What started me?

I sort of remember thinking about a client, or a neighbor, or a friend who`s tolerated a sub-par relationship for way too long. I remember empathizing. Then I remember putting myself there. Then I remember holding onto the dish hard enough to crack it.

Makes no difference. I go there because I go there. Sometimes I go there to balance the scale when things have been particularly grand in my marriage and in my work, and I just can`t tolerate so much goodness coming to me. Sometimes I go there to shake things up – as if I`ve been asleep. Sometimes I go there as a pre-emptive strike against me, to punish me for some sin I`ve committed or believed I`ve committed, or believe I will commit. I could analyze for days, years, eons, this life and the next and the next.

Or I could right things right now one moment at a time.

If I cannot tolerate love, I will get angry and push it away. If I don`t have a good reason – I`ll make one up. If I cannot tolerate success, I will sabotage it with carelessness. If I don`t have a good reason, I`ll make one up. I always have a reason, an excuse, an idea. Something I was taught long ago, in this life or the last, or the lives before. There are so many ways to make up real reasons for everything. There are statistics aplenty to support any point of view I could come up with. There are charts and examples and experiences to quote for any statement I could make up about anything in this world.

So I`ll Stop trying to figure it out. It doesn`t matter what I think. It doesn`t matter what I think about myself. It doesn`t matter who`s right or what`s right. It only matters how it feels. If I feel bad – yes, there`s a reason, a source, a belief. And who says feeling bad is bad, anyway? Who says feeling rage and making stuff up is so bad? I just know I don`t like the way it feels. So I`m going to stop this right now.

Here`s how:

We women process. Our feelings morph. We feel good, then we feel guilty, then we feel bad, then we feel mad, then we feel lots of things. By following those feelings around our bodies, we get to experience feeling alive. We get to experience pain, anger, joy – the whole soup of love. Can`t feel one feeling without getting close to another. It`s the way it works. We`re not all compartmentalized. We can`t only feel joy and never encounter pain. If we spend all our energy trying not to feel pain, we can`t ever get close to joy. So if we focus on pain, all we`ll ever feel is Resistance to feeling pain, which is the same as Resistance to feeling joy, which leaves us with a big, fat nothing. Feeling numb, a void, cold, bored, overwhelmed. All the small feelings are all that`s left. To feel passion, we have to be willing to feel pain.

The amazing thing is, being willing to experience pain doesn`t always mean you have to experience pain. Quite the opposite. Once I start to embrace the whole soup, the scary feelings aren`t so scary after all. It`s as if my ship was weighted down with Resistance, sinking it backwards into yucky, painful feelings, and once I lifted off the Resistance and said Okay – I`m okay with the pain – the pain never showed up. The shoe I was spending my waking hours waiting to drop doesn`t drop. I take my hand off my ears and there`s no screaming. Instead, my ship rights itself. It goes on ahead – something that feels better is up ahead. And if I do encounter pain, I find joy, bliss and peace all mixed up with it.

If our man is standoffish, then we must be too. We may think we`re all ready and willing and able, we may have our hearts open wide, and yet it doesn`t make sense. To get close to a man, you have to let him in. If we`re doing all the work and he`s just hanging out in his half of the relationship turf and not venturing into our hearts, if we`re with a man who doesn`t want to venture into our particular hearts, then all that makes sense is that we`re afraid to let a man – any man - in. If we`re afraid to let him in because we`re afraid we`ll be abandoned, afraid we`ll share ourselves totally and then watch helplessly as he takes off, taking our whole selves with him, it`s because we`re afraid of abandoning ourselves.

What does that look like? Either we have a man, or are attracted to men, who we know on some level will play us and leave us - thereby efficiently abandoning ourselves without having to do it ourselves (this is all about Boundaries, of course) - or we have a lovely man who wants us and so we are faced with the chore of abandoning ourselves. Either way it`s not pretty. We go to abandonment often. If he`s not doing the job, we do. We make it up.

We are all made up of so many parts and voices and energies and thoughts and feelings. We can identify some as wounded parts, some as heroic. When things are going wonderfully, we may habitually bounce to the wounded part, then to the angry part, then to the numb part before we feel okay back at the wonderful part. Most of the time we`re doing this dance all by ourselves. Our men are standing around, totally fine with us (sometimes even looking for direction to make us happy), wondering what`s come over us. And we make it up.

Try this:

Be compassionate with yourself. Be grateful to yourself. Embrace yourself. So much of why we make stuff up is that we yearn to stay in touch with our deepest parts. We want to access the pain, the wounded parts, because that`s where the joy is stuck too – in the soup. We want to be close to our deep feeling parts. It makes us feel deep and profound, and spiritual. The trick is to be able to go there, and everywhere else too!

You can start easy, with inanimate objects. Put your hand on something – the chair, the sofa, the table. Talk to it – out loud if you can. Say Wood table, I know you were once a tree. I feel bad that you were chopped down. And sawed up and pounded. I`m sorry. I`m so glad to have you with me. Thank you for your sacrifice. I feel so grateful to be able to put food and my work on you. Thank you for supporting me, I love you. I will not forget that you were once a tree. Thank you. Or a metal lamp, Lamp, I feel you all hard, I know you were once in the ground, all cozy, where you belong, and you were dug up, and put through the fire, and

If I cannot tolerate love, I will get angry and push it away. If I don`t have a good reason – I`ll make one up. If I cannot tolerate success, I will sabotage it with carelessness. If I don`t have a good reason, I`ll make one up. I always have a reason, an excuse, an idea. Something I was taught long ago, in this life or the last, or the lives before. There are so many ways to make up real reasons for everything. There are statistics aplenty to support any point of view I could come up with. There are charts and examples and experiences to quote for any statement I could make up about anything in this world.

So I`ll Stop trying to figure it out. It doesn`t matter what I think. It doesn`t matter what I think about myself. It doesn`t matter who`s right or what`s right. It only matters how it feels. If I feel bad – yes, there`s a reason, a source, a belief. And who says feeling bad is bad, anyway? Who says feeling rage and making stuff up is so bad? I just know I don`t like the way it feels. So I`m going to stop this right now.

Here`s how:

We women process. Our feelings morph. We feel good, then we feel guilty, then we feel bad, then we feel mad, then we feel lots of things. By following those feelings around our bodies, we get to experience feeling alive. We get to experience pain, anger, joy – the whole soup of love. Can`t feel one feeling without getting close to another. It`s the way it works. We`re not all compartmentalized. We can`t only feel joy and never encounter pain. If we spend all our energy trying not to feel pain, we can`t ever get close to joy. So if we focus on pain, all we`ll ever feel is Resistance to feeling pain, which is the same as Resistance to feeling joy, which leaves us with a big, fat nothing. Feeling numb, a void, cold, bored, overwhelmed. All the small feelings are all that`s left. To feel passion, we have to be willing to feel pain.

The amazing thing is, being willing to experience pain doesn`t always mean you have to experience pain. Quite the opposite. Once I start to embrace the whole soup, the scary feelings aren`t so scary after all. It`s as if my ship was weighted down with Resistance, sinking it backwards into yucky, painful feelings, and once I lifted off the Resistance and said Okay – I`m okay with the pain – the pain never showed up. The shoe I was spending my waking hours waiting to drop doesn`t drop. I take my hand off my ears and there`s no screaming. Instead, my ship rights itself. It goes on ahead – something that feels better is up ahead. And if I do encounter pain, I find joy, bliss and peace all mixed up with it.

If our man is standoffish, then we must be too. We may think we`re all ready and willing and able, we may have our hearts open wide, and yet it doesn`t make sense. To get close to a man, you have to let him in. If we`re doing all the work and he`s just hanging out in his half of the relationship turf and not venturing into our hearts, if we`re with a man who doesn`t want to venture into our particular hearts, then all that makes sense is that we`re afraid to let a man – any man - in. If we`re afraid to let him in because we`re afraid we`ll be abandoned, afraid we`ll share ourselves totally and then watch helplessly as he takes off, taking our whole selves with him, it`s because we`re afraid of abandoning ourselves.

What does that look like? Either we have a man, or are attracted to men, who we know on some level will play us and leave us - thereby efficiently abandoning ourselves without having to do it ourselves (this is all about Boundaries, of course) - or we have a lovely man who wants us and so we are faced with the chore of abandoning ourselves. Either way it`s not pretty. We go to abandonment often. If he`s not doing the job, we do. We make it up.

We are all made up of so many parts and voices and energies and thoughts and feelings. We can identify some as wounded parts, some as heroic. When things are going wonderfully, we may habitually bounce to the wounded part, then to the angry part, then to the numb part before we feel okay back at the wonderful part. Most of the time we`re doing this dance all by ourselves. Our men are standing around, totally fine with us (sometimes even looking for direction to make us happy), wondering what`s come over us. And we make it up.

Try this:

Be compassionate with yourself. Be grateful to yourself. Embrace yourself. So much of why we make stuff up is that we yearn to stay in touch with our deepest parts. We want to access the pain, the wounded parts, because that`s where the joy is stuck too – in the soup. We want to be close to our deep feeling parts. It makes us feel deep and profound, and spiritual. The trick is to be able to go there, and everywhere else too!

You can start easy, with inanimate objects. Put your hand on something – the chair, the sofa, the table. Talk to it – out loud if you can. Say Wood table, I know you were once a tree. I feel bad that you were chopped down. And sawed up and pounded. I`m sorry. I`m so glad to have you with me. Thank you for your sacrifice. I feel so grateful to be able to put food and my work on you. Thank you for supporting me, I love you. I will not forget that you were once a tree. Thank you. Or a metal lamp, Lamp, I feel you all hard, I know you were once in the ground, all cozy, where you belong, and you were dug up, and put through the fire, an