COMPETITION

I started working on a new "thing" ( I don't yet know what it is) today, something that captured my imagination enough so that I put pen to paper. It;s no coincidence that it came after I read a few Amazon samples of books that have gotten raves, all by women. I was surprised at how ordinary the writing is. It could be the plots are ingenious, unpredictable, but the sample was only about twenty pages so I can't say for sure. I found myself thinking, well, I could do as well, and a few minutes after reading the last sample, I got an idea, a good one, and I actually wrote a scene.
     I never thought of myself as competitive. I never tried hard enough and that was one of my problems. I couldn't put  myself in the game. I didn't want to go head to head with anybody; I was certain I would lose. I didn't know this was at the heart of so many problems in me. I kept it hidden from myself because I was too afraid to let my real feelings out - the ones that were all about desperately wanting to win and the certainty that I never would. 
     But in fact I was very competitive. I cut winners "down to size". I found ways to discount and criticize their efforts - well, I convinced myself, I certainly wouldn't want that. My competitiveness was so repressed I didn't even know it was there.
     There's a very dark side to all this. It's the source of the constant comparison I was making between me and everyone else. It's a form of envy - see, that person has more than I do, has accomplished more; why do I always get the short end of the stick. 
     I wish I could trace exactly how I was brought out of that terrible dynamic. I know I began to make progress when I realized that constant comparing was a kind of self-pity. They have so much and I have so little. I saw how sorry  I was for myself.  I began to inch up to some of my fear that if I competed I was bound to lose. To finally recognize something so deep seated and self-destructive is to be already moving toward change. I began to be able to feel my strengths, to look at them and not at anybody else. I didn't know it but I was leaving the crippling kind of competitiveness behind. The more I valued myself the less I looked at and compared myself to anyone else. I began to get free enough to focus on my own work, and do my best work.
     But the ground beneath all of this has to be seeded. With the willingness to move forward, even when I'm terrified - in other words, to have faith that wherever I'm led will be the place I want to go. A willingness to surrender what I think of as my best ideas and opinions, especially about myself. A willingness to not run from deep and frightening emotion. A willingness to surrender everything.
     There is so much more that has gone into the changes I feel in myself. I know I can't trace the path exactly because no one thing sums it up. There are so many levels in each of us, so many aspects of our experience and values, so many chains and braids, merging and untangling. Our inner lives are an endlessly evolving collaboration.
     
        

CHERISH AND GRATITUDE

A friend and I were talking the other day about the difference between cherish and gratitude. Cherish is a verb, it's something you do, while gratitude is a noun; it's something you feel, a quality, something you can express or demonstrate.
     Cherish is a word I don't hear very often anymore. Maybe it's too intense for our cool culture. There's nothing ironic or cynical about it, no wink-wink. In fact, to cherish something or someone, to feel deeply, is the opposite of irony. It's the opposite of "whatever," which is another way of saying, I don't care. To cherish is to care deeply. When you say you cherish, you're  acknowledging that something is vital to you in a way that has nothing to do with dependence. Cherishing is a verb of pleasure and to cherish is to be enlarged.
     If I don't hear "cherish" much anymore, I can't get away from "gratitude." The word is used so much -"practice gratitude" - it's bordering on the cliche. I googled gratitude and clicked on images. Many came up and most of them looked like they'd be perfect on a greeting card. Maybe that's what always happens. Something that begins as heartfelt get co-opted, is used to make a profit and so stripped of real meaning.
     But here's the thing. I think of gratitude as the aristocrat of emotions because when I feel it deeply I have a sense of grandeur, a wide expansiveness, a going out from myself and touching the world. When that happens "gratitude" loses its meaning, all words loose their limiting meaning and become the doorway to the universal. The veil between me and everything else that exists is pulled away. I am totally connected.
     Here is some irony. We have only words to describe these transcendent experiences to ourselves and to each other. We have only words to take us to the place that's about the absence of words.

YOSEMITE

I was driving south from Sacramento.  Just south of Stockton there was a sign: Yosemite, Take 120. I pictured the road, a two lane blacktop heading east, running as flat as the San Joaquin Valley floor until it reaches the foothills of the Sierras and starts climbing higher and higher until it reaches Yosemite. The road may follow an Indian trail, laid out centuries ago, then replaced by a dirt and gravel path which in turn was replaced by this paved road with its sign - Yosemite.
     I've been to Yosemite twice. The first time was insanely rushed.  I had driven up the east side of the Sierras on the 395, through towns called Independence and Lone Pine, up higher and higher until I reached the Tioga pass at about 9900'. I didn't know it but if I'd come a week later the pass would have been closed because of snow. As I turned west, I also didn't know that the road, which went right through the park, was the 120. The sun was very bright, the air clear, and I passed an Alpine meadow that glinted in the light. I remember a lake and then the drive down ultimately to the valley floor. I'd only just realized I didn't have a place to stay for the night and I'd have to find a motel outside the park. So I was in an insane rush and speedily took in the sights but it was a kind of if-it's-four o'clock this must be El Capitan.
     The second time was very different. I had a room at the Wawona Hotel near the Mariposa Grove and I spent a morning wandering through the impossibly old, impossibly huge trees. There's no other word for them but awesome, and although there were other people there, we all were silent, our mouths stopped by awe.
     This time I dawdled as much as you can in a weekend. I walked up to the base of El Capitan, considered hopping over the Merced River which was almost a trickle, making it hard to believe this is the river that carved out the valley, along with the help of some glaciers. I got as close as I could to the famous waterfalls, the ones on a thousand souvenir postcards. The water begins falling in each of them very high up and comes down in thin white ribbons. You can't see its movement from a distance but up close, the sound and the power of the water is the sound and power of nature.
     I spent a long time at the lookout point from which you can see down the whole Valley with El Capitan on one side and Half Dome in the distance. It's one of the most famous and popular views of the park and, as I gazed out, the other tourists suddenly felt very far away. I sat on a low stone wall and tried to come up with something original to say. I gave up pretty quickly.
     There's a field of study called hermeneutics.  Its name comes from Hermes, the messenger of the Gods the go-between, the interpreter. Modern hermeneutics is the study of theories of interpretation - for instance, how do we understand, interpret all the levels of meaning we use to see and understand a text or our experience or a work of art. Since ideas and experience are always shifting, how can we get at the truth?
     Sitting on the stone wall, I realized my time in Yosemite had a hermeneutics all its own. There was the present, the direct experience coming at me through all my senses, my spiritual response to all that beauty. But there were layers beneath that, adding to that direct experience. There were the Indians cutting trails as they tracked animals. There was a book I had, written by a traveler in 1888 and he called the park by its Indian name, Yo-semite. There were Carlton Watkins' 19th century photographs of the Valley monuments and wide vistas from the depths of the Park, and Ansel Adams' oh so familiar black and whites. There were the people who climbed the sheer face of El Capitan without ropes, clinging to the rock by their finger tips. There was a vintage travel poster I'd once seen, of this very view.
     But mostly there was John Muir who walked south from San Francisco, over the Pacheco Pass, across the flat Valley and into the Sierras and ultimately to Yosemite. His love was immediate and included very pebble and leaf and animal. He was endlessly curious; on the night of a storm, he climbed up high in a tree because he wanted to feel the power of the storm. There was the fight he made to save the Hetch Hetchy valley which he lost and then watched as that valley, part of Yosemite, disappeared under hundreds of feet of water when its river was dammed up. I'll never see Hetch Hetchy but it has a meaning for me built on Muir's struggle to save it.
     All these layers and more were part of my experience looking down the Valley. If I had stopped to tease them out, I wouldn't have been present for my experience of the Valley view. But layers like these are beneath every experience and idea and feeling I have. They're part of what I mean when I say, "I". Some are accessible when I go looking for them while others float somewhere beyond my consciousness, always ready to flood in.
     Somewhere south of Stockton I saw the sign for Yosemite and I said to myself, "Let the revelries begin."

INDIANA

I'm driving through southern Indiana on my way to Los Angeles. There are cultivated fields along the highway and after a while it's all corn. I'm staring - I've never seen corn so tall with thick stems, dark green leaves. America is rich, I think, you can see it in the corn which looks so healthy it can only be the result of science and effort.
     I find a motel and go in to register. When I come out to move the car, it won't start. I try again and a few times more. I can't believe it. I'm in the middle of nowhere. I have AAA but it's after seven and for some reason I don't want the car towed to somewhere I'll have to leave overnight. It may not be working but it's still my car.  I know this is ridiculous but stranger, and worse, things have happened. If this is where my head goes automatically, I know I'm losing it.
     I suddenly remember I'm a member of a fellowship that has chapters around the country. I look in the phone book and one is listed. I call the number, it rings for a very long time but I feel hanging up is the same as cutting a lifeline. Finally, a man answers. I tell him who I am and what my problem is and he immediately says, "Don't worry, we'll take care of it in the morning." That's all I need to know - someone will help me and the panic is already fading. He tells me he was on his way to a fellowship meeting and offers to pick me up. Of course, I say, of course. I go outside to wait. I don't know who or what I'm waiting for but what drives up is the biggest Harley I've ever seen. It's a dusty pinkish color which doesn't quite compute with its size and power but for the moment  I'm not thinking about the bike. I'm looking at the man who's riding it. Think of Sterling Hayden with a crew cut and reflector sunglasses, in swim trunks, no shirt and flip flops. We introduce ourselves and he says, "hop on." I do.
     We take off and I can't get over the size of the bike. Unless my eyes deceive me, there's carpeting on the floor board. I'm holding on to the bar behind my seat and the ride is completely smooth. We're on a two lane country road. I look at the man's back, the overhanging trees, the fact of me on this huge Harley in the middle of southern Indiana and suddenly laughter rises up in me, deep spontaneous waves of laughter that I want to last forever. I can't believe it. I'm having the time of my life.
     When we get to the meeting, the man puts on a t-shirt and introduces everyone to everyone, including me. It's as if he's the official majordomo, making sure we have a pleasant evening.  There are long tables set up in a square. He sits opposite and I covertly watch him. He's restless, distracted, and half way through the meeting, me leaves without a glance at me. It's all right. I know someone else will take me back to the motel.  When it's my turn to share, I tell the meeting that I'm driving cross country and my car has broken down. Everyone is nodding as if it's a minor glitch (which I suppose it is) and this is enough to make me feel better.
     The meeting ends and I find myself standing with the man's mother to whom he introduced me. I say it was so nice of him to pick me up and bring me here. I say, "Your son stands so straight. Was he in the military?" She looks at me and laughs. "No", she says. "Jail."
     It turns out there's a mechanic at the meeting and he comes to the motel the next morning, lifts the hood and does something I can't see. Then he closes the hood much too quickly but that's because he's already fixed it. A clogged gas filter, many thanks and I'm on my way.
       This story is definitely one to dine out on and I've told it many times. I think the man would be astonished at how often I talk about him, and his dusty pink Harley, the country roads and the overhanging trees, his mother laughing and saying, "No, jail". But most of all - of course - I see myself hanging on to the bike and I hear my laughter, that deep spontaneous laughter. Even now, I feel it bubbling up and traveling through my body and there's no way to stop it, no desire to stop it.  How unpredictable and amazing life is. How great it is to be alive.

GETTING NAKED

   A while ago, I woke up from a dream that left me with a very bad feeling. The dream wasn't exactly a nightmare - it felt like a long dream, complicated, but what I remembered was struggling to get out of a jump suit that zipped up the front. I couldn't get the zipper open and I felt hemmed in, confined and I was desperate to get out of it. It was the sense of that desperation that I woke up with.
     I rolled over and stared at the ceiling. In a few minutes, the sense of desperation faded but I saw the image in the dream with sharp clarity. It didn't take much insight to understand what a perfect metaphor my dream mind had created. My sense of being trapped, unable to unbind myself. The longing to step out of my old confining skin and be naked like a baby, so I could begin again. It was all about my struggle to get free and my desperate fear that I'd never be able to.
     As I lay on the bed, I found myself wanting to go back into the dream and change it. I focused on my struggling self and then worked to let all that frustrated effort it all go. I watched how easy it became to unzip the jump suit and shrug it off my shoulders. I watched myself turning and walking out in the world naked, just as I am. 
     I did this again and again. I knew that just making the effort to rewrite this bulletin from my subconscious gave me back some power. It changed an image of myself that was all about frustration and desperation into a vision of an alternate possibility, one in which I was no longer helpless but could do the work that change required I do.
     With each attempt I made, it was as if a movie were unreeling itself before my eyes. I could stop the projection, change details, go over certain moments again and again. But then something happened. Suddenly, there was no distance between "me" and "it." I wasn't watching, wasn't an observer of the new story I was trying to tell. I didn't see it or absorb it.  I had no objectivity at all. The image was inside me; it was me. 
     When I came back from that moment of transcendence, which is what I think it was, my psyche knew something fundamental had changed. I knew there was nothing more I needed to do at that moment. Something had moved forward. 
     I've had this experience other times when an image has come to me, one that fills me with fear and despair. But no matter how many times I go over it trying to change it, nothing shifts until the moment when I and it no longer have any separation, when objectivity is gone, when consciousness is suspended for a brief instant. The loss of Self is what enables self to change.
     I've learned, though, I can't will these moments no matter how much I try. That trying mind is still the objective mind but it's the repeated trying that allows something else to take over. It paves the way so I can find myself in that place without words, where all is effortless and one, the place where real change can happen.

LOOK AT ME

I've known people who have a voracious need to be noticed. They want to dominate conversations, to show you how smart they are, how accomplished - they don't realize how often it puts people off. They don't seem to have any doubt or awareness of who they are. But you want to say to them, "Don't come at me with guns blazing, don't work so hard to impress me, don't push into my space." 
     Most everyone wants to be noticed and admired. I certainly do. In the past, it was all I wanted; I was sure that if I didn't have they world's adulation, my life would be a failure. That desire came out of deep insecurity, so deep it took years for me to recognize it. At first, as the insecurity revealed itself, I took it as evidence that I was worthless, so weak I could never change something so deep in me. I thought of it as a flaw. I was afraid that to recognize anything I wanted to change would pull my whole facade down.
     It turned out, a direct approach to my insecurity didn't get me anywhere. I couldn't snap my fingers and be "healed." What I mostly had to do was to acknowledge the insecurity, become unafraid to feel it, and I worked to surrender it, to let a power greater than myself in turn work inside me. I stopped trying to decide on the best solution to my insecurity. Instead, I began to say, "Show me what to do in order to get free." It didn't matter that I didn't know who or what I was saying that to. I just had to surrender my relentless super rational ego. 
     This is a process I go through over and over again. Surrender the demand that I be rich and famous; surrender the insecurity that is the very thing that's blocking me from being my most spontaneous, freest self. In the deepest way, this is my life's work, to keep allowing myself to feel the truths inside me, both the good and the not so good.