How Did I Get This Way?

It happens so slowly, we never notice that we are disappearing and something darker is taking over. This darkness is always looking for an opening, for a weakness. It begins in childhood, this darkness seeking a way into innocence. It finds a very small opening, almost too small to bother with.

. . But when it finds that opening and while that opening is still small and only a slight discomfort, there is still me and still all hope to remain me. But then I learn to talk and give words to my discomfort, which gives it shape. It gives it a name that I can now remember and repeat to myself so my mind feels satisfied it knows what’s going on. And it always has to know what is going on. The more I repeat this name, the more reality I give it, until I no longer experience “it” but my thoughts about “it”. The thoughts keep it real because experiencing the pain directly would lessen it, not increase it. The pain gets trapped under my words and can’t get out because I keep calling it back. It races around and around in my head, heating up, locking me down under ever greater pressure until that pressure finds an “escape valve” or explodes. Sometimes that valve is alcohol, sometimes sex but sooner or later pain finds what gives it momentary relief.

Then one day all those missed opportunities to grow, hiding behind all that alcoholic haze, come out of hiding. They pile up, waiting for the moment we stop running, stop denying. And like a boulder rolling slowly downhill, they pick up momentum. With us strapped securely to our rock, the boulder rolls over us time and time again—tenderizing our delicate sensibilities until we finally give up and enter the state of vulnerability. “Everyone else got to grow slowly as life came to them. I’m so thankful I sobered up just in time to have to grow up all at once.”

Brought to our knees with head bowed just enough to fit through the door into the spirit realm, a door that notoriously refuses anyone with a big head, we find our new direction, our new thoughts, our new self.

But how does that darkness take over my life to begin with—to the point it pushes me out? It uses pain to encourage me to continually object to life, to continually notice what is wrong with life, as though I am reality’s curator. I constantly complain, wish things weren’t like they are, feel sorry for myself, all of which reinforces my impotence. Complaints are basically negative entities. So as I complain, if there were an image as to what this does to my consciousness, think of a sunny day. Then I begin to complain and list all the ways I can’t work with reality, and the day begins to darken. If we’re really good at pushing back on the immovable, the day continues to get darker. “Oh, boy, what a depressing day. Nothing ever works out my way.” But things worked out exactly my way. I just didn’t know the rules of the game.

As we inform life about the things we won’t put up with, at the very least, it begins to limit us in multi-faceted ways. And if we object too much, life might just decide we really don’t want to be here at all. More than one accident has probably been arranged to accommodate our inability to go around the bridge.

King Arthur himself, told to ride around the bridge by Sir Lancelot, refuses. During the fight, Arthur breaks Excalibur and Lancelot tells him his anger has unseated him. In remorse and sorrow, Arthur throws the pieces of the sword back into the lake. Then that beautifully bejeweled hand reappears with sword magically whole again. Arthur’s contrition has healed it. We don’t get far when our path is blocked and we refuse to look for another way. We can’t even see another way until we sincerely wish to look. When we get ourselves out of the way, whole consciousness can fill the space we've been inhabiting with our knocked over trash cans, dirty diapers, and beer bottles. Of course, Consciousness can’t be broken but assume it can or seem so, just as Arthur broke Excalibur. As Consciousness fills up this space, the trash gets picked up, floors mopped and waxed. When it reaches capacity and Consciousness becomes whole, it doesn’t just turn on a flashlight to look for a new path. It builds a whole new and better bridge.