Messy Guru

Mirror in the Sunlight

 

Yesterday I had arrived a bit early to an empty yoga studio.  I placed my mat up near the front and close to the large studio mirrors and looked at my body in the sunlight.  My stomach has 5 scars on it in various stages of healing and I have gained considerable weight.  The kind of body an old ancient warrior would have been proud of.  

I immediately thought of a story Martha Beck had written in one her books, "Following Your Own North Star" when she was a college art student and they had a model to sketch that was less than ideal:

"She looked well over sixty, with a deeply lined face and body that was probably fifty pounds heavier than her doctors would have liked.  She'd had a few doctors, too, judging from her scars.  Shining purple welts from a cesarean section and knee surgery cut deep rifts in the rippled adipose fat of her lower body.  Another scar ran across one side of her chest, where her left breast had once been.  When she first limped onto the dais to pose, I felt so much pity and unease that I physically flinched.  But we there to draw her, so I picked up a pencil.

"The thing about drawing is that you can't do it well with your social self.  You have to bring out your essential self, which doesn't know anything about social stereotypes.  And so, as I began to draw this maimed old woman, the most amazing thing happened.  Within five minutes, she became a person of absolutely wondrous beauty.  She didn't look like a supermodel; she didn't have to.  Her body, in and of itself, was as beautiful as a piece of polished driftwood, or a wind carved rock, or a waterfall.  My essential self didn't know that I was supposed to compare the woman to various movie stars, any more than it would have evaluated the Andes Mountains by judging how much they looked like an Iowa cornfield.  It simply saw her as she was:  an exquisite sculptural form.

"When this perceptual shift happened, I was so surprised that I stopped drawing and simply stared.  The model seemed to notice this, and without turning her head, looked straight into my eyes.  Then I saw the ghost of a smile flicker across her face, and I realized something else:  She knew she was beautiful.  She knew it, and she knew that I had seen it.  Maybe that's why she had consented to pose nude in the first place.  Knowing that a roomful of artists couldn't draw her without seeing her--I mean really seeing her--she may have decided to give us gentle education about our perceptions."

I stood there watching myself carefully while smiling as I remembered her beautiful story.   My "essential self" didn't seem to mind either of my supposed liabilities.  I glanced up and down my body while allowing the sun to look in without having any judgements.  The surgery cuts were miraculously healing without me reminding it to do so.  The belly hung there in confidence like a snow drift that had been blown upon for a bit too long.  It seemed perfectly content and happy.  Healthy enough to take on a 90 minute yoga class in 105 degree temperature.  

I watched my body move in and out of the postures as the class started and I marveled at the way my belly and scars moved with me.  I caught glimpses of myself as Martha did with the older model.  Shiny skin would appear and disappear into the mind and the mirror held out for me a new way of looking at myself.

It is strong and healthy.  

Full of wisdom and wonder.

This is what the woman model must have seen in herself too. 

 

Justified Resentments

 

I tend to hold all my fears, resentments and anxieties in my stomach area.

I have had a couple of surgeries recently also in the corresponding area.  I also asked my therapist for a session involving this issue and we worked on it with the EMDR technique.  I looked up the spiritual definition according to Louise Hay:

"Stomach: Holds nourishment. Digests ideas. Dread. Fear of the new. Inability to assimilate the new."

I also remembered Wayne Dyer saying he saw a sign in an AA meeting once that read, "There are no justified resentments" and I remained puzzled by that.  I looked that word up:

"Resentment, or the strong and painful bitterness you feel when someone does something wrong to you, doesn’t have actual physical weight, but it feels very heavy and can last a long time. Forgiveness is one way to get rid of resentment.

While I "knew" this on many levels and could articulate that pretty well, I still seemed unconsciously stuck and the appearance of it showing up physically was a good indication that I had some inner work to do.

Over that past few months I've also heard from Dr. David Hawkins speaking "...We need to apply our spiritual principles to EVERYBODY."  That quickly caught my attention of people that I knew where it was easy to do and also the ones that have been buried in the past.

I looked at this principle with 2 caveats:

1.  Who would you be without your story?  A book by Byron Katie with the same name.
2. You have no need to defend any of your current or past behavior. 

This idea came to me as I was sorting out who I wanted to meet with and how I would let whatever was to unfold without a story.  It seemed fraught with the possibilities of me ending up in a pile of trash at the end of it.   I also wanted to know if I was as able to "apply" this spiritual principle with my 2 reference points.  It would also test me if I could remain balanced and in the present moment without quickly jumping to a defensive posture or lassoing a story from the past.

I met with my mother and sister both individually and separately on 2 occasions.

We sat and talked for hours and I was surprised how much I could hear when I was not in a resentment or defensive posture.  It did not erase my past history and put me in a happy place of denial.  I simply sat and listened and shared my experiences of the past 9 or so years. I did not attempt to change their minds or hold them accountable for my justified resentments.  I did not need to.  It's not my job to do that.  Perhaps it is for others.

It did relieve a lot of space in my stomach area and I walked away feeling heard.  

This was for me and my journey.  It may not be for others.  I also am not advocating we meet with our abusers face to face to find peace or ask them for forgiveness.  I respect any boundary that anyone feels is necessary for their own journey. 

I believe that a space opens up when you can be in the present moment and stay centered without jumping into the past where Byron Katie says:

"“As long as you think that the cause of your problem is “out there”—as long as you think that anyone or anything is responsible for your suffering—the situation is hopeless. It means that you are forever in the role of victim, that you’re suffering in paradise." 

When I gave up defending my past story it relieved me of the burden of holding others responsible for it.