TERMINAL SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

   The other day something reminded me of what I used to call my terminal self-consciousness. It was as if there was a camera in the ceiling recording my every move and I worried constantly about how I was doing. Sometimes, I felt I was lurking behind my eyes, looking out at everyone and everything, assessing. What did this person think of me? Was this the person I should be talking to, instead of someone else across the room? That person is wearing the wrong shoes so I should get away as fast as I can. 
     The camera in the ceiling, the lurking behind my eyes - nothing happened without my constant worry that I would be seen in the wrong way, or reveal something shameful, or be found wanting by the cool people, whoever they were. It was all about judgment, judging myself and all the rest of you. It was exhausting but I couldn't rest - judging others and being afraid others were judging me kept me very busy. 
     I couldn't be in my body and I couldn't be in the world. In that self-consciousness, I didn't see anything apart from myself. Everyone was an object that revolved around me. I didn't understand it was narcissism; how could I be narcissistic if I was afraid all the time and condemned just about everything I did? 
     I couldn't survive in that place. In a way, it was a matter of life and death - self-consciousness and its friend ambivalence would have taken me down, stripped my life of pleasure, enjoyment, the freedom to create. Desperation made me willing to surrender, just surrender all the anxiety, judgment and second-guessing. You take it, I said to the universe, because this is killing me.
     I can narrate some of the steps in my changing. Surrender created a sliver of space in which I began to understand that my terminal self-consciousness and reflexive judging weren't standing on anything solid; they were habits of thought, ephemeral patterns of behavior that were just passing across my vision. I saw that they weren't "reality," whatever that was, and there was at least the possibility that reality might be something different. Surrender, hope, willingness became my building blocks and their solidity gave the courage to untie the knots inside. A slow process began, one that's still going on, and I hope it will always go on because I will never come to the end of the possibilities of getting free.
     I can narrate the steps of this process, but I don't know why it came to me. It's not because I'm special or more deserving that anyone else. I can see that at every step I made the right choice, the one that would lead me on toward change, and I can see that I was willing to stay in the process, not matter how painful or frightening it was. But I don't feel I can take much credit. I didn't make something happen. Something happened to me.
     I was talking about grace this morning which William James defines as a sudden inrush of energy, energy that seems to come from outside us, beyond the confines of our consciousness. I have felt that energy many times and when it was most needed. The energy of grace has kept me moving on.

SURRENDER AGAIN

Over the years, I've had many images of surrendering. One of the first was that I was a rat in a maze, frantically searching for the way out, when all I had to do was stop and the exit sign would appear. 
     "...all I had to do..." That's the hardest thing to do, to get to the moment when I fall to my knees in defeat, and in that falling find myself in a new place where change and answers can come. A place where I am willing to surrender all the manipulations of my ego, my expectations and demands, my certainty that there is only one right way for me to live and I can't live without achieving it. Willing to surrender the belief that only I can and should be the sole creator of my destiny.
     Life would be much easier if there was a step by step guide to liberating surrender. Although I've come to that point many times, I can't say exactly what gets me there. All surrenders follow a similar path - I hold on and hold on until I can't do it anymore, then I let go and stillness comes. But I never am able to hurry it along; I can't say, oh, I need to surrender, and then simply do it. My desire to surrender doesn't help me surrender any more easily or quickly. 
     But once I directly experienced what a relief it is when I do surrender, I began to develop faith that if I kept trying to get free of my frantic will, my desperate demands and expectations, I would be led where I wanted to go. I began to see that the bubbling cauldron of fear and doubt and self-loathing that was reaching fever pitch wasn't my fate, wouldn't shatter me, but was part of a process leading me to insight and possibility. More and more, that bubbling cauldron had a context, a purpose - to move me along toward freedom. With each surrender, my belief that there was a purpose to my pain, that it was leading me toward insight, gave me the courage to keep on, to not cut and run, to hold steady and to keep my eyes focused on the possibility of change. 
     I can't make surrender happen on my schedule, but I can prepare the way so that I'll be ready for the moment of release. Where does that moment come from? Some would say it's grace or a moment of clarity or the hand of God. Wherever it comes from, it's a moment of expansion, a stabilizing connection to someplace beyond my own distorted ego.