Category: Psychology

Spiritual Teaching

“The spiritual teacher must know every inch of the way, every danger and pitfall, and not from books or maps or hearsay.  The teacher must have traveled it themself, from the foothills to the highest peaks.  And must have managed to get back down again, to be able to relate with students with humanity and compassion.  Not everyone who attains Self-realization can make a reliable guide.”. Eknath Easwaran

I feel like the experience that has been my life has been one of psychological and spiritual cartography.  Every detour felt like a travesty. But, there is no escaping blazing the trails where others haven’t yet trod.  And so, the feeling of travesty dissolves into its unmasked form… leadership.

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Inevitable Moments

There are these inevitable moments in life. Today I got word that a 3rd member of my family has died. My poor father is shaken with grief as this was his older brother. It seems there was a lot left unsaid. And, honestly I don’t blame that on either one of them. I blame it on life. This is the 3rd unexpected death in 9 months. To be perfectly honest, I began heavily medicating after the second one back in December. And, I don’t mean I’m staying high. I’m just taking a lot of prescriptions to hold me steady so I can still function mentally. I still haven’t regained my ability to walk more than about 1800 steps per day with lots of rest periods and that still carries a bit of repercussion with bouts of tachycardia at bed time when my body is trying so hard to recover from the strain of movement on top of the emotional trauma of the past year. My cat died, my mother died, I lost 2 vehicles, almost got evicted, had to move in with a relative because I can’t afford rent anywhere anymore due to soaring cost of living and I’m not able to work right now and won’t be able to for quite some while. I lost a younger cousin. The last surviving son of my elderly uncle. I can’t believe he lost both of his children and faces his elder years without them. I can’t believe me and my mamaw and brother have to face the future without my mother. There’s just so much. And, while I’ve said since 2017, “I can’t take anymore.” I do. I’m writing this because I’ve just taken so much more than I ever dreamed possible and still survive it. Granted, I have lost my mobility to emotional trauma and stress and I am heavily medicated and have packed on more weight than I thought I ever would. I have taken a toll. But, I’m here. Writing.

There are these moments in life that are inevitable. And it sucks when they all pile up together rather than being spaced out allowing time for recovery before the next crisis. But, here I am. Doing all the nervous system things, leaning on my friends, loving on my family, appreciative of the shelter, helping where and how I can. And, writing. Oh, I also made the Dean’s list at University and am about to publish my first book in about a week or so. All this during the hardest years of my adult life. And, I’m middle-aged and that sucks honestly. Because of the crisis I have not been afforded the opportunity to find the “finally don’t care” attitude that I hear women talk about when they get a certain age. I haven’t found the solidity women say they feel at my age because to walk in my world feels like the globe has been greased and I too have been oiled and walk on it slick and naked. Vulnerable and no balance. My world feels like a greased pole where the floor is lava.

There are these inevitable moments in life. And, when they come…you can’t pray them away, you can’t manifest them away, you can’t cuss them away, you can’t wish them away, you can’t science them away, you can’t psychology them away, you can’t religion them away, you can’t God them away, you can’t spell them away, you can’t gather an army of friends, family, or politicians to resist them or tell them to go away, you can’t write them away, you can’t therapy them away, you can’t spiritual them away, you can’t atheist them away, you can’t hide from them, you can’t run from them, you can’t deny them, you can’t sublimate them, you can’t pay them away, you can’t doctor them away, you can’t medicate them away, you can’t exercise them away, you can’t work them away, you can’t sleep them away, you can’t drink them away, you can’t starve them away, you can’t not see them.

But, you can allow your friends to love you through them, you can let your family hold you through them, you can let your cat or your dog lay on your chest and lick your tears as they fall. You can open your chest wide and accept that these moments are life too. You can acknowledge that your steps are in sync with the march of humanity and that your footfalls imprint the human continuum and whether it feels like it or not you are right where you’re supposed to be. You, me, we….are part of the marvel. The dynamic, diverse, prism that is humanity. One massive, non-congruent, yet deeply cohesive at the same time, collective unconscious, reflectively conscious, forging forth for a better day.

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Why?

Blindfold me for the battle so I can at least be authentically barbaric
The masses have always hurled in to peril the esoteric

Slipping through the cracks I’ll never look back
But, I will remember my blood dripping through the black

I’m drowning in their cognitive dissonance
While crowning myself the leader of dissidents

With raised fist I’m screaming in to the void
I am my id the cautionary tale by Freud

Primordial and parabolic
I’m a corporeal hydraulic

Telling the story of how modernity is primeval
My nervous system lunging and launching in upheaval

My voice exists on the other side of the veil
But my body is here going through hell

The observation of this peculiar disconnect
That my self-awareness longs to resurrect

Rhyming and timing my sanity like a metronome
Like a daft pendulum the swing is my home

Wisdom that inspires wonder is reputed to be of significance
But the collective seems to relish in the bliss of ignorance

A scathing indictment that leads to incitement
Where even the Socratic of the democratic find themselves affrightment

I’ve simplified my question to three letters, “why.”

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Soulmate Romance

As I think through my concept of a soulmate, the first thing I think of is the emphasis on the word “mate.” For me, mate, means match, alignment, similarities, and therefore comfort. The soul component is the deeper part of our humanity that the majority of other humans do not adequately or accurately perceive about us. A soulmate, for me, would be someone who does see that part of me with clarity and mirrors back to me the profundity of what they see because that person shares many of the same qualities and perspectives and emotions of my own soul. That person can see me because they have seen their own soul, deeply. It is the element and degree of depth of their own self-awareness that is one of the greatest qualifying factors for me to identify with that person as a romantic soulmate.

As I’ve gotten granular on the semantics of the word, “soulmate” it has occurred to me that I’ve been too willing to accept men who do not match or align with me on a soul level. And, to be perfectly honest, and as I’m told by those closest to me, I am likely too deep for most and therefore unrelatable to a great degree. So, where is love for me? I feel like my depth very much limits my options. Added to that, my “niceness” has always given the impression that I can be treated poorly or not have my relational needs met and they can still have priority and benefit from my love of them. 

I think this post serves mostly as a precursor to an impending perspective and behavioral change. I don’t know what that will look like but if I could describe the emotion of what is gathering in this regard it would be more confidence, less tolerance of bad behavior for the sake of being flexible and making it work, and self-belief. I would say “glow-up” but I feel that term has become banal and I’m growing to despise it for that reason. The next several months of this year feel like they will be an unearthing of the “why” and the “how” I need to change my understanding and behavior of who I am willing to accept as a romantic partner. I think ultimately it will be a massive contrast in how I’ve always I’ve seen things pertaining to being loved. And once that change is done it will likely seem to others that it was like an overnight explosion that completely changed my emotional landscape and personality aspects. But, I can intuitively tell that for as profound and impactful as it will be it will be a process of gentle erosion. One that my body can keep pace with and not one that will cause further non-congruence in my soul. Because it is those non-congruences I think, that are creating the disparity between who I desire and who I actually attract.

Cheers to self-discover, shadow work, and the romance of the soul.

Cozett Dunn

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Cozett Contemplates Being A Healer

You used to be so nice~ It was because I was afraid of the implications of displeasing you.

You’re so strong & such an inspiration ~ It’s because of my survival instinct and because I’m naturally a good person

You’re so brave~ My nervous system would no longer allow me to tolerate the confines of the box people wanted me in. It was either tear it apart or continue to betray my emotional well-being

You must be an empath~ I’m hypervigiliant. I’m highly attuned to the energy of others because I was traumatized as a child.

As a trauma survivor you find yourself on a continuum. There is a linear space, thread, that runs from your childhood, into your present, and reaches out before you in the time to come. Like a train track you can stand on any point of it and feel the vibration of the train whether its behind you or has passed you. It doesn’t matter if you can see it. You can still feel it its vibration. Its energy.

As if in a dream, you find yourself experiencing an alternate reality than that of those around you, and you’re constantly teaching yourself what’s real and what’s not, what to hang on to, and what to let go of.

People who have experienced emotional trauma have brain changes, similar to those who have had concussions.

Emotions, feelings, are so powerful they can physically reshape the structure of your brain and thereby color your reality. Thankfully, neuroplasticity is a thing. But, healing is something that needs support and takes work. And while the trauma isn’t your fault you are the one who will have to take the responsibility to heal what you didn’t harm. That feels unfair and is traumatic in its own sense.

This is why its imperative…..to not feel like you have to be nice to everyone. Because everyone….isn’t supporting the healing of your brain and nervous system. Everyone isn’t guarding your heart and prioritizing your well-being or creating safe spaces for you or trying to understand the decisions you make.

In fact, most people aren’t critical thinkers. For many it’s never occurred to them how they could make the world a better place by looking through the lenses of others and a lot of people have zero desire to do so even if it has occurred to them. The fact is, that those with narrow emotional experience, narrowed and selective perspectives that require people to believe the way they do, behave the way they do, see the world and others the way they do creates disenfranchisement because it automatically has the implication that there are consequences for people who aren’t like them.

So here we are as trauma survivors. Healing from harm we didn’t create. Creating corners of safe space from spaces that others assume should only belong to them.

I want to take this post and tell trauma survivors how amazing, dynamic, multi-faceted, emotionally intelligent, beautiful, powerful, and expansive they are. You have amazing qualities that evolved on the inside of you. You are an evolved human being. You have space on the inside of you. That space is capacity. Capacity for good. Capacity gives you the ability to receive that narrowness cannot afford you.

I believe that humanity has begun a massive shift. A shift that values emotional intelligence and expansiveness and tolerance. A shift of conviction.

There will be a collective of humanity who deeply hold the belief that it is better to be a bridge builder for every chasm is better than clinging to feeling superior because of what “sets them apart.”

There will be a collective of…us…who deeply believe that to be a healer isn’t something relegated only to licensed professionals or the “spiritually” gifted. Healing belong to humanity. Period. It is expressed in community not division. It is given and received in relationship with those who understand that though we are many, ultimately we are one.

I refuse to be anything other than safe. I refuse to be anything other than a healer. I refuse to be anything other than whole.

And, if you’re not of this same energy you can’t be in MY energy. At all. My health cannot afford you.

The community I’m creating, the circle I’m curating, the reality I’m shaping is necessarily humane, good, sovereign.

Cozett Contemplates the conviction of what it means to be a healer

Yours in emotional intelligence,

Cozett Dunn

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The Taxi Driver

I’m sitting outside on the patio anticipating the sunset. It’s about an hour out. And it’s a warm winter day. About 58 degrees Fahrenheit. I’m quietly reflecting on who I want to be in 2024. How will I define myself? In what ways will I be boundless and free from definition? My skin is pale and my eyes sensitive from being indoors so much this year. Its like I lived in a bunker all of 2023. Listening to shells drop all around me. Waiting on someone or something to save me. To airlift me out of the hellscape.

People walking their dogs here in the complex have no idea what dwells inside the woman who is sitting on patio furniture gazing silently up at the sun. I have no idea what’s inside of them either.

I hear a car radio, factory grade, thumping coming down the parking lot. At first its behind my back so I only hear it. My mind’s eye begins to project images of what it might look like once it appears in my field of vision. It is factory for sure. Someone is absolutely juicing their factory car radio. I love that. Its likely a sedan. Probably grey or silver with shimmery undercoat that glistens in the sun if its clean. I imagine its probably a 2018 model and has a child’s car seat in the back with Cheetos covering the back floor board. I guess it has tinted windows. All of this my mind conjured before I could see it.

It was a taxi driver. The car was a tiny 4 door. Big, bright, green, logo on both sides. Indeed it was clean. Windows were tinted. As it pulled up to a garage I could hear the 1981 song by Olivia Newton John, “Let’s Get Physical” erupting out of the driver’s open window. I wondered to myself, “who am I gonna see get out of this taxi that’s been BUMPING Olivia Newton John?”

A lady in her 70’s opens the back door and slowly climbs out. She seems active but also a bit frail. Strong but fading. Definitely filled with the spiciness and zest of life. Big smile on her face. The taxi driver opens his door. He’s a white guy and balding. When I tell you the setting sun was beaming off the top of his head….I guess he’s in his 40’s. He’s wearing a black t-shirt that gapes at the bottom struggling to cover a pot belly. Dark, inky blue, straight cut jeans, that look like Wranglers. Black socks with taupe, open-toed, rubber sandals. 2 straps across his thick black socks. Olivia Newton John was still reverberating thru air. I wondered if the music wasn’t so loud it made it hard to hear his passenger. But, they both seemed happy. Pleasant. She’d had a great ride. Maybe the music was her choice? As someone born on the cusp of the 80’s I did enjoy that sound and I’m assuming the taxi driver is older than me and also an 80’s fan. But, something tells me that was her song choice. And, as someone who also drives I would never have the music that loud, or even choose the music. The volume and genre are always per my rider’s request.

He had the energy of a driver who had just started their shift and wasn’t thinking yet about the long night ahead. As he helped the passenger get some things out of the back seat another man comes out of the apartment. Older than the taxi driver, but younger than the passenger. He extends his arm to the driver and I’m assuming was paying and/or tipping him. Maybe that’s why the driver seemed so energetic and happy? Maybe it was the tip? Maybe he felt exuberant from his interactions with his passenger? I wondered at what the source of his joy was. It did seem more than happiness. The scenario tasted like genuine joy mixed with a large helping of abandon, with a dash of ignorant bliss. He laughed with the man who came out to meet them as he rounded the hood of his car to get back in and wait on another fare. A cigarette dangled from his lips.

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Panic Poetry In Prose

Panic in prose
It starts off as a steely resolve to be…steel.

I will not be moved. I will not be moved.
I will fix my mind and not be blind to what is really going on

A cascade of chemical effects begin to disburse thru my nervous system.

Is this a joke? I know what’s happening. Why can’t I make it stop?

In this self-aware nightmare my chest tightens like a snare
From a deconditioned position I spring to my feet like my legs are hydraulics

I pace to my own heart’s race
Wishing I could bawl I suppress my caterwaul

Banging my body into the walls like a pinball
Clawing at my arms and legs the back of my throat filled with gall

Breathless I stand writing rhymes to heal
I wait for my beta blocker to kick in to stem the reel
I’ve never known a more brutal and dehumanizing countdown
Shaking under the pressure I long to sit down

Since 2017 it’s been one crisis after another
And then this year I lost my mother
The pain in the voice of my grandmother when she found her dead
Has shattered me
I’m really not certain there’ll be a recovery

I try so hard to press on and do the normal things
But from sunrise to sunset I never know what the next cycle brings

I do know that crying feels so very good
But, sometimes I can’t cry no matter how hard I try

I wish I could cry instead of panic
Let the tears wash my pain instead of feeling frantic

Yoga, meditation, breathwork, and good friends
my cat, my keyboard, and my cousin’s pens
I gather these things around me trying to make a nest
To save my soul from the beating in my chest

I sometimes wonder if I’ll make it out alive
Even with my willingness & efforts will I ever get truly free to thrive

Shoes dropping all over the place
Forced from one precipice to another
Surely there is some unseen demonic bullwhip cracking at my back
It’s 2 am and I am a penned insomniac

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The Haunting Aspects Of My Mama’s Death Part 2

I’ve never experienced such a black, jagged, grief. I’ve mourned my whole life, people, places, habits, homes, cars, health, opportunities, etc. But, as traumatic as my life has been nothing has ripped me open like the death of my mama and it’s because she and her death was so complex and haunting for me.

I want to sit down in the middle of about 5,000 acres of grassland. Low-cut. No trees, no flowers, no creeks or streams, just low cut grass. I don’t know how expansive 5,000 acres is but that is a number that my soul resonates with in its estimation of the amount of void space I need to fill with my mourning. I want to be the only energy in the space. No birds, rabbits, spirits, field mice. Just me.

I want to wear my ratty pair of sneakers, my favorite pair of jeans, & a t-shirt. I want my hair pulled up. No makeup. I want silence and a gray sky with dull green grass that looks like it needs rain soon.

I want to stare, not think, only feel. I am desperate for this. I’ve always been a thinker. But lately I find myself so tuned out of reality. Not at all present. Busy but with no verbal thoughts floating through my mind.

I want a massive, quiet, space to unpack my grief and mourning and flashbacks and not be judged.

The grief in me feels so chaotic, unbound, and boundless. And I think that’s why my usually wordy thought life has been blunted, shut down because the trauma in my body has grown to the point that it is requiring all the energy from me. The trauma and shock in my body has silenced my thought life and it feels like my mind is taking a ready bow to my body because it recognizes this is the first time my body has ever required this of me and so it is willing to defer.

I need to heal but I don’t know how because I am a healer. And, I feel this sickening dread that as I approach the broken American system for help that I am going to be handled by incompetent, impatient, underpaid, overworked, degreed professionals who don’t naturally operate with foresight or expansive emotional intelligence or are trauma informed.

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The Greater The Depth The Darker It Gets: Pioneering The Pathless Path

Whether the ocean, the earth, the cosmos or the psyche….the greater the depth the darker it gets.

Shadows still exist because they are the egregores of our ego. But, their borders bleed into the blackness. Doing the inner work here is harder. You can’t see anything at all. You can’t feel anything at all. You can’t smell anything. And, there is no flavor. Yet it is not “nothingness.” When taken to this depth you experience sensory deprivation and your integration process looks much less coherent than what is trending and being discovered in even the health and holistic wellness world. Things like Kundalini awakening, or plant medicine trips, or exorcisms, carry a busy energy of a human life trying to survive and progress. There is a frenzied, frenetic, frantic, or even euphoric feel to these processes.
And while they all are wonderful rites in and of themselves they are also in and of themselves mere entries into a life that is pure consciousness, awareness. They can serve as portals to important journeys but they are just that….keyholes through which we get to peer into what’s next….beyond the body and beyond the mind.

As one who speaks from the deep….I’m understanding there is a disabling stillness that overtakes the psyche that forces the soul to switch off to allow our spirit to come online. We depart from understanding the world and the people around us physically because we experience a break, a disconnect from the physical even while we are still in the body and we sojourn into a metaphysical knowingness.

From physical understanding to metaphysical knowing. This is the path of shamans, healers, oracles, prophets, and poets. This is where the pathless path begins. This transition is the junction where we meet other souls who are longing to go deeper but need the guidance of those of us who had no choice but to pioneer the poignancy of what its like to live between worlds.

For years I’ve felt a jealousy, a scornful envy even of those who never seem to venture below the surface. The ease that they experience in their unawareness has seemed so unfair to me. And up until my mother’s death, which has carried a level of complexity that no one should have to experience, I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand why so many people get to walk around having done little to no inner work, existing in pure ego completely unbothered, and untouchable in spite of the harm that their willful ignorance has caused.

But, now I do. I do get it. I believe there is a subconscious mechanism within each of us that will allow us to go only so far into understanding humanity, emotions, spirit, soul, shadow. It is the “thing” within us that determines when it is our own unique time to learn certain lessons. And until it’s time to learn those lessons….these people act as lessons to those of us who are inwardly turned.

We learn how to deal gently with a collective that isn’t ready. We learn how to meet people where they are….without judging who they are. In the end its all about survival. The survival of the body. The survival of the psyche. The survival of the soul. The survival of our spirits that get so attached to the identity of our physical existence and feel terrified at the thought of the moment it loses the body. Because that will happen for all of us. We are all moving towards that moment of no longer being “the us that we know.” The us that is grouchy when we wake up. The us that looks in the mirror and sees thinning hair, banging bods, stretch marks, chiseled jaw lines, on point brows, and unwanted chin hair.

There is life in the deep. Beyond the body. And, beyond the mind. I’m here. But, I’ll be back. And, when I come back…I’m bringing my soul with me. I’m not politically correct. I’m not religiously correct. I fit in no where but because of this I’m equipped to go everywhere. Spreading boundlessly as threads of my energy finds the energy of other wandering souls like mine.

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Naked In The Wake Of The Reaper: Reflection On The Emotions Of Moving Forward While Mourning

Navigating forward through grief to get back into daily routine feels like crawling through a briar patch. Trying to present yourself to the world as grounded as one possibly can be 35 days from something that was so dark and complicated and even macabre can feel unfair. inauthentic. I’m calm, kind, productive, caring, sensitive, and…trying. But, there is an inherent awkwardness in this space. It’s like being in public naked but trying not to “feel” like you’re naked. Being naked but trying to obscure the more offensive parts of yourself so that you don’t end up incurring the misunderstanding or discomfort of others. As a trauma survivor and an empath who is doubly sensitized from trauma the discomfort of others….feels dehumanizing to me.

I never could have anticipated the tangled mess of absolutely contrasting emotions that would arise from my mother’s death. And this bothers me because I’ve always been able to anticipate my own emotions. It’s kept me safe since the age of 4.

35 days….and I feel as vulnerable as a 35 days old human. There is a strange rebirth of me that has happened since she died. A new me that is washing in piece by piece with the tides of this new chapter.

This part of my life has started but I never got to have an intermission. There is a scene change that I never got to get dressed for. I’m a new character who didn’t get to see the script before it was show time. Yet, now is not the time to improvise. Now is the time to acknowledge that my own curtain call is coming. What happens between then & now is critically important if I’m to leave the world stage with a standing “O” rather than have rotten tomatoes thrown at my funeral.

I’m still covered in the dew of death. Naked in the wake of the reaper. As I watch him go all I hear are the words, “break a leg.”

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