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.
     
        

CAR AND COMPUTER

There are two things that can throw me into a panic: something going wrong with the car and something going wrong with the computer. It's not the oh-my-god-how-can-I-function-without-it sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, and it's not because I know nothing about them and am therefore dependent on other people who I hope know what they're doing. It isn't even the money it will cost to fix either of them, 
     I think the panic goes deeper. It's my fear of being without something I need which I can see is a kind of fear of abandonment. I'm a child saying, "Mother, don't take that rattle from me - Mother, don't take yourself from me." I feel bereft, and as I had bad parenting, I learned to cover up whatever I needed so I wouldn't feel the pain of not getting it. 
     The car and computer are crucial to my daily life and, even though I'm an adult and know whatever the problem is will get fixed and probably sooner rather than later, I find myself feeling resentment at the universe for doing something mean to me, and the powerlessness of a child, and  anger at myself for having that reaction in the first place. I know it's irrational and I have ways of quickly moving past the turmoil of those feelings, but the buttons that were installed in childhood will always be there. They've seared pathways in my being, and the feelings they give rise to will surface at the most unexpected times. I've learned that's all right. Those fears and needs have taught me most of what I know about surrender, letting go and the transitory nature of all feeling, both good and bad. Those feelings have taught me how to deal with them.
     Today, there is nothing wrong with the car and the computer is working just fine. No need for panic, no need at all.

GETTING LOST

The other day, I was reading about a man who had gotten lost on a hike in the mountains. I was most interested in how long it took him to realize that he was in fact lost. Evidently, we are always making mental maps of where we are - the familiar like your house or the way to your office. When we're in unfamiliar places, we need some time to orient ourselves. We try to construct maps of where we think we are and where we think we're going. The man in the mountains had a image of a lake that should have been up ahead. Even when he could see that the terrain wasn't matching what he knew it should be, he kept thinking the lake was just over the next ridge. He couldn't register where he was and continued to believe he was on his way to where he wanted to go. He rushed ahead trying to get over the next ridge and used up energy, made bad decisions about what he was capable of, ignored the growing danger of being alone in the woods. 
     He was lost in the mountains for five days and it was only on the fourth that he came fully to realize and to accept that he was lost. He stopped trying to make his surroundings conform to some idea in his head. He began to map out where he was and focus on what he needed to do to survive. Rescue came on the fifth day.
     I hardly need pick out the metaphors. Rushing to make reality conform to my own mental maps. Continuing to deny the reality of where I actually am. Using up precious energy in denial. Wanting so much for something to true that I can't see what's in front of me. 
     In a sense, this is the human condition. Each of us wants what we want and sometimes desperately so. We all are sometimes blinded by our ego wants and needs and can't see beyond them. We can run for a long time before we notice we're not getting any place at all, that in fact we're lost, without a clue about what to do next. Anxiety and dread build because some part of me senses that something is wrong, I'm afraid to be "lost". But it turns out getting lost isn't the worst thing; the worst thing is continuing to insist that I know where I am. 
     Eventually, the bubble of denial has to burst and then comes the moment of surrender. It's the moment when I accept that I've been holding on to illusions and wasting my energy, my creativity, by insisting on my own distorted version of reality. I open my hand and anxiety and dread dissolve and I feel energy because they are no longer sapping me. I surrender and don't fall into the abyss. Instead, I float free, able to see what is. In that moment of clarity, a path opens up, one that will take me where I want to go. I find a place of refuge inside which is always my home. I can't get lost. I carry my home with me.
     

FAILURE

I knew a man who, in the eyes of the world, was both accomplished and admirable. His first novel won a national prize, he went on to make money from other kinds of writing, and he took a principled political stand at a time it was dangerous to do so. He and his family paid a high price, but years later he was seen as a hero, his name well-known. But as glad as he was that he had done what he had done, something was missing. He regretted he had had no success with other novels and plays; he had wanted a career like Dreiser, or Dos Passos, any of the other great social issue novelists. It wasn't that he felt he was a failure, but he felt he had failed his deepest and dearest ambitions.
     I sometimes think that I could win an Oscar one day, the Nobel Peace Prize the next and gnash my teeth that it wasn't the Nobel for literature. Some part of me is a bottomless pit that is never filled no matter what I do. Freudians would say I have an out-of-whack superego, an ego driving me on which I can never satisfy. Many people do. For some, it drives them to greater and greater accomplishments, others are paralyzed by the impossibility of attaining an imaginary perfection of ambition, while others, like me and most other people, fall somewhere in the middle. On good days, I can take pleasure in my accomplishments but on a bad day I feel myself a complete and utter failure.
     Over the years, I've learned some things. I can step back from my self-centered opinions of myself, from both the grandiose and the self-loathing. I don't have to attach to either of them, or to any ideas in between. I remind myself of my belief that there is no truth, but only perspective, which is something I create, and it has a search light I can swing in another direction. It's very hard to believe that ideas I feel deeply, that seem to have no distance between them and whatever this thing is that I call "me", can possibly not be "real," not be true. But I've experienced many times that if I shift my gaze only a few degrees, move the light to a different part of the ocean, I can move out of all the judgments I make about myself. I know now that other direction, the stillness and release it provides, is always available to me, if I take a moment to look for it. 
     I often say, "Is, is." It's the shortest version I can think of for acceptance. I don't mean acceptance of any of my ideas, either the ones that drive me to outlandish pride and arrogance, the ones that tell me I have to resign myself, or the ones that collapse me into failure. I mean acceptance of the reality that all my opinions, no matter how vivid they can be, are only passing through, undoubtedly subject to change. 
     It's the paradox I want to have before me, that the only reality is that there is no reality, nothing fixed, unchanging, written in stone, or more true than anything else. That's where my freedom lies, in letting go, breathing in and out, surrendering to my own particular stream of consciousness.

SURRENDER, ALWAYS SURRENDER

So many people I know are having a hard time just now. All kinds of problems - health, money, family relations. When things are difficult and the future unpredictable, it's easy to get caught in fear and anxiety, and even when you have experience quieting the demons, so much energy goes into detaching and connecting with the part of me that knows I'll be all right no matter what.
     It surprises me that when I think of dire possibilities in the future, I feel I will adjust, accept what is and be all right. When I'm hard on myself I label this attitude nothing but fatalism or resignation. But most of the time I know it's the result of many surrenders, the kind that come I give up fighting the things I can't change. When I surrender, I feel an expansion inside; giving up demands and expectations, quieting my relentless ego makes room for a connection to the world outside me and the nourishing energy inside.
     I want to remind myself every day of the expansiveness of surrender.  More than remind, I want to close my eyes, take deep breaths and actually feel the expansion and energy. As a beginning, I will cultivate the willingness to give myself that gift.
      

NOT YET

There's a famous section in St. Augustine's Confessions.  He's had a wild youth - drink, women, and other things.  Now, he's slowly coming to his God. But some part of him is still resisting. He finds himself praying: I most wretched in my early youth had begged chastity of Thee and said, "Give me chastity and continency, only not yet." He doesn't want God to cure him too soon; he still wants what he calls "the disease of concupiscence" to be satisfied rather than extinguished.
     I so understand that "not yet." Any addict (and others) knows that terrible ambivalence - the desire to change and the fear of change. Who will I be without my old habits, whatever it is I lean upon? How will I get through? I'm the one who...how will I give up that story I tell myself? These questions come even when we sincerely want to change.
     What takes us across? I wish I knew and could bottle it and hand out free samples. Some people spend their lives without having gotten across while others do; it's a mystery why that should be. I used to think it had something to do with intelligence or temperament or something else bred in the bone. But when I look around at people who have left ambivalence behind and managed to surrender, I see very few common denominators. There is probably the same percentage of good guys and bad guys as in the rest of the population. That's just the way it is.
     Some people never come to the bottom of their self-destruction but some people do and they're the lucky ones. Surrender, the admission of powerlessness, is the moment when "I can't do this anymore" reverberates through your being. There's nothing else to do but to give up and turn forward, even when the hope that there is another way is faint and flickering.
     Why for some and not others? Some would call it grace. Whatever it is, it's happened for me and I don't take any credit for it. All I did was pay attention and let the path unfold. Of course, that's not "all." At every significant turning, I was willing to surrender. Why? Well, that's the mystery.

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.
     

SURRENDER

Surrender was a word I didn't want to get near. I heard defeat as if I were an army and if I surrendered to the other side I and my cause would be a total failure. To surrender is to stop fighting and I thought if I didn't fight I would be trampled, flattened by the world. 
     Eventually, I heard the word in a different way. To surrender is to let go of my desperation - to change myself, to get what I want, to make everyone and everything do what I want. That kind of fighting is a terrible burden to carry - I used to feel it was three o'clock in the morning and I had to figure everything out by dawn or I would be taken out and shot. The best description of what that anxiety feels like is from Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner:

     Like one, that on a lonesome road
     Doth walk in fear and dread, 
     And having once turned round
     Walks on and no more turns his head
     Because he knows a frightful fiend 
     Doth close behind him tread.
     
     Who wouldn't want to surrender that? This kind of surrender is about letting go of the frantic need to get to the  bottom, control, fix, get what I want. Not only is that desire for complete control impossible to have, it's the desire of someone who views everyone else as a object in her world, not a full human being. It's the sign of a neurotic vanity that says, you must do everything, control everything, but of course you can't control it all and you wind up thinking yourself a failure.   
    When I surrender I'm taking my tight little hands and clawing fingers off the controls. As soon as I do, relaxation comes, the kind that lets in air and light. No fighting, no pressure - only an open hand. That opening hand is the gesture that takes me beyond my willful desperate ego, and allows me to be precisely where I am in the moment. I see clearly the futility of my trying to impose answers and fix all the things I think are wrong with me. I realize that I am no judge of anything that has to do with me; my thoughts and opinions about my place in the world, all the sentences that start with "I should have" or "What if" come out of fearful and doubting ego. 
     No more trying to impose answers and fixes and my will on the world. I open my hand, relax and allow possibilities, answers to emerge from that surrendered place. It's one of the many paradoxes, that giving up the need for control, opening my hand, leads not to defeat but to the possibility of real change.