The following blog post and red quotations were written by a student in Wellcelium’s Ignite! course. Bold quotes below in black were written by Dr. Pavini Moray as part of the Ignite! course curriculum. The questions and practices sections at the end of this post were developed by Wellcelium to support your exploration.
** Please note there are brief mentions of childhood sexual abuse and dissociative identity disorder in this post. Please take care while reading. **
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Any period of concentrated learning is followed by a period of rest and integration. This is the most important part; when you take ideas and concepts, and they are woven into the fabric of your being. The work becomes integrating and inseparable from who you are. You are truly never the same again.
Part of integrating is acknowledging. You look back over what you have done, and you allow yourself to notice it all. You acknowledge the work, the bravery, the commitment, the time you spent practicing, the ways you showed up for yourself.
As part of acknowledging the work we have done, Pavini has asked us to create a zine that charts our time here, that shares who we really are now.
Just before we meet for the last gathering, I am looking at my zine and I think, okay, this zine isn’t done yet but I’ll share what’s there. Amazingly, almost everyone else says the same thing. Because it’s a book of us, it’s undone. It’s in process. It’s shifting forever. That’s the gift of life. I know that writing about my process has been a really good way to chart change, to be able to word and therefore get clearer on things I was feeling, but does sharing this written process really do anything for anyone else?
Just as I’m contemplating this, my doorbell rings with a small package delivery. An artist, Jess MacCormack publishes a gorgeous book called SHAME, SHAME go away around this time: a collection of watercolours and words that deal with their experience of childhood sexual abuse and dissociative identity disorder. I order their book and when it arrives in the mail I pull open the envelope to reveal a stunning bright cover full of feelings. I open the book and snap back into the world 30 minutes later, having stood completely still in the hallway pouring through it, page after page.
This is acknowledging work, this is integration work, this is shame killing work, and this is generous art. I begin to see the work that projects like the zine and like sharing our deepest truths in community can accomplish. (You can take a look at MacCormack’s book here. Warning that its contents include descriptions of child abuse, sexual assault and mental illness, especially dissociative identity disorder. Also the art work is just stunning.) I guess I got my answer as to what sharing processes can do for each other. Thanks Jess.
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In Montessori education, the teacher is taught to watch for and not interfere with the period of time after the child completes a work. It may look like spaciness, lack of concentration, undirected movement around the classroom. It may appear that the child is drifting and lost, and the impulse of the teacher may be to direct the child’s attention to some new activity. But well-trained teachers are supremely respectful of this period of rest and integration. They know that this time is sacred and precious, that the true work of the mind is occurring in this seeming period of emptiness. This is the completion, the culmination period, and it must not be interrupted.
In capitalism, we are taught again and again that our value exists only in productivity, and as soon as one thing is ended, another must be begun in order to continue producing value in the world. This is wrong.
As the class comes to a close, I feel panicked and unready. I don’t want it to end! I think. I need these people, this community! I can’t do this work alone!
In our last embodied practice meeting, Pavini takes us on an exercise in which we revisit each week of the course and what we worked on. As I’m laying on my back, mind moving through each week’s core teachings, I see a small thread begin to connect and drag through every week, as if each were a puddle of ink. The thread leaves some things and bringing along others, as the colours of the ink mix they make different colours, just as the teachings from each week build and shift the meaning of each other. All leading to where I am now. I know that I need to do that walk again, maybe many times.
The walk through each of these weeks, stopping to consider what I have done, where I have been, where I am now but at least I’ve started the process of integration and now I have a tool for doing it.
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You are invited now into a practice of completion. A practice of rest and acknowledgement. The time for expansive dreaming and doing is done. The time for pausing, sinking in, and allowing the cycle to complete for now is here.
We finish our last gathering together. And then I collapse. Many things arrive at once and take over. The pandemic worsens where I am, I become ill for long periods, my work life is an impossible strain, and I can’t do anything. Okay, I think, I guess it’s time for rest. It’s hard not to listen to the voices of capitalism so bone deep in me that say my value is tied to my doing. It’s hard to let myself just be.
This truth of my present state outside of my erotic is also true inside of my erotic. When I do the work outside the erotic zone, I see the reflections inside it.
They don’t always change together but they do reflect onto each other and give me information about each other. Now, I have more skills to see what is what, inside of me. To name what I’m feeling, what I want, what I’m afraid of, and importantly I have a chorus of voices affirming that I’m allowed to want what I want. That I’m allowed to not want sex! That I’m allowed to want sex and not have it! I’m allowed to want sex and have lots of it and still be my authentic self!
I’m allowed, I’m allowed, I’m allowed. That is a chorus of voices that was given to me by the community I worked with throughout this course. And that is a huge gift.
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Some backsliding is normal. It doesn’t mean the work didn’t work. Backsliding is kind of like a kid who retests the boundaries when a parent returns from a trip. Your nervous system says “But we’ve always done it this way!” and you brain is like “But I want us to be free!”
At the end I get sad. My partner, who had been far away, comes to stay with me. In my heart of hearts I’m hoping that she’ll arrive and I’ll be free and open with her. Able to easily enter into intimacy and erotic expression. That’s not what happens. And when that’s not what happens, I have to mourn the death of my dream that it will.
I wanted erotic liberation to look how I wanted it to look. And I wanted it to snap magically into place.
It didn’t, of course, on either count. The disappointment of realising that erotic liberation isn’t a state but a process, isn’t a rapid change into what I want to be but rather a slow process of accepting how I am and then working from there, is disappointing.
I mean, I’d love a quick fix.
But I’ve also done enough therapy to know that true lasting work in the invisible parts of myself comes from lengthy commitments to self-exploration. Sure, sometimes it shows up in sudden floods but just like watershed social justice moments, these are built out of years and years of slow, sometimes unrewarding, work. So I’m not my dream version of myself. But I am different, and I have a load of tools that I didn’t have before. I know that if I am brave enough to keep returning to this work, I now have the walking path maps I need to do so.
And I can already see so many changes from when I started the course: so much more capacity to perceive and accept what I’m feeling.
I rest for a long, long time. Sometimes it feels more like paralysis then rest. Sometimes it feels like forgetting in order to rest. Sometimes I shut down hard like before. And mostly, my body’s erotic behaviours and responses can’t go very far beyond where they have been able to go before, yet. But there is tectonic movement. I can feel that there are things contracting and expanding, connecting and disengaging deep underground inside me.
After a long time of resting, I see the journey within myself softly launch again. I start having intense dreams that state clearly my honest feelings to myself.
I find myself noticing information about my erotic truths that, before the course, I wasn’t able to hear.
Before, I didn’t know what to do with that information or where to put it. Now, I see it with more welcome and excitement.
Oh! I think, That’s something that is part of my ongoing exploration of my own erotic! That’s information I didn’t see and I’m so happy to see it. And I’m even able to share it in words with others, things that are scary or feel shameful start getting some light on them.
I find myself more fully able to admit and embrace the fact that I want to feel freedom in my erotic life. I want to feel choice. And to not follow that admittal with a spiral into shame about how I can’t do anything to change it and it’s my own fault and I’m bad. I’m more honest with myself and with my partner and with my friends. I’m less small and tight and scared when I arrive into a place in my erotic that I don’t want to be in.
I am still working on earlier weeks of the course. Finding and respecting my yeses and nos, trembling stuck places instead of staying stuck in them. Growing my capacity to let myself feel pleasure.
And I feel excited about this collection of resources I have from the course.
I know that I will go back to them when I get stuck again. I know that I will work on and with them when I need, in the rhythm I need, for years.
Mostly, I’m grateful.
To my fellow erotic explorers who give me solace, strength, and inspiration. To Pavini and per’s support team for creating this space for such deep, beautiful, and under-supported work. And to myself, for showing up for me. For committing to my own freedom.
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Questions to Ask Yourself
It is helpful to establish the new narrative that you are shifting towards. This is called a commitment. A commitment is a powerfully-worded truth, written in the present tense, that names the somatic shape you are consciously creating. It is worthwhile to take the necessary time to create the most potent commitment.
What is my commitment?
How will I know when I have arrived there?
What are the daily practices that will support this commitment?
How will I be supported in this commitment?
Suggested Practice
Rest!
