My Inner Saboteur

This is what I do when the saboteur grabs hold of me and I lose myself in self-doubt: I wrap myself in a thick quilt of silence and walk backward as far as I can until I find a big, dark shadow to stand in, a large, tall tree to hide behind, and I sit there, far from anyone, and listen to the volume rising on the voice within me telling me I am not enough.

It would take so little to keep me from going there, so little to mute the voice of my saboteur. All I need is the proof that I have done something meaningful, or have someone look me in the eye and tell me, with clear conviction, that there is no means to measure the enormity of my worth.

But by the time I need it, I don’t allow myself to seek this proof, I am too far gone to look anyone in the eye. Shame keeps my sight locked on the ground.

And then I inhabit the shadow, and waste away my gifts, until a miracle, a sliver of sunlight, hits me and gives me just enough strength to remember I have a tool box. And I reach in with my last ounce of strength and have to pull myself along, out of the darkness, inch by inch, using every last resource, every last tool to save myself from my own self-doubts.

And I know this is exactly what happens for my clients, although they may visualize the process differently: they retreat into themselves, where the voice of self-judgment is loudest, and spiral into depression and paralysis.

But we don’t have to do that! And, just because I have the tools doesn’t mean I should create the conditions in which I need them. I can choose another way. I can recognize the voice of my saboteur, and lower the volume on it immediately! I can take the wisdom from its message, without having to accept the self-hatred and vitriol as well. And I also teach my clients how to do that, because none of us has to live in the shadow.

We take to the shadows, with the saboteur at full volume, until sunlight hits.
Photo Credit: Andreas Krappweis

Spacious

I sit before Helene, observing, as she moves her familiar, old fear out of her body. Softly, my voice guides her. She pours the energy out with ease. Then she speaks of a new experience of inner spaciousness. 

I feel a thrill, hearing a change in her voice, a new lightness. I ask if there is a word she will be able to return to later, that will remind her of this process, bring her back to this moment of creating new space within her.  

She closes her eyes, quiet, attentive to what arises.

And when she nods, I request that she spell it out loud. Her voice is lilting in its response: U.R.N.  I think, “Urn.”

But her sudden laughter startles me, and she chortles, “Make it a long u, like saying: you.” Then, laughing, Helene says the word. And, hearing it, I laugh, too!

Her Self extends, as a reminder of spaciousness, the spelling of this word that sounds exactly like “yearn.

Together, we laugh gratitude and joy, for the Wisdom that offers this gift!

Photo by Michal Zacharzewski / RGBstock

A Gateway

There is a pain wedged beneath my ribs, radiating like heat into the rest of my body. My heart rests on it. Together, they make a formidable weight.

I want to banish the pain. Obliterate it. Erase it.

All of my energy turns towards it, intense and focused. The rest of me is left feeling tired, weak, drained.

I drag myself around. Then I remember this is also a gateway, this pain. It is a gateway into discovering, as I have so many times before, only to promptly forget anew, that there is no separation between that pain and me. There is no me versus it.

I pass through the gateway, armed with all of my “going on an adventure” gear, including my curiosity. And the pain begins softening, dissolving into my tissue.

And my heart, it is floating free.

Photo credit: Kevin Tuck at RGBstock.com

A Reminder

Even though I work this way with others, I have not gone into retreat for a long, long time. I am inspired by the effect of retreating on those for whom I am companion and guide. But I forget how vital this work is for me.

I determine that it is time again, to go into retreat, in preparation for the turn of the year. As is to be expected, this feels inconvenient to do now, hard to find time for, requiring too much from me.  Still, I persevere, and sequester myself in silence, light my candles and bring out my rattle.

The past year floats under the glare of my gaze, and I rescue forgotten blessings, feel my heart tighten with unresolved pains and fears.  I honor all of the energies I find, witness them wholly.

In the smoke of the incense, I release what does not serve me, and feel lightened, heartened.

Then I remember, one last thing.

This year, too often, I have felt disconnected; disconnected from Nature, from the cycles of the year and my body, from awe and from what is sacred in my daily doings.  As this recognition comes to me, along with the question of how to release this large, heavy energy, a movement outside my window catches my eye.

It is a great bird, with powerful wings, gently coasting past, and my mind is slow to grasp, to process, to return to me: owl.  The bird alights in the high branches of a towering tree, the tree that I gaze on as I do my daily practices, the one that reminds me that trees are also my relations.

It can’t be an owl, I think. This is the city. It is broad daylight. Could it be?  The bird is still, imposing, enormous, unblinking. It is indisputably an owl.

My mind is startled into stillness. I remember the thought of disconnection and, immediately, a new thought arises: I could never be disconnected from Nature, from what is sacred, from my Self.

No sooner does this thought rise in my awareness, as the great owl takes flight and coasts away into the white sky, disappears from my view.

I could never be disconnected from my Self; Owl has come to remind me of it.

Photo Credit: Jay Simmons

One Gift of Time Passing

For all that I have heard people lamenting the passage of time, what a gift it is that my life has cycled far enough to give me the wisdom of hindsight. To look back and see that each choice I have made (led by insight and clarity, or blinded and confused) has created a graceful arc of perfectly fitting pieces — a collage of apparently disparate elements, mysteriously and magically joined— which molded me and formed me as I reached this place where I am today.

Perhaps, if I raise my gaze towards the future, where the path ahead disappears in the mist of the horizon, beyond which I cannot fathom, another collage may be taking shape and I may be able, someday, to see it, looking back.

Or, perhaps, not.

But even without seeing beyond the horizon, I can trust that this moment and every moment, each one made up of apparently disparate awarenesses and experiences, seemingly senseless joys and sorrows, outwardly meaningless energies: all come together, somehow, inexplicably, into a fabulous tapestry that, whether I can see it or not, understand the intricate design of it or not, has meaning and beauty and grace.

What a gift that time and my journey have brought to me this awareness, and the awe that it awakens in me, here, in my core.

Today I am grateful to rest in that trust.

 

Photo Credit: Lee

Self-betrayal

Self-betrayal is the ways that I turn my back on my Self and refuse to honor Who I Am.

It is when I don’t wait for clarity, but jump into things because that feels easier, more comfortable. It is saying “yes” when I already know I can’t follow through or don’t want to with my full Self. It is also saying “no” because yes means peering into dark corners of my Self.

Self-betrayal is turning away from the nibbling of knowledge at the edge of my consciousness because turning towards it means seeing, right behind it, a cavernous black hole that threatens to suck me in.  It is setting a course and following it, regardless of the signs along the way that direct me to go a different direction.

Most of all, Self-betrayal is allowing my heart to be padded, protected, numbed even  to those I hold dear.

Ease, comfort, oblivion… they tempt me away from honoring my Self.

I breathe deep, I straighten my back and lift my chin. In the spirit of the Reiki Principles, I tell myself: Just for today… I will align myself with the highest energy of my Self, and look where I fear, feel what I would not risk, know what is present, and honor my Self in each moment.

Photo Credit:Lars Sundström

Hiking, Then and Now

When I was growing up, my father often took my sister and me, and sometimes friends — of his, or ours— on beautiful hikes of varying length, through the green patchwork of the Colombian mountainside and its cloud forest.  Occasionally, there was a defined path to follow. Most often, there was a starting point and a destination (a lake, a mountaintop, or a town), and, if we were lucky, the remnants of the ancient native paths or a few scattered cobblestones and the sporadic boundary stone remaining from the colonial caminos de herradura, built for pack mules.

We would be up with the sun and drive to our starting point, carrying some water and a picnic lunch, and we’d set off in the general direction of our destination. We never knew how long it would take to arrive, or where we could end up if we strayed from our course. I remember many times when asked for directions from a campesino tending his fields or feeding her hens. More often than not, especially if we were heading in the direction of a town, they would point us towards the highway, where we could catch an inter-municipal bus that could take us quickly. More often than not, they would chuckle at our foolish obstinacy for wanting to go the long, “old way,” through the fields and forests.

We had no cell phones in those distant days of last century. No way of letting anyone know where we were, or, more importantly, no way to contact anyone if we needed help. We didn’t know CPR or wilderness first aid, and I am pretty sure our first aid kit consisted of my dad’s Swiss Army Knife. There was little certainty regarding our hikes, other than that we would eventually arrive, somewhere, and that the journey would be beautiful.

The potential dangers we could encounter never stopped us —not even when we had to slither, single-file, along a fallen tree trunk to cross from one bank of a river to the other (with a couple of babies in tow, that time).  The uncertainties were simply part of the experience. We hiked in rain, through mud, and under sweltering heat. And, surprisingly, we never did have a situation where we needed help we couldn’t get!

Today, when I think back —especially since I have had kids of my own— I think of all the things that could have happened, all the dangers we could have encountered and lost to. Nowadays, I take gentle walks along wide gravel paths with a wide shoulder of mowed grass on either side, keeping the wilderness out of arm’s reach.  I travel with my cell phone and follow carefully placed, colored trail markers at each junction. Today, I check the weather before I set out.

No wonder, then, that I feel a captive of caution. No wonder that I seek certainties in all that I do, on the trails and in the quiet of my sacred space. It is time to reclaim the sense of adventure of my childhood hikes. More importantly, it is time to exercise the unseen powers of orientation and intuition.  It’s time to see past what danger could appear, set aside fear —or invite it along, as a passenger, not as a leader.  It is time to remember why it is we took those back roads, instead of the convenience of the highway: for the gifts unfolding out of that unique experience, for the excitement of the unknown and the beauty in the landscape, for the company and the satisfaction of testing ourselves, and for the stories we could tell once we arrived, before we slept the deep, untroubled sleep that renewed our sweetly tired bodies. For those same reasons, and in order to reclaim my Self, I must stand at this starting point and set my direction for a destination I may reach, eventually, sometime.

Colombian landscape on a rainy day. Photo by Pedro Szekely on Flickr.com

Remembering to Listen

This is one of the spaces I have consciously created for reflection, for listening to my Deepest Knowing and to explore what otherwise would find no outlet. I created it as a space for play, in the sense that it nourishes me and I lose my sense of time when I am in it.

Along the way, I learned that I have to show up regularly, that the inspiration to write rarely comes over uninvited, and often hides under many layers of “shoulds” and apparent urgencies.

I learned that I could write many, diverse reflections in one small burst of time, and I could begin many reflections that never really went anywhere more than a tight circle.

Lately, I have been forgetting that this is supposed to be play, fun, nourishment. I have been telling myself “I HAVE to blog,” and I sit down with a pout, my inner adolescent ever ready to stake a claim for independence. I have been in a power struggle with my inner Taskmaster, as one of my clients calls the ego.

Only when I catch myself, realize this and decide to let go, step back, hold up my hands in resignation; only in surrender can I begin to find my way back to the purpose, to listening, truly, and opening up.

Now, I do. I come back and sit down with joy and curiosity, with the excitement of discovery: what does True Self have to say?

All that I can feel is my heart unfolding open, like a book.  I find no certainties, no assurances, nothing to grasp. And yet, this is real: I am alive, in the energy that vibrates out of the center of my chest, and courage to be present in this moment courses powerfully through my veins. I am alive, I am present, I am Love.

Photo by Andreas Krappweis

Morning Pages in the Afternoon

Decades ago, my college writing teacher (who taught me as much about believing in my gifts as she did about English) introduced me to The Artist’s Way, and the tools I found in it changed my life (I started writing fiction, for one).  I used them consistently for years, and I still have Artist Dates with my Self every few weeks.  I used to do Morning Pages every morning before I did anything other than sit up in bed. I did them for over 10 years, and it would take me around half an hour to finish those three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing. When I went through the old notebooks of them, recently, I found what I already knew, they were full of pettiness and smallness, but the last few lines of almost every entry held pearls of wisdom, epiphanies, and breakthroughs for me.  Writing Morning Pages every day served me really, really well.

And then I had kids, and my early mornings did not feel my own. I stopped doing the Morning Pages. I missed them, but it was too stressful to try to predict when the kids would wake up so that I could have my half hour of uninterrupted writing in peace. And I was too tired. And then, when they got older and had to go to school, I preferred the pleasure of having them come, squirming into our bed with us, first thing.  I still do.

I toyed with the idea of starting them again. Except that I already get up crazy early, and I only manage to get the sleep I need each night because I stay vigilant about it.  Realistically, it wouldn’t work for me right now.  Maybe in another decade.

Still, I have been trying it out, in my own way, which means that I do them at odd times during my day.  There’s a part of me that hates that, it’s not the RIGHT way to do them, and I can’t harness the unconscious energy of my sleep when I do them over lunch.

And yet… I love to do them, I love to watch my petty thoughts spill out onto the page instead of occupying me all day.  I become free of them, and free to let the thoughts that hide beneath the surface, rise into my consciousness.  And I, still, consistently, find the pearls of wisdom, the epiphanies and breakthroughs in those last lines.

Doing the Morning Pages the wrong way is a fabulous means for me to access my inner wisdom.

But the Morning Pages have also taught me a lesson that I have learned before, one I can learn over and over again (and one I make a point of teaching). They reminded me that the tools I use are meant to serve me, and that means that I must adapt them so that I can use them, so that I can benefit from them. I must make them my own.

Photo by Miriam Wickett on RGBstock.com

Falling Apart

When I was a child and showed a tendency to pout, my father would say to me, “Pull yourself together!” or “Don’t feel sorry for yourself.” And, of course, that serves me well when I need to focus my attention on creating the experiences I choose to have.

I did not know it, initially, but it is what I have been doing for a couple of days, since I had a small traffic accident that left me shaken and scared, but grateful that the physical damage was only to the cars. I did take a moment, before driving away, to breathe and ground my scattered, rattled energy, but still, all the way home, and through the subsequent days, I battled a heavy energy of exhaustion. And a sense that my strength might momentarily fail me and I might crumple in a heap, all of a sudden. Every small sound startled me, and left me frazzled, as if my son had played his trumpet in my ear.

All this time, I had been pulling myself together, without making a conscious choice, without checking in with what my needs were. But today, that effort seemed monumental, and my energy, weak and diluted. There was a lump in my throat that felt like a fixture there, I swallowed around it.

Today, finally, I was touched by inspiration and I headed for the bathroom to run the hot water. I undressed slowly, as if my clothes were layers of experience, energies that I was shedding. I felt fragile, like I could shatter, as short fragments of the accident came back to me. I found my face damp with tears.

In the shower, sobs arose from my chest and my thoughts turned from the vehicles to my body, to my children, and all the uncertainties I hold at once. The water, my tears, the steam seemed to steep the heavy energy off of me, my muscles felt firmer, my legs reliable again, my stance more stable.

As I toweled off, I shrugged at the thought that I still have to deal with the insurance, with repairs, that nothing had really changed.  And yet, allowing myself this space of release, where I could feel the stark truth of my mortality and recognize the strain of holding myself up; gifting myself with a space to fall apart, to be with what is within me, left me with a cleansing emptiness that maybe, perhaps, could potentially become a renewed awareness of solidity and strength.

Sometimes the wisdom is not in pulling myself together, sometimes the wisdom is in allowing myself to fall apart.

Photo by Brano Hudak on RGBstock.com