Mindful deaths in the internal system as a trickster response to late stage capitalism
Unthinkable thoughts*
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These are some of my unthinkable thoughts, as I spend some time processing some existential dread.
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It has taken me most of my life to realize that not everyone has the same bass notes in life. Not all people feel the same existential dread, at the same frequency, in the same way.
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We all have this deep psychological floor that shapes how we experience life, and while a lot of emotional knowings are very similar between humans (hence being able to create frameworks like the attachment framework of avoidant /disorganized/ anxious/ secure) they are also unique as fingerprints.
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They are stamped into us limbically, somatically, emotionally, and at some point, we might put words to them - most of us never do, though, as they are deep, unconscious, and nonverbal.
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One of my emotional knowings is that the world is out to get me. Rationally, I can laugh at how ridiculous that sounds, but my system won't let me dismiss it quite so easily. Hence, existential dread.
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The tricky thing about emotional knowings is that they're not *entirely* wrong. We have them for a reason. Something in our life, at some point, somehow, maybe even countless times, made us feel the subjective truth of them.
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But, they're not entirely right either and part of the work I do is wrangling with these emotional knowings like they are mythic gods. They are powerful, but they can be tricked, bargained with, banished, or even seduced.
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Because I exist in late-stage capitalism, it makes deep sense that I feel like the world is out to get me. In a way, it is. This is a world in which the rule is we have to earn our keep, we even use the phrase "earn a living." The message is, we don't have a right to live, we rent our lives, our existence, our joy. We must pay for the birthright of our aliveness.
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And the system wants my death in a way. It wants to extract from me, use me up, then dispose of me. It definitely wants my death more than it wants my aliveness.
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And so my dread and my sense of being hunted, makes beautiful, exquisite sense. In one way. (And there are many more ways).
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My unthinkable thought is, that if the system wants me to die, then of course there is a part or multiple parts in me that just want to surrender to the death. That want to say, fine, if this is what you want, let's get it over with. They want to align, take the path of least resistance. Of course. It makes sense.
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And I want to let those parts know I see them, and I want to honor their deathwish. It makes sense to me. And so, if there are parts in my internal ecosystem that want to die, how do I honor and facilitate their dying?
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And what a beautiful truth this unearths: that sometimes dying is in the service of living. Imagine if cells held stubbornly to their existence, instead of gracefully ceding their spots to brand new cells, more vivacious, more capable.
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What parts want to die and why? And how can I be with that? And how is that actually in service to the thriving of the whole system? And what if parts-sacrifice is something I need to acknowledge as coherent strategy?
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And what comes up for me then is this understanding that dread is a very specific type of fear, and that I can make sense of my fear in terms of aliveness.
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My fear is signaling my longing for aliveness. My fear tells me I want to live. My fear is an expression of my aliveness. Maybe my fear even is my aliveness. It is the root. I am feeling my roots when I feel fear. I am contacting my aliveness when I feel fear.
In order to feel fear, I must still be alive.
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When I realize my fear connects me to my aliveness, I can be differently with my fear. I am emergent, and every moment is a choice full of permutations of different spacial, temporal, and psychological dimensions.
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Fear is a dragon that I can ride. (We ride at dawn....sorry, couldn't resist.)
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If you are in fear, or in dread, or in anything existential, it turns out that these are my stomping grounds, and the hills are alive with the sound of me telling you I'd love to support you. Work with me one on one. Four sessions or 6 months of weekly coaching. You can find all the info on this website, and book a discovery call to make sure I’m a good fit.
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*concept via adrienne maree brown
