Month: July 2022

Let’s talk about suicide and bodily autonomy. Yes. I’m going there.

And I think it won’t be what you might expect.

First of all. If you’re here because you currently or in the past have felt suicidal or have had suicidal ideation. You’re in good company. Me too. A lot.

I’ve felt the agony of sleepless nights wishing I could will my heart to stop. I’ve felt the desire to veery my car off of the road into a tree. I’ve contemplated what the easiest, most painless, cleanest (for those left after) method might be if I were to actually cross that threshold.

I’ve felt various pains that made me want to leave, but mostly I’ve just felt like I don’t belong. Like this place is beautiful and all, but what the heck am I even doing here?

My life has been a parade of traumas which resulted in a disabling, painful, and exhausting dis-ease of fibromyalgia. All while I have to work to keep my family supported despite the pain, exhaustion, burn out, and, yes, resentment that I have to do this.

Why couldn’t we just have a society that could support someone like me through the healing process and the time and space I need away from the world to heal? That’s another post I suppose.

I’ve wondered why the heck I was staying if my life was so terrible.
Don’t get me wrong, there have been a lot of really amazing things in my life, but is it really worth it in the balance?

Before I go any further, I do want to note here that if you are currently in a moment of crisis, this is not usually a time that the sorts of contemplations I’m about to explore are best pondered. Feel free to keep reading but crisis times are not the times to make a decision. I’ll explore more on that in a second.
For now, if you’re in crisis, please soothe yourself. Avail yourself of what resources there are like the US National Suicide Crisis line (just call 988).

I’m about to plunge into some deep, icy waters here. This exploration is not for everyone in every moment, and you know best where you are currently at.
As my view around suicide has evolved, I have also come to understand that moments of crisis are not the moments to be making decisions like this that have more or less permanent results. In these moments of crisis it’s almost impossible to truly decide. It’s almost impossible to cogently consider options. Pay attention to what the crisis is bringing, and when the crisis has settled, come back to ponder what it brought to your attention.

I used to have horribly agonized feelings around suicide, like Shakespeare’s Hamlet. “O that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d his canon ’gainst self-slaughter!” I was a fundamentalist Christian, and suicide was going to end this torture only to commence a new, eternal torture. Yikes.

So I was suicidal, but could never really face it, never really grapple with it. There was no option, so why bother?

Then I left Christianity and converted to Scandinavian Heathenry. No such law against suicide there, only that you face your death valiantly. In fact, there is evidence from Sagas of Norse mythology that suicide was an acceptable option and would still net you the reward of, in the case I’m thinking of, Sessrumir, the afterlife abode of Freyja and her chosen ones.

Now I was in a tricky bind… I couldn’t kill myself, right? Not possible. No longer not allowed, but I just can’t think about it. I can’t go there or I might make a permanent decision.
So, for a few years I avoided the subject. I soothed myself down from moments of crisis, then buried myself in work the rest of the time. Always something new to heal, either in me or in my patients. Always some new external crisis to manage to keep me distracted from this ultimate question.

Then as my fibro progressed in the first year of my second marriage and by far the most healed, most blissful romantic relationship I’d ever had, I was forced to really look at it. This was three years ago now, for perspective.

As I agonized over how I’d started planning three years prior, then stopped, then brought this new love into my life who I was now pondering leaving in a very permanent way, I had a heartfelt discussion with my partner, and he gave me the best gift I’d ever been given.

“If you need to go, I’ll support you in that, and I’ll hold your hand through it.” I was floored. I wept. I was simultaneously blown away by the vistas of possibility that had opened up and terrified.

I was terrified. Now, now I really had to look my suicidal urges in the eye. I could no longer just pretend that it wasn’t possible and repress the urge anymore.

I was no stranger to this, this is how I practice shadow work and trauma healing, but looking the monsters in the eye, asking them to come to tea, and making friends with them. I thought I had done this with my suicidal urges, but it became suddenly, terrifyingly, abundantly clear that I had not. Not really.

I really had to face it. And I did. And I do. It isn’t gone for a number of reasons, but let me tell you what the gift of looking it in the face was.

As I pondered over the weeks following the offering this gift of unconditional love and support from my partner, even through the very gates of death, I realized that when I fully gave myself permission to consider suicide fully, to enact it, I didn’t want to. When it was really an option and I really considered it as an equally valid option to continuing to live, I wanted to live!

It remains a struggle for me because I want to live, but not like this. In the three years that have passed since then, I’ve been working with triple the usual fervor to change my life, to improve it, to move away from the things that are making it miserable and move towards the parts that I don’t want to leave. Towards the things that when I really seriously think about suicide I am stricken with grief over leaving behind.

As I’ve continued to ponder this, I’ve pondered deeply physician assisted suicide, which is a service that is offered here in my home state of Oregon.

To be eligible for the program, typically you must have a terminal diagnosis. You must go through a waiting period of a couple to a few months, and psychiatric evaluation. The purpose of this is to determine that you are not in a moment of crisis. Remember I noted that you can’t really decide in that crisis moment, you can only react.

Then, if you pass all those criteria, you are allowed to go forward with the procedure of assisted suicide, surrounded by those you love. This is a huge point.

We allow people with a physically terminal illness to escape the prospect of wasting away to a painful death. We offer them the mercy of death with dignity, death on their own terms. I love that for us as a veterinarian who has offered this gift to my patients and their families for 12+ years. I really do. And I wonder why it’s only those with physical diagnoses who get this mercy.

Those of us with mental diagnoses, or painful debilitating, disabling physical diagnoses that are not terminal are often not included in these programs. I think we should be. I know from my own experience that mental illness can equally cause you to painfully waste away until you die, often at your own hand in a moment of severe crisis, hidden from those you love both because of the stigma of what you’re doing, and in an attempt to shield them from any legal culpability for your acts. Why would we not offer all people access to a dignified death on their own terms? Who are they hurting? Moreover, offering it this way would help to ensure that those who were simply in a moment of temporary crisis that did not need a permanent solution could get the help they needed by being able to be completely honest about where they found themselves. (Don’t get me started on how the modern psychotherapeutic community handles suicidal folks.)

That’s just some food for thought there. But let me close with the things I consider when I’m in those moments of thinking about and planning for an end:

Something needs to die. Your being deeply knows this, but is it you? Is it a part of you? Is it a part of your life or circumstance?
A desire for death does not necessarily mean you really desire your own physical death. That’s not how being an oracle works.
Obviously I have yet to decide that an actual physical death of this body is what is needed or you wouldn’t be reading this because I wouldn’t have written it.

Perhaps you’re actually ready for initiation. If you’ve found your way here I suspect you are ready for an initiation. In shamanic traditions, initiations involve a death-rebirth ritual. It’s very intense and something that the modern spiritual community often bypasses or treats as metaphor. Sure, it is that, but when you’re in it, you’re dying. Really. I’ve done this before and it was intense.

If you’re contemplating suicide, I encourage you to consider that perhaps this version of you needs to spiritually die in order to allow the new version of you to live, much like the pheonix.

Our culture has lost the art of initiation, but it is there in every one of our roots. Ancient cultures (and modern indigenous cultures) still have this wisdom. We still know the path through the darkness.

If you are ready for initiation, ready to be burned alive so that the parts of you that are no longer viable are immolated and the new you can step forward, let’s talk. Or maybe you are deeply suicidal and have not been able to find help. My spiritual coaching is for those who know that gaslighting themselves into staying is not the answer.

Let’s talk. Get in touch and we can talk about how my coaching works and how we can walk together through these initiations and face these monsters of yours. Let’s turn these monsters into the dragons you ride into battle.

All you need to do is take the first step and get in touch.

One day as I was riding my horse on my friend’s property I passed a huge patch of A. muscaria mushrooms, also known as fly agaric. With their bright red tops and brilliant white specks they were unmistakable and unmissable little messengers from the Otherworld.
As I rode past I clearly heard them saying “Eat me, eat me!” in a cacophonic chorus.
“I don’t think so. I think you’re trying to trick me. I’ve heard you’re quite toxic!”
“EAT ME!” they replied.

I went home that day and researched these mushrooms, their uses, and their toxicity. This was years ago, and today you’re ready some of the results of that encounter.

I’m an herbalist, and was at the time. I’m also a shamanic practitioner in the Scandinavian tradition, but this was something that was just budding at the time the mushrooms spoke to me.

Years later and I thoroughly understand their place in shamanic practice, and I understand a bit about why this botanical helper (not technically a plant helper, but in that general category) is not widely used.

Psychedelic mushrooms and humans have a very interesting relationship, and I’ll link an article at the end that thoroughly explores this in cultures across the globe. Humans are the only primates who have serotonergic systems that respond to psilocybin mushrooms the way we do. Other primates do not experience a “high” or hallucinations from them while we can. This indicates that there is something about psychedelic mushrooms and responding in a psychedelic manner that was an evolutionary advantage to us.

Certainly these are a different kind of mushroom, but psilocybin mushrooms are found nearly everywhere that humans have lived on this planet and Amanitas are found on every continent, though the only place they grow in the US is right here in the Pacific Northwest (up to and including Alaska).

Entheogenic practices are so common in animistic traditions (the ones that give us shamanic practices) that I would venture to say they are essential. Whether we’re talking about San Pedro cactus, psilocybin mushrooms, Amanitas, Ska Pastora (salvia), peyote, ayahuasca, and DMT (frog medicine), just to name a few.

In fact, when we look at some traditions, we find it. There is strong evidence that soma/houma, the drink that brings enlightenment in the Hindu Vedas is made from Amanita muscaria, and I would argue that the red-gold mead of poetry in the Poetic Edda of Norse tradition is not mead at all, but a fly agaric beverage (perhaps mushrooms mixed in honey wine).

In fact, in the Norse myths, we frequently hear tell of the “red-gold” as a metaphor for spiritual wealth and spiritual enlightenment. What if this isn’t just a metaphor for having something valuable spiritually, but also for the drink that brings that wealth and understanding to you?

There are some very interesting archeological finds that support this. In the linked article you will find a number of these sources, but one of the most interesting ones to me are the razors and petroglyphs from Bronze Age Scandinavia that show mushrooms which appear to be A. muscaria being worshipped or the mariners for voyage that many “crew members” are going on in their little ship.

Yes, these mushrooms have toxic principles, but so does alcohol. Most of these consciousness altering substances are a little bit toxic, and, of course, the toxin is in the dose. Always. Strong herbal medicines will always be toxic if you take too much.

I have since “eaten the mushrooms.” I put that in quotes since I actually prepared them by drying and making a tea, not by eating them.

Some people might ask, why fly agaric when you can have psilocybes which have almost no side effects other than mild nausea? (Fly agaric can be a bit like ayahuasca in it’s causing you to purge your stomach.)
Firstly, it’s a different medicine. Different medicine, different experience. Different needs, different medicine.
Secondly, it works on a different system altogether. Psilocybin works on the serotonin receptors, and I think mine might be funky (yours might be too), while the muscimole of the fly agaric works on the GABA receptors. That’s really just another way of saying different medicine, different effect.

If you’ve heard the mushrooms calling, you know you can’t deny them. They’ll talk to you forever. Maybe especially if you take them.

Questions? Get in touch!

Next up? Let’s talk about suicide and bodily autonomy.

Resource article: https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/3/2/article-p43.xml

Let’s talk about reincarnation, the transmigration of the soul, the wheel of samsara, and how one fulfills or escapes their cycles of rebirth. I hesitate to talk about karma as it is not a part of my tradition and both karma and our modern, post-New Age ideas of reincarnation steal *heavily* from Hinduism.

But let’s talk about a second about karma as I understand it. It seems to me to be very similar to the Nordic idea of orlog. Orlog is both your fate as well as the debt owed to you by your ancestors and the debt that you owe the world. Similarly karma is a debt that you are currently paying and accumulating. There is no “good karma” or “bad karma,” there is only karma. This is similar to the idea of soul contracts.

Some Hindus say that the root of all karma, the original karma that causes your soul to incarnate the first time, is desire. This is an important point as we go forward.

Most people that you talk to about the cycles of death and rebirth want to talk about the things you have to do, complete, learn, or believe correctly in order to finish your “term” here in embodied life. I think they’re wrong.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve often been plagued by the idea that I have tasks and lessons to complete here on earth before I can be released from my debts and contracts in order to not come back. Fortunately I’ve remembered that this is absolutely incorrect.

This idea that a desire is what started our journey here is a much more correct understanding from what I remember.

First is the desire for your soul to individuate from the All-That-Is, the Great Mother.
Second is your desire for an embodied life with all the sensory/sensual experiences, pleasurable and not, that come with it.
Third, for some of us, is a feeling that we must keep coming back for one reason or another.

Lately I’ve been observing that some souls, particularly those in human form, seem addicted to coming back when maybe they should rest with the Cosmic Mother for a bit instead. Our broken masculine paradigm insists that we cannot rest until we complete our work, then makes everything work.

What if I told you that the only thing you need to do in order to not incarnate again is to simply not want to? What if I told you that you can be released from soul contracts now?

Another important idea here is the idea of consent. True, continuous consent. This is another thing that the broken masculine paradigm has a problem with. In this system we learn that consent is given once, and once given cannot be retracted.
What a load of shit!! Even in our very broken system, almost any contract can be canceled. There is an out. Minds can be changed.

Similar to our re-evolving idea of sexual consent – that consent should be exuberant, ongoing throughout the encounter, may be withdrawn at any point, and is something that all partners are seeking and monitoring throughout – is the idea that our souls, all of them, are consenting to be here and to be in the situations they’re currently in.
We planned this before we got here. We had certain experiences we wanted to have. Not necessarily to learn, nor to even “finish” the experience. If, like me, your soul wanted to experience an abusive marriage, then perhaps what it really wanted was to experience you saying “no” to a situation that was not serving you! I know that was true for me, and I stayed a lot longer than I needed because I thought I was supposed to fulfill my vows, not break them.

Part of why I have remembered any of this is that a large portion of my life experience is about being in something that seems compulsory and then opting out. Things are always, always better after opting out in line with my soul desires.

If your soul is no longer consenting to incarnate, no amount of debt or contract can pull you back in!

Interestingly, I had a plan to write this post today and last night I had a very relevant dream.
I had given a man free advice on my strategy for finding soulmates or your twin flame using dating apps. I told him the whole thing, for free just because I wanted to, because I was so moved by his distress over yet another bad date with a person who was not a good fit for what he was looking for. Later in the dream when that advice hadn’t worked, he attempted to get more from me in the dream metaphor form of stalking me and attempting to assault me.
After having crossed my own boundaries voluntarily for him before (giving free, unasked for advice), he now felt he had a right to cross my boundaries in whatever way he liked. In the dream I chose to enforce my boundaries by defending myself with violence and with the claiming and speaking of one of my true names, a reflection of my nature.

Nature tells us the same story. Even a very peaceful, lazy animal like the black bear will become a violent force to be reckoned with if you cross her boundaries and harass her cubs.

If your soul does not consent to incarnate, or if you want to end a soul contract you made before you came here, you simply need to withdraw your consent and then enforce that boundary.

It sounds so easy, but trust me when I say that I know it’s simple, but not always easy. Especially for folks like me who were traumatized early on, particularly with abusive power figures including parents. That’s most of us, by the way, as the Christian flavor of our (US) culture visits religious trauma on almost every child. We’ve been conditioned to allow the violation of our boundaries and to think it’s wrong or bad to enforce our boundaries with loud no’s or violence.

Truly I am not a coach for beginners, and I’m a hidden sage, a hermit on the mountaintop. If you’re here reading this, I bet you that you’re not a spiritual beginner, that you’ve begun to walk your path. Moreover, you’ve found me, and they who find the hidden sage are often meant to work with the sage.
If you’re looking for guidance on your spiritual journey, including but certainly not limited to working with enforcing boundaries regarding soul contracts, drop me a line and we can talk about working together.