Bah! I messed up the scheduling and posted two yesterday. So, there will be a break til next week to put us back on schedule. Sorry!!
In the meanwhile, enjoy the summer. Stay cool! Wear sunscreen and a hat. Clean up after yourself at the beach and in the park. Watch out for sharks and bears and riptides. Enjoy the bounties of your garden, if you have one.
That is all. Carry on.
-Adrienne
Dear Readers,
First, a happy announcement. My husband and I have opened a hypnosis (and he, a massage) practice in Kingston, NY. We will be doing all kinds of hypnosis but of course, my specialty will be Past Life Regression. If you or anyone you know would like to arrange a session, you can contact me via my website, http://www.artofepiphany.com.
Second, a big favor. I would be SOOOO grateful for some positive reviews of my book on Amazon. Since the book is stories from the blog (put it a more logical order so that they flow better philosophically), if you’ve been reading the blog, you can honestly review the book. Positive reviews really help sales, so it would be MOST appreciated!! (Thanks to those of you who’ve already reviewed it.) You can post reviews HERE
Thank you SOOO much!
Agat
I was a disaster at love. My relationships never lasted more than a few years. I fell in love with the notion of love and never saw my partners as they really were. I was interested in others only as long as they allowed me to feel within a narrow spectrum of emotion; as long as they didn’t force me to consider my own responsibility too closely. When my feelings began to stray beyond those parameters, I might become angry or demanding or hurt or fed up.
None of my behavior was consistent with truly loving someone. I was never willing to stick around to do the work.
I thought I was doing the work. I thought I was being the mature, sensible one. I believed that what I wanted was within reason, and within my right to ask. I wanted them to behave in the way which I believed was the correct way to behave. I wanted them to reciprocate my feelings. To feel as I did. Respond as I did. Desire as I did. Love as I did.
I had lofty concepts of love, which, to my great heartbreak, no one else seemed to share.
When they finally would not or could not live by my standards, they would either leave or gradually stop making any effort until I ceased asking; until I abandoned my feelings and went away. This process was not without drama, which was mainly my own doing. It was, ironically, the very drama they’d been trying to avoid. It was the behavior which always proved them right in the end.
I believed myself to be loving yet tragically unlovable when in fact, I was quite lovable but tragically unloving.
——————
NEW
Dr Brian Weiss, Omega Institute, May 17, 2019
Hey all!
Back from the most wonderful workshop with Dr. Brian Weiss and his lovely wife, Carol — five days at the glorious Omega Institute, learning about Past Life Regression. Dr. Weiss and Carol were so generous with their huge stores of knowledge on the subjects of hypnosis, past life regression, reincarnation, energy work, and more. I am still processing everything I experienced and promise to write more in a few days, but for the moment, I just want to enjoy my happy little bubble of bliss.
For those who don’t know, the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies offers seminars from one day programs to weekend intensives to five day workshops, on a variety of spiritually-related subjects.In addition to the one I just attended, there were classes on meditation, yoga, energy work, mindfulness, Buddhist studies. In fact, I was excited to run into Pema Chödrön on campus yesterday. (She’s teaching this weekend.) As we passed each other on one of the well-tended paths, she looked right at me and gave me a huge smile! I admit to being a bit star-struck! I suppose I shouldn’t have taken her smile toooo personally since at Omega, EVERYBODY smiles! All the time. I don’t think I saw a grumpy expression all week! There is literally nothing to harsh your mellow — even the fact that it was damn cold for May (low 50s!) and raining most every day. People were friendly and supportive and loving.
The grounds were once a summer camp and the familiarity of the setting brought back a lot of happy childhood memories for me. I admit, however,the accommodations are considerably better than the bunks I slept in as a kid. Although the rooms and cottages are spartan, they are fresh and clean (i.e. not covered in decades of chipped paint with spider webs in every corner!) They have been upgraded with modern amenities such as air-conditioning, heat, and handicapped accessible bathrooms. And the grounds are heaven on earth! There are magnificent plantings, flowering trees, and lovingly tended grounds. Meals (mostly vegetarian) are provided in a big, friendly dining hall. (Although I’ll tell you honestly, if I never see another piece of kale in this lifetime, nor hopefully in my next, I’m OK with that.)
Truly, it was like spiritual sleep-away camp for grownups. I met lots of “campers” who return year after year, from far-flung corners of the planet — Australia, Japan, Uganda, Chile, Scandinavia, Italy, the Caribbean, Mexico and of course Canada and the U.S. I feel I have found my people — folks who speak intelligently and knowingly about the same esoteric “woo” subjects which have long fascinated me but may have marked me as “weird” among non-believers. They were spiritual yet grounded, intelligent and serious about the subject matter but funny and willing to laugh at themselves. I think — I hope — I made some friends for life. (Just like camp!)
So, dear readers, please indulge me for a couple more days, and I’ll tell you about a fascinating regression I did on one of my fellow workshop attendees.
But for now….namaste, bitches!!!
——————
As a small child and well into adulthood, I felt a part of me was missing. It was as if my soul existed both within me and without me, and I had no agency over the part outside myself.
I could not explain this sensation in any way that would allow another human to understand. To others, I seemed strange. My feelings were often bizarrely congruent. For example, sometimes, when things were going badly, when I was hurt or deeply disappointed, when my heart was broken and by all rights I should be crying, I’d be filled with a strange sense of satisfaction or happiness.
The day my father died, I was weeping and mourning with my family, feeling all the pain any adult child might feel at the loss of a beloved parent. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed by a deep sense of joy and peace. I stopped crying and sat wordless, smiling beatifically. In an instant, I no longer felt like grieving.
By then, people were used to my strange moods. They shook their heads and reminded each other in whispers that I’d always been odd.
Sometimes, too, in the middle of a happy time, when it seemed everything was going my way, I would be stricken by a sadness that sucked all the joy out of me. On my wedding day, I could not stop crying. I loved my husband. He was the right man for me. I was thrilled to be marrying him. I had no doubts. And yet, I was filled with inexplicable sadness. They made no sense, not even to me.
Eventually, my husband and I moved to the city. One day, a friend became angry at me because she said I had snubbed her in public. I had no such recollection. “You looked right at me, smiled back at me, and kept walking.”
Then it happened again. And again.
Sometime, strangers would approach me, greeting me familiarly, calling me by a different name. When I denied I was who they thought I was, most did not believe me. Some thought I was joking or playing a game. One or two became angry or insulted.
I began to seriously question my sanity. I was used to my unexpected emotions but I would never ignore my friends. I was not rude. I worried that the issues which had plagued me all my life were now progressing into a serious mental disorder. Was I losing touch with reality? Was I losing hours without knowing it? Was I losing my ability to recognize familiar people?
I did not share my fears with my husband so as not to worry him.
It went like that for perhaps a year.
Then, one day, I was in a café, reading a newspaper, having a my lunch. Out of the corner of my eye, I perceived what I believed, in that first tenth of a second, was my own reflection. In the next tenth of a second, I realized this was not so. We were not moving in tandem. We were not dressed alike.
I looked again, this time, more carefully. She hadn’t noticed me yet.
I could not stop myself from staring. Finally, I stood up and walked over to her table, and sat down in front of her. She picked her face up from her book, first in annoyance at being disturbed, and then, her jaw dropped in incredulity.
We were not merely two people who looked similar. We were identical. Even to a mole on high on our right cheek.
We sat there for what felt like a long time, just staring at each other. She too, had had a lifetime of disconsonant emotion. Her recent encounters with strangers and the upset of friends at having been snubbed had also made her question her sanity.
But now, the logic was beginning to dawn.
“Birthday?” I asked. Just one word. She immediately understood the importance.
It was the same as mine.
*****
When we were little more than a cluster of cells, we split in two. “I” became “we” inside our mother’s womb. There, we shared one soul. When our forms became more distinct, our soul also split in two. One soul, one set of DNA, two separate people.
We came into the world minutes apart, and clung to each other in our first hours. Others saw us as two, but we still felt as one.
Our mother was sick and poor and alone, not able to care for us. And so we were given away to those who could. No one would take us both. Those with the power over our lives decided it was best for us each to have a loving home, rather than to remain together in an orphanage. Cleaved yet again, both from mother and each other.
We were too young to remember any of this. Even our adoptive parents did not know we were twins.
****
That was the first time in our lives we both felt whole and that our feelings made sense.
We each had places to go, obligations to keep. It was painful to take leave of each other but we arranged to meet later that evening, in the same cafe. We talked until the place closed down. We then went back to her apartment which was closer than mine. Her husband and son were already sleeping, but she insisted I peek into the boy’s room to see him. My nephew! Flesh and blood, twice in one day!
From that day on, we were as inseparable as two separate people can be. Our families became one. Our children played as cousins. Our husbands became as brothers.
We still felt each other’s feelings, but they were no longer a mystery.
We both lived to be quite old, and died within months of each other. And here we are, together, waiting to be born again. Perhaps as one, perhaps as two.
——————
Wa
I did things I was not proud of; things I lived long to regret. I still bear their weight upon my soul.
Before the war, I thought of myself as a civilized, rational, intellectually sophisticated human being. It was shocking to me how quickly starvation and deprivation sucked the civility right out of me. With the Angel of Death as my constant companion, it was easy to lose track of my humanity. With a landscape of nothing but cruelty, it was impossible to hold tight to my values.
Some people did inhuman things and made inhuman sacrifices to save the ones they loved. I cared only about saving myself. I put my own life, which wasn’t worth much, above those of others who might have done some real good. I gave aid and information to the enemy in exchange for another day. I betrayed my friends, my leaders, my beliefs, so that I would not suffer.
Before the war, I thought I knew which side I was on; which side others were on. In the throes of the nightmare, however, the only side that mattered was my own.
And so I lived and ate and stayed warm while better ones than I died for their cause; for their families; for their love of country. Had they lived, they might have changed the course of history. My only goal was to stay out of its way.
When it was over, I created a history of how I survived. I painted myself as an innocent, a victim. I told it so often, to so many people, I too believed it occasionally. I worked to delude myself into believing I did only what was natural; something any human would do: I saved my own life. But I had seen too many examples of selfless sacrifice not to feel reproached by them.
And so I lived the rest of my life shackled to shame and guilt, knowing I had betrayed those far better than myself.
I am still bound by those chains.
——————
First published January 14, 2015
Ti
I met him when we were children and I loved him the minute I laid eyes on him.
It was in the play yard of my first school. The Bully, who tormented us all in one way or another, was picking on a much younger boy. He was boxing at his ears, tugging the collar of his jacket as if to pull it off, stopping short of hurting him but tormenting him nevertheless. It was his idea of fun, puffing himself up at the little one’s expense.
I was on the swings, pumping my legs furiously, taking myself as high as possible, not paying much attention to that bit of mischief. Suddenly a boy with dark curly hair, way on the other side of the yard, noticed the altercation and made a beeline across the playground. His direct path, fierce determination and brisk pace made him pop out against the random chaos of recess. He caught my interest even from way up in the air.
It was clear to me he was going to interfere, but what would he do? The Bully was bigger than everyone. And yet, this hero seemed fully confident, full of righteous indignation. I scraped the heels of my white shoes on the dirt to bring myself to a full stop, and followed him with my eyes.
The Bully was backed up by his friends, as bullies often are. Simply humiliating another human being is never enough. They need an audience; someone to remind them that, at least for the moment, they are in control.
The hero walked right up to them, stepped between the troublemakers and the little boy, and nudged the child aside, to safety. The boy ran away, frightened but relieved. Then, the hero leaned over and whispered something to the Bully so that none of his friends could hear. It was as if he had stuck a pin in a balloon, that’s how quickly the Bully deflated. He slunk away, his head hung in shame. The hero never even took his hands out of his pockets.
I knew right then, in that playground, I would marry him someday. And so I did. And I spent my life striving to become worthy of such a man’s love. He made me a better person, and that was only one of the reasons I loved him.
We married young, raised three children, and had a good and happy life together. We had our challenges, but we never let anything or anyone come between us. He was my hero, always and forever.
And then he got sick.
It started slowly, the descent into infirmity. We weren’t very old. Our youngest child had just gotten married. It was right after the wedding when the weakness started. The disease progressed slowly. In the beginning, we were able to joke about it. We accommodated his limitations. We took things more slowly, spent more time at home. As long as we were together, we could manage everything.
Eventually, as he deteriorated , it was hard to maintain our sense of humor. We saw doctors more often than we saw our children or grandchildren. He became dependent upon me for everything. I was happy that I was there to help but this kind of constant care takes its toll on the caretaker. I dreaded the time when I could no longer do for him what he needed. I knew I could not carry or lift him, even as frail as he had become.
I don’t deny that I sometimes felt put upon and angry and frustrated by our, by my, circumstances, but I resisted self-pity and did everything I could to keep him at home. My children begged me to put him in a place where he could have full time care. I was not so young myself, anymore, and it was wearing on me. But I couldn’t do that to us. His body was gone but his mind was intact. Our love was intact. I would not be the one to abandon it.
The time came, however, when I could not care for him alone. His mind was starting to go. The end, while not imminent, was not far away.
One day, when I was cuddled in bed with him (as we still often did), he asked me for the biggest favor he’d ever asked of me. He wanted me to help him die, there at home, in our bed, with my arms around him. He did not want to die in a hospital, hooked up to tubes, unconscious or unaware of his surroundings, being poked and stuck with needles and monitors. We both knew there wasn’t much time before that would be inevitable.
I was terrified, both of living without him and of being the cause of his end, but he knew what he wanted and I was the only one who could give it to him. I cried for days when he asked me, but we both knew I would do it. It was time for me to be a hero to my hero.
I found a method that was painless and undetectable. I held him in my arms, stroking his head, as his breathing slowed and eventually stopped.
I lived for many years more, alone, missing him every minute of every day. When my time came, he was here waiting for me. I flew to him in joy.
——————
I can still smell the sweet, musty scent of old perfume clinging to her elegant clothes; the tickley feeling of her long fur coat brushing against my face; the smooth skin of her fine, leather high-heel shoes lined up neatly in the shoe rack.
My mother’s closet. It was the place I hid when I needed to feel safe.
When I was very young, and my parents fought, downstairs, I would run up to their room and slip into my secret fortress, pulling the door closed behind me. I kept a flashlight hidden in the back. Sometimes, I turned it on. Sometimes, I sat in the dark. When I was in grade school, and the kids at school bullied me or called me names, when I felt myself weird and disconnected, that’s where I ran. It was my secure, perfect little world, where every color, smell, and texture was familiar and reminded me of unconditional love.
It was a finite place yet it contained infinite peace. The sounds of the world outside were muffled by tightly packed garments of silk, linen and wool. If my parents were shouting, I couldn’t make out the words. If I fell asleep, when I woke up, I couldn’t tell if it was day or night. I might have been sleeping for an hour or for years, and this too seemed mystical and magical to me, because there was always the possibility that I’d been asleep so long that when I emerged, everything would be completely different.
When I got a bit older that pleasure was no longer available to me. It was OK for a small boy to hide in the closet, but not at all appropriate for a thirteen year old. Which is not to say I outgrew the need or desire for it. I was just more afraid of being humiliated, especially by my father.
In order to recreate that feeling as best I could, I would sneak one of my mother’s silk shirts or casual dresses — something with her scent on it — or perhaps a pair of her shoes, and I would keep them near my bed. At night, I would pull them beside me, and they helped me fall asleep.
One day, when I was about 14, I put on her shirt, just to feel it against my skin, and I become sexually aroused. This confused me and made me feel ashamed and yet, it excited me in such a primal way.
As I said, I never outgrew the need for the closet so I found another way to hide in it: by wearing women’s clothing.
There was so much shame involved in this practice, it colored everything else I did in my life. I hid this deep, important part of myself from everyone, including my wife. I lived in fear that my humiliation would be discovered. The mocking voices of my childhood classmates accusing me of being strange never left my head. I had to admit to myself, they were obviously right. I was weird.
I tried so hard to control my need, but the more I resisted the more obsessed and stressed I became. The more stressed I became, the more I needed it. It was a cycle I could never break. And every time I went back to it, after being “good” for a while, I was filled both with relief and a deep-sense of self-loathing.
This was the core of my life. The rest of it doesn’t matter. Not my job nor my family nor any hobby or interest. They existed outside of me. I played my roles well and nobody ever suspected — I hid myself that perfectly.
My entire life was all about what and how and when I could do it again; about balancing my need with my terror at being unmasked as a pervert. My entire life was a lie. I hid the most important part of myself from everyone and in doing so, sacrificed any hope that anyone would love me for who I truly was.
My life was a never-ending cycle of self-loathing, fear, determination to change, failure, collapse. I suppose the only way to have broken that cycle was to accept myself as I was, for who I was. It didn’t matter if nobody else loved me; more important, I needed to accept myself as the imperfect being I was. This is something, I never managed to do. Perhaps if I’d been brave enough to share my secret, I might have found acceptance, but I could not. The shame was too deep. It was a part of my DNA.
It was a secret I took to my grave.
____
Hi all,
It occurred to me recently that to really excel at one’s chosen enterprise, whether creative, emotional, professional, or even criminal, it’s extremely helpful to understand people what makes people tick. You need to be able to get inside the heads of others to know their fears, their dreams, their fantasies, their insecurities, the person they imagine themselves to be, the person they hope to become, the person they fear they are. In this way, you can negotiate the best possible outcome for yourself. The ability to put yourself in the shoes of others is an extremely useful life skill.
I believe that this blog (and the book) can help you think in those terms; to help you see others the way they see themselves, and thus to become better negotiators (ideally in win-win situations.)
I have been toying with the idea of using the blog/book as a jumping off point for a series of discussions on these, and other useful life skills. For example, the notion that our pain and disappointment is a result of being tethered too tightly to our egos. Once you understand that, a lot of the suffering evaporates.
I would be most interested in hearing from regular readers, to know if you have learned anything from reading this blog — anything that can be shared and taught to others, with guidance — as I work up a curriculum of sorts.
Thanks!!
-Adrienne
Dear Readers,
Once again, I am taking the month of December off to focus on business (my busiest month) and also to settle in to our new place.
It’s going to take me a month to recover from the move! As regular readers know, we just moved. It’s been a nightmare from beginning to end! Things were delayed on the front end (NYC move) which made the move out of our weekend home a big rush.
It took nearly ten hours to move out of our apartment in NYC, during a miserable ice and snowstorm that basically shut down the greater NYC area. It took seven hours of white knuckle driving to get to our hotel, (normally would have taken two) arriving at 4am! Then, we had to wake up at six a.m. to meet the home seller to get the keys. The movers were originally supposed to meet us at the house in the morning, but they, too, got caught in the storm so the move-in was delayed for 24 hours which was fine with us! Gave us a day to rest up!
Then, a week later, we had to move out of the weekend house where my husband also had a wood shop and an art studio. So much stuff!!! The unpaved hill was so icy and the turn into our driveway so sharp, the mover couldn’t get his big truck up to the house. This necessitated THREE smaller truckloads, three trips. over three days. When it was finally over, we were so exhausted, we could barely walk, move, think.
And now the work of unpacking, painting, etc etc, begins.
So, I’m really going to need at least a month to recuperate! I will return in January, hopefully with some new stories.
Until then, I wish you and yours a wonderful holiday season. Don’t forget, the book makes a great gift! (hint, hint!)
With much love and in complete exhaustion,
-Adrienne
____
