hello! this is a bit of a wild one. i hope you get something from it, even if it’s the seed of a seed. if you’d like to support my process and take what i have to offer, you can subscribe for the cost of a cup of something warm once per month or you can send whatever you want to me on venmo at @rubys-ego anytime. thank you sincerely
my partner said to me the other day (lightly, knowingly, not unkindly) “you are obsessed with power and control and freedom and subversion.” they are not wrong.
i have been taking to heart kahlil gibran’s poem, on freedom
And an orator said, Speak to us of Free-
dom.
And he answered:
At the city gate and by your fireside I
have seen you prostrate yourself and worship
your own freedom,
Even as slaves humble themselves before
a tyrant and praise him though he slays
them.
Ay, in the grove of the temple and in
the shadow of the citadel I have seen the
freest among you wear their freedom as a
yoke and a handcuff.
And my heart bled within me; for you
can only be free when even the desire of
seeking freedom becomes a harness to you,
and when you cease to speak of freedom
as a goal and a fulfilment.
You shall be free indeed when your days
are not without a care nor your nights with-
out a want and a grief,
But rather when these things girdle your
life and yet you rise above them naked and
unbound.
you can read the whole poem here.
in my endless search for safety, i fixate on agency. on being able to do whatever i want, whenever i want. and when offered this possibility, it feels how my friend kate feels when someone brings up whales. an immediate somatic no, too big. too vast. can’t think about it can’t talk about it don’t want it no thank you.
i think this is because my concept of agency is skewed. my concept of agency is lonely and alone, married to the grief and avoidance of responsibility, the power that comes with being able to harm others and be hurt. my concept of agency feels very “i hate you don’t leave me.” is this because i want or need to be loved with an open hand, or because even if i were to be loved with an open hand i would still feel overwhelmed by my own ability to choose to stay or fly away?
i’ve been considering that perhaps the agency i thought was so dependent on who i was with or the circumstances of my life or where i live etc. has nothing to do with those things at all. what would it feel like if the amount of agency i have is consistent, unchanging? what if i was assigning godlike power to these people and places and things by deciding they determined how much agency i had, centering them in my inconsistent attempts to decenter them, orbiting them, swinging around them at a fixed distance by a thread of blame?
i don’t mean to discount that there are very real factors that limit my choices. when i was in the spell of a mutually abusive relationship, i could not have left any sooner than i did. when my car is out of gas, i cannot continue driving until i fill the tank. and i am not suggesting that everyone has the same amount of agency, in a physical sense: others experience far more systemically limiting factors than i do in terms of what choices they have access to.
and then there’s the spiritual or philosophical question of free will. do i have any agency at all? do i have any choice, really, at all? grace is consistent in her influence, constructing a reality where physically, the only thing that can happen is what happens. we are in a very specific version of reality where very specific things had to happen in a very specific way in order for you to be looking at your screen right now, considering agency and free will with me. (hello.) but if i go too far into the part of me who feels i have absolutely no agency at all, that everything is just happening no matter what i do, i feel powerless in a way that is no longer freeing or comforting. i touch deep depression.
in a class on the purpose of meditation (find it here) one of the teachers, connor, said something like “emotions are like the crowbar that you can use to pry open the door of the heart, and then it’s open forever.” hanna, the other teacher. in the course, regularly talks about how self-effort and grace are two wings on the same bird who, perhaps, carries us to god-realization. not to get too esoteric here. but here it is. grace is always here. self-effort can come if we choose it. maybe? this is all nice and good theoretically, but in practice, the struggle i face, the inner tension i feel, points to my perception of myself as a crazy person.
i feel like i am in a coming out process to myself and others as a crazy person. i have felt palpably crazy since i was maybe 14 and was beinning to realize that i had secured positionality as a nice girl at my school, and that it was my task to adhere to that identity. this does not mean i felt like it was true or accurate, but that i needed to get very very skilled at performance. and when those who were close to me throughout the next years of my life realized my power to do harm, and that i was not as simple as i seemed but very intelligently calculated and at times very manipulative, what it felt like was my exposure to the sun as a crazy person. the mask ripped off. the veil pulled away.
what i mean when i say “i am a crazy person” is that the veil in me feels thin, and that my highs are very high and my lows are verrrry low. what i mean when i say this is that it feels like i have access to something very powerful that i have not been trained to know how to wield, that i have not been initiated into holding well. when i say this what i mean is something in me (it’s my ego, let’s be real) struggles deeply with relaxing into the safety of grace. my egoic identification with the person who’s Doing all of this, who is Creating my reality and circumstances, whose Choices create the Future, is deeply uncomfortable that grace could have made me this way on purpose and is loving me and smiling at me even in my extremely uncomfortable spiritual awakening.
on a whim, i just googled “self-effort and grace.” and was taken to this website from a yoga magazine. i’m laughing as i write this because this is how grace shows up. you google something, seemingly on a whim. the desire to learn exists in you. grace puts what you need to read at the top of the results. you click on it. grace is there waiting. grace is you, experiencing herself.
“If you are really keen to reach the goal, you will like everything that will take you toward the goal. People create a lot of troubles and difficulties for themselves by not understanding what is needed to reach a goal. It is not that easy to reach a goal. If your goal is to reach the moon, how much money must be spent and how much risk must be taken? If you dislike that, then you are not interested in the goal. It seems to be self-contradictory then, and I have to doubt about your goal itself. Do you really understand the goal and do you really want to achieve it?”
so, i’m thinking about my goals. so far, my goals have been to achieve true freedom, to achieve true agency. i’ve never considered, until this moment, that i don’t really understand the goal and don’t really want to achieve it.
can i get more specific?
this is becoming writing for my journal. but i think someone who reads this might feel what i’m feeling right now. i don’t know if you feel it, but i straight-up feel The Presence right now. there’s an empty seat next to me and grace is sitting in it. grace is standing over my shoulder watching me write, moving my fingers to the correct keys. grace is kneeling in front of me, touching my left leg where i feel shooting chronic pain moving down from my lower back. grace is each tree around me, looking down at me looking up at them. not to freak you out, but grace is in the room with you right. now. perfectly concealed until you notice her. i live for this revealment. can you feel her?
may we feel grace sitting next to us quietly
may we feel us sitting next to grace quietly
may we observe grace as grace observes herself in the shape of us
may we hear the wingbeats of self-effort and grace like a raven flying right over us
may we type the question we have into google and watch what happens
may we crack open the emergency glass of our hearts
may we turn our attention away from gluing the glass back together
may we sit in the sun and feel grace undeniably
may we consider if we actually understand our goals
may we consider if we actually want what we struggle so deeply towards
may we be free from the pursuit of freedom
i love you
yes .... soft...