Frida Underground

Wow, with a week containing Solstice, the first day of summer, Father’s Day and a new moon, I am happy to report only one nostril/food-related incident. ‘Twas Saturday last at the illustrious Market and I was in chemical need of caffeine, so I made the journey across the two lane road to the food court. Surveying my options, I noticed a sign advertising a blended iced coffee drink.

Arms outstretched like a robot, I marched toward my favorite vegetable: coffee beans. I was about to order their version of a chilled mocha java when the “barista” jammed a bored index finger into his left nostril up to the second knuckle.

This behavior had its own chilling effect. I stopped in my tracks and stared. He looked at me looking at him, grinned with pride, pulled the strawberry-digger out, appraised his treasure and then proceeded to insert it back into his other nostril.

Suddenly I didn’t want a coffee so bad.

For those of you paying attention to my segues, transitions and content, I have been on an unfortunate wavelength for the past two weeks that has me engaged with nostrils and things either going in (fingers and corks) or coming out (strawberries and boogers). This condition is likely caused my time spent with an active 15-year old relative who is delighted and proud of every one of his body functions.

Logically, since I am grossed out by them and offer plenty of resistance, the Universe is having a good time at my expense, sending more juvenile antics for me to observe. Or perhaps there is another explanation. I am in vibrational alignment with pesky, hormonal teenage energy.

There is plenty of evidence to support this theory. I am often cranky. I cry at commercials and dance shows. I want my way. I am moody, swinging from this branch of emotion to that branch in record time. I am flexible as long as I don’t have to change. I need others to change so that I can feel better. I think everyone’s stupid. I am amazed at how smart and talented everybody else is.

Which is why Groom and I are going underground for the next five days. Okay, well, not exactly underground, just turning off our cell phones, shutting down the computer and attending a five-day, 12-hour a day personal growth seminar. It’s part deux of the one we participated in a couple of months ago.

We had to fill out a fairly extensive questionnaire, answering what we’d like to learn while underground, locked in a room, or whatever they do to help us get at our personal itch. I wrote that I wanted to – oh, did you think I was going to tell you? I wrote that I wanted to stop seeing boys pick their noses.

Not really. I mean I do, but I think the issue is that I’m stuck in a particular chapter of my story and I’m getting bored with it. Here’s an example of somebody else’s behavior to describe my own, which is what the behavior is about. Confusing? Read on.

I know a Malaprop man (when complimenting my decorating style he said, “I like your decorum”) who loves to insert himself into other people’s home improvement projects. He starts all kinds of things, which the person may or may not have requested, and then becomes distracted before he completes them , leaving the project mid-mess only to start another one.

At one point, when he was complaining to me how many disorganized, unfinished projects he had going, I asked why.

He looked at me like I was an idiot and stated, “So I don’t have to deal with my own stuff.”

Oh.

I’m much more like Malaprop Man than I care to admit. Until recently, I believed I was in service, offering help to people in crisis, even though they may or may not have requested it. I thought I could take away their pain. As I hinted last week, people no likey.

This week, I am coming to understand that as I try to squelch their pain, I am unwittingly (and ineffectively) trying to take away their lessons. God and the Universe no likey.

It has also been pointed out to me that I am motivated to take away their pain because I am unaccepting of people as they are. I want to change them. I want them to change so that I can feel better. I am interested in other people’s home improvement projects so that I don’t have to deal with my own stuff. Uh-oh, now, me no likey.

Furthermore, I was guided to understand that I have to discover in myself those feelings and reactions I’m hoping to receive from others, such as approval, appreciation, validation and love.

I am all bass-ackwards. I somehow believed that I would find self-love by getting others to show it to me first as an exchange for siphoning their pain. Sucker.

God’s Minion gave me some excellent feedback, which deserves its place here: Resistance. I have been thinking of that word so much in recent years and I try to immediately transform it into the word fluidity...fluidity.... fluidity. It even rolls more easily off the tongue.

Resistance is the condition that keeps us from being our best self and from seeing the best in others. In the book Lazy Man's Guide To Enlightenment the author says: “What is it that you think needs to be loved?”

Perhaps even, dare I say it, the cutting of a tree (or the picking of a nose)? He says once we can love everything then we are in heaven and he does mean EVERYTHING. Our human condition dictates that we have judgments about as much as we possibly can, as much as we can cram into a day and even keep ourselves awake with at night. The universe is neutral. How comforting, the universe is neutral. No judgment, just response to the frequency being emitted. EMIT LOVE. Wow.

Yes, wow. As I type these last words, a car passed by honking and the driver leaned out the window and yelled, “Yeah, you’re number one, too!”