Everything Old is New Again

When I was a very young girl, maybe 7 or 8 years old, I had a recurring nightmare every time we had a thunderstorm. Last night it dawned on me for the first time who the multi-armed image was that would chase me, surrounded by flames.

It was none other than Kali.

Score one: Jung.

And it's funny because even though it was definitely a nightmare there was something...familar enough?...about it that kept me from being terrified or waking my parents to get me through it. Kali was definitely trying to catch me, presumably to destroy me, and I knew she was going to annihilate me if she caught me but part of me was fascinated by her so I almost liked it when she showed up.

That may not be exactly the right way to say it but I don't have better words for it. It was like we had a special relationship...like hero and arch villian maybe...I needed her chasing me in some weird way...like it tested me in a way I wanted to be tested...or maybe not so much wanted to be as had to be tested.

Now that is some pretty sophisticated stuff for a second grader so you have my permission to have your doubts. I'm just trying to describe for you what was all non-verbal stuff for me. There was never dialogue in these dreams...just this blue multi-armed-being chasing me surrounded by flame and just before she caught me thunder seemed to inevitably wake me up...a big clap. Or maybe it was the blinding flash of lightening that preceded the thunder and coincided with the flash of light so bright as Kali was just about to reach me that woke me. At any rate, I woke up with an adrenaline rush and because the dream was recurring (and maybe because I always escaped) I kind of started to look for her. I remember being disappointed when over time I started to be woken by thunder and realized that the dream didn't accompany the storm.

What does that have to do with me now, forty years later?

I think everything.

My arch nemesis is and always has been my discriminating, over active, hyper critical mind. That's Kali...the destroyer. I get that from my mother and I don't like it any better in her, believe me. And because I have a healthy dose of that which I resent in my mother (and she got it from hers), the ability to always find the flaw, or that one little thing that would make things better, and the compulsion to point it out, I find myself in the terribly demoralizing place of realizing that I still have "mother issues".

Score one: Freud.

The good news is that Kali is intent on destroying what I already know is my biggest problem, (every human's biggest problem): my own ego. Pick a belief system and you will find it's the only work to do really, Buddha knew it, Christ knew it...all the saints in every tradition. We and our desires and our attempts to spend our lives building temples to ourselves are the fundamental problem. ("Witness my beautiful body, beautiful mind, beautiful personality, beautiful clothes, beautiful financial success, beautiful accomplishments...don't you wish you had them too?" we say to each other in one form or another. Don't agree? What do you think all those self-help authors are doing? And if we weren't buying into the game they wouldn't so often be best sellers. Or we say to ourselves, "When I have a beautiful body, mind, personality, bank account...then I'll really be something and I'll attract the right mate, job, award, adoration..." so we buckle down with our eye on the prize.)

And there is Kali ripping it down and eating it for lunch as soon as we think we are close to being somebody. "Oh yeah? Well, you and I both know you are a big faker...you can run but you can't hide this (and she rips off your offending arm and shakes your own finger at some fatal flaw or other)...now who do you think you are?!"

It's not a lot of fun, having someone dogging you who knows all your shit.

It's not much fun having someone who always seems to confirm that you are, in fact, a big imposter.

But there is that other part...the birthing part...Kali being female and all.  And there is that part of you deep down inside that knows that all that shit is just shit and you are really the pony underneath it all. And ponies grow into horses. Who doesn't love horses? My father-in-law had a name for horses. He called them "Eat and Shit" because that was pretty much what they did.

So do you reject the pony? It's just being a pony.

Are you going to reject yourself just because you are never going to reach perfection?

That's what I've been holding on to for far too long. I'm always the kid in the back seat riding home from my grandmother's house with my mother turning around with that deep breath before she starts, "Well, Laura, let me tell you what Grandma said. She thinks you are wearing too much make up...she thought you were a little mouthy...that shirt is too tight...that's a wrong color for you..." Every time I write an email or a blog post I know not a single typo will escape my mother's notice. Not one.

I'm not blaming my mother. She probably said a lot of nice things that I don't remember. For whatever reason I internalized the critical mother. And while my mother is an earthly symbol for this it isn't really about her. I internalized Kali's discriminating destroying aspect and that's why she doesn't appear to me in thunderstorms anymore. I can't see her because she's with me all the time. It's not a special event anymore. We live together now.

And in the end, Kali, not my mother, holds the keys to my salvation. Fire can annhilate or it can purify. It all depends on how attached I am to preserving who I think I'm supposed to be.

It's a paradox. As long as I am attached to perfection I'll never reach it...as long as I notice every typo and hear my mother's voice pointing it out I'll reactivate all the negativity associated with that. If I spend my life trying to reach my internalized view of my mother's internalized view of perfection I'm doomed. I'll never make it. I already know that. I'm trying to win approval from my own belief about someone else's view of me.

Goofy, right?

Score one: Ellis

As long as I feel like I have failed as a person because I have felt anger when I would rather feel compassion...judgement when I have longed to feel understanding...every time I fail to give myself compassion for being a human Kali is going to singe me. And she's going to keep on burning until I drop whatever it is I am holding on to.

No wonder I missed her.

And the fact that Kali started chasing me around when I was seven years old is a good thing in my opinion. I got on this path a long time ago, or maybe the path chose me, I have not idea how it works...but here we are after all these years and that helps me know that there is no falling off the path. I may sit for a while. I may step in a pothole and twist my ankle. I may envy people on horseback who seem like they are zipping by me. I may long for a jet plane. But in the end that doesn't matter. There isn't any race. Every road can take me exactly where I want to go. It's all the same road.

Comments

[Kate]

..."it's all the same road."

Thanks very much for this illuminating piece of prose. I still think we're twin sisters (separated at birth), but I see that we have MANY siblings. :)
...and I see myself a little clearer, too.
love you, Sis.

[Laura]

Love you, too.