believing is seeing

"We say, "Seeing is believing," but actually... we are all much better at believing than seeing. In fact, we are seeing what we believe nearly all the time and only occasionally seeing what we can't believe." Robert Anton Wilson
















It’s the anniversary of my father’s suicide. A year or so after, a friend was looking at our family photograph album and was aghast at this photograph. She kept repeating “oh my god, why is this in here! Oh, my god!” I couldn’t figure out why, until she pointed out the noose around my dad’s neck.

I’d never seen it before, although I knew the photograph well. It had been taken in old Tucson and the baby my father was holding was me. I had always liked the way his lower hand was snugly holding me, and the way I seemed to be looking into his heart. It startled and appalled me that I had grown up loving that picture and had never seen the noose. I showed it to my sisters and was even more shocked to find they too couldn’t see the noose until it was pointed out to them. Such is the power of denial. Such is the power of family systems. Such is the power of belief.

This week I haven’t been able to stop thinking of this photograph. How often do we not see what is right in front of us? How often do we delete from our sight what is obvious to others? A client said to me today about a situation she’d been in for years; “I drank the kool-aid. But, I’ve been realizing that the only way to stay there was to drink it.” It wasn’t an abusive situation that she was in, just one that now she was out of she found herself open to all sorts of other perceptions of the world. In order to function in the families, relationships, communities, and work situations that we find ourselves in, we have to drink a bit of kool-aid. We have to distort our wide-open perception and tune out things that we aren’t even aware we are tuning out. Or do we?

This is what I have been mulling over for the past week. Is it at all possible to truly see outside of our beliefs? And what do we give up when we choose seeing over believing?

My father’s suicide gave me my spirituality. It sent me to the coast of Oregon and it directed me to tune into the rhythm of moon and tides. I eventually came to San Francisco and found people I began to call family. We formed covens together, did political actions and risked arrest and even bought land in the country together. I spent seventeen years with my blood family and had my father in my life for twenty two years. I stayed in my chosen family for almost a decade more than that.

Besides the actual people, I attached and committed myself to the traditions that we were building and clung to the beliefs we held true. Reclaiming and Feri – both ecstatic traditions of magic – have been just as formative to my being as my original family. And so too, my coven sisters, in both shadow and light. As a child of a suicidal parent, I found comfort and joy in wedding myself to the life force and committing myself to serve it. I know that I’m a better human and a better therapist for it. I'm better for what I have believed in.

And. There’s a noose in the picture that the last few months have opened my eyes to. Like my blood family, I’ve known that there were things amiss well before I could see the noose. And like my family, I’d already separated myself quite a bit. But something changes upon seeing things outside of beliefs.

The photograph of my father holding me is well worth a thousand words. I am forever grateful for the ways in which my father held me and the ways in which my chosen family held me. Both, also, have broken my heart. Hearts can mend, and mine seems remarkably resilient, but there were many things I couldn’t see until I got some separation, until I was willing and able to let go of beliefs I had formerly cherished. Isn’t this true for just about everything and everybody?

This solstice, may the light return and be gentle with us. Sometimes it’s painful to see things clearly. Liberation is, in fact, difficult to adjust to. It means seeing, rather than believing. And who, really, can do that?

such a winter's day

all the leaves are brown
and the sky is grey
I've been for a walk
on a winter's day

stopped into a church
I passed along the way
well, I dropped down on my knees
and I pretend to pray

California Dreamin'
on such a winter's day                                        
  

-the mamas and the papas

Like my friend Macha, it’s been quite awhile since I’ve blogged. This time between Thanksgiving and solstice has been a time of inner work and laying low. It’s always a dicey time for me and quite possibly always will be. Having a parent who commits suicide right before solstice gives the season that extra special something.

Most years I find comfort in the overt honoring the dark and trusting that light will return that celebrating solstice provides. And some years the cheery Christmas songs and pressure to find or make gifts that will please makes me want to jump off the bridge. There’s a big golden one quite nearby. The beauty of it never fails to take my breath away in the best kind of way, but every time I cross it I wonder if this will be the time I catch a glance of someone leaping. Beauty and despair so many times are c lose companions.

The flu laid me out for almost two weeks, letting up just enough over the weekend before last to allow me to travel to Esalen to participate in and priestess Jeremy’s memorial service. On the drive down it became clear that I was not going to escape the truism that one loss brings back all other losses.

As we got closer to Big Sur, grief closed in on me. To me, Big Sur is the dividing line between northern and southern California, and it is a gate to something that goes beyond words. Maybe it’s that place where beauty and despair dance cheek to cheek. It’s a place that my father loved, and was also favored by that famous depressive I loved so much in my youth, Richard Brautigan. As you get closer to Big Sur, you can feel the power and potency of the elemental forces. There is a natural hot spring at Esalen, bringing together the best of water and fire. Air and earth loom large here as well, with the mighty Pacific crashing against the huge ancient rocks, and looking out, you can’t help but marvel at the way the sky meets the sea.

There’s magic in how places like this reverberate with the potency of loneliness, grief and depression while also providing a balm for the same. I found myself crying for not only the loss of Jeremy, but for all the losses of friends, family, and even the loss of the pride I use to feel being part of the spiritual tradition I took part in crafting. But as Bruce Springsteen sings; “Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact. But maybe everything that dies someday comes back”. I’m thinking that just may be true, but feeling sad that there’s those I won’t set my eyes on again in this lifetime and feeling the tenderness that a heart can feel when it lets go of old illusions.

So, I’m going thru the motions, pretending to pray until something shifts, and that old fierce optimism returns. The solstice altar is under construction, and the crèche for the baby sun is up on the mantel place. This weekend I plan to make presents for my loved ones, and I just began playing the musical solstice compilations that my friend Steward sends me every year. Light will return, baby, that’s a fact. But then, everything that returns someday goes back. Such is this dance of light and dark, and beauty and despair. Are there really any other dance steps?