Sometimes the whole of me is like a crowded bus in motion, all passengers wanting to get somewhere else, somewhere better, somewhere different, all of them not quite happy where they are. There’s a lot of sighing, and “if only-ing”, and “Ma, how many minutes till we get there?” going on. There is a lack of clarity and consensus among my inner passengers and the poor driver is exhausted. There’s a restless, itchy quality about being on the bus.

Buses have been a significant mode of transport for me, literally and figuratively. I’ve been sitting still and paying attention to the quality of movement and feel of the bus and recently, in a dream, I got off. The bus broke down and couldn’t get me where I’m going. So, I ran and made my way over to the train station, and I notice I am in Temuco, the Southern Chilean city of my childhood.

Chile is a long and narrow land of contrasts. It hugs the southernmost Andes for more than 2,700 miles (4,300 kilometers)—that’s about the distance between San Francisco and New York, or Edinburgh and Baghdad—and it spans a terrain that includes the driest desert in the world—Atacama—way up North, all the way down to Patagonia, and to the icy tip of the world in Tierra del Fuego. Legend has it that when God finished creating the world, he had a bunch of leftover odds and ends, and that Chile was formed when he dusted off his hands of all those mountains, lakes, volcanoes, deserts, glaciers, and climates.

In my dream I board this train that runs along the edge of the world, where land hugs ocean and where conscious meets unconscious. And from my seat I can see clearly what lies behind, while moving most certainly forward into unseen. I have a sense of where I’m going but can see none of the details. I boarded this train and want to be here, and yet the movement is out of my hands. And so I sit and watch with interested curiosity even while I am moved I know not exactly where. It’s all very exciting and it most definitely beats the bus, without which, I might add, I would not have ended up on this train.

How about you… what modes of transport show up in your dreams these nights and what curious things do you observe about yourself and how you’re moving through life?

Several years ago I read and loved Philip Pullman’s trilogy, of which the first book —The Golden Compass— is being made into a movie to be released December 2007. The movie’s website has a 20-question quiz which tells you your animal daemon. Being a lover of all-things-me, I couldn’t resist.

I first learned about “The Gift of Criticism” from Byron Katie, who suggests that when someone criticises me, I see it as an opportunity to learn about myself and potentially also grow closer to the person offering the judgment. The juiciest gifts of criticism are the judgments that give me a little (or a lot) of sting. You know, the qualities that don’t fit into the image I want to present of me, or the things I feel shame or guilt over and try to hide, like things I think you would not like me for if you knew.

I know something has stung when I find myself justifying, making excuses, defending, or denying in a certain way. Or maybe just plain old crying about it. Sometimes even seemingly positive or good judgments bring up discomfort. Like—just speaking hypothetically here… ha ha!—if I’m someone who’s believed for a big part of my lifetime that I’m a weak person with a lot of struggles, then I may notice a good bit of denying if someone says they see me as strong and wise. Or, if I were ashamed of my suicidal, bulimic past— say, just say — then I might feel lots and lots of sting at being called crazy. Or, if I take pride in being someone who says it like it is, directly without pretend, I might feel a good bit defensive if a friend tells me that my supposedly humorous email was pretty guilt-trippy. Or, if I see myself as someone aware and awake, I might take it real personally if I am told I have my head up my ass. Ba-ta-bing! (All hypothetical, here, of course!)

So, the good news is that the more you do this gift of criticism thing, the more quickly you come to laughter after the sting.

Do you have any “gift of criticism” stories? Or, who’s your daemon? What does he or she say about you?

And so, without further ado, meet my foxy daemon, Rasthmus. (And yes, the skeptic, question-asker in me took the test a few times, and no, I never got the same daemon, but yes, pretty much the same qualities). It’s fun to look at the list and see what I find.

Happy freedom day. I’m on my way to North Carolina to visit my sister and her 3 kids with my mom… should be interesting, to say the least, the faces from which I will see myself reflected back to me. I’m looking forward to seeing my 2 nephews and my newest little niece the most. I just got back on Monday from helping P. move from Halifax to Montreal. We loaded up a big—I mean BIG!—truck (U-haul had run out of the most appropriate size) and hitched up a trailer for his car and set out across Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and into Quebec. I do love road trips and this one did not disappoint as adventures go: the truck, that is, and all the new places and sights… it was quite fun being high up there on the highway, and I discovered that truckers have these sweet little signals they give each other with their lights to help them know when there’s enough space for them to merge back into the flow when they are passing each other. I called it “the wink”. “Look! He winked at us!” I might exclaim, delighted. And so I have discovered a new appreciation and fondness for trucks and truckers, whom I’d always rather feared and mistrusted on the road. And so, here we have yet another thing to add to the list of previously misperceived, misinterpreted, mallaligned … ahhh, the list grows.

I continue to awaken ever so slowly. At least that’s how I’d say it today, right now, since I just did. Awareness comes unexpectedly and can never seem to be forced, though being open and ready for it seems a nice way to be “in waiting”… My life goes on and in some ways not at all as I’d expected. I keep glimpsing this vast, infinite realm of being and freedom. I see that all my dramas and questions and apprehensions and fears and hopes are such little specks in this vast timeless something-for-which-there’s-no-word. Do you underst,and? What a funny thing life is, even in the asking of such a question as: “do you understand?”… silliness. But oh i do so love connecting and understanding seems a part of that.

This morning there’s a silly tune in my head seemingly out of nowhere, maybe dream land, maybe nudged by Carol’s blog posting. It’s a song I didn’t really know, other than the main verse lyrics “Getting to know you, getting to know all about you…” So I googled it and found my mind playfully turning it around, which seems to happen often when I am living in an inquiring and curious way, filled with the exciting adventures of exploring inner landscapes. The original Getting to Know You is by Oscar Hammerstein from the musical The King and I. Here I offer you my turnaround.

It’s a very ancient saying,
But an honest, truer thought,
That if I look at what’s around me,
By my pupils I’ll be taught.
Through inquiry I’ve been learning
That I’m bound to live my most
When I become an expert,
On the subject I here toast:

Getting to know me.

[Laughter!]

Getting to know me, getting to know all about me.
Getting to like me, finding I like you too.
Getting to know me, putting it my way:
I am precisely,
my cup of tea.

[More laughter]

Getting to know me,
Getting to know all about me.
Getting to like me,
Getting to find I like you.
Getting to know me, putting it my way,
just how it is:
I am precisely,
My cup of tea.

Getting to know me,
Getting to feel free and easy.
When I am with me,
Getting to see what I say
Haven’t you noticed
Sometimes I’m bright and breezy
Because of all the beautiful and new
Things I’m learning about me
Day by day.

Is that true?

Hmmmm. I believe it sometimes.

Can you absolutely know that it’s true that “they won’t like you if you are real”?

No. I can’t know.

How do you react when you believe that “they won’t like me if I’m real”?

I pretend: my voice is different, maybe a bit higher, a bit “sweeter”, a bit softer, a bit politer, a bit—um—faker!
I cushion things to soften what I perceive would be the blow.
I try to protect.
I couch and smoothen out.
I say things indirectly, trying to get my way without coming out and saying what I want.
I pretend to listen even when my mind has left.

Who would you be without the thought “They won’t like me if I’m real”?

Less reactive.
Less reading people to see what they want to hear.
More coming from my center, my truth, whatever that looks like in any moment.
No need to smile if there is not a smile automatically coming. No need to pretend.
Much more spontaneous. Voice deeper.
Less smiles and probably more laughter! Ha. That’s a funny one to notice!
And in situations when I’m unclear, I might just express my unclarity or confusion or unsureness, rather than pretending to be the more evolved and mature person I think I should be.

Turnarounds to “They won’t like me if I’m real.”

>They will like me if I’m real. — That could definitely be as true, if not truer.

Can I find 3 genuine examples where that’s been truer?
1. I’ve heard interesting comments from people recently, when I was just being myself without trying to watch out for anyone’s feelings or for “appropriateness”… I actually heard a couple people say something like, “who is that? where do you keep her? we like her!” Interesting.

2. In my relationship, I fessed up to my confusion about wanting or not to do something, and we moved on in our day and later the confusion cleared and I did feel like doing the very same thing. I notice it feels bad to do something halfheartedly just to please or because I think I should. Not doing whatever it is in those moments, frees me up to do them wholeheartedly when the movement/desire is there!

3. I have often gotten a big sense of connection (no separation) when I have expressed my inner world without sugarcoating or dramatizing. A number of people tell me they can relate, and that I express what they also feel.

>I won’t like me if I’m real.

Hmmmm. Some part of me, maybe. After all, it is that part in me that is perceiving and projecting what the world wants from me, and so it is that part that then feels uncomfortable with the “real” me, whatever that is. So, maybe that is actually truer: I won’t like me if I’m real.

>I won’t like me if I’m pretend.

That’s actually turning out to be the truest. It feels bad. My neck and shoulders hurt and get stiff. It’s like I’m keeping myself secret when I pretend to be something I’m not, just to please you or avoid losing your approval. And then if you do, supposedly, “like me”, who is it you are actually liking then anyway?!

——————

What about you? Do you have any stressful thoughts about being real or about pretending? I’d love to hear! These questions I just posed in relation to my stressful thought are an example of simple and powerful inquiry using The Work of Byron Katie. Oh— Annie… thanks for your comment on my last entry that prompted my inquiry! Love, Heidi

You lose your grip and then you sink into the masterpiece…
—Leonard Cohen in “A Thousand Kisses Deep”

I used to give a whole lot of advice to God. I called it prayer. But it was more like a to do list or a Santa Claus wish list: please help me find my retainer that I accidentally threw away with lunch (so I don’t get in trouble!); please make so and so better; please don’t let such and such happen; please make him love me; please help them be happier and not fight; please make the days go faster; please make the days go slower; please make my flu go away; please please please…

It’s hard, in the midst of telling God or others what to do, to see that things look pretty lonely and wasted right within myself. And, I notice that the longer I spend in God’s and your business, the lonelier I am. As Byron Katie says, when we’re over there minding everyone else’s business, no one is home for ourselves. And so the natural result of years and years of not being home for myself was that my world, my own dear self, was cataclysmically falling apart.

Amazingly, there is a very good side to falling apart, to being desperate. Desperation can be a huge gift. Really! What I love about desperation is that it means that I’ve finally thrown up my arms, stopped the put-on and the pretend that everything’s fine. In moments of desperation, I have finally given up my position as God’s secretary of state. I haven’t a clue. Moments of desperation, when my best-laid plans and agendas lay scattered by the roadside like some kind of fast-food trash, are precisely when light can shine through the cracks. During desperation the only prayer that’s left is “Help!” and, help prayers are always answered.

When I used to pray the advice kind of prayers, I pictured God as the man that said yes or no, granting or withholding what I wanted. Help prayers have taught me that God is a kind, wide-lapped being who is —by god!— a She just as surely as a He or an It. And as this great mother kind of presence, I imagine that she loves prayers of desperation because finally there is an honest, no-pretend being to be with.

There’s nothing more tight than pretend. I’m not talking fun pretend, like the playing of my just turned 2-year-old niece when she has a very dramatic, arms and hands gesturing wildly, non-sensical but to her, conversation on her toy cell phone. I’m talking about the keep-it-all-together-when-it’s-not, pretend. The smile when you’d rather cry, pretend. The it’s-hilarious-but-I-shouldn’t-laugh, pretend. The I’m-scared-shitless-but-should-act-cool, pretend. What a relief to no longer have to pretend to God, which is to say, to me. And, interestingly, pieces are much more likely to settle into beautiful place when life is seen for simply what and how it is. No forcing, no trying, no fixing. Just me over here laughing. Or crying.

Which brings me to another kind of prayer I love, which also hands-down beats the giving God advice prayer. I call it the “Hello there” prayer. It involves just speaking from my heart, expressing what is there just the way it is. It may make no sense at all. It may be filled with worry and fear. It may be utterly inappropriate. It may be laughed or cried. It may be said in the dark or in the light of day, on the bathroom floor or lying in bed or sitting on the couch or on a park bench. There is no trying to twist the arm of God. And if I do happen to notice an agenda, I tell her about my wish, my desire, my motive, and she smiles and maybe we both laugh, and life moves along and I get to find out what really happens.

Is that true, Sweetheart, that you need your dad to have shown you how to be carefree?

Yes, he should have. If I’d learned it when I was little, I’d not be so anxious as a grown-up.

What’s the reality of it, did he show you how to be carefree?

No, not in my recollection. He was just so and very carefull. Things needed to be in order.

So how do you react when you believe that he should have taught you to be carefree?

I feel like a victim. I feel like the damage was done long ago and it’s too late, that now I’m doomed to anxiety. I see pictures in my mind’s eye of going to him in his office where he was working on his Sunday sermon, my 10-year-old self with my Bible, anxious about the verse I’d found about the unpardonable sin of blaspheming against the Holy Spirit, which I was worried I’d done inadvertently.

Oh, Sweet dear one. Yes. I can see that picture too.

I see how he tried to answer me theologically and how I felt no better and then my obsessive little mind went all like Tourettes on me, and all I could think were bad thoughts and what I thought were blasphemes!

Yes, Love. I remember.

[Laugher!]

Come here, Sweetheart. Let’s look at this some more, OK?

Yes.

So, who would you be if you could not believe the thought that you need him to have taught you how to be carefree?

Hmmmmm. I don’t know. I really don’t. I never used to think that when I was a kid, because I just thought that’s how it was. But now…

So, can you see your dad there in your mind’s eye?

Yes. I’m going to him in his office.

So, see him without the thought that you need him to teach you carefree?

Yes, there he is. He’s a busy man. He’s serious. He’s reading. He’s studying. He’s doing what he does. He’s doing what he thinks is best, just like anyone else. He’s doing the best he can, based on what he believes and thinks, just like anyone else.

OK, Sweetheart, let’s play with some turnarounds. What’s the opposite of “I needed him to teach me how to be carefree”?

I don’t need him to teach me that, which seems to be truer, because it’s not what he taught me, at least not in my recollection. And, I don’t need him to teach me because I seem to have learned it somehow anyway. I do remember carefree times.

yeah? Tell me a few of those.

Well, when I was really little I used to go out in the yard and behind the church and in the garden, and I’d pick grasses and flower-weeds and hazelnuts and I’d find a smooth stone and then I’d grind it all up into all sorts of soups and sauces. I loved doing that and when I played like that I had no cares in the world.

Yes, good. And what about more recently?

Well, a few nights ago, when I was playing trivia with my friends over at Johnny D’s, well, it was lots of fun and I wasn’t thinking of cares. And over the holidays I had some moments like that too, like on the road with P from New Jersey to Canada… I love road trips and road trips with him.

Good! So good to notice all those carefree moments, back then and now.

Any other turnarounds?

I need me to teach me to be carefree.

Tell me about that?

Well, I’m a grown up now. If I think it’s so easy to do and that my dad should have done it, then I should do it myself.

yes, and I see you doing that with this inquiry, and with focusing, and with EFT, and with having good times with friends, and road trips with P… yes, love. Good find! Any others?

Yes. I need me to teach dad how to be carefree. Yes, I was a kid. In one way I was much closer to carefree than he. But I was reading the Bible because I thought I should in order to be better, to be more perfect, to please him and God more, and that verse I found about the unpardonable sin wasn’t the only one I found. I’m sure I also read the verses about Jesus telling his disciples and the people he was speaking with to consider the lilies of the field and the sparrows, how they don’t fret about tomorrow, and they don’t worry about what they will wear and where their next meal will come from… I could right now, in my mind’s eye, march myself right there into that office and say, “Hey Dad! Look at this here verse I found about the lillies and the birds! I just love that they don’t worry. You know, I’ve been worried a lot lately and I’ve been getting headaches all the time and, well, it just seems I’m trying too hard. Dad? Could you preach about the lillies and the birds on Sunday?

Oh Sweetheart, that’s wonderful. In your mind’s eye it’s your dad you see, but it’s you, of course. You are the one that loves noticing the lillies and the birds and the trees and the grasses and sprigs of this and that greenery. You are the best teacher for you, love.

Today I woke up to find Gratitude as the guest at my door. Here are some of the toppers on my list. What about you? When Gratitude knocks on your door, what is that guest about? Click on “Post a comment” at the bottom of this entry if you want to add your own to the list I’ve begun.

1. Today, I am grateful for you, my mind. Yes, my dear mind. I have fought you much of my life. I have hid you away. I have felt ashamed of you, of the thoughts coursing through you, as if they were personal, as if they were only mine and none other’s, as if they were dark and ugly. I have called you names like crazy. I have tried to bend you and sway you and make you up. I have tried to enlighten you. I have shaken you violently to wake you up, and I have numbed you to death to make you fall asleep when I thought you were too much for me. Today, I am grateful for you just as you are. I am grateful for every thought that has crossed you: not personal but simply thoughts. Who am I to take credit for thoughts? The darkest malice, the most resplendent creative insight, did I will it there? No. As my dear friend Byron Katie taught me: Thought appears. No more, no less: thought appears.

And while I can really take no credit for you, on the other hand you are the mind I have been granted to partner with in this life. And so today I say thank you for all the thoughts you, dear mind, have graced me with. I am especially grateful for your openness. It is your openness that has gifted me with a new way of seeing the world and myself, each as a reflection of the other.

Today, I am grateful for inquiry, which opens doors in the mind that are otherwise locked in dogmas, fears, superstitions, and rigid beliefs about the way the world, and you, and I, should be. Questioning the mind allows me to sink into the embrace of the kindest, wisest mother-being, whom I call, for lack of better words, the Great Mother (she is out there and inside, all the same). It’s the widest, softest lap. An open mind is as lush as the moss on a forest floor. As calm as the ocean at its deepest depth.

2. Today, I am grateful for my failures, if they can even be called that. Spanish poet Antonio Machado says it beautifully: “Last night as I was sleeping, / I dreamt—marvelous error!—that I had a beehive / here inside my heart. / And the golden bees / were making white combs / and sweet honey / from my old failures.” (Click here to read Machado’s poem in full).

3. Today, I am grateful for my dear friends and mentors: poets, and for their beautiful way of expressing the amazing essence of things. I am grateful for how poets don’t offer much by way of explanations and advice, and in not doing so, help me find the “solution” in the simple beingness of things. One of my great teachers recently has been the morning light.

4. Today, I am grateful for the “unsolvable” dilemmas and questions in my life, for it is my agony about such matters that keeps leading me to the perfection to be found in everything as it is, it is pain and the grief of not knowing, that keeps opening me to love and to mystery and to possibility.

What about you? Click on “Post a Comment” just below, if you want to share yours.