Big Exit

I'm back into order. The office, the kitchen, are fully functional. The structure of the school year has saved me from myself. And falling back into the forms, freedom comes. The freedom to consider what structures haven't worked before, why, how to re-form them, what to reject and what to accept.

Family. Family order and inheritance is in my head a lot lately. A very good friend is going through a mid-twenties reckoning, figuring out what her raising has done, how it has shaped her, affected her. What to accept, what to reject. Right now there seems a lot to reject: parents' manners, opinions, structures. Yet she can still feel the love, compassion, underneath. Is it an undertow or an inner connection? Karma or Samsara? I know this battle well. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater - that baby, floating in your family heritage, emotional, political, psychological - is YOU.

Or, here, Me. I dreamt last night that my family was seated like a council around a large table. They were plotting and planning, in deep undertones, like a warren of gangsters accustomed to the action, to murder and torture folks. Even in my dream mind, I could see that the content came from watching so much Angel lately with Dylan, but the intention came from a long conversation just after TV with the aforementioned friend. Violence - intentional or unintentional, psychological, sexual, emotional - haunts us, from the inside out. I felt this strange allegiance to the family - I couldn't just walk out, and not because they'd kill me - and yet, I knew I opposed what they were plotting.

I woke disoriented, concerned about the content, the plot of the dream. Ugh. Why so violent? Less Angel, more Barney, I guess. Then it hit me, steel beam on the head: duh, of course, I was combining our conversation with the data from Angel. How do you stay in your family and yet make your Big Exit, become who you "really" are, and, for that matter, as the friend and I were discussing, how do you actually HEAL your family's karma, wipe some of the slate free, make sure the Samsara buck stops as much as it can at YOU?

How intertwined we are. In order to see interdependence, just look at your family, so many teachers say. You want practice? Call your mother. ("Say hi to your mother for me, Miriam!" a friend said yesterday after we hung out. "Oops," he quickly stated, sheepish grin. "That's ok. Even I forget sometimes that she's dead.") Think about your childhood. Go "home" - to where you were raised, to your adolescence, and you'll have plenty of fodder.

Fodder. Crap and Compost. Fetid rich rot. Ready to fall Apart. Perfect ground for Growth. Exit yes, but you'll have to come back, compelled to do so, with or without resistance. And there you cannot help but heal, yourself and your family. May as well make the best of these return visits.