LivingUndaunted

Parties, Planning and Truth

Parties, Planning and Truth

I'm ruminating on the value of truth tonight. It's juxtaposed in a frantic and yummy way with party planning and decluttering, knowing my dearest and most valued friends are coming to my home for a party tomorrow night. The week-long "Hurray to Maria Being On The Planet" celebration goes on.

And so the first question is: why do we "get the house in its best order" when "outsiders" are coming over? Shouldn't our friends see the truth of a place, dirty socks on the living room floor, papers spilling over on our desk, a wrapper and a capless pen, the warmth of book-fulls of ideas hapzardly strewn on shelves, beckoning with their unique attraction? Shouldn't our friends, like our housemates, know that we forget to put the used teabags in the garbage sometimes, that we don't always load the dishwasher, or that we don't always pick the dead leaves off the plants?

Well, apparently not, because all the lived-in personality of my house is gone now, along with the dead plant leaves and used teabags. And there's the dishonesty of a party.

I come to see life as an unfolding parade of deeper and deeper honesty. As a teenager, you are so frantic at being yourself that you become uniform, outfits, gestures and all. You try to be a clone of the other scared and lonely kids taking nibbles at being grown-ups. In your 20's you tell yourself, "I'm an adult now, I can do anything I want," and mainly that involves doing everything your parents didn't want you to do - an act of reaction rather than freedom.

In my 30's I find there is much more truth about me unfolding - both to myself and others- and that the unique, burgeoning self expression brings me closer to pleasure, to truth and to life. And I don't only share my secrets now, but my weaknesses, my warts. I now regularly tell people that I want to be famous - as shallow and pointless and vain I think that may sound. It's truth. So it's out. I tell people about what I like and don't like. I steer myself away from people and situations I don't like - a self-preservation type of truth that grounds and pleases me.

And so, in this week-long birthday, I find myself asking... what is true about me? What am I here to say? And though I can't presume to know the answers in their entirety, I see outlines in the darkness, luscious shadows of a truth so radiant I can't yet look at it and not go blind.

So maybe I'll go put some dirty socks in the living room.

Party time tomorrow.

M

Loving the Darkness

I've discovered a new technique for overcoming issues and it involves love. It's been so powerful over these last few weeks that I want to shout about it, but I know that I am not yet proficient enough to do the feeling justice.

I find it to be a natural extension of the Core Dynamics. In the Core Dynamics, you wash away the conflicting intentions and pain of looking for approval from others (to simplify it to the extreme) by being present to them, not fighting them or resisting them. In involves the counterintuitive action (at least by logical standards) of allowing the feeling of "I'm not good enough," "I'm going to fail," to be, to exist, unopposed, without all the justifying and tap dancing we do to cover it up. Strangely (at least for me when I first did it) it melts the feeling away. It's really effective.

Still, the act of simply being present to the feeling has felt incomplete to me for some time. Yes, it does melt the feelings away, but it leaves an emptiness in their place, a lack of resolution and wholeness.

And that's when I discovered loving the feelings instead. On one of my wacky web hunts I bought some meditation tapes from LuminEssence Productions. I was skeptical at first, since the woman talks about some of the stuff being written by others, which you then come to discover means it was written all by her with some angels. Still, I gave it a chance and ordered some of her meditation tapes.

And they were warm balm to a cracked soul! They were delicious. Her voice, velvety and mellifluous, uttered wonderful words of peace and joy. And then she said it... "Feel the fear and love it as though it were a small child." And that idea changed everything for me.

Why is it that when we see a small child who is lost or afraid, we invariably feel the need to love and nurture her? It's never a question, never an issue of judgment. It's just a reflex. Then why is it that we can't extend that same love to ourselves and our fears? Why do we get so angry, impatient and frustrated with ourselves for being scared like the child?

And this one simple idea has caused a big shift for me, one that requires much more love and acceptance of myself and others. It reminds me of a metta meditation CD that I listen to: "All beings everywhere just want to be happy." If we could all truly grasp that as a deep truth, it would be the end to all conflict and violence.

Lest you think I've gone totally granola on you, please know that it is still challenging and difficult for me to do this. And, as I mentioned, I don't even have it "down" enough to articulate it well. But it is so strong, so deep and important, I just needed to get it down on pixels and save it. I know it is pointing the way.

Flag Day

June 14th, 2004 (Flag Day) I became a year older. I won't tell which year, suffice it to say it's another one and somehow it's okay.

I've lived longer than I ever envisioned in my "live fast, die young and leave a pretty corpse" days. And a miraculous thing has happened... it hasn't mattered a whit. It's true I've become the old fogey my teenage self would abhor, I rarely go dancing any more and my idea of a good time is to sit on my backyard swing and listen to a meditation tape. And still there's a richness and a depth to who I am now that I wouldn't trade for all the perk in my boobs and stamina in the world. And I'm so much more comfortable in this skin. For all my foibles and self doubts, I am infinitely more together and self confident than when I was young and gorgeous.

For someone as reflective as I am, birthdays don't cause the analysis of the passing years they might for some (since it's going on all the time). Still, they're a marker, a milepost, a checkpoint. So here goes:

What I thought I'd have accomplished by this age that I haven't:

I thought I'd have 2 or 3 books by this age
I thought I'd have some level of fame and recognition (I do - but I envisioned more)
I thought I'd have traveled to more exotic locations (no Everest Base Camp or living with an African bush family yet)

What I never imagined I'd accomplish that I'm so proud of:

I have mastered true and complete forgiveness - a power beyond measure
I have learned that feeling uncomfortable doesn't mean you don't necessarily do something - being scared is okay
I have gone on an amazing and unfolding inner journey

All in all, the pages of a life slowly and deliberately write themselves, and like a rich and captivating novel, they never go exactly where you think they will. This is my story. And a happy birthday to me.

M