Of Tolstoy, Shifts, Why Being Right is Wrong, and Tuna Fish Ice Cream

I watched a movie last night with my husband.  It was called The Shift, and it featured Dr. Wayne Dyer.  For those of you who have never heard of Dr. Dyer, I urge you to not necessarily go to his web page, but go to your library.  Check out some audio CDs of his books and lectures.  His work is life-altering if that's where you are in your life.  Get past some of the corny, kitschy stuff and listen, though.  To the whole thing.  At least, then, you can decide if you are ready.

On April 4, 2012, I experienced an epiphany of sorts.  I knew that if I was to stay alive and healthy...if I had any shot at all at a happy life, I needed to change.  Right that minute.  So I did.  It was a profound change.  I started with additional meditation.

I had already been meditating due to a horrible premonition that I had...one that I didn't have any idea what to do with.  Once the events unfolded, I was traumatized.  My husband told me that I had to get a handle on this "information" that I was receiving.  He likened me to an antennae...but one that was unable to tune itself.  Basically, I receive information, but I have no idea who it's attached to or what it means at the time until after. After, as in this case, is sometimes tragically too late. So, I read books.  LOTS of books about being psychic and how to meditate.  How to meet your spirit guides and for what kind of information I can rely on them. I met them. The one who I speak to most is called Maurice.  He is very rational , and kind of abrasive.  He pulls no punches.  He is benevolent in all ways, but refuses to hand me anything without me working for it. He wants me to learn.

While refreshing for someone that had never really formally meditated in her life, it was wonderful at first.  I craved it.  An hour a day all to myself where I would put on my headset and listen to John Edward's voice, and drift off into a place where I learned, relaxed, and grew...  I started getting fit.  I lost 35 pounds walking up to six miles a day in the heat of the mid-day summer.  I practiced yoga and fitness.  I ate well. I gave up drinking. I grew out my short hair.  I let life happen around me without trying to control it.  That was my shift.  The epiphany was the catalyst.  But the behavior was the shift.  I quit being negative, and looked for the good and positive in each and every moment.  I truly believed that with each breath, I could choose happy.

Then, after a while... about a year... one of my children became a senior in high school.  Now I say this not a an excuse or to blame anyone, because I have no one to blame but myself for what happened next, but if you've ever had a child that was a senior you understand that you suddenly have zero life/time/money to yourself.  And if you are blessed with additional children, as I was, it only compounds things.  I found myself sleeping instead of meditating.  I was driving instead of walking.  I was in a hurry.  I was grabbing inappropriate foods for me and eating, not mindfully, but on the go.  I was exhausted....  Sadly, days turned into weeks, turned into months, turned into nearly a year.  I had become flabby and unfit.  I had gained almost ten pounds back. My hair became dry and brittle. I had gone back to having migraines at an alarming rate.  But most of all, I had lost myself.  I had lost my moxy. My MoJo, if you will. I was no longer that person that I admired.

I mean it when I say that I admired myself.  I have never had a point in my life where I could say that before.  I was healthy, happy. I was positive.  I had energy.  People liked me, but most importantly, I had learned to forgive myself for the traumas of my past and, as it turned out, I liked me! I was funny and carefree, though quite mindful. I let myself have friends.  I let them breeze in and out of my life without curling into the required fetal position for days at a time.

Have you ever looked at an old snapshot of yourself? A candid. One that was taking place when you were happy and having fun and thought, "Wow!  I remember that.  I wish I had more times like that now.  I wonder what (insert goofy friend's name, also featured in the shot, here) is doing?  We used to have so much fun.  I miss those days!"  Most of us have.  That's how I feel when I look in the mirror.  Every day. Every time.  I ask myself where the beautiful woman (on the inside) has gone, and am I really going to let it go back to those days several years ago where the mere thought of getting out of bed some days was too much to handle?  As the tagline for Game of Thrones says, "Winter is Coming."  I can see the winter coming for me.  Ready to tie me up and hold me hostage.  Robbing me of happiness.  While I have seen this image coming, I've done little to stop it.

Actually, I probably made every possible self-destructive choice available to me.  Then it happened.  I got into an argument with one of the subjects of a prior post.  This time, it was the one I never argued with.  I was very hurt.  I felt slighted and forgotten.  I felt I was right about my end of the situation.  Part of me still does.  But more importantly, I learned a lesson there.  Dr. Dyer, in the Shift, discussed his personal experience with reading the Tolstoy story The Death of Ivan Ilych,  and how profoundly the last line affected him. "What if my whole life has been wrong?"  Much the same, I found myself doing exactly that.

You see, at the end of the argument, my friend said, "I've tried to explain myself, and the person who doesn't give a damn what people think is giving a damn what people think." It resonated.  I balked.  I pouted.  Then I tried to sleep.  I dreamed of him, and Tolstoy, and Ivan Ilych.  I dreamed of my hurt and my desire to prove to him that I was right. I dreamed of the whole short argument...our whole relationship...interspersed with rattlesnakes and snowy owls and tuna fish-flavored ice cream...and then my eyes flew open. I kept hearing his voice saying that line over and over... all in different tones.  And I thought, maybe, just maybe, he wasn't trying to be hurtful.  Maybe, just maybe, he sometimes misses me too.  Maybe, just maybe, he is exactly right.

Maybe it isn't about me being right. (I had gotten over the crux of the argument long before.  I was just fixated on being right.)  I have felt so out of control, largely of my own doing, that I had to hang onto the only thing I thought I had.  My rightness. What people in my life would think of me if I chose to move past the situation and continue on being friends as if nothing ever bothered me? In their eyes, I'd be "played."  But what did I feel?  Really?  I re-read the first sentence of my last text to him. "Sigh...I don't want to fight. I really don't." And I thought about it.  Then why was I doing it?  Why was I fighting? What if I was wrong?

Much like the tuna fish-flavored ice cream in my dream, it seemed marvelous at the time, but it just left me feeling sick at the end.  And looking back, who really thinks that tuna is a good flavor for ice cream?  It's a bad idea all the way around.  So was the quest for rightness.  My whole life, at that moment, was wrong.  So, to my friend, I say that I'm sorry.  I have once again had an epiphany.  A catalyst to change...shift...get my center back.  To be proud of me.  You, my friend have made me want to admire myself again. And for that, I truly thank you.

I'm off now, to meditate!  :)    Mwwwah!