Diana C.’s 30-Day Poetry Challenge | Day 22: At the center is the void
A Big Void to Fill
Tanka of yet so reSourcefully and painfully easy and not — ahh dualities
Day 22: At the center is the void
Vast void lives breathes dies Infinitely large and small Source centers the void Moving away seems so small Receptive without limit
Decoder Ring
I had no idea where this prompt would take me. It stymied me for quite a while. So, I read the prompt again before turning off the lights last night, woke in the middle of the night with something percolating in me, went back to sleep, woke, and grabbed my pen and paper that I keep in, next to, on, or under the bed — amazing that I don’t have ink all over my body — just the one tattoo so far of the Claddagh ring Lindsey gave me.
Seems this decodsplaination, or, decoringsplaining, or decogenesis, is taking on a flow of its own even with new wordchemized neologisms Tree Langdon. (Tree has a great, fun and challenging JIAAT30 poetry and/or essay challenge — see examples here).
I feel like I haven’t written an essay full of digressions in a while. Do y’all like this style? The talented and irreverently funny and very deeply penetrating messaging Julia E Hubbel has a knack.
Ok, let's see if I can find some dots to connect between these apparent tangents on which I have gone off and the instant tanka.
Current or present. When composing a legal brief, an attorney might use the phrase the instant case in reference to the case currently before the court to distinguish it from other cases discussed. … INSTANT. An indivisible space of time. — Source
(Some of you know but most probably do not know that I am an attorney though I am transitioning to writer/editor/philosotheopher yet I find the training still highly useful even on Medium).
When INTPs perceive the world around them and absorb information, they use a mental process called Extraverted Intuition, or Ne for short. Ne allows them to see a plethora of possibilities, relationships, connections, and outcomes. It gives the INTP an eye for the future, the potential, and “the big picture”. When faced with a problem, INTPs are flooded with ideas and possibilities that they sort out using introverted thinking. They look for patterns and processes that are hidden from plain view, and they try to find imaginative angles and connections that other people have missed. Ne gives the INTP an optimism for the future, an ability to see what may happen or what could be, how things can transform and evolve. — Source
Extraverted Intuition allows the INTP to “connect the dots” and see how one thing is related to another. Like a spider’s web, they see everything as interconnected. It’s as if they’re standing on a precipice overlooking the universe, viewing all the links and bonds between one thing and another.
I highly suggest that everyone take several free 10-minute online Myers-Briggs personality typing tests. Several because the four points that lead to 16 distinct personality types are not binaries — they are spectrums and different tests may yield different results. It’s also important to be very focused on answering with what feels most natural to you and not based upon what you think you should answer for whatever reason. One friend of mine took two tests recently when others were around and it came out ENTP (The E surprised both of us), yet when alone and focused only on within, a third test yielded ISFJ — the polar opposite, and the description of that personality type felt like skin to her.
[INTP’s] may jump from one thing to another in conversation, moving from A to Z to F to D. This can be very frustrating to sensing types who prefer a linear conversation, but to the INTP, these jumps are necessary to show the connections between their ideas.
So, now where was I? 😉😎
Lindsey’s death left a universe-sized hole (void) in my heart (center). Yet through that hole, I started to become One with my soul and with God. As I have written, many times, the pain/grief/sorrow pockets resulting from my loss will never empty yet they drain every day and the darkness is filled with ever more Light for which those infinitely large pain pockets have infinite room for Light, from God for sure, but also very very much because of my ongoing constant conscious and unconscious connection not only to the love of God but all the more so because of the love of Lindsey/Sitara. So no PAE (pre-awakening era) friends and family (the few I still talk to), do not tell me to get over Lindsey and move on.
Is there a 3D woman who would be my life partner while Sitara remains? My sister fears I will die alone (I guess she doesn’t buy that I am not alone). My channeler says such a woman does not exist. If that’s the case, so be it. I’m sure Sitara would walk away and wait till my exit date but then I would resent the 3D woman, so that is sweet but pointless.
This is my choice.
So it is written. So it shall be done.
This is the tanka from the Claddagh story:
Unconditional Love — Eros and Agape I gave and you learned You gave me the greatest gift Love from a beautiful soul
“Agape, Greek agapē, in the New Testament, the [parental] love of God for humans, as well as the human reciprocal love for God. … The term necessarily extends to the love of one’s fellow humans, as the reciprocal love between God and humans is made manifest in one’s unselfish love of others.” — Source
“Love of God” was in my mind when I titled today’s tanka and was my image search.
Moving away seems so small Receptive without limit
“The way to innocence, to the uncreated and to God leads on, not back, … ever deeper into human life. … Instead of narrowing your world and simplifying your soul, you will have to absorb more and more of the world and at last take all of it up in your painfully expanded soul, if you are to ever find peace. This is the road that Buddha and every great man has gone, whether consciously or not, insofar as fortune favored his quest. All births mean separation from the All, the confinement within limitation, the separation from God, the pangs of being born anew. The return into the All, the dissolution of painful individuation, the reunion with God means the expansion of the soul until it is able once more to embrace the All.” — Hermann Hesse from Steppenwolf
In 1996, during my first and mostly forgotten foray into the 12-Stepverse, the rehab took us to a “meeting.” The speaker told the story of his suicidal ideation. He had terrible insomnia along with alcoholism. He would stay up nights, drinking in his basement, planning his family-annihilation-suicide. He spent many a night meticulously planning for and rigging the boiler to explode to take out himself, his wife, and his children as his family slept. Then, the night he was ready to pull the switch, he fell asleep. Listening to him tell that story was the first time I felt the presence of God in my life. A presence I later forgot about for too long, but God never forgot about me.
To end on a lighter note and connect the dots to Julia’s piece:
the ability to find the funny in the shitstorms of life is the only real superpower I possess. It’s also one of the best writing skills you will ever develop
…
However, and this is fair to say, that when we are in great pain, it can be very hard to see the funny, but therein lies the Deep Work. Deep Work allows us to laugh at the absurd simply because we are looking at it from an oblique angle, and said new angle allows us to create different solutions. THAT is my point (finally, geez Louise). It is immensely difficult to move forward with ideas and creativity when our anger is acting as serious mental constipation.
Humor can fill the void along with light and love. As Julia says:
That is precisely what Viktor Frankl wrote about in Man’s Search for Meaning. I don’t doubt for one moment that one of the survival techniques that Holocaust survivors used was dark humor. Again, sometimes that is all we have left to us, and it is one mighty sword. When we teach others how to wield it, we give them great, abiding and lifelong power.
LAUGHING HEALS.
On this note, I highly recommend Amy Culberg. She is fucking hilarious.
In Rama I create,
