An Analytical-Spiritual-Mystical Odyssey: The Path and Power of Grief

As I clean out my cerebral attic, I’m on a campaign to publish four books.  Two are already completed:  Fierce Longing…Fiery Loss and Preserving Human Touch in a High Tech World.  (The latter will come out first.  More info to follow.)  Two remain: one on “Anger,” the other on “Creativity.”  However, the proverbial “elephant” in the attic (or the closet) that I have left basically untouched for over thirty years is my path to a mindscape-changing mystical-like experience.  And the elephant is finally trumpeting its frustration; it wants to be liberated…to roam free.

This is the first step in a mysterious journey.  I hope Part I of “Menagerie of Madness…The Mandala Moment” both intrigues and inspires.  For my mystical pathway and moment was somewhat unconventional.  Hours of meditation was not the midwife.  Nine months of grief labor yielded, in serene yet startling fashion, an inner child with cosmic consciousness.  Perhaps some people must flesh out closeted skeletal memories and flush out smoldering toxic resentments, wash their wounds with tears of mourning, before peace and grace can be achieved.  My new mantra:  Emotional irrigation precedes transcendental meditation!

I hope you will join me on this journey of discovery and recovery.  Peace!

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Menagerie of Madness…The Mandala Moment:

A Mystical-Mythical Odyssey – Part I

Ready to Launch

Nine months on the cranberry-colored couch

Head-heart exploration three times a week

A discount price for a struggling student

Lost on the dissertation trail.

Probably need a time out

A tune out to turn inward

To dig out and discover

Who is this mind-body soul?

The analyst behind me out of view

Now what to do…?

To lie quietly, self-absorbed

And just free associate, whatever comes up

What a treat; like a mental massage:

A playground for the imagination

An unconscious brain journey

But with mindscape ruts and crevasses

And hidden trapdoors and floors…

The Depths and Shocks of Wonderland and Memory

Suddenly falling Alice-like

Into a dark hole…spiraling down

Through cracks in the head, heart, and gut

Into a depression, a valley of shadows

Awakening memory demons

Howling “listen to me, listen to me

Otherwise, don’t say you want to be free!”

But why do I so often cry…Why! Why!

Must I recall all the drama and trauma?

In a household of wounded souls

Little boys of all ages

One a distant father

Hiding depression…our disconnection

But how was the real little boy

Supposed to know

About his father’s hospitalization

Years of shock wires

For alleged “manic depression,” memory suppression

Feeding his other life drinking and carousing.

For when he was home

He would sit outside alone.

What was he thinking?

That the sun’s rays might touch a soul

Restore some humanity, maybe his sanity?

Another Mad Tea Party

The other, the black sheep uncle

Rusty, the trickster

Mistakenly thought retarded

Likely “schizo” from birth.

And my mother, his sister

Who lost a father

A proud businessman

To the Depression

His heart gave out

When she was sweet sixteen

Now has to pretend to be strong

Without being wrong.

The brilliant ringleader of a menagerie

Except when she explodes

And all the walls shake.

The Pillar

And her mother who was truly strong

An emotional saint; she was my buffer

For an angst-driven mother.

Though grandma hardly knew English

Her warm eyes spoke love in Yiddish.

“Gram” – a one woman psychiatric ward

She was called by a doctor

For keeping her “schizo” out of the bin

Until she finally died, then Rusty went in.

We did not need a big casket

From medical malpractice and diabetes

Gram had lost both her legs.

Yet she never complained

And her love caressed all in her range.

As I look back…it all seems so strange.

From Pillar to Panic

She was my higher power

After Gram died…sinking feeling

Our captain had abandoned the ship

Now gripped by dread-panic

All that bottled rage…constant static.

No one consoled me:

“He’s too young to understand.”

The impaired can’t see the wounded

Don’t want to face their own dis-ease.

So blinded…I stopped talking

To my angel in assembly.

And soon became a target

Leaving a “trail of blood”

For the sharks and wolves

In Junior High and the neighborhood.

Running for (or was it from) my life

Being chased after school

Teased and taunted

So ashamed to be haunted

Too fearful to break away

So I remain battered

Once again the black mood descended.

All I could do was self-numb and be dumb

From mindless TV to juvenile “R & R” –

Long lost moans and groans

Rubbing and Releasing those teenage hormones

With nowhere to go

No healthy ego

So I took the abuse and

Mostly lost any true voice

For two decades or so.

Tell me:  did I have any choice?

A Voice in the Wilderness…

Still for some of those years

I had a beloved savior

My mother’s youngest brother

Uncle Dave, an ex-marine and a ballplayer

Who, whenever he came over

The black cloud seemed to vanish

As we roughhoused together.

But then he got married

And had his own family

And moved upstate

I would visit…too little too late.

But then Dream Reality Descends

I recall a dream discussed on the couch:

My mother grasping my little hand

Pulling me along

The two of us trying to keep up

With Uncle Davy, walking much faster

As we chase after

But why is he leading us

Onto a WW II cattle car?

Heading to a hell so intense

Nothing makes sense, yet

For some reason I turn my head

And there sitting slumped in the corner

Is my strung out father…

Black holes for eyes

And there’s no time for goodbyes!

From Worse to Verse

And this reminiscing

On the couch shedding

Went on for months…

Then, magically, tears

Like water unto wine

Morphed into ink flowing

For the first time, poetry scribbling.

Truly startling…automatic writing

Nine tenths of the piece

Flowed out in one sitting.

An anthem to my father

Who, in miraculous fashion

Finally had resurrected himself

Spurred on by some woman

Who told him he was crazy

Stop being a petrified rock:

“You don’t need shock!

Get into counseling.”

Dad’s Odyssey/Our Journey

So he left the family

For his epic odyssey

To wrestle with Scylla and Charybdis  **

Raging demons prehistoric –

Psycho-logic and Genetic

In twice-a-week group

Mercifully, mostly therapeutic.

Eventually dad came home

Bringing the psychic battleground

Into our living room, to the sofa

Fighting out in the arena

For the first time over subjects

Once hidden and forbidden.

The Pandora’s Box was now open

And hope, though unspoken

Was a guiding light

Helping me follow his trial of terror and rage

To break out of our cage

Onto my own trail of tears couch.

**  Scylla and Charybdis – Scylla and Charybdis were mythical sea monsters.  Greek mythology sited them on opposite sides of the Strait of Messina between Sicily and the Italian mainland. Scylla was described as a six-headed sea monster on the Italian side of the strait and Charybdis was a whirlpool off the coast of Sicily. They were regarded as a sea hazard located close enough to each other that they posed an inescapable threat to passing sailors; avoiding Charybdis meant passing too close to Scylla and vice versa. According to Homer, Odysseus was forced to choose which monster to confront while passing through the strait; he opted to pass by Scylla and lose only a few sailors, rather than risk the loss of his entire ship in the whirlpool.

Being between Scylla and Charybdis is an idiom deriving from Greek mythology, meaning "having to choose between two evils". Several other idioms, such as "on the horns of a dilemma", "between the devil and the deep blue sea", and "between a rock and a hard place" express the same meaning.  (Wikipedia)

Gestating on the Couch

Now once again lying prone

Immersed in the dark clouds

On my incubation vacation

Hatching more reason and rhyme

Of the pain connecting all in the brood

And their prismatic disorders of mood

Perhaps understanding

For the very first time…

The real blame was not mine.

A stream of sessions upon seasons

Of a wounded man’s life.

Waterfall orbs keep flowing

To irrigate parched lips

Trying to speak

An anguish that has no name

But a primal growl-painful howl

Deep, deep from within.

What the **** Going On?

Until the mind-blowing happens…

One fine day, seemingly ordinary

I lie on the couch with nothing to say.

Who turned off the cavernous wellspring faucet?

What’s going on?  What should I do?

A voice from behind to the rescue:

“Don’t say anything!”

Who can be silent when you haven't a clue?

The Mind-Shattering Moment

“Don’t say anything?”…to myself:

I’m paying for this!

Okay, stop fighting, give in

To the unknown quiet

A blank tablet

For twenty or thirty seconds…

Then the silent cosmic explosion:

Suddenly I am an infinite web

Invisible threads

Weaving in rhythm with the universe.

Hands outstretched…mere words

Simply more of the curse

Leaving the sensation untouched.

The only thing sensible

Though inexplicable

Embrace the ineffable.

I am part of all things

All things are part of me.

Later I would learn the expression:

“The one in the many, the many in the one.”

Now my own odyssey had surely begun!

Mystical Mindscape

Drifting… a stranger in a strange world

Hmm…not floating alone.

Yet how can this oneness

Be divided in two?

Wait…now I am outside

One earthly body on the couch

One spiritual body

Looking down from the ceiling

It’s all so confusing.

Is this a vision or hallucination?

It can be such a fine line

In psycho-analytic space-time!

Still…an intuitive feeling

A sense that I’m healing.

A realization:  the peace

Of being at one with everything

Means looking in the eye

Of lightning storm fears and dark night desires

While bowing down to consuming brain fires.

This is who I am

At this moment in time and place

In awe of and humbled

By something called grace.

And yes…I can still evolve.

Might this be a feeling of love?

If so…it’s beyond comprehension

But it has my attention.

The Polar Connection

So too my out-of-body polarity

What does it tell me?

That I’ve been tortured too long

By seeming contradiction

This schism…a psycho-cultural fiction

Pitting courageous-coward

Perfect-pathetic

Self-centered, aggressive mania

Too accommodating melancholia

Splits from within

Which is the real sin!

Remember, the mantra for the day:

Burnout is less a sign of failure

More you gave yourself way.

Grieving as Conceiving

And in the silent space

Uniting sensual and spiritual

With an aura of the mystical

Conceiving is believing

Aha!…the nine months of grieving

Emotional wailing and weaving

Cleansing the wound, purifying the soul

Being reborn through elan vital **

Appearing in the flesh

A flash of peace and quiet

Transforming inner rumbling and the riot –

A kaleidoscopic tapestry of prophetic insight

That no longer could be denied

Though, lord knows, I have tried!

** elan vital – Élan vital was coined by French philosopher Henri Bergson in his 1907 book Creative Evolution.  Elan vital was translated in the English edition as "vital impetus," but is usually translated by his detractors as "vital force."  It is a hypothetical explanation for evolution and development of organisms, which Bergson linked closely with consciousness – with the intuitive perception of experience and the flow of inner time.

An Echo Calling…an Electric Current

The mythic-psychic-genetic echo within

Has been waiting for me

To hear my calling

And see the luminous light of day.

To raze and reconstruct

The Tower of Psychobabble

Turning ancient “critical voice” torment

Into meditative ferment

Replanting brain cells in fresh soil

Constructing a new ark

For shepherding my emerging grit and gifts

Prodded gently and not so

By electric current memory, by hypnotic imagery…

Staring and listening and trusting

In wisdom and wizardry

To power creativity, realizing my fullest self

Without, of course, becoming too full of myself!

Am I up for the challenge?  Am I ready to embark?

Stay tuned for the answer!  Until then…Practice Safe Stress!

©  Mark Gorkin  2016

Shrink Rap ™ Productions

Mark Gorkin, MSW, LICSW, "The Stress Doc" ™, a nationally acclaimed speaker, writer, and "Psychohumorist" ™, is a founding partner and Stress Resilience and Trauma Debriefing Consultant for the Nepali Diaspora Behavioral Health & Wellness Initiative.  A former Stress and Violence Prevention Consultant for the US Postal Service, he has led numerous Pre-Deployment Stress Resilience-Humor-Team Building Retreats for the US Army.  The Doc is the author of Practice Safe Stress, The Four Faces of Anger, and Preserving Human Touch in a High Tech World.  Mark’s award-winning, USA Today Online "HotSite" – www.stressdoc.com – was called a "workplace resource" by National Public Radio (NPR).  For more info, email:  stressdoc@aol.com.