I have heard that there are cultures that revere peacocks, because peacocks can eat poison without experiencing harm. Instead, they transform it into their beautiful feathers. There are times when I’ve wished that I could be a peacock. In a recent phase of my life, the world was not safe for me. My life was being threatened, and I was constantly followed everywhere. My social media accounts were stalked, and pictures of my life were texted with threats. I limited my interactions with friends and family as I did not want them to come to harm. I also wasn’t sure who I could trust, as I was finding that people weren’t who I thought they were. I once thought my relationship was reaI. I once thought my friends were real. Yet somehow, my life had become collateral damage in a twisted king of the heap game. I decided that my best route to survive was to not turn on the lights after the sun went down, and to live in the most vulnerable area of my home. I often slept sitting in an armchair in the corner of a room with a 2×4 propped up against it. I could hear people rustling in my yard at night, but I was never sure who was there as my protectors and who was there to put an end to me. When I would return home from work, I would go through the entire house with a flashlight, and I would always be grateful that my animals were still alive. Many nights I would sit on the floor of my kitchen with my computer and research how to erase myself from the world. Erasure is a strange thing for a human to seek. There is a sort of death that happens with it. I decided to practice the Buddhist death practice during those nights.
In a night that is this kind of dark, things move incredibly slow and fast at the same time. While it is a very lonely place, it is also a place where there is a quieter kind of Presence that is both a companion and a guide. I remember looking out the windows and seeing all that was alive around me. I noticed that a sunflower was growing tall from a sidewalk crack. And the doves would sit on the windowsills above my bed, cooing, during the harshest winter days. There was life all around me that was finding a way, despite the immediate circumstances. And I too was finding a way; I was being given just in time, step by step direction.
Haunted by the strangest memories, and no longer knowing who I was, I moved on to a new area where I was free again and the people were good. But freedom doesn’t come easily. It is a lot like walking on the ground after a war. While the smoke has lifted, the ground is still singed from all that has happened there. I was that ground, a ghost between the two worlds, wishing to be a part of neither. It had been years since I had walked outside at night, even though night was once something I had enjoyed. It took a long time for me to turn on the lights in my home and to be able to sleep without one eye open. Even now, I still rush to close the curtains over the windows as the sun goes down.
In my spiritual tradition, we are all given spiritual names. Mine translates to “equanimity.” Where is equanimity in all of this?! Perhaps the peacocks know. I wonder if it is painful for them to transform poison into beauty, or if they do it simply because it is what they are meant to do. A wise woman once told me that labradorite is a stone of transformation that lets the light in. Perhaps I am labradorite, living through these experiences to shine light on them in order to transform them into something new. The great Rumi once said, “We are the eyes of god.” We need be nothing more, and nothing less.
May our strength be supported as we walk through the dark places. And through them, let us not become what we hate, but may we shine our light on that which is ugly within humanity, so that the cosmos may work towards its redemption.
©Cardinal Speaks