Last time I was up at the hospital getting a routine mammogram, the test happened “behind the veil.” The experience was like a dip into the world of shamans and medicine women. I’m trying to understand it by writing here, or at least lay bare a powerful human experience that can be difficult to express.
That very regular Tuesday, my trip to the hospital was fantastical, and every person I encountered seemed to be a part of an archetypal game. I felt like a pawn, or like a hapless mortal batted around in a Greek myth, unaware of the bigger machinations happening. My vision was acute, and a bit dark, and I was coolly calm. Every song on the radio seemed to mean something, each call and text that came in was dripping with spiritual directives. I parked on Gay Street and went in.
Don’t get me wrong, there were actual machinations about to happen — like a large white boob-squasher jamming the flesh near my armpits between plates of Lucite. But my sense of personal agency had evaporated on the drive up. I just did the next thing. Then the next. Nothing was my plan, and yet, everything was “just right.” The veil between rational life and the mystical was thin.
I think these trippy experiences are common. Maybe they are coping mechanisms? Maybe awakenings?
Or maybe they reflect surrender to what is. Who wouldn’t be more than a little nervous about a test meant to find a disease in you?
When life feels larger than life, like a Guillermo del Toro movie or a road trip in the Iliad, maybe it’s because we’ve given over to the realm of the unconscious. Or maybe it’s an inoculation for giving others spiritual medicine.
When people say, “all the world’s a stage, and we are merely players,” I think they’ve had this same agency-less, allegorical experience, and managed to tell the tale.
That day in the hospital, I felt like I was being marionetted around, and the only free will I had was to choose whether to play along with dignity, with warrior spirit, or maybe slink through like a fool. Not sure which one I was, I felt like all of them at once.
See, if there are realms like Carl Jung’s collective unconscious1, home to myths, archetypes and gods and goddesses, these characters are practically immortal in the sense that generations of living humans are affected by their stories. The characters carry power long beyond the span of any singular human life. The characters may evolve, or get renamed, but they carry on. Atlas2 becomes Thanos3. And Thanos is any one of us who is existentially tired and genuinely needs a break.
Another way of saying this, is that the spirits of this world live... just not as flesh pressed in Lucite. That special experience is just for us.
That day I drove to the hospital alone, like I always do, and saw everything differently. A once very mundane experience was like wandering through a weird trip complete with circuses, magicians, and odd phenomena.
In my subjective experience, I had felt like my sense of “me” had evaporated. But there I was.
What wound up verifiably funny was that the hospital computer system lost record of me after I got inside. I had long before tracked the referral, received confirmation calls, “don’t come if you have COVID” texts, and more. I made it all the way into the mammogram room, and changed into the tiny-patterned cotton cloak before I digitally disappeared.
The medical tech had no record of me in the system. She went through screen after screen. I was not supposed to be there. No order had been made. I heard my voice tell her what I was there for. She whispered a quiet, kindly “we’ll do that” and we carried on. I’m not even sure if she actually pressed the button to take the images.
Six months later, I still don’t.
What happens when you are in two places at once, without a medicine woman, or maybe with one you don’t recognize?
I have always been been blessed with great teachers, leaders and surprising guides.
What was funny that day, was that my body went through the motions of the tests, and made small talk the whole time. An arm placed here, feet moved there, quips about the weather there. And she was kind, and went through the motions, with whispers and gentle smiles. I’m not sure why I had that experience: some may call it “panic,” except I wasn’t afraid. I dressed myself afterward, ate a Au Bon Pain hospital muffin, and drove home. I credit the med tech for getting me through it. She held me up when there was no there, there.
Why do we go into experiential spaces like that? What’s the point?
It’s embarrassing to recount this trippy dippy, semi-insane experience, but I don’t think I’m alone in perceiving the complicated dichotomy that is life, and trying to express it. As a younger woman in that situation, I would have become disturbed, created a drama elsewhere, or stayed in bed all day for some other reason. What I did as a 55 year old, was stand and take it, trying to be kind and dignified. I remembered that “polite me” didn’t want to go all Karen on anyone. That was unnecessary. I’m grateful now, some aspect of me remembered that.
Control over life & death: well it seems so… in one realm
I think we all desire control over life and death of ourselves and others, and in some places, we kind of have it.
To my bones, I understood if I went through this underworld/hospital journey without fear, I would physically be ok. I experienced having genuine control over the situation: over eternal life or death itself, as long as I participated. This was a knowing, a sensation I have in my body, one that makes no sense to rational minds, my own included.
Who else has these magical thinking moments but won’t admit it? Who doesn’t?
There is surely a common sense explanation for the computer data disappearance. And, yet, what I learned about spirit and matter were invaluable to me. I learned that my inner and outer experiences happen in tandem, routinely in opposition to each other. Where “I” reside in my perspective determines my comfort with it. And sometimes that comfort only happens in the underworld.
Now I hope to also be helpful to those who need some test to happen, even if they no longer show up in the machines.
- There is so much to read and learn about Carl Jung’s ideas, you could experience a lifetime of richness right there. For now, here is a quick-read article. ↩︎
- A Titan cursed by Zeus to hold up the heavens. Read More. ↩︎
- Marvel Universe Character. Just watch the movie Avengers: Infinity War (2018) for tie in. It’s pretty good! ↩︎
