Let It In, Let It in
February 27th 2024
About three weeks ago, Joe and I were having a regular cozy Sunday morning. Drinkin’ coffee, watchin’ a Bigfoot show. Ooing and aahing as the cats yawned and stretched in front of the fireplace.
He decided it was time for breakfast, so he got up to put some bread in the toaster and a couple of eggs on the stove. I went to pee in the upstairs guest bathroom because I like to leave a little mystery in our marriage.
Our guest bathroom is nothing exciting. Mirror. Counter. Sink. Toilet. A generic shower curtain that I swear I’m gonna replace any day now.
I walked in, and no sooner had I’d dropped my drawers and sat down, than the entire room filled with this fireworks display of these dancing darting lights that skimmed across the surface of the air as if they were wearing ice skates!
With such speed and sporadic direction, these lights appeared to be playing with me. Bouncing off my nose and cheeks like snowflakes. My entire body tingled as they swarmed around me.
You have most likely seen these too, especially if you do any kind of massage or bodywork. I feel like we quickly become acclimated to seeing sparks, rays, and bursts of color. Especially being in dark rooms all day you start to see stuff a little easier. I remember one day this incredible burst of pink and silver sparkled so brightly in my peripheral vision that I thought,
Rebecca…that was way too tangible. They probably have one of those strobe settings on their cellphone and you just saw a text message come through.
But when I searched the room for a phone layin’ out at the end of the massage…there was no phone.
So sitting in our guest bath on a regular ol’ Sunday, this was the first time in my life that I had not only seen flashes but they weren’t going away. They were just multiplying in front of my eyes and becoming more physically palpable.
I turned my head to make sure the cherry blossom pattern on the shower curtain wasn’t just fuckin’ with my vision, but they were everywhere, just merrily bouncing ‘round the room. ( Yes, just like Phish.)
Every inch of the room was filled with dancing lights.
I must have sat there with my pants at my knees looking around me from floor to ceiling like a codfish for about 45 seconds when I heard,
“This is us, and this is you.”
Oh.
The energy that creates all things we refer to as well, things.
At first, I was just in awe that I was able to sit there and watch and feel and take this in for such a long amount of time.
It was amazing!
But then, my analytical mind piped up, obviously feeling left out of the group chat,
“Hey, what are y’all doin' without me!?”
Sometimes that analytical mind can be a real wet blanket.
Because of things that had been happening throughout the previous weeks, deaths, and multiple people around me having serious medical emergencies, that analytical brain went into what it does best. Playing the devil’s advocate.
I quickly sank into catastrophizing.
“Oh my God! Am I about to stroke out? Is my blood sugar low? I don’t know, I don’t feel faint or dizzy but…Oof but what if this is like, the precursor to the worst migraine of my life!? Should I call to Joe before I pass out and he doesn’t find me for an hour?”
These thoughts flooded my system like a gossip column.
I decided it best I play it safe and at least head back downstairs just in case I was about to have a medical emergency.
As soon as I made that decision and reached for my drawers, the sparkling lights dimmed and dissolved back into the air.
It went from such an insane light show to nothing so quickly that as I left the bathroom, I turned my head suspiciously and looked behind me to make sure there weren’t any stragglers.
It was completely back to normal.
I took one step at a time to get back down the stairs, ever so gently.
Joe had his back to me frying the eggs and I announced as I entered the kitchen,
“I think I’m OK. I feel completely fine. But I just tripped balls in the bathroom for a good one to two minutes… and I… I don’t know what just happened.”
Tears started to fill my eyes, not only because of the intensity of the experience, but because as I shared it, I was still coming from a place of worry, and realized I couldn’t exactly fully convey what had just happened.
He was doing his best to comfort me, saying he knew what I was talking about and had often seen flashes of things darting through the air while in the shower at times, but I got upset, shaking my head.
“No no, we’ve talked about that stuff and seen it a buncha times before. I’m trying to explain it was more intense than that. It was to the point I felt like I could be having a psychotic break or a medical emergency. I wouldn’t be crying if it was like we’ve both described it before.”
I felt even more isolated and started spiraling into self-scrutiny.
Oh my God, I am just overreacting. Maybe I’m just being a self-important asshole and everybody sees this shit all the time and I’m acting like it’s this big deal and it’s not. Am I discrediting his experiences to make myself feel special? Oh gahd…
Now-
This is something that our brains like to do when we’ve experienced prolonged periods of gaslighting. Our reality and the boundaries of our own identity become nonexistent. To keep peace with unhealthy people around us, we learned to validate all of their pains and triumphs at the cost of our own because in a very real sense, as soon as they saw something they didn’t have they immediately shouted, “No! Gimme that’s mine!”
So, a tough lesson that comes along with this healing, is that we can have people in our lives that we are SO close to and we’ll share so many experiences with… but there are still times that we have to just stand on our own.
They aren’t trying to hurt us or intentionally gaslight us. On the contrary, they’re usually giving us the best medicine at that moment, because we have to learn to love and trust ourselves without anyone giving us permission or validation. Even the people we love the most need to let us down in that sense sometimes so we can attend to the foundation in ourselves. That self-love is always number one. We can only see and hear others as well as we can see and hear ourselves know what I mean Vern?)
After eating breakfast and seeing that my appetite was perfectly fine, no headache was coming on and I felt completely clear, I headed back upstairs and hopped in the shower.
About as soon as the shampoo started to lather, my spirit family chimed in,
Ok- so let’s look at this. If you had been in meditation when that happened, how would you have reacted and perceived it? Completely different right? Miraculous! You may have stayed in that state of awe and ecstasy as long as possible! We know you want this to be fun and we want you to have fun with it too! But you’ll have way more fun with this when you’re creating the framework.
Because these things aren’t gonna stop happening. They’re ramping up.
And when you’re experiencing and receiving them in a mainly passive manner that means your interpretation of them is far more susceptible to outside opinion, projections, and internal programming of fears and beliefs. This is when you experience double-dutching in and out of others' realities and your own. When you’re already in regular practice laying the framework, choosing the soundtrack? You’re intending for the miraculous to happen and anticipating the curves. This is the difference between driving a fun mountain road with the windows down or sitting in the backseat with motion sickness. Intention and perspective are everything.
You don’t have to have a physically structured spiritual practice. We know as human beings the word structure immediately translates to something physical or an inhibiting discipline, but we mean more like regularly tagging a base while playing a game of softball to remind yourself you’re safe. Constant awareness of your spirit is the practice that will frame your entire experience of reality. Use the phrase, ‘Expect the unexpected’ to gauge where you are. How is that phrase translating for you at this moment? Does it make you wanna call your insurance provider, or get you daydreaming of all the wonderful surprises that could be just around the corner?
About a week later, I had a dream I was sitting in the backseat of a parked car doodling in a sketchpad. No clue who I was waiting for or what parking lot I was in, but I was definitely in a place of being along for the ride and not in my power.
I watched a girl I recognized walking around the parking lot looking for someone. I knew that someone was me but I kept my head down, watching from the corner of my eye and pretending to be occupied with my drawing until I finally looked out the back window and mouthed, “Are you looking for me?”
She nodded yes and motioned to meet her outside the vehicle.
She was joined by five or six other people who had a very Umbrella Academy vibe. One of the guys excitedly put his arm around me in a very jovial nonthreatening way.
I pushed him away from me by giving him a very gentle but calculated La Femme Nikita kick to the crotch, stepped back, and addressed the whole group.
“I don’t know you! I don’t know you people.”
Their heads fell to the side as one of them cooed sympathetically,
“Yeah…but you do…”
I stuck my nose in the air and turned my back to them, opening the car door to climb back in as the gal I’d first spoken with said,
“Ok but, you know we’ll just come back. This is happening.”
And then I woke up startled because something cold and slimy was making its way across my bottom lip and about to drip into my mouth.
Now, our supposedly hairless but fuzzy little boy Rygel drools like a sonofabish, so I just assumed at first that he’d fallen asleep on my face and had started drooling. But when I sat up, he was lying across from me snoozin’ with his head resting about six inches away on the pillow.
I laid there wiping my bottom lip over and over trying to figure out where this liquid came from, 'cause if I was droolin'…well… it was going in the wrong direction.
But there was nothing. No liquid.
It didn’t make any sense.
Lotus snoozin’ on a Sunday mornin’ :)
Rygel on a rare Sunday mornin’ that he didn’t wanna wake me up for 4 am aerobics.
Now if that wasn’t strange enough already… sitting next to my husband on the couch just a few nights ago, he suddenly slapped at his beard and started wiping his bottom lip and checking his fingers.
“You alright?” I said.
“Yeah…I… that was weird. I felt like something cold was dripping from my lip but there’s nothing there.”
“Uhhh” I paused our Bigfoot show. (we watch a lotta Big Foot y’all) …Remember the dream I had the other night?”
We sat back and looked at each other wide-eyed like Wayne and Garth.
What does it meeeean!?
I have no earthly idea.
I mean I do have some ideas that are not of this earth, but that’s for a whole other discussion.
The funniest thing to me is that I’ve spent decades of my life begging someone to tell me I’m not crazy. That what I’ve experienced is real and I can trust myself.
And when I finally got the answers I’d longed for and hugged my pain to my chest until it stopped weeping, the universe said, “Now let it go.” And that need for confirmation began melting down into something else completely.
The more I’m able to trust myself? The more I’m able to surrender to the unknown.
More and more I feel like I’m pushing off the side of the pool and backstroking out into the twinkling abyss.
When I’m in fear? I feel crazy.
But when I’m in joy? I am in awe.
All I know is, I’d much rather try to spend my life living in the latter. And only I can control that.
I’ll leave you with the words of Aesop Rock that my husband has been walkin’ around the house singin’ to me for the last month.
“Let it in, let it in.”
I love you! Thank you for reading! Now out into the sparkling abyss with you!
