Express in the World What is Held in Your Heart:
Part Four
In FINDING YOUR OWN TRUE NORTH, Martha Beck
examines how when the essential self and social self are not communicating and
working in conjunction with each other (which is likely true of virtually all
human beings to a certain extent) inner and outer conflict result. This is from
chapter 1: The Disconnected Self.
Melvin
worked as a middle manager at IBM and a miserable middle manager Melvin made.
If clinical depression had a phone voice, it would sound just like Melvin’s did
the morning he called me to see if I could take him on as a client. He’d been
feeling sort of flat and listless for a while, he said – no big deal, just the
past couple of decades.
After checking into Melvin’s current life, and if
he might be a good potential client (because she doesn’t want to waste their
money and time if not) Beck got to some of the questions which really interest
her. These questions are like: When you were a kid, did you have an imaginary friend?
Is there anything you do regularly in which you find time passing without your
noticing? Tell me everything you can remember about the best meal you ever had
in your life.
Melvin didn’t realize he would need to answer such
questions, didn’t feel prepared, and decided to hang up the phone. Beck never
heard from him again.
He couldn’t answer the questions because he didn’t
know. His essential self, the one who knew what he loved and wanted to do by
the time he was in about second grade, was so disconnected from his social self
– the one who presents in the world – that the two weren’t talking to each
other or on the same page about how to move forward in life.
I don’t know about you, but I really like the idea
of my essential and social selves speaking to one another regularly. Let’s get
the game on!
Authentically Yours,
Laura
Express in the World What is Held in Your Heart:
Part Three
In THE BOOK OF AWAKENING (I am reading one
reflection per day this entire year), Mark Nepo speaks regularly of the need to
be honest about one’s own feelings (whether it be sad, angry, hurt, light
hearted, filled with love) to ourselves and to others. To voice,
compassionately, what one is truly feeling inside. To express the truth of who
we internally are, instead of creating a facade to present to the world.
My writing is not as poetic as Nepo’s. He words
things like this:
As the sun
cannot withhold its light, we cannot what feels real. As the Earth keeps going
by turning itself toward the light day after day, we have no choice, despite
all forms of etiquette and training, but to keep turning toward what we feel is
real. Otherwise, we become cold little planets spinning in the dark.
Don’t withhold your light. Share it.
Authentically Yours,
Laura
Express in the World What is Held in Your Heart:
Part Two
In THE WISDOM OF MENOPAUSE, Christiane Northrup
describes not only the physical, but also mental, emotional and spiritual
changes a woman goes through in mid-life during perimenopause and menopause.
This must be the Menopause Bible of the world – it is almost exhaustingly
detailed in health related areas (hormones, bones, thyroid function, etc.) of
the physical body.
Where the theme aligns with the other books is how
in mid-life (which I can vouch for from my own experience) women are simply not
willing to put up with crap anymore. Divorces tend to happen during this phase,
after years and years of marriage. I personally know two women who have
divorced their respective spouses after having been together for around two
decades. Both are just a few years younger than I am.
After years of putting their own desires on hold
to raise families, provide emotional or other types of support for spouses,
keep the household running smoothly, etc., there comes a time. A time when hormones
are changing, it’s not about nesting anymore, and a woman simply must start
saying “no” to the demands of others and “yes” to those from deep within herself
to take care of her own needs.
Early on in the book, Northrup describes a
gentleman who was utterly shocked when his wife uncharacteristically stood up
and threw a plate of roast leg of lamb (or some such thing) right out the
window at the dinner table. He blamed her “craziness” on hormones and the
emotional charge of her change of life. More likely accurate is his wife –
after years of simmering frustration and anger – simply reached a boiling point
wherein enough was enough and she simply wasn’t going to keep playing her prescribed
role anymore.
If the woman doesn’t change, she will wind up
miserable and ill, and noone around her will be happy either. So either the
marriage stays the same with everyone miserable until death does someone part,
it changes, or it ends.
This transition is an opportunity to move into a
new future, with clear intentions and nurturing of self. I say CHEERS to that!
Authentically Yours,
Laura
Express in the World What is Held in Your Heart:
Part One
I used to be a finish-one-book-before-starting-another
kind of gal. I’m not anymore. Often I like to have one fiction and at least one
non-fiction book (more and more on my Nook) going at the same time. Now I
prefer to spread my attention around a bit, yet focus on each directly while I
am there. In fact, I am reading more books right now than I remember ever
reading all at once before.
And I am struck by how the same theme keeps surfacing
in different formats, by different authors. It goes something like this: Let
your outer and inner lives be congruent. Express in the world what is held with
love in your heart. You knew what you wanted when you were 7 years old; don’t
let the world stop you from recovering and doing it now.
With all this richness, a four part series has
presented itself! Here is part one.
In THE VEIN OF GOLD, Julia Cameron describes how
she nabbed the title and concept from interviewing the now deceased brilliant
film director Martin Ritt. Here is my paraphrase of what Cameron wrote: It was Ritt who directed NORMA RAE, the film
that changed our impression of Sally Field from Gidget to an actress of depth
and stature. Ritt had a theory about actors and brilliance. He called it the
vein of gold. He said that all actors have a certain territory, a certain
range, they were born to play, and that is their vein of gold. If you cast an
actor within that range they will always give you a brilliant performance. As a
writer-director myself, years afterwards, I found my mind circling back to Ritt
and his theory. I saw evidence of its validity everywhere, and not just among
actors.
I have noticed the same thing, within myself and in
observing others. Some things we feel like we “have” to do. Some tickle our
interest and we think we wanna try. Others we feel we “must”, or we aren’t
truly living.
Should is
how others want us to show up in the world—how we’re supposed to
think, what we ought to say, what we should or shouldn’t
do… Must is different—there aren’t options and we don’t have a choice. Must is
who we are, what we believe and what we do when we are alone with our truest,
most authentic self. –elle luna.
I send cheers and congratulations to all who
choose to mine their inner vein of gold, who decide to live in the must.
Authentically Yours,
Laura
