I wrote this in July.  Both times I tried to post it to this blog, I lost everything else I wrote about it.   Here's the original post and my thoughts today:

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I found this paragraph about inspiration and wretchedness as I was re-reading Pema Chodron's words from When Things Fall Apart this morning. It spoke to me of my own Mad ups and downs and the journey I am on to learn from and accept them both as gifts, and I wanted to offer these words to all of your mornings/afternoons/current positions in your time-space continuums, too...

"Inspiration and wretchedness are inseparable. We always want to get rid of misery rather than see how it works together with joy. The point isn't to cultivate one thing as opposed to another, but to relate properly to where we are. Inspiration and wretchedness complement each other. With only inspiration, we become arrogant. With only wretchedness, we loose our vision. Feeling inspired cheers us up, makes us realize how vast and wonderful our world is. Feeling wretched humbles us. The gloriousness of our inspiration connects us with the sacredness of the world. But when the tables are turned and we feel wretched, that softens us up. It ripens our hearts. It becomes the ground for understanding others. Both the inspiration and the wretchedness can be celebrated. We can be big and small at the same time."

The times I have been deeply depressed have shaped who I am at least as much, if not more than the times I haven't, perhaps because I have more of them and they last so much longer. I don't view myself as sick or ill, yet it can be so easy for me to slip into dualistic thinking where I think of my inspiration as "good" because it allows me to function more easily in this crazy world we live in and helps me feel connected to something bigger and deeper, and then judge my wretchedness as "bad" because it can be so painful when I loose my vision of that connection.

It feels both radically challenging and tremendously inspiring to me to envision and work towards changing not only the oppressive, hierarchical, capitalist systems structuring (and destroying) the world we live in but also de-structuring and growing new ways of understanding my own and others' Mad experiences, how to not only accept and learn from the lows I go through, but to value and celebrate them. Do any of you have experiences with celebrating the parts of your dangerous gifts that are painful/terrifying/horrible to live with? For people that don't experience times of inspired, creative energy (or not many of them), how do you see your gifts? What does it look like in your lives when your metaphor meets your experience? Are the truly dangerous times we go through that feel so painfully intolerable extreme ocean depths you navigate through to avoid drowning or gifts that you celebrate?

ripe-hearted flying...

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Months later, I'm still asking these questions.  Today they seem particularly relevant.

Today I did not feel gifted or inspired.  When my dangerous gifts metaphor met my disconnected, loosing it all day long, Mad experience,  I did not celebrate my wretchedness.  I fought with it.  I tried to figure out what I needed to do to move through the world.  I even tried  to co-facilitate my local RMH Organizing meeting.  I tried to hold on and I lost it, several times.  You would think I'd have learned by now...

Here's one of the things I learned today:  I am lucky.  I am lucky to have a Mad partner who understood without judgment or fear, gave me kindness and Rescue Remedy when I lost it, and changed her plans to be with me.  I am lucky to have dear friends who welcomed crying me into their home after the meeting, made vegan hot cocoa and didn't ask any questions when I said I didn't want to talk about it.  I am lucky to have a fellow Mad activist and friend who accepted my explanation after the meeting and still wants to go to dinner with me for my birthday.  I am lucky to have a message waiting for me when I finally got home from my best friend from high school (who I still haven't called back) tracking my ass down again and telling me she wants to hear from me.  I am lucky to have someone waiting in the kitchen for me with a cup of hot tea so we can watch anime together when I finish writing this.

So today I don't feel gifted or inspired.  I don't feel like celebrating, and I am so grateful that I have such gifts to celebrate, even if they don't belong to me.

ripe-hearted and lucky...