A good friend and mentor of mine, someone I listen to perhaps even more than I listen to myself, shook me to my core a week or two ago when he questioned the wisdom of one of my more heartfelt, if quixotic, hopes. Now I’m plenty used to hearing that I have my head in the clouds, or more accurately up my ass, but this was the last person I expected to say nay, and it affected my equilibrium, my self-trust, and my mood for over a week. I went whirling off into the usual unhappy and obsessive cycles, digging and digging for the tragic flaw in the foundation of me, frustrated to the point of tears with my perennial fuckup-ness, trying on alternate, more “realistic” possibilities and scenarios that felt like nothing so much as generic prison jumpsuits I had to wrestle myself into. It felt awful — and I couldn’t stop.
In short, I just plain violated myself. I went right back to the early belief that I needed serious fixing, and that forcible change was indeed warranted — no matter how bad it might feel to me. As if I were an out-of-control teenager about to be sent to one of those dubious military-style “boot camps.” Kicking and screaming.
If you read my last post, which was actually inspired by an entirely different situation, you know how susceptible I am to this sort of thinking. Especially when the message seems to be coming from a highly esteemed source.
I was feeling particularly miserable one day in particular when nothing could shake me out of my funk — not an hour of meditation, not a yoga class with a fun instructor, not a pleasant chat with a friend. Everything felt like a losing struggle. I found out, through a person in the know, that I’d gotten someone important an inferior gift thanks to my own cluelessness. I felt like crying over that. Soon afterward, my dinner companion called to say that she couldn’t pick me up, and I had been counting on the ride, as my old beetle wasn’t running well. This just added to my growing feeling of defeat. Once I decided to ride my bike to our rendezvous, thunderheads moved in, seemingly out of nowhere, and it started to pour. Literally pour. I stood looking at the sheets of rain coming down hard, and I gave up. And then I started to laugh. Who can argue with the rain? A crazy person, maybe?
But wasn’t that what I had been doing? Fighting with the is-ness of things, including my very own state of being?
**
After my conversation with my mentor, I had picked up a book by Esther and Jerry Hicks, or Abraham, if that’s what their disembodied friends want to be called. (They’re sort of the grandparents of the popular manifestation movement, which was more or less appropriated by everyone else.) I was seeking some sort of radical faith injection, or at least some relief from my suffering, and headed straight for the woo-wooiest section of the library to browse. I felt too wounded to be proud. The book’s title, The Astonishing Power of Emotions, caught my eye. What would these folk have to say, I wondered, about my feeling so completely shitty?
A lot, as it turned out.
The authors introduce the metaphor of the natural flow of our (timeless, inner) beings as a river and our (finite, physical) selves as being in a boat on that river. Our thoughts may be either upstream thoughts or downstream thoughts, paddling our boats furiously against the current or letting it carry us where our true selves want to go. Our feelings function as indicators of which way we’re headed. “Upstream” thoughts are stressful, and create greater unhappiness; “downstream” thoughts bring a sense of peace and well-being. “Nothing you want is upstream,” they write.
All of which struck this skeptical sculler as brilliant.
“So we beat on,” ends a book widely considered to be the Great American Novel, “boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” Such poetic and melancholy words, penned by an alcoholic after a devastating world war. Fitzgerald’s tragic hero seeks to gain control of the present in order to recreate the past. Given our national myths about hard work and struggle, and our quest for global control, perhaps it’s only American to row against the natural flow of things — and make ourselves unhappy.
The one teaching of Eckhart Tolle that got my attention more than any other was what he had to say about resistance and allowing. In a nutshell: in saying no to what already is, we only create greater unhappiness for ourselves, and act, or more accurately react, from a place of negativity. If we can embrace whatever the present moment brings, we allow ourselves greater peace of mind and are able to act more effectively. I thought of Tolle again recently when I reached the end of Herman Hesse’s classic Siddhartha, where the restless protagonist finally learns exactly this sort of allowing and presence from his close association with a river.
So now here were Esther and Jerry, and all their invisible playmates, advocating relaxing into our natural state of well-being by “letting go of the oars” and being carried by the current of our being. According to them, everything that feels bad indicates resistance, or paddling against the current, including my own raging frustration, impatience, anger and hopelessness. “The belief that there is something to overcome points you upstream,” they say. Any sort of urgency, the feeling of needing to get “there” right now indicates some kind of pushing-against, is a red flag for an “upstream thought.”
My forced attempts to entertain an entirely different vision for myself upon (what I experienced as) someone else’s prodding were giving me a case of rower’s hernia. I was going strenuously against the flow of my own inner current. What was needed here, as the authors advised, was surrender — even though I was impatient to get somewhere. (In retrospect, it was perhaps this impatience that infected my friend and prompted his frustrated response on my behalf.) “I am where I am, and it’s okay,” to borrow a mantra from the end of the book. If I could just quit struggling, my boat would naturally turn around and float downstream, and I’d wind up somewhere — somewhere, if you take the authors’ word for it, I’d want to be.
You must find a way to feel good now, where you are, they reminded me. You can’t wait for a change in circumstances or other people to make you happy. (So basic, yes, but how do I keep missing it?) Decide how you want to feel and then figure out a way to feel that way regardless of what’s happening. Improvements occur externally when your internal landscape changes for the better. (Tolle said as much, too.)
**
The sudden downpour that day made things very easy, and very clear, in a way that other circumstances often don’t. Here was the rain; what now? I’m sure I could have remained resentful and resistant about the day’s unexpected twists and my crappy mood for hours, and made a pretty abysmal dinner companion for my poor friend. As it was, I laughed, and quit wishing for different weather, and took the g-damn car anyway.
By the time I got to our meeting place, the sun was coming back out.
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