Comfort Queen » dreams

Kindly Finding Yourself

Jennifer — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 18:48:58 +0000

That’s the tag line for this blog/website – Kindly Find Yourself – and it’s a phrase I’m sweetly resonating with right now. It is becoming my little creative beacon.

My friend Eric wrote this in response to me talking to him about Kindly Find Yourself as a retreat/class title:

Kindly – Do this with loving kindness.

Kindly – This is my gentle request that you turn around and find yourself.

Kindly – (with a little more edge in your voice) Stop tying yourself up in the knots of your stories. Find yourself.

For me, the first step in kindly finding myself is letting myself be lost. I feel so ashamed that I don’t know what I’m doing or who I am at 45, almost 46. I like to keep stopping and saying, “It’s okay to feel lost right now because that is how I feel right now. It’s okay to feel bad about feeling lost right now because that’s how I feel. It’s not necessary to beat myself up for feeling lost nor do I feel lost in all domains of my life. This feeling of being lost in my creative work won’t last and even if it does, it’s okay because I am not what I do.”

Speaking of “I am not what I do” am I the only one who wants to run away from the Internet and all social media because it feels so overwhelming? It’s like a demon named Do Everything and Do It Big and Do it Now is biting at my heels ((I just joined FaceBook so that might be part of it). I want to run away . Okay, going to stop and welcome that feeling Demon too… “It’s okay to feel overwhelmed because that’s how I feel. But god, I hate feeling this way. It’s okay I hate feeling this way, I can still feel the feeling.” It really helps if I do this welcoming while relaxing my body or going for a walk or doing some art journaling. Also reading Rumi helps:

THE GUEST HOUSE

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

The second thing that helps is reading other people’s journals and blogs and talking to my friend Ann and my beloved Bob so I feel/ see/ know I am not alone in feeling lost, and that most of us do — especially at mid life. I have to remember to reach out and get some of this support when I need it most instead of telling myself I AM THE ONLY ONE FEELING THIS WAY and then not spend all day reading blogs and talking on the phone so that I don’t actually do any creative work because doesn’t feel good.

The third thing that helps is watching happy movies that are smart like Miss Pettigrew Lives for Day and reading books like What It Is by Lynda Barry

Okay, back to kindly finding myself and designing a class and retreats so we can do it together. Love to hear what you are doing to kindly find yourself today!

Raw Radical UnRuly Dreams – Part 2

Jennifer — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 02:52:17 +0000

I didn’t know this but on September 2007 when I declared a nine-month retreat–sabbatical, what I was really declaring was, “Where do I go when now that I’ve gotten to the end of my dreams?” At the time, my dreams seemed fine, thank you very much, but as I moved into less and less doing, I found my time off was becoming more and more about shedding and letting go: of outmoded dreams, of dreams that are so threadbare, they can’t even float on the River Denial anymore, of “should” dreams and good idea dreams and dreams other well-meaning people have for me. It’s turned into a dream heaving festival over here. Watch out because when you start such a process, the gods and goddesses love to jump in and help–my husband has shed our marriage, Spring Air shed me as a spokesperson and Body+Soul as a columnist. Oh bloody hell, I want to go back to what was known, to what was safe–help! But the worse thing one can do is stop the process mid-way through. I’ve done that several times before and where did I end up? Watch a current presidential debate and you’ll get a good idea: same old, same old. Boring. Trapped. Nothing raw, radical or unruly to be had.

I write this from my shedding nadir where the only dreams left on my list are: Reawaken the feminine, open my whole heart to Love, and create art with abandon and only for myself. Read those three again—see how beautifully interrelated they are? That astonishes me. And see how clearly tending to these will provide the energy for more specific dreams like rewriting my novel? And guess what? Art is the way in to it all, the way in and the way out. So this is what I’m trying:

Open my big cheap art journal on my art table
Put out some random paints, water, couple of brushes, oil pastels, water soluble crayons, alphabet stamps
Glance slowly with soft eyes at one art book (current favorite Hans Hoffman), read two or three poems (current favorite Pablo Neruda odes), put on some music (Always favorite: Krishna Das).
Feel into the space around me, behind me, in front of me, above me, below me.
Ask Spirit to get me out of the way. Ask Spirit to fill me.
Tell my small self, “It’s only for ten minutes. Nothing bad can happen in ten minutes.”
See what emerges. Not for the sake of dreaming new dreams or getting anywhere but for the sake of being open.

We can dream our way through the wardrobe door, down the rabbit hole, out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing into a fresh field of learning and possibilities (to appropriate the Persian mystic poet Rumi) but only if we are willing to ask, “Where am I willing to go when I get to the end of my dreams?”

Footnotes:
* Diagnostic new age guru Louise Hay claims foot problems signify a fear of the future and not wanting to step forward into life. For me, my very sprained big toe came about because I was hurrying and I’ll buy I’m afraid to step forward so I see my sore toe as a lovely symbol of needing to rest and let go of everything, including fear.

* Child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim posited that grappling with horrible tales (he primarily studied fairy tales) gives children an outlet for natural angst and anxiety which makes me wonder if so many truly horrific horror movies are being consumed by teenagers right now because their anxiety about the future has left the building along with Elvis.

Raw Radical UnRuly Dreams – Part 1

Jennifer — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 01:20:37 +0000

“Where do you go when you get to the end of your dreams?” Dan Fogelberg

I was on hold with my local clinic about my big toe – which stubbornly is not healing*—when I realized I was hearing a Dan Fogelberg song from my youth. In fact, the song coming over the phone had been the soundtrack for my 16th summer, a time when I was bursting with hopeful itchy angst, stuck between yearning for newness, for life, to be in life yet completely unsure what I wanted from life. As I listened to Dan croon (what a crush I had on him: the original sensitive man!) it struck me that how I felt my Pu16th summer was very similar to how I felt now, some 29 years later, and that Dan’s question was perfect for me – and maybe for you, too. Where do you go when you get to the end of your dreams? (I realize now the station was playing Dan because he died Monday of cancer at 56.)

I’ve run out of dreams. It’s very scary to admit that because in this microcosm culture of personal growth and coaching where I spend a lot of my time, it’s all about possibilities. Declaring, “Hey, I’m tired of growth. I don’t want to live my best life. I just want to curl up and do nothing,” feels so unrealized. It also smacks of the S word-selfish. “Dreams are the food of the soul. In our existence, we often see dreams come undone, yet it is necessary to go on dreaming, otherwise the soul dies and agape does not penetrate it” rhapsodizes novelist Paulo Coelho in his Ode magazine column (January/February 2008). Yes, I say to Paul yes but where does the letting go, cleaning out, dropping-into-nothingness-stage of dreaming fit? In our love affair with self-improvement and efficiency, have we forgotten this aspect? If you and I don’t attend to not dreaming, do we block the ability to conjure truly new dreams? If I lack the courage to peer at my dreams and ask hard questions like:

What commitment am I willing to make?
What price am I willing to pay?
What courage is required of me right now?

(Questions courtesy of The Answer to How is Yes by Peter Block)

What is the result? If I lack the stamina to be restfully fallow (say that three times really fast), do my dreams cease being dreams and become should-filled bland heavy nightmares? If I only dream, do my dreams become only delusions?

I believe many of us have gotten to the end of our dreams—I certainly think our American culture has reached the end of something. Partially this may be because we have relentlessly, brutally pushed ourselves. Faster, faster, grab the golden ring! Keep moving, keep buying, keep trying because if you don’t, you’ll be left behind. Our collective well has more than run dry; we’ve pushed clear through to China and out into empty space. Consider our political landscape, our national depression rate, and the number of horror movies leering from the New Movie wall at the video store* as proof positive. We want to dream radical raw dreams, we want to feel desire, we want to believe in new beginnings but we’re too tired from doing, from pushing, and those optimists among us, from dreaming.

Stay tuned for Part 2…