Holding My Breath - A Private Garden Within (Act 2)

A Note Before You Begin

What follows is heavy. It was written as part of my Reclamation of Lost Humanity series, and it does not shy away from grief, anger, or the raw edges of faith and self-confrontation. This is not an easy read.

I offer it not as a polished story to be “enjoyed,” but as a witness—an act of truth-telling from a period in my life when longing and loss were inseparable. The themes are weighty, the language at times sharp.

Please read only if you have the space to do so. Step away if you need to. My hope is that, if you do enter, you find something here that meets you honestly, even if it leaves you unsettled - Ryan

I take a deep breath through the nostrils. Inhale. Exhale. I turn inward, letting my mind and heart meld into equilibrium. I knock on the front door of the gate guarding the chambers of my Self. It opens, and somehow the equilibrium acts as a key to entry. Stairs descend and curve like a corkscrew deep into darkness. A thousand-mile trek only to arrive at a lush garden, illuminated by Splendor, and located far beneath even the longings inside me.

A gardener greets me, tilling the soil with a plowshare. "Ahhh, it is so good to see you Ryan...welcome to the Garden. Come and make yourself at home. After all, this is your home. As we have collaborated over the years, look how much progress we have made! The toil has been sweet wouldn't you say?"

I spend about 2 minutes taking it all in before responding "It is good to be here. It has been a long time. Sojourning is exhausting—the soul can experience hunger and thirst, blisters and frostbite, cacti and barbed wire...solitude and loneliness" I reply. "Fatigue has carried me home, however, this is where I belong during the harsh season—I need Shelter. I need connection to myself. I need restoration inward, for any hope of embodiment outward..." I raise my head to look the gardener in the eyes, "time in this lush space is exactly what I need to cultivate myself."

"Well then, we are glad to have you here. Spend some time and take it all in, my friend. Since you last visited, there is much to explore: The Table has been built, The Wellspring is now working, and The Cabin has finally been finished. I can take you on a tour if you would like. How is it with your soul?" the gardener asks with concern and care.

"I am burdened. The outer world I see above is deeply afflicted. Contagion spreads every moment—the neural pathways of our Western world seem ravaged by something. An unfolding has been happening—one can only hope an artist's hand is guiding the paintbrush, however inconspicuously and cloaked in Mystery it may be. It is ominous outside. Real Feeling is now poverty-stricken. It hasn’t vanished—it’s simply become uninhabitable. Our culture is a swamp: oversaturated, acidic, resistant to roots. The soul’s seed can’t take hold in such soil. There’s so much rage. So much sentiment. But neither are rooted in Feeling—not the kind that mends. And in their shadow, I’ve watched Fatherness lose its sight, and Motherness drift out of her body.”

The gardener lowers the plowshare. “Then let us tend what’s still alive beneath the rot. You may not save the swamp, Ryan. But you can keep a seedbed here. Tell me, how did you find this place? It has been almost 15 years since we last saw you. What led you here?" asked the gardener.

“This will sound mysterious, but some kind of feeling brought me here. Not emotion—something much more potent, much deeper. It was Feminine energy, though I can barely explain it. It moved like water, soft but relentless, finding the cracks and seeping into the deepest places in me. I think that’s what the feminine does in a man—connects him to the depths, and somehow forms a bridge to his own hidden self.”

Suddenly, I remembered the gardener's offer, "About your offer for a tour, yes, that would be nice! Let me rest on that bench over there for a bit. I need to take in and absorb all the beauty down here. I had forgotten this Private Garden even existed, and I have never managed to enter into this place—it has always been blocked. Who cleared the entrance?" The gardener’s smile widens, but no words come. Instead, they gesture to the bench as if the question had already been answered.

I finally collapse onto the bench and look around. It is beautiful here, impossibly so—but I have no recollection of actually entering.

The lower entrance—at the end of the corkscrewed stair a thousand miles deep—has always been impenetrable. I search my memories for a clue, a pattern, a pre-existing condition that might explain my arrival in this inward place. One thread glints in the weave: suffering. Yes, it was suffering—or rather, the desperation suffering breeds—that drove me to descend. Each time, the descent was a pilgrimage through a blackness so thick it felt like weather—humid, pressing, without edges. And somewhere in that darkness, a Handless Maiden moved in me: tugging, beckoning, whispering. She could not clear the path herself, yet she knew the way. And at the bottom, the entrance was always barricaded—knotted thorns, briars, and the poisonous Machineel sealing the gate. I would try to clear it, but each attempt left me pierced, bleeding profusely. Over time, that became its function for me: the Garden was not a refuge, but a place to bleed, and in bleeding, to Feel—raw, unpleasant, but real. And yet, here I am now, sitting inside. The thistles are gone. The briars, vanished.

“Who cleared the way? And at what cost?” I think to myself.

"We cleared them together." said the gardener. Dumbfounded, I look its way, puzzled. Was I talking to myself or...how did the gardener know what I was thinking just now? "Well, you cleared them. I just directed you from afar. I was on the other side, in here, but we learned how to cooperate. It was that very same feminine energy that brokered communication between us. Most men cannot descend here as they have no resonance with their disowned Feminine. She has been banished, severed by the sword. And above…”—the gardener’s eyes glance upward, toward the unseen swamp—“…a cultural Thing roams about, called It-ness. Rampant objectification. It was once a subtle habit of the human heart, but has now swollen into a vast machine—fed by technology and broadcast without pause. It mutilates by turning relationships into transactions and people into instruments. Up there, even the most tender seed of Feeling is trampled before it can root. The air itself smells of circuitry and utility. It-ness does not sleep. And it will not stop.”

The gardener’s voice softens, though the weight remains. “A Divine Breath of the Feminine is desperately needed above. Without her, the function of Feeling withers. But…” the gardener smiles faintly, “we are getting ahead of ourselves.”

I reflect on the gardener’s words for a while. I can’t tell if thinking is talking or talking is thinking in this mysterious place. This time, I most certainly speak aloud, for I want to know more about this Handless Maiden—the Feminine.

“That is interesting. There is much to unpack in what you’ve said. Come to think of it, I have always been sensitive to Life. Perhaps my experience of Mutilation was, in some paradoxical way, a blessing—however insane that sounds. I’ve often wondered, ‘Where does all my empathy come from? Is it nature? Nurture? A quirk of personality?’ No… that never felt right. It was only recently I concluded it must have come from my Horror experience, along with that Sacred Tear deposited by The Eyeless. Perhaps it was the unforgettable shriek of The Mother—the Banshee’s Voice. Yes… perhaps that was my first true encounter with what we call the Feminine—the feeling function—though I experienced it without knowing. I heard it with my ears as I witnessed with my eyes.” I fall silent, wonder curling around me. Have I made a connection with my Self?

The gardener has one hand on the chin with the other hand acting as a prop beneath the elbow. A contemplative expression is etched into the gardener's face. "This topic is of great interest to me. Let us start our tour, shall we?" The gardener beckons me to follow. I stand up to stretch. I need to gather myself. Something about the gardener radiates wisdom and life. I need to pay attention and Feel its words. It speaks in a different language almost—a transition from words to symbols perhaps?

“Over there is the Wellspring,” the gardener says, gesturing toward a pool whose surface barely ripples. “It descends another thousand miles beneath even this place, down to the essence of who you are—where Spirit and Soul converge. To drink from it is to drink the nectar of death: The Midnight Hymn.”

I narrow my eyes—part suspicion, part curiosity. “Why would anyone do that? What kind of alchemy produces something like this? And what does it actually do to a person?”

The gardener’s voice drops into a low, deliberate cadence. “It is the alchemy of relinquishment. One drinks deeply in order to expand. Ego becomes subdued in that nectar, and in the process comes a widening of the borders of the Self. ‘You’ expands; ‘not you’ contracts. In this way, the ‘them’ and the ‘it’ dissolve—not through erasure, but through expansiveness.”

The gardener lets the words hang in the air. The silence is not empty—it feels like it’s weighing me, testing the shape of my hesitation.

“Your capacity to love changes,” the gardener continues at last. “It becomes unvarnished, stripped of transaction. You look at another and see God looking back at you. Even the plainest face becomes a portrait of Beauty. Even what once repulsed becomes a form you can hold without turning away. This is the work of the Wellspring.”

Something in me shifts. My suspicion hasn’t vanished, but it’s now threaded with a strange ache. “Most interesting. I want that. I need that.”

I grasp the winch and begin to turn. The rope creaks, heavy and damp, each pull straining my shoulders. It feels like hours before the bucket appears, coated in age and dripping. Inside is a thick, black liquid—viscous, glistening under the garden light.

“Go ahead, drink!” the gardener says.

“It looks disgusting!” I blurt, the first hints of fear wrapping around me.

“Disgust, yes—you are right. But it transforms disgust, making the mouth agape so it can swallow Value. Drink. Drink deep into your soul. Drink from The Midnight Hymn. Beauty will prevail.” The gardener steps closer, eyes fixed on mine. “This alchemical process is called eucontamination—a word the outer world has only recently learned. It cleanses by contact, reversing the logic of disgust and contamination.”

The words pierce me. The gardener isn’t speaking to me—it is speaking into me. “Love,” it says, “is the eucontaminant.”**

I hesitate—just for a heartbeat—then tip the bucket back and drink. Every. Last. Drop.

It takes only thirty three seconds for my vision to change. The garden sharpens. Vibrancy. Edges. Light refracted like crystal. Beauty has been… recalibrated. No—that’s not it. I feel value all around me.

It is as though I now have two sets of eyes. The first are physical, bound to subject and object. The second are Spirit, operating only through Feel. They cannot see things—only verbs. Actions. Movement. The hidden shape of a soul behind an action. Invisible longings.

The gardener breaks the silence. “Shall we move on? I am glad you dared to drink from the Wellspring. Most do not. Disgust can be a difficult thing to overcome. The emotion of disgust is powerful.”

I clear my throat. “I do have one more question…” My voice is quieter now. “How does the bucket get filled with new substance? And where does it come from?”

The gardener lowers its gaze, fingers tapping the handle of the plowshare. It is weighing something. After a long moment, it speaks. “It is through your suffering—and that of The Suffering Servant. The Wellspring is filled when you contend with suffering, sorrow, grief, and joy. Any wanting inside a person will, by necessity, lead to contention with these four.”

My eyes glaze over as I turn the words in my mind. “It seems all of life is—at the end of the day—really just about how we contend with these four experiences: suffering, sorrow, grief, and joy. The sculpting of one’s internal face is somehow chiseled, formed, refined, and illuminated by one’s contentions. I wonder how…” I drift into the thought, but the gardener’s voice cuts through the haze.

“Let us sit at The Table next. Come, follow.”

The gardener’s arm settles lightly around my shoulders, its face lit with quiet anticipation. We walk like old friends in a park, unhurried, taking in the flowers and the shifting air, until a glossy wooden table comes into view. It seats twelve. Around it blooms a riot of color—flowers of every shape and size, each one leaning slightly toward the center as if drawn by some invisible warmth.

“Have a seat, and let us enjoy each other’s company. This is a place of Hospitality. Guests who feast here carry that hospitality back to the outer world,” the gardener says, resting its palms on the table’s edge. “I know your sojourning has brought great conflict to your soul. The contagion above vexes you. Only hospitality can bring the sustenance your soul needs.”

“The Table does not differentiate friend from foe. It welcomes the strangest of strangers, the most other of others, the most foreign of foreigners. It nourishes the malnourished and connects the disconnected. Hospitality feeds the soul.” The gardener pauses, eyes scanning the flowers as if weighing whether to continue.

I lean in. “How does this relate to the contagion above? What does feasting here actually do in the outer?”

“What I am about to say will sound… esoteric,” the gardener replies, voice low. “Feasting at the Table brings attunement—it connects Self with Source, the primal of life itself. Language can’t capture what happens inside the hungry who feast here.

“It awakens the awareness of Encounter above—true subject-to-subject meeting. Your feeling function will stir with resonance inside you when you encounter Encounter itself.

“The contagion that has been metastasizing above for hundreds of years is the woundedness embedded in Western individualism. It is disconnection from Self. It is that mechanical IT-ness, breeding only subject-to-object experience. In the swamp of Things, Encounter rarely grows. Only utility and instrumentality take root there. And with them comes the cancer of the soul—the effacement of the feeling function, the negation of Value, the inability to find joy, worth, or meaning. The ineffable—love, kindness, friendship, generosity, beauty—loses its lustre.”

The gardener finishes and lowers its gaze, solemnity painting its face. Then—without warning—it begins to weep. The tears run dark, red as fresh blood. I blink, and the red becomes clear, salty wetness. Another blink, and the red returns. I glance to the gardener’s side—there is a deep crimson stain there. Wound or symbol, perhaps both. Some piercing has taken place.

The gardener unfolds a napkin and blots its glowing cheeks. “Are you hungry or thirsty? There is much in the way of sustenance at The Table. Simply imagine, and it will appear. Let us feed the souls of the poverty-stricken and oppressed. Feasting here brings Encounter out there, made discernible through what you experience right now.”

I close my eyes and imagine. Platters emerge: a bowl of olives glistening with oil, bread still warm enough to steam, wedges of cheese collapsing under their own weight, fruit splitting open to reveal jeweled insides, a bottle of wine catching the light.

We dine for hours—laughing, trading stories, lingering in the presence of one another. Somewhere in the rhythm of bite and sip, I realize what is happening. This is attunement. The movements inside me are not abstract; they are felt. Recognizable. This is Encounter. This is resonance.

I take inventory of the sensation—a deep, quiet place where Spirit and Body converge. Stillness, presence, and awareness seem to be the only conditions under which Encounter can swirl, pressing at the edges, asking to be born into actuality.

The gardener sets down its fork and knife, meeting my gaze. “This is the resonance required to dispense Life. Equilibrium of body, soul, and spirit. A reclamation of your feminine and masculine disowned parts. As you become more conscious, your connection with all forms of matter changes—nature, people, life itself. What we might call The Hospitableness of Life.”

The gardener stops speaking. A flicker of hesitation passing across the face, as if wondering whether this is more than I can yet bear.

“I think I see what you’re saying. I have much to… not learn—no, that’s not right—much to feel. Thinking will not take me there.”

A large grin forms on the gardener’s face.

“Then it is time I bid you farewell, Ryan. I’ll give you directions to The Cabin, but the walk is yours alone. Down that path, then turn left. You’ll cross a drawbridge—follow it to your abode. But before you go, I have something for you.”

Curiosity prickles through me. “What is it?”

The gardener reaches into its apron and withdraws three envelopes—two white with black lacquer seals, one black with a white seal. Their weight feels disproportionate to their size.

“These hold the echoes of your pain and your longings,” the gardener says. “Think of the thorns, the Machineel, the years when the entrance to the garden would not open. These are for you to carry, not yet to open. In time, perhaps you’ll see that sometimes it is in death that beauty prevails.”

We embrace—slowly, without hurry, the kind of hug that communicates what words cannot. “Peace be with you, friend.”

The gardener smiles faintly, eyes bright. “And also with you.”

I turn toward the path, the weight of the envelopes pressing gently against my side, the scent of tilled earth lingering as I step toward the direction of The Cabin.

After walking about a mile, I reach the turn the gardener described. The path bends left, leading to a small wooden bridge arched over a lush stream. I stop in the middle, breathing in the untainted air. Below, water moves with a patient certainty. Flowers exhale their scent into the wind. Trees whisper in a tongue older than language. The Legless, the Mouthless, and the Earless are all present—each bearing its own kind of knowing—coexisting in simultaneity. For a moment, I am simply there with them, as if the outer world has no claim on me.

At last, I continue. The path winds gently for twenty minutes until I come upon two massive boulders draped in green moss. Between them, a narrow passage invites me forward. I step through and find myself in a wide, open field carpeted in deep green grass.

At the field’s center stands a small cabin of cedar and Ipe wood, warm in color and scent. I linger for a moment, scanning the perimeter, taking in the quiet embrace of the place. The air here feels thick with welcome. Slowly, I walk the hundred yards to the shaded entrance, where an oak door waits. There is no need to knock—this is my Cabin, after all. A space shaped by my own becoming, and waiting for me to inhabit it fully.

I step into the Cabin, and at once a strange wholeness enfolds me—a completeness that feels both foreign and deeply familiar. It is my first time crossing this threshold, yet the space greets me like an old friend. The single room is quiet, but its stillness is deceptive. My eyes adjust, and I am startled: the place is almost an exact replica of my living quarters from 2007—my outer world, fifteen years ago—when my life was in disarray.

The room seems to hold the disowned parts of my Self from those years, frozen in time. A bed, unmade for what feels like an age, draped with soft bamboo sheets that seem to beckon me to lie down and surrender. Scattered across the floor are books, their pages torn and curling, as if the words themselves tried to escape. Wrinkled clothes lie in chaotic heaps. Pots and pans are strewn in the kitchen, ringed with mold and algae where stagnant water has kissed the iron.

The air is thick—dank with the scent of neglect and the quiet heaviness of things left unattended. I clear a small corner of the sofa, pushing aside debris, and sink into it. My body feels heavier than it has in years. Fatigue takes me quickly. My eyelids drop.

And then, a dream rises—vivid, insistent. A memory, yet not a memory. Symbols woven into movement, colors, and sound. It is as if my unconscious has been waiting for this moment to speak—a puzzle pressing itself into my awareness, begging not merely to be seen, but to be read and decrypted:

The dream sharpens into focus. An image forms—a White Straitjacket, stark and blinding against the darkness. On its chest, a large cross is scrawled in ashen charcoal, rough and uneven, as though drawn in haste but with deep conviction and desparation. I circle to its back. In bold block letters, one word is emblazoned: REFORMED. Beneath it, in delicate cursive, three phrases stare me in the eyes: Sola Scriptura. Sola Fide. Sola Gratia.

The image hovers, heavy with meaning, and then dissolves as suddenly as it appeared. My stomach lurches. A nausea coils through me, deep and sour—an ulcer in the soul.

Another vision flashes, more violent this time. A human heart—raw, red, and beating—is impaled on a towering pike. Around it, the ground bristles with picket signs, each bearing words that once claimed to be truth:

“If YOU LOVE ME, YOU WILL OBEY!”

“HE WHO BEGAN A GOOD WORK…”

“ALL THINGS WORK TOGETHER…”

“DEPRAVITY!”

“TEAR ASUNDER”

“YOUR LOVE IS VILE”

Then, movement—sudden, frenzied. A man in his thirties stands before the pike, fists pounding the impaled heart with relentless fury. His knuckles are stripped of skin, raw to the bone, but he does not stop. The heart continues to beat—slow, labored—thirty-three beats per minute. The exact age of the man striking it.

I strain to see his face.

And then I know.

It is me, beating my own heart, in pugilistic rage.

The blinded derelict snarls—a sound halfway between an animal’s warning and a human sob. His breath is ragged, metallic with the scent of blood and rot. He tries to wrench himself free from my grip, but my hands stay—gentle yet immovable—on his shoulders.

“You think this beating will save you?” I whisper. “You think pain is the only language worth speaking? It is not. You have mistaken the sound of your own suffering for the voice of truth.”

His head jerks toward the pike as if pulled by invisible chains. The letters carved into his forehead—S.O.S—darken, the grooves filling with fresh blood as though the plea is still being written.

His right eyelid is stapled shut, the skin inked in black with the word Ululation—the letters raw, inflamed, and shimmering in the dim light. His left eyelid is sewn tight, the word Desperation branded upside down from right to left into the lid’s surface, its seared edges weeping a milky-white pus. These are not mere marks; they are lacrimosa made flesh—groanings that see without sight, mourning what cannot yet be redeemed.

I step closer, my forehead almost touching his.

“You are not your mutilations,” I tell him. “There is beauty inside that you cannot see. You are not the venom from the Adder, nor the poison of the Machineel. There is something unburned inside you—something unstabbed, unsewn. You may not see it now, but I will hold it for you until you can.”

The snarling falters—just slightly. His shoulders sag from fatigue, but his face stays fixed toward the pike. The heart still beats—slow, stubborn, unbowed. Thirty-three beats per minute. The number hangs in the air like a code—wound and visitation, lament and presence in the same pulse. A heartbeat like lacrimosa—weeping that refuses to close.

“Who are you and what do you want!?!? Stay away from me! I am anathema. A Leper. An object to be experimented on! Are you another Succubus? A WOE-MAN! I will never…NEVER let my longings bubble oxygen into my drowning nostrils! I will never be another specimen, seduced by the Widow’s Kiss. Weren’t you the one who came before? Knocked on my door, told me I was ‘special’? Boundary-less you came to me—never again will I not say NO! I say it now: NOOOO! Whatever you bring, I don’t want it! Who are you?… get the hell away from me! NO!!! I don’t want what you have to offer, you manipulative Siren!”

Like a dog cornered, trembling, the younger me collapses inward—aware his life has been irrevocably altered.

“Ryan, it’s me,” I say, my voice low and steady. “I bring you good tidings. I wish to give you a portion of your own compassion. You cannot see it yet, but open your eyes and look at me. You will never believe what you see… it is I—or rather, it is you.”

“My eyelids are sewn shut and stapled closed. I cannot see you, nor will I ever. You are hidden from me. You are a Tease, drawn only by my scent. How did you find me? Did you sniff me out? Allured by the scent of my pain? Your eyes are likely stapled shut as well—if you are who you say you are.”

I notice a pulsating glow illuminating from his eye sockets. It’s faint, but with each pulse there’s a subtle fragrance — the same unplaceable note I caught in his words, as though the drink from the Wellspring had left its scent behind. There is something hidden. Grief distilled into salt and light. A Splendor that has yet to be revealed… the scent of something dying beautifully, lingering as if it had soaked into the very air around him. What is behind those eyelids waiting to be seen?

Suddenly I wake from the dream, sweating profusely. The cabin is so messy it looks like a crime scene—as if someone had rummaged through it—but more likely it has been left to decay through years of self-neglect. I shift on the couch to get comfortable and feel the envelopes in my side pocket pressing against my ribs. I pull all three out and set them on the coffee table before leaning back and propping my legs up.

The dream still haunts me, yet there is a strange tranquility here, even in the disarray. My mind drifts to the gardener—The Wellspring, The Table—and the words spoken to me outside The Cabin. My gaze falls to the two white envelopes with black lacquer seals. Each seal bears a word in nearly indecipherable gothic script. One reads Desperation with a date beneath: 03/17/2007. The other reads Ululation, dated 05/04/2007. The dates pull me toward memories of my 33-year-old Self—dark memories from darker times.

I reach for the Desperation envelope first—its date comes earlier. As I lift it, I notice the word matches the one branded into the swollen left eyelid of my 33-year-old Self. The instant the connection lands, my own left eye begins to twitch violently for thirty-three seconds, then stillness.

The seal breaks with a brittle crack.

I draw out the letter — the handwriting is mine, yet it feels like it has crossed decades to find me. It is an artifact from an oubliette of my own making. A faint trace of something—neither perfume nor decay—rises from the paper, like a memory trying to breathe. It carries the same note I once caught in the Midnight Hymn at the Wellspring—something that moved first through the throat, now surfacing through the eyes. I begin to read:

Desperation

Lord as I sit here and think, you are on my mind.  Oh the fear that weaves itself into my soul!  This fear bubbles out of my lips thusly "Art thou with me?"  How could I ask such a question?  The damage caused seems so extensive.  My persistence of being in a relationship with my….. Is that stubbornness?  And if it is, how patient are you with me—a stiffnecked wanderer?  Oh lord, have mercy on me!  I have lost everything it seems.  The fabric of my life is unwoven.  I am named a nomad in the desert.  I call out to you in my heart lord.  I have always had it in my heart to know you and declare you as God—the I AM.  You know as well as I those times in my youth that I acknowledged you—NO! Rather, when you acknowledged me.  That flame has been so dissipated.  How is it not gone as a result of my waywardness?  YHWH!!!!  Hear my disjointed cries.  I am a torn man, a schism, a Raskolnikov.  Might you make me whole?  Only you can shed light; expose; heal.  Lord how do I explain walking down a dismal path such as this—amid your 'supposed' people yet so damaged and having exacted such damage in others?  You have given me over to my ways and let me drink a measure of my cup.  Oh how I long to vomit it out and not drink; yet drink it I must!  May the cries of this reprobate rise through the atmosphere and make their way into your chambers and temple—even penetrate your Ark!  May you sniff me out Lord and breathe upon me a fresh air.  Bandage my feet Lord; grease my joints and direct my ways!  Let this engine I call "my choice" move toward you—wholeness

At exactly the moment I finished the letter—the image of the 33-year-old Me flashes through my mind with the left eye now opened and Splendor bursting forth in radiance. The white milky puss of self-oppression has been lifted, or rather, my consciousness has now been expanded to realize the cry of my heart has somehow, in some way, been honored. I refuse to let my private monologue convince me that 'my prayer has been answered' rather I sit in a state of gratitude that this letter has been honored—personally and cosmically.

I reflect for a moment about how I no longer pray in the manner many are accustomed to. No private dialogue of the mind or spoken word with the lips. Rather, it is something primal waiting to be released: through writing, music, or art...and now accompanied by a connection with Self. Each season acting as a Reclamation of Lost Humanity. Integration. A movement toward wholeness, however incomplete in this lifetime.

I snap out of my private reflection and pick up the other white envelope corresponding to the right eye of the younger Me. I pull it out, unfold the letter, and begin to read:

Ululations of the heart

My God, as I sit and I write this, I am terrified.  Fear encompasses me and walls me in.  Dread and angst speak to me, whispering their names.  Why do I fear you?  Why do I fear more the absence of you?  Hope itself has dripped from the pores of my skin, like blood leaking from an old wound.  Why do I murder hope?  Why do I strangle love?  Why am I hardened to faith?

I don't come to you with questions Lord.  You are not obligated to answer me.  Indeed, You are the Questioner.  You question me, not the other way around.  My heart is far from you Lord.  I want to pursue that which I feel will 'make me happy', however far I flee from You.  I feel more in control that way.  Faith—trusting in you—is so antithetical to my nature.  It seems so impossible.  Walking in the dark, with narry a light to see.  Dying.  Always dying.  Somehow the secret of life is in dying to one's self, or at least the thought has occurred to me. A special kind of rot.

I can't find anything to solve my woes Lord, if I could erect an idol and bow down to it I would.  I have nowhere else to go lord, for every time I flee to something else you seem to come in and afflict me over time.  You let me persist in my hardness for seasons—weeks, months, years—and then you tease me Lord.  You are like a great Tease.  You peek your head from around the corner and whisper my name and beckon me, then you vanish and I am left standing in a dark hall with nothing in sight, no light to guide my way.  Emptiness and silence fill the hall and I am left blinded.  Dead in my tracks.  I can't move forward, nor can I move backward.  WHAT AM I TO DO LORD?  I cannot sit here on my couch each night, contemplating my condition, I will go crazy.  To isolate myself is to die a painful death.  It is a form of rotting.  After all, why is solitary confinement in prison the ultimate form of punishment?  We were made to relate to people.  You put that relational craving in each of us.  So why then should I hide and persist in isolation?  To what end or purpose does it serve?  I won't harm others that way, fine.  But I won't live in any capacity either.

Faith, Hope, and Love.  Can I hope in you Lord?  Might I put my faith in you?  Faith for what?  Faith that you would somehow, someday, love your creation through me, as you see fit and in your good timing.  On my own, and apart from you, I can do nothing.  Nothing which lasts at least. Faith. Hope. Love.  Uncage me Lord, in your good timing.  I'm holding on Lord, but just barely.  Strengthen these wobbly knees, these enfeebled arms of mine.  Mend this broken heart and my broken ways.  Restore this mind to health and use it for your purposes.  Teach me to love others and see them as precious and not look at them for what they can or cannot provide me. Protect me from the enemy: cursed certainty and wretched credulousness!  Shine down your light and expose.  Persevere in me.

Again, the image of the 33-year-old Me flashes through my mind, and now the right eye opens—its lid once stapled—Splendor spilling outward like a sunrise breaking through a storm. The tears of blood that once marked my self-punishment have stilled, leaving the skin tender but unshackled. How could I have written such groanings? I see now they were seeds—buried in darkness—that have somehow, in some way, come to fruit. I have been Uncaged. The Gordian Knot that once cinched the White Straitjacket has slackened, thread by thread, until the fabric falls away. My limbs move again. My breath returns. And in that motion, I discover that truth is not an idea, but a hand held out—first to myself, and then to another—thatTruth is relational.

I sit on the couch for a long time, experiencing Wonder and Awe, wrapped in the blankets of Gratitude and Grief. The Beauty of the moment. Somehow, no suffering is more unendurable than the presence of Beauty that one cannot see or accept—distortedness disfiguring the prism by which we see. There is a wanting inside me. It is palpable.

At last I look down and see the final remaining envelope. It is ebony black, sealed in white lacquer. The code “S.O.S.” is scribed on the seal, along with the date 01/13/2007.

Stunned, I now remember this period vividly. I had just moved into an apartment, separated in a marriage doomed to fail. A decision so misguided and reckless that it would haunt me for many years to come. A spiritual spider web of my own making bound me in naïveté and credulousness—the calculus for how I’d make major life decisions was akin to a wounded duckling crossing a busy highway. My own spiritual bypassing—both a cause and an effect—beckoned me into the realm of an outsourced Self…it would take me many years to escape.

It was with great hesitation that I picked up the black envelope. An ominous foreboding told me this was going to be painful. Something hinted that I would Witness the 33-year-old me in wincing memory. I sat for almost two hours debating whether or not I wanted to break the seal. I thought, ‘How on earth could this be tied to the white envelope letters I read hours ago? Those came after 01/13/2007.’

Then the gardener’s voice returns, steady and unhurried:

“The memories of your pain and your longings. Consider the thorns, thistles, and Machineel blocking the garden years ago.”

Finally, it clicks. The white envelopes were my longings. This black envelope must be the pain.

I take a breath. My hands close around it. I break the seal. I am prepared to drink from the Midnight Hymn—a dangerous sacrament the pious call apostasy, but which heaven itself names metanoia.

My Lamentation

"Why?  Why all this pain?  I have given up on God.  He is a capricious bastard.  I fucking give up the one person I truly love, my inamorata, to try to “do the right thing and reconcile” compelled by 'obedience'.  Only to wound and mar in the process.  I let myself get fucking controlled by coercive religious BULLSHIT.  I want to destroy my longings.  I want to strangle my masculinity by the throat. I want to carve out my heart and put it on a pike and BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF IT.   I’ve never wanted to love somebody as much as I’ve wanted to love you, inamorata.  If it wasn’t for this FUCKING BULLSHIT self-imposed oppressive FUCKING BULLSHIT system I have erected and clung to in my life.  It has betrayed me.  I condemn it, I curse it, and fucking spit on it.  How could I have been so stupid?  I get a taste of something good, and then I hope, and I trust, and then I get it ripped away from me in the name of 'obedience'.  AND THE WORST FUCKING PART IS THAT I HAVE NOBODY TO BLAME BUT ME.  *I* have caused all of this.  FUCKING ME.  FFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKK.  Woe is me.  WOE IS ME.

I sit in this apartment and I weep.  I mourn.  I grieve.  This loss is unbearable.  I’m going to die.  How do I obtain relief from this affliction?  “Let go of the dream”, how? HOW?  HOW? As long as I am in bondage to this FUCKING HIDEOUS form of religious crap, I am a viper that is incapable of anything but venom.  I could only produce wounds, not bind wounds.  I could only deliver harm and not protection.  I have to leave this putrid cage of rotted wood…"

Finally, it ends. The vivid image of the S.O.S carved into the forehead of 33-year-old me vanishes, replaced by a white circle—almost Eucharistic—suspended against a black ashen aura. Purity, unmarred, yet ringed in shadow. The two do not cancel one another; they remain, side by side, bound in a strange and solemn marriage.

It is the beauty of darkness that does not erase the light, and a light that does not sanitize the dark. An unholy communion I have carried all my life without naming—until now.

I close my eyes and inhale deeply to begin the process of Holding. The air bites my lungs. It is the sharp vapor of muriatic acid—its nature to strip, to dissolve, to eat away at what is calcified. I feel it working inside me, softening the hardened places, loosening the encrusted layers of years-old rigidity. It burns, but it makes space.

The Holding

I transport myself back in time. Current me enters the dank apartment of 33-year-old me. I open the door and begin talking in a loud voice, “Ryan, it is me again. Come out and see yourself! You have much to be hopeful for! The Mutilated Man has been integrated and we have been uncaged! The entrance to the Private Garden within has been cleared, leave everything and follow me!”

But all the rooms are empty. Nobody is there. The stillness tells me he’s already gone—not taken, not lost, but gone by his own choosing. He has crossed a threshold without me, stumbling forth into the unknown with the unsteady resolve of someone who knows there is no going back—only becoming.

In the small kitchen, pinned onto the refrigerator door is a folded note labeled: TO MY PURSUER. I lift the magnet and unfold the piece of paper. It reads:

“I am not sure who you are or why you are looking for me, you mysterious Pursuer. I have decided that it is finally time to choose for the first time in my life. And to own that choice. There is an infinite chasm between obey and follow—the former is susceptible to self-coercion, the latter to self-deceit. There is something about your presence, even if I can’t see it…I sense something beautiful—a longing that is safe to hold. Something that isn’t transactional. Something devoid of instrumentality. I want to see myself one day—clearly, or at least clearer. To see my face one day.

If you are reading this note, then you most likely know how the story plays out. I am taking the Leap into the Abyss—it is either some kind of absurd faith or a form of internal suicide…reckless abandon. I have come to a point where I must apostatize in order to actualize Faith, making metanoia possible. I must drink my cup, and drink it I will. Weep for me, you who are reading this. I can no longer shackle myself to the jail masquerading as ‘freedom.’ It is time to leave the cage of rotten wood. And stumble forth I will…”

The Exhalation

Sitting back in The Cabin, I notice movement far away in the corner of my eye. I walk to the window and look out beyond the field. A large wooden cage stands beneath the open sky, the gardener beside it. Inside, a small lamb trembles, barely able to stand.

She opens the cage, and something in me loosens with it. The lamb bursts into the lush garden, its legs unsure but its joy unbound.

The gardener kneels, arms spread wide. For 33 minutes the lamb hesitates, as if testing the air for something it has always longed for but never fully trusted. At last, it steps forward and presses into her hands, bunting with an ecstasy so tender it feels like my own.

And then — like the flicker of a hidden lamp — I see it: the curve of her cheek, the knowing in her eyes, the way her breath meets mine. She is not separate from me. The gardener is the Divine Feminine that has been waiting within, patient as a seed in winter—a woman-shaped incarnation of what has been quietly forming in me all along.

I turn from the window only to find that The Cabin has been transformed: the bed is made, the kitchen clean, the living room in order. The air holds the quiet after a deep exhale.

I climb into the bed and let the sheets hold me. Sleep takes me whole, and I return to the outer world replenished and restored. A Reclamation has taken place — the breath of the Divine Feminine moving through a man, one more step toward wholeness and healing.

(This piece is my way of befriending, claiming, and integrating my current Self with my 33-year-old Self. My previous piece, Act 1 of my 'Reclamation of Lost Humanity' series, focused on the integration of my 5-year-old Self with my 33-year-old Self and the narrative I used to construct meaning from experience. My focus with this piece is on exploring the feminine side of masculinity and the ways we can look inward to restore Western Individualism's fatal wound—the dissolved feeling function and the subconscious tendency we have to treat others as mere objects of instrumentality and utility.

It was recently that I was rummaging through my old emails looking for something and, strangely, I found each of the three 'letters' I had written back in 2007 in emails. I winced and wept reading My Lamentation and I needed to explore that. I felt something very real inside me so I decided to sit with it and hold it. This blog entry serves the function of exhaling and emitting a part of myself into the world. I am so much more than this blog…but certainly not less. If you have read this far, you honor me and I want nothing more than to honor you in whatever authentic way I can)

With warm regards,

Ryan

** For further reading on the concept of eucontamination along with the logic of disgust; see Billie and Paul Hoard's published journal titled 'Eucontamination: A Christian Study in the Logic of Disgust and Contamination'