Light it up March 30, 2011

“Contradiction

I’m conflicted with being a hypocrite

And through these songs you can witness it

The difference is that I admit this shit

‘cause I’m just like you

Walking the fine line between saying it

And living it”

~Macklemore

I have quit writing more times than I can count.  In fact, I have quit many things – and people – more times than I can count.  I have avoided, belittled and stalled on amazing ideas and plans and I have been far less than I could be. I had gone into hiding and shirked my calling. I have ended friendships, jobs and avoided being recognized. I used to think that it was just a “commitment” issue that caused me to be unable to fully engage, but recently I heard words come out of my mouth that told a different story.

I was giving a long list of reasons why I really shouldn’t write to my son the other day.  He got frustrated with the never-ending excuses and said JUST DO IT MOM.  “I can’t” I replied.  “If I do, someone will find out someday that I can’t always live the story I tell, and they will call my bluff and everyone will know that I am a fake and it will be horrible”.  Openmouthed he looked at me and with thick eighteen year old sarcasm he said “REALLY, Mom?????”  Confessing this to a young adult fully in the throes of self-discovery shook me into realizing how universal this fear of being judged is, and how limiting.

The next day I got in the car and plugged in music my son introduced me to from Seattle hip hop master Macklemore in which he talks about the difficulties of being a white, middle class hip hop artist.  He speaks of the need to share your story and of the urge to create that goes beyond your own self-imposed boundaries. He totally gets the paralyzing fear that you are going to be called out on how well you walk the talk.  He challenges us to honor the places we are contradictory so that we are more true to ourselves and liberate our creativity from self-judgment.  Hmmm…..

I am often front and center in leadership roles that mask my own insecurities. I would love to live a quiet life out of the path of action but something keeps pushing me into it.  Destiny, karma, or whatever, has given me the ability and opportunity to serve others even though  I’d rather be unknown .  I have tried, but I can’t fight it. I have this over riding sense that I am supposed to speak up and speak out even as I worry that someday the skeletons in the closet are going to have a big ol’ dance party in front of everyone I know. I still hear the voice of someone I loved challenging me:  “How can you help other people when you are so screwed up?”.  Said years ago, it continues to echo within me.

Writing in particular is a challenging and often completely bipolar exercise. Some days I get up so excited to write that it is all I can do to get through the day until I can sit at the computer.  The words just flow out of me and the connection to a deeper wisdom is effortless.  It makes me incredibly happy and everything is good.  Other days the voices in my head drown out any enthusiasm with their shouting about how worthless it all is, how self-indulgent and arrogant I am. Worse yet….what a liar. I struggle with getting out of bed, much less with how to be my truest self.  I am often not a very good cancer survivor, and frequently can’t find anything positive about who I am now because of it. Most of the wisdom found on these pages was discovered at the end of many a long road of hardship that a truly wise person would have seen coming and avoided like the plague.  While I feel the truth in the words that flow so easily on those magical days, the reality of living them fully is often daunting enough for me to hide not only my gifts, but myself.  What if I am wrong?  What if I can’t?  Who am I to say these things?  For God’s sake, what if someone finds out I am human!???

In my all or nothing life, I frequently judge myself too harshly –if I am not all wise, than I am nothing.  And if I am nothing, well, then that is just how it is so I should keep my head down and maybe no one will notice.  Certainly don’t put myself in front of an audience who will all be there to see me fall.

But,  there it is….I sit with the knowing that I am both wise and stupid, successful and not, and to live this life fully, both sides of the coin must be embraced.  I do walk the fine line between saying it and living it, and am nothing if not a frequent contradiction.

Perhaps I need to remember the day I went to give a speech (for which I had paid a lot of attention to how I looked)  to have my mom tell me I had chicken shit on my stilettos. We laughed it off after a cleanup and I went to the microphone relaxed.  The speech went great -I came off as smart and funny and looked pretty good too.  No one knew about the poop….and maybe it was just what I needed to keep me grounded and focused on what part of me was most important.

It would seem fairly obvious that we all are in process, and we shouldn’t judge ourselves so harshly for where we are not living up to the face we put on for everyone else.  But we do.  I have too many friends that agonize over where they think themselves a disappointment to others, who choose not to love fully or pursue their dreams because they need to keep their carefully developed persona intact.  We are so aware of our own faults and mistakes that we wear them as a shield to protect ourselves from our dreams.  It is an awfully heavy burden to lug around.

I challenge you to look within at the areas where you act as if you are less;  where you don’t stick your neck out, say what you need to say, act on your dreams or love as fully as you would like because someone might see the contradiction in your intentions and your actions. Don’t listen to the people who scoff at how “you talk one thing and do another”, who question the validity of what you know, who hold you back because of what it means to them if you take risks.  If we change ourselves, the whole world will change with us because we are all so connected.  And if we call our own bluff and show the man behind the curtain, everyone will all be affected and called to a deeper place of integrity and honesty that will change all of us.

My confusion about the right path to take and the way I often flail around in my life are the same struggles others face more or less publicly.  We are not diminished by our challenges, but fed by them.  We all live lives of contradiction because we are complex ever- evolving beings.  There is grace in holding both the wisdom and the idiocy, and true depth and meaning come from a heart that has been strengthened by both.

I am sure there will be many more days where I feel like a hypocrite and unable to live with the contradiction in what I am able to do vs. what I write about.  I write this not as an apology or a public exposure of my weaknesses in order to cover my ass, but as a way for me to speak the truth about all that I am so that I can be more.  I have written nearly everywhere in this blog that we must live into what we choose instead of into our fear not because I am good at it, but because I must keep reminding myself.  We hide all we can be because we fear that in showing our brilliance we will also expose our dark.  As the chorus to the Macklemore song goes, we must “light it up to burn it down”.  And so I write today and each day  to light a match for me and for you and you and you and you and you…………..

(Check out this amazing music….Macklemore \”Contradiction\”)

“Just use it with some grace….” November 17, 2010

This summer I had an experience that made me question not only my general competency and wisdom but my very right to do the very things I feel so compelled to do.  While the details of what exactly happened would be meaningless to the outsider, it is enough to say that someone I loved deeply had negative things to say about my skill and knowledge doing something that meant a great deal to me.  The fact that I valued this persons’ opinion a great deal intensified the deep feelings of unworthiness and doubt that bubbled out of my soul along with a tide of endless tears.  While the grown up in me was able to recognize that this person had something firmly wedged up her butt and that the issue was within HER and NOT me, the inner child had a meltdown.  And the child’s deep sense of being afraid she might not be good enough and wanting to avoid this pain at all costs saw me retreating into my shell and hiding for weeks.

This is not a new thing for me, although I had thought perhaps the wisdom gained in the past couple of years had caused me to grow out of it.  I am known to be reclusive – that would be my positive spin on what others might call “Robyn is avoiding human contact whenever possible”.  Years of bad personal decisions on my part left me feeling like I should not subject other people to myself except when I was at my best – which was not very often.  I  know a lot of people in my community and the idea that they might see me when I am not living up to the image I wanted to present can be horrifying.  Add to this a history of abuse, the constant physical and emotional contact of being a mom and the shallow, ethereal contact of working retail and you begin to see that any kind, relatively deep connection with an adult can make me squirm.

Yet, the flip side of this is that I am a highly intuitive and deeply spiritual person with a overriding desire to help others find a truer, more deeply fulfilling path for themselves in this lifetime.  I have studied with spiritual teachers who claim that I have a profound “gift” that is not intended to be kept to myself.  So I walk an uncomfortable path  — wishing I could just be left alone in my garden and my writing and not have to deal with anyone  unless they were on Facebook or in my golf foursome – and knowing that I have a greater purpose that requires me to extend myself beyond my comfort zone.

So I wonder what is the matter with me that I, a LEO for crying out loud,  would prefer to avoid attention and unnecessary connection under most circumstances. I know that I know what I know. But how can I be so devastated by what one person has to say about my performance?   Is this a self esteem issue?  So I looked it up……

Wikipedia defines Self Esteem as:

Self-esteem is a term used in psychology to reflect a person’s overall evaluation or appraisal of his or her own worth. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs (for example, “I am competent” or “I am incompetent”) and emotions such as triumph, despair, pride and shame. A person’s self-esteem may be reflected in their behaviour, such as in assertiveness, shyness, confidence or caution. Self-esteem can apply specifically to a particular dimension (for example, “I believe I am a good writer, and feel proud of that in particular”) or have global extent (for example, “I believe I am a good person, and feel proud of myself in general”).

Psychologists usually regard self-esteem as an enduring personality characteristic (“trait” self-esteem), though normal, short-term variations (“state” self-esteem) also exist.

Synonyms or near-synonyms of self-esteem include: self-worth,^[1] self-regard,^[2] self-respect,^[3][4] self-love (which can express overtones of self-promotion),^[5] and self-integrity. Self-esteem is distinct from self-confidence and self-efficacy, which involve beliefs about ability and future performance. (Wikipedia)

So things seem okay here. I certainly don’t feel like what I lack is self-confidence.  If I had to answer the question, I would say that my beliefs (currently) are that I am strong, brave, more or less smart, a decent writer, a loyal friend, a good listener and holder of space to instigate healing for people.  Occasionally I am also smart, beautiful, and fun to be around. My behavior would certainly reflect someone who is confident, strong willed, and out-going. I believe that I deserve good things and am still waiting for my fairy godmother to help me purchase the winning lottery ticket.

But as I write these statements about myself – and indeed, the very act of writing itself — makes the sirens go off in my head and I hear some nasty 12 year old girl start shouting at me about how I am so stuck up  and  full of  myself.  “WHO ARE YOU TO THINK YOU HAVE ANYTHING IMPORTANT TO SAY, MUCH LESS WRITE OR TEACH? YOU ARE SO NARCISSTIC AND SELF-CENTERED!” she shouts as she pokes at me.  She is a nasty little thing, and even though I don’t like her, somehow she latches onto the core of all that I am and chews holes in my soul like a moth in my sweater drawer. So, quietly I try to go about the things that I am driven to do, and hope that I can fly under the radar of anyone who will be the physical manifestation of that adolescent demon bitch in my head.

And so I keep myself to myself more or less. Even while I know I have many fabulous characteristics and loads of wisdom to share, I am acutely aware of all my failures and very public mistakes.  Somehow I am ashamed of being human. For some reason I hold myself to an unrealistic moral standard that I would never expect of anyone. I know this and yet I have a hard time moving past it. Instead, I play an outgoing, self confident person in the real life movie about me. The vast majority of people who know me would be shocked at the level of inner angst they never see. Sometimes I draw strength from the fact that if I knew me only as other people knew me I would think I was pretty cool and would skip over the messed up parts.  It is probably a good thing we CAN’T see each other’s inner lives or we would all be in a cave waiting to be rescued from the crazies!

This is all compounded by the fact that I dated someone who was once, in the new age circles of the 1980’s, relatively well known  and even in the year 2000 was still riding on his supposedly  enlightened mystique. He was essentially a good guy, but he was from an era and a healing approach that was very ego-centric and arrogant. The end of our relationship began when I said I loved him, but I didn’t believe in his therapeutic techniques. Well meaning though he was, he was benignly arrogant and narcissistic, and did not apply the things he taught to his every day life. Which were the very things that terrified me that I would be accused of. Having that mirror in front of me made me quit teaching workshops and my counseling practice, because I felt that since  I was not even close to achieving for myself what I was teaching others,  I had no business acting like the pro.   Even though I knew that the concepts I was talking about worked, and I believed in them, I felt I had no right to teach as I was not “Master”.  Was this a lack of self confidence?  Was I being realistic?  Was I just hiding?

One day I spoke to one of my teachers about this and he looked me in the face and said to me “This humility does not serve you. Who are you to determine to not use the gifts that God gave you?”

HUH? My teacher, a man whom I respect not only for his knowledge but his lack of pretention,  is telling me that I am down-playing myself too much?  Being raised in a religious family, I thought that humility was EXCPECTED of us as spiritual people and especially as a woman. Was he suggesting that I had it wrong?

And so I turn to Wikipedia again wondering what is humility….

Humility (adjectival form: humble) is the quality of being modest, reverential, even politely submissive, and never being arrogant, contemptuous, rude or even self-abasing. Humility, in various interpretations, is widely seen as a virtue in many religious and philosophical traditions, being connected with notions of transcendent unity with the universe or the divine, and of egolessness; by contrast, some schools of thought are sharply critical of humility. (Wikipedia)

Right away I chafe at the idea of being submissive but the rest of it rings true for me.  I want to be modest, reverential, and never arrogant.  Wikipedia goes on to say….from the Catholic tradition no less….

Humility is defined as, “A quality by which a person considering his own defects has a humble opinion of himself and willingly submits himself to God and to others for God’s sake.”

I am brought full circle to the moment in which someone I loved said bad things about how I was doing things that I loved and felt called to do.  Somehow, as much as I rebelled against Catholicism growing up, the very idea that I am submitting myself to GOD/GODDESS/the Divine/Great Spirit for his/her sake gives me courage. I do not write, volunteer, fire-tend, teach, or speak out because I want anyone to feel any particular way about me, or because I have something to gain. I am propelled along this path in the same way the cartoon character Wallace is propelled along by the robotic pants in the cartoon short “The Wrong Trousers”.  I have always felt, deep down inside that I was being called….that I had something to say, in a way that people needed to hear that was completely independent of the person I would identify as ME.

So long ago my teacher challenged me to not think that I should shut off the gifts that God gave me because of my own fears of how I would be perceived.  Now, as I write and stick my neck back out there again with so much fear and trepidation of being judged harshly, I am reminded of the Martha Graham quote:

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.”

It is our responsibility as children of the universe to let ourselves shine.  When we get bogged down in other people’s drama about us and in our own hopes and expectations for ourselves we lose sight of what we were put here to do. We may not know what is best for because we do not always see our way clearly through other people’s garbage.  And, perhaps the gifts we are given are not to benefit us…to pay for new cars, expensive toys and houses larger than we need.  Perhaps we all need to look at our hiding, our denial,  and at how we spend our time and energy and try to determine if that is really what our Higher Power intended for us.

Women have been taught for eons that we are to be submissive, silent and non-confrontational in order to have worth and be seen as “good”.  While I would not label myself as a feminist, it would be difficult for any intelligent woman – or man for that manner – to look at our culture and not admit to all  the ways in which the characteristics of a man: confident, aggressive, competitive, business minded – are valued over those of a woman: communicative, mothering, less assertive, negotiator, feeling oriented, intuitive. And when a woman crosses over into the realm of the “male” she is seen as a bitch, a rebel, difficult, arrogant, slutty and more.  No wonder I crumpled into a heap when I was challenged that evening about my right to be an authority – I was essentially being called all the dirty names in the book just because I stepped into my place of power. And this wasn’t the first time I had been silenced by someone’s expectations about what my role should have been….this was a long drawn out pattern that I was determined to put an end to.

I have spent much of my life trying to figure out how to walk a path of knowing and socially and self-enforced enforced submissiveness in order to not look “stuck up” as that adolescent monster would say.  I have dumbed myself down, shrugged off compliments, failed to use the strength and power I possessed and often chose to not act on the gifts I have been given in an effort to be acceptable. Yet my kids, and now my young, predominantly male staff, see me as a tough rebel who will take on anyone/anything in the interest of my moral code.  There is a contradiction in my life that makes me uncomfortable and makes it so that I cannot easily fully embody either aspect.

Recently I watched the move NINE in which Daniel Day-Lewis’s character director Guido Contini struggles with writing a movie script because he is uncertain which aspect of himself seen through the eyes of the women who “love” him is actually him. The positive and negative aspects of each of his persona’s are shown and he agonizes over how much damage he does in his private life while pretending to be the self confident, wise Director everyone expects to see.  He is anxious, unsettled and despondent and retreats to be away from everyone’s expectations. He is discovered in his personal exile by Lilli, a long time friend played by Dame Judy Denche. He tells her that he cannot possibly go back to that life and the only story he has to tell is one of a humble man trying to win back the love of his life.

Lilli says: “There isn’t a single person passing by who hasn’t been touched in some way by one of your movies.  That’s your gift. That’s what you’ve been given. Use it.  Just use it with some grace for Christ’s sake”.

Like Guido so many of us, myself included,  get caught up in the expectations – real or perceived – of the people or society around us, and we neglect our  gifts because of our own doubt and the way we want people to see us. We hide, we play dumb, we tell ourselves that our inner voice is EGO and not to be trusted.  We lack the self confidence to pursue our dreams not because we are afraid that we are not good enough, but because we are afraid of what may happen if we are. We are afraid that if we become everything we were meant to be, say everything we need to say and do everything we know we were meant to do – we will be seen as arrogant, stuck up and ego-centric.

But what if exactly the opposite were true?  What if, like my teacher said to me, our arrogance lies only in our decision that WE think we know better than GOD what to do with our lives?  What if, as Martha Graham stated, we choose NOT to express our uniqueness and therefore it is lost?  What if there is really an intention for us here on this green world and the butterfly effect is so true that in our choosing NO, we impact the entire world negatively instead of positively?

In the end, we simply need to remember what Lilli says to Guido….” that’s your gift. That’s what you’ve been given. Use it.  Just use it with some grace for Christ’s sake”.

Resistance is futile November 5, 2010

One of my favorite bad guy lines of all time is “ Resistance is Futile “ courtesy of  The Borg from Star Trek Next Generation.  The Borg were a collective entity that assimilated their victims in an attempt to reach a sort of computerized all–knowing perfection.  Their standard “resistance is futile” line was the last thing they said to their victims to state that there was no escape from their fate….that struggling only made the inevitable more difficult.

Recently I faced situation at work where I stood the very real potential for losing my job because I stood up to an injustice.  As I waited through the weekend full of anxiety; stomach churning and a constant tension headache from my tight shoulders I began to think about the Borg statement in a slightly different light then they may have meant.  There was nothing I could have done about the situation I found myself in other than to have kept quiet (which was simply not possible if you know me at all!). I did what I needed to do, I was not antagonistic, I spoke my truth and now simply need to face the result of my actions. Resistance to the proverbial shit hitting the fan is indeed futile. And, my relaxing about it might indeed give me the agility and strength to dodge it! My inner struggle with the perceived difficulty of the impending meeting was ruining my weekend. I could not change a single thing about what was going to happen….I could only change my own end of it and let it go.  If I stopped holding myself in such a place of resistance – the fear of the unknown – what would I begin to open up to as a possibility?  And certainly, walking into that meeting tense and agitated wasn’t going to do me any good – I knew I was in the right, but I didn’t need to be all wound up about it or I was going to be the one who lost it.

Relaxing into the struggle looked at in a different light makes me think about learning to swim – something that is still  an anxiety filled sport for me.  Since we owned a boat growing up my parents were determined that I would know how to swim. To make a long story short, their well intended efforts, and those of the swim instructors who employed a sink or swim attitude, did not lead me to a lifelong love of the activity. But learning does shed some light onto the Borg philosophy as well. I was taught that my swimming safety net is to float on my back. In order to float, I must stop flailing about….the more I struggle, the more likely I will end up under water. How often do we accomplish our goals by running around panicking about all the things that might happen?  How much more successful are we when we approach the events in our lives with a calmness that leaves room for positive outcome? How often do we struggle within our own safety net?

The difference between my use of the Borg statement and theirs is that I believe that resistance is futile not because I believe we should give up, but rather so that we can see how and what we are resisting and decide if it is a necessary use of our energy. In between resignation and resistance is curiosity. Examining our places of resistance, fear, defensiveness and avoidance gives us the opportunity to shed light into the darkness of our scary places.  Curiosity steps us away from our habitual actions/reactions  and gives us an opportunity for a new experience. As we pause and look at the path we always take, the actions we don’t even think about, the words that we use without analyzing their future, we become freer in our lives.

We all have a tendency to struggle with a myriad of things that really don’t require all that energy. Usually this struggle is prompted by fear. We are uncomfortable with not-knowing, we are worried we will get hurt, we don’t want to let our guard down, we are preparing for the worst.  We are focused on what MIGHT happen or what HAS happened instead of being present in the moment and gaining strength in that. When we hold ourselves too tightly we hold ourselves back from accomplishing our goals, speaking/acting on our truth and from fully loving and being loved.

Pema Chodron writes:

“… the next time you lose heart and you can’t bear to experience what you are feeling, you might recall this instruction: change the way you see it and lean in…Instead of blaming our discomfort on outer circumstances or on our own weakness, we can choose to stay present and awake to our experience, not rejecting it, not grasping it, not buying the stories that we relentlessly tell ourselves. This is priceless advice that addresses the true cause of suffering – yours, mine, and that of all living beings.” (Excerpted from “Taking the Leap”, by Pema Chodrön)

I often think of Pema’s instruction to  “lean in”.  I most easily see resistance as it manifests in my own body. In yoga as we are engaged in a challenging position – especially if it is a new one to me, I find that my muscles fight every movement. They are bunched up and tight even as I try to stretch them in ways I KNOW they are going to like. My yoga teacher speaks of how we hold stories in our body and how the physical pain and resistance we feel is a piece of our personal story that got lodged in that particular place. He tells us to send light and love to those uncomfortable places – to breathe into the resistance in order to open it up to receive love, compassion and gratitude.   I notice that I am often able to tell my muscles and my brain to let go of the tight grip as I take deep breaths and melt into the discomfort. As I stop resisting, as I stop seeing the pain as bad my body opens and I am able to go more deeply into the pose.  In yoga and in life, as I stop resisting, I open myself up to a deeper experience that transcends my fear of inadequacy, of “what if” and “I can’t and begins to heal those long-held tensions in my body and soul.

I don’t know all of causes the knots of pain and anxiety that my body holds onto.  And I don’t understand how one day they are gone and the next they are magically back.  But I do try to regularly practice the concept of not struggling with the struggle as my friend Carole puts it.  Life is hard, hard things come up, we have hurt places and scared places and resistance within us.  Okay.  So are we going to move forward by fighting; by flailing around and resisting or  by opening to a level of curiosity and seeing what happens when we lean in just a bit.

I wish I could say that knowledge of my resistance to so many aspects of life lessened it dramatically – but no.  Each day in a multitude of ways I am reminded how much I hold myself back. I deal with a chronic anxiety disorder that is controllable with great care and attention without drugs. Keywords…CARE and ATTENTION. A person – or at least me – with an anxiety disorder is exactly like the metaphor of learning to float on ….you must stop flailing around in order to keep floating. The more I resist being anxious/stressed/overtired, the worse it gets. And not only does the anxiety get worse, my brain fills up with negative stories about all the things I SHOULD be capable of, all the way’s I am not successful/beautiful/smart instead of just listening to the tiny voice in me that says “I need a time out…and some chocolate…and a little less business please”.

There are many more ways I hold myself too tightly emotionally and physically. Every morning I bend over to dry my hair upside down so that it doesn’t matt to my head like glue as it dries.  And every morning, no matter how limber or stiff I am feeling I only bend part of the way over. I hold back, for no particular reason. Each time I realize this I let go, and immediately move into a place of greater ease and relaxation as I stop trying to hold myself  Amazingly, the pain in my body eases!  Each time I sit down at my computer to write I find a million other things to do besides write and the voices in my head go on and on about how worthless it is.  I sit down with my cup of tea and BREATHE through the anxiety and resistance. Each time I approach the keyboard, I swear I am going to quit  and then do it anyway.  When I am heartsick about the perceived indifference of my  partner Neil,  I take a step back and open my heart….is it really intentional neglect or  am I afraid  that I will be left or that I am not enough?  As I step into that feeling of fear, and watch how instead of being confrontational being present chances the situation for both of us, we both open deeper and more fully to our relationship.:

So here is a simple experiment to just see how you may be holding yourself too tightly physically:

As you sit here reading this RELAX.

Sure, you think you are relaxed now, but are you? Are you holding your stomach tight?  How about the muscles in your jaw?  Are your shoulders up at your ears as you sit at your computer?  Can you breathe into those places and just let them drop? What are you gaining by holding yourself so tightly?  What feelings come up when you let go?  And more importantly, what are YOU really resisting?

The Borg kind of had it right….and even the concept of assimilating into the collective is not so far off.  It is just that the entity you become a part of when you cease resistance is not evil or of a continuous questing for betterment. It a place of soul filled radiant beauty, of right action for the right reasons. Its physical image is not that of the linear cube of the Borg, but of an open hand, not grasping and ready to receive. It is not about striving, but about being open to what is coming at you with a sense of curiosity. We can continue to hold ourselves back, but on the warrior path it is imperative that we are paying attention so that we may choose our actions and responses wisely. We must not shut ourselves off or ignore the triggers in our bodies, or in the messages our deepest selves send us.  And so, as we walk this path of right action and of soul-filled living, resistance is indeed futile.