The Empress' New Clothes

Baby’s got back. She’s got junk in her trunk. And by “she” I mean me.

I love manifesting. That is, having an idea, putting it out there, releasing my attachment to the outcome and then discovering the delightful way in which it comes to me. For instance, the other day I was quite bored with my wardrobe. I wanted new clothes. That afternoon I went for a walk with Groom and we stopped by the Post Office.

Turning the key and opening the metal door of our postbox is always a thrill as I anticipate it to be full of goodies, surprises, cool cards, fat checks, affectionate notes, missives from far away lands, invitations to dine and miscellaneous greetings.

I was not disappointed. Inside was a notification that I had a package. Standing in line, I felt like a kid at Christmas. What might it be?? When it was finally my turn, a postal worker sporting a jazzy comb-over handed me a box. I made myself wait until we were back at the homestead to open it.

Slicing through the packing tape with a lime green box-knife and lifting away the tissue paper finally revealed several layers of beautiful fabric. Wait a minute, not fabric, clothes! Accompanied by a card, the handwritten note from my cousin in California (named Frida Maria) explained that she had been inspired to design new outfits for me.

I was so excited, I couldn’t wait to try them all on.

Uh-oh.

My backside is much bigger than either of us realized. There’s a big gap where the clothes don’t fit. When I thanked her profusely, I admitted the size discrepancy as she was telling me about some more designing ideas.

Her solution? She made herself a fake bottom for a more accurate fit. A faux bottom, imagine!

Shall we take a peek at the junk in my trunk? Yes, I’ve been dragging baggage around with me and also working deliberately to let it go.

On Saturday, a vendor I’d never noticed before stopped me as I walked past his booth. He engaged me in conversation and made an observation saying, “You look like a very happy person.”

Admittedly, this is still a fresh, new feeling and his comment took me by surprise. I don’t know why I confessed this (little vestiges of my story still clinging perhaps?), but I replied that until recently, I had been a very angry person (Okay, before you mention it, yes, I just now realize I need to stop saying that. You are witnessing the last trace of something no longer in existence disappearing into this moment. Thank you).

His candor took me to the next level of surprise. “For you to be so angry, you must have been victimized.”

His words struck like an arrow to the center of my heart. We’re not talking sweet, valentine cupidy arrows with red fluff, but sharp, hitting-the-target with accuracy poisoned tips. I felt the wind knocked out of me. His face was so kind and because he was speaking with such compassion, I had a moment of clarity, seeing the bigger picture.

“That’s an old story,” I said, “stuff I’m leaving behind.”

Or was it? His use of the word “victimized” set my teeth on edge. Recognition can be humbling because this next part is humiliating to admit. I’ve been victimizing myself and blaming others for it. Until this weekend, I’ve been using other people and what they say, don’t say, do or don’t do as excuses for my moods.

I carry gigantic, nay, colossal, mammoth, grandiose expectations. Expectations that other people will behave in certain ways in order to make me feel good, and darmnit, if they don’t keep letting me down.

I have put my emotional well being in the hands of other people and then feel victimized by the smallest of things. No really, they are ridiculous. In fact, the smaller the “slight,” the more pain they seem to inflict. A glance I can’t interpret, someone choosing to sit in a chair across from me rather than immediately next to me, a thank you I feel warranted that does not come, someone taking longer to answer via email that I think is appropriate.

This is how I am victimized. Can you believe it? When I write this out loud, I am cringing. Why stop there? I look for rejection everywhere. As a friend says, “You go where you look.”

When I look for rejection, I find it. Evidence is everywhere to support my belief, whether it is a useful one or not. I also get plenty of praise, but as that does not fit the old program of Rejection I’ve been running, why pay as much attention to that?

When I feel rejected, it is because I am attending and nurturing my ego, the smaller, undeveloped part of myself composed of a thousand little hurts.

When I am attending and nurturing my spirit, things look very different to me. When I reframe my view through the eyes of Love, I see others as individual reflections of the Divine, each unique and beautiful, doing the best he or she can.

I carry my weight around my belly and bum, second chakra: Money, self-worth, sexuality, and creativity. As the clothing attests, I have a gap. Not everything fits anymore.

I could look at the ill-fitting clothes as an excuse to feel bad. In fact, it’s so tempting to allow just about anything as my excuse to get out of the flow. I’m not sure why my ego’s favorite flavor of mood is to feel like mierde?

However, I could also consider the gap as a signpost that I’m expanding and that it’s all behind me now. As I look in the mirror, it’s more empowering to understand it’s simply a reflection of where I am rather than making up a story about what anybody else is doing to me.

And with that, I shall bid you adieu.

Mirror, Mirror…

Whoo hoo, I’m at the beach! Arrived yesterday at dusk with the wind snapping the rain into a frenzy, but woke up this morning to the waning full moon directly over the water, conducting its orchestra of waves. Streaks of silver tipped the foam, a regal encore before the sun’s arrival.

My companion and I left Eugene, Oregon yesterday and traveled Highway 99 through Corvallis, continuing to Newport where we took a walk by the ocean and shopped in Nye Beach. At one store, where I knew I was going to make a purchase, I politely asked to use their loo.

I was in for a surprise. Hovering over the porcelain throne…okay, I must interrupt myself for a moment. As I’m sitting here at the private beach house where we stay every year, a gas truck just pulled up out front and a man dragging a hose is entering the premises.

Get the humorous timing? I’m about to tell you a bathroom story and a truck full of gas appears at this exact moment. Synchronicity? I’m a fan. Hmmm, I certainly hope he knows what he’s doing. If nothing gets posted this week, then I guess you’ll know what happened. Gulp.

Okay, back to the toidy. I’ve just created the proper paper barrier and have lowered myself into the hygienic position, when at eye level, I notice all kinds of post-it notes and handwritten signs instructing the current occupier of the throne what to do in case of a smelly emergency. “If you make a stink, please use two squirts of this (chemically engineered) Spring Breeze to clear the befouled air.” That proved grin worthy.

But then I saw the price sheet.

There, on the wall, was a menu for possible toilet options. The first itemized a “liquid deposit, with one toilet flush and one hand washing, $2.00.” But what if we want to wash both hands?

The second quote was for a “solid deposit, no odor, one toilet flush and one hand washing. $3.00.”

The last menu item was for a “solid deposit with odor, one toilet flush and one hand washing.” Current market value? $5.00.

At first, I thought this was a joke, but as I continued to read the many signs and notices, I began to suspect the proprietor was more anal than funny. When I later handed over my credit card for a merchandise purchase rather than a “deposit fee,” I wondered if their cash register had special buttons. My mind ran with it. When people approached the counter, did they ever negotiate?

“Hi there. I’ll take one solid deposit, but skip the hand washing?” Ooooh. Ick. Or what if a customer was equally fastidious and asked for a receipt? How would that pan out come tax time? “Yes, Auditor Smith, that was for a poo I took in Newport, Oregon.”

Okay, but the really big question for me was, what about the people - and we all have them in our lives - who don’t think their mierde stinks?? What would they do in that little shop on the Oregon Coast?

“I owe you for one solid deposit, no odor.”

“No odor? I beg to differ! You can smell it all the way down the hall.”

“Oh no, ma’am. Mine smells of roses. In fact, you should pay me for the perfume I leave behind.”

Holy cow, I’ve practically had this conversation. What do you do with those who have no grasp on their toxic vapor trails -- literal or energetic? I’m really asking, because I haven’t figured it out yet. If everything is energy and we receive into our lives what we put out into the world, what do you do when someone stinks up your palace?

Deepak Chopra said to me the other day, well, not so much to me as to the television camera, “If you live with the question, you will move into the answer.”

I spent the rest of the day, living with my question, playing on the beach and hiking to Cape Perpetua. [Note: The propaganda leaflets for the trail says it’s only a mile or so climb to the top. However, and this is key folks, it is much longer from the bottom to the top than it is from the top to the bottom. Somebody lied!]

Panting, wheezing and sore muscles aside, an answer came from an unlikely source. Making our way back to the Visitor’s Center, a woman working for the Forest Service told us a story about ravens. She said that on a regular basis, ravens, upon seeing their reflections in the great picture windows of the Center, dive bomb their own faces.

Apparently, some sort of messy secretion from their beaks accompanies the assault and the glass becomes filthy after a few violent pecks. The ravens believe, whether seeing themselves in rear view mirrors, picture windows or any reflective surface, their image to be that of an enemy and knock themselves out from attacking.

So my question, “What do we do when someone stinks up our palace?” looked different through the eyes of a raven. There are people we get along with and those we don’t. The reason we don’t get along with some of them is because THEY are difficult and annoying. They complain, criticize, pick, poke, assault.

Uh-oh, I don’t like where this is going…

Perhaps they attack because they see their reflection in our own actions and behaviors and believe their likeness belongs to an enemy, us. This theory could be carried even closer to home.

Maybe we interpret our own image as belonging to an enemy and launch an assault on ourselves. Why do humans often stay in a suffering place and throw blame (read sticky secretion from our beaks) all over the place?

What is it about ourselves that frightens us so? Oh great, another question to live with. I’m a little skeerd to find out.

Companion and I went walking in Yachats, a little seaside town south of Newport. We took the meandering path along the rocky beach, passing through second-home neighborhoods on our way to the beach. The first year I saw it, I almost had a heart attack. The second year, only minor apoplexy, the third, raw anger. On a wedge of beachfront property, some scurvy dog built a ridiculously, self-indulgent temple to himself, completely obliterating the view of the quaint cottage a few feet away. A view-pirate is what he is, stealing the most valuable thing from his neighbor.

I was incensed. Furious. It was unconscionable. I’d forget about it though, in between annual walks, but as soon as I rounded the bend, the criminal monstrosity rose from the mist and I’d feel my anger all over again. Rather spoiled my walk, my mood.

This year, when I saw the hideosity and felt the flames of wrath re-ignite, I stopped in my tracks and looked at both houses. I realized I knew nothing about the situation, except what I was making up in my head. If it was all fiction anyway, could I tell myself a story that created good feelings within myself instead of bad?

I pondered and continued walking. What’s a better-case scenario? I spun a yarn about the owner of the small cottage desiring the slice of property for years and finally obtaining it. Then he managed to build his dream house and kept the smaller cottage as a place for his many guests to stay. Phew, that felt so much better.

There’s something about fresh, salty sea air that clears my mind. From that spontaneous story I made the leap that whenever we don’t know something, we make it up -- about others and ourselves. We only exist in this moment. Not an hour ago, nor five minutes from now. Here, in this minute lives the real us. Everything else is memory, thought, imagination, or figment. Does that shock you as much as it does me?

We are storytellers, fiction makers and we create all kinds of crazy business in our heads about who we are. That’s reason enough to believe enemies are lurking within every shiny surface.

If we’re going to make it up anyway, why not embellish life with thoughts that make us feel better, thoughts that create a bondship with our funny, loveable, adorable selves?

I’m going to blow a kiss to the next reflective surface I see, because as Oscar Wilde advises, “Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.”