i actually read your postscript before I saw your earlier posts about your struggle with depression and suicidal thoughts. Oh my. I wept for you and your suffering. I’m so sorry for what you’ve endured all the while knowing that this was an essential part of your soul journey and life transformation. Your parents must be so proud of you and so deeply grateful for your life.
Many years ago, one of my children was seriously injured in an accident. He suffered terribly, both physically and emotionally. It utterly broke our hearts to see him so broken and in so much pain. Yet in the depths of despair, we were grateful for his life, grateful that he was still here. We were all broken and never the same again afterwards. Each of us in our own way experienced growth in spirit. We learned endurance and perseverance, but most of all we grew in love and appreciation for life. We grew in compassion for people with physical disabilities.
So I think of your parents and know how grateful they are to still have you, how precious you are to your family and friends, how precious you are to us in this community. Much love to you, Coyote.
Bravo to you for sharing your story.
This is a phenomenal act of courage, of trust, and of willingness to do whatever it takes to live your life in your truth and faith in your deepest knowing of true self and souls purpose in allowing the process of this challenging journey into this incarnation and its manifestation and creation in this world and all worlds as one.
May we all be worthy of this trust and have the wisdom to be who we all know ourselves to truly be so we can join you in our own souls journey as we all connect with you and with each other and become seeming separate parts reuniting with the whole once again of all there ever was or truly ever will be.
Blessings to you dear, dear Coyote.
???
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Wow. Just wow. I truly read this all and for a few hours had no words. Thank you for sharing your very incredible, personal struggles and journey with all of us. I feel honored you did and that you trust us here. I know you are going to make a big difference in this world.
When reading your journey, my empathic self felt each moment with you. The way you wrote it enabled me to put myself in your shoes with each twist and turn. I could understand how you felt and what propelled you to the next "exit ramp" in the road you were on. Living in Connecticut, I knew some of the places you mentioned which helped me picture so much of your rides up to school, up north and back home. The way you felt after T was elected, I too felt so depressed and sad. I think I cried for a few days, even my cousin in Germany called me to cry with me about it.
I'm so glad you are here and that you have learned and healed so much. What you also say about not grouping people into sides makes so much sense. I think many of us try not to do so, but at times do so when we can't make sense of what is going on in today's social and political climate. You are already making a difference to so many, just here on this forum, but I suspect that's also true in your circle of friends, acquaintances, and family too.
My heart is full with the knowledge of the miracles you have mastered within your body and soul. I know you have many Angels proud and happy to give you even more guidance on the journey your beautiful soul will continue to take.
Big Hugs, love and light and continued blessings with your healing! ? ? ? ❤️
@Coyote, I am relatively new to the forum but am deeply moved by the honesty offered by everyone here. Thank you for your raw courage to share the dark nights of your soul with us. I never felt as deeply as you did but post the election I would inexplicably break down into tears for a month that a brave woman like Hillary would be dealt such a bad hand. What soul contract did she agree to before this incarnation? Thank you for pointing out that we still need to reconcile our own darkness within in order that our own Lights can be revealed.The more brightly our individual Lights glow, the more brightly will the collective consciousness shine. A million glowworms can light up even the darkest, deepest cave!
Thank you for such thoughtful reflections. I seem to remember you mentioning on a different thread that you have a son who was injured in an accident, and that he's now firmly turning the corner to a better period in his life. That is wonderful. Along with you and your other family members, I'm hoping he can integrate his past trials so that they enrich his present state.
It delights me that you were so mindful while reading. I thought about you while writing and wondered whether you'd be familiar with some of the locations in the story. As far as not grouping people goes, yes I do think everyone here is trying to be more mindful. But it's tough, because these mindsets are programmed into us by thousands of years of culture. The wetiko article I linked in the last installment captures this tension beautifully: "Let us dance with thought-forms through a deeper understanding of ethics, knowing, and being, and the intimate awareness that our individual minds and bodies are a part of the collective battleground for the soul of humanity, and indeed, life on this planet...The dissolution of wetiko will be as much about remembering as it will be about creation." The Shambhala Warrior prophecy has a similar message. It tells us that the line between good and evil runs through the heart of every human.
I had to share, because I sensed the process of writing it all down for this particular audience would bring to my awareness thoughts and lessons that I hadn't fully realized yet. And it did.
What did Hillary sign up for? I think she's supposed to learn that she didn't need to hide her authentic self, and that her soul can accomplish so much when she shows it in its full luminosity to the people around her. Vera de Chalambert writes about this:
"Stripped of her hopes and lifelong dreams, speaking honestly and transparently about her pain, this woman in a dark suit was a far cry from the controlled, manicured version of her shiny political persona. Stripped of her agenda, stripped of her certainties, this Hilary might have won the country. This Hillary touched our hearts. This is what we look like after the Dark Mother has had her way with us.
"We stop shining of the false light. As our heart breaks, as our veneer cracks, we open to more integrity, more truth, more tenderness. We stop trying to be all things for all people. We become this one small thing, feigning nothing."
And I love your glowworm metaphor. @vestralux has written on the forum about how only a small subset of humanity, about 1%, needs to genuinely awaken in order to tip the planetary scales towards light.
I finally had the time to sit-down and read your journey without interruption.
In your most difficult moments Coyote, I am sure you never imagined being in a place where you could envision yourself writing about this part of your life-story and sharing it with others.
Look at the beautiful radiant light you are walking in now! For someone who once avoided people and conversations, you sure have inspired us all with your thoughtful posts and observations. Now your written reflections on how you emerged from a cold dark tunnel to the warmth of daylight can bring hope to people you haven't even met.
Thank you for your bravery and honesty.
It will make a difference in peoples' lives. It has already made a difference in yours.
@coyote I so appreciate the extra insights! Ah, the Dark Mother, she definitely puts us through the wringer but then, that’s because we’re being called to step up, to tilt the balance, as you are doing. Marianne Williamson said “And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.”
We are all turning into glow worms.?
Bless you fellow traveler. I too have had more than one bout of major depression, two suicide attempts, and a commitment to psychiatric care. Mine did not stem from an as yet incurable disease, but from a taught sense of unworthiness. Our journey and lessons as light workers is to find that our light cannot be extinguished or hidden- regardless of what anyone tells us. In fact, this is our lesson as a human. Those who try to subdue and shut out the light of others will not succeed; and, eventually will come to understand their efforts to stifle others stem from the shutters they have placed around their own light.
I am profoundly moved by your story, your bravery and honesty - cracked open - changed. Thank you doesn't touch it. My heart is with you and that too, is inadequate. Words still fail us - telepathic and emotional communication overwhelm us - someday we'll figure out a decent communication system. Until then, love and strength to you.
I wanted to take some time to fully digest your story. You are clearly a very old soul. I was very much moved by your story, and btw, you are a gifted writer. I grew up in metro NYC, and am familiar with all the places you described (Croton-Harmon station for example), and your writing brought images to mind that were cinematic. THANK YOU for your honesty, it takes great bravery to share with as as you have. I want you to file something in the back of your mind for future: you have been given the great gift of storytelling - you have a muse for sure. I want you to think about either writing all of this into a book of some sort, or consider going into verbal storytelling and tell your stories far and wide. To [respectfully] borrow a term from African traditions, you are a type of Griot. You have so much to teach already, imagine how much more you will have as time passes. I have been in similar dark places as you (I had suicidal ideation by the age of 8), and one thing my grandmother used to say was "God thinks he's a comedian." I saw that come through in your storytelling, and it uplifted me.
KEEP GOING.
❤️ ❤️ ❤️
Collective sickness is my area of concern. I know that I came into the world at this time in order to work with globalized culture’s wetiko—the sickness of separation. As training for that work, I chose to be born into a body with NF2. NF2 inculcated the mindset of separation within my familial bonds and other personal relationships over the first 21 years of my life. I then chose severe depression and attempted suicide as part of my life contract. I also probably chose a number of potential triggers that would tip me into the abyss. I journeyed as deep into wetiko as I could possibly go while still being able to emerge intact on the other side.
@Coyote, my dear soul friend. For ten days, I've had a task reminder set on my phone, imploring me to log on and read your new posts as soon as I could. I've been swallowed by maximum workload, but equally so by the hit to my energy that happens to me whenever the collective is experiencing something chaotic, uncertain, and fearfully painful—as it is now with pandemic and falling markets.
Thank you.
Thank you for sharing yourself. For vulnerably and openly baring your experiences for us.
How grateful I am/we are that the knife wasn't appealing. That the train wasn't fast enough and you were tired. That the cliff face wasn't as sheer a drop as you'd thought. That, even though you'd planned and checked and rechecked, workers locked the pedestrian gate to the George Washington Bridge.
I've met too many spirits who had suicided to believe that no one is successful unless they're absolutely and entirely done with living. Add just enough despair and desperation to a sudden impulse, and not even the most stalwart guide or guardian can shut the gate in time. My point isn't to quibble the politics of the afterlife, but to say that I believe it is both a miracle that you're still here (and that I am still here)—and also that you had especially bold and orchestrated support from the other side (perhaps "stalwart" doesn't come close to describing it). And I'm convinced that there's a reason for that, which I see that you know, so I pray you never have reason to forget it.
Further, I honor your story and find a lot of my own in it. To wit:
"Collective [trauma] is my area of concern. I know that I came into the world at this time in order to work with globalized culture’s wetiko—the [trauma] of separation. As training for that work, I chose to be born into a body [that suffered every type of ongoing abuse from earliest childhood, and into a deeply traumatized ancestry]. [This multigenerational trauma] inculcated the mindset of separation within my familial bonds and other personal relationships over the first [35+] years of my life. I then chose severe depression and attempted suicide as part of my life contract. I also chose a number of potential triggers that would tip me into the abyss. I journeyed as deep into wetiko as I could possibly go while still being able to emerge intact on the other side."
And here we are.
The last time I set out to end my life, I chose to walk alone into a dilapidated area in midtown Atlanta. Here and there on the sidewalk there were homeless men, teetering in an attempt to walk, or curling up with a bottle in a paper bag. Women with listless eyes were walking back and forth along the curb, calling out to passing cars. The backdrop to all of this was my destination, a 5-story concrete parking structure which was in the process of being demolished; crews had been blasting the site that day. I planned to enter that crumbing stone carcass and never leave.
I'd stopped for just a moment on the sidewalk to look at my fate. I didn't feel anything. Hadn't felt anything—not fear, not curiosity, certainly not anything positive or pleasant—in months, maybe as long as a year. But as I stood there in front of that immensity of collapsing concrete and dust, thinking only, "This is what the end of the world looks like," I became suddenly and acutely aware of a feeling. That feeling was an energy, and it was streaming directly toward me—and now all around me—from someone who had quietly stepped beside me to my right.
There hadn't been anyone else nearby when I stopped, but when I turned to look, a man was now standing only inches from me. Just standing there, facing the demolition site, as if we were two old friends staring pleasantly over the dystopian landscape together.
The man was a tall, slender Sikh of perhaps 32. He was wearing a white kurta (a long tunic) and what I remember as a beautiful turquoise-colored turban. (Though sometimes in my memory it's orange or reddish.) I remember the whites of his eyes being the whitest white, and how his beard and skin and everything else about him seemed to shine.
Because there's little room for logic in severe suicidal depression, I happened to be holding my camera. He smiled warmly down at me and asked if I'd like to be in one of my own photos (he was offering to take it for me). I declined, which he seemed to anticipate, but then he turned, gestured forward with his arm, and asked me if I wanted to walk with him for a little while. It was the tenderest invitation.
We walked slowly in silence, for no more than a block. When we reached the corner, he pointed across the street and said, "This is my stop." It was the MARTA station hub.
He told me goodbye and I watched him cross the street and board an empty train. He immediately came to stand at a large window inside. When our eyes met again, he broke into an enormous smile and waved his arm broadly over his head, as though he were greeting (not departing from) a loved one he hadn't seen in ages.
My heart still heaves with the memory of it.
As the train and its single passenger pulled out, the Sikh kept waving until he was out of sight. At that point, I realized I'd been smiling and waving back, and that tears were streaming down my face. That was strange enough, but when I looked around me—and there is no description that could do this justice—the very particles in the air and sidewalk and street and bridge and buildings were rippling, glittering.
Every surface in midtown was covered in graffiti and suddenly the colors and forms were blowing me back in their genius and beauty. The homeless men, the working women, paper trash drifting down the street, that collapsing concrete structure I'd chosen for a coffin—absolutely everything was alive with startling perfection. "Awe" is an impossibly small word to describe something so vast as the feeling of suddenly being taken into the arms of the omnipresent Divine.
The backstory for how I'd gotten to that sidewalk is too long, but suffice it to say that a recession had recently hit the country, and via a series of corporate collapses and inexplicable personal accidents, I'd rapidly found myself jobless, homeless, auto-less (due to a massive flash flood just days before), and physically sick with no means of getting well. What's more, I had no family, no support system, no where to go. [Not incidentally, these were the very symptoms being expressed all across the country, by America in toto.]
And yet, somehow, miraculously, I walked out of there, away from that demolition site. A stranger had appeared out of nowhere, and because he did, I chose to live. I chose the hard work of re-membering my soul's purpose, reclaiming my sovereignty as a spirit, and stepping into service for the collective. Twelve years later—the time it takes Jupiter to orbit the sun—and here I am, blessed to live that purpose everyday.
It would be untrue for me to say I haven't felt the lull of the abyss since then. As everyone here knows, it's hard to be exquisitely sensitive amid so much suffering, volatility, and change. Due to my early experiences, I'm wired to prefer solitude and isolation, even though I recognize it will take connection and relation to heal ourselves and our planet. I reckon these puzzles are for you and your generation to help sort, Coyote, and I know you are distinctly suited to the task, for which I am most grateful.
Though...perhaps even the wound of separation has a purpose. As Murakami wrote in your beloved Kafka on the Shore: “A certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect.”
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Dear Vestralux, my heart was so full reading your story. Thank you for sharing it with all of us. I'm so glad you are still here with us, we are all so blessed to have one another. I know the man who waved to you was an Angel here on earth. ? I felt electricity reading your story. I still have goose bumps while typing this.
I remember a few times at the age of 11 through 13 wanting to jump out the window at my middle school. I used to imagine it. I had been incredibly bullied for 7+ years, lonely, on top of that my parents were constantly arguing and my dad was a manic bi-polar hot-headed man. I met my best friend in 9th grade which brought me back to wanting to be a teen and have fun. I am so grateful for her friendship and we are still like sisters.
The hardships you endured were not ones many people could have survived, yet you went on. Somehow we have all signed up for the journey we are on. I know there are many lessons my own soul is supposed to learn, but also teach. One minute we are the student, then the teacher, and back again. The fact that so many of us are empathic and sensitive can make it so hard to deal with everything we do on this planet.
My dear late friend Sue was a medium. She taught me so much and told me that when she spoke to those on the other side who had ended their life, they were still dealing with whatever brought them to that end. The lesson they prevented themselves from learning was still on their plate so to speak.
I hug you and thank you again for sharing. ❤️
My sweet, dear friend. You bless me in so many ways. Every time I see your face, a smile comes to my own. While my heart felt broken as you shared your deeply personal story of despair, there’s more, a personally astounding and strange coincidence. I can’t prove this, but know it to be true.
I recognize the stranger who came to you and I’m having chills as I write this. I have seen him in a vision and considered him to be one of my spirit guides. He appeared to me as a man in a turban with the cloth partially covering his face. Then he pulled the cloth away to reveal his features. His face was unlined, an acquiline nose, high cheekbones, a swarthy complexion and wise eyes.
He came into your life and saved it. On the the hand, maybe he just encouraged you to save your own life. Look how many lives you’ve touched in the years since then. There’s a purpose to your beautiful life and you have so many years ahead of you. The ripples move out from your steps in the water, flowing and pulsing and reaching beyond your reach, touching lives you may never know as you share and teach and encourage.
Namaste.
@coyote and @vestralux,
Thank you for sharing your stories. I'm so glad this thread came up again when I had time to read through these posts. You've provided moving accounts of how the divine appears to step into our world, and I say "appears" because I agree that it is the myth of separation that keeps us from recognizing the divinity and oneness that is our true reality. Love and gratitude to your for sharing and for your work in the world to help others wake up and heal.
Oh how I have loved you since you first settled down your spirit on this site! You fill me and lift me up with just your presence every time I see you or hear you in any form.
That tiny circle when there were was 5 then 4 then only 3 was such a huge "ahhhhh" and "aha" for me. A cycle became complete in time and I finally connected so many dots.
Awareness of conflicts were pouring in and in my deep place of holding space knowing what would happened the next day I held back.
But oh the gifts you have been blessed with! I smile and smile and smile. The grandmother in me is filled up with pride but truly it should be more like a mother for her child. You are just my oldest daughters age!
And every vision you had that night in December, every image, the energy --everything right down to the potions and vials was not of me as you thought but that oldest daughter who you perfectly saw and felt so strongly as she was fully in my heart and a huge part of my soul and of course in many ways she is me and you as we all are parts of the bigger circle and cycles and layers upon so many endless layers.
So many layers, so many connections. What a wondrous one you are to all of us. And now to be blessed with @coyote at this site as well. To share the blessing and communion of the gifts to understand the pain to relate without needing to fully even know the stories to already fully understand.
Both of you are such a deep deep blessing now even to those of us elders who are nearing their deepest challenges before personal or collective event horizons in so many ways, indeed.
So much joy to balance the places of so much pain. Grandmothers/Mothers and Child after layer of Child after Child.
So much sadness yet far far greater joy and so very very much love. ???
@vestralux - THANK YOU and NAMASTE`
And for you and @Bluebelle - I just am bursting to share something about this "angel" who guided you in your moment of need. I have seen him too, not so much in this life, but here's the story I have about him:
My family is Italian ancestry. My grandfather was a doctor. Over the course of many years, he and my grandmother would entertain doctors from other parts of the world. When I was about 3, there was a gathering at my grandparents' house, a typical Italian Sunday dinner, in fact. Here is my actual memory: I'm playing with a toy on the living room floor, the adults are on chairs/sofa/etc. chatting. I look up and I see a young man, in a black suit and a red turban, and he looks familiar to me, so I crawl up into his lap, he smiles, and we hug. I could feel love radiating from him and felt so safe. The room falls silent and my parents are gobsmacked because as a toddler I rarely engaged with strangers, especially not physically (I was famous for refusing to hug or kiss distant relatives). I never saw him again but I remember that feeling of familiarity.
Growing up, I held that memory, but was never sure if it was real or if it was a dream. Years later, as we were cleaning out my [deceased] grandparents' house, we came across some photo albums and looked through. Lots of pictures of Sunday and holiday dinners. And in one of them is my family, with some of my granparents' closest friends, and seated in the middle is a young-ish Sikh couple. I see the man's face and I nearly cried. The whole memory came flooding back, and somehow I felt a loss. No one in my family knew his name, but they remembered the visit, and my mother remembered me crawling up in his lap and basically clinging to him throughout that afternoon. My mother remembered he was a young doctor visiting from India with his wife (they had no kids at the time, but I like to think after my interaction they did!).
I don't think this gentleman is or was a spirit guide of mine, but I have had the feeling for a long time that he reminded me of either a guide/angel I knew before this life, or even a person I knew in another life, and that even at a young age I was searching for spiritual connection. Looking back, I can say that when I was about 3 was when things in my life started to change and become chaotic, although of course at the time I couldn't have understood that.
So, Vestralux, I wonder if your and Bluebelle's Sikh Angel is someone we all have met on a different plane. In any case, I'm glad he found you when he did.
❤️ ? ❤️ ?
I'm half Italian too on my Father's side (my other half is German). When I was a child we used to fly to Germany to visit my mom's side of the family for 3 weeks in the summer and stay with my grandparents (my dad stayed home for years until later in life because he was self employed). We would fly home into JFK and spend that Sunday (as we did many Sundays) having dinner at my Aunt Jo's house with my cousins (my dad's middle sister). I have such fond memories of those Sunday pasta and meatball dinners.
My funny memory was once when I was about 5 or 6 yrs old I said to my mom "why did everyone shrink?" Well my Aunts were about 4' 11" and my dad was 5' 5". My German relatives were all tall. So in a child's mind I thought everyone shrunk while we were away LOL
My dear late friend Sue was a medium. She taught me so much and told me that when she spoke to those on the other side who had ended their life, they were still dealing with whatever brought them to that end. The lesson they prevented themselves from learning was still on their plate so to speak.
Thank you for your sweet words, Tricia. They mean so much. ?
Reading about your middle school self makes my heart ache. Those years were especially difficult for my daughter, too, and although she's an adult now, I still occasionally find myself embracing her, as if I could cradle the girl she was then.
I hope your dad—and you and your family—eventually found some kind of peace. My mother has a cascade of mental illnesses, addiction, and aggression as a first defense, but she's finally calming down somewhat in her sixties, it seems, for which I'm incredibly grateful.
The vast majority of my experiences with those who've taken their lives are exactly like the reports of your friend, Sue. Many times I find them still earth side, lost and confused in what feels like darkness to them.
There can be a lot of guilt, remorse, fear, and pain to work through, on top of everything else they were dealing with. (In my experience, these things don't just disappear at death; we take them with us.) In some cases, if a person doesn't believe they're worthy of receiving help, they actively repel it (higher spirits don't violate free will). Or they simply may not be able to see and hear the presence of higher spirits who are nearby, waiting to support them. Sometimes, they even misinterpret the intention of those spirits and feel afraid. But these are just some of the things I see. As far as I can tell, there are as many types of death experiences as there are people having them.