Coming Home
Tomorrow’s events:
Collective Journaling w/ Peter Limberg and Co-Hosts. Daily @ 8:00 AM ET. Patreon event. 90 mins.
Practicing Compassionate Self-Inquiry w/ Susan Campbell. October 28th @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
Newly posted event:
Metamodernism: The Future of Theory w/ Jason Josephson Storm. December 9th @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
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October 27th, 2021
I turned 37 yesterday. I like this number. It feels mature, yet still young enough. I did not like turning 36. I got a tad freaked out turning that number. My inner dialogue went something like this - oh shit, I am four years away from 40.
There is nothing wrong with turning 40 of course. I guess I always had in my mind that when you turn 40 you become “old.” I do sense that I am going to like turning 40 now, as being freaked out to be closing in on that number has gone away.
As Carl Jung says: Life really does begin at forty. Up until then, you are just doing research. It does feel like I have just been doing research and I am excited to do some more. In turning 37, I am now like - wow, still three years of being in my 30’s, let’s continue to do some good research to set me up nicely for my 40’s.
I sense I got freaked out when turning 36 due to a narcissism of youth. There was a part of me that wanted to feel like I never left my 20’s. I still wanted to feel like a hot stud, full of virility, being desired by a harem of young women. I wanted to hold on to these fantasies of youth, the unrealistic kind that push the sense of death into the far corners of the mind.
When I was growing out my beard early in the year, appearing like a digital desert father, a bunch of gray hair started to reveal itself. My hair is also thinning in the back, which I hate seeing. I also notice that my throbbing thumos definitely needs certain conditions to be here. I cannot get away with eating shitty or sleeping poorly anymore, as that stuff catches up with me real quick. In essence, both in appearance and in state, the following truth was making itself clear to me: I am getting older.
I do not care that much about getting older now. I sense I have been processing this pretty well throughout the year. Yesterday I had a really good processing moment. My family came over to celebrate my birthday. Along with Camille, my parents, brother, and uncle were there. I went for a quick solo walk beforehand, as something felt off and I assumed I just needed some fresh air to clear my mind.
Before a social gathering, I often reflect on how I want to show up. I set social “ad hoc goals,” a technique that has massively helped improve my social skills, which were pretty terrible when I was young. During my solo walk I was considering what goals to have with my family and the thought of speaking to and through the “family field” came to mind.
This is something I have got a sensitivity to through my experiences with Family Constellations, a really trippy therapeutic modality that has a diverse array of influences, including family systems therapy and the Zulu worldview. Sure, it could be hippie woo-woo stuff, but from my experience doing some constellation work, you definitely get plugged into something. When I was attempting to sense into this field when setting my social goal, something started welling up inside of me. My babushka came to mind.
She died over ten years ago. She was such a wonderful woman - a very strong woman as well, who still visits me in my dreams. Every time she does it feels significant. I love her so much. The thing is though, I never cried during her funeral, nor did I visit her much when she was dying. I am getting teary-eyed now writing this.
All this came up during my walk and I started to cry. These tears were unexpected. I did not want to return from my walk all teary-eyed, so I was trying to hide them. I noticed how embarrassed I am about crying. There is some shame around crying still, perhaps associated with the toxic belief - men do not cry.
I stopped crying before going back into the house, but I knew people were going to see my watery eyes. When I sat at the dinner table, my mom was the first to notice, anxiously asking what was wrong. I said I would like to say a few words before we start eating, so I could let everyone know why I was crying then.
When everyone was settled, I told them how I felt Baba’s presence. And I told them how I did not cry during her funeral, while everyone else did. It was not because I was “Stoic,” as not showing emotion is a poor man’s Stoicism. It was because I was too afraid to cry, to process how this woman I loved so much was no longer with us.
I cried in front of my family hard. Camille was crying as well. The others were holding back their tears. I told them I felt guilty for not crying before. I also told them that I feel us, at all times, and wherever we go, the family spirit is here. Baba is here with us too. This felt really true to say.
My family is pretty normal by most standards, but they did not judge me for making a scene, probably because they are used to my strangeness by now. It felt good crying. If I tried to hold in my tears, I would not be able to fully show up for the rest of the evening and fully be present with them.
During the summer, when Camille and I were at the family cottage, we were talking with my uncle about his take on the family dynamics. He is still so plugged into the family spirit. That conversation made me sad, because it made me realize how plugged in I used to be. In my late teenage years I plugged myself out of the spirit and I felt cut off from it. It was like I was too good for it or something.
With my current philosophical fanciness, I can blame all sorts of things for this - such as modernity/postmodernity and its antifamily, antinatalist, and ultimately antilife trajectory, but blaming abstractions is not the right Stoic move. I was the one who cut himself off and I am the one who can try to plug himself back in. To do so requires feeling the beautiful messiness that family is.
Family is so beautiful really. I want to get better at doing family. Camille and I really want to create our own family. If this is something God wills for us, I want our family to be plugged into the family spirit, engaging in practices that are both nourishing and supportive of becoming more conscious of it.
Another reason which made yesterday’s gathering very tender is that Camille and I are traveling to Europe tomorrow and we do not know when we’ll be back. We are heading to Portugal first, for about three weeks, and we do not know where we’ll go from there. We are eyeing Norway or Denmark and some of the Scandinavian countries.
Maybe we’ll just come back after the three weeks, I do not know, but Canada has a collective energy right now that we are not vibing with. I do not want to write too much about this, but the “polarity spell” I was writing about previously is being cast pretty strong here.
Camille and I named our travel planning document “Coming Home.” This felt like the right phrase to use. Something about being in Europe makes me feel at home. I have visited five times before and every time a sense of home arose. Is there something more spiritual to this? My ancestors came from there after all. My babushka for example was born in Ukraine and according to a DNA test, I am a total Euro mutt, with ancestors from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Lativa.
I do have a love for Canada. It is my birthplace and it is such a beautiful country. I never felt a deep connection here though. I was sensing into this the other day, reflecting on the city names I lived in or lived nearby: Toronto, Mississauga, Etobicoke, Niagara, Oshawa - all of these names are of indigenous origin. The ancestors of the Indigenous peoples of Canada were living on this land for thousands of years. Imagine what kind of unspoken relationship a people build from that. Spiritually speaking, this is their land.
Europeans only started living here around 500 years ago. More personally, all my grandparents were born in Europe, only arriving after the Second World War. I am opening up to the possibility that there is something about having a spiritual connection to the land. Perhaps that is why Camille and I are being called towards Europe - a spiritual homecoming.
Like everything with these journals, there are multiple meanings to the “Coming Home” phrase. Schuyler Brown’s previous session at The Stoa was titled Coming Home: A Path to Embodiment - a title that suggests being embodied is home. The last few days I have been feeling unusually at home in my body. Perhaps it has to do with Dave Oshana’s strange “Enlightenment Transmission” on Saturday, or maybe it is due to all of the body-focused Beyond Self-Discipline practices I am doing.
Whatever the reason, I am honoring my bodily temple more at the moment. I am also feeling a deeper connection with the daemon. I do not think these two things are unrelated. This could just be a romantic story I am telling myself, but here is a story that feels true: me coming home to my body is inspiring me to come home to the land of my ancestors.
I do not know if this story is true. I do know that this movement to Europe feels like the right move, right now. I am the type of guy who likes doing the right thing, so I will take a chance and follow where this feeling is moving me. I am sensing into my family spirit now. There are moments where the temporal boundaries seem to crack, and my baba is here. Smiling. Inviting me to come home.
I do not know why this is making me cry. I guess home is just a really beautiful place to be.
***
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