Stop Being Mean to Yourself: A Story About Finding the True Meaning of Self-Love (18 page)

I finally understood
.
My doctor
,
my healer
,
had been talking about my
"
auric
''
field
.

There were a lot of things about life that I just didn't
get
.
Sitting in this tomb on the edge of the Sahara Desert, I didn't understand what I was supposed to do now.

But, if sitting here with a kerchief on my head was going to help me get one inch closer to the missing piece, then I would try it. I really wanted to be enlightened. I really wanted "the powers"—if there were any special powers to be had.

I will do what I know to—meditate, I thought.

I looked around the area where I sat. I picked up a couple pieces of the light crumbling rock and held one stone in each hand.

I would begin by praying.

Page 157

First, I said the Lord's Prayer. "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen."

Next, I said the Ave Maria. "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen."

Then, I did a Buddhist chant I had learned. "
Om ah hung vara guru padme siddi hung
.
Om manipami hung
."

There, I thought. I sat for a moment. I was a lot dustier. The candles had melted some. Other than that, nothing had changed. I felt exactly the same as I had before I entered this mystical pyramid.

I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate, but the droning voices of two people talking outside the cubbyhole distracted me. I wondered how much these people had paid for this enlightening experience.

"Shhhhh," I said loudly. "I'm
meditating
."

Next, I tried some less formal prayers. I prayed for the people I loved—my daughter, my son, my family and friends. I prayed for the people I resented. I finished with Page 158

some prayers of gratitude, counting and expounding on my blessings.

Then I opened my eyes and looked around. Nothing was happening yet.

I reclined on the ground, using my backpack for a pillow. Now I would "breathe my
chakras
,"
an exercise my holistic doctor had recently taught me.
Chakras
are thought to be the energy centers, or openings, in the body. Deliberately envisioning them and breathing into them during meditation supposedly clears out residue and opens us to power.

I visualized breathing a spinning circle of color for each
chakra
,
starting at the bottom, or root
chakra
,
and working my way up to the crown. I started with red at the bottom, at the base of my spine. Then I envisioned an orange circle slightly below my belly button. Next, I saw a spinning yellow circle in my solar plexus, then green for the heart, blue in the throat, purple on my forehead, and white at the crown. I went up the body, then down the body, imagining the colorful circles rapidly spinning counterclockwise. I did this for ten or fifteen minutes with my eyes closed, breathing deeply.

I thought I started to see "The Light," but when I opened my eyes, I saw it was just the flickering from the candle flames.

I still felt exactly the same as I had before entering this tomb.

Page 159

Now I was out of things to do. I sat there, looking around, feeling stupid, watching the candles burn. I wished the two men would come back for me. I wished I wasn't wearing this ridiculous hankie on my head. I wished I had a
shisha
with some tobacco in it now.

I felt as if I had failed.

I sat, and sat, and sat, waiting . . . for at least an hour. Nothing happened. Nothing was going to happen. I wanted to leave. ''Help," I began to yell softly. "Please come and get me."

The guides appeared instantly at the entrance to the cubbyhole. "What took you so long?" I said.

"We were just sitting around the corner," the guide said. "That was us talking.
We
were waiting for
you
."

I grabbed my backpack and followed the two men out the narrow passageway, through the hole in the side of the pyramid, out into the bright light of the Sahara Desert. I tried to give the pyramid guard the amount of money Essam had recommended, but the guard made such a scowling face that I immediately gave him some more. Then my guide and I rode the horses back to the sandlot.

I dismounted, tipped the young man who had escorted me on my journey into enlightenment, and went to find Essam to say goodbye.

I was thirsty, dirty, dusty, and disheartened. I was also done for the day.

Page 160

"Did you get the powers?" Essam asked earnestly.

"Yes," I lied, "I did."

What a crock, I thought, in the cab on the way back to my hotel. I have really and truly outdone myself this time.

When I returned to my hotel room, I flopped down on the bed and stared at the ceiling.

I felt cheapened, stupid, and betrayed—again.

I don't know when it happened, but at some point I stopped thinking and began talking out loud.

"I don't get it," I said. "I absolutely and totally don't get it. I am so sick of chasing the truth. I'm so sick of the pain on this basically uninhabitable planet. I'm sick of trying to make a life and failing. I'm sick of getting back up again each time, trying again, just to stumble and fail again. I'm sick of going through pain, then calling it a learning experience, only to have neither the pain nor the learning ever end. I'm sick of trying harder, doing better, and being someone I'm not. The whole thing is a crock.

"What's the point?" I screamed at the ceiling. "Why do we have to come here if all of life is going to conspire against us to make it as hard as it can possibly be?"

Life
hurt
.
I hurt. My spirit hurt. My emotions hurt. And my butt hurt from horseback riding.

I felt as though I'd been fighting the devil at every step.

"Oh, I can keep doing this," I said aloud. "I can keep going through each disappointing experience. I can keep Page 161

struggling. I always survive, don't I? I've done it for almost fortyeight years. I'm a strong woman. I go through whatever it is I need to go through. And I do it like a trooper. Yup, that's me. I'm so good at dealing with pain, disappointment, heartache, betrayal, and problems. I've learned how to be grateful for every bit of it. I've learned how to breathe into the pain. I've learned how to get through, get around, make the best of, transform, and even turn it into healing for other people. Yeah, I can do it. I've turned it into an art . . ."

That's what this is about, I thought suddenly. I got up off the bed and stood in the middle of my hotel room. "Eureka!" I said. "I've got it!"

I flashed back to the summer before this trip.

One day Nichole stopped by the house
.
She was going through a hard summer
—
that transition from being a child to an adult
.
She had been groveling
around in emotional muck for months
.
That day
,
she was complaining about her pain
—
about all the pain in life
.

"
You ought to be happy
,
"
I said
.
"
Today
'
s Friday
."

She just stared at me
.
"
Does your pain end on Fridays
?"
she said
.

We listened to Janis Joplin belt out
"
Me and Bobby McGee
"
and
"
Get It While You Can
"
on the stereo
.
Then Nichole told me the story of how she thought
life really worked
.

"
My girlfriend Jen and I figured it out over lunch
,"
she

Page 162

explained. "There's two kinds of people in this world: the pigs and the vampires. The pigs think they're going to be happy when they buy a new home, get
married, get a new car, or get a new job. They really believe those little things will stop the pain. And for them it does, kind of They just go bowling, or they
golf and that's enough. The vampires are different. They've been through some kind of tunnel, some kind of experience that's really changed them. And it's
not that they've never come out. They just get changed by it. They know too much. They do all the same things pigs do. They get new cars, they move, they
get married, they take new jobs. But they know that these things are never going to make them happy. They know that life is going to hurt sometimes, at
least a little bit. And sometimes, it's gonna hurt a lot. "

It took me awhile to realize Nichole wasn't using the word "vampires" the way I usually thought of that word. She wasn't talking about werewolves,
monsters, bloodsuckers, or human parasites. She was talking about pigs and vampires the way a college girl would talk about two football teams. They
were just terms, or names, for people on the teams of life.

"It's not that vampires are never happy," Nichole said. "But they're happy in a different way. They feel all their feelings. And sometimes they have
moments of pure joy. But they know those moments aren't forever. They move right on to the next feeling and experience.

"
In some ways
,"
Nichole said
,
"
the vampires are even
Page 163

happier than the pigs because vampires know how they really feel
.
They tell the truth and people like that
.
People like being around them
,
even though
,
for
the most part
,
vampires
'
lives suck
.
But they take the pain and they turn it into something more
.
They do something with it
.
"

I flashed back to a letter I had received from a young man I met on Christmas Day, the day I first saw the crescent moon and star in the sky.

He was in his early twenties
.
He and his mother were friends of a friend of mine
.
They had joined Nichole and me and our mutual friend for Christmas
dinner
.
In the year past
,
this young man had almost died
.
Then he had made a decision to come back to life
,
a decision that made him and his mother happy

"
My dream is also to be a storyteller
,"
he wrote to me in a letter thanking me for the day
.
"
I sometimes wonder if that
'
s why I survived
—
to give back
something of what I
'
ve learned
.
I hope that one of my purposes on this planet is to use the perspective gained from tragedy to illuminate life
.
I think it is in
reaching out to the universe and deeply within ourselves that allows us to transcend these experiences
.
It is what allows us to turn tragedy into a life force
for ourselves and others
.
It is what allows us to transcend surviving
."

I flashed back to the beginning of this trip in Paris, when I had whisked through the Museum of Man and the Louvre. That's what that was all about, I thought. It was the

Page 164

setup, the kickoff, for this adventure. It led directly to today. It was all right there. I had seen the eternal themes of life on this planet—birth, family, health, marriage, religion, divination, and death—and the art that results from all the anguish and joy of those experiences—the rich and treasured art that fills the halls of the Louvre.

Evolution wasn't something that may or may not have happened once, at the beginning of time. Our planet and the life and people on it continually evolve. As we grind through each issue and theme, the work and art we create embody these experiences for the rest of the world. Our creations help us evolve, but our lives and our work help others evolve, too.

We're not just here to live our lives and to create our art. We're part of the art being created.

For a long, long time—somewhere in the back of my mind—lurked the codependent exhortation that if I really loved God and truly wanted to serve on this planet, I would force myself to take vows of chastity and poverty and live the lives of the people I served. Now, in the hotel room in Cairo, I began to see that's exactly what many of us had been doing all along. We were having the range of human experiences and emotions of the people we would later serve.

Lives without pain, comedy, drama, irony, romance, suffering, some foolishness, and a dash of unrequited love would be like going to see a movie without a plot. It's not

Page 165

that life is
only
pain, suffering, drama, and tragedy, but those elements are part of it. And always have been.

From the raw material of these experiences came the art we would create—the art of living our lives and the art we create in our work. So often the experiences I wanted to deny were the raw material that had been handed to me to shape and form into truth and into art. Nichole had been correct. This way of living and creating art involves speaking the truth. My new friend, the one who had written me a letter, had been correct, too. This way of living, working, and approaching our lives allows us to transcend survival and martyrdom, and it illuminates the truth for others. It's not the art of living happily ever after. It's the art of learning to live joyfully.