The desire to escape is reeeeaaaallllll. Especially in the dominant culture in which we live- seeped in capitalistic, exclusionary, materialistic and punitive thought paradigms and norms, a culture in which heart connection and healthy interdependency doesn’t matter… isn’t that desire to escape understandable? And yet, here we are, and while we’re here we’re being invited to ask deep questions right now… what is it that we desire to escape from? And perhaps more to point: what is it that we truly long for? what is it that we truly desire?
Many of us are tapping into deep levels of grief and anger (and some shame and fear for good measure) right now as we discern through these questions. No wonder. We are currently sandwiched btw two eclipses, while also in a mercury retrograde period (which always asks us to consider what is working for us, and what isn’t)- all of which bring us closer to realness, whether we want to be or not.
But a lot of us are ready. We’ve been waiting. We’ve been desiring to know and live through our wholeness. We’ve been learning how to be present. We’ve been remembering and we’ve been re-membering.
Remembering brings with it the “good, bad and ugly”- the various layers of our humanness- including the terrain we had to disconnect from when we were young beings on this planet, or later as adults when our systems hadn’t yet learned that it was safe to slow down and feel big feelings.
For me, it is sometimes a strange phenomenon, to not have to escape these big feelings, and stranger yet, to be with that core desire to escape- a desire that’s been around for me for as long as I can remember in the functionally dysfunctional household I was born into. Put another way, the irony in not needing to escape the depths of my patternings of escapism has brought me closer to the subterrain there within. It’s not a pleasant subterrain. That subterrain is what I’ve been been working hard to stay separate from all my life. Shame, disgust, rage, despair… Rumi says to treat them like guests in our personal human guest house, but easier said than done.
To feel the depths of that instead of turning away and avoiding, instead of getting lost in people/places/thing to escape, instead of getting lost in dominant culture and capitalistic blame/shame/fault/othering, instead of avoiding through activities that “save” me temporarily, instead of dissociating into mental (fantasy or managing)— to feel, consciously the want to escape, and then choose not to… This is brave, courageous, and loving work- and it’s the journey of this life time for many of us. Sometimes called the heros journey, for good reason.
I can’t count the number of times I fall into little escapsims throughout the day- and I don’t need to. I do need to bring compassion because let’s be honest our culture is set up for escaping. Dominant culture wants us to be dulled and asleep, stoned out of our minds and hearts, disengaged and disempowered as possible. Not giving into the desire to escape is the hero’s journey because it an act of rebellion and defiance to stay awake amidst a cis-hetero-patriarchal- settler- colonial-capitalist system.
What’s important to me is to notice I move towards that inclination to escape, and to see what else is possible. I’ve been journeying in this arena enough to know that there are lots of possibilities available when I slow down and resource. I also gotta be real here: as much as I still may fall into escape patternings, or still may fantasize about it (because I have decades of neural pathways built in the way) escapism really doesn’t works for me anymore- in fact, when I step towards that territory, I suffer. Almost immediately. I’m too much on the other side now, and there’s no going back. I know some of you know what I mean. It’s a curse, it’s a gift.
The good news? Learning that I don’t have to escape has revealed to me who I really am. Underneath that subterrain of muck and capitalistic blame/shame/fault, is another subterrain. I’ll call it Love. Unburdened by the weight of false selves and the capitalist mandate to prove/earn my worth… and so many other belief systems and survival strategies… I come face to face with who I’ve been all along, and that’s all I’ve ever really longed for. It’s a wild and wacky journey, and yet so many of you are right here with me in this star dust planet of oneness. Let’s be love renegades together.
(Call out to all my clients and students who are in with me on this wacked out journey, and for all the others in communities of practice i’m engaged with who are also committed to being evolutionary co-creators. I’m so grateful. )
