Today’s thoughts–

1. On slaves

Today my friend Kim told me that she recently read that only slaves work seven days a week. Slaves, and bloggers like me, was her implication. Ugh. She’s kind of right. As much as I enjoy and reap benefits from this project, I often feel chained to it. Am I ready to quit blogging every day, every damn day? No, not yet. But perhaps until I reach my next goal (1,000 days in a row), I can find other ways to let up on myself.

2. On enlightenment

This morning I woke up tired, tired, tired, and despite going back to sleep and even taking a nap this afternoon, I still am. And whereas I’m always paranoid that I’m getting sick, it’s probably just whatever’s in the air. And what’s so bad about sleeping all day?

There’s this story about enlightenment. A student asks his guru, “What do I do before enlightenment?” and the guru says, “Chop wood, carry water.”

“What do I do after enlightenment?” the student asks. To which the guru replies, “Chop wood, carry water.”

In other words, don’t complicate things. Psychologist Sheldon Kopp says your life is your life; enlightenment means accepting what is. So don’t make things harder than they already are–eat when you’re hungry, sleep when you’re tired.

3. On our stories

This afternoon I worked through another chapter in Mastin Kipp’s Claim Your Power. And whereas I’ve been thinking that the exercises related to releasing emotions associated with old traumas probably wouldn’t work (because I’ve tried everything and nothing works), they actually are. According to Kipp, a lot of self-help material talks about changing your thoughts, but that’s only part of the puzzle. He says our thoughts (and emotions) ultimately stem from our beliefs or our stories, that each of us has a handful of core beliefs that–how can I say this?–fuck with us. For example, I just mentioned one of my core beliefs–I’ve tried everything and nothing works.

You can imagine how frustrating a belief like this might feel. That was the gist of today’s exercise–to read out loud and FEEL what my core beliefs, well, feel like. More specifically, to feel WHERE my beliefs live in my body. Again, I approached this task with a lot of skepticism. I thought, Maybe it’ll work for someone else, but it won’t work for me. But as soon as I began, I started getting answers. This belief (there’s not enough) lives in my sinuses. This belief (life works for other people but not for me), lives in my stomach. This belief (the world is not a safe place) lives in my (extremely tight) shoulders. That’s when I started crying, when I said out loud, “The world is not a safe place.”

I imagine we all have core beliefs that would bring us to tears (or rage) if we finally admitted them. For me, I know I’ve been carrying that one about safety around for a long time. Decades. And whereas the cathartic moment I had this afternoon did help–it felt like finally letting go of a heavy load–it’s not like that belief completely disappeared when I stopped crying. Healing happens in pieces.

4. On hope

This evening I re-read some more of my old blogs. As I’ve said before, I’m finding a lot of compassion for myself through this process. Not that I’m trying to read my story as if it belonged to someone else, but I still find myself having that experience. I keep thinking, This guy’s all right. He’s pretty funny. He’s doing the best he can. So this has been on my mind, that this person I’m reading about is me and that I can apply all those positive feelings I have for the me of the past to the me of the present, that I wouldn’t treat him like a slave and I don’t have to treat myself like one either.

I’ve also been thinking about hope, about what would happen and what my life could look like if I dropped even one of my core beliefs. I mean, how would your life be different if you all-of-a-sudden saw the world as a safe place or believed that life could work for you too, that the universe was on your side? Wouldn’t you breathe and move easier, freer, if just ten percent of you were less afraid? Wouldn’t you swing your hips a little more? Wouldn’t you let your shoulders relax? I know I would.

I’m beginning to believe these things are possible.