Altered States and Human Connection

On Saturday, I went to this workshop related to communication and connection at the end of life. It was put on by Salt Spring Hospice and Greenwoods Foundation.

The two workshop facilitators, married to each other, were excellent and they shared amazing stories and examples of how they have used these techniques to communicate with people who were in altered states of consciousness or at the end of their lives and were having difficulty letting go. 

Now, let your judgement go when you first watch this video. It starts off a bit like Chevy Chase doing a Saturday Night Live intro but persevere and keep watching and be amazed at the stories that Arnie Mindell shares about his experience working with people in comas or during their last stages of life. 


It's on YouTube in three parts so watch all three parts. I think it will take about 20 minutes in total.
Part I
Part II
Part III

Salt Spring's Fernwood Dock as Rural Water Cooler

More often than not when I stroll down to the Fernwood Dock on the north end of Salt Spring Island where I live, I'll meet someone there to chat with.  I like to think of it as the water cooler of the North End, although that description is a stupendous stretch from the reality of what might take place around an office water cooler. To be honest, however, I don't recall ever really having a conversation around an office water cooler. Do you? The photocopier on the other hand, now that's a hotbed of social activity!

The weekend before, I met some new landed immigrants from Korea who were using chicken thighs as bait inside crab traps to catch small, bright red rock crabs that honestly, must have about as much meat in them as a sparrow's leg.

On  this beautiful Thanksgiving day, I met Elena Johnson and Joe Nagy from Vancouver. Initially they were talking to other Salt Spring residents also out for a stroll on a sparkling Thanksgiving Sunday. When the others moved on, I continued talking with them.

They were here from Vancouver and staying at The Harbour House Hotel. Elena is a poet. She relocated from a little village in New Brunswick of 222 people (221 when she left) when she was accepted into the MFA Creative Writing program at UBC a few years back.  Of course I was interested. She has had great personal success in the past couple of months getting her poems published in various literary journals in Canada including: the Literary Review of Canada; Dandelion; Arc; and This Magazine; as well as being included in RockSalt: An Anthology published from MotherTongue Publishing run by Mona Fertig here on island.

Joe has been in his chair for 13 years after a forestry accident and together they have this wonderful energy about them which I think comes through in the photo (above).

Tuesday, I dropped in at Bruce's Kitchen as I usually do to touch base and they showed up right behind me. We all had lunch together and we were speaking about writing programs and various other things about Salt Spring (which for the record they found to be really, really friendly) when a woman sitting next to us interrupted us and asked if we would like to hear one of her own poems. Of course, we agreed and she proceeded to recite this...

LOST IN THE MOMENT

by Laura L. Lang

Lost in the moment
Fear rises to the surface
Like the head in your glass of beer...

You blow it away
Choosing not to drink it
Becoming part of the haze

VIctory for a moment
But fleeting it would seem
For fear that has not been dealt with
Will crawl back on its knees..

And when you think you've beaten it
Fear rises to the occassion
You've only second guessed it
Now it is part of the equation..

All you are and ever would be
Are lost in the the fears we refuse to see
In order for your dreams to take shape and form
You must face your fears, by riding out the storm.

You may or may not know that Chef Bruce Wood loves poetry. One of his favourite poems is by Pablo Neruda, it's called Your Feet.

Meanwhile, Elena is working on a book of poetry and it will be good to look for that when it gets published. Always nice to meet the visitors who are drawn to the island for some R&R.

Closure? No Such Thing But Inside of You

You don't really hear the word used all that much any more. It used to be that you couldn't turn around without someone spouting off emotionally about how they just needed closure. "I'm doing this because I really need closure," they'd say, referring to the belief that some process external to themselves or definitive interaction would give them the answers they are seeking, the peace they long for, and that they'd finally get to "the bottom of everything".

After enduring more than a few roller coaster rides of emotional chaos in my past, I can guarantee anyone in search of closure one absolute. Here it is. Are you listening? Repeat after me. The only person who can give you closure is yourself.

Now,  it's not that I'm saying there is no value in seeking answers or that healing can't be gained from interacting with an individual that you have unfinished business with, but as someone who has endured the suicide of a man I loved and launching a complaint against a "professional" counsellor, I'm not a big fan of the "I just need closure" sentiment any more. 

You need closure? Give yourself permission to grant it to yourself. Do whatever it takes, as long as it has nothing to do with self medication, addiction or violence in order to resolve the disappointment and ambiguous feelings, the disbelief, the shock, the anger, the fear and the grief. That's what therapy is for.

Sweat lodges. Marathon running. Silent meditation retreats. Yoga. Skydiving. Or, ideally, quiet and wondrous acceptance that life is short and every moment you spend embroiled in emotional chaos and pain is a moment that you're handing back to the past in lieu of the present and the future.

The last time I had the burning thought that I just couldn't move forward without some "closure" (and it was a burning and enduring thought at the time), I ended up in an arbitration that required lawyers, testimony, cross examination, the subpoena of my personal journals from 1993 and more soul searching than an astronomer on the verge of a Nobel prize discovery or a new solar system.

To be fair, it was a process that did bring closure and personal strength and the recognition that I had done everything I could to get an individual who in my heart I believed to be someone different than he must have been to explain how he could know better and do what he did. But, it also brought emotional exhaustion at that time and resignation, specifically as it pertains to men and love.

What it didn't do was give me any of the answers or the kind of face-to-face conversation I would have preferred to have with the individual I was seeking to get closure from. While I was seeking something more like what I imagine might happen in a restorative justice process, I got nothing of value except knowledge that my inner voice is the most important one; one that I most need to listen well to, hear and trust absolutely.

The reason this whole focus on closure for me has even surfaced is that the word, closure, has had a resurfacing of late. It has come up in interviews on radio and TV as the Missing Women Inquiry gets underway. It came up while being bombarded by the media circus around the 10th anniversary of 9/11. It comes up time and time again in listening to reports by victims of violence trying to find a way back from their anguish, to the life they used to know and will never know again in the same way. Think Air India.  And, painfully, it comes up every time a First Nations person looks at their shattered present and is stuck in the tragedy of their clouded childhood betrayals.

Closure. If some interaction has already happened, it's over. Give yourself the self-love you're seeking to create a better reality, anew.