I'm Afraid Of Desert Critters

I am not a native of Arizona. I am not even sure I am a courageous enough person to live in the desert among the creepy crawlies who enjoy their environment and habitat here. There are many things about the desert that are redeeming and many people, including me, love it. I just wish it felt safer.

When I first arrived it was November. That is the time of year when all the critters go underground and wait to come out when it gets hot again. I had heard tales of them but as yet had not encountered any.

I put my fears in the back of my mind and enjoyed the winter without the tons of snow and overcast skies I had been accustomed. I put my boxes of warm clothes and sweaters away and dealt with the cool evenings by throwing on a light jacket that I only needed sometimes. It was pleasant and I forgot totally about what was coming.

In April I began thinking about the critters after my neighbor reminded me to pay attention where I was walking. That was not a comfortable suggestion, but I took it seriously and walked carefully back to my house.

Several weeks lapsed and I saw nothing scary. I began to get my confidence back again. Not that I stopped looking where I planted my feet, just that I hadn’t seen anything unusual.

Then one day I had a complete turnaround that knocked me for a loop. The first thing that happened was I opened my friend’s gate and started to step through and saw a rattlesnake coiled and sleeping next to the gate. I quickly shut the gate and ran out back to get some help. When we came back the snake was gone. That was extremely disconcerting. Now my fears were real and no longer a myth. Now I understood about watching the ground.

I went into my friend’s house and sat down in the living room for a chat. As we sat there drinking ice tea I saw something crawling up the wall. It was pinkish-clear and shaped like the pictures I’d seen of a scorpion. I tried to be casual in asking what it was, and to my horror, it was indeed a scorpion. My neighbor killed it with her shoe and sat back down and continued the conversation as if nothing had happened.

I was shaking inside but did not want to show my cowaderdness. A little while later, I got up to go to the bathroom and as I went around the corner of the kitchen I stopped in my tracks. On the wall was a huge hairy spiderish looking thing on the wall. It did not look real until I saw it move. “What is this?” I called out. “Oh, that’s just a tarantula”, she said calmly as she grabbed an envelope, scooped it up and put it down outside the door.

I had been initiated all in one day. I was beside myself. Like all initiations, my world was turned upside down. I made my way home, knowing that I could never live where there were so many scary things that were part of a normal day in the desert.

Soon after that, a dog in the neighborhood licked a Colorado River Toad while I was there and went into convulsions. She had to be practically drowned with water rushing down her throat before she could come back to normal. It affected her neurological system and for a while she could barely walk, even after the water treatment and she foamed at the mouth for several hours.

That experience made me what I am today: an ax murderer. I was thinking about that just this week when I put my dogs out into a side yard before going to bed. Just as I put them out, a huge toad moved right in front of them. Now, I don’t know if you have ever seen one of these creatures, but they are gigantic, ugly, and strongly resemble “Java the Hut”. I whisked my dogs back into the house and went for the ax.

These toads are not fast and tend to get themselves into corners to get away from you. Because I saw that dog almost die a few years ago, I have no mercy for these poisonous toads. A strong protective urge comes over me that out weighs my fear. I held the ax high over my head and came down hard on the creature over and over until I knew it was dead.

Just the day before, as I was sitting on the porch of my house enjoying the breeze against the backdrop of a very hot day, I saw my two cats carefully moving in the same direction toward a ladder that was against the house. Then I heard the distinct rattle of a rattlesnake. I yelled at the cats to stay away, which did nothing. I started throwing rocks in between the cats and the snake. I got the cats to move away and hastely picked them up and put them in the house. The snake coiled itself up and went to sleep.

I sat watching the snake feeling totally helpless and thinking about all the times I had not been protected or not been able to protect myself, my son, or others. I did not know what to do. I felt paralyzed. I knew I could not kill the snake because I was too scared of it. After about a half hour the snake woke up and slithered across the yard in the opposite direction from where I was sitting and disappeared.

Now you may be wondering why I am still living in a place that on such a continuous basis scares the bejebees out of me? That is a question I ask myself many times a day from April until November every year. I have never lived in a place where I have been aware of so much danger. My innocence and naivety shock me and I yearn for the safety that I previously enjoyed.

It is all very clear to me now. I am not a native of the desert and honestly don’t believe I’m cut out for it. The desert is beautiful but foreign to my being. Oh, did I tell you about the gila monster?

Transformation Through Solitude

My life sometimes takes twists and turns that I don’t expect so that my soul can learn its lessons.

Four years ago I was catapulted out of my three-ring circus life and I lighted alone and isolated in the seclusion of the desert. The desert was so alien to my senses, I felt as if I had landed on the moon. I struggled to get my bearings. I found the desert to be a wilderness created simply to itself.

It took me a while to realize the desert was a dwelling place for seeking nothing but being myself. A place so barren and solitary, the desert called for self-inquiry, deep thinking, and solitude. I was alone with nothing standing between my Creator and myself.

I struggled to getaway from the solitude that surrounded me. The vulnerability of being alone with myself was frightening. I felt miserable. I struggled with detaching from who I had been and everything with which I had identified myself. I needed to give up the perception of reality I had left behind. For a long time I was hopeless and felt really lost.

The desert landscape that I had not yet learned to love reflected my depressed inner landscape that felt so bleak, numb, and useless. I started questioning my part in the events that had cast me here. I slogged through a lot of shame and self-doubt, anger, regret, and remorse. With intense resistance I started sorting out what was mine and what was not. It took a lot of effort to find balance anywhere in my life during this tumultuous period.

I felt as though I was caught between something and nothing. Being alone gave me a lot of time to think. One day I began to consider nothingness. I wondered if that was what I was experiencing. Was that what I was battling? What did it mean to know nothingness? The more I allowed the experience, the less of a grip nothingness seemed to have on me and the more I began to live peacefully with it. I began to appreciate nothingness as an act of humility to love and accept my state of moral and metaphysical helplessness.

In order to be with my nothingness I had to cast out all the old ideas I had held and been told about myself. I had to accept everything as mine, coming from something Greater than myself. If I was going to love my nothingness, first I had to love myself.

About this point in my journey something shifted and I began to relax into and realize I was choosing solitude. I started appreciating my situation as a precious gift. It was a time unencumbered by outside influences. It was providing an incredible opportunity for self-review. I wanted to use my time wisely so I could devote total attention to myself, seeking love for myself and connecting to Spirit that I had lost.

Solitude was providing me a space of sublime reverence for Self. My life, as I had been living it, had separated me from my true self. I had disconnected from my spirit. My soul felt a strong yearning to heal and rise from the pit of despair into my Higher Self. Looking inward was helping me find my divinity.

When I allowed myself solitude, I felt connected to All That Is. I recognized how some people live for All That Is, some live with it and some live in it. Those who live for All That Is fill their life with activities outside of themselves in the world. Those who live with All That Is also live for it, but they seldom allow the vulnerability necessary to let it in. Those who live in All That Is do not live for others or what they do. They live for what All That Is does through them. I felt a growing need to live in All That Is.

With this awareness, I began to puzzle whether solitude or partnership brought greater advancement to my soul. Reviewing my relationships that had ended, as well as those that had blossomed, reminded me of some of my life's greatest lessons. I had grown a lot being in committed loving relationships.

I thought about how relationships had been a method of reflecting my belief systems by giving me feedback about myself. Solitude was demanding detachment. It was helping me become reacquainted with myself. Knowing myself was facilitating and bringing me sovereignty. I could see the importance of having balance in a committed relationship. Haveing solitude within a partnership for self-contemplation provided the balance.

My journey of chosen solitude was bringing my life to a new level, I was living more consciously and being present in the moment. My soul had needed to clearly define Self in order for me to grow. Self-discovery was, without a doubt, embodied in this period of chosen detachment. I was being shown how to release dependency and all that was not serving my divinity.

Knowing myself was helping me discover who I am and what I believe in. I started to feel that this chosen time of solitude was a sign of my soul’s intention toward grace. I sensed that the final graduation of the soul is not accomplished through living outside All That Is. Life’s journey is manafest with the divine self in Universal harmony with All That Is.

Having the courage to let solitude be my teacher helped me understand that a spiritual life is not merely something to know about and study. It has to be lived. With me, everything that seemed to be a problem was not imposed by fear from the outside but pressure I was imposing on my self. Solitude taught me that sanctity means to be without anxiety in the midst of anxiety.

I have learned many inspiring and valuable lessons in this time of chosen solitude. I have been shown there are many contradictions in life. I know now I don’t have to resolve them all, but live with and rise above them. I want to be totally alive in body, soul, mind, heart, and spirit. The way to the Divine for me is through connection with the sacred sovereignty of Self. The way to my Higher Self is through self-definition, accepting what resonates as true, and loving myself. I am here to make the unknown known. The path isn’t always easy. Before I can surrender myself, I must be myself. I can’t give up what I don’t possess. This is the essence of solitude.