I’m Connie White and my story is about a lifetime of trying to solve all the problems and mysteries surrounding me. For example, how did I think, for so many years, that the IFB was the only cult to which I had ever belonged? In fact, I had went from one to the next and so forth. I could say it started when I was born into fundamentalism. That made my mind ripe for the picking even after I left. The irony is that psych nursing became my passion even while I was unknowingly operating from a cult mindset.
I had been too busy learning the psychology of other people, to thoroughly exam my own!
When I finally recognized my own repeating patterns, I knew there had to be something about me that made me a susceptible candidate. I felt ashamed for being so arrogant while I was completely unaware that I was being tricked on a grand scale. The death of my shame ran parallel to the death of my naïvety. And the latter was fast-tracked after I ate from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
But before the forbidden fruit, came the BBL.
Plastic surgery was definitely one way I tried to kill shame, specifically, my body shame. It was that unrelenting pain after the liposuction that made me try Marijuana. Ganga later opened my mind to Mushrooms which, in turn, opened my mind to Ayahuasca. In the beginning, after I first met Mary Jane, I refused to believe that she was a gateway drug. As far as I was concerned, that was just her haters talking. I was her lover.
In a nutshell, that’s how my BBL seemingly accelerated my enlightenment journey.
It triggered a domino effect. I could’ve just as easily chosen breath work or cold water swimming instead of marijuana as pain management options. But I had little to no knowledge of either outside of Lamaze or the cliche advice, just breathe. Yoga class is where I learned breath-work. And I didn’t go to yoga until after I met Mary Jane. And I didn’t know about cold water swimming or plunging until after I was introduced to yoga. But it doesn’t matter, because each of those are enlightenment accelerants on their own. And so now, I understand the wise master’s words.
“Quick is not always safe (and) you are only looking for what is within you. Why should it take time? Enlightenment itself doesn’t take time. For you to become willing, you may take time.” ~Sadhguru
Yoga, that other forbidden thing I did, was demonic, or so I had been taught.
After my first class, which I thought would be a breeze, I scoffed at the idea. It had been crazy hard but not demonic. The whole reason I even went was because a coworker at the crisis line invited me to go with her. At the last minute, she cancelled. But for some reason, I still went. I kept going and eventually, I decided to become a teacher. But somewhere between my first class as a student, and my enrollment into teacher training, I experienced a very significant and prolonged episode of back pain.
And then there had been those strange symptoms which started after I began practicing yoga. I couldn’t find anything from the allopathic world with which to diagnose myself. All my research led to one thing, kundalini syndrome. At the moment I understood that woo-woo diagnosis as a real thing, I also understood why I had been taught that yoga was demonic. And though I couldn’t quite articulate it then, I understood that my kundalini energy had been awakened. And as it arose, it was running into my demons which blocked its path. That sounds crazy, though.
So, did my BBL actually trigger a trip into spiritual psychosis instead of enlightenment?
That is a question which in retrospect, I have asked myself many times. Of course, back when I was diagnosing myself with kundalini syndrome, I certainly wasn’t pondering that. In fact, I had been rather pleased with my spiritual progress between my first yoga class in December of 2015 and February of 2020, which was when my (below) aura photo was taken.
By then, I had overcome so much. During teacher training, I had relapsed back into a state of severe pain. And this time it was worse than any other. It was unbearable. An MRI revealed multiple herniated discs. I found myself wondering if my butt was too heavy for my tender Marfan Syndrome spine to carry. But that was just my poor self image talking. Before teacher training, I had been so fit and shapely from practicing yoga. The real issue was that I had pushed myself beyond my limit, my Marfan Syndrome limit.
I never wanted to admit there was anything genetically “wrong” with me. But I just couldn’t do yoga for hours a day which in teacher’s training. I had no choice but to drop out of the program. I could barely walk or sit upright. Anyhow, by the time I had that aura photo taken, I had managed to master the pain. I had not become homeless as I feared I would. I had learned how to heal my back without surgery. I was enrolled in a massage therapist program and I believed that I was close to mastering the law of attraction. My aura, along with my naïvety was magnificent.
Back when I was learning how to heal my back without surgery, I studied everything I could find. I had learned about the psoas muscle both from a scientific and spiritual perspective. I was absolutely fascinated and I wanted to teach what I had learned. That’s when I decided to study massage therapy. So, I was absolutely delighted to learn that unlike my old nursing school, the massage school I had chosen, had a strong spiritual focus on wellness.
There, I was taught something I had already learned from the University of YouTube, that the psoas is the muscle of the soul.
The pic above is post BBL but before the pull of a tight psoas.
While I was in massage school, my body was strong and thriving much like it was back when I first started doing a reasonable (for me) amount of yoga. I was not just giving massages but also receiving them many times a week. We practiced on each other. I truly believed that my tight psoas, my sacral dysfunction and my herniated discs were all something from the past.
COVID came before I graduated. And sometime after the lockdowns stopped, I attended my first Ayahuasca ceremony. Very gradually, I started to become sick or at least more sick than I already was from self-diagnosed long COVID. And once again, I was riddled with pain. For a long time, I didn’t make the correlation between my consumption of the plant and the timing of the returning symptoms. I was sick all the time and my right hip was frequently in a state of subluxation. I was crooked both in the physical and in the metaphysical.
Once again, I was living with the pull of a tight psoas.
The pic above is after the pull of a tight psoas and of course, after the BBL.
I felt like I was dying because I was dying. I remember when I finally realized that. Marijuana, yoga, mushrooms, breath-work, the physical pain and the cold water swimming were like slow bullets that killed me. I regenerated after each and came back stronger than before. But Ayahuasca was like the fast missile that killed me. Only after consuming that forbidden fruit, did I fully understand Sadhguru‘s words, “Quick is not always safe.”
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die ~ Genesis 2:17.
I understand now why it has been said that Ayahuasca, along with LSD, is the drug that can fracture the mind. At least for me, the effect of the plant didn’t just last for twelve hours or so. No, it has been like a long acting drug that releases over a lifetime. It never stops. There is no unknowing and no going back. And of course, I did it enough times that I can’t deny being a psychonaut.
It made me see that everything I thought I knew was really a part of some illusion. I had thought I was mastering the art of creation through being a high vibrational being. But then Ayahuasca made me see my nakedness, my ability to be tricked and my ability to fool myself. I was like the narcissistic emperor with no clothes. Or maybe, I was like Eve who had an unquenchable thirst for wisdom.
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. ~ Genesis 3:6-7a
I’m convinced that the ability to see one’s own metaphorical nakedness produces the shame which triggers the humiliation ritual. And for me, nakedness meant everything hidden from myself. It included my naïveté, foolishness, arrogance, bitterness, hatred, etc. Seeing my nakedness brought me not just to my knees, but also to my death. The humiliation ritual is death. Shame is the last to die and its dissolution signifies the end of the ritual. Rebirth then moves to the forefront.
There is much more to my story. Like I didn’t even mention that I’ve been stalked since at least my early twenties. And that was a very long time before I ever tried drugs. It was only after the fact that I realized my consumption of plants more or less ruined my opportunity to tell my stalking story in a believable way. People could just say that drugs put me into psychosis. But then again, long before I tried drugs, when I told certain people about the stalking, they said I was crazy. So I guess it doesn’t matter much, after all.
After Ayahuasca, I was forced to evaluate whether or not I actually was or had ever been crazy. While interpreting my spiritual nakedness, I stumbled into some interesting ideas. I learned there is a link between Schizophrenia and Shamanism. I also discovered a link between connective tissue disorders (like Marfan Syndrome) and Autism. And then I learned of links between Autism, spirituality and telepathy. I’m talking about pseudo-science. Whether or not the DSM-V says there is links, is irrelevant to me. Don’t get me wrong, I very much respect it and find it helpful.
But my experience and observations will never be undermined by the psychiatric Bible, a book of other people’s interpretations.
P.S. I also haven’t told you what in the world Tenderloin has to do with anything. But it is all here in my blog which is compiled scrapbook style. It includes vlogs, photos and excerpts from my diaries and journals.