Dealing With Bad Days

    "To stand up and be worn 

to something deeper 

is a pledge that living 

forces us to keep."

-Mark Nepo

     From the moment we are born on this planet, we are subject to the elements, the unknown, emotions, responsibilities, and all kinds of fluctuating energies both inside and outside of us.  Each moment brings new possibility for change, both negative and positive, and none of us know how to predict the way we will feel at any given moment.  Some people treat their bodies badly and live to be 100, and others who die young are puritanical about their self care.  Sometimes we get hardly any sleep, and wake up feeling refreshed...and sometimes we sleep for hours and wake up exhausted and cranky.  I used to think that I could prepare myself for the next day, and what it would bring, but I am realizing more and more that I really have no idea what tomorrow will bring.  I do not know how to ensure that tomorrow will be a good day, that I will wake up feeling happy, or even that I will still be alive.

     Sometimes my brain goes to the thought, "What if this is my last day?"  I wonder if the clothes I'm putting on will be the clothes that I die in.  I worry about all the things I haven't done yet in my life.  I worry about the welfare of my kids.  Sometimes I wake up and feel the weight of my responsibilities crushing me, before I even lift my head off the pillow.  My worst mornings are the ones where the pressure of waking into real life feels like quicksand, pulling me out of my free and glorious dreamland.  I drag myself up and stagger around, fulfilling my morning routine slowly, methodically.  I notice that some of my hair falls out in the shower, and I am suddenly overwrought with depressing thoughts about aging, fears about going bald, anger that youth is so short.  I look in the mirror, picking every inch of myself apart, reprimanding myself for not being healthy enough, for not working out hard enough, for eating too much sugar, for everything.  I reprimand myself for being too hard on myself.  Of course, it's a bad hair day.  Of course I have dark circles under my eyes.  No amount of makeup can make me look the way I wish I looked, and no cute clothes can turn me into the young, perfect Barbie doll that I (at this moment) believe I should be. I drop my eyeshadow and it breaks into a billion pieces on the floor.  I hit my head as I'm standing up from cleaning the mess.  My daughter refuses to get out of bed and get ready for school.  We are late for school and work, and we get stuck waiting for a train.  A taxi cab runs a stop sign and almost kills us all...

     In the past, (until I read the book Untethered Soul), each and every one of these events would have built up inside me, and I would have ended up pulled over on the side of the road weeping, or racing onto the freeway with severe road rage.  But something clicked inside me when I read this book, and it is impossible for me to ignore.  So much so that I have been reading it one chapter per month, so as to make sure that I'm applying Michael A. Singer's concepts to my daily life.  I know now that I cannot allow any event or string of events to close up my heart and ruin my day.  Now that I have been awakened to the infinite strength inside my own soul, I know that I can depend on myself to just observe the thoughts and events as they pass through, and let them go.  In every moment of our lives, including the worst ones, we have a choice to either let our consciousness delve into negativity, or to allow the deeper, stronger part of ourselves to take over and bring us forward.  

     The real you, your soul, is meant to listen and observe.  This part of you is witness to all of the crazy thoughts that reach out into the depths of your fear, anger, sorry and joy.  The real you is not the critical voice, the paranoid voice, the nagging voice, or any of the other voices you hear as your day unfolds.  The real you is the one who is underneath all of that, observing it.  So if we can observe the patterns of our brains, then we also have the power to control them.  We may not be able to control what pops up in the first place, but where we let it go is completely under our control.  As the taxi driver speeds away, not even flinching at the fact that he almost killed my family, I observe my thoughts become murderous.  I want to chase him, to crash my car into his, to punch him, to scream.  These thoughts begin to lead into further thoughts that take me deeper and deeper into rage and misery.  This is the point where I know I need to take control, and I know that the sooner I take control, the easier it's going to be for me, and the better chance I have of having a peaceful day despite the events that take place.  

     Have you noticed how one bad thought leads to the next?  Have you noticed that the more you let your mind spiral off, the harder it is to recognize reality?  I am still battling with vices and obsessions that I must work on every day to let go of-needs and thought patterns that I created out of fear, resentment and boredom.  These thought patterns used to be my reality-I allowed my mind to obsess severely over things that eventually destroyed relationships, dreams, opportunities.  I obsessed so much over certain things that I eventually ended up making them realities, and believe me-these were not positive things.  I clung to my vices for comfort when my obsessions had brought me to my lowest, and I circled down there in my own scum for years and years.  I know from experience how easy it is to let your mind get lost, which is why I really believe in the importance of controlling your thoughts.  When I read Untethered Soul, I realized that not only is it possible to bring yourself back into reality, but it's also very simple.  Just remember that your thoughts aren't you.  Recognize your soul and learn to rely on it.  Your soul is stronger than any thoughts, emotions or events that you experience, and all you have to do is observe where your mind is going, reel it in, and relax.  Letting go and moving on has nothing to do with stuffing the feeling down, and everything to do with breathing, physically relaxing, and saying "Hello...and goodbye" to passing thoughts and feelings.  If we can rely on ourselves to drop down into our souls during difficult moments, if we can reel our consciousness back in when it lashes out, if we can keep the negative and positive energy in constant flow, if we can experience each present moment that comes, then we can move our lives forward and upward, away from the stagnant waters of misery.

     I am developing little ways in which I can rely on myself to pull through tough situations.  In the early morning when I am already feeling angry or sad, and I dread coming into real life again, I know that if I just breathe for a while, if I just sit up and do one round of chanting, if I envision all of the people who will smile at me today, I am then able to take the next step forward and set foot on the floor with gratitude.  In the shower, as I begin to panic about hair loss, I stop and remember something Mark Nepo once said, "Misery stems from a loss of perspective."  I ask myself, "What does that mean to me?  How does that apply to this situation?"  Immediately, I have my answer-that there is no time in this world for getting lost in tiny, personal problems.  That there is no time in this world for being miserable over the way we look, or might look some day.  We are all here to age and die.  We ourselves are only a passing season.  In the vastness of eternity, in the grandeur of the universe, what does it matter that two hairs fell out of my head?  What does it matter if all my hair falls out?  There are beautiful sights to be seen.  There are wondrous millenniums to unfold.  There are people to love and support, friends to grow old with, children to guide.  There is a universe full of unknown miracles.  There is your destiny, my destiny, our destiny as a species, as a planet, as life.  We are alive, and we are so fragile.  We are almost gone, and here we are-fighting, obsessing, skulking around in misery.  But when we live from our souls and allow them to keep us present, we can find the peace and perspective we need to save both ourselves and the world.

     Bad days will happen.  Difficult events will happen.  None of that has to break us.  None of it has to be held in.  None of it has to escalate.  Let's let it all move through us, let it all change us.  Let's surrender our egos and stay open to the mystery of our lives.  Let's be kinder to ourselves.  Let's be more understanding with others.  Let's make it our goal to discover our own souls, to close our eyes and recognize ourselves.  Let your smile bring you wrinkles and let your hair fall out.  Find something bigger, deeper and more lovely to live for.  Join me in the ups and downs, and we can continue to bring each other into the truth.  Release the light of your soul, and I will release mine.  Eventually, one day, if we are lucky enough to be old, wrinkled and bald, we will smile knowing that we experienced every moment.

"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year."

-Emerson

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How Do I Love Myself?

     "Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend."

-Elizabeth Gilbert

     I spend a lot of time wondering when I will have a clear sense of self worth.  When will I feel confident in my ability to succeed?  When will I be open and trusting in my relationships?  The trust, the confidence-they come and go, and when they go, I'm left there wondering, "Who am I to be a teacher/writer/artist/mother/wife/friend?  What makes me special?  What makes me lovable?"  It really doesn't matter how many compliments I receive or how many people love me-I still seem to spend time wondering about my worth.  I wonder if the compliments were true or false.  I wonder if the people who say they love me are being honest.  I feel so much love for others, but when it comes to me, I do a lot of wondering.

     Things happen in our lives that break our hearts and compel us to question our worth.  When a lover ignores us, treats us badly, leaves us or is unfaithful to us, we turn ourselves upside down, wondering what essential beauty we ourselves are lacking.  When our parents criticize or hurt us, we are like children again, defensive and angry or desperate for approval and acceptance.  We hang onto those hurts for years and years, obsessing over them until they become a part of us.  We carry around broken pieces of our hearts, and when our self worth comes into question, all of those pieces come bobbing up to the surface.  Those thoughts and memories make us feel small and exhausted, like we have no place on this earth and no stable ground to stand on.  Even when things are good sometimes we wonder how it is that we deserve happiness, and how long it will stay.

     At my worst, I feel a wretched, spiteful anger toward anyone who provokes me to question my self worth.  In one moment I can turn from tenderness to venom, from Jekyll to Hyde.  In one moment, my heart closes.  Even when I know that it's not the other person-that it's me and my own issues-even then, I feel violence surge inside of me.  I want to hurt the person, to share my suffering, to make them feel the horrible way that I do.  I want to close the doors and never show them love again.  The lack of love that I have for myself turns into hideous anger, directed outwards at others.  In that moment, I feel that hurting someone else would be the answer, that destruction is the only solution to my pain.  And if I can't destroy the other person, I will then turn around and do something destructive to myself.  I wonder what I could possibly do to make things better, or even to just show the world how much it hurts, but nothing I can ever do or say will satisfy my pain.  When I speak from this place, I create more misery.  When I act from this place, I only hurt myself more, I destroy the world around me, and I create pathways to shame and regret.  So I know I must do what it takes to find seeds of love, deep within my gashed bosom.  I know I must do whatever I possibly can to love those who hurt me deeply.  I know that a life of anger and violence, an existence of fear and self pity, is not for me.

     Each person that lives has something that evokes violent urges inside.  We all have our buttons, we all have our weaknesses, and I know for a fact that many, many people in this world have problems stemming from a perceived lack of love.  Quite often we feel desperately alone and positively worthless, and we expect others to fill that void for us, or to at least not trigger the pain.  Of course, others are who they are, and they will do what they will do, so we are left with the pain of bearing our own broken hearts and the huge underlying questions, How do I love myself?  How do I find a place where I can be ok with my rage?  How do I keep from constantly questioning what I'm worth?  How do I become a stable soul who cannot be broken by the mistreatment of others?  

     There are many times that I do feel love for myself.  When I lift others up, when I eat something healthy, when I stop resisting and take care of business, when I create a piece of art that I feel is beautiful or powerful-these things confirm my worth and the worthiness of my path.  Essentially, when I make good choices, I reinforce my self esteem.  When I have done what it takes to pull my life together, when I get out and help others, when I have the strength to reach out, when I have beautiful moments with my children, when I pass up an opportunity to be mean-these things bring me into a sense of peace within myself.  I think, "Wow-I think I can actually learn to love this person who I am.  I think I can actually be grateful for the gifts, and even the problems that I possess.  I think I can actually trust that others will be true and honest to me.  I think I'm worth loving!"  I do these things daily, weekly, monthly, to bring meaning into my life, and yet I still have my open nerves, my moments of despair.  But this is just the first level of true self love.  The first level is to answer the question, "Am I making good choices?"  When we do things that we know are bad for us, we are slowly but surely diminishing our feeling of self worth.  The more things we do for our body mind and soul that we know are keeping us on the right path, the more our sense of self worth will grow.

     The second level comes in facing our past.  There is no need to let the past rule our current lives, but if we are honest with ourselves about the root of what originally hurt us, we can connect more deeply and truly with why it is we are feeling this way now.  When you find that root feeling, and connect with that hurtful moment in time, the only work then is in releasing it.  It was only a moment in time, and we have held it for so long.  There is no reason for us to be hurt, for us to live in fear, for us to close our hearts because of a memory.  At this level, we identify the root feeling and accept it.  Even if the true feeling is, "I hate myself sometimes" or "I feel worthless," just fall into that feeling for a moment and let your soul digest it.  There is nothing you can do in this world to keep the pain away.  When you get hurt, you just let go.  Let the light of your soul burn away all the crap, and just let go.  There are so many ways to let go in the moment, but all of them include breathing.  So when a feeling of hurt comes along, when a painful memory comes up, just empty your lungs completely and then fill them up again.  Don't go down the path that your pain is trying to lead you to-stay right inside yourself, and just feel it.  Face your past, feel the hurt, and let it go.  In doing this, we can learn to rely on ourselves for compassion.  We learn to be resilient.

     The third level into self love is in living with gratitude and embracing your gifts.  Accept that you are a miracle, accept that you are unique.  No one else but you can tell your story.  No one else but you can create what you can create.  You are the one and only person who has lived your life, and here you are still-living and breathing!  There is just so much to be grateful for, and to turn our lives into acts of gratitude is to find more to love than we ever knew existed.  The fourth level of self love comes with the shedding of the ego.  When we realize that we are already dead, when we realize that we are already reborn, when we stand in awe at the vastness orbiting around our tiny little lives, and stop in wonder at the greatness within our hearts, then we can surrender and say, "Wow-this is my one chance, and this is what has been given to me, now.  Choosing to love it all will be my savior.  Choosing to love who I am will allow me to live this precious life!"  Don't let big egos fool you-they are often an outward symptom of a very small sense of self worth.  Look around you at people who love themselves-they shine with a light that is all theirs, and they share it with others.  They see no competition in being who they are, and they accept themselves as divine.  They don't need anyone else's approval to shine.  They don't need to show off.  They don't need praise, and they don't even need acceptance.  To accept that you are divine is the deepest level of self love.

     I heard a woman express recently that she knew what it felt like to love others, but she didn't feel that same kind of feeling about herself.  She took care of herself, she respected herself, but she didn't know if she loved herself.  Isn't it true with all of us?  Do we ever have a rushing feeling of giddiness when we are about to spend time alone with ourselves?  Do we ever wrap our arms around ourselves and say, "I love you so much!"  Do we feel joy in giving ourselves gifts and doing nice things for ourselves?  Do we ever look in the mirror and say, "You're sooooo good lookin'."?  Not really.  In fact, I believe that most people spend most of their lives being very, very hard on themselves.  I have seen it in myself, I have seen it in many of my students, and I have seen it in all of the people I know intimately.  We keep our most precious faults hidden because we are terrified of being vulnerable.  We allow our negative self talk to become our whole existence, and we kick and scream our way through each day.  We wonder if people like us, we wonder if we fit in.  We wonder constantly if we're good enough, young enough, pretty enough, etc, etc, etc.  We can't stop listening to our egos, which are so weighed down with sensitivity that we can't face the truth, and yet we actually believe we can go on pretending to be "normal".  Looking at and loving who we are gets further clouded and complicated by the falsities of the media and the expectations of society, and the thoughts that we allow ourselves to think are rarely the self-nourishing ones.  Is it possible to look within with compassion and tenderness, like a mother loving her daughter, or a father raising his son?  How do we spend more time in that deeper, wiser part of ourselves, and how do we council ourselves out of negative thought patterns and deep-seated fears?

     As Thich Nhat Hahn says, "Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky.  Conscious breathing is my anchor."  Sometimes there is nothing we can do with our feelings, and so all we can do is to make sure we're not holding them in.  We do this by simply breathing.  When the last thing our bodies want to do is relax, we relax.  We experience the wave of emotion and we surrender to it.  We breathe it out, we slow our breath, we clear our mind of obsessive thoughts.  We slow down and we breathe, and we put an arm around the small child within us.  We soften our shell, and we relax deeply-right then and there.  We find our true self, the one who holds us up so tenderly through all of our pitfalls, the one who is capable of unconditional love, beneath the breath and beneath the waves of constant feelings.  

     Even as I write this, my feelings of panic that I'm not enough are starting to seem foreign.  The intense fears I thought would invade my thoughts always are so distant to me that I may as well have read them in a book.  It is this way so often with feelings-they are so strong, and yet so fleeting.  And so of course I know that the fear, anger and sadness can easily be triggered again.  Yet this is the beauty of doing conscious inner work.  In the past, my fears would have invaded my existence, affecting my entire life and all my choices and relationships.  Now that I have learned to breathe and pry open my heart again, I am becoming more resilient.  My nerves are still open, yes, because I choose to be more vulnerable each and every day, but I cannot do this work of loving myself unless I am willing to give all of myself away.  A person who knows their self worth has nothing to lose and everything to give away.  With patience and conscious work, we can each realize that we are just as worthy as anyone else.  Our souls may be full of holes, but that just means that the breath of God can move through us more freely.  Our hearts may be broken, our bodies may be broken, but as long as we have the power to fill ourselves with oxygen and cultivate inner peace, we have the power to fully live without debilitating fear and regret.  The inner work, the beauty we each create, the legacy we leave behind as loving people-these are the things that we truly live for, and these are the things that will help us realize that we are each an invaluable and essential piece of the world.

"The secret of individuality is powerfully suggested by the act of birth.  We come to the earth in an intensely vulnerable way, for birth is an act of separation.  We are cast out into the emptiness as the cord is cut, yet the wound of connection remains open for the visitation of beauty...The shape of each soul is different.  An individual is a carefully fashioned, unique world.  The shape of the flaw that each person carries is also different.  The flaw is the special shape of personal limitation; angled at a unique awkwardness to the world, it makes our difficulty and challenge in the world different from that of others.  When we stop seeing the flaw as a disappointment and exception to an otherwise laudable life, we begin to glimpse the awkward light and hidden wisdom that the flaw holds.  As we look deeper, we begin to realize that the flaw might be the first window into a world of difference that we rarely notice."

-John O'Donohue

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