The Stuff Movies Are Made of (Blog #1076)

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Currently it’s 9:30 in the morning. I know. It’s early. I just did this (blogged) less than twelve hours ago. But I have a full day today. In a few hours, I’m going to see my myofascial release wizard. Then I’m going to see my therapist. Then I’m going to see a show and have dinner with a friend. (Going, going, going.) At some point, I need to take a shower. Yeah, that’d be nice. Not necessary, mind you, but nice. Anyway, so I’m blogging now. Part of me has nothing to say. Part of me has everything to say.

This is the way of it.

With the end of the blog, or at least the end of my blogging daily, quickly approaching (three weeks from today I’ll wake up relieved, terrified, and grateful, and it’ll all be over), lately I’ve been (even more) introspective. Although many days I’ve wanted to throw my laptop into the fires of Mordor, this entire project has been such a good thing for me that I often wonder what I’ll do without out. My Inner Perfectionist wants it to be Right, completed by The Last Day. Since this entire project has, at its core, really been a means for me to come, meet, understand, accept, like, and love myself, this means that my Inner Perfectionist wants me to be Right, completed by The Last Day. He wants me to be whole, healed, happy, and healthy (in every way), um, three weeks from now, and to have said everything I have to say about it.

This, of course, is a ludicrous notion.

That guy.

Twenty minutes ago I walked into our “plants and puzzles” room to take today’s selfie and noticed and reflected upon a puzzle I started, I don’t know, a few months ago, a Van Gogh, something I only work on every so often, when the mood strikes. Anyway, I realized that I was getting close to done. Only a handful of rows on the bottom need to be filled in. One or two more concentrated “putting together” sessions, and that’ll be it for that puzzle. It’ll be back in the box or up on the wall, and on to the next mystery. So are the days of our lives. We finish puzzles and projects, books and blogs, but we ourselves are never finished. Until the day we die, we’re a work in progress. On the one hand, there’s nothing to say about it. We are what we are in this moment. On the other hand, there’s everything to say about it. We contain multitudes.

Something I’ve long believed and have experienced lately through EMDR and myofascial release is that our bodies forget nothing. “You may have repressed [ignored] or suppressed [relegated to your unconscious] part of your life, but your body has remembered it all,” my EMDR therapist says. More and more I’m struck by the wonder of this and have started thinking of the individual events and interactions in our lives, especially our dramas and traumas, like play-at-home movies that can’t be fast-forwarded or ejected until they’e completely played out. Meaning that when we repress or suppress a reaction or emotion, we’re not hitting the stop button (there is no stop button). At best, we’re hitting the pause button.

For me, therapy, this blog, EMDR, myofascial release, and a number of other therapies have allowed many of the old movies of my life to finally play out. And be over. This often has involved a cathartic release of emotions (anger, sadness, frustration, disgust, joy), emotions that got (literally) frozen in my cell tissue God knows when. (My body knows when.) Along these lines, myofascial release sometimes refers to this letting go process as “thawing,” especially when the body shakes or tremors.

I used to read about all this stuff, the way our bodies store our emotions and memories in our fascia, and think it sounded real good. Like, isn’t that nice? Alas, having experienced it, I don’t mind saying it’s real gross. Helpful, healing, but gross. All this to say that I wish it weren’t true. Not for me, and not for you. And yet it seems to be the way of it for all of us, the way we were designed to be and function but weren’t told about when we were younger by our families, teachers, preachers, and doctors. (My Inner Conspiracy Theorist added that last part.) Chances are, they didn’t know either.

Yesterday I blogged about how miraculous our bodies are and how more and more I’m learning to trust mine. Caroline Myss says that she doesn’t see so many pounds of flesh when she sees someone’s body. Rather, she sees “an energy system,” a system of power. And whereas as a former medical intuitive Caroline can sense and “just know” where someone is sick or losing power in their body (and why), I can’t. I am, however, really starting to get the concept that, consciously or unconsciously, how each of us organizes our energy system/body in a particular fashion. We put this event on pause. We play that event over and over and over again. We never finish that puzzle. Even though we could.

More and more this is my advice to myself and anyone else: hit the play button on your past and let it finally be over. Unfreeze your body and your life. Finish as many of your puzzles as possible. The inside kind, not the outside kind. Not by running away from yourself, but my running toward yourself. Really, that’s what this blog has given, and what it will continue to give me even after I write The Last Word, a connection to myself and my inner wisdom. It’s given me a knowing that I’ve come equipped with everything I need for this journey. That I don’t have to look out there to find it; it’s all in here. I realize this sounds too good to be true, the stuff movies are made of. And yet it is true, the way of it. You are a wonder.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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The clearer you see what's going on inside of you, the clearer you see what's going on outside of you. It's that simple.

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This Is Your Spiritual Journey (Blog #1035)

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A few months ago I started a new 1,000-piece puzzle. And whereas I got most of the border completed, the puzzle has honestly sat unloved and unattended to ever since. Until today. This afternoon I plopped my read end down on our futon, hunched over our coffee table, blew the dust off the puzzle box, and went to work. For five solid hours I labored, putting the border back together (someone–my father–recently knocked the puzzle off the table), hunting for pieces with similar colors, looking for perfect matches. Aren’t we all looking for perfect matches?

Now, did I get finished? Hell no. But I certainly made progress.

This evening I helped a friend publish their business’s website. Over a month ago we designed the site but got stuck because we ended up renaming their business during the design process. Well, this meant we needed, or at least wanted to, pick out a new .com address, and that’s always a pain in the butt because most the good ones are taken (.com names, not butts). For example, marcuscoker.com is taken (by me), so if you wanted a website named marcuscoker.com, you’d just have to think of something else. Maybe marcuscoker01.com or marcuscocker.com, which is what all the telemarketers call me. (Of course, it’d be weird for YOU, someone who’s NOT named Marcus Coker, to have a site named after ME, someone who is.) Anyway, my friend and I got together tonight to brainstorm website names, and for over an hour we were like, “No, that’s not it. Uh, close, but no cigar. Crap, what are we gonna do?”

Finally, my friend suggested something, and we were both like, “Yeah, that’s it. I really like that.” Then we checked to make sure the domain name was available, and it was. So they bought it. Then, after a good while chatting with tech support, we got the site published. Are there still changes to be made and work to be done? Sure.

But we made a lot of progress.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about endings and beginnings, I guess because this blog will be ending soon (two months from tomorrow will be my last consecutive post), and another project–I’m guessing–will begin. Yes, something else will begin. Something always does. Indeed, I already have a few projects up my sleeve. I just don’t know which one will call mostly loudly for my attention. That’s the deal with creative endeavors. More often than not, you don’t tell them what’s up, they tell you what’s up. For example, I’ve made it a practice to sit down and write every day, and–yes–I have certain parameters I work within. (Like, I talk about me and my therapist. I don’t talk about celebrity gossip or cornbread recipes.) But within these parameters, what I write about is usually dictated TO ME.

What I mean is that I have an internal creative compass that points me in this or that direction, tells me when I’m on or off center. It says, “No, that’s not it. Start again. Delete that paragraph.” It says, “That’s it, you’re done. Don’t you dare write another word.” As strange as this process may sound, it’s not. We all know when a night out with our friends is over, or when a relationship is. We don’t even have to say we’re done (because the other person knows too), we can just start packing up our things. More and more, I can’t advise listening to this inner wisdom–your inner wisdom–enough. In essence, this IS your spiritual journey, learning to follow your own divine compass. That still, small voice that tells you, “Go here, don’t go there. Do this, don’t do that.” The one that tells you when pieces fit, when pieces don’t. The one that tells you when something’s a perfect match or not.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Things are only important because we think they are.

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On Emotions and Pain (Blog #751)

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Currently I’m out-of-town, sitting outside at a restaurant, waiting for a dance to start at 7:30. It’s 6:00 now. I plan on driving home after the dance, and because that will be late, I’m blogging now, before the sun has gone down. I’d like to start doing this more often, blogging when I’m coherent and not exhausted and, therefore, irritable, upset, and distracted. We’ll see how it goes. I have a lot of practice blogging during the wee morning hours, and there’s certainly something to be said for writing a blog about your emotions when you’re, well, emotional.

I’ve been emotional all day. One minute I’ve been sad. Lonely. The next I’ve been laughing out loud, totally content to have the day to myself. Recently I adopted the motto “all parts are welcome,” so I guess I can’t complain when different parts (or thoughts or emotions) show up. That is, far be it from me to host a party and not attend to my guests. Not that it’s fun or comfortable to feel upset or grief, but these are the ingredients of our lives, and–in my experience–if you dampen one emotion, you dampen them all. Want to feel less joy? Shove down your sadness. It’s that simple.

I don’t like this fact any more than you do.

I spent this afternoon looking at books. I didn’t buy any (believe it or not), but I went to three stores. Before that I had brunch (pancakes and eggs) and read a book. Well, half of one–Explain Pain by David S. Butler and G. Lorimer Moseley. Honestly, it’s one of the most fascinating things I’ve read lately and explains a complex topic–pain–simply. I’m not to the “what to do about it” part yet, but the book proposes that whereas, yes, sometimes pain is due to nerve damage, structural or joint problems, or damaged tissue, this is just as often (if not more so) not the case. That is, there are plenty of instances in which there’s structural deterioration or injured tissue without pain. For example, when I tore my ACL, I didn’t feel a thing. Granted, I had some adrenaline flowing, but my knee didn’t hurt even after my adrenaline calmed down. Even though I’d severed an entire ligament.

The book says we don’t have pain centers or, um, pain buttons in our bodies. Also, just because you cut your finger, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll experience pain. Indeed, once my neighbor threw a hammer over our fence, and despite the fact that it hit my head, I didn’t start crying until I saw blood several seconds later. According to the book, this is because the meaning we ascribe things has a huge influence over what our bodies feel. Just as importantly, the meaning our brains ascribe things is what ultimately determines whether or not we feel pain. This is because–apparently–our bodies send signals to the brain when “something” is wrong. A cut finger, for example. Then the brain interprets that information and decides how to respond. To be clear, it has a lot of choices. It could cause you run away; it could cause you to cry. But if the brain thinks that the most appropriate choice is for you to feel pain, then that’s what you’ll feel.

In other words, to quote the book–no brain, no pain.

The book says that the basic rule of pain is that if your brain perceives a threat–if it thinks that you’re in danger, Will Robinson–you’ll feel pain. Said another way, if you feel pain, it’s because your brain thinks you’re in danger. This goes against a lot of historic wisdom, of course, but it makes sense to me. Again, because of what I experienced with my knee. Also because of people who experience pain or sensations in limbs they’ve had cut off or were never born with. Clearly in those situations the brain (and spinal cord and nervous system) are involved in the creation of physical sensation and/or pain.

I can’t wait to learn more.

This might be a stretch, but I think this “pain being related to feeling threatened” thing could be applied to our emotions. For example, this morning while getting ready at my hotel, I was dialoguing with myself about why I’ve historically felt the need to bend over backwards for certain people in my life even when my efforts were clearly fruitless. Suddenly I had a vision of an applicable memory from my childhood, and a voice in my head said, “Because if we don’t, they won’t love us.” Then I started crying. More and more, the release of tears is my signal that I’ve hit on something deep-down true. For example, when I read that pain is often felt because we feel threatened or “not safe,” I also cried.

Ugh. So much of my life I’ve felt “not safe.” Not that I feel ever-moment terrified, but I can never quite relax. It’s like my muscles are always tight, more tense than they need to be, ready to fight or flee. I can only breathe so deep. Granted, this has gotten a lot better. It IS GETTING a lot better. More and more, there’s a lot of relief in understanding that even when it’s emotional or in pain, my body is trying to help, trying to send me a message. Sweetheart, something is wrong. We need you to take another look at this. Something isn’t working for us. So if for no other reason than the fact that my strategies thus far haven’t been working for me either, I’m now making all the more gentle effort to turn my ear inward and simply listen, to finally hear and connect with my inner wisdom.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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There’s no such thing as a small action. There’s no such thing as small progress.

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