The Queen of Polish OR “I” Statements and Going Easy on the Stork’s Swan Song

I am suave, smooth.  I communicate elegantly.  In other words, our breakup with the Stork couples therapist (ongoing) started last night with a bit of, well, ahimsa.  And panache.  And f*&(ing “I” statements.

We started the conversation like this:

Me:  (To my partner.)  You’re on.

My partner:  Uh.

Me:  Uh?

My partner: Um.

Me:  (Pause, looking at her.)

My partner:  (Pause, looking at me.)

Me:  I guess I’ll go.

Then I proceeded to communicate my experience, including my doubts, questions, mistrust, self-questioning, without once blaming the Stork for being an insane person.  I periodically turned the topic over to my partner:

Me:  So it’s your turn.

My partner:  Uh.

Me:  Are you stuck?

My partner:  (To the Stork.)  I just want to blame it all on you.

Stork:  I can take it.

Me (thinking silently):  That is one big fat lie.

My partner:  Uh.  Um.  (She looks at me.)

Me:  Still stuck?

My partner:  Uh-huh.

Me:  Allow me.

Then I again talked about my own experience in a very moderate and adult way while steering the conversation to solutions without directly suggesting any.  We ended with the Stork encouraging us to interview other therapists while still seeing him, so we weren’t left in the lurch (read:  homicidal and very anti-ahimsa with each other) in the meantime.  Which was pretty much my goal, and I do usually get what I want when I’m all elegant, polished, kind and focused on ahimsa.  (Is it really ahimsa?  If I’m getting what I want?)

Of course, now that I’m back to doing the John Sarno investigation of my unconscious and apparently limitless homicidality, clearly such elegance also results in BACK PAIN, which is not ahimsa at all, since I end up suffering.

And there you have it.  The bind of all existence.

I have said this before:  The shadow must have its day.

I’ve been having epiphany moments about my new life–you know, the one I’m fantasizing about in between doing 7 million hours of yoga and reading the Yoga Sutras of Patajali as well as texts on Buddhism.  And it all comes down to this–yoga, religion, meditation…isn’t it all about turning us into good little boys and girls?  I mean, really, all that higher self and elegance is just so….boring.

Mind you, lock me in a room with someone possessed by criticism and blame and I’ll get on my ahimsa high horse in a flat second.  It’s more the impossibility of eradicating sin, or the animal part of our natures, our primal emotions, that concerns me.

I think of the Meisner technique at its most advanced best, when the humanity of two actors collides without barriers–and there is love, joy, sexuality, rage, pain, hurt, flirting.  People have said things to me in the repetition exercise that brought me to the point of shaking with fear or angry enough to hit, and then afterward I felt so close to them.  If it had been life, I’d probably have made sure I never saw the person again.  It’s the safe container of the creative world and the exercise itself that allows all parts of the self–dark and light–full expression.   That’s where the creative closeness comes from.  Especially if you’re in the service of story, expression, meaning.

We just don’t seem to be able to allow for that full expression anywhere else.  There’s such danger of really damaging each other.  So it’s all about controlling, containing and civilizing.  The problem is that while those things are important–who wants violence or verbal abuse in their life?–there’s a tendency for them to actually feed the rage and pain that lies underneath bad behavior.  The standards expressed by religion, or therapy–speak only in “I” statements (therapy), be only peaceful, follow these rules, calm the mind…can’t undo our inherent messiness, and when these rules are imposed with rigidity, the shadow grows stronger and in need of expression.

I’m mostly messy with my partner.  Sometimes I say, “I just really need to be bad right now.”  Then I jump on her and tickle her and she makes jokes about how long this particular fit will last and will she survive it.

Sometimes I come home from a day of successfully practicing ahimsa and I say, “Oh my God, I’ve been so mature today I think I’m going to die.”  Then I throw myself down on the yoga mat and writhe for a while.

I frequently announce that I need attention or that I’m about to show off or that I’d like to kill x, y, or z.

I do not say these things as examples anyone should follow.  It’s just that balance, moment to moment messiness, is a goal for me.  I’m either a paragon or a very very bad, rebellious teenager trapped in a much older body.  (My partner would say that I am vastly over-estimating my age.  She’d vote for 5 years old trapped in a much larger body.)

Spirituality, calm and beauty are things I love, but I know, truly, madly, deeply, that the shadow, the unhealed, the unexpressed, must rise up, and it’s better if I find a place of welcome for it than if I try to make it go away or pretend it never existed in the first place.

Think of Right Wing Christians, so invested in their own goodness that hatred and intolerance dominate their lives.

Being human is tricky.

This morning I helped my partner write an email about a conflict she’d had with some people.  Her first draft was stilted–non-blaming, but disorganized and hard to understand.  We had this conversation about how when she doesn’t criticize other people, she gets blocked on what to say.  So I helped her with the email (a little overbearingly…and yes, that is an invented word) and we looked at it.  The paragraph I’d written as an example was very polished.  You’d never know how devastated and triggered she was.  And indeed, polish is a mask for hurt feelings, for feeling less than, a way to hide when you’re afraid other people will use your own vulnerability against you.  We were like, “Wow, we are such opposites!”  (We realize this about every other hour or so.)  I keep people at a distance when I’m all elegant and “I” statements or when I’m too reactive/rebellious for life.  My partner keeps people at a distance by being too messy  or being silent because she’s afraid of being messy.

And so I wonder–what is the true path to awakening?  It cannot only be meditating and being oh-so-perfect.  And then I remember my Western meditation teachers warning that meditating your feelings away is called repression, not awakening.  Meditation is about knowing, investigating and holding all the feelings while recognizing that they are not you.  It’s a way to get bigger than your own experience, and so to have more choices.

In Internal Family Systems (my partner’s obsession) this would be about being able to tell the difference between an internal Manager (like the Queen of Polish) and Self (the true compassionate center that can communicate honestly about all other parts and all feelings).

I can deconstruct anything, so let me say that trying to be in Self all the time then becomes the perfection to avoid.*

But.  But.  The Queen of Polish manages the world of communication with skill and panache.  Self, the true heart, the bigger, meditated Lyralen is actually more vulnerable.  And much more accessible to other people and the world.

And therefore to be avoided at all costs.

Just kidding.

I think.

*To give Dick Schwartz his due, he does say that healthy couples live in a state of play in which different parts of who they are come and go without fear.

Starting Over

Sometime in the last couple months I started thinking about the whole concept of fresh start, starting over, re-imagining myself, re-creating my life.  I was obsessively watching Netflix tv and got caught up in the show Break-Out Kings, which is about convicts, who, of course, want to start over more than anything.

Then at Spirit Rock they had this book on display: Emotional Chaos to Clarity:  How to Live More Skillfully, Make Better Decisions, and Find Purpose in Life.  I wrote about Right Intention (part of what Moffitt talks about in the book).  Now I’m into his next section on starting over.

I sometimes say, to the people I am closest to, that I have reincarnated 4 or 5 times in this very lifetime.  So I’m hardly new to starting over.  The longing for a different life, or a new one, or some dream of a another country, or a promise I made to myself when I was a child of how things would be different when I grew up and had more choices, has often driven my decisions.  I have, in my life, wanted desperately to get away from things–relationships, bad jobs, voicelessness, violence, poverty, to name a few.

Those are the big starting overs.

Sometimes, I just wanted to feel better, more peaceful, more accepting of my lot in life, sometimes I wanted to be able to love more deeply, to be kinder, less judgmental, less reactive.

Sometimes I just wanted some particular pain or level of pain to go away.

It seems intimate to say these things, but really, is there anyone alive who hasn’t wanted some, if not all of them?  I mean, I do sometimes believe I am cursed (or blessed, it’s not clear) with the fate of having to experience everything in life, from the worst darkness to the most ecstatic joy, but that could be just terminal uniqueness (as they say in 12 step programs), though to tell you the truth, I don’t really think so.  I think I am on this experience-everything track and some people, luckily, perhaps, are not.

Anyhow, I’ve been thinking of the words “new start” with a kind of longing.  So, presto-changeo, this book shows up.  And, since it is based in Buddhism and Vipassana meditation, it talks in depth about starting over in meditation as a practice that can be extended into the rest of life.  Because in meditation we just wander and come back, wander and come back, over and over again, ad infinitum (which I can testify to, since I am back to meditating every day, something I couldn’t do for months after my friend died).

Moffitt says that starting over can be a practice, that once you set your intentions (I set mine as kindness, honesty, ahimsa, radical self-acceptance, etc a few blogs back), you can use a gentle, non-judgmental mindfulness to be aware of when you stray, and then just stop and start over like you do in meditation.  Starting over can be a practice moment-to-moment.

I kind of like that.

And in the meantime, though I read only the very beginning of Living with Your Heart Wide Open while standing in the Spirit Rock bookstore, its statements about critical self-talk and how we treat ourselves has echoed in my head while I’ve been reading the Moffitt book (and the yoga homework Eastern philosophy how we treat ourselves on the mat stuff).

Incidentally, my partner and I have started over.  We haven’t really called it that, but we made an agreement to do a couples spiritual practice and to make that the foundation of our relationship since couples therapists are all crazier than we are.  I notice a difference.  It’s very uncomfortable, because she’s asked me to be more open, and even the meditating together and the communication and restorative yoga, and, the, dare I say it?, prayer to an unnamed whoever/whatever, are so very not something I’m used to sharing with another human being especially the one who’s been driving me crazy for 24 years, 11 months and 7 days.

Anyhow, for myself, I’m thinking of starting over as something other than a move to another coast or another country.  As I read, as I study yoga, as I see my partner change, I think there are more radical things to do than a shift in geography.  I may move, it depends on what my intuition tells me, but for right now, the starting over has to be in this moment, right now.

And it occurs to me, as the eldest daughter from an Irish/German Catholic family, with an overburdened sense of responsibility and guilt, that the do-over I am looking for is forgiveness.  Forgiveness, first of all, for Don’s death.  Yes, I realize I did not cause his appendicitis and the following complications, but his medical treatment was less than stellar and I kept thinking there was something I could do, should be able to do, because I always think that, even when I am showing up, and being kind, which I did, around his death.  I know I did.  But that doesn’t seem to matter in the world of reactive emotions and psychological patterning that too often make up my inner life.  I see myself as responsible, always.  It’s knee-jerk, and painful, and not at all useful in living my life.  And it dogs me.  No amount of making fun of it causes it to disappear.  No amount of anything has made it disappear, ever.

So.  I start over.  And my practice, mostly of ahimsa, because that feeling of responsibility is a self-violence, is to spend a few minutes a day saying, “I forgive you,” as my mantra, while I meditate.

I have decided that the I forgive you is my get-out-of-jail -free card.  I can forgive myself for all the things that were never my fault, that I never should have felt responsible for, as well as my deepest flaws, my terrible mistakes, the ways I’ve let myself and other people down.  I can forgive myself.  Period.

And then suddenly all the humor blows away, and what is left is compassion.  I have done a very good job with an impossible beginning, and the failures are okay.  I didn’t know there would be failures.  I didn’t know that not reaching goals was a possibility.  And I can just sit and forgive and feel my connection to everyone alive, because really, we know so little.  Our ideas about life grow from family, movies, television, books, dreams, insanity, hurt, impossible hopes.  We do terrible things to each other.  We are incredibly kind.  I am of us, I am us, we are one.

Buddhism and yoga teacher training.  A random book on a shelf.

The truth is, I’m on this journey because it’s just so interesting.  The grief must be lifting because once again, I just want to see what happens next.

(Okay, I know what happens next: lunch.  But I’m not sure what I’m going to put in the maki rolls, so there’s always something unexpected.  Carrots or red pepper?  Is the avocado ripe?  Think I’ll go check.)

And, gotcha.

Just for the hell of it.

If I Do Yoga Am I Hindu?

Because let’s face it, yoga is a Hindu tradition.  A fact I’ve been in denial about for, well, an embarrassing amount of time.

Of course, the denial helped with the simple fact that all I really know about Hinduism is that it is, or was, the major religion of India (until forced Muslim conversion), and that it related strongly to the Brahmins.  I also had learned somewhere that the Brahmins are the highest level of hierarchy in the Indian caste system (a commonly known fact here in Boston where we refer to rich old money people as Boston Brahmins).  Since I am absolutely anti-authority and fairly anti-hierarchy not to mention a member of 3 minority groups and completely identified with the underdog and counterculture movements…and since I fell in love with yoga from my first experience of the practice, well, suffice it to say that all human denial has a purpose.  I just didn’t want to examine the roots of yoga too deeply.

Now, of course, I’m in yoga teacher training, so whoooooooossshhhh, there goes the denial.  Not that the training addresses the social inequities in India or the poverty or how religion played a part in social hierarchy.  It doesn’t.  But being me, and having been fully bit by the yogic bug, and therefore wanting to know everything, I’ve started to read outside the training and to really investigate Eastern religions.

That this fits nicely into the self-study of Buddhism I started last year seems bizarrely uncoincidental, but it is, nevertheless, an adventure, because I have no idea where what I’m studying will take me.

I have learned that Indian religions and religious history is a tangle.  People kept revising the religion and inventing new branches.  Because of this, the crossovers between the yogic school of Hinduism and Buddhism are immediately noticeable, not to mention that the Buddha was, after all, raised in a Hindu society with Hindu beliefs.  But get this, from Wikipedia:

Hinduism does not have a “unified system of belief encoded in declaration of faith or a creed“,^[50] but is rather an umbrella term comprising the plurality of religious phenomena originating and based on the Vedic traditions.

The characteristic of comprehensive tolerance to differences in belief, and Hinduism’s openness, makes it difficult to define as a religion according to traditional Western conceptions. To its adherents, Hinduism is the traditional way of life, and because of the wide range of traditions and ideas incorporated within or covered by it, arriving at a comprehensive definition of the term is problematic.

Apparently there are Vedic, or Brahmanic traditions and anti-Vedic traditions (yoga being one of these), and I just have way too much to learn to say anything else about this.  Except that any religion that can’t define itself can’t be all bad, so studying yoga is okay with me.

Of course, I won’t become a Hindu or a Buddhist.  I mean, I couldn’t even join a Unitarian Church when that was my practice.  Blame my freak of a cultish family.  I am emphatically not a joiner.  I am, for example, an Independent because I don’t like the political parties in this country.  Of course, that’s just sane.

Anyhow, more to come on yoga and being or not-being a Hindu, Buddhist, yogi or whatever.

I am on a mission of understanding.  I always kind of wanted a degree in comparative religions and this is probably as close as I’ll come.  I don’t need the degree.  I just want to learn stuff.  As always.

Clarity or What the ?

My partner told me that my last blog on Right Intention is hard to follow.  This makes perfect sense since I was working from a book that has the words “mental clarity” in the title.  Obviously, I need to be reading the book.

Basically, the books says that Right Intention is automatic, that it is the living of values in each moment, and that if you set your own intention, and then get some peace with your unruly mind, you will be more authentic.

Like all books about Buddhism, it clearly states that we are not our thoughts, feelings, personal history, profession or anything other than a moment in time, a sensory experience, or, in this case, an intention.

I told my partner today that I think personality is a construct derived totally or almost totally from conditioning.  Personality is not a self, it’s not who we are.  It’s a series of disguises built to withstand the pressures of life in this world.

I’m not sure if living in a centered presence and modulating our own craziness with a set of automatic intentions is really a self.  I’ll have to let you know.

But I hope this clears up any misunderstanding about what I was talking about before.  I hardly ever really know what I’m talking about, and I may be a figment of my own imagination anyhow, so I wouldn’t really worry about it if I were you.  (That means you, Ms. Criticism of My Clarity.)

Right Intention OR Back to Buddhism We Go

While my partner and I were in San Francisco, we did a day of let’s just see what happens.  It was my day to pick what we did, and I decided I didn’t want to plan.

Mind you, I spent 10 years (17-27) traveling the world, and long before I had heard about the concept of being present I knew that the essence of traveling was to forego plans and let experience yield what it would.  I always say I’m a snob world traveler, because I do look down on itineraries, and, until the last five years, vacation spots.  (I now know what it’s like to be exhausted enough to just want to lie in the sun and have people bring me things…plus, as I said in my last blog, I am a pseudo-Buddhist-eclectically spiritual etc. princess.)  Anyhow, for the above-mentioned 10 years, I was in love with traveling for the experience of being present and open.  I didn’t know that–I thought the remarkable experiences and connection were what I wanted.  I didn’t know they came from letting go and opening.

So anyhow, my partner and I got on the road–I was driving, and I thought we were heading to Sausalito when suddenly we realize we’re in Marin County and the next thing we see is a sign that says, “Spirit Rock 500 Yards.”  Spirit Rock is the sister insight meditation retreat site to IMS here in Massachusetts.  I’ve felt drawn there, powerfully drawn, and then suddenly there it was.

And here’s the thing–I have truly learned that in life wherever you go, there you are.  In other words, I stopped traveling as a life plan when traveling stopped working for me, when I ended up face to face with myself and in trouble in Tokyo, Japan, not really understanding what the trouble was except that I was lonely and frightened of my own darkness.  So I didn’t expect San Francisco to alleviate my current state of grief and loss, and I was worried about my partner’s expectations of our anniversary celebration.  Until Spirit Rock, I’d been up and down–sometimes really having fun, but some mornings waking up crying.  (Which, since she didn’t go to work, she got to see.)

Of course, we pulled into the long driveway of Spirit Rock, met a couple in the parking lot who talked to us about the place, then walked inside the community center.  We found the bookstore and the day retreat meditation hall.  I said to my partner, “I just really need to go meditate.”  And I did.  For a long time.  Ending, as meditation often does, with an experience of varying mind states, including, but not exclusive to, grief.  Only, unlike long meditations I’ve done before where emotions and mind states pass like weather in New England, the grief took hold for a pretty long time.  I did some restorative yoga, cried for a while, then did some other poses, and ended up utterly grounded and present.

My partner and I went on a wonder hike–meaning, with the inner experience of being grounded and present we hiked up into the hills behind Spirit Rock.  It was by far the best time of the trip.  I was in love with everything–myself, my partner, the light, the woods, the rise and fall of the land, the wind.  An easy kind of being in love, an opening, an acceptance, the world as miracle.

Before we left, I picked up some brochures and memorized some titles in the bookstore, because, face it, I write this blog as part of a quest, a need for a do-over.  I write, as I have all my life, to understand what I’m not yet seeing.  That I make fun of everything along the way is just a bonus.

So, last night I downloaded two of the books onto my Kindle and of course they are about Buddhist precepts because Spirit Rock IS a Buddhist place, so what else?  And with Buddhism, you always get the life-is-suffering-everything-changes-there’s-nothing-you-can-do-about-it-and-your-mind-states-are-wreaking-havoc-in-your-life optimism that I entirely love.  No.  Really.  I mean, I live in America, where we’re all frantically consuming and pretending it makes us happy, so listening to these people say we all suffer, shit happens, it will keep happening and we’re all crazy is just a great relief to me.

Buddhism doesn’t stop there, of course.  After you accept that life is suffering and suffering is caused by craving and aversion and that suffering can end if you follow the 8-fold path, you kind of have to look at the 8-fold path.  And you know what?  Right Intention is one of the 8 folds.  On the path.

I’ve never read about Right Intention in depth before reading book #1 by Phillip Moffit.  I always thought of it as addressing motivation, making sure your motivations weren’t malevolent, evil or unreasonably selfish.  I’m a moralist, so I thought about Right Intention as moral in a Catholic religion sort of way.  But this morning, reading the book, I started to understand that setting intentions is about how we care for ourselves (and others).  Right Intention is truly a building block for peace of mind.

So, I’ve been thinking about Right Intention, and setting mine.  This may come as a surprise to those who expect only self-deprecating humor from me and this blog, but I actually think I’m not terribly far away from Right Intention.  I’m probably not terribly far away from anything on the 8-fold path.  You know.  It’s just a jump to the left.  And then a pelvic thrust.  Let’s do the time warp again.

GOTCHA!

Seriously, I have great values.  I like my values.  But I don’t always know what to do with my intentions.  So let me say here that ahimsa, or non-violence, is number one for me.  I want to practice kindness, honesty, beauty, integrity, compassion and peaceful understanding, I want to be in center and presence and utter self-acceptance.  To start.

I think about the play production we just did, and how I didn’t know how to be kind or compassionate when I was so frustrated with some of the people with whom I worked, and I was playing a character who gave a sermon about the nature of humanity and how we are all broken and redeemed, and that kept me thinking about when to be honest, when to stay silent, the absolute need for center and presence when you’re stepping on stage in 5 minutes or half an hour.

I told my partner, before we went to San Francisco, that the likelihood of my grief remaining in Boston was about nil.  Then, I told her what I’d felt and/or thought when I cried or got quiet for a while.  It is so easy to feel love when you do that.  It’s so easy to like yourself, even in a hard moment.

I don’t think I’m far from Right Intention.  I think it’s simply terrifying to be honest and kind.  To say, “I’m frustrated, because sometimes you do a great job and sometimes you don’t, and I’m worried about talking because I might lose all the work I did to prepare for going on stage, and I don’t know what to do to make things change or even if I can.”

I mean, let people really and truly know what’s going on?  I mean, that’s intimate.  That’s really HARD.  Especially if you’re feeling angry or frustrated and you have a role, like being an actor, that requires utter vulnerability and openness and all your emotional energy.  But I wish I’d said what was going on.  Or maybe I did, at least some of the time, and what I needed to do was accept that it didn’t make a difference.

Like, last night my partner was incessantly playing with her new companion, Siri.  I have made cracks like, “I’d like to get polyamorous with Siri,” or, “Is this Siri’s anniversary trip?”  My partner is a GEEK, and she loves techno toys.  I am an anti-materialist and would love to end my Facebook account.  You know.  We’re married.

But the point is, last night I actually said, “I don’t want to want you more than you want me, and I don’t want to pursue you or ask for more time because I feel needy when I do and that feels humiliating and awful to me.”

I don’t remember what she said, only that she understood.  She’d put down Siri temporarily, anyhow.  But then, 10 minutes later, when I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth, she came up behind me and hugged me, saying, “I need you, too.”

Of course, the beauty of Right Intention is that once I’d said that terribly intimate and run-on sentence, I was completely freed of the feelings I’d described.  So I was like, “Okay, but I’m brushing my teeth here.”

I’m not sure that fulfilled my kindness Right Intention, but it certainly hit the honesty one.

And I’m since self-acceptance is on my list of Right Intention things to live by I can say that I accept that I am inappropriately funny on purpose because it’s really fun.

It’s Buddhism.  They say, in Buddhism, to give the practices a test drive.

Right here, right now, testing, 1, 2, 3….

Ahimsa, Everywhere You Go

Sometimes, my faith in human nature, which, admittedly, is often non-existent, gets (if it’s non-existent it can’t exactly get restored, can it?), well…existent.

First, I did start writing the comedy Me and My Parts VS. You and Your Parts.  I sat at the computer laughing at myself, which is a fairly frequent event since I find myself not only endlessly fascinating, but also endlessly entertaining.

BUT, then I talked my partner into reading the first 16 pages with me a couple times, until we started to get the timing, and even she had to admit that the part about us being slackers in heaven complaining of boredom and pissing off some offstage guy with a voice like James Earl Jones was a little funny.  I can see I have my work cut out for me in getting her to actually perform it, so if anyone out there actually knows my partner, I recommend emailing her and putting a plug in for the show. (The kindness here was in her reading it with me twice.  She was done after the 1st time.)

Then, we went to San Francisco for our 25th anniversary.  We’re about a month early–as of today we have been together 24 years, 11 months and five days.  It’s tempting fate, I know, to take it for granted that we’ll complete the next 26 days, but hell, San Francisco is worth it whether we cross the line or not.  Even if I had to listen to my partner say, ad infinitum, in Boston it’s 3am now.  In Boston it’s 4am now.  You know what time it is in Boston?  No wonder I’m tired.

We stayed at the Hotel Kabuki, and they were painting the exterior of the hotel, so the Japanese garden was closed.  I was disappointed because I used to live in Japan and I had anticipated sitting in the garden and doing nothing, which is my favorite pastime except for my other favorite pastimes.  Anyhow, on the 3rd morning we woke up to paint fumes and men outside our window, on our balcony, painting.  So we went to the front desk to ask to transfer to a different Joie de Vivre hotel, and he lowered the price of our stay, gave us a free night at some future point, and then sent us on to the Waterfront Hotel where they upgraded us to a suite for free and then surprised us with champagne, fruit and cheese as an anniversary present.  We don’t drink, but still.  It’s nice when someone is just kind, with so little reason.  Besides, I’m a sucker for luxury, since I’m a little bit of a princess (get this, I’m a pseudo Buddhist- eclectically spiritual-yoga teacher-artist-princess who likes luxury hotels).

I know it’s all good business for the hotel people, but, well, we are queer, and to have strangers honor our commitment to each other, and then to wake up to our poet president announcing his change of stance on gay marriage…it’s enough to make a skeptic hope.

The world is like this.  The Berlin Wall comes down the same year as the massacre at Tiananmen Square.  We step forward and back, all the time.

The real hope, of course, is in the Me and My Parts VS. You and Your Parts.  It’s waking up, after 24 years, 11 months and 2 days to the same body breathing beside me, and I stir, and she touches me in her sleep.  The way it moves me, that simple shift, the way she is attuned to me.  And so I hold her, and the light pours in from the windows around the bed, and we can hear gulls, and the people learning to do stand up paddling on boards or kayaks or whatever.

Ahimsa–I ask whether she’d like to shower first.  I make her a smoothie.  I start to cry, because mornings are still hard, and I tell her why, so she won’t think it’s her fault.

She packs the car, and since we did Go-Cars in the city, which was her thing, she offers me power-of-choice for the day, and I pick something we both like.

I don’t yet know the name of the yama for kindness, but I know there is such a thing.  And it doesn’t matter what name you call it, or whether it’s good business, or a good political move, or just a way of practicing love in a marriage that sometimes struggles.

It is.  Enough.  Always.

The End of My Life as a Christopher Durang Character OR Mixing Metaphors

Yes, I plan to commit suicide in my role as a Chris Durang character.

In other words, the Stork’s swan song is imminent (there’s my mixed metaphor).

I haven’t fired him yet, but I have sworn to do so.  I haven’t taken an oath in blood, but I figure blogging about it is almost as good, as far as commitments go.

Truth is, after he said, “Lyralen might abandon me,” it was only a matter of time.  Because who can pass up an invitation like that?  Besides, it was completely unprofessional and inappropriate.  I think sometimes my partner and I should continue our pattern of going through couples therapists like bottles of Smart Water (health freaks that we are) just so we can see what else they can come up with in that category:  inappropriate and unprofessional.

See, they’re self-employed, and they report to no one besides their clients, who are in therapy, face it, because they’re f*(&ed up and don’t know any better.  So they think they can make up the rules as they go along.  NOT.  WITH.  ME.

Okay.  Would you like to know what the Stork did this time?  I was actually saying something profoundly intimate to my partner.  In fact, I had three profoundly intimate topics in one session, which might be a record.

The first referred to a promise she made to me and how we might finally have a start on an agreement about fair fighting.  I said that it should be egalitarian, that I have to live up to it, too.  Then she made a practical suggestion about how we could do it.  I told her I thought it was a good idea and maybe one of us should take a stab at writing the fair fighting agreement.  She said she would.  Then I said, “That’s about all I can do on that subject,” and she said, “Okay.” (She really meant the okay, because we’d argued about it so much and she knew giving concessions is hard for me.  She is a person of compassion, my partner.)

The second–I decided to tell her that sometimes I can’t see her clearly because she reminds me of my father.  I get confused about what love is when she reminds me of him.  I start feeling distrust.  We were pretty much in the middle of talking about this, and in the process, one of us mentioned a Breathwork and IFS workshop she’d done over the weekend.  I said, “Yes, when you came home I wanted to just listen about it, but we still hadn’t resolved the fair fighting thing, and I’d been waiting for you to get back to me about it, and I was anxious, so I didn’t want to be close until we worked it out.”  The Stork, who’d got interested in the breathwork thing, says to my partner, “You did a workshop with Stanislav Grof?”  And she was like, “Yeah, but not this one.  The one I did with him was this fall, at Kripalu.”  And he’s like, “I didn’t know he was still alive.”  And she’s like, “Yeah.”  And he’s like, “I did one workshop and then decided to get trained in it.  I bet it helps with accessing x, y & z.”  And she’s like, “Yeah, I really like it.”  And he’s like, “Lyralen, what about you?”  And I’m like, “Honestly, I avoid it like the plague.”  And he’s like, “I thought you did a lot of bodywork.”  And I’m like, “Yeah, but rebirthing and that kind of breathwork make me want to run for the hills.”  He’s like, “It’s good to not have any control.”  And I’m like, “You really want to see me out of control?”  And so he turns back to my partner and starts monologueing about her experience and I say, “WATASHI WA!”  And I point to my nose.

In case you’re wondering, watashi wa is Japanese for me, and in Japan, if you reference yourself, you point to your nose, not your heart like we do in the West.

My partner started cracking up, because she knew I was really saying, “Shut up about the breathwork!  I have an AGENDA.”

So then I went back to talking about wanting to see her more clearly.  She said she understood, and she wanted to change things because she hates my father.  Which was good, I thought.

Finally, I got to topic #3.  The night before, I’d asked her, “Do you really want to be closer to me than we normally are?”  And she said, “Yes.”  So I’d thought about it, and said, “I can’t tell the difference between you wanting closeness and just getting mad at me when I say no to meeting all your needs.”  And she said, “I can’t tell the difference either.”  And I said, “I can’t turn into someone who finds it easy to be all mushy.  I wish I could be as open-hearted as Don was, but I can’t.  I get too scared.”

And then the Stork said something useful.  I almost fainted.  He said, “You can’t be someone else.  But you can be present as yourself.  Like Oscar Wilde says, ‘You might as well be yourself.  Everyone else is taken.’”

I said to my partner, “That’s what closeness means to me.  Like when we’re getting along and your neuroses are an endless source of amusement instead of something to criticize.”

But then the Stork says, “I’ve been kind of fading in and out, there’s just something very subdued about this session.”  And I’m like, “I’ve been crying all day because of Don.”  My partner says, “I’m exhausted from work.”  She and I look at each other and we’re like, “This is okay with me, is it with you?”

The Stork says, “I’d like to go back to the fair fighting agreement.  You know, in IFS*, you can still get angry, you just have to speak for parts instead of being blended and speaking from parts.  You know what I mean, don’t you (to my partner)?”

My partner nods.

Then he looks at me.  “Lyralen, do you understand?” As if I’m in kindergarten.

“Yes,” I answer homicidally.  Because he has only explained this about 15 times (he’s a born-again IFS person and talks about it incessantly) and besides, I read the IFS books and knew all about speaking for parts instead of from parts before session 1, which I have told him over and over again.  Also, I am conceptually gifted, so understanding the concept wasn’t exactly rocket science for me.  What I wanted to say was, “Yes, I read the books and in case you haven’t noticed I’m a lot smarter than you are.”  What I did say was, “I already told you I’ve done as much as I can on this topic.”  And he’s like, “I just want your partner to know that if she tries not to get angry at all it will build up and she’ll explode.”  And I’m like, (more homicidal by this point) “But I still can’t do any more on this topic.”  He says, “Oh.  Okay.”

Therefore, I have taken an oath to fire the Stork so I don’t have to kill him.  Much as I will miss the absurdity of Eckhardt Tolle quotes, IFS repetitive lectures, and his abandonment issues, enough is enough.

My partner, who is less reactive to the Stork than I am, basically agrees with all my conclusions.  She says, “He just has to be the center of attention all the time.”

So true.  And obviously a problem, because I need to be the center of attention, if not all the time, at least 60%.  Though 70% is better.

I’m sure this will be a topic with our next couples therapist, as my partner isn’t really happy with 40%, let alone 30.  As I’m sure you could guess.

And so, back to the world of therapist interviews.  Perhaps we will meet another therapist who talks with puppets, or who dresses as the Wicked Witch of the West or who turns into a dog between visits.  I am not looking forward to it.  To say the least.

IFS:  The Richard Schwartz theory that we are all made up of subselves called parts.  Some of these parts are protectors, some critics, some firefighters, some exiles (lost children), etc.  My partner is an experienced peer counselor in this method and is now, as I’ve previously mentioned, doing a professional training in it.  To prove my intermittent sainthood, I’m doing a workshop to get some practice in it.  But, more importantly, I am really interested in writing a comedy called, “Me and My Parts VS. You and Your Parts.”  (Which has to have some couples therapy visits in the plot.  It just has to.)

IFS info:  http://www.selfleadership.org/