Last night I had a dream I remembered well. I'm sure Freud would have a hay-day with it. I will have to sit and contemplate it for awhile.
Right now I'm listening to Mika's "Life in Cartoon Motion" waiting for the coffee to kick in at 1pm and just feeling rather relaxed despite what I have to do later this evening.
I was reading something from Pema Chodron the other day. She talked about how when we let go of hope and fear we can begin to really live and deal with things as they are rather then as we wish them to be. I love it. Life is a much more curious place when one leaves hope and fear behind. It's more beautiful to deal with things without all the extra perceptions that hope and fear give us about the world.
I bring that up because today I have no hope and no fear. It's a beautiful day to live in this very moment. Later today I will be addressing a crowd of anywhere from 20 to 300 people. Speaking in front of crowds used to make me nervous and scare the shit out of me. Lately this fear has lessened as I've gotten over the HOPE that I will impress people. Isn't that funny? What I was hoping for was the thing that was holding me back from reaching my full potential in front of people.
When you act from the firm bedrock of your inner-self instead of from the ever-shifting perceptions you create around you a myriad of things occur that you would not have thought possible otherwise. You engage people, when you communicate from your heart you can open up theirs. I have heard this called compassionate communication. Compassionate to yourself and to others. It is the only way to connect to other people, and it can be terrify to talk to others without any of your protections in place, to read from the book of your heart with no editing.
Quentin Crisp said, "No man is boring who will tell you the truth about himself." I think he was fixing the quotation of another author, I have no current inclination to look it up. But, when you tell the truth about yourself to other people, when you show them a glimpse of the universe of yourself that is like a distant star so much of the time, you both gain something. You both gain that moment of solidarity, of humanity. It is the very thing we are all looking for. The funny thing is everyone is running around looking for it in sex, drugs, self-help books, paper cuts, and term papers. The greatest music is that which gives you that moment of solidarity.
Mme. Tetrazzini talks about how music only lasts until the note stops echoing. We think we have overcome this with recording. But really, most modern music with its slick production and pitch correction has only put the wall up in front of us even more. How can someone sing from their heart into a microphone in a square room with no one around? And even if they did how could you hear it through all the added reverb and effects added in?
And right now I have hopes and fears for everything I just wrote, but I recognize them as hopes and fears, and that is okay. They are there, I am here.
You must share with me the secret of living without hope and fear. I for one have too many of both, and my only viable soloution to letting go of that has been to ride out the storm untill there comes a point when the fears of others will not drag those I love deeper into the maelstrom. I have to say, though, that this very approach lends itself to perpetuating the fears of those others, as well as further petrification on my part.
ReplyDeleteWell, you're never going to be completely rid of them, they are emotions.
ReplyDeleteBut, there's a couple of things to try to identify and deal with them.
Every hope has a corresponding fear. For instance, "I hope it doesn't rain" is actually another way of saying "I'm afraid of getting wet." (which is just a statement of "I'm afraid of being uncomfortable" when we pair everything all the way down)
Another example, "I hope my child gets into college." = "I'm afraid my child won't be able to make a living without getting an education."
Or, "I'm afraid of making a fool of myself." may mean "I hope I impress people."
I guess I should say there is nothing wrong with hope and fear as long as we recognize them as things to learn from. But, all too often hopes and fears are the way we attempt to fit the reality of the current situation into the mold we want it to be in.
If instead of saying "I hope it doesn't rain." we say "If it rains, I'm going to be wet." We've gone from making an emotionally charged directive at the universe (which doesn't really care about your directives) to making, as much as one can, a statement of fact.
Many times our hopes actually cover an amazing amount of fear. For instance, "I hope my husband isn't mad at X." could be covering many layers of fear, like "I'm afraid if he is mad he'll leave me." I'm afraid if he leaves me I will not be able to support myself." "I'm afraid if he is mad at me he will hit me." ad absurdum.
Getting down into the nitty gritty of our hopes can be just as painful as getting into the nitty gritty of our fears.