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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504395823 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Balboa Press |
| Publication date: | 03/06/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 110 |
| File size: | 432 KB |
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CHAPTER 1
ALEGRIA
Alegria (joy) had been looking for a nameless name and the energy it represented. Oh, she had many names, but these names, though initially valuable, had obscured a nameless name deep within her that sought release. A name that, like a caterpillar that turns into a butterfly, would turn a child into a woman. She would be released from the ties that bound her gentle and wild nature, all the while realizing that a nameless name represented a much greater vastness that words could convey.
A snake charmer waited at the first bridge. The closer Alegria came, the more the cobra began to dance and sway like a goddess to the haunting melodies vibrating from the pipe. Keeping respectful distance, Alegria could see old skins, signs of shedding. Then, without warning, the cobra turned in her direction and spat potent venom. The target was her eyes, and the venom burned through her protective glasses, blinding her to what she perceived as reality.
"You must begin to see the world with new eyes," hissed the cobra. After being momentarily stunned, Alegria opened her still-burning eyes and saw only darkness. Somehow, though, she managed to step onto a single-footed, narrow bridge.
SEPARATION
Time to start cutting some umbilical cords, lest you be strangled by them.
From a symbolic perspective, reunion, paradoxically, would come to mean separation. The umbilical cords of attachment that follow us from one realm of existence to another, though possibly helpful, can become chains of oppression when we believe that it is the chains themselves (i.e., our stories about who we think we are) that ground us in the earthly realm rather than our essences. There is a timeless wisdom that says what is seen on the outside is but a reflection of what exists within. Preceding this pivotal event was a medical trip to Nicaragua, a destabilizing hurricane, a series of "accidental" deaths, the release of a long-held trauma, the closure of my former high school, and the death of a religion teacher whose presence, inside and outside of the classroom, had been aligned with both talking and walking the walk. All of these happenings severed umbilical cord attachments and closed one chapter of my life as I knew it.
Although I went on with everyday life, deep down I knew that what was happening externally was also happening internally. Something was preparing to come into being as something else was preparing to fade away.
Yet what was coming into being would be concealed for quite some time — until the time was right for it to be revealed.
So what happened on that surreal day so long ago when I met my birth mother and sisters for the first time?
Happily shocked though I was during that blur of a twenty-four-hour period, there was a part of me that remained outside of it all. Call it merging with eagle consciousness. The subtle message I got was this: "Yes, there is a seventh presence here, as you have intuited. As you have always been guided, you are now being guided into new terrains. Cherish and grieve this moment simultaneously, for it will never again come in this plane of existence. Prepare to let go."
Naturally, that was not a subtle message likely to be well received by any member of the adoption constellation participating in a reunion!
Nonetheless, I sensed all along that this would be a onetime event. I could see the bigger picture. Still, I struggled with what was evolving, most notably in the cause-and-effect arena. After all, I had spent much time and effort reading, researching, and connecting both personally and through emails with professionals who understood the complexities of such an experience. Did I seek to be rewarded for my efforts? Of course! My cup was overflowing with so much information that there was hardly any space to welcome whatever was to be poured.
There is a wonderful Zen story about a seeker who is interested in studying with a renowned master. During the interview with the student, the master listens patiently to the student talk incessantly about his studies and experiences (which reminds me of my converting rabbi who, God bless her, listened with great equanimity — not to mention patience — to my overflowing stories!). The master starts to pour a cup of tea, and the student eventually pauses from his dissertations long enough to see the overflowing cup. He yells for the master to stop pouring. "The cup is overflowing!" cries the student. The master then replies, "And so are you. How can I teach you anything?" (Lama Surya Das, Awakening to the Sacred, p. 43).
I've often wondered if the student in the above story was caught in cause-and-effect thinking because, on some level, welcoming something new, no matter how much desired, might have been threatening to his sense of self. Perhaps he too wished to be rewarded for all of his spiritual efforts. In this particular scenario, the quest was for healing and for developing a more consciously connected compassion to those closest to me. And from a bleeding-heart perspective, I wanted to have the dream come true of all of my families coming together (a common inner wish, I strongly intuit, of many who were part of the closed adoption system of the yesteryears). The first two were cultivatable and sustainable. The third one, as I would come to realize, was not. I could, however, do my part to heal whatever rifts I had created in my relationships by being unaware and making unconscious choices. Somewhere down the road, I would come to learn more about the energies of detachment and discernment, and I would put them into practice when it came to owning my issues and not taking on someone else's.
Bottom line: I wanted to be both the pourer of the tea and the cup that received its contents!
Before I go any further, I wish to state that seeking and exploring are part and parcel of any transformational journey. I also wish to state that what we wish to seek, for the most part, has always been within. As a species, we are a lot more powerful than we have understood ourselves to be, and it is useless to expect others to do our inner work for us. Part of what I was doing was moving to a place of empowerment not previously recognized within myself. The conflicts arose when insights from the combined practices of yoga, meditation, and breath work revealed that the origin of what needed to be transformed did not originate on the academic plane of existence. Its origins were spiritual.
In my first book, Ocultando No Mas / Hiding No More: Unmasking Adoption and Reunion (Rosedog Books 2009), I likened the reunion to an individual crossing a bridge that leads to a new phase of existence and that, upon looking back, disintegrates. This is similar to the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah, when Lot's wife looks back at the destruction and turns into a pillar of salt. There are many diverse interpretations here. Allegorically speaking, could one of those themes speak about not getting stuck in the past and instead living in the present? Like the cobra at the beginning of this chapter, could this tale be speaking of the creation of new being balanced with destruction of old? Could this tale also be speaking of healing the earth?
I also began to realize, with a heavy heart, that to welcome an evolving new phase of life, the bridge of the catalytic event known as reunion would at some point have to be destroyed as well.
This was, to say the least, difficult to process — especially since I am a sponge for surrounding energies. This was not about destroying people, though I was well aware that this would be painful. What was being destroyed, I hoped, was any and all attachments of feeling like I needed to be defined solely by this experience as well as by the insidious need to be right about it. There was no way to predict outcomes, though through centering practices of compassion, discernment, and detachment, clarity would eventually reveal itself. And speaking of revelation, so would new teachers eventually reveal themselves, most of whom were not connected with adoption and reunion.
While there was an internal uprooting occurring, there was an external one as well. As someone who embodied a mosaic of colorful birth heritages as a mixed-race Latina and who also had wonderful adoption experiences, I noticed subtle shifts of awareness in that I was no longer interested in identifying myself solely as this type of linear thought pattern so common in Western culture. This did not mean that I was not proud of my earthly roots. I was. It just meant that I was reuniting with the reality that I was more than what appeared on the surface. Yet I found myself more interested in exploring the spiritual wisdoms and lore that were part of these heritages. In time, I would become even more interested in learning how such wisdoms could be applied in cocreating a higher level of awareness.
I also found my awareness starting to shift when I talked about the reunion itself. Since many people have asked me what it's like to have an adoption experience — and make no mistake, it's not a one-size-fits-all experience — I found myself enjoying the role of teacher in providing explanations. Sometimes I enjoyed the role a bit too much! I was indeed grateful for the friends who stood by me during this time, and also, at times, I was troubled. Perhaps the question I needed to ask myself was whether or not I was sharing or teaching out of a need to be right and a need to blame rather than doing so from a place of centeredness. The years of having to field insensitive questions, though necessary for learning how to proactively stand up for myself, had taken their toll. The years of trying to explain myself in the hopes of fitting in external boxes had not always left me feeling like I was in a good place emotionally. Grateful though I was to be living in a country of material abundance, I was also tired of fielding arrogant remarks about how different life would have been had I been raised in Latin America. It had been in my heart to try to understand that those remarks were not always made out of spite but perhaps out of a person's knowing only one such way of life that followed a linear pattern. Nonetheless, such remarks needed to be challenged. Well intended and not well intended, such rationalizations revealed that some surrounding me were indeed uncomfortable with what I was facing. The limits of cause-and-effect thinking might not be bursting only my bubble. The challenge here was to acknowledge what was emerging without projecting it onto anyone else. I was, by far, not the only one who was hurting. In time, what had felt so good in terms of my own validation ultimately felt anything but good. I started to wish that the ones I called my friends would kick me to the curb and out of a limited and limiting mind-set. Of course, they could not, because that was to be my sacred task. Service, not subservience, to others was what was emerging from the depths within when it came to the adoption/reunion experience, as was impermanence.
Impermanence is the proverbial elephant in the room that no one likes to acknowledge, yet is always there. A reunion can give one the ability to transform numerous tissue issues that arise, because, at some point, either on the earthly realm of existence, saying goodbye to one way of living, or via death, the experience will have to be relinquished once again. This was what was now arising in my consciousness.
Cause-and-effect, reward-and-punishment perspectives were in the process of being disbanded. As someone who has spent most of her working life in the health professions (first as a cardiac technician and then as a personal trainer), I began to pick up on some energetic vibrations that had been previously dormant, making themselves known via electrical disturbances at times. When working with new clients, I could intuit many things even before they spoke. Naturally, I kept these things to myself, as it was more important to engage in meaningful dialogue than to speak for someone else. I had dismissed what was going on, despite the fact that I was now becoming ever more aware of how sensitive I had always been to atmospheric changes that could not be described with words. Watches never lasted on me for very long. These changes were both people-wise and weather-wise. Even though I had experienced these inner workings throughout my own life, I was not yet ready to give full credence to the mind-body-spirit connection — even though I had spent a good part of graduate school studying such connections (again, this was on an academic level; the experiential had arrived and was yet to come) and observing such connections being practiced while in Nicaragua! Loving-kindness was a more potent healer than any drug could offer. What I was seeing there was the embodiment of the phrase "made in the divine image," and even more so, in likeness.
As someone who was initially schooled in Western ideology, I can say that I am more than grateful for its innovations and that such innovations, health-wise, have contributed to the vast improvements of many lives the world over. Yet during this time, I also began to see the limits of such innovations as well. Not everything can be fixed with a pill. My studies had initially focused on fixing, almost to the exclusion of making reference to the body's innate healing wisdom. Cultivating patterns of conscious eating, stress management, exercise, rest, and generosity went far beyond height-weight charts. It was about the whole person, from the inside out. Nothing was separate, as I had originally been taught. It was all interconnected. The questions I pondered in time with regard to one's lifestyle evolved around questions as to what fuels a healthy lifestyle and what causes imbalance. I finally came to accept both as energetic in origin and, in all likelihood, the result of not always being physically present in the physical body. This in no way discounted genetic and lifestyle choices. It was just another piece of the puzzle.
Truth be told, none of these shifts in awareness were comfortable. In fact, they were downright aggravating! As an avid independent film buff, I found myself increasingly bored by what I was watching on the screen. As important as it was to be aware of all of the suffering in the world, it was equally important not to be drained by it. This did not equate to denial, but it did mean becoming more aware of the movies I watched, the foods I ate, and even to some degree the company I kept. I was becoming allergic to life as I once knew it, and this was reflected in minor health disturbances. Situations and people that sapped vitality, and that included my own energy-sapping ways, were limited. I was no longer interested in the misery-loves-company mantra. Instead, I was more interested in being part of life-enhancing vibrations and living and teaching from that place.
This also meant cultivating more playfulness and keeping grounded in what was occurring in each moment. When that happened, the so-called ordinary became extraordinary. The words of my favorite songs now took on a deeper meaning, as if to say, "Pay attention. I'm talking to you."
Still, there were more bridges to cross. If compassion could be cultivated for people in distant lands, why was it such a challenge for me here sometimes? It appeared that the cup that had runneth over now had made space for something else to take formless form.
That formless form was this: if the origin of what was happening was spiritual, and I no longer doubted that it was, what did this say about the Creator and any perspectives that needed to be revisited and possibly relinquished?
Alegria had been shaky on her feet when she began and was now even more so as she approached the second bridge. The first one had been shaped like a mountain that, to the untrained eye, appeared to be easy to climb. Alegria's eyes, however, having been infused by the spitting cobra, found navigating this ambiguous terrain a challenge like no other.
Of course, she didn't realize what was coming up next!
Nothing about crossing the first bridge had been surefooted. Nonetheless, she had managed to stumble her way through the overgrown thickets, some of which obscured the sparkling radiance of the tallest of trees, and found herself standing a few feet away from the second bridge.
If one could even call this contraption a bridge!
It was wooded, rusty, and held together by ropes resembling spaghetti noodles, but what appeared most striking to Alegria were the cobwebs!
Was she really supposed to be crossing a bridge that, on first sight, seemed to go nowhere? The only sights that she could make out were smoke-covered clouds. Upon second glance, it appeared that those smoke-covered clouds were expanding out to include the lower rock formations of the river below.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Ambiguous Terrains"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Denise M. Hoffman.
Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
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