Never Abandon Your Family
Hey beautiful people,
I will be returning to host Collective Journaling starting tomorrow. You can sign-up via Patreon. We will be doing a fun exercise to start us off. Many thanks to Dajleet Peterson for hosting when I was gone. I will also be returning to philosophical coaching soon. You can reply to this email if you’d like to book an early spot.
Next weeks events:
Homestead Incubator: A Class for Resilience and Community w/ Ashley Colby. December 13th @ 10:00 AM ET. RSVP here.
Pop Magick: A Simple Guide to Bending Your Reality w/ Alex Kazemi. December 14th @ 2:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
The Authentic Relating Movement w/ Susan Campbell, Sarah Ness, and Jason Digges. December 15th @ 1:00 PM ET. RSVP here. 90 mins.
Steamology: Steaming Towards Authentic Connections w/ Boris Ryabov. December 17th @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
Check out what is happening in our wisdom gym:
Collective Journaling. Daily @ 8:00 AM ET. Patreon event. 90 mins.
Collective Presencing. Every Tuesday @ 2:00 AM ET. RSVP here. 90 mins.
Collective Presencing. Every Friday @ 8:00 AM ET. RSVP here. 90 mins.
Collective Presencing. Every Friday @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here. 90 mins.
Stoic Breath. Every Sunday @ 10:00 AM ET. RSVP here. 60 mins.
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December 12th, 2021
Socrates was so shy. When we came inside he ran up the stairs to hide. It was a month and a half since we last saw him. It struck me how small he looked. I guess he is not going to be growing any bigger.
He slowly came downstairs, sniffing our luggage. I snatched him up, lovingly held the little guy in my arms so we could have a moment. And we did. I can tell he missed me. It is funny how this cat brings me so much joy. He is so anxious though. I wonder if he has trauma or something. He is jumpy, does not really like to be petted, and plays extra hard to get compared to your normal house cat.
I am going to take this program called The Trust Technique. It is supposed to help you get in the right relationship with the animals in your life. As the website describes…
Daily practice of the Trust Technique creates a shared peace of mind and reduces anxious over-thinking, one of the main causes for so-called “behavioural problems”. This dynamic approach does not objectify animals, but rather recognises all animals as sentient beings and transcends an unhealthy approach of dominance or control.
I was doing some of the focused presence techniques this program recommends with Socrates and they seem to work. It kind of felt like I was building a psychic relationship with him. These techniques seem foundational to getting into the right relationship with people as well. This is something that I am called to do. Get into the right relationship with people, especially the most important people.
We arrived back in Canada on Friday. Deciding to return felt just as spontaneous as deciding to leave. I really missed writing here in front of you. After leaving Copenhagen my desire to publicly journal stopped. We were staying in Porto, which is an incredibly beautiful city, but something about living there was not filling me up with my usual thumos. The daemon was not asking me to write. It was asking me to get right with Camille.
Travel is indeed a spiritual exercise, especially for couples, allowing for the spirit to make a return to the relationship in unexpected ways. Travelling disrupts patterns, ones so unexamined you do not even realize they are there. The numbing aspects of routine seem to keep at bay all the unprocessed, difficult emotions. It is like each couple has an unconscious conspiracy, pushing away any emotions that could bring an end to the relationship. And for a moment it felt like our relationship could end.
We were dialoguing throughout our travels, on all sorts of things, and for the most part it was fun. I followed the simple heuristic that I use during my philosophical coaching practice: put words to what is most alive. One night while drinking port and eating natas, the words that were most alive brought us to past hurts. We both thought these hurts were processed, but yeah, there were not. There was so much still bubbling underneath.
We ended up talking about what hurt for three day straight. It felt like being in some timeless alternative dimension, plugged into a conversational flow state of emotional ups and downs. We made it to the other side and we felt very satisfied when we did. It felt like we grew as a couple in those three days more than we had for the entire year. The conversation was so intense, so unpredictable, so alive, that we actually mourned when the conversation was over. After it was over and the emotions settled, we lost the plot as to why we were travelling. It was like we climaxed, discovering the real reason why we left in the first place.
During the beginning of our travels, I wrote the following …
We are not in a bad relationship, far from it, but I am here in Europe, with her, and I want to sink into her. I want to sink into us, by sensing into all of our difficult moments, the moments of tension and withdrawal. I want to breathe into our fears, unprocessed hurts, and whatever relational hiccups may arrive.
The daemon works in mysterious ways and perhaps he wanted us to leave with the thought of never returning, so we could go deep, to discover the real foundation of us. My friend Dajleet Peterson, an astrologer who uses astrology for sensemaking, gave me my first astrological reading shortly after Camille and I had our conversation. Without knowing what just happened to us, he foresaw that for the next year and a half my focus will be about getting into the right relationship with my most important relationships.
My chart also showed that I am a sextuple Scorpio, which makes sense, as my daily experience of life is filled with so many intense emotions. It is exhausting really. I catch other people’s emotions easily, getting yanked around by them. My Stoicism makes sense to me in this light. It is my attempt to gain emotional agency. My bad habits also make sense here, as they are a way to numb myself from all the feels.
It seems like I am destined to stay with the emotional intensity these days. While exhausted at the thought of this, I am called to go deeper into the emotional subterranean realms, so I have a capacity to deal with the chthonic. Patterns are being disrupted worldwide and what is underneath will be revealed. When it does it is going to be shockingly horrific. People are going to lose their shit. Many “demons” are lurking close to the surface now. I sense them waiting for the cracks to widen.
There are a lot of great psychotherapeutic practices out there, but no widespread encouragement for people to get into the right relationship with the full spectrum of their emotional potential. There is no better way to practice getting into the right relationship with emotions than with your most important relationships. I am called to continue to get right with Socrates and Camille. I am also called to get into the right relationship with my parents.
I have been doing family constellations with my friend Ole Bjerg, a fellow Scorpio, about my parents. It is opening things up and it primed me to come back. I can spot the moment when the decision to come back to Canada was made. I was private journaling about what to do next, and a Kanye West song came on, with an outro that gave me a message…
Two lessons that he passed along to his children
The first is that, no matter what, you never abandon your family
Is that, no matter what, you never abandon your family
Is that, no matter what, you never abandon your family
Is that, no matter what, you never abandon your family
Is that, no matter what, you never abandon your family
Is that, no matter what, you never abandon your family
Is that, no matter what, you never abandon your family
It is that kind of love that made my father the kind of father and the kind of man he is
He vowed that he would never walk away from his family, and he never has
Repeating that lyric was a perfect touch. Yeah, Canada does not feel like home anymore, but my family is here, and it is time for me to get right with them. I spent my whole life running away from what is at the bottom. Not anymore. I am committed now for the spell to be broken. The karma resolved. The spirit to return.
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