Dear Jirka,
where are you? I know you’re dead but where are you?
I wish I knew, I’m glad I don’t – the great Unknown and how it would suck to not have it be unknown anymore. I don’t want that, I hope you now know and I hope there’s goodness in it. Boon – a new word I learned today.
((I decided you don’t want to learn German in your after-life so I’m writing in English.))
So many things move me, but I’m trying to catch something that matters.
We’re sitting in a session, Jirka, and I feel ashamed and sad because all that I can bring up is to sit on the client’s chair. We need to listen to our clients, no, and get them to express themselves. And it needs to be real, in the body. You can’t do that any more.
I just stumbled across notes from our last session in June. I didn’t know it would be the last one. Yes Psychoenergetics ended in some way (and we thought that was a shock, little did we know) but I somehow assumed we’d meet again in some space, where I’d get to witness your skills as practitioner some more. You have the graduate’s shimmer, you know, that little light glimmering from doing this work over years, loving it, struggling with it, running from it, meeting it again in the bar with shared laughter, dancing, in others. You’ve grown so much.
I am outraged that that has ended. Not because you decided to end your life. I have both compassion and maybe some understanding how that might have felt like a friendly decision, compared to feeling completely engulfed in despair and hopelessness.
We ought to share our suffering, our pain, with each other, no? It needs courage, active doing – and if it happens because we do it, yes, that is hope. That has touched me in the last 2 weeks, you know, that definition of hope. Not something we have, but something we do. Through sharing. Psychoenergetics teaching in a nutshell.
I believe this kind of hope to be true with all my heart.
When I first heard about your death, it went very fast that some of my shock manifested over how lonely you must have been. I’ve told close friends over the years quite some times: Suicide is horrible, I wish someone would sit with a person who decides to do that, so they don’t have to be alone when they die, they just shouldn’t be alone with it. And I was shocked that you didn’t share – because you know how to do it. And you have people who – sorry for the slight narcissism in this (…) – really really know how to do this. Not perfectly, but very good enough.
A day later, I reflected on what had been shared amongst our community, how you just came back from a retreat and there was hope in you, and then how you lost it again and that must have been already very close to your death. And it struck me how you DID share about it, cause else how would we know all this.
How it’s out of control how life happens. It’s wild and at times merciless.
Das Schicksal, ein mieser Verräter. Fate, a lousy traitor.
Why wasn’t it enough if you did share, it should be enough to have prevented this.
You’re teaching me a very hard lesson – there’s no way to control fate. I realized, also because I wasn’t the only one putting that into words – how come this is possible – doing years of PSEN, graduating, … Doesn’t happen to those people. Does it. Does it? Does it not?
I have some new honesty with myself here, and that is that I somehow assumed, phantasized and not even consciously, that in doing all this work I’ll be protected from harm. As if my graduation piece of paper had written on it “Barbara from now on shall be protected from any suicidal tensions and she shall now know how to deal with fresh trauma”.
I admit I still think my chances stand better with the work I’ve done than without… But I also see the world might hit me with all the life-force it has, and it’s not always the Unicorn part, is it, else your Unicorn University tshirt should have worked the miracle of safeguarding you from death.
I’m also seeing how I treat the world the same – wishing to have control over fate. Politics… I can tell you this because I remember when we shared about Vaclav Havel. Or when we rode the taxi with the taxi driver – was he from Russia? – who shared with us about the war his country had freshly started, another one of those shock-moments that happened during a PSEN week. I’ll miss to share these shocks in the future with you, we have so many of them, our support can’t just die away. Or can it?
I’m so scared – if I see my prevention-control-strategy didn’t work for you – it’s also not likely to work for me – or the world. I always had this feeling of comfort the Holocaust gave me – it’s been so horrendous it’ll never happen again to us, that’s what gives it some sense in all its horror, and look at all the work we’ve put into speaking about it, … It was my feeling of security that the democracy I live in could never stumble. Or can it?
What gets me angry – inexplicably angry – is a feeling that we need to interpret where you are right now. And HOW you are. If you’re in the dark. If there’s light. If you’ll be screwed for the next couple of centuries (a slightly nicer version of this came up today). Some gruesome details from Buddhist theory came up before, too, and all in me says NO.
I thank God – whoever she is – that you did not end your life in a time where that would have meant to not get a decent funeral or some other weirdness around it – a moment of despair is enough.
Jirka, listen to me if you can.
I am with you. I know we were not that close. I mourn because thinking about the relationship we had, being allowed that non-super-closeness and still sharing with you what we did with our hearts – that is very special and important to me. It matters for my life, thus it stays alive with me.
I can only talk about my belief and how it stirs me.
I do believe you might be moving through the despair. Just because if something continues, your body is missing, my friend, that beautiful body that brings us the best sense of reality we got. Probably the anxiety yours was holding is also missing, I wish very much for that, you’ve struggled with that so much.
And here’s something that moves me – I have a choice. I can choose to believe in hope. It’s not the same as the hope-stuff on listening to our suffering. Well maybe it is. Because I firmly and – una más – with all my heart – believe in that my listening to you now will bring you into that open space of the Unknown. That part, where you want to go and explore the void you’re in. Well not mine alone, but so many people are listening and speaking to you right now. There’s great beauty to it. And great sadness.
What I don’t get is that all those theories of what happens after suicide, don’t consider the impact that contact has. As if there’s no loved ones that care to shine light into our despair and darkness.
This is PSEN, Jirka. You thought you’d be out of the process game when dead? I read today that you’re likely in the dark and it’ll take you centuries to get out of there. WTF.
Don’t they know, these theories, that I will certainly die before the end of centuries. More likely before this one ends. Not sure when. But when I do, I’ll come check on you. If I get distracted in eternal not-quite-Nirvana-yet process shit as well, you know what? A massive PSEN group will all be dead as well. They’ll come and find you, Jirka, I feel that field. I feel it when we mourn. I say no to giving up that hope.
And I’m stirred you know because Michael gave some class today from the Heroes Journey, online, and I felt so sad because of course – classic – it was about loss and mourning, happening to be the theme for this week. And I felt so sad and not willing to share at all, also not knowing how to, and whenever trying to grasp it inside of me – whoosh there it went. Like the wind.
Anyhow it was about letting go. Of the good things that are lost and impossible to bring back. Guess where the crying started. I could only take it because I saw and felt Michael mourning as well. I think else I’d have gotten angry at him or anyone naming that.
I was also glad this was online only. I would have held back had we sat there in 3D and also had people seen me on screen. I told myself several times that it’s okay to cry and lose it cause I can’t disturb anyone with camera and sound off. And shouldn’t I let go of it anyhow and it doesn’t feel as if I’m doing that really. I don’t know what’s going on in my grieving process with you, Jirka, it feels a lot of times as if however I do it, I do it wrong. So much self-blame, so much shame. And then I look at what has happened – and I think it’s a very very bad idea to continue to do this.
Right there is where I kill myself despite being alive.
Of course Michael said something about the clarity that mourning brings.
It’s just – if I let go of my control. Wanting to control my fate. Fate in general. Then how do I do that without losing hope?
I also didn’t share this, because I successfully self-judged the image that came up within me – an anger at the phantasy of telling Martin Luther King (I’m actually yelling that with my inside, it’s a yelling silence in me that’s yelling this) “Stop having a dream that’s not going to come true”. And then who would he be.
I was also angry at something in the lecture a week earlier. Back when you were still alive. It was your second last day alive. I wonder if you knew.
I think Michael spoke to connecting to something that’s bigger than us, than our lives, than what is happening in the world. Parts of me get him. And this one part gets really really angry – like in yeaaah, let’s just don’t care about the world and feelings are just feelings so let’s just stay in that super spiritual super world (no, no joking now, Jirka) where nothing concerns us. Why don’t we enter Nirvana directly. And let’s contain the paradox – who’s right, A or B? Well just listen to each other’s suffering, it’s all so hopeful, and then if A will have the world or someone go to shit – oh well, bad luck, but we’ll all meet in paradise, centuries sooner or later.
I’m not sure I know how to hope and stick to it when reality lays clearly in front of me.
(I’m using my most sarcastic voice now, also because it’s super nice to not feel ashamed about it with you, that’s one of your qualities) Which was of course the next thing Michael talked about – letting go of something that never was true to begin with.
It matters to have my own belief about what happens after death because – if I knew for sure, something like Buddhism is right and darkness engulfs me should I chose to end my life – it’s as if I have to give up believing in the goodness of the world.
I’m confused now, in that good and hard-to-bear-unknown way, you know.
Goodness in the world might not be so clear to me either.
And I’m sure it’s there. Let’s leave my (now you’re looking quite happy as the session seems to go well, some turning point!) fate-control-freak out for a minute.
(AND you are making a joke about how you feel it in your not-body)
My playlist is NOW playing Wind-of-Change. It’s nice to have a what-if-question with that – what if you’re listening. It doesn’t feel as if I’m writing this from a lonely place.
Sorry, best distraction ever.
I’m procrastinating on the new space, make a remark, Jirka. You’re saying “let’s go back to that fate-control-freak, that sticks out for me”. Thanx.
Here it comes.
I have seen your light, Jirka. I have no idea what comes after death. As I said I love that not-knowing so much, that I’m even open to nothing happening at all, as in we’re just all gone. Sucks to think that which is why I pick a different belief, but it’s possible. A dear friend is very convinced of just that, it doesn’t suck for him. It’s possible you’re in the dark. It’s possible you’ve jumped straight into Nirvana. I DON’T KNOW and I need to ask some people in our chat if they really know, because that means God is walking this earth again (and, as I always suspected, she’s a woman. Or two).
I’m shying away from the seriousness, and it’s fun to laugh with you while you’re in my inner room.
I have seen your light, Jirka. I don’t know about death, but I KNOW you have light. I have witnessed it. I have listened to it. I’ve seen it break through more and more over the years that we’ve known each other.
So if you are still there in some new form, which I believe – YOU HAVE LIGHT.
I can sit with you in your despair. I can sit with you in the freedom that comes with the ability to still take a decision in favor of hope, by leaving a world engulfed in despair. I can sit with you, Jirka. But whatever comes up, whatever is in the room, all the things that I am listening into now, hoping my ears reach you – they are grounded in one fact, and truth matters – you have light. Quite a lot actually. And we’re reflecting it back to you these days. Like we’ve always done, like you’ve done with us.
I wrote an email the other day and I was surprised by something I wrote about your death: Maybe his soul has just made the breakthrough into something where it no longer needs hope, because there hope has long since confirmed itself.
Run with the unicorns, Jirka, and swim with the sharks.
