Shucking Self-Limitation and Securing Healing with Colin Reinagel

NitN 87 - The Eight of Swords

Grateful as always for a scintillating conversation with Colin, our newest Adeptus Maker. We chat about everything from the numerology behind ancient megalithic structures as endorsed by the Knights Templar to the truly radical acts of healing trauma and embracing vulnerability.

You may already know Colin from recent contributions to the now collaborative Creekmason blog like Christ-like Suffering and Toxic Positivity in Wellness Culture. If you don't, what are you doing? Missing Newsletters?? Sign up already!

Check out⁠ ⁠Colin Reinagel⁠⁠'s website Weird Life Studios, to checkout out and purchase his art and make sure to follow him on ⁠Instagram⁠!

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Intro: The Great (co)Work(ers)

The last couple days my wife has been treating me like a dog that’s about to be put down. 

Instead of an entire filet mignon, though we have been to a few exotic restaurants, we’ve been adventuring to local attractions. Strolling through landmark gardens. Hiking stretches of closed down coastal highway. 

How lucky am I to have someone so sensitive to my mood that she manufactured these delightful distractions. How lucky am I to look into her eyes and find her watching mine? To see her seeing me.

Why has she been so tuned in to my needs? She knew that today was my first day back from paternity leave.

She guessed, rightly, that unless I burned off my energy it would be spent fueling rumination, anxiety, and stress. I got away with a mere smidge of paranoia about what I might be returning to at my day job.

The only expectation I really articulated to myself was met: I wasn’t laid off the minute I logged on.

But I still ended up feeling hurt.

It was that kind of hurt where you haven’t really done anything wrong but you still feel embarrassed by your predicament. Like it’s your fault that your toes were stepped on. Like you should feel ashamed of other people’s callousness, even though you’re its victim.

It’s not that big a deal. 

So I didn’t get a warmer welcome. So what?

So I was left like confused_travolta.gif from that scene in pulp fiction when I announced I was back. Wandering aimlessly, unacknowledged.

So, hours later, when I got a reply, my pics didn’t elicit so much as a "Look how cute that baby is!" just a "Thanks for the photos”… 

What else should I expect in what David Graeber called a Bullshit Job, where everyone dissociates and suppresses their true self? Graeber says a job qualifies as Bullshit if the employee themself can’t even justify how they spend their time.

I’ve got 10 years of angry, abusive assholes battling cigarette cravings and yelling “if there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean” at me. I’ve been fired with zero notice so many times. These abusive bosses’ echoing voices are creating a mindset that I should somehow be earning my keep but that I ultimately will never be able to predict when I might be let go no matter how well I perform.

In the words of one Creekmason, I may have moved to a job where I get more status, pay and respect, but I’m no longer providing anything of value to anyone. I’m contributing nothing—just gradually chipping in to make civilization a little bit worse.

I’ve re-evaluated, and I think my actual workplace is the spiritual one. My actual vocation is the Great Work.

And that makes y’all my Great coWorkers. 

Just as I’m grateful to my wife for helping me navigate the anticipation and the first moments of pain at being ignored, I’m grateful to have the Creekmasons. 

What a privilege it is to have a Digital Sangha to whom I can bring emotional wounds like this one and receive all the little heart and hug emojis I could ask for. 

What a joy to be developing psychologically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually alongside this delightful group of wonderful, unique humans.

That is the Great Work after all. 

Could we all start answering that banal “What do you do for work” question like this?

“I endeavor to cultivate the mindfulness, investigation, energy, bliss, tranquility, concentration, and equanimity to pierce the illusions of incarnation and burn off the karmic seeds instilled by my culture before they flower into the poisonous perpetuation of white supramicist, patriarchal, imperial capitalism, meriting legitimate free will for me and peaceful, loving, coherent, awakened actualization for all beings.”

Because at least here, in this context of my refuge in a Collective of Creatives who are committed to each others’ growth, I’m happy to be back at Work.