It's the job of a teenager to rebel.
What do we rebel against? (Look, I'm present-tense still identifying as her!)
We rebel against what isn't permitted.
Whether that's what is taboo within our family, religion, culture, society, peer group...
There will be something. When I feel into the gestalt of teenage years, they are just becoming conscious, in a world that is overwhelming and soon will be theirs to conquer, or be conquered by.
It's rough age.
Teenagers palpably, instinctively tune into what is being ignored, brushed off, swept under the rug.
Children growing into teens feel into the shadows of the culture and adults around them.
Why do you think they are able to get under their parents' or teachers' skin so successfully?
They have a sixth sense about these things, and I believe it's a very natural part of each generation. If we look at the principle of Spanda, the wave that was ignored by one generation, will invariably come to light with the next. The currents of reality cannot be ignored forever.
So, as a teenager, I was fascinated with the macabre. My friends and I were all just getting the internet during our teenage years and would search out some pretty awful websites showing dead bodies, people who'd been decapitated or in horrific accidents. (Anyone who remembers this website in particular feel free to not remind me! IYKYK) The media and general culture I grew up with was quite sanitized from death and gore unless it was for entertainment purposes.
Part of me thought it was strange that I found some kind of entertainment with these dark things. Was there something wrong with me?
As I got older, some part of my instincts stayed online, where I found it continually flat-feeling when the media sanitized stories about mass shootings or war.
The Columbine shooting was my generation - it should have stopped there. It should have never happened.
9/11 happened a week before we were sent off to university. What world were we being sent out into?
Once upon a time, the media did share imagery and it disturbed people too much, perhaps their ratings dropped some, so they stopped.
What's the problem with being disturbed though?
We NEED to feel disturbed, when things are disturbing.
Feeling flat, or feeling just a twinge of sympathy, is not enough.
It's not real.
It's manipulation.
What happens when you're disturbed?
Deeply disturbed?
You make it STOP.
We are MOVED in ways to make it better.
We are not FLAT.
We find ways to be with reality, as it is, truly.
Then when I landed in Nondual Tantra, and in more animistic cultures, it all came together.
They have ritualized practices to incorporate all aspects of reality.
None of it is white-washed or sanitized from our eyes.
In an extreme example, some lineages meditate on corpses.
Did you know Savasana, corpse pose, you are actually meant to meditate on your own death and decaying body?
Why do this?
When we are intimately in tune with the finiteness of our existence, well, people are generally a lot happier.
The life energy we use up by egoically gripping onto 'life', prevents us from actually living.
We treat ourselves, we treat one another, we treat the earth and her creatures with a whole lot more preciousness and reverence.
We deeply FEEL how this moment, right now, will NEVER happen again.
That moment you just read about is gone now.
Poof.
This moment, right now, this body, this YOU, with all the joy, the sorrow, the longing, the pain, the dreams, the pulsating heart beat, stunning eyes you see this world through - this is it.
This is it.
This. is. it.
And this is what I now understand about my teenage-self being irresistibly and disturbingly drawn to the macabre. She sensed deeply, instinctively these things fundamental to our reality that were being hidden from sight.
We cannot hide things if we want to actually live.
I'm not sure if this is, by definition, actually an ode.
It is certainly an honoring however.
Those instincts we have to look at what is ignored, always listen to them.
(Don't always trust your interpretation of the instinct however, that can be very dangerous territory. Interpretations MUST be dissected and discerned.)
What is ignored is still a part of our existence, whether a people, a culture, a media, a religion want to admit it or not.
Next time you end your yoga class with Savasana, feel your bones.
Let them rest on the earth while the rest of you melts into her.
She is your mother.
She is you.
Breath fully, while you are here.
See with clear eyes, while you are here.
Love it all.
(love is not always sweet and nice. love is also fierce and honest and many, many, many things. Love is everything.)
Xo
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