Dismemberment, Dismemberment, Dismemberment.
It's like saying a word over and over again until it loses its meaning. Except in this case, I am hoping I will learn its meaning.
I feel like I've gone and used a big word that I've claimed I will elaborate on. And now come time to elaborate on it, I don't know what it means. I am a hair's breadth away from heading right on over to dictionary.com. My junior high/high school English teacher would be please with that. "When you don't know what a word means, look it up." I'm paraphrasing, sort of.
Dismemberment --
is that experience of no longer being membered in the same way, being taken apart, disassembled yet with an inkling of hope of being re-membered -- as in put back together in some configuration not remembered as in memory because that would kind of defeat the purpose of being dismembered, being returned to the original state through remembrance . . . .
Ok, enough word play.
For now.
It is easier for me to make light of this topic in this moment as being dismembered doesn't sound pleasant. It does not sound like it is good for one's health. It is something that many parts of myself are keen to avoid. "I like how I am put together and what I've got going on just fine, thank you. There are hitches and glitches, and at the end of the day, I know how this system setup works. All else can leave well enough alone, so I can just keep plodding along as I am, thank you very much."
That plodding part though. It bothers me. It nags at me. It is not something I sense as being a truth of me. There must be more to this journey than plodding along. Isn't there trotting or galloping to be had? Skipping, dancing, twirling, even walking sounds more enticing and invigorating than plodding. No wonder I feel downtrodden with how my life feels and is moving along, plodding.
Yet, dismemberment? Is this the only choice for changing my gate? Will it change my gate? What will it do to be taken apart like a shoot of horsetail plant, each of the individual pieces popped apart and laid to the winds? Or taken apart like a disarticulating skull model, won't all the pieces need to go back in the same way to reassemble? So will it just be cleaning the edges and the joins and fitting everything back together, well-oiled and better aligned? That sounds easy enough. I will just be a skull model again though if that is the case, all the same bones put back in the same places, won't I?
What if it means I will no longer be a skull model? What if it means only one or three of those pieces of horsetail plant are incorporated into a new form? This strikes closer to home, closer to the meaning of dismemberment in this context. A taking apart of what is, period. It is a stepping into the void with a healthy helping of the Buddhist sense of letting go of expectations. It is choosing to experience the free fall, hopefully into my authentic identity. That's the aim anyway, if one can aim a free fall. There is the offering over of what needs to die, what is being offered up for more life. And then there is the surrender to the utter unknown and unknowable. This is not an everyday sort of choice and not one that many people choose to make.
It looks sort of like this -- a willing, curious, with a slight air of hesitation, walking out into the unknown:
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