Original Essence

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had grateful clients say, you changed my life. I am a completely different person now, so much happier and fulfilled.

How did I do it? I did it by bringing light to their dark places, creating a safe nurturing environment and by seeing the truth of their soul, then holding their spirit with respect and beauty until they learned to do that for themselves. I freed them to stand in the best part of themselves, but never changed their essence, which is an important distinction. They are not really different people; they are simply more of who they already were.  What I do is turn up the volume on their light and bring them out of hiding.

You could not change the essence of a person if you threw cosmic fireballs at it all day long − just not going to happen. 

 As parents many of us believe that we can shape and mold our children, but we can not. We can create a supportive loving environment and teach values, but that is all. I think if we could really understand that, in our heart of hearts, that it would relieve a world of parental guilt and all the, ‘what did I do wrong’, conversations that go on inside and outside our heads. 

 For example, my husband Gib is an athlete. His greatest desire was to have an athletic son, but he didn’t get one. He got a gentle sensitive boy with the soul of an artist, who had no desire at all to go crashing around an athletic field. In the end, the son felt he didn’t measure up and that he disappointed his father, while the father wondered what he’d done wrong. 

We are all unique. We all come in with a strong powerful core and mission, but when we don’t listen to that inner voice that carries our wisdom, and we let others define our purpose for us, we become sick, depressed or unhappy. 

I have found astrological charts to be helpful, because they expose the birth blueprint of each individual. I remember finding out about a trait from my brother’s chart and being surprised.

Really, I said, he’s wired that way? I thought he was just doing that to piss me off.

The point is, that people are who they are, and we can’t do much about it, except love them as they go through their changes. That’s the challenge we all have, to strip away the layers of information and experience, until we come back to our original essence, then celebrate that essence and take it proudly and boldly into the world. We are not here to hide, but to be ourselves as fully and completely as possible, while supporting others as they do the same.

Ram Dass

 

I first saw Ram Dass in the late 70’s, when he came to Ohio State University to speak about his trip to India and the ways it transformed his consciousness and character. He spoke about his time as a Harvard Professor, his friendship with Timothy Leary and finding his Hindu teacher.

Everyone is a manisfestation of God, he said, and every moment is of infinite significance.

I had no idea who Ram Dass was and had no expectations. He walked to the center of the stage in flowing robes, closed his eyes and sat quietly for a very long time. It amazed me. How could anyone begin a presentation by sitting down and being quiet?

I was at Ohio State studying dance, theater and women’s literature. I had just finished touring with Hello Dolly and had been well-schooled. Being on stage was about dynamic presentation, articulation, entertainment and projection. How could this guy sit center stage, take a long drink of water and willfully exclude his audience? I was baffled.

He began to talk about consciousness and the freedom in allowing yourself simply to be without doing.

We are human beings, he said, not human doings.

Wow, what would that be like? I was a single mom and the pressures of it made me feel like jumping off the nearest bridge. I got up early each morning; put my son in the child seat on my bike and my daughter on the grown-up seat, while I pedaled standing up. I stopped first at the day care center and later the university. We came home the same way. I worked as a waitress from three until nine, gave all my tips to the babysitter and stayed up past midnight finishing assignments. The next day I did it all again. Easy for him to talk about being and not doing, I thought.

But there was something wonderfully appealing about his gentle spirit, colorful robes and the tranquil glow in his eyes that made me pay attention and want to read his books. A few years later I moved from Ohio to Oregon and decided to try a ten day meditation. I had never done a formal meditation in my life - starting with ten days was not enlightenment, it was pure hell. But I was curious to know who I was beneath my story, history and ingrained beliefs, so I began searching for another way, a way that made sense to me.

What I settled on was sending my kids to their father’s house, while I closed the door to the world and imposed a kind of solitary confinement. I sat and noticed and observed.

When I wanted to bust out of the room, I noticed the feelings, thoughts and sensations around the desire but remained still.

When I wanted to eat food I was not hungry for, I stopped and noticed the desire for comfort, my need to fill my emotional emptiness and soothe the frightened child within.

I spent nearly a month peeling back the layers of my identity, sitting, laughing, crying and writing, looking for and finding the me that was capable of being and not doing. I wanted the personality to ease its fearful grip and allow a glimpse of the divine. I wanted access to the wise woman at my center and was not disappointed.

I saw Ram Dass last night in a documentary called Fierce Grace. He looked vulnerable, frail and broken. He talked about his stroke and what a worthy teacher it was. He cried openly and laughed the same way. The ability to mask his emotions had dissolved; the flow of his language was restricted and withheld. My husband wondered if it hurt his credibility to weep without restraint, but I saw it as one more protective human wall that had collapsed, to further reveal the compassionate spirit within.

Life is a strange and unyielding teacher. Willing or unwilling, we are all her pupils.

Equal Measure

Oh, last week was such a hard week. Everything went wrong; I was overwhelmed and found lack of harmony at every turn. Ugh!  I wanted a ticket to La-La-Land where everybody gets along and life runs smoothly all the time.

When I get stressed I try to maintain a positive attitude. But when the hard times keep coming and positive thinking starts to look like a band-aid over a tumor, I allow myself to surrender. I give myself permission to think what I think – and feel what I feel – as completely as possible, no matter how ugly or unwanted it is. I measure my mental health by the time this takes. Can I move through feelings in a day that used to take a week? Can I allow in a week what used to take a month? 

I find a kind of beauty in suffering that goes straight to the heart, because pain pulls away pretense and takes us to the raw truth of our being.

I received a letter last week from a woman in Kansas who had traveled to a graduation and returned to find that her horse of twenty-six years had died in her absence. He had a heart attack and was buried by the time she returned.

“I needed to find closure, and found it difficult as I was not able to see him one last time before he passed, so I have been walking around the barn to find his smell, to smell him one last time. There was nothing there, and then today my son said he cut some of his mane and tail for me and put it on a shelf in the barn. I found it and stuck my nose deep into the mane. It smelled just like my horse, the horse smell that is calming, peaceful and safe. I cried again, it was helpful to smell him one last time, now I have closure, now I can begin to heal.” 

How beautiful is that?  The communion of spirits and depth of love in her honest pain is profound. 

Today I find myself embracing the dark and the light in equal measure. I sit with my feet propped up on a ledge at the library, where I gaze out at sunshine, pink dogwood blossoms, water lilies and a long legged crane. A little girl in a blue dress is crouching near the ducks and walking as if she were one of them. They allow her to mingle only inches away until she tries to place her hand on their backs for a soft feathered embrace.

A little girl with golden hair,  duck-walking with her animal friends,  that’s enough to make my week.

Healing Ritual

I was collecting rocks at the beach. Wind blew hard against my face and I was glad to have the many layers of clothes I had worn. It was time for a healing ritual, an unloading of unwanted accumulation.

I sat on the sand like a kid, examining and fingering each rock. Some were perfect and round, others jagged with veins of white running through the center. They were every shape, variety and color. I unzipped the pocket of my fleece and pulled out a magic marker. Each rock would represent a burden I carried that I wanted to release.

On one rock I wrote the name of a friend whose connection had become strained and heavy. I wanted to keep the friend, but not the troubles surrounding us. On another, I wrote the word, stagnation, sighting my desire to travel and my feelings of being stuck. I wrote the names of foods I needed to stop eating, foods which pleased my taste buds but harmed my body. I went on this way choosing the right rock for the outgrown belief or trouble I carried.

When I finished, I piled them in two plastic grocery bags with the intention of walking as far as I possibly could to bring the reality of what I was doing emotionally into a real world understanding. I hefted the bags from the beach and began to walk. I had only gone a few yards when both bags broke open and spilled on to the sand. Determined to finish, I took off my jacket and bundled them inside. It was more difficult to carry as one bundle, but I managed.

I looked around. The beach was fairly empty, a tall man in an orange coat with a golden dog walked in front of me, and a handful of people who played by the parking lot entrance disappeared behind. The wind encouraged my efforts as it blew against my back, making it easier to walk. I thought about all I carried as I made my way down the shore. I thought about how heavy it was and how tired it made me feel. There was a moment which mirrored my life, when I actually felt proud. Wow, look at me, I thought. I am so strong and can carry so much. I wanted to celebrate my strength. Emotions rose and fell with each new step.  After awhile I slung my bundle on to my back and realized how familiar that felt. I looked so normal from the front. No one would guess I carried such weight out of sight.

When I could bear that no longer, I shifted the rocks from shoulder to shoulder and finally pulled them in front of me, where I acknowledged them for the troublesome weight they were. At one point, I noticed a sand dollar and wanted to pick it up, but had to ask myself if I could do it. I wondered if I could hold my burden and reach for what I wanted at the same time. I studied it. It was small and beautiful and would add no weight, but there was the juggling of the load to consider. Would it be easier to pass it by? How symbolic that moment was, as I remembered my recent desire to book a massage and how easily I had over-ruled it, sighting lack of funds or too much work. I carefully lowered myself near the prize, plucked it from its resting place and tucked it in the pocket of my shirt.

After walking three miles, I came to a path that led away from the shore and up to a cliff where I could perch on the point and rest. The path was sand covered, steep and shifting, a challenge on a good day. I struggled to hold my bundle as I grabbed tree roots for balance and leverage. I pulled myself to the top exhausted and panting,  dropped to the earth and gratefully took in miles of shore line, seagulls, fishing boats and the distant orange speck of a man and his prancing dog.

The mountain served as a welcome protection from the wind as I waited for my breathing to descend from chest to belly. The sun warmed my face. I pulled each stone from the bundle, thought about its shape and size, and the words I had written. I cried about some and settled into my willingness to release them.

I knew from my healing practice that it was not enough for my mind to decide things; my body had to decide also. This ritual was making my decision both integrated and real. I remembered a client I had seen a week earlier who felt he had lost his masculinity in an overbearing marriage. He had complied so much that his essence seemed to have disappeared all together. It had been helpful to talk about his feelings, but it wasn’t enough. What worked was a physical ritual that placed a knife in his hand, called his warrior self from memory and brought rage up and out of his belly in great howls of self-claiming. Ritual is the missing spiritual piece in our ability to heal. 

Finished on the cliff and ready to head back, I prepared to leave. I picked up my bundle and was surprised to feel my body recoil in resentment. But my ritual was not complete, so I picked up the rocks, made my way down the mountain and walked to the ocean’s edge.

Waves lapped at my feet as I pulled each stone from hiding.  As I threw them into the water, I spoke again of releasing the energy they carried, but this time I invited new energies to take their place. Where there was conflict, I invited harmony, where there was stagnation, I invited invigoration, and so it went stone after stone until my hands were empty. 

I finished with a great feeling of liberation and peace, but the wind was no longer at my back. I tied my empty jacket over my head to shield my ears and walked the three miles back to my new beginning.

Lessons

 

I learned a lot from my residency as a therapist, but very little came from the books I read. It was the personal realizations that moved me to insight more than any training skills. Specifically, I learned that the judgments and criticisms of others that I was so quick to make in the privacy of my own mind were destructive and misplaced, saying more about my lack of development than anything else. 

I ran therapy groups at Clackamas County Mental Health Center with Rich Panzer, the resident psychiatrist. Our evening group was attended by a very angry, immensely overweight woman, whom I disliked immediately. She triggered me because she was the dark side of the compliant physically fit girl I had learned to be. Her manner was caustic and fiercely good at pushing people away. I secretly wished she would leave the group, and take her attitude with her. I felt she was standing in the way of real healing for others, but mostly she evidenced an uncomfortable place of judgment in myself that I had no skill to deal with. As months went by and her shell began to weaken and crack, I was able to glimpse the magnificence of the spirit within.  When she felt safe enough to tell her story, give up her secrets and release her pain, I felt shamed by my earlier thinking.

I saw the same thing repeated daily in my practice at the clinic, clients hiding their beauty and wisdom behind years of walled off pain, desperately needing to find a way out, and just as desperately determined to create a kind of safety that prevented them from doing so.

The spoken message was, please help me, my life is a mess and I can’t go on.

The unspoken message was, I’ve been hurt so much that I can’t let you close enough to know me.  I have to constantly guard from danger.

It took time to understand how to separate people’s defenses from their deeper essence, but I count it as one of the most valuable lessons of my life.

Debbie Ford wrote a book called, “The Dark Side of the Light Chasers,” which helps us understand how we project what we can not accept in ourselves onto others. If you haven’t read it and feel ready to look at your own shadow side, I’d give it a try.

Dyslexia

I was in my last year at boarding school before I picked up a book and read it from cover to cover. Before that, words were a collection of tiny line drawings in black ink, placed against a light background and bunched together in clusters of illegible form. Much of my childhood was spent alone in my room with one illness or another. School became a place I rarely went, so my mother hired tutors to keep me in the educational loop.  I didn’t fully realize that I couldn’t read, because I’d been taught the mechanics in school, I simply could not gain entry.

Tutors came to my bedroom and left stacks of books on the night table, with demands for memorizing and reciting to avoid failure. Bright pink markers guided me with clear certainty to mountains of exercises and reading assignments. I saw the tutors and the books as ugly intruders, the certain onset of a headache. I would look at the pages as one would look at a book of Latin or Greek, and put it aside. I wanted to comply but didn’t know how. Once, in my frustration, I copied the pictures I saw in pencil and ink. I made a great sweeping portrait of Mark Twain and handed it over instead of a book report. It landed in the trash with more threats and verbal lashings describing the dismal future I’d have if I failed to cooperate. If I had been brave, I would have torn the pages and filled my bedroom with paper airplanes, but I didn’t do that. I was not brave.

Reading was painfully slow, but I got better as I got older, better at faking my inability and better at recognizing words. I envied those who saw it as a source of comfort or escape into a better world. When we were assigned book reports in school I would ask others to describe the story or ask a librarian to talk to me about the book. I was able to slide by, but hiding and the extra effort made me weary.

When I was sent to boarding school to recover my health, my roommate gave me John Steinbeck’s  Of Mice and Men. She owned his entire collection which sat on a shelf between our beds. Here, read this, she said, as I lay in bed with a cold. It will help pass the time. I had never read anything that was not academic. I opened the book out of sheer boredom, expecting as ever to be turned away, either by dull content or its failure to allow entry. To my surprise and delight, I was invited inside. The words were easy and enjoyable. I could read it!  I went from cover to cover and wanted another. I was so proud of myself. I was 17 years old and it was the first book I’d read from start to finish. This Steinbeck guy didn’t seem so bad.

Unfortunately, the experience didn’t begin a love affair. I had too many year of seeing books as the enemy for that, plus they required holding still, which I didn’t enjoy either. After so many years of illness, I wanted to be out in the world, doing, not stuck in a room reading.

My character is not very different now. I do love finding a good book, but never suffer an author I don’t connect with immediately. I find beauty and comfort in language, especially in classics like Anna Karenina, and the well-met phrases of Shakespeare.  Dick Francis and his stories from being the jockey for Queen Elizabeth are other favorites.  And now, as miracles have it, I have my own book at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Who would have thunk? Surely not the little girl lying miserable and alone in her room, starring at the towering piles of books near her bed,  and wanting to burn each and every one.

Writing Memoir

Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

This is what happens each time I sit to write. I ask myself to look at life straight, without skipping over the shadow places, or pretending I don’t hear what I hear, or see what I see.

I ask my courage to dive deep into dark waters with eyes wide open when my tendency is to turn away, protect or avoid. Warning lights flash in my belly. Sometimes it’s hard to breathe. I tell myself it’s not too late to turn back. But I go there, because if I am successful, I won’t have to live above the swamp. I can drain it, release the power of the underworld and add sunshine.

To look again at what was, is to open my memory to sights and sounds and smells I have masterfully put aside. My mind tells me to cut off the past like a dead limb, because there is simply no point, no useful purpose. Look ahead, it tells me. Plan the future. My mind tries to be nice to me, to do me a favor and keep me out of trouble. I appreciate it, but I can’t move forward as long as there is unfinished business.

I pride myself on having created, against all odds, a body of water that is clear and calm. Why would I stir it up with memories of the past? Not just stir it up, but keep my eyes wide open. My mind directs me to sunny beaches in Mexico, while my emotions direct me to the business of truth telling.

I reach for Hershey’s kisses. Little pieces of chocolate wrapped in shiny golden paper with an almond hidden within. I’m allergic to chocolate, but the almond eases the guilt. If I listen to the language of the heart, it’s telling me that I need some kisses, whether or not I can digest them, and not only do I need them, I need them now. Not after the next paragraph. Kisses can’t wait.

Writing memoir brings up issues of privacy and loyalty. Do I want others to know my history? Will I lose power or gain it by revealing myself?  The past is not the present. Is it fair to portray what was frozen in my personal archives? Surely, everyone experienced our time together differently. Each person is a country in and of themselves. Is it fair in revealing my memories to expose, accurately or inaccurately, the personal landscape of others? Will I be seen as an alien invader? Most certainly, I will. I intend to see with honest eyes, but whose version of the truth is revealed? I commit to write, and ask for forgiveness if my version of the truth offends those living or those already in the spirit world.  Sometimes I hesitate to recall memories for fear it would pull on the spirit of another in a negative way, when what is called for is forgiveness. All these things are considered and felt when we open the door to deep diving.

Oh, you animal!

My massage therapist, Jean, recommended a book by Crowley and Lodge called, Younger Next Year.  She said it inspired her to eat well, and set her on a course of regular exercise.

Being inspired to exercise sounded good to me, since I find it difficult to do anything but work, write, cook, see clients and watch some BBC. Jean did not mention, nor did the title, that the book came in two versions, one for men and one for women.

I searched my library and was glad to see the bright yellow book jacket resting happily on the top shelf, waiting for me to tuck it under my arm and take it home, which I did.

The book started out innocently enough, two men talking about the importance of staying fit, one man a physician, the other a 70 year old attorney, who traversed from aliments and retirement, to trim and energetic.

I did wonder if I wanted to read a book written by two men, since I’m not inclined to take advice from men. I find them a little alien and male for my literary tastes, but I forged ahead.

As I turned the pages, I began to wonder how Jean could have felt so excited about the information, and questioned our compatibility as readers. In one chapter, I was jolted out of all propriety when I read, “Get off the couch and exercise, you lazy son of a bitch.”

In another chapter, I learned that nose hair could become a real problem as I got older, and that I’d better plan to find a way of clipping it before my nostrils looked like a home for wolverines.

That was followed by a piece that said I should never neglect shaving in my later years, lest I start looking like Yasir Arafat. It did not end there.

I read that my ears would need tending as well. They advised finding a barber who was good at that, unless I wanted to look old and furry.

I began to have alarming ideas about age. The last straw was a paragraph that told me that guys in their 50 or 60’s could be surprised by suddenly having a penis that curled up like a chow’s tail when erect. “Imagine,” it said, “straight ahead and true for 50 years. And now, it’s looking ever so slightly up at the sky.”

Must I be warned about the future of my husband’s penis?

I closed the book and reached for the phone. Jean! What were you thinking to recommend such a book to me? I can’t believe you even liked it.

When I told her what I had read she began to laugh her lovely light Jean laugh. You must have the book for men, she said. There is a similar one for women. I’ll lend you mine, if you’d like.  At that point I was nearly finished so I declined. Besides, I had not read the chapter titled:

YOU ARE AN ENDURANCE PREDATOR, ACT LIKE ONE!

Henley

Henley continued to move through our lives with regularity. Utterly oblivious to the material world, he became a serious student of metaphysics. He also became convinced that I had special healing powers, which I certainly did not, at least not the kind he imagined. In the evening he knocked on the door to request a healing treatment for his balding head. This consisted of seating himself in front of the woodstove and offering non-stop conversation, while I placed my hands above his head, and sent the heat from my palms into his thinning patches of remaining hair. I had no faith in my abilities, but he was positive I had powers from another world. It couldn’t hurt and his conversation was interesting, so I became his healer. (His hair never did grow, by the way.)

Henley never entered or left a room in the usual manner. Most people have rituals which consist of entering or leaving talk. For instance, how nice to see you, how have you been? Or in leaving, I think it’s about time to go, it’s been great. Henley, however, entered a room like he’d been there all day, and had just gotten up to get a drink. He launched into full blown conversation without warning and left by simply disappearing. He just rose from his chair and walked out. This always left Kristen and I baffled, and looking at each other questioning, is he gone? Do you think he’s done now?

The other bizarre puzzle was that one of the young skaters he had coached had matured and was on her way to a silver medal. Because he didn’t have a phone, I would receive his calls and retrieve him from the far corners of the house. The calls came from all over the world. When he took them, he stopped being the eccentric Henley I knew, and became the authority in his field. His voice lowered as he dispensed advice, and gave long distance suggestions on winning strategies. My jaw always dropped to the floor during these conversations. I privately mused, who are you Mr. Henley, who lives in there?

We lived in Henley’s house for five years, then left for Seattle. His mother passed away shortly after Kristen and I moved out, leaving him a large settlement. He gave B’Lou one of his mother’s mink coats, paid his back debts, sold his house and moved to Tacoma. I lost track of him after that. But where ever he is, I’m sure he continues to be optimistic, has maintained his status as a world class trasher, and is pursuing his love of learning. If I am wrong, and his inheritance has run out, you might look closely into the eyes of the next tall thin man you see bending into the garbage to retrieve bottles. Could be Henley, who is not really a bad guy at all. I think you’d like him.

Alignment

How does one heal, prosper and thrive? 

How does one enter the core of themselves to discover the light within?

The essential thing is to find the part of you that is already well, always has been and always will be. To do this you need to rise above the personality and the physical to find the wise woman or wise man that lives within, the one who is just visiting this place, and remains unaffected by external events. Find the part of you that is the child of divine energies, and not human ones. That part has the answers you are looking for. Here is an exercise that might help.

Quiet yourself, relax your body, and imagine sending your energy deep into the center of the earth where it can be held. Rest there, release and allow your spirit to be cradled and safe. Next imagine a light that comes from above, a divine light that knows no boundaries. Allow it to penetrate your physical body, moving through and around, allow it to merge with the energy of the earth. Breathe into the place where heaven and earth meet, breathe into the place that knows that your life is sacred and you have everything you need. This is a physical place in your body. Once you find it, you can go back. This is your place of peace, guidance and power. The most important thing is finding it and knowing it is there. 

The first step in healing for my clients is to feel seen, to have another person view the truth of their essence and hold it with respect and appreciation. The next is to understand the place their soul resides and to know how to access it by themselves.  When you have engaged this place, reality shifts and you stop giving power to people and things outside yourself. You know your inner truth to be greater than anything that exists externally, which allows more peace and gratitude. Learning to trust your inner voice is a formidable task because we have a lifetime of conditioning that directs us to do otherwise. I call this listening to the voice of spirit. If you listen, you will hear, maybe not right away, but eventually.

The logical mind is jealous. It says, no way buddy. I’ve been running this show a long time and don’t want to yield. I’ll do everything I can to get you back if you stop listening to me. This part feels threatened by the shift, so an internal dialogue is necessary. The logical mind needs to be reassured that it will not be out the door, it will just be given a supporting role instead of being the ruler on the throne. The voice of logic will come from the personality, your fears, society, and well-intended friends. It takes tremendous faith, courage and trust to wait patiently when guidance tells you one thing and the voices of logic are yelling, Are you out of your mind? It is a process but the pay-off is tremendous.

The planet is demanding we abandon old structures to make room for new growth, however uncomfortable, a new beginning is about to occur. Stay awake and aware. Don’t get locked in distress or focus on endings. Remain fluid. This time may not be easy, but it will be rewarding. Let go of old ways, it is time to allow change.