The Year Of The Equal And Opposite Reaction

This year was truly the year of the Equal and Opposite Reaction.  I'd dallied around the edges of getting this realisation before, in a theoretical kind of way that made sense but wasn't quite felt yet.  This lineage has been building up my entire adult life, with trauma after betrayal after intense life event happening - and then the equal and opposite swinging in with amazing people, realisations, and support, leading to understanding, learning and growth through change.  Often the most traumatic change has brought the most dramatic growth.  

I'd have to say the year of 2012 was when the intense flash cards of equal and opposite started to kaleidoscope between each other the most magnificently.  Our family made sense through the bonding after Zarrathustra's birth, of the dramas that led to us leaving South Australia, that ended up being very good in the long run, and taking us to a far better place.  My friend Michael Lusty committed suicide, and the equal and opposite of such a tragedy was a tremendous outpouring of connected community love.  Since then a Death And Beyond group has started in Nimbin to deal with death better.  And I had a personal moment with my brother through serpentine interconnections, that was truly and deeply beautiful.  I wrote a Note To The Menfolk, and it touched a lot of people.  My blogging friend Lauren of Sparkling Adventures  and her 4 daughters lost her son Elijah and her husband David in one tragic stroke.  I watched her deal with unnameable grief and loss and heartbreak, with grace and love.  We met in person at Elijahs' funeral, and she did and continues to inspire me and change my life.  Where she travels in her equal and opposite reaction to an event we all quail from, has profoundly impacted in a hugely positive way on many many lives.  Another friend Sarah Kerr lost her son Tully in 2011, the brother of Ruby in birth, and honestly shared her grieving and heartbreak, and has gone on with her amazing family to create a beautiful video of her family loving Tully even in death, with an incredible song Blankets Of Love, written by another beautiful friend Loren Kate, which went on to raise money for cold cots so that other families could do the same.  She and her family are travelling the country at the moment, leaving some ashes of Tully everywhere they go, as a heart flowing tribute.  I also met with another truly beautiful human, both inside and out, Bree Daley Forsyth, who is published in the same book as me Birth Journeys, who lost one of her twins Sage, and has gone through a similar underground journey into the equal and opposite of the beauty and growth that can emerge through death.  And right at the end of the year I got a big dose of hate and cyber bullying.  Which pushed me into owning myself, and my shadow and light, and was a very clear case of equal and opposite.  Only equal to the amount of hate and bullying was the amount of love and acceptance that came with the tide.  It's true.  Haters make you famous.  And it pushed me over the edge into self love and acceptance, which meant I could write My Truth

Enter the year 2013.  

First thing of the year was moving into a hoarders house, which was a HUUUUGE amount of cleaning and work just to get there, and ongoing as we tried to uncover spaces.  We got to know all sorts of people, and with true hippy naiveté  thought that love and acceptance would heal everything, even the people who our instincts warned us might be volatile.  

I had an ectopic pregnancy, that was like the shortest pregnancy and most painful birth I've ever had.  And had all the attendants that normally surround birth, of confronting skeletons in pregnancy, and the bonding and oxytocic adventure after birth, even though it was birthing the spirit of Bodhi Seer into our family, who brought many gifts with her like all my children do.  And through the physical pain and emotional pain (because we'd quite fancied the idea of another baby), we were treated amazingly by the hospital staff that helped me through the experience.  And loved and supported by our friends on our community.  Who looked after our babies so that Currawong could be with me.  And all the way driving into Lismore to be hospitalised for a night, we were crying about how loved and held we felt.

As part of the increased learning and growth that was the equal and opposite for the pain and grief of an Ectopic pregnancy, I really got that we had to eat our shadows.  I was thinking and thinking and thinking, for days and days it seemed, and my thoughts almost hurt.  I was trying to come up with my Humanimal Manifesto, and it was flowing and streaming from my pen and my fingers, and right in the middle of it all I really truly got that our shadows and fears are actually our friends, with the seeds of enlightenment and learning within them all.  All the worst things that have happened to me have taught me the most.  Every heartbreak has cracked me through into greater love.  Every grief increased my capacity for feeling joy.  Every pain has eventually given me incredible comfort.  All as an equal and opposite reaction to each other.  I was down on the ground, with my hands on the earth, looking at ants only inches from my eyes, and saying to myself, 'I LOVE my shadow, I wanna EAT my shadow, and all the shadows and fears that have beset me have been BRILLIANT in where they've taken me.  From now on when I see a shadow I'm gonna RUN into it's arms, cause it's there to teach me!'  I was all impassioned, and explained it to Currawong and he instantly got it, and 'Eat It' by Weird Al Jankovich was our theme song for a few days.  

At one point I was yelling to the sky 'Just bring it on!  Bring on any shadow you want, cause I know  that it will evolve me!'  

And we bumped smack bang into one of our fellow community dwellers who was as brilliant……as he was an evil wolf, and we'd made friends with him in his sheeps clothing.  And he went all psycho at us and another family, threatening to kill Currawong, and holding us under siege for two nights.  We also fell out in similar but unrelated ways with many of the others we were close to.  Overnight it was over.  And yes I did think to myself 'eat this shadow silly bitch' almost as soon as it happened.  We got out and away, and were totally traumatised, it was in the middle of winter, and we were suddenly homeless with 7 kids.  And I shut down my blog and stayed fairly quiet online to keep our whereabouts hidden.

And the equal and opposite to this event has been quite stunning.

We drove off our community in full flight and trauma, straight into the Rainbow Cafe for lunch, where I met my new best friend and we had an impassioned talk and loved each other on sight, and then straight to a new friends house where she cooked us a roast and filled us so full of unconditional love it was stunning.  In the process of her and her family helping us in the dead of winter, we actually helped them in a sweet and unexpected way.  And then needing to sit somewhere and work out what to do next, I thought the very best place for a bunch of hippies to hide………was at a christian farm stay.  I knew there was an unschooling camp coming up at Hosanna Farmstay,  so I thought we should check out where it was going to be, as well as give the kids a holiday to take their minds off being so freaked out at seeing us scared for the first time in their little lives.

The minute that we explained to them what was going on, (we thought it was only fair) and we worked out that they were ex-hippies and I was an ex-christian, it was love at first sight.  They nestled us under their wings, and their gentle WWOOF'ers took the kids on the farm chores, we were in tears often, and had all sorts of inspirational conversations.  Even though I was into the eating of shadows, I was also into loving myself wherever I went.  So I went totally into all the emotions that came.  Fear, loss, grief, betrayal, anger, hyper vigilance.  Many tearful conversations were had, between me and Currawong and especially Alex at Hosanna, while we stayed there a week.  There was a moment of pure gold, when I was desperately trying to find connections and understandings talking with her, and compared god to chaos and gave her on a silver platter the opportunity to barter for my soul…. (I would have taken it up in my christian days myself).  And she fixed me with a piercing gaze and said "We're all different, and God treats us all individually……you don't need to be like me" with a huge smile and hug.  Could have kissed her I could.  And the caretaker and his family were a treat, and Dutch, and came to us seriously one morning with the kids in tow, and sat down with the dad holding Currawong's hands.  And they told us a story about how they prayed to God every morning, and wrote down the messages that came, and a month or so earlier, one of their daughters got a message that a family in a big bus was coming, who weren't christians, but they needed their help.  They said a week before a family had come in a bus, but they were christians, and they thought maybe that detail was a bit different, but then we turned up and they knew the message was right after all. And they were so there for us in such a deep and unexpected way, and so much more than a safe place to hide, that I could just hug them all, and hold the memory as a golden star.  They were angels of mercy and love, and when we left they threw us a huge lunch, and we parted to many promises of seeing each other regularly.

From there we were sheltered in a cosy and comfy shed in the garden of a mansion on a thriving community in Nimbin, and found all our needs and legal requirements beautifully met in the most amazing and resourced town I've ever lived.  We were so fried from what had happened and working it out, but the landscape, dwellings, and friends who passed us around and sheltered us were so very beautiful.  Currawong and I learnt about the long term effects of adrenaline on a body, and had many tense, teary, and desolate moments, looking at the chasm that had grown overnight between us and the community dream we'd been living.  But while this was happening we were also being treated beautifully by the Police people who were dealing with our case of being intimidated, and then  violating his bail conditions.  A big burly constable was about as gentle as you could be with my shaky questions.  People all around town helped out wherever they could.  As well as our extended network stretching all over the country and welcoming us wherever we thought we needed to go.  With legal matters we're here till they're done though.

And on the morning when I had us all packing up and going on the road till the court case, we fell into the most amazing house that we've ever lived in.  We couldn't have tried harder to not get it than if we were actually trying - no references beyond phone ones, no income statement, fluffed phone messages, too many of us, but we just seemed to fall into it.

We love it so much it's silly.  I feel so good living here, that I compare it to all the other people I tried to fantasise about a future with, as opposed to meeting Currawong and just settling into that future and meeting so deeply.  It makes me think that every other house we've lived has just not been the right one.   It holds us so well and beautifully.  I've fallen in love with the land, it's powerfully intense, behind a major sacred site on a mountain.  There are magnificent fig trees that I'm yarn bombing.  I could burble on for a while about it's beauties, but there's a point I'm getting to.  So we love it.  We're happy.  And thriving.  And have realised a lot about ourselves and each other.  I also had the most magical metaphysical experience of my life…..but those are all other stories.

The big lesson of the year for me, or maybe more to the point, the reaffirmed and confirmed lesson that I've been learning all my life that has really kicked through this year…….is that of the equal and opposite reaction.  Every action, has an equal and opposite reaction, and that doesn't only count for physical things.  When we send out love, it can often bounce back as hate, and vice versa.  And this isn't dire or drastic or dastardly, but a reflection of a perfect composite of opposites that bounce off each other to change, move and become.  Every single thing in the universe is energy that is constantly destroying and creating itself over and over, and we are also the same.

This year has been huge.  I've learnt how good I am at 'making things good'.  I've learnt that you really can't love someone who doesn't love themselves, cause they'll always prove you wrong.  I've learnt to accept my equal and opposite of extremely good and bad.  As well as the same in those around me I love (and hate).  As good as a person can be, is as bad as they can be, and the scariest people are those that only own their good.  Or their bad.  We all project onto others the issues that we don't deal with in ourselves, and I've learnt enough from the arts of projection to be able to be projected at, without taking it personally anymore.  I've learnt that security is an illusion.  I've learnt that surrender is really the best tactic when dealing with everything.  I wonder if we all do ourselves a collective disservice when we strive towards the good all the time, thinking that bad things that happen are an act of karma, and something that we're paying for, rather than seeing it as the equal and opposite, and the swing to the change, and the down to the up on the great see saw of life.

I'm reading a book at the moment.  I don't read much offline anymore, having my fancy well and truly caught by the multi media splendour that is the internet, but old fashioned books with slightly brown edges and that booky smell still have my heart.  At least I'm trying to read it, but I keep reading the first part over and over, and really stretching my head to fit it in.  It's called 'The Tao of Physics' by Fritjof Capra, and it's all about how Quantum Physics is bringing the seeming opposites that are really a unity of science and religion together.  Cause I don't know about you, but I think science without god is just about as silly as god without science, and as the man explains, Eastern mysticism has forever kept science and god on fairly good terms.  And I've been most taken by the fact that early in our Western thinking, before Aristotle and Descartes separated everything out, there was a tradition where everything was seen as one and connected.  In particular, Heraclitus, of the Milesian school summed it up about perfect.  And every time I get to this bit in the book it just stops me completely, and I've got to sit and contemplate (or rather contemplate in that part of me that sits and thinks while my busy brain is active performing tasks or shutting out the chaos of 7 busy children) and really let it steep for a while.  It goes like this….

…….The Milesians were called 'hylozoists', or 'those who think matter is alive', by the later Greeks, because they saw no distinction between animate and inanimate, spirit and matter. In fact, they did not even have a word for matter since they saw all forms of existence as manifestations of the 'physics', endowed with life and spirituality.  Thus Thales declared all things to be full of gods and Anaximander saw the universe as a kind of organism which was supported by 'pneuma', the cosmic breath, in the same way as the human body is supported by air.

The monistic and organic view of the Milesians was very close to that of ancient Indian and Chinese philosophy, and the parallels to Eastern thought are even stronger in the philosophy of Heraclitus of Ephesus.  Heraclitus believed in a  world of perpetual change, of eternal 'Becoming'.  For him, all static Being was based on deception and his universal principle was fire, a symbol for the continuous flow and change of all things.  Heraclitus taught that all changes in the world arise from the dynamic and cyclic interplay of opposites and he saw any pair of opposites as a unity.  This unity, which contains and transcends all opposing forces, he called the Logos.

If I wanted to sum it all up, I'd say it was interesting that I posted the story of Spiral-Moon's birth and bonding and the shift of our energies that destroyed and created a whole new community for us at about the same time that the very same thing was about to happen again.  During the very short pregnancy and miscarriage of Bodhi Seer, which is the name that came to me when contemplating this baby, we experienced the very same shift through grief and bonding, instead of birth and bonding, and a very similar destruction and instant creation of the old energy, making way for the new. And it was so clearly obvious the equal and opposite, that for all the people that exited stage left rather traumatically, a whole bunch of people turned up on stage right straight away, that were similar but different.  Everything that was destroyed was created again, fresh and new and brighter.   And the change brought great growth.

Looking at life this way just really works for me.  It makes sense of a lot of things on contemplation for a start, and it also takes the sting out of the 'bad' events, along with the guilt and self blame I've carried for the negative events in my life.  Take the judgement out of good and bad, and see it instead as equal and opposite, and two interdependent parts of a logical whole, and all sorts of mini miracles can occur.

I wonder what next year will bring…..

Confessions of a Drug Addict

Over this last weekend, events happened that have led me to realise that I have to finally acknowledge a long time drug habit, that I'm totally addicted to.  I am a complete junkie, to this drug created naturally in our systems, and dispensed to us as a reward for behaving evolutionarily, or in a way that our evolution has adapted us to expect to act to survive.  I hunt for experiences in my life so I can feel my high, and get a hit of my most favourite drug.  A large part of our surrender to birth and babies and the amount of children we have, was so that we could get our fix of it.  In generous doses while engaging in the intimate and connected sex we created that created our babies, and during the pregnancy when all our hormones and bodily parts and odours were changing as a reflection of the life growing.  In birth with the massive doses of our favourite ever drug that we share together, co-dependent in the hugest degree.  The bonding that washes over us all afterwards.  The connections we feel because of it.  The closeness and empathy we have for each other because of our closeness.  The dawning and enlightening conversations we all have as well.  And then that extension from our family into our close community and heart family, and then further into Nimbin and the market that we're playing with there. This drug that we love is most likely a palpable bubble around us most of the time, after we've loved or bonded, or understood and transformed, or had intense and deep interactions with complete strangers, or gone into a potentially non-friendly situation and left with warm hugs and a whole circuit of new friends.  From all the births that we've shared, and the travels and connections and relationships we've had, no matter how brief.  We are all total slaves to our addiction to our entire families drug of choice.

Oxytocin.

Since reading this article by Michel Odent, I've really been sitting with oxytocin.  I've always associated oxytocin with birth, and knew that my natural ones were much better, and a necessary part of birth, often needing quiet and dark undisturbed places to unfold, and that they were pumping through my body when birthing, and most strongly just after.  I've joked about how midwives are drug addicts, addicted to that energy of birth.  I've known that there are oxytocins associated with sex, and with breast feeding, and with holding your newborn close, but I always kinda considered them almost half arse, piss weak drugs, when it comes to comparing them to other drugs and the drug taking methods of  ganga for example, or eating halluciongenic mushrooms, or reports of ayahusca, and shamanic drug rituals we have in our collective consciousness.  They somehow seem more real and formal 'drugs', because they're the result of an external item that you ingest in some way, and have an easily defined reaction.  A drug that is made inside you and released naturally in moments of sex, birth, bonding, great connection, spiritual connection, conscious death, hugging, unconditional love, realisation, empathy, compassion, a strong sense of identity, and feelings of spontaneous love and community..........can't be that potent and mindblowing really can it?

Well maybe it can.  And maybe the point isn't a mindblowing experience, but a carrot given as a reward to expressions of love, bonding, family, and empathy, cause if you were getting that little carrot, you were well on the way to forming tribe, helping each other, caring for each other, and surviving.  Maybe the point was that in all those little carrots, if you kept following the trail, you would blend on the path with other hunters of the carrot, who would keep eating those carrots with you when you helped each other on the path, becoming a stream of a family around you, and then a river of community around you, that washed you in the waves of oxytocin regularly, co-creating survival as a bonded and harmonious feeling of drug induced love and community, so that it did indeed create mindblowing internal and interconnected drug induced situations on a grand scale, to dwarf the potential of any external drug induced ecstasy.  Because it comes from us and the love and community that we create together.  And instead of draining us or leaving us weak it feeds us.  Gives us the experience of that effortless ease that you can have in a conversation, that connects the dots between you, and traces a shared moment of enlightenment.  That sense of timelessness and complete interaction and love with your whole present experience.  That dropping away of the world 'out there' that impinges on so many freedoms and tentacles of connection.  That incredible lightness of blossoming completely into who you really are with witnesses around you, who totally adore the spark of the authentic you, they can see as a reflection of themselves.  

So yesterday, driving home from a our first official day as a family of co-conspirators of community and markets, after having such a long break between drinks, of that particular oxytocic drug rush in particular, it just hit me like a train.  We spent the day in complete chaotic harmony of time, surrender and love.  Max and Merlin were with Shen, and had a totally adorable day and didn't miss us once, which meant we could actually have conversations without having to dash off every couple of seconds after a twin.  We stepped into an incredible communal oxytocic rush of interactions, people stating passions, obscure stories, deep moments, everything happening in the right time and place with no control needed, serendipitous meetings and realisations of connection, shared stories, tears, hugs, enlightenments, networks, musicians turning up and playing little miracles, kids flowing round in a river of kid world safely boundaried by adults, problems raised and solved, and immovable objects flowed around, while sparkles and bubbles and great gooey globules of oxytocin were puffing thier way gently all around us.  

And it was more the afterglow than the glow itself that I first noticed most.  The talking and hooking up of stories and people and amazing events that we were all tumbling over each other to relate.  Trying to soak around in it and lush it up while the glow was slowly receding.  Trying to witness our stories to ourselves and each other to pin it up in the winds of time as a noticeable event of connection.  That slightly exhausted feeling being over-ridden by joy and smiling and afterglow.  Of all the moments when we felt so incredibly real, and seen, and heard, and loved.  And now there's more kids in this new market experience, and more stories to relate, I noticed very clearly this oxytocic afterglow, and recognised the amounts of times I've felt that afterglow before.  I've been lucky enough to have experienced a lot more sex, birth, intimacy with strangers, deep spiritual belief and connection with others, and family bonding than a lot of other people I know.  And I see the echoes that come from all of them, as the echoes of the great drug I adore......oxytocin.

Another thing that's emerged really strongly from the article I mentioned in the beginning about Michel Odent, was a huge sadness that the conversation can even exist about 'getting men out' of birth altogether.  For the very same reason, and to the very same purpose as this whole thing I'm talking about here - oxytocin.  For the bonding that he spoke so strongly of, that I loved to read in anothers words so much, I personally believe that everyone in the family needs to be involved.  For that oxytocic rush, and for the love and care afterwards, it's essential that fathers (when the situation forms naturally that way) and mothers and all the other siblings are there for that magical oxytocic soaked moment of birth.  To connect, imprint, and bond their binds to each other, that will carry them through life, and through care, empathy, and relationship with each other, to survive and thrive in a world of family and community.  I wrote a statement in passionate avowal and honouring to the importance of my man in our births and lives and family, that my Currawong has wanted and needed to hear for a long time.  And I'd really like to share it here.

 I just feel so sad, in all this talk about men getting out of birth, that there aren't more experiences represented in our consciousness of men like Currawong.  We've birthed 7 babies together, and from the very start, I NEEDED Currawong there, especially for transition and what came after.  There was no preference or thought about it, it was a PRIMAL AND URGENT NEED!  He and I both knew when the act of love that we'd started months ago was being born, and he was always there in whatever way I needed him, without question or thought.  Behind me in the bath, or above me and holding me with his arms as I pulled down on him, staring into his eyes, or crying into mine when I was telling him I loved him, as Spiral was being born, or his countless hours of carting water and making sure it stayed clean and warm, or of keeping people out of my space with Spirals birth and telling them very clearly to let me go into my primal space and not talk to me or touch me or bring me out of my feelings, or crying in-between contractions when he knew that we were going to have to go to hospital to have Balthazar by caesarean, but drying his tears before I saw him cry, and holding all his fear at bay to get me to the hospital, and staying strong and loving by my side while it happened, and then staying awake in the hospital, almost as exhausted as me, so he could watch Balthazar and keep him from the nursery while I slept, and then coming home and cleaning my wound, and wiping my arse, and dealing with my shit, and holding all the kids and keeping them clean and fed even while I went through Post Natal insanity, and nursing our babies when even I was afraid during whooping cough, and staying strong in the love of me and our children, and keeping up the slack, and HE was the warrior who turned our twin birth around, talking me strongly into how this was TWO births, and everyone was fine, and he knew I could do it, and then he cleaned out the bath while we all slept and it was HE the birth warrior who shifted that energy and bouyed our spirits and kept us all going, and it was he who bottle fed the twins when I was so nipple sore and kept people away from me and rode my waves of overwhelm, and HE who gave me love and faith and strength.  And he who showed me how sexual and primal and ribald and goddamn sexy birth could be through the birth of Zarrathustra.  He who gives me power and the wings to self acceptance on the complete love and adoration he gives me and us and him for our connected journeys that have opened into bonding and a sexual journey that I keep trying to get the flavour of to convey to a world that hasn't experienced anything like it.......I stake my claim and fly our flags on the timelines of evolution, as one of the first Post Modern, Fully Bonded, Sovereign Families I know of.  And to me, and our loin fruit, and my man, all of us are as integral to the whole as each other.

In a world where birth is so incredibly focused on individual elements, in one way or another, I just think there is a place to stake a claim on birth for the family.  For the whole.  Father, Mother, Child trinity.  And for what they can all become when they bond with each other, strive to protect, respect, and accept each other, and bring all their valued threads to the whole rope of a family bond, that can grow to embrace the whole world, and go beyond the importance of any single thread to what can be created in the singularity.  That can indeed feed the thread more fully than any internal individual process.  And can help the singularity of the rope of oxytocic connection from our families throughout our communities, and to even greater global connection with each other.  

Our family is a strong singularity of a whole, with threads that pull out and go to all different places with other people, but pull back into the singularity of our family more regularly than not.  Every single one of us has equal importance to our singularity, but extra special qualities that are just us.  And in that singularity, our kids always have either their tribe or their parents nearby.  Most of the time.  When something disconcerting happens, or they're hurt, or afraid, they know that we're only a stones throw away, and are always gonna have their backs.  We'll listen to them, take them seriously, take action if it needs to be taken, and defend them if they need it.  There's really no gender distinctions in jobs around the house, or general survival work that needs to be done, so to all our little younglings, we're known as MumanDad.  Cause it doesn't really matter which one of us responds, either one of us will do, and are usually always available.  We feel connection and sanction often.  See ourselves reflected in each other.  Have the opportunity to work through issues together because of our love.  

That bonded connection relies on introspection, self honesty and evaluation, and appreciation.  And when practiced regularly, it becomes easier and easier to practice self and other acceptance all the time. And when practiced often at home, it becomes easier to practice with broader community, and market community, and regions, and environments and histories.  Our kids roam the world with freedom, and connect with who they will, and are supported in their connections by us, as we also connect with those who do with our kids.  They're used to bouncing round in a relative and respectful world, full of loving mentors, oxytocic soaked events, and interested new folk.  

To live this experience makes it impossible to not notice all the anti-bonding moments encouraged between us, especially between adults and children.  All the potentially oxytocic moments that are crushed by judgement, control, separation, rules or cultural fads.  Not to mention that the foods we eat, our anti-bonding practices, and the possibility that synthetic oxytocin (made from pig sperm) actually suppresses natural oxytocin, and could result in lower production levels of it.  What's the opposite of oxytocin?   Adrenaline?  Hate?  Fear?  Suspicion? Could it be that our oxytocic supressions have resulted in our alienated families and communities? With all the disruptions placed between us and potential bonding with our children, and our parents, and our extended families, and work mates, and communities?  How much importance is placed on cohesion and community love?  Acceptance?  Respect?  Connection??

And what could you do to increase your share of oxytocin in your own life?  

What gives you an oxytocic rush?

Have you ever thought of oxytocin this way?