Carnage & the In-It-ness of Life

Death to the resistance!

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” - Joseph Campbell

1. Let’s hear it for inner carnage

“It’s carnage over here,” a friend wrote in a group WhatsApp yesterday.

My pulse quickened at the word “carnage.” I leaned in to my computer, as if I could draw closer to the writer of these words, who was half a globe away. For a few fantastical seconds I smelled the cannon smoke hanging in the air. I saw bodies strewn over a battlefield, bayonets on the ground, ribbons of blood, and sunlight slicing through fat gray clouds. I’m not into war imagery but for some reason, I was into this.

[there’s context missing here.“carnage” was part of a conversation with a group study I’m part of, in which we’re exploring our conditioning, thinking, beliefs that create suffering and limitations, and how to get so close to these false gods that they cease to exist. POOF. but the witnessing and moving through it all can feel like you’re getting beaten up. like, well, carnage.]

I imagined the inner carnage, the bloodbath of some of my most favorite long-held beliefs. It feels like I might die when I start to poke and prod into the limits created around time or money or love (not enough! not enough! not enough!) or when I take a non-judgmental look at my resentments, strivings, insecurities. Slowly, I see there’s nothing there. It feels real, but I can’t point to a photo of the anxiety that is telling me to work harder, prove myself, show the world what hot stuff I am! (All made up.)

Over time this disrobing can feel like a slow-mo explosion, a stumbling around, a shock.

It’s carnage. A beautiful bloodbath.

It might make you cry. Best done in the company with other big-hearted liberation-seekers. Not easy, all this capacity building. Ultimately, more expansion, more beauty.

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2. The In-It-ness of Life

“The mind that is not baffled is not employed.” - Wendell Barry

There’s a project. It keeps tapping you. Tap tap tap. A piece of writing. To start. Or to finish. You see it. You circle it. You talk about it. You might open the document. You think about it at night. It wakes you up at 2 a.m. It grabs your attention in the middle of an important work conversation at 2 p.m.

Nothing happens but circling, circling, circling.

Why the hell aren’t you GOING IN? Go in for the kill, now!

[nope, gonna facebook scroll instead. gonna post something on Instagram. eat potato chips. oops.]

Of course, the inner trickster feeds you reasons: too much worky-work, then there’s family time and exercise, and meditation, sock darning—the list goes on.

[you need a little internal carnage, quite frankly—but let’s stay with our plot.]

You feel impatient. Perplexed. You’re excited about this project! You feel a hum of pleasure thinking about starting it—tomorrow, at 4 pm when you have a spot of time.

Then 4 pm comes, and OH SHIT. The standing outside the circle of doing it, feeling like you don’t know how to get in there. Feeling like you want to have it over and done so badly that the idea of merely starting it just …. hurts.

What the hell? Why aren’t you excited to roll up sleeves and get funky with the muse? You find something else to do instead [facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, read, walk, grocery store, early dinner, call your dad who is blind with dimensia], then go to bed feeling like the deadbeat mother of yourself.

What it comes down to is this: the project lives in your head, your imagination. Like a fantasy love, a dream date. You want to think about the creative project with relish and anticipation, and then be DONE with it. You want to revel in its success. Yes, let’s go straight there, please.

For some reason there’s a giant resistance to be IN IT. Is it fear of the unknown? But you love the unknown, don’t you? All the delightful, mysterious, surprising and engrossing discoveries that happen when you’re IN IT. The creative eye of a storm rocks!

All you have to do is start. All you have to do is find a vein—open the document, write a word, a sentence and give in to the creative wandering that happens when you are IN IT.

You think about the In-It-ness of life. How you withdraw, retreat [carnage! carnage! the idea shouts to you. kill all that damn conditioned thinking! stop protecting ego!].

You realize the conditioning you need to stare down and confront is the withdrawing, retreating, “I’ll-do-it-later-ing.” There it is.

It’s no one’s fault. There is no doer here. Just a programming of evasion.

Forget presence, or the process, or trusting the creative cycle (all very good of course). Just get yourself in the killing circle.

But that’s violent.

Yeah, let’s try it. You might need to CHARGE through the resistance.

Be IN IT. Experience the in-it-ness of life. Charge in there. Crawl in there, tip-toe, cartwheel, just get in there and be in there. Then stay in there. These body systems want to hum away in a flow state.

Just go all in. Commit. Right now. You can do it. You were made for this.

P.S. In my group, where we turn WhatsApp into a philosophical discussion tool, we’ve taken to the Cousin Itt-Ness of Life

Talk about being all in it.

💥Do you want to join a writing group this Spring? We’d love to play with you. XO