Chapter 1 - Metanoia
/ˌmedəˈnoiə/ Noun a transformative change of heart especially : a spiritual conversion
What a magnificent word. Right?!
Carl Jung coined the term to suggest the “spontaneous attempt of the psyche to heal itself from unbearable conflict, melting down and then being reborn in a more adaptive form.
Yea, that sounds beautiful.
But when you experience one, it feels more like you drank the slimy dregs off the bottom of the ayahuasca cup handed to you by a sweet-faced, grinning Shaman somewhere in the Amazon who knows exactly what’s about to happen to you and smiles anyway.
No running water or flushing toilets, so your left to just bleed out, everything you’ve got in you, from every orifice your body holds.
That’s a Metanoia – akin to the butterfly emerging from its cocoon, it’s not a beautiful thing, it’s messy, bloody, gooey, horrifying and at some point, liberating…
I think I’m in the gooey right now.
My fifties began literally with a world-wide pandemic. As the world shut down and went within, I had no choice but to spend hours upon hours sitting in silence, reflecting on the journey my life has been.
And here I thought I was going to spend the summer of 2020 walking the Camino, drinking wine, meeting amazing travelers all on their own spiritual quest, laughing and who knows, maybe falling in love with a charming Italian or Spaniard who would whisk me away to their palazzo and cook for me, sing to me and um… you know…other things…
Ha! Nope… Not so fast little miss wannabe Algaea (The Greek Goddess of Beauty and Glory)…apparently, I chose the discount package life adventure, which is more akin to Oizys…the goddess of misery, her Roman name was Miseria…sound familiar?
To be fair, my life hasn’t been utterly miserable. Over the last 3 years, I’ve had plenty of time to look back on what has been, for the most part, quite an adventure.
I have traveled to many places, met many interesting people, made a living doing what I love, did all the things humans are supposed to do… had 2 great kids, a couple of shitty marriages, gained weight, lost weight, totaled one car, you know, life stuff.
But it wasn’t until a few months ago, after years and years of personal growth work, where I thought I had unpacked all the hidden shadows of my past that I realized. I had one more (dare I say) deep, dark secret to unravel before I could honestly say, I played the game of life well.
One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned about our existence, is, at least I believe, is that this is the plane of experience. It’s like a Logan’s run of sorts. We’re born without a fucking clue about what the hell is going on and we’re given a finite amount of time to figure it out, playing out different scenarios of suffering and joy. With a ton of easter eggs along the way to hopefully enlighten us to wtf is actually happening. It’s up to us to find them, to digest the wisdom and move to the next choose your own adventure page of life.
Some say these events are pre-determined based on our past lives and some contract we signed in the void, others say we are dreamers of the great higher consciousness experiencing itself at infinity, trying on all the different thoughts and ideas consciousness can create. Some say, we have no say in any of it and are just operating in a deterministic reality, in a clockwork like universe acting based on the laws of Newtonian physics and Darwin’s theory of evolution, without any real contribution to the system, reacting to an existence based on survival of the fittest.
Who really knows… We do like to make up some pretty wild stories about why we are here.
Either way…I’ve come to understand it’s never an end or a beginning. It’s an experience. And so, I’ve taken to operating from that perspective. Especially as I got older and reflect back on all the moments when I thought my life was over…
I was over…
and then I wasn’t.
Somehow, someway I always landed back on my feet.
Some call this luck, some call it destiny, some give credit to the angels or the spirit guides, my astrological chart, some say God’s hand. I just call it BoB.
BoB has clearly had a plan for me since I arrived here, and I feel like I’ve been a pretty good steward of his dream. (I know – his… it’s a pronoun- get over it…)
And yet there is one gaping hole still seeping out sledge of a lifetime of trauma that I must fill.
Love.
I don’t know that I will ever be loved.
Truly loved.
And this is where my Metanoia 5.0 begins.
In love or lack thereof.
*Artwork by Emily Grieves
Way back in 2012 I wrote my very first book. A short book of essays that came to me during my Metanoia 4.0. It’s only available on Amazon.
Bought the kindle and sent as donation for the 4th. Once we are both all healed up let’s meet up💕