Broke down, broke up, went broke, broke my heart. Naturally, I understood that these frustrations were holy teachers sent to teach me, so I meditated and found the beauty in them. Then I smiled until gumdrops beamed out of my orifices.
And if you believe that, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you. It’s in San Paulo. And it’s got, um, nifty scrollwork. Got your checkbook handy?
No.
Here is what really happened:
I thought enlightened things like, “Fuck fuck fuck fuck!!!” And, “Why is it all so haaaaard?” And, “Why does everything”–sob–“happen to meeee?”
You know, wise, spiritual things like that.
My distress was real, even though it’s a little embarrassing.
Here are some of the things that went down:
The malfunction light in the car. The frozen computer. The sick babysitter. The $5 transaction that charged $500 to my account. The resulting hold on my funds. The automatic bills that therefore didn’t get paid. The accounts my other bank just plain shut down mysteriously. The fancy new systems upgrade that broke my website.
Shall I go on, as you snore and stab your arm with a fork?
I tried to coach myself, but it was so pitiful: I’d get clean and clear and chirpy, and then something else would break and I would know, in a sudden flash of deep insight, that it’s because I am doooomed. And because my hair isn’t shiny enough. Also the universe might be out to get me.
This went on for many days.
But eventually I crawled whimpering into more mystical territory. (Why did it take me so long? Well. Sometimes my little life lessons have to really smack me around before I pay attention.) I FINALLY remembered to use a technique that I teach in my program Practical Magic for Secret Mystics that basically asks some element of your life to speak to you using a metaphor.
My metaphor gave me a very clear message indeed. A very holy one. It said:
“It’s your energy, stupid.”
(Actually it didn’t call me stupid. It seems to like me even when I’m ridiculous.)
All these fuckups big and small were organic representations of stutters in my energy. Every time I clutched up or clamped down or shamed myself for being human, it was like I put a crimp in the hose.
Clear up my energy, in other words, and the rest will take care of itself.
Uh-hunh.
Naturally, I didn’t have time for such airy-fairy new age foolishness. I had shit to do. Plus, the little voice whispered, if you tell them you talk to the universe, they’ll haul you away in manacles and burn you at the stake. Or at the very least try to sell you aromatherapy oils.
But things kept breaking.
So at long last, with great resentful heaves of my chest, I attended to myself. I used an ancient secret technique that I learned from a seventh-generation South American shaman. It went like this:
I played myself cheesy pop music. I lay down. I read a whole novel. I made myself a salad, with blueberries and goat cheese to disguise that salad taste. I watched The Good Wife.
(I’m totally lying about the South American shaman. How bout that bridge?)
And things began to come back into focus. I remembered what I so often forget: that the story I tell is more powerful than the raw material. If Nelson Mandela could be inspired and inspiring from inside a jail cell and then stand up and lead a nation–well–perhaps I could overcome my precious little dramas.
And slowly, an interesting interpretation occurred to me. (Proving that my deconstructionist feminist lit major does have its uses.) I realized that one way to look at things falling apart was to see that I was busting out of some of the flimsy structures I’d created for myself.
After the earthquake last year, when I moved suddenly across an ocean, I cobbled a new life together very quickly. I slapped things up overnight, I winked and promised, and sometimes I just plain pulled miracles out of my ass. (This is not necessarily a bad thing: I pulled off the impossible last year.) But my systems were slipshod and teetery. I was trying to corral the Willamette River with a cardboard toilet paper roll.
And so things were shredding.
Now, after this new interpretation occurred to me, the things, they were still broken. They didn’t magically fix themselves. (Except wait, there’s a coda to this story.) Nothing external changed. But this new interpretation shifted my energy.
I felt better. I honored what needed to be done. And then and ONLY THEN was I able to shift things in the physical world too. Systems. Phone calls. Planning. Hiring some help. It wasn’t fun. It wasn’t glamorous. But I did it, and I was fine, and I didn’t spiral into despair.
So tell me this. What shitty, shitty part of your life could you tell a better story about? We try so hard to change the external things so we’ll feel better–make the man love us, make the hydrangeas purple, make the bank account bulge–but it works backward. When you change how you think and feel, then you’ll be able to change the tangible things.
So if you were the Dalai Lama or your wisest friend, what deeper and wiser tale would you tell about some thorny challenge you’re going through right now? If it were trying to tell you something, what would it be?
Write it down. Let it zing through you. Feel yourself take one tiny step forward propelled by this new iteration of the world you’ve just created.
Coda:
True story. After I wrote most of this down, here’s what happened: The bad light went off in my car. My computer suddenly is working fine. The bank manager called me personally to apologize. My VA found an even better thing for my biz that we never would have gone looking for otherwise. I’m thinking maybe it’s just the beginning. I’ll keep you posted. And you report back too.
