Decomposing: Nuances of Release

Dear Dreamer,

In the arena of wellness and healing, transformation, self-development, spiritual practices attuning to seasonal change/change in general, etc, there is a rather common prompt: What are you ready to release or let go of, now?

I’ve been facing this familiar inquiry as I emerge from a week-long simple detox (led by Living Ayurveda Hawai‘i) in which I found that the process of removing things from my life (sugar, dairy, most starches, social media, cold drinking water, eating after 7pm) allowed me to retrieve a sense of clarity and vitality that I had been missing for months, actually. We forget that it’s not always about adding more—more supplements, more practices, more regimens—sometimes consuming less, releasing certain things, is what’s needed for healing.

But the idea of release or letting go can also sometimes be presented too simplistically.

“Releasing what no longer serves us” can easily become a trap of trying to purge the things we disapprove of or judge in ourselves, the things we may be too afraid to witness directly. Avoidance that wears the mask of “letting go” might actually be running rampant in our lives. And often what we try to ignore only continues to return, growing more and more disruptive until we are forced to finally face the thing.

This is why Dream Tending approaches nightmarish figures as beings that also carry wisdom, if we can grow our capacity to face them. This process starts with resourcing ourselves until we feel supported enough to move towards rather than away from a challenging image. Over time and with attention, what was once nightmarish can become integrated, even joining our inner council of guides.

And yet, on the other end of the spectrum, we also don’t need to integrate everything. At some point, release is often necessary for physical healing processes. Why would healing processes of the psyche be different?

And integration certainly doesn’t mean that things remain unchanged. When we come into relationship with our dream figures, we get the privilege of watching them evolve over time, as we evolve too.

This also makes me turn, once again, to compost as a wonderful metaphor for how I see release as actually being about integration—where what is no longer useful to us can be combined with other materials, and decomposition creates reconfiguration, in which what has been offered or surrendered can dissolve down to its raw elements, ready to feed new life. When I think about compost, I’m reminded that the purpose of release is to become more fully integrated with all that we are—life itself. Letting go, disintegrating down to our raw components allows us to be more open and available to being in connection with all of life, and taking on another form. It’s not about simple deletion of the parts of ourselves we don’t like. It’s about stripping ourselves of the norms we cling to, in order to touch more love.

If you want to decompose, reconfigure, retrieve, integrate with me, you can join me in The Scorpion’s Nest: Artemis Rising, Transforming with Imagination, or book a 1:1 Dream Session. And I can already feel this conversation inspiring a new offering coming around the corner…

Love,

Tsuyuno

Epilogue (or, a more poetic repetition of what I already said)

The Underworld is Calling:

Ear to the waters of

Change,

rushing babbling river, always.

Death is decomposition,

nothing more or less.

The gate that lets wild dogs out to roam.

Asking, what is worth keeping

that can ever really be kept?

Darkness reimagines the composition of our cells,

letting our striving settle into rest.

Here is where I will offer my bones

into the fullness of the Well of Time.

In a dream I step out into a foreign landscape. My body longs to die in this great expanse, and take comfort from nothing but the dirt, the feeling of the earth beneath me, the sky above me, the everything within me.

And that is what I mean by release

What needs to dissolve or decompose down to its basic elements for you to be able to feel the fullness that you are? In order for those offerings of surrender to feed new life, in a new composition of raw materials?

Perhaps not let me release fear, but let me release my resistance to the feeling of fear.

What if there is nothing to try to change?

The earth is full of trash and incredible life forms.

Don’t try to pick the litter up, move it to a different place, turn it into something else.

Just let yourself melt into it all, asking to be broken down enough that you become open to moving into a new configuration.

Asking the dirt what it needs you to become now.