Doodle Progression: Rocks, driftwood, birchbark and feathers

Doodle Progression: Rocks, driftwood, birchbark and feathers


The next major nonverbal communication/hieroglyphics after the doodling that contributed to my healing was playing with rocks, driftwood, birchbark and feathers - but especially rocks. As I look back now, I realize that it was just another form of doodling...  This time the great need to express my unconscious experience had moved from the 2 dimensional and into the 3 dimensional world!  Perhaps this is a clue to my healing process... but then this didn't start happening till the last half of our stay in Hancock...

We had been transferredDoodle Progression: Rocks, driftwood, birchbark and feathers to Hancock in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, way up in the Keewanaw Peninsula that juts out into Lake Superior.  It was a university town embedded in the most amazing natural setting of hills, forests and shoreline - and covered with rocks of all kinds!  And for a nature loving girl who had lived most her life in metropolitan areas of big cities, it was heaven!

We were there for 11 years and for much of it, I was in pretty bad shape.  On top of all my ongoing inner struggles and fragmentation, I was entering, unprepared, into the experience of the empty nest.  Our daughter was on her own and our son had stayed downstate (with my full support) to finish his last two years of high school - 10 hours away...  I didn't realize what a shock that would be for me and I slipped into such a deep depression the Drs. decided to give me electroshock treatments.  I guess it worked temporarily because my husband said that when I got out of the hospital the uncontrollable sobbing had stopped and that I didn't even remember being depressed!  But then... after having my brain fried, I didn't remember much of anything...  I have no memory of what I felt, but for a while, Gene said, I smiled!

During that first half of our stay in Hancock, I was tried on all kinds of psychiatric medications to keep me out of DID hospitals (including one in Baltimore, Maryland) and from killing myself.  The effect of the heavy duty meds was to deaden me to the point of not being able to get off the couch!  It was horrible, but what else could they do.  At least I was deeply committed to going weekly to therapy - 2 hours drive away!  And at that point, I couldn't drive myself because there was no telling what might happen or where I might end up!  Kudos for my dear husband who drove and stayed with me through it all!

Somehow in the midst of all the craziness, I found my way to the shores of Lake Superior and reconnected with my love of nature.  The sand and sea, the rocks and driftwood, the birch bark and feathers, they all called to me and became my close friends. Especially the rocks!   Each beach had a different variety and they were all so beautiful, so lovely to hold.  I didn’t know what kind they were, nor did I care.  It was the colors and shapes that took my breath away.  Each held a mystery, leaving me in awe to wonder why the black rocks had red circles in them or why the green ones were so rare.  To me, they were precious gems and I felt absolutely amazed that I could take my pick. Sitting in their midst, I felt so rich, so blessed!

Before long I was obsessively hand picking specific pebbles and rocks, driftwood, birchbark and feathers to take home.  First I filled my pockets, then bags and buckets, and finally, on occasion, I brought a sled for the larger ones!  Of course I felt guilty removing the objects from their natural habitat. So first I spoke aloud my desire to mother nature and asked permission to remove the objects and then I expressed my deep gratitude.  I felt my motives were understood and had been blessed.  However, if for any reason a rock fell out of my hand, I would assume it did not want to go and I left it.

Why did I feel such a driving need to collect them?  I don't know.  Seeing how I was dissociated, I experienced myself as in a dream, disconnected from the world and perhaps because they were of nature, physical expressions of God, they helped me to ground myself in the physical world.  And they were "safe," they needed nothing from me.  But for whatever the reason, I took them home and used them to decorate, and - to create...  Once again, as with the pen and pencil, I "doodled" my unconscious experience automatically - without knowing where it was going or why.

The following are not the greatest pictures, but at least I thought to take a few and record this particular creation.

This is a corner of the living room (and the curtains are not ours :-)) The creation began at the far right with a wooden sculpture I had, surrounded by rocks with a shamanic picture on the wall behind it. The creation extends beyond the far right and turned into a children's area.  Pictures of that part are  at the end of this grouping.

This is a collection of the rocks I had painted and glued to a wood slab.  The individual painted rocks at that time were stuck to the out facing wall in the above picture around the corner from the wood sculpture.  They were placed around a poster of a Native American woman.

This was in the corner of the back wall and beneath a little table.  This area under the table with its driftwood and feathers  reminded me of a funeral pyre.  Plus there is a driftwood "creature" (Egore) guarding the front.

This is the top of the table with a resin angel that I had, surrounded by a variety of candles and candle holders.  Above is a feather painting our son had given his dad.

This is a knick knack shelf above the table.  There are 2 brass plates I had painted kachinas on, various animal statues and shells I had, and on the left was a large piece of birch bark that I had glued various beach finds on.  On the right, I had hung the giant pinecone my husband and I had found out west on our honeymoon.

This is a combination of pictures showing that area up closer.

This is the next area with a flow of rocks leading to a turquoise "pool" (made from those beads that turn into a gel when water is added, plus coloring), and then continues beyond to one of those mexican fireplaces.  I used whatever I had on hand - "found stuff."  I also had little statues of Native American spirit children placed here and there and the plaque in the front had Aztec symbols? on it.  Souvenirs given to me. 

This is the next area, the center where I sat and burned incense in holders I made from sticks and bark.  My favorite piece was the driftwood tree root in the back where I had painted each root section with a different design and color.  The next 3 pictures are close ups of that.

This picture was taken at another time and shows the whole thing.
OK.  I'm done for now! I'll just have to finish my descriptions for this another time. 

More doodles from my inner nightmare

I finally went to my Apple computer guy and he showed me how to get into my photos.  So I downloaded a few more doodles and paired them with some journal writings from the years of suffering.  I think it is important to show what it was like for me before my healing experiences as well as after.  The difference is extreme.  The years of suffering, however, certainly contributed to my growth and prepared me for helping others as a counselor.  As a "wounded healer," I can understand the suffering of others and have empathy and compassion for them in a way I wouldn't have without my own difficult journey...  Only one writing below was actually written in response to the picture I had just drawn (while riding in the car) and that is "The Voyeur."

Words... I just can't seem to find words to communicate.  Why?  I feel so helpless and alone.  What am I doing wrong?  I need others and try to reach out, but too often I come away disappointed and more alone.  I find myself avoiding people and our confusing conversations.  Their empty words stick in my ears like antiseptic cottonballs, and their presence, like an unwanted sedative, numbs my awareness and blots out my existence...  And yet I am desperate in my search for real words with real meaning.

    Perhaps there are none...  Perhaps there is no "real"...  or perhaps it's just me.  Maybe human beings like myself don't have the capacity to reach what is "real".  Sometimes it seems that we are like insects atop a plate of glass, able to see, but not touch the world of "real" below.  Prevented from immersing ourselves in a real existence, we content ourselves with sliding across the surface (or clawing in vain at the impenetrable glass) of our pretend real world.

    So why struggle to communicate anyway?  Why does it feel so important and what could be the purpose?  Is it meant to connect us to other human beings like the sticks in tinkertoys?  Or is it just a necessary, but meaningless means of energy release?  All the stuff in my head keeps piling up until I feel I shall explode - and the only way out is through words!  The problem is, it's like trying to slide circle pegs into triangular slots.  They just don't fit!   

There is always so much going on in my head - so much to say that I can't say anything…  There are times when this experience becomes especially intense.  It feels as if a door in my mind is flung open, allowing the winds of infinity to come howling through. Unequipped and unable to comprehend it all, I experience chaos and meaninglessness.  I am sucked into a whirlwind of utter confusion, helpless with despair.  I can't describe the terror.

And yet, there is something more… a kind of excitement and curiosity.  I feel somehow that if the door were closed and locked, I would die of suffocation or at least stagnate and rot away inside.  For if nothing else, this wind brings fresh air and new energy.  Perhaps the problem lies not in the “wind,” but in my inability to understand and accommodate it.  Perhaps I just need better mental “lungs” to process and control the experience.  Perhaps… but then how does one develop such a capacity? 

    I can't write and I can't draw - I just don't know how!  I've never been taught and I don't feel prepared.  I need instruction - classes in history, art, math, mythology, science, literature and psychology.  But even if I had the education and knew what I was doing, what could I possibly have to say?  

    There's too much to say so I don't say anything (still the pressure at my temples strain to hold something in).  All around and deep within life whispers with urgency (but my ears are filled with heavy air and they ring and ring).   Voices cry out, "See me, hear me - experience me!" (and I back away screaming silently to myself).  Awareness threatens to rearrange the furniture (and I am afraid).  Even so, electrical impulses charge into my arm demanding that I act (but it is dead and heavy - I can only twitch)...

    Still I cannot escape!  Every everywhere are poems and paintings crying out - longing to be heard!  But it is too late, my ear is broke and I cannot respond.  Slowly the blood of what might have been trickles down my window falling into a puddle of defeat...

  

    Hide, hide, shh, be quiet.  Cook, clean, scream, cry - Besides, what would be the purpose?

       

My head is all stuffed up with sadness and my thoughts are incoherent…  The other day it occurred to me that thought should be like the yolk of an egg fried sunny side up, but that my thoughts, instead, seem scrambled - no center or focus, just a mass of competing confusion.  But even that description seems to fall short.. It's more like a fried egg hardly cooked but cut up and bleeding - with yolk running everywhere and dripping over into a pool of nothingness.

The Voyeur
Like the mysterious and secretive sea, her inner world teems with exotic life and unrealized potentialites.  And like those ocean depths, her existence lies submerged in darkness, embedded deep within recesses, untouched and beyond time.  All that remains as proof of their reality is a shell, a desperate attempt to camoflage the secret of her fearful presence.

This delicate armor shelters the fragile life inside.  It protects her from the harsh concrete world and its' seductive illusions of light and warmth.  For her, "life out there" appears as a dream from another dimension  - it may be watched from a safe distance, but neither felt nor embraced.  "Life out there" is like a ship at sea passing over the surface of her experience.  It passes indifferent to the passion play taking place below, and disappears into the vapors of deception.

“I feel so terribly distant and disconnected...It seems as if when I was created the life force injected into this physical body somehow missed the vein.  Like an air bubble, it has become trapped in existence, imprisoned in this body and in this world.  Unable to grasp the flowing, rhythmic beat of life, it is condemned to wander aimless and alone.  Without direction or purpose, it seeks only to be released and relieved of the pain and confusion it must bear in silence...”

I don't think I am experiencing depression as a means of superficial rebellion or simple resistance to feeling good - It's not like the calm silence of a pleasant summer evening suddenly being disturbed by the squealing tires of some mischievious teenager looking for attention.  Rather, I feel this depression, this discomfort goes much deeper...

    Actually, when I think about it, it is like a disturbance in an otherwise peaceful night.  However, the depression points to something deeper and more frightening.  This disturbance is more like the piercing shriek of a wild animal in a nearby jungle than squealing tires… It is a shriek that causes the villagers in their warm, cozy little huts to stop whatever they are doing and listen; a shriek that makes them shake with fear because it makes them aware of the world outside their tiny circles of light...

    This kind of disturbance shocks and reminds the villagers that just beyond the silent door is a dark and vast world, teeming with life and shrouded in mysteries - a very powerful world that presses in on their flimsy walls.  And at those moments they recognize the illusions they have built around themselves to create a false sense of security...  Then they realize how very small and vulnerable their circle of light really is and how frail their existence.

Then I started imagining the little girl in the picture growing up and  removing the snakes teeth and taming it.  I went downstairs to my art room to look at it and pretty soon I started seeing all kinds of stuff in the picture.  It was my “Garden of Eden” with dead , vegetationless mountains, a smoldering volacano, an apple pierced and bleeding tears, and the Tree of Life sunk in boiling  quicksand/lava.  The only road out is blocked. The pink (feminine?) blob above her of the thoughts and feelings that make up her personality is fragmented and confused, floating in a background of dark blue sky (masculine?) And at the top of the picture is a window into the other world where God’s eye watches and my arms reach out for help.

I then started seeing the replication of symbols in the other pictures hanging, along with  religious themes and symbols of a raging, all powerful masculine and a wounded weeping feminine.  I took a couple pictures upstairs and showed Gene (who had finally gotten up) and started talking about them and got even more insights.  For example, I associated money with my father (his obsession and what devoured him) and the snake is green and wrapped around the spear like a dollar sign!  I’ve said that green represented poison and money certainly seemed like an addiction and a poison for him!

I feel so drained from all the self loathing.  I want so terribly bad just to be able to like myself - to not always feel so embarressed and ashamed and angry that I exist...

In my head I see a picture of myself -  A woman lying on the floor, starved and lifeless.  Her bones are broken, and she is bruised, cut up, and bleeding.  She is crumpled silence bearly breathing.

There is no way this woman can even raise herself, (much less pick herself up).  And certainly anybody who tried would only inflict more pain, more agony...  No, nothing less than the compassionate tears and gentle touch of God himself could soothe such hopelessness...

Then I thought to myself, “If only she could be roused enough to cry - If only she could cry... But such a cry would make one sick and vomit to hear -  For such a cry would be like the wail of a mother at Dachau watching her baby tossed in the air and shot.

Frustration on the Journey

This morning I came across an old journey entry written in 2004 that reflects my experience of coming down the mountain of "ecstatic experiences and bliss" into everyday life.  Of course, I loved the mountain top experiences, but I needed to come down, integrate them and live them in the world.  I had soooo much to learn (still do!)!  As the experiences receded, I felt abandoned, as if I did something wrong and was being rejected (which shows how much I did not understand!).  I felt hurt, angry and confused...

June 28, 04  

Like a tightly closed Daisy bud, my spirit feels trapped - suffocated by the incessant word games in my mind.  Forever analyzing and defining, my thoughts distance me from heart felt experience and understanding.  Why do I trust the compulsively constructed word buildings in my head over the effortless and natural flow of joining?  I can hear the delicate flower petals buried deep within me crying out,  “Come sun and warm me, burn away all resistance and open me so that I might receive your glory!”  

Oh great tripper of locks, greaser of hinges rusted shut, free me!  Come, Holy Spirit, come, and break down the barriers of my self imposed prison.  Lead me into the unbounded playground that You created for knowing You!  I long for Your joy and tire of watching from a distance, safe within my puny definitions.  Melt the plated windows of my small experience where I gaze out to see the wind blow, but never feel its caress.  

Please wake me - right here, right now, in this spot, among these lovely earth forms that are You and I.  Dissolve the tenacles of doubt and distrust that keep me enslaved to rigid rules born of a fearful mind - and free me!  Teach my senses, once again, to become paths of holy communion with You - that I might remember who I am and sing my soul song once again...

Doodles from my inner nightmare!

So far I've posted journal writings mainly from the upside of my journey around 2001 or 2.  Today I'm going to start posting some entries from the earlier "dark night of the soul" period as I struggled to make sense of and heal from the hell I was in.  One way I turned to was art, or as I referred to it, doodling.  I was not trained in art, but when my sister gifted me with a blank sketch book for my birthday, I began to play with lines and shadow and space...  What appeared was automatic.  In other words, I didn't know what I was going to draw, I just followed one dot, or line, with another, guided by... hmmm... a feeling... a need... intuition... curiosity... a call...  I don't know exactly.  Perhaps it changed.  The pictures certainly look different from each other as if drawn by different alters.  And the more I doodled, the more complex the pictures became.  It seemed that the "mute" parts of me needed desperately to communicate and drawing apparently felt safe.  So even though I didn't understand what the pictures were "saying," I had to draw!!  I even had to drop out of graduate school because I couldn't stop drawing to do my homework!

The following pictures are a sample of the variety of images I produced.  They make a good rorschach test because everyone sees something different in them!

I call this one my Michelangelo because when I look at it, I am reminded of the Sistine Chapel painting where the image of God is reaching out his hand to touch Adams' and there is a space between their fingers.  In this doodle, I see the multi colored wavy lines emerging from the globe on the left as Spirit/God reaching out to instill life in the dead tree (me) who is struggling to hold on.  Perhaps on one level, it depicts the existential struggle between life and death, with the globe representing the life force, surrounded by the clawing, grasping energies of the world that bring suffering and pain, threatening life's resolve to blossom. 

On Borrowed Wings

The innocent breath of a day newborn

Wafts gently from my window to waken.

But I embalmed in sheets of night shall mourn 

To see my cherished refuge taken.

With night I hear myself whisper softly

And dreams dance to the beating of my heart.

But time returns and walls imprison me

So from my captive soul must I part.

Then like a wounded bird that cannot fly,

I drag this broken, useless body.

For day awaits, a hungry cat and sly,

In silence he stalks his fearful quarry.

Then sweet small voice with wide disturbing eyes,

You call out and on borrowed wings I rise.

The Mystical Vision

A MYSTICAL VISION

As I walked along the dirt road deep in thought, I paid little attention to the woods on either side of me or the predawn light beginning to fill the sky.   Just as I reached where the road curved and dropped downhill to the trail head, I glanced up.  The trees on my right had given way to a wide, open field and in the distance stood a group of large black mounds.  I had never noticed these minature mountains before, but suddenly I couldn’t take my eyes off them.   Against the dark backdrop of pine, they glowed with a brilliant light that made them appear ethereal.  I stood rooted to my spot, awed by the magnificent spectacle.  

Though a little scared, I decided to investigate and turned onto a path which went down and around a small hill that led in the direction of the scene.   As I walked, I wondered with anticipation what mystical revelation awaited me.  I was in for quite a surprise.  As I rounded the curve and the mounds came into view, my mouth dropped open.  Before me I saw pile after huge pile of trash!  Actually, they were decomposing biodegradable bags filled with greenery, and the light I had seen was the reflection of the rising sun on the tattered remnants flapping in the breeze.  Was this the essence of my mystical vision - a garbage dump?  I was reminded of the popular song that had asked, “Is that all there is?”. 

It’s funny how my experience diminishes when I rationalize and slap labels on it – like “Oh, it’s just a garbage dump.”  Life suddenly losses it’s magic and I wonder why.   Why am I so quick to reduce my experience to a safe formulaic equation, rather than embrace the enthralling possibility that God is present everywhere in everything and is at all times seeking communion with me.  Do I doubt God’s desire, or is it my own fear of appearing foolish or of being disappointed?   Where would the human race be if the masters and the mystics had told themselves that their visions and dreams were “nothing more than...”   It seems that having the “eyes to see and ears to hear” involves a personal choice of faith, a willingness to perceive that which cannot be measured.

Unwilling to explain away my mystical vision as a simple mistaken visual perception, I decided to look within and listen for that “still, small voice”.  The message that came to me then was an image of a poster I had seen in a sunday school classroom.  It said, “God don’t make no junk!”.  I realized that long ago I had decided that mounds of trash were, without exception, ugly and despicable.  Suddenly I had been gifted with new sight and had witnessed mounds of trash transformed by light into a thing of  awesome beauty.  I realized then that all things are made beautiful in the light of God and that, when looked at through the eyes of love, life in all it’s various forms is an amazing and incredibly magical gift.

Again I turned within and reflected on some of the “garbage dumps” in my life which I had judged to be unworthy.  The painful situations which had taught me empathy, the hard choices that had showed me how to trust my intuition, the frustrations that had given birth to patience, and the problematic people who had challenged me to be the forgiving and compassionate person I had longed to be.  I realized that because of those “garbage dumps” I had stretched myself to become more like the person I wanted to be and, as a result, experienced more peace and love and joy in my life than ever before!  These were gifts, not curses!

Then I thought of all the times that I had, in one way or the other, told myself I was junk.  You’re not good enough!  You’re not worthy!  You’re hopeless!  You’ll never amount to anything!  You have nothing of value to offer!   What misguided and destructive messages these are - a garbage dump of the worst kind!  Such beliefs come from living too closely to the world, from interpreting what is good, worthy and of value from the world’s perspective.  This nearsighted view prevents me from seeing the bigger picture, the sacred perspective.  When I look through the eyes of God, through the eyes of Love, I can see that God don’t make no junk...

I mock God and God’s ability to create perfectly when I think of myself or any other as anything less than Holy.  Not only that, it is very unproductive.  The smaller I believe myself to be, the smaller I feel and, as a result, the smaller become my actions.  Where can this take me if my task is to bring about “earth as it is in heaven” for myself and for the world?  I may say that I am made in the image of God, a co-creator with the Divine, and an inheritor of the Kingdom, but imagine if I really believed it in my heart and lived it every moment of my life.  “What a wonderful world it would be!”

                                                        

                                                                      

A butterfly encounter

Come near to God and he will come near to you.   James 4:8

...the LORD searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts. If you seek him, he will be found by you. 1 Chronicles 28:9

Karen Bacon

One early summer morning, while walking on the Mastihito trails seeking communion with God, I came across a monarch butterfly in the middle of my path. Surprised that it didn't fly away, I got down on my elbows and knees and watched as it walked across the dirt and climbed blades of grass. Its wings were a bit tattered so I assumed that was why it didn't fly away. Finally I decided to go on, but as I got up I wondered if it would get on my finger. So I put my finger next to the butterfly and, to my surprise, it climbed on!  Slowly I stood up and began walking and, as I walked, I talked to the butterfly.

I told it how I had never had a monarch butterfly perched on my finger before and that the experience felt magical.  I explained that because nothing like this had ever happened to me before, I wondered if God was reminding me of his presence in all things and that she sought communion with me at all times. Not wanting the butterfly to think me foolish (hmmm…), I quickly added that I knew it was only my imagination and that the only reason it had stayed on my finger was that its wings were tattered and it couldn't fly. With that, the butterfly spread its wings and rose into the air and flew all about me!

Amazed, I stood there and watched until it landed on a bush beside me. By then I realized I had been mistaken and that it could fly with tattered wings. So I announced out loud (for anyone that might be listening…) that I guessed the real reason it had not flown earlier was because its wings had been wet with dew and needed time to dry.  I added that what had happened was all just a coincidence and that now that its wings were dry, it certainly wouldn’t get on my finger again.  Then to prove my point I went up to the bush and stuck my finger out - and, to my surprise, it climbed back on! 

Not knowing what to say, I just continued walking in silence, staring at my tiny friend.  As I got closer to my car, however, I excitedly began telling it how I was going to take it home and show it to everyone and then get some butterfly food to give it and then...  and then it spread its beautiful orange and black wings and flew, up, up and away, above the treetops and beyond. I guess it had other plans...  I just stood there in awe, watching - and I wondered if, perhaps, God was smiling…

Father/Mother God, too often we have encountered you in some special way, but we quickly deny it.  We tell ourselves it was only our imagination, that we are not worthy of your interest. 

But like the shepherd seeking the one lost sheep, you care about each of us individually, and like the father who embraces his prodigal son, you reach out and touch us in any way that might help us to feel your love and know the joy you experience when we respond. Help us God find the courage within to risk accepting your gifts with joy and gratitude!  In Christ’s spirit we pray.  Amen.