Thursday, April 25, 2013

TURBULENCE... A VIRTUE?




Orange Springs, oil on canvas, 2003                    Pat Jacobs

In numerous spiritual traditions, brokenness is looked upon as a path to power. The little known Hindu goddess Akhilandeshvari, for example, typically depicted as a woman riding like a warrior on a fearsome crocodile through deadly turbulence across a river, derives her power from being pulled apart, from having to live constantly in different selves simultaneously, from never being “complete”. What does such a concept offer us, what could such an image teach?


The crocodile is a predator that kills not through the brute force of its huge jaws, but through the power of violent disorientation. It snatches its prey from the riverbank, thrusts it into the water, and spins it “like a dervish seeking God.” In this way, the victim virtually scares itself to death. What could be better!

Like the crocodile’s prey, we, too, can scare ourselves if not to death, then into sickness, paralysis, and impossible disorientation. Our stories run our lives, and when these stories are disrupted or in any way “broken,” the illusion of being “whole” implodes, our specific sense of the future dissolves, our expectations grow meaningless, and our anticipations either no longer apply... or resound with all too much disappointing familiarity. Then, our role takes on a new and different responsibility. We must reassemble the pieces of our story/our lives – either back into their previous form (which can never truly be replicated – time and energy have intervened) – or into a new shape and motivation that integrates the changes wrought by the brokenness.

Consider these words of one of my students: Every time she erupts, I fall apart. I am broken into pieces and sent flying. I want to come down to earth. I want to feel whole. I want out of the paralysis of grief and terror. I want my momentum restored.

Because the writer was consciously and non-judgmentally observing his emotional self (as opposed to unconsciously acting it out), he had the option of grasping for the shards of the old story and/or conjuring a horizon in which the disorienting picture can be diffused, resized, re-colored, rearranged, or dissolved. He can use his brokenness to reshape the story and realign an inner compass.

The crocodile archetype represents the reptilian brain, the neurological aspect where the fight or flight reflex resides (in the part of the prefrontal lobe known as the amygdale). In times of brokenness or panic, the reptilian brain surges into action, flooding the endocrine system with hormones that put our minds and bodies into a state of full alert. In moments of physical danger, this can save our lives; but as a repetitive emotional pattern affixing us into a condition of fright, the reptilian brain remains, like the crocodile, geared to devour us with every bit of its disorienting force. The female divinity -- the symbol of the right brain, creativity, and transformation – rides the crocodile through the prismatic refraction of watery turbulence to arrive at a new location, perhaps even on a different shore. Akhilanda does not tame or kill the predator, but uses her own power – the power of non-judgmental introspection and divine intuition -- to navigate the waves.

But then, even when Akhilanda lands, battered but safe, her newfound unbrokenness is but temporary. (Ishvari means female power in Sanskrit, and Akhilanda means “never not broken.” In other words, she is the “always broken goddess.” She must continue breaking apart and reassembling herself, riding the next crocodile and navigating the next waves. Her brokenness is life, the crocodile itself, the river, the spinning, the disorientation. All are elements of the process of living, which, after all, is one of allowing our pieces to fall away and collecting them for the next reassembling.

Thus, there are always fractures, unexpected curves, and dangerous edges to our storylines... both crisis and growth make them evident. Observing, releasing, reinventing, and riding our crocodiles across the turbulence, we never get the story straight. And never have. For the story – past, present, or future – never is straight. After all, nothing in nature moves in a straight line,. Our stories hold our power, and our power emanates from the imagination which resides in the subconscious, in the fields of our right brain, in the realm of the reptile.

copyright  c  2013 by Laura Cerwinske
with acknowledgement to Julie Peters and Eric Stoneberg

http://www.radicalwriting.com, http://www.lauracerwinske.com

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