond is still somehow active in my life.

So I have 'noticed': working to improve something I am fundamentally unconscious to requires indirect effort.

By the time I recognize a choice standing in front of me, most of my conscious effort goes into catching up with where I am already going; with what my decision already IS.
No choice arrives to me as one not already made—not until the moment I can witness myself directly interacting with the forces actually making it. And the very act of acknowledging unconscious agency brings my Will to the conscious surface, and with it the real, raw choice: do I continue the mechanical pattern, and with it the comfort I have grown accustomed to? Or do I wait for a moment, to see what surfaces?

Every moment of direct contact with my Will is what ultimately makes this crossing of the Abyss about my own sovereignty.

And I cannot lie.
It feels like touching fire.
I have denied and avoided my true Will for so long, she is in such absolute pain.
How can she ever trust me?

I have allowed myself to identify with false images of my power. Images all on the outside, energized by some mysterious, shrouded wish. Purpose not of my making. Diversions designed to capture my attention, easy prey that has not known where else to look.
I got used to those external sources, and how they feel… and of course they feel powerful! There is real potency out there. But they are not all sustainable to my system because we do not operate on the same resonance. My power cannot join in to participate. So she fails to get the training. Believes she is not needed.

Goes to sleep on the one hand.
Fights back with mischief on the other.
Gets entangled with anything showing her appreciation, regardless of whether it is for her truth.

My Abyss is my reservoir of mislaid power. And yet just as I do in my outer life, she exists in a collective environment of similar sovereigns-in-training who have their own Abysses, who just like me, can be fairly clumsy with it.
Sometimes, as part of this mass environment, I pick things up that do not belong to me, and lose things that do. I lose track of what is me and mine, where my power truly lay, how I responsibly use it, and how I receive graciously from others—which I MUST be able to do—inside a climate of misty motives and false discernment.

I have to bore it into my brain. The environment is me.

Agency matters, because when I do not own my power, I risk its co-option into corruption. SOMETHING will pick it up and use it. Which is ultimately on me! Thievery happens inside the ‘intelligence’ of my Abyss before it does anywhere else—but still, I let it happen. And within the body of our collective, POWER is being diverted, and consumed, AND WE ALL KNOW THIS. My thoughts and feelings about it have just been such a jumble, I believe I cannot see straight; I believe I cannot know where my responsibility and my sovereignty actually converge.

But I can know. We can all know.

This is not a passage I sought willingly; not at first. I refused to believe that becoming conscious required the experience of any pain. But the pain was happening anyways… she was insistent. So when I finally set my ego aside and listened, imagine my surprise! Within an instant, the pain stopped being pain, and started becoming intelligence.
As if something had been freed. And it was: my SPIRIT.

So with astonishment I clue in! My Spirit is always, technically, free! And she is offering intelligence left right and centre, all of the time, when it is needed. TRUE intelligence. Purpose and meaning surround me everywhere! They just get mixed up in the Abyss—hence the crucial necessity of developing that conscious relationship.

I would be lying to you (and to myself) if I were to claim the journey becomes pain-free from this point on. It can be difficult to remember how pain is not the story I box it into, but the signal for its release. A signal to knowing different.

So I repeat: NOTICING IS THE KEY. I need direct contact with my Will, because SHE KNOWS.

The Abyss is not a passage I seek willingly, but once at a threshold, willingness—and my gratitude for her endurance—are the only powers that can carry me across.

I can, and will, be pushed into the water. It is my choice whether I swim.

~ ~ ~

Our biggest lesson from the sea was also our biggest surprise: the fears surfacing in our life had nothing to do with the ocean’s wild fierceness, or even our ability to meet it. They had to do with our past—unfinished spirit, so to say, with unrelenting wills—that could not properly metabolize in our environment of simple freedom. The boat and sea were becoming metaphors for things they were not. Fulfillment takes curious turns when the way forward demands a completeness it is not truly ready for.

Life is often such a study of extremes. I chose the military at a young age because I sought freedom. This may sound a contradiction to what the military even is, but it has always offered adventure to those feeling stuck; to being a part of something bigger than one feels oneself to be. And what an immensity of structure to stretch around in, finding all the edges, exploring relationships of achievement.

And yet. When we meet the margins of an organization so large as a global complex, we have ‘choices’ to make—defining moments to navigate. If it is mastery we crave, we may think the extremes are where we find the frontier ‘meant for us.’

And which extreme? We may spot a new boundary beyond even the megalith we are contained in and feel a need to jump ship, rub our skin up against another colossal neurosis, and another and another until we find enough clues to notice where our call for mastery is really coming from.

These hard walls that keep accosting us are in the centre of ourselves. Outside they feel impassible because they are roads to follow inside, into our own utmost extreme: our own inner void, which has more of our answers than any outside explanation ever can.

Fetching our answers from the void obliges personal exertion—and it only works indirectly. This means dedicating our efforts to an embodiment of our actual question.

Outer structures can be helpful; even life saving. When the seas are busy tossing the boat about, coherence relies on what is solid we can grab. We can discover a mastery of ourselves this way, the dance between stability and complete chaos being what allows whatever spirit lay buried deep within our mountainous voids to emerge and grab the wheel.

What we need to make sure of is that whatever structure we might be leveraging to ‘find ourselves within’ is a cradle fit for the mission. Outside forms are important mirrors to the skies inside. It is good to know what we are looking at.

Our bodies are such structures. As are our thoughts and feelings. As also is our Mother Earth.

It is time we get to know them.

~

For Ian,
whose boundless compassion I could never have met these waters without.
I am forever grateful to be sailing alongside your mountainous courage.