The title of this post is taken from a column I wrote for Sagewoman magazine, back in 1997. I place this column here, as a pdf, along with two others, also from Sagewoman in the late 1990s.

See, in your mind’s eye, the nuclear conflagration. Go ahead. I dare you. I dare you to touch in to that horror that has lived within you since you were born. We call what results PTSD: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, a psychiatric diagnosis first identified in the 1980s. It used to be called “shell shock.”

We think that PTSD is associated with war. And it is. Not just external wars, I would argue, but wars within the psyche, as each of us, consciously or unconsciously, continuously strives to bat down the intense anxiety that attends human life ever since HIroshima was obliterated by U.S. forces, on August 6, 1945.

Now, let’s re-imagine that same nightmare vision; let us re-purpose it, or even better, re-interpret it, gift it with an entirely other meaning, as the glory that awaits us when we awaken to who we really are, each of us a buried font of extraordinary creativity.

In alignment with this re-imagination, I offer three pieces from Sagewoman columns in the late 1990s. You’ll notice that the second one, Magic and Politics, resonates with the post I put up yesterday. You might say that this post is a continuation, and a deepening of yesterday’s theme. We are able to intend to regenerate the world, because we are capable of re-interpreting the meaning of the mushroom cloud.

The first column, Solitary Spirituality, traces my own personal story, starting as a small child.

The second, Magic and Politics, focuses in on social/cultural dynamics.

The third, Breaking Free, identifies and penetrates into my still ongoing determination to identify and embrace the shadow material that accompanies any blinding light.

 

SOLITARY SPIRITUALITY_ One Little Girl’s Visions

Excerpt:

The birthright of each living thing is a miraculous fountain of energy. Like water flowing downhill, when energy is damned, it will eventually break the dam and flood. The creative force, when denied, turns destructive. At every level, whenever energy is repressed, violence is done when that energy explodes.

 

MAGIC AND POLITICS_ An Exploration

Excerpt:

Perhaps the most telling difference between magic and politics is that in accessing dimensions larger than the physical, we invoke realms where the notion of scarcity or perceived lack simply does not arise. How could it, when the universe we are only dimly aware of, is, we do sense, both infinite and expanding?

 

BREAKING FREE_ An Illusion

Excerpt:

I am so scared. The saliva in my mouth tastes metallic. I am so scared to drop into my own heartbeat, for I know that it will take me back. That I will fall into the bottomless depths of my own mother’s heartbeat, and her mother’s, and hers before that. I am so scared. My eyes flutter, glitter in panic. For I can feel that beat starting to drive me down, that rhythm of the universe, that intimate union, and know that I am lost. There is no breaking free, there is only breaking through, to that vast ocean of awareness washing eonic shores.