“What is your intent in being here?” A simple question. Surely one who traveled 1500 miles alone and walked tenderfootedly barefoot through several freezing river-crossings over rocky beds should have an answer, yet all I could seem to come up with at that moment was that I thought I wanted their permission to be myself and to feel that this was good----this being me. How strange it was to say this, to realize this as true.
Of course, I could have said many things; I’m quite adept at explaining and rationalizing, intellectualizing, saying that which makes me appear a certain way----rather as an actress who dons roles like clothing and tries to decide whether truth lies in any of it or not. It’s being clear and simple, clearing away all of the superfluous that is difficult for me----and, according to Loba, who told me that many who come there say similar things, that they, too, want permission----it is for others, too.
To ask permission of someone who has no power over your body is to grant them a power over your spirit, and for you to grant this power to them must be a gift of trust----trust that they want what is best for you, that they wish your strength, beauty, and love to shine for the betterment of all, that they wish for you to be free.
So here I was amidst relative strangers asking their permission for me to be myself.
Doesn’t that seem strange to you? What had brought me to this state of mind? Partly, it was living for years among the walking dead: those who do not question how they are living, those who drift along on the status quo, watching others, doing as others do, doing as television tells them to, thinking only what the mass media tells them to think, being good citizens, good consumers, good Americans, watching as nature is decimated for the short-termed “benefit” of humankind, watching buildings replace trees, concrete coat pastures, grocery stores replace farms, listening to friends spout politically correct arguments (or not politically correct) or claiming a politician will save our lives, cause the changes to occur that will make all that was wrong now right. . . .
I’d come to believe that I didn’t fit in anywhere, that I was unloveable and perhaps could no longer even love myself or others. I could find no reason to open up, to share what was good in myself because all seemed to have become a competition-----and I refused to compete. I’d become silent.
And now? Was it as simple as my accepting this permission granted from someone I respect?
Wolf warns of gurus and cults (as most folk I respect do), and I am, perhaps, too suspicious of such figures and movements to ever succumb, but when I find something or someone who speaks clearly to my spirit, I’m also capable of giving in to that feeling and of learning from it. Thus, when I woke that Thursday morning in the riverside cabin, just four days into my solitary retreat, and felt glowingly grateful and so open and happy for who I am and where I am and what I am doing, I wrote a thank-you to my dear hosts, and I thought of Wolf as yet another (I didn’t say this in my note; it’s a bit crazy-sounding, but I’ll say it here) Jesus or Ghandi or Buddah-----another who is able to synthesize the best and communicate it in such a way that others are able to free themselves because of this.
What could be better?
