Cling as you will to the surface path, but if you are to die unto the spiritual core, at some point, the inner catacombs will call to you. Anonymous
I was introduced to the dark side of humanity and personal suffering through the work of Shakespeare, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Van Gogh, Hammett, folk music, R & B, and classic movies that dared to bare the soul. I protested, marched, chanted, and sang in the streets. I wanted to help bring about a better world, and the theatre was the way to go. I wrote musicals, read aloud short, evocative fiction, and plotted novels that never surfaced until one day I heard a voice that told me I might as well lay aside the pen and paper (or, by then, the early electric typewriter with minimal memory) because I didn’t know how to be honest.
I fought the voice, postured, protested, ranted & raved, but the voice was strong, and finally, I acknowledged fear. Having never admitted fearing before, I found the path confusing and challenging. I named the portals I learned to identify along the path and developed methods of clearing away the debris before unlocking them. They creaked when opened, and I experimented with entering the long, sloping stone stairwell. Sometimes I was caught by a strong draft sucking me into reactive flashpoint, my first conscious awareness of blackout as constructed in my early download years for self-protection. The death of outdated self-protection habits is a tough one. That was my first level.
I panicked, fought to get back to the surface, but the inner voice encouraged me to follow the dark blacked-out hallway. My theatre and sports training helped. I remembered to breathe and focused on one foot at a time into shut down emotional regions. Somewhere along the way, I learned of the Buddhist phrase, “Practice dying before you die.” So my second level of dying was accepting my journey would worsen, get much worse before it got better.
And it did. I spent more time in the inner catacombs, was less and less able to return to the surface path. And, when I did make it back, the times had changed, and my uncovering was less desired. I floundered in vast pools of toxic shame, and no one wanted to hear about it. Instead, I was pointed to doors labeled Disorder, and I couldn’t quell the crashing tide sweeping me deeper into the Inner Catacombs. I learned the phrase Suicidal Ideation, which helped in one way and simultaneously made things worse. This was when I met Caliban, the Inner Catacomb Tour Guide. My third level of dying was surrendering to guidance.
Caliban is a distant relation to Shakespeare’s Caliban, whom I first met in my teenage drama class. He had acquired self-esteem as a tour guide, and he took his important role seriously. When I got lost, he waited until I was ready to follow him again. He pointed out artwork left by others on their way through to the other side. I learned to cease craving praise from others and settled into a form of contentment gained by word crafting and paying my respects to those who had gone before me. The fourth level of dying has been letting go of attachment. That’s where I am now, and though each day is a challenge, I can say practicing dying before dying is the way to go.
