Posted by The below blog was last edited on July 25 2016, referencing an experience 18 months before – I guess I didn’t have the balls to post it! – well hear it is 🙂
18 months ago I had a life shaping revelation
I took a journey to Costa rica and made my way to a mountain top on a rainy day, I could view a whole region of coast line and not one person in sight.
I guess I was on a pilgrimage of sorts, I was looking for a space with no framing where I could find out what I believed to be real. I left my phone and went off the grid!
This quote I found after the trip speaks to how I felt…
“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.” ― Cynthia Occelli
I got to the top of the hill and started to shout at God! It seems I was angry!
“WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME? WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING HERE?”
And other more colourful phrases to that effect 🙂
Growing up in an evangelistic christian community I had learned about something called ‘speaking in tongues.’ There are many explanations to what this very odd sounding activity is but on top of that mountain that day I found myself making all kinds of sounds not too dissimilar from what I had learned about. My guess is that I probably sounded like a very very angry south american tribes man!
I went off for about 10 minutes, wailing and crying!
What is it?? I don’t claim to know, does it make sense in a language? I don’t presume to know but it does feel real, i felt like I transcended my cognitive self, my learned behaviours, my circumstantial self, to a sound that fitted my face,
After a massive jaw operation at 18 I know very well the feeling of something fitting my face and something that doesn’t, when something is comfortable and when it isn’t and this was.
At the end of my incomprehensible rant I began to speak in english again and that’s when the the moment hit me. I didn’t sound like ‘me’. I realised that the sound of my english accent was a bit sterile and ‘learned’ a bit robotic. I had always thought that the way I talk was ‘me’ but now I could see that it was a framework like all the other layers I had learned to interact with the world around me.
Speaking these sounds is funny because it is very comfortable to me but desperately uncomfortable to talk about. It is difficult to bring ideas to a medium that is governed by a different paradigm.
Making these sounds with no interest in logic or language processing is like body movement. It is a global language, almost anyone can make sound or move regardless of their environment or learning.
These real moments of connection are what I think is worth pursuing and experiencing.