The Fire That Brought Me Home

I woke up on the floor with this nasty, eerie, icky feeling. Nightmarish dreams. Weird aloneness. A burning ache in my muscles. 

But when I sat up and digested the fire behind it all, the ache in my body relaxed.

And it hit me. That ache right there. That is what my entire life has been about managing. Going across the face of the earth to manage exactly that. 

The Anger

There is something in me that feels angry. This anger about it having to take this many years. Having to go through all the nightmare of surviving my life. Without a single person who gets it. No one to show me the way. To explain to me.

I went in all the wrong directions. Did everything that was not what I needed to be doing. Feeling the agony of being so so so different. And no one getting it. Seeing it. Understanding it.

Almost like this anger at the universe. For making me live so much of a life in a world that was not built for me. Navigating depressions. The psychedelic experience of myself. Like an alien abandoned by her home planet. 

The Search

And yet I sought. I sought the fuck out of it.

I needed to find the answer. I had no choice but to search. I could not settle.

I searched all the books in the religious section. I went to Tibetan Buddhist meditation centers and sat eight hours a day for a month. I did handfuls of weeklong retreats. I went to every doctor. I tried every drug. I sought out every human who might know.

I searched all the communities. Texas. San Francisco. Festivals. Workshops. Community houses. Psychedelic therapists. Neuropsychologists. I searched far and wide. I sought the face of the earth relentlessly. I tried everything. Developed all kinds of maps. Theories. Systems. For how to manage what I was walking through.

I found Bentinho, and he became my new religion. Finally, a map that started to make sense of why I am here. How I can navigate it. What is reality. Why I am here. What is the point. I ingested everything from his teachings about awareness, source, life's purpose.

I searched all the YouTube videos. Leo Gura. More really insightful insight on the nature of reality. The Tibetan Buddhists had some good stuff too.

And then Jeffrey. Thank god for Jeffrey. He first introduced digest direct experience,  felt sense vs story.  He gave me tools. Terminology. That was  life changing. Notice how it feels. Notice the difference. His tools were pivotal. His understandings and maps were monumental to me cutting through,. He was the first human alien I related to. 

The Finding

My seeking was ferocious. Relentless. Thorough.

I felt through every last desire. Every last direction. Overturned every map front and back.

And you know what. I actually found what I was looking for. Believe it or not. I did.

The Paradox

So it is interesting, is it not. To be frustrated that the world was not built for me. That I did not fit into it. That I had to spend all these years feeling like an alien abandoned from her home planet, searching the face of the earth for my lost home.

But actually. It was that fire. That thoroughness. That I do not have any other fucking choice energy. That actually led me to where I am now.

Even though I can feel the anger in it. Even though I can feel the fuck you universe in it. I also see how it has allowed me to go deeper than any human would ever dare to go in one life. Maybe hundreds.

The Reckoning

I see the anger. I see it. Like, wait a second. This sucks. How dare you, universe. How dare you abandon me like this. Play this cruel game on me. Displace me, and be like, Oh, figure it out, good luck.

And yet. The reality is. I did search. And I did find maps that helped.

The Gratitude

And the thing is. I see the gratitude of it now.

This served me. This needed to be this way. It needed to take this long. I needed to be thrown into the flames to create the diamond that I am and will be.

I gained a ton of experience and wisdom that actually allows me to be where I am now. Direct experience and wisdom that is like hundreds of lifetimes worth, when I look around at what everyone else is doing on the surface.

I exhausted the search. Burned through all the options. And it led me exactly back to where I started.

The Return

It is true. It led me right back to exactly where I was running from.

And the whole time. That was the answer: the ache. Sitting alone with myself in that ache. 

Burning through all the aches and stripping away everything other than…just…me…

I mean, what the hell, right. I went on all this journey just to come back and realize what i was seeking was everything I was running from.

And that it was here all along.

I was here all along.