Sexual Sanctity: A Memoir of My Burning Times and Learning Times

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Journey to Freedom

Section One: Getting Hip to the Predator's Blind Selfishness

"Wade in the water,

Wade in the water

Children wade

In the water,

God's gonna trouble

The water,

Why don't you wade…

Sometimes I feel like

A motherless child,

Sometimes I feel like

A motherless child,

Sometimes I feel like

A motherless child

A long way from home…"

~ African American Spiritual

Looking back on that moment I hadn't budged with my mother on getting the Prednisone, I know it was most likely the first of many moments thereafter, in which I finally had a sense of how to be in synchronization with my wise, and powerful Force-Field. I didn't know it then, but my ability to protect myself from evil was getting stronger. It was as if my Soul was finally able to shine her profound light on areas in my psyche that had been damaged through chronic abuse.

The nervous system becomes damaged through traumatic experiences, and becomes unable to relate all the thousands of small, to enormous signals that the Soul and Body need to relate to one another through it. The journey of healing of my nervous system is in perpetual motion forward. I never fully know the treasures hidden where trauma-healing still occurs indefinitely.

The Spiritual above is said to have been born out of the harrowing experiences African Americans went through on their journeys to freedom. It is said that thousands, to avoid being tracked by dogs in their escape, would "wade in the water," usually, in bodies of water up North to Canada that were freezing temperatures.

I can only imagine, and it has been recorded in literature, but mostly preserved through their powerful oral histories, that being up to neck deep, or swimming in those freezing temperatures made perhaps most of the former slaves at some point in the journey, wretchedly long for the relative "comfort" of their lives as slaves. I can only imagine the terror of the demons that tried to infiltrate their minds and freeze their hearts in terror, and hopelessness, as their heart-stopping escape made them perhaps experience their ancestral, and personal conditioning to identify with slavery, maybe, for the first time.

I've only come to realize now, that the icy plunge into an eating disorder, was not, as I thought for many years, a continuation, an extension of captivity, torture and burning. It was, in a symbolic sense, a plunge into those icy Northern waters, on my harrowing escape to freedom. I met my inner demons, my sinister conditioning as a slave to my circumstances, directly, for the first time in my life.

Section Two: Heom

" 險 Simplified Character: 险, Pinyin: xiǎn, Korean: 험, Yale Romanization: hem, Radical: ⾩, Additional Strokes: 13, Total Strokes: 15, Definition: narrow pass, strategic point, dangerous" ~ From: Root Korean, A Dictionary of Korean Root Words (Hanja), by Andrew P. Livera

"Heom" is the Hanja, or Korean version of the Chinese Characters for "Narrow Pass," or "Strategic Point," or "Dangerous." It is pronounced thus: Start with saying the word "home." Then, when pronouncing the "o" sound, shape your mouth into a less tight "o" shape. Try tightening the "o" shape again and say "home," then widen the "o" shape of your mouth position, and try to say "home" again. The "o" sound is less "narrow" sounding, and more hollow sounding. This Korean sound is often shown as "eo" to represent the "widening" of the "o" sound.

How did Harriet Tubman accomplish what she did? How did, and do, refugees from various locations around the world escape the violence of World Wars? Of Communism? How did, and do women from all over the world escape human trafficking? How did babies come into the world moments right after the atom bombs hit Japan, and grow into adults and tell the tale of their triumph? How did our ancestors survive the Burning Times and Witch Hunts of Europe and all over the world, or die trying, and yet, here we are, their descendants, telling, and hearing about their trials, and triumphs?

How? It is through "Heom."

"The passage in a woman that lets the

Baby through, looks only

Wide enough for Lovemaking

And yet, all of humankind have

Passed through Her this way…"

Woman, is "Heom." The Sacred Feminine, is "Heom."

A Mother's Love; Is the Narrow, yet miraculously, and mysteriously flexible, beyond your wildest dreams Passage; through which we are sculpted, disciplined, protected, nourished, and given life. It is the "Strategic Point," of Origin, from and through which all human beings and life forms without exception are cast from; melted down and purified again, and again; to be poured into the shape-form, the discipline, the teaching, the beauty, and the pleasure that is needed for each stage of our personal cultivation, the cultivation of humanity, and the cultivation of our planet. A Mother's Love is the most Dangerous Force in the Cosmos, and yet we are the safest enfolded in it. This is because even the most dangerous, predatory forces on this planet, that drive the most egregious, heinous, and insidious behavior and crimes on this earth; all must return to Origin one day. Evil is just energy, temporarily divorced from Origin. But like anything on this planet, their Essential Blueprint never changes, and like Death, that will take all of us one day; no matter how rich or poor, popular, or overlooked, a Mother's Love is The Essential Danger we all need to fully embrace this Powerful, Meaningful, Painful, and Joyous Gift, of Life in its most raw, and real form.

The principle of "Heom" says, "the passage is through here," and we look and more often than not respond by saying,

"WHERE?!?!"

Heom responds to us simply, pointing, "right, there."

We look where She's pointing and we practically faint in terror and disbelief; for She's pointing off the path, way off the beaten path, forget the "road less traveled,” ¹ She's pointing at the vast, freezing body of water that runs alongside the forests we've managed to run to in our journey to freedom, usually unconsciously, or through sheer desperation, but nevertheless through our Most Essential Instincts.

"You have got to be motherfucking KIDDING ME!" We cry out.

"Nope," She responds, then falls silent. But it's not a deathly silence, it's a FULL silence. A silence that grows and grows, then warms and warms. We've come this far. It's either turn back and plunge into the fires of torment again, or take the insane plunge in the direction of “Heom,” and trust, with every last ounce of fortitude we have left, that Heom, is not just a crazy figment of our imaginations.

Section Three: Wade in the Water

Looking back, I see how my unmoving resolve to obtain Prednisone for my fifth poison ivy rash of my young life, before I was old enough to sign for the prescription myself, I had to go through my mother; was much more than what could be explained on the surface.

I was taking back my power. Unconsciously, I had been able to direct my Force-Field in a way that would signal to my mother that this time, if she didn't move out of the way, Heom would unleash Her plans in a way that would make sure my mother moved out of our way. The thing is, I know now that Heom was going to have Her way, either way; but as is usually the case, my mother, or other people or forces that stand in the way of growth, including their own, have always a choice to make the process more or less painful for themselves in the long run.

When my mother scooped me up after that summer, practically disabled and on the brink of a very severe breakdown, crippling, or even death; and brought me to our lifelong, family Alternative Healer and friend to be "saved," I know that was the moment I knew Heom, whoever She was, was pointing in the direction I needed to go next.

Section Four: The Calm Before the Plunge

Dancing in the Riptide

Breathing in the Undertow

Being in her body,

A tormented Soul

In need of death and rebirth,

This storm has stripped me

Of everything,

My only chance is to

Learn to swim in her

Tidal Belly

And die to all that

Would have me believe

That death is the end

And that I must pretend

To go on living

Without my Soul

Who can

Dance in the Riptide

And breath in the Undertow

I'm not just mortal

This, I've always known

She pulls me out

And drags me under

As she whispers

In my ear

"The key to life

Is knowing when to die,

Stop building castles in the sky

That have no roots

So that if life chops you down

You disappear in mist

Leaving no legacy

Learn not to resist

All that you must know

When Dancing with the Riptide

And breathing in the Undertow

~ "Dancing with the Riptide, Breathing in the Undertow," a Poem, by Anshin B. Kelly (2)

I remember I had a tiny reprieve before the plunge into Heom. My eleventh grade year at The Waldorf High School opened with a trip to Hermit Island. Waldorf Education, founded in the beginning of the twentieth century, by an Austrian man called "Rudolf Steiner," is a truly extraordinary kind of education. Steiner was a mystic, a healer, a scholar, and a man way before his time. Through his extraordinary gifts as a Spiritualist, or as he called it "Spiritual Scientist," he, among many other powerful, and deeply influential things, developed Waldorf Education for children and youth, from kindergarten, through twelfth grade.

Waldorf Education was founded on the premise that human beings, from conception, are Essentially of Divine Origin, and The Soul lies at the center of each human being. He knew, and taught that the Essential Role of Education is to be completely, and intuitively hands-on with the fundamental task of raising human beings in the integration, and cultivation of The Soul, The Mind and The Body.

As a result of Rudolf Steiner’s extensive legacy; in literature, healing, medicine, education and religion; one of the many hands-on, and wholesome teaching pillars of Waldorf Education is to go on many subject-oriented trips into the natural world.

I remember the trip to Hermit Island as being one of the precious few, and emphasis on “precious,” memories of my youth that were filled with the warmth, deep love, and succor that can only come from the Divinity, and Original Schooling of Nature. Our biology teacher reserved a beautiful camping spot, with a fire pit, and room to pitch two large tents; one for the girls, and one for the boys. I remember most of the girls, one being my best friend, were whining incessantly about having to go camping as required schooling. One girl brought a blow up mattress that took up about a third of our tent. She told me once that in her Junior High she was called “The Queen Bee.” Well, let’s just say I saw why.

Hermit Island is an Island off the coast of Maine, which is actually connected by a narrow strip of beach, to the mainland. It was lovely. Like a Maiden in the Bloom of Youth is lovely, with the Autumn sun shining on her smooth, black, thick hair, revealing the natural, red highlights throughout. It was lovely like a Pregnant Woman is lovely; swollen, and ripe with new life, her hands naturally cradling her unborn baby, kicking and moving in her belly. It was lovely, like a Woman in Midlife, pregnant with experience is lovely; just showing signs of gray, but not yet silver like the Wise Old Crone, and yet, already able to harvest crops ripe with perspective, long-sight, patience, and the inner glow, and hope of the budding grandmother. She was lovely like the silver Old Crone, or Grandmother is lovely; frail, and wizened on the outside, yet imbued with the generational, full circle of the Sacred Feminine. She, in the form of Hermit Island, showed me the pivot point from which All things Turn; are Born, Die, and are Reborn.

I remember how healing it was to sleep, work, eat and play, every day near the sand, sea and cliffs. It didn't feel like school work, though we had plenty of work to do. I remember how raw still, and frightened I was, deep inside my heart. I'd only just begun to take the steps, and use the tools my Alternative Healer had given me, and I was sticking to her healing suggestions and regimen, very well. I felt like I was on the road to healing, and I started to see a tiny flicker of hope, that perhaps, I was going to be ok, after all.

I remember a few days at the end of the trip, we went on a hike through the beautiful cliffs and forests along the coast of Maine, and a group of us came across what looked like Moses' Burning Bush; it was a huge, mostly flaming red, with splashes of peach, orange, gold and green, poison ivy vine-bush. I stared at the burning bush, awestruck by her exquisite beauty. She legitimately looked like she was on fire. I could hardly believe my senses, and I wondered ponderously, how something so breathtaking could hurt me so, very badly.

Section Five: Heom Bound

Everything on the surface seemed to be ok, for the next year or so, and when I look back, my mother was so relieved I didn't die, she began to give me some small special treatment when it came to my required healing regimen and dietary needs. I understand now, that while it could have been an opportunity for her to start the healing process herself, I think her guilt took over, like so many times before, and her actions were motivated by it primarily, rather than actual remorse, self-reflection, and a genuine desire to repair her relationships with her daughters, and her husband for that matter. Guilt is like a heavy, metal torture device, at the center of women's inner torment.

I don't remember exactly when my conscious mind became aware that I had taken the plunge Heom. But I think it was just around my eighteenth birthday, because I remember it being quite cold already seasonally. Suddenly, it seemed like thousands of icy tentacles, that seemed to each give me continuous, painful pricks that would send agonizing throbbing straight into my heart, were coming up from the depths of my very Being. Each throbbing prick, that as time wore on became like continuous, intra-psychic lacerations, also carried a terrifying voice, that was torturing me to "confess" my guilt. Guilt about what? Guilt about how everything terrible that had happened to me, including sexual assault, and my sister's trauma too, was my fault, and that I should be punished. The voices told me I was a monster, because nobody normal, or more specifically, a "good person," would ever feel this kind of guilt. You only feel guilt, because you're guilty, they said. You're dangerous, you're capable of monstrous things, did you ever think of that? How dare you live, how dare you think you're worth anything, especially life. Kill yourself, it's the only way anyone will be safe from you.

I look back, and I know now, I was "wading in the water."

The intra-psychic torment took my hope, and my heart, and shattered them into billions of pieces. I didn't think I was going to survive this one. I can see clearly now, how the process of Heom, was awakening me incredibly rapidly; years, and years of trauma, entombed inside my heart, and scattered like abandoned, and ancient graveyards, all across my psyche and nervous system, were being split open and excavated. I had no way of knowing then, but the excavation process of Heom in just a mere seven years, would put me on a path to Wholeness, and tremendous Spiritual Endurance, and Power, far beyond my wildest comprehension.

I felt like everything was being taken from me; I'd always had my hope, my vision, my zest for life. I'd always had something to hold onto inside, and especially children and nature would help to reinforce that sense even on my most wretched days. But now, every cell of my body, every fiber of my Being seemed to be infiltrated by demonic ice, and horrific guilt, that I knew I didn't truly believe, but I would feel, like a great stone in my chest, every moment of every day.

I remember clearly, like it was yesterday, how one day I opened the front door in mid-winter, and I remember being able to see how frozen and cold everything was, but I couldn't feel the cold. I could have gone out into the snow, and wind and ice in a t-shirt, and I wouldn't have been able to feel that I was freezing to death.

It was either keep moving, or stop, and if I stopped I knew it would be the end for sure…but maybe, that wouldn't be so bad…

Section six: Delirium

I remember, it all began with the thought, "If I could just achieve a perfect body, and be really, really, good, the best, at sports and dance I can achieve the happiness I have always wanted."

Years prior, during Junior High School, I was tormented by this horrific feeling of failure at life. I was only twelve or thirteen years old, and there was a girl in my class who was this incredible, natural athlete. She was tall, and very muscular and toned for her age. She was a local track star, and she often got her name in the local papers.

I remember, I'd come home from school almost every day for months, after experiencing my daily ostracism and bullying in school, only to come home to my mother's tormented patterns, and sob inconsolably. I remember with the hormone changes during those years, the trauma in my body began to manifest as severe, digestive inflammation, and I rapidly began to develop severe allergies to food.

I also remember how humiliating and traumatizing it was to realize that my breasts just weren't coming in the way all the other girl's seemed to. It wouldn't be until I became pregnant with my first child, a decade later, that I would have beasts large enough for a cup size.

Combined with my digestive system constantly in swelling and pain, my body staying (at least for the time being), almost like an elementary school girl's, and the daily difficulty, and confusion that was my life, I was just overcome with sorrow, every day, and I'd finally let the tears flow at home.

My body and my mind always felt severely cracked, like a ceramic bowl that has been hit and broken with a hard object, since about twelve years old. I couldn't articulate it then, and it wouldn't be until I was a mother with several children, that I could finally begin to understand that depressive, and broken feeling from my schoolgirl days: Due to the severe trauma I'd sustained since I was a small child, huge swaths of my nervous system were dormant, or only flickering sporadically. Like the lamp being off, or flickering inside a room in a house, except, in some cases, a fuse had been blown in certain parts of the house, and no one had bothered to examine the fuse box in the cellar, for years. Electricity, even in a house has to go somewhere, and because the normal, natural systems were damaged, it often started fires where frayed, or severed wires had been neglected, cut through by damaging forces, and people, who needed to strike me down in order to try and escape their own trauma and misery. Miraculously however, that same Life-Force, the electro-magnetic pulse that flows throughout the nervous system, also created thousands of secondary systems around the damaged areas, on a constant basis. My Soul had a way to communicate from way underneath through these secondary systems. Though absolutely miraculous, and life-saving these secondary channels were, they were not the true channels, like the main roads in a town. Life was like constantly meeting detours where yellow tape and cops surrounded places where the road had caved in, or flooding had occurred, or accidents were being cleaned up. In some cases, or even more numerous than one would want to believe, there was no detour sign, or flashing lights or yellow tape; there was just the end of the road. Sometimes, I wouldn't see that the road dropped off and I'd go ass-over-tea-kettle into a ditch, where a very traumatized, and dangerous wild dog lived, and I'd just barely escape with my sanity intact.

I just wanted the pain to stop, the internal lashings, and unspeakable ache in my heart, the tremendous guilt. I began to separate from my body. I took what little Life-Force I had left and I began to fashion a fantasy with it. I began to work out excessively. I took on as many dance classes my schedule could hold. I began to restrict my diet to things the complexes deemed "safe" and "not fattening." I was only about 130 lbs. to begin with, at 5' 4 ¾." I took yoga classes near my house on the weekends, and I began to collapse inside myself, while the part of me that still flickered sporadically, nurtured her new-found fantasy.

I began to lose weight rapidly, and worst of all, I was getting compliments for how I looked at school, and at church, by young women mostly. I began to isolate myself away from my school friends during lunch breaks because I couldn't be tempted to eat anything outside my restricted diet. I know people noticed, especially my best friend. But I was so rapidly disappearing into myself, I barely noticed anyone or anything anymore. I was just going through some limited motions. Looking back, I know I just didn't care anymore, because in truth, my heart cared so deeply, and so much.

Section Seven: Waking Up

"To dream the impossible dream,

To fight the unbeatable foe,

To bear with unbearable sorrow,

To run, where the brave dare not go.

To right the unrightable wrong,

To love pure and chaste from afar,

To try when your arms are too weary,

To reach, the unreachable star,

This is my quest, to follow that star,

No matter how hopeless,

No matter how far,

To fight for the right,

Without question or pause,

To be willing march into hell

For a Heavenly cause,

And if I'll only be true,

To this glorious quest,

That my heart may lay

Peaceful and calm

When I'm laid to my rest.

And the world will be better for this,

That one man, scorned

And covered in scars,

Still strove with his

Last ounce of courage,

To reach, that unreachable star,

That unreachable star."

~ From the Musical of "Don Quixote."

I don't know how, I don't know exactly when, I began to hear, from deep within, or was it somewhere far, far away, a voice so faint, it might as well been a tiny wisp of nothing at all, blowing in the howling wind,

"Anshin…Anshin…wake up Anshin…Anshin sweetheart…I'm here Anshin…Anshin wake up…please don't leave…please sweetheart I'm here, I have you…you won't drown…I promise…wake up…"

About three months later, since I began my spiral into oblivion, I remember, in an outwardly very mundane, and everyday circumstance, I woke up with a jolt.

"What the fuck am I doing?!" I exclaimed in horror inside my head.

If you've ever seen the movie "The Man from Snowy River," there's a scene where a large posse of men on horseback are following a herd of wild horses led by a mighty black stallion. The posse is able to keep up with the herd for hours, as they climb higher and higher into the woods and mountains of the Outback. They are sure they have them, the men are filled with determination and fire, they know that if they just endure long enough, they'll be able to corral the horses, and most of all capture and tame the black stallion.

But, as luck would have it, the black stallion leads his mares over a plunging cliff. Down they go, thundering together down the vertical, mountain side. The posse slides in a cloud of dust; men, and hooves to a sudden stop right at the cliff's edge. Just a few pounding heartbeats later, the young, male protagonist, who is the only one in the posse from those very mountains, and not the valley below, comes up behind the posse, and with a mighty, absolutely mind- blowing leap over the posse, man and horse thunder down the vertical mountainside after the wild horses. The film goes into slow-motion, to be able to capture and display the cataclysmic wonder, that is this real, live mountain man, on horseback; horse, man, and mountain become One Being. Man and horse never slip once, indeed, one slip would mean both their lives for certain. They both make it all the way down the mountain, like some god, or mythical being that is half horse, and half man.

Suddenly, in that moment of awakening from my delirium, the posse slid to a stop, and just before I slipped beneath the freezing waters, my very Soul, on horseback, like the young Joan of Arc, a teenage girl leading an army of French, male warriors to victory, came thundering from behind, and took that mighty, other-worldly leap over all the odds, over all the demons and naysayers, over every, single trap, and blockade that was being set to stop me for good. I flew, inside my heart like The Man from Snowy River down the impossible mountainside, following the Wild Horses, the mighty, relentless, Cosmic, Heom.

1. “The Road not Taken,” A Poem, by Robert Frost

(2) Song: https://suno.com/s/x7eJbXuIQSQNsCZz