pissing_myself tender_square somehow, i have scaled a mountain rock face and i have realized just how high i am off the ground. i am not wearing safety equipment—no harness, no helmet—i adjust my body, which is clinging for dear life around a huge boulder. i look down and see how far away the ground is from me. there are people nearby—others who are trying to pass?—but i am blocking the path. i am able to call to someone down on the ground, to tell them that i am paralyzed. i say that i can’t get down unless an ambulance or firetruck comes to get me. she says it’s going to take at least 45 minutes for help to arrive and i’m not sure i can hold on for that long. i am so scared. i start to pee myself and, with that, the fear dissipates and the scene suddenly changes; i’m off the rock and in the care of a nurse in an examination room. my pants are still wet or they have dried; either way, i’m not embarrassed by having soiled myself. the nurse swabs a cartridge she has taken from inside me, a pearl sheath, to see if i have a uti, but she says that i’m in the clear, and deposits the cartridge back inside of me. * “alchemy elaborated the symbolic character of urine. it was golden in color, indicating something precious. it was fluid and acidic, giving it the qualities of both water and fire, opposites that separate and united in the transforming opus…[urine] was also the living, changeable matter of the psyche that was being transformed and the solvent that was the agent of the transformation… “urine belongs to the second chakra…to the kidneys, or reins, to the bladder, the pressure of instinctual urges and our awareness of them. it denotes the urgency of emotional and creative self-expression, the feeling-toned ‘yielding to or allowing the flow of what needs to come through one.’” —book of symbols (p. 426) * is the mountain in my dream a symbol to serve as a warning for how ungrounded i am and unaware of this? or has the ascent given me a new perspective into what i’m capable of achieving and i am fearful of that power? have the concurrent threads running through my life taken me to unanticipated heights? i don’t remember scaling this mountain with conscious intention—i arrived here. when i think of the stone i am hugging, i am brought back to my poetry rock i gravitated toward when i was eight, and how it’s solid smoothness helped me find a place within myself to process all the big feelings ballooning in my body. i keep waiting for rescue from an external force to my perceived emergency out there on the rock ledge, yet i know only i can be responsible for saving myself. ambulance is borrowed from the french “ambulant,” meaning “mobile, itinerant,” but i can’t physically move; perhaps the wish for help is a wish to make my body respond when in a state of fear and anxiety. it is only when i urinate that the scene switches, that i free myself from the rock face. the nurse examines me but concludes that there’s nothing wrong, no blockage in my second chakra. i can’t control the stream of creative work coming out of me—there is no impediment now, no shame. what flows is auspicious. * “change is a fundamental element of consciousness. it is what commands our attention, awakens it, makes us question…without change, our minds become dull. without change, there is no growth, no movement, and no life. *consciousness thrives on change.* “the second chakra’s purpose is to *let go and create flow.* flow allows one thing to connect energetically with another. it is the difference between a point and a line.” —wheels of life, anodea judith (pgs. 108–109) * “pleasure, as befits the duality of the second chakra, is a two-edged sword. it’s an easy chakra to get trapped in, yet the trap can result from avoiding pleasure as much as indulging in it. the balancing of any chakra requires opening to its particular energy, *without becoming excessively attached.*” (118) this is where the importance of centering comes in. i once had a psychic tell me that tree pose was an excellent yoga position for me to return to—head in the clouds, feet on the ground. i know that i am a personal journey. joseph campbell called the hero’s journey a monomyth, meaning that each of these traditional stories followed a similar formula: the hero goes on an adventure, is victorious in the face of a crisis, and comes home changed or transformed. the journey always begins with a call to adventure, followed by a refusal of the call. i tried to refuse the call when it came into my life two months ago and, in doing so, felt that i had cut off a vital life force i didn’t realize i needed; my therapist characterized my refusal as a “denial of pleasure.” “unfortunately, we are taught to beware of pleasure, that it’s a dangerous temptress waiting to lure us away from our true path. we are taught to repress our need for pleasure, and in so doing, we repress our natural bodily impulses, and once again, segregate mind and body…these stringent measures arise from the mind, but seldom from the body. we then may experience a backlash in our emotions.” (119) * i am clinging to that rockface in my waking life. the further i step into my creative power and potential, the further i step into individuation and a stronger self. the ramifications of these changes leave me with uncomfortable, thorny questions: what if my stronger self eclipses the person i committed myself to? what if my growth threatens the very idea of us? this is the fear i’ve carried with me, that my creativity will take me from those i love. this is why i’ve always prioritized relationships over self. i know i have a right to an individual life, but he and i are so intertwined that any shift feels like a betrayal to what we are. i feel selfish and secretive and yet i know this journey is mine to face alone, to make conscious what i don’t yet understand. i am living in dualities. i am pissing myself in terror. “emotions are inherently tied in with movement. we repress feelings by restricting movement, and conversely, movement can free the emotional holding that causes chronic tension…emotions are a complex, instinctual reaction to pleasure and pain. they begin in the unconsciousness and, through movement, are allowed to come into consciousness. to block emotion, we restrict movement. then the emotion may remain in the unconscious—meaning we are unaware of it—yet still wreak havoc on our lives. it is the acting from *unconscious* motivations that so often gets people into trouble.” (120) what’s that adage—feel the fear and do it anyway? and so, the quest continues. this dream tells me that i’m looking for aid, but i know i’ve already crossed the threshold into the unknown; i have guides but no one else can walk this with me. the sheath-as-womb image in my dream, if it’s even that, may suggest i’m about to enter the belly of the whale. campbell writes, “this popular motif gives emphasis to the lesson that the passage of the threshold is a form of self-annihilation. ... [i]nstead of passing outward, beyond the confines of the visible world, the hero goes inward, to be born again.” (wikipedia) * i’m dying, i’m dying, i’m dying. “i wish i was someone who was satisfied with staying where i am,” i cried to my therapist. “but i’m not.” * canadian poet gwendolyn macewan once wrote that living consciously is holy, “while merely to / exist is sacrilege.” 211011 what's it to you? who go blather from