core strengthening

Pain Will Leave Once It Has Finished Teaching U

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday afternoon was one of those times when you’re shaken, literally, by how awful things are playing out. But by early evening it was clear–this curse had turned into a blessing.

I was working the late gate at the park under the scorching beam of the sun that likes to stream into the ranger station at what is already the hottest part of the day. After an aggressive visitor the day before yelling “Fuck you!” not just once to my face but again as he drove away, I was determined to be extra sweet today so as not to be in the least bit offending, thus avoiding any chance of any such repeat interaction.

That was my takeaway. Can you believe it? ‘Maybe if I asked more nicely how many people are in your car? then you wouldn’t get verbally abused’ was my deep introspective dive as I looked out over the beach last night, waves lapping at my feet, sinking my toes further into the sand. What crap. No wonder it didn’t take away the gnawing in my gut. No wonder it invited another lesson. “Pain will leave once it has finished teaching you,” Bruce Lee said.

Cue the physically threatening cycler. For the second day I am shaking at the gate. This can’t be right. So I ask for help. And when the ranger doesn’t help, and I’m still shaken fifteen minutes later, I call for more help. And I learn that not only is my concern valid and my command for this person to leave the park the correct action but it was retroactively so, going back to the day before. I learned there were consequences to someone treating me that way and the calvary was coming.

Another ranger was making rounds to try to locate the offender. Management called the police. A ranger stayed with me until they arrived. And even though the person was never found (maybe he’d realized his possible fate and had left already) I was touched by the “I have your back” response. As people filtered out of the park at closing time and I pulled down the flags, I caught site of a pair of headlights that were not moving like the others. It was that officer; ready for action, positioned for support. The whole thing was starting to melt me like candle wax.

It had me open, humbled, willing enough to see what the real morale of the story was while I pedaled my bike hard out of the park, music on full blast to crowd out of my mind the replay of the awful scenes I’d endured.

My default is the lone ranger. I’ll handle it. I can do it. I got this. And I’m quite proud of my independence, it has served me well. It’s taken me around the world and through some tough times. But it has also, I can see now from this new place in my curriculum, kept others from lending a hand. Standing with me. Somewhere, I got the idea that the highest level of achievement was doing it all by myself.

“Somewhere!?!” my inner wise voice snorts in a tone so sarcastic I had to laugh out loud. We both know exactly where I got it. I got it from the mother who relished watching me move out at seventeen and a father who left me at four.

Now that I think about it, I have advanced far beyond the age where one finds worth in announcing, “Look! I did it all by myself!” No longer a child tying her shoes for the first time or mastering riding a bike without training wheels. I was an adult. I’d made it already. And besides, my worth was established long ago–by God. I come from Perfect Love, created in His Likeness. There is nothing I need prove.

I wondered as I watched the wagons circle around me, felt their focus on the hurt that had been done to me and their own efforts to try to make it alright again. Had they always, in some version or another, been with me all along waiting for my cue? Was help always just a call away?

But First, Miracles

~ Solo Chick Traveler ~ Leave a comment

I’m toning up my spiritual core. Much like, and for the same reason as, my body’s core. My physical life parallels my mental/emotional/psychological and spiritual life. They reflect one another, represent each other, and ultimately integrate into one.

I’ve gotten flabby. I’ve gotten lazy. I make progress and I take my foot of the gas a little. It’s human nature. A Doctor’s Opinion written in the early days of A.A. said that an alcoholic in recovery who relapses is no different than a heart attack patient being devout about changes to diet and exercise, only to waffle (pun intended) once their health and welfare no longer hangs delicately in the balance.

I was doin’ alright, I thought. I was getting by. But I was crossing the lines I had drawn for myself and it was putting me in some inner conflict. Once that scope showed my disease advancing, that was a wake-up call. And then my copy of A Course In Miracles, which I opened one morning on a whim, got wet. As the saying goes, “The heavens opened” and rained down upon it before I could rescue it. I put it in front of the fan to try and dry it out. The fan blowing on it opened it to random pages and I would catch glimpses of inspiration as I looked over at it and read it to myself. It gave me peace after reading a line or two. . . just like it always did. I would put it out in the sun to dry more, it would get rained on again, and the process would start all over.

This went on for days.

I can take a hint.

Much like someone walking by the windows of a gym and glancing in at the well-defined muscles of those pushing themselves through perspiration towards their goal, I started flexing my mind’s muscles and tightening up my spiritual core. For the same reasons why you’d work a body’s core: stability, strength, alignment.

So I have an anchor when the winds blow and the storms roll in–guaranteed just like the seasons. I will have sunny days and rainy ones. Calm times and turbulence. My core is my anchor keeping me steady and grounding me in my true self. Elizabeth Gilbert says in The Big Magic, “You can’t just go from bright moment to bright moment [as a writer], it’s how you hold yourself together during the creative process that matters.”

Crohn’s disease is where my body attacks itself over a perceived threat that isn’t there. My mind does the same. The call is coming from inside the house. And the solution is in there, too.

I can get distracted and pulled by events in the world and then blown off course as I busily try to handle the challenges all by myself. I’m spinning plates and juggling balls until I freak out–overwhelmed by ineffectiveness, exhausted from trying to control the uncontrollable. I surrender. I step back. I zoom out, as the observer, and regain perspective.

A spiritual guide once told me, “My problems come from looking through a microscope. My solution comes from using a telescope instead.” I have tested this repeatedly and it never fails.

“Of myself, I can do nothing,” Jesus said. “I do all things through Him Who created me.” Translates for me, trying to twist and turn things to satisfy my fragile ego leaves me frustrated and empty; using the power of creation, the Universe, the divine whole, plugs me into a power strip of energy that is out of this world. Beyond my measly 3% of brain capacity I’m employing to handle crisis after crisis.

I got a Christmas card years ago that I ended up framing–it spoke right to my heart. I’ve hung it for so many holiday seasons, I know it by heart.

Sometimes we see only the underside of the tapestry of life All knots and gnarls and missteps. But there is a Master Weaver who sees it from above. And He weaves according to a plan.

Every year I pull it out from the light blue Rubbermaid tub with the slightly darker blue lid marked “Christmas.” And every year I search my soul whilst scanning the past year, then whisper, that’s true.

That is the best definition of my God, my Higher Power, that I could give. I put faith in the plan, and I trust the Master Weaver. And I find peace whenever I remember that.

To be an empty vessel and let Love pour into me and overflow onto the world–that’s purpose. Why settle for a job, when you know you have a function. Who would fly with the wings of a sparrow, once you’ve felt lifted by the mighty wings of the eagle.

“You do not ask for too much,” A Course in Miracles asserts, “but far too little.” This book saved my life once. I could feel it doing it again. Not from death, but from apathy. From a lack of passion and connection.

‘The answer is always more spiritual growth,’ I heard on a tape or CD sometime from someone. A long time ago. I keep testing it, and it keeps proving itself to be true.

Any good guru will tell you , “Don’t believe what I say, try it. Apply it in your own mind and see what happens.”

Be like children, curious, inquistitive, trusting.

I know not everyone believes this. I am learning that most people don’t. I’m still shocked by that. It makes perfect sense to me.