"When a person becomes excited about who she actually is rather than who she wants to convince herself she is, deep inner satisfaction is close at hand...true contentment is not the same as getting your act together. Feeling good is a product of becoming aware of who you are beneath your act or acts."
~Taming Your Gremlin by Rick Carson
Be who you are...~exploring with Mother HennaMaybe it was the full moon or the eclipse. Maybe some planet is retrograde. Maybe it was just my turn. But yesterday, I was completely and totally out of sync with being who I am.
Hawk noticed it, too. Every time he went to do something, there was something in his way. He'd turn to grab a light and bam, a light stand in the way. He'd turn to grab something off the grocery shelf, and bam, someone else grabbed for the same item.
It was just one of those days when your soundtrack is just a heart beat or two off from the film that's running on the screen.
These days have previously made me scramble. To fix it. To try harder. To find out what's wrong, become better at being. Talk about depressing.
Recently though, two resources made me turn my perspective on this kind of experience:
1) Rick Carson's book
Taming Your Gremlin2) David McCready's book
The Great SimulatorIn different ways, they both present the idea that there is a HUGE difference between being excitedly curious about exactly who we are in any given moment VS. trying to convince the world and ourselves we are other than we are.
This is not to say that they promote lazy acceptance of anything. If there is something you want to do or try or experience, great. But it is a much different thing to approach those desires with curiosity rather than hate of self fueling your movements. Curiosity is flowing with the stream of BEING. Being fueled by hate of self is cutting thru a mountain with a chain saw and being buried in the consequent avalanche.
So I began a little practice. Could I simply be curious about whatever was happening for me in the moment? Could I release burning desire to be "better" "healthier" "improved"? Could I have more time contently BEING rather than hatefully doing?
Being out of sync yesterday was a good place to play with this tool. I started to be curious about why I might want to be out of sync? That made me laugh. An Eyeore voice came into my head and said, "Well, I'm always out of sync, you just don't notice it usually." Oh, my poor Eyeore Gremlin. He's so droopy. I decided to imagine putting him on the round about at the playground, give him a good spin, and leave him dizzying while I went on with my day. As I walked away, I actually saw him laughing as the wind flew thru his mane!
Then I noticed that every time I tried to connect with another person, I sort of missed the mark. In the art store, I wanted to say thank you to the owner, but she was on the phone. In the cafe, I wanted to say thank you for the fast service, but the baristas were busy and distracted. As I sat down, I wanted to connect with the other artist there painting, but she was engrossed -- and then later as people stopped to admire her work, I found myself jealous. When my friend showed up and was in too much tooth pain to chat, I wanted to be able to float the conversation for both of us, but my mind was zoned out in art-making trance. I missed every phone call that came for me. Every time I tried to connect with Hawk, he was so in his own universe that I became convinced he was mad at me. (He was not -- total projection on my part!)
So I sort of sat back and watched all this happening. And instead of doing anything about it, I just sat with it. Watched it. Curiously asked myself why I might want to experience being so off the mark with people? And a Georgia O'Keeffe ghost came and sat at my table. She placed the bones of a dead bird in front of me and looked into my eyes. I imagined taking the bones and placing them in my pocket. She left. As I pondered it, I got the feeling that I actually like being off the mark and out of sync because for me, that is where the art is. There are not many people who might want to sit at a table in the Cafe, bones of a dead bird on the table, drawing them in detail, just to try and capture death, dying, grief in a sketch. And that's okay. I'm perfectly happy to sit there with my ghost guides and be out of sync. Really. No improving or fixing necessary.
And then I flashed on a memory. One year I went away with three other friends on a bus trip. We went into this huge shopping complex, very high end, beautiful. At one point, all four of us were about to get on an escalator going in one direction, and I was last in the group to get on the walk way. At the last moment, I had this impish, Trickster Being sort of come into me and say, "Hey, go around the other way NOW, and get on the escalator going the opposite direction, and you'll criss cross your friends, and be in two places at once." :)
To this day, I cannot really clearly physically remember how I did it. I don't recall running up stairs to the other level to come down as they went up? I don't remember how I physically did it. But I did it. As they went up, suddenly there I was on the other side, coming down. The three of them dropped their jaws and turned to look behind on their own escalator and, of course, I was not there. It is a funny memory to this day.
I think it is my first conscious memory of PLAYING with being out of sync instead of trying to fix my out-of-sync-ness. I looooooooooove that memory. It was the first time I physically felt and practiced my Trickster power. I truly felt the ability to be in two places at once. And it was FUN! Not scary. Not weird. Not something to be fixed. Just BEING ME!
Ah-ha!
There was a key in there for me. Playing. Choosing the fun way of BEING instead of the "must improve or change this" way of being. Allowing for being in two places at once.
So I decided to just allow my first BEING to be out of sync yesterday. Just let it happen and wave over me. And then I decided to take my Playful BEING to impishly cartwheel thru town showering glittery blessing on all I saw. I sent sparkles to the store owner, the baristas, the painter, Hawk, my friend & her hurt tooth even!
Didn't really change anything. I was still out of sync and connections were missed all over the place. But I didn't really care or feel badly or judge myself about it. I just cartwheeled through it all, waving my wand, and chanting over the bones of a dead bird.
Georgia O'Keeffe was proud of me. :)
It is a heART-full life for sure!
Try being who you are instead of who you are convinced you should be!
Miracles,
k-
CLICK IMAGES TO SEE FULL SIZE!
Genie, I hope you like the smell of Bergamot coz the pages are fairly soaked with it from the "infuse with a smell" page being on the back of my FAVs :)
