It delivered.

I was chatting online with a friend I have not seen for 12 years. We chatted for several hours, catching each other up on the happenings in our lives.

She asked me to fill her in on the details of my love life. So I tried to encapsulate 10+ years of  dating drama. I concluded my synopsis by saying “I’m not sure what the deal is with dating unavailable/inaccessible men”.

Her reply was instant: “You date unavailable men because you’re a commitment phobe darling”.

I was stunned. I felt as if the entire landscape of my life had just shifted.

I had never seen it that way.

As my brain scrambled to process this notion – a sinking feeling came over me. She was absolutely right.

The next day I called my best friend to ask her opinion.  I shared the conversation with her. There was silence on the phone then she said, “WOW!  WOW!.”

“Am I really a commitmentphobe?”  I asked desperately, holding onto a tiny kernel of hope that she might completely discount the idea. Instead she said, “Yes. I think its true. You don’t want to commit”.

I know I said I wanted to see things differently but holy cow!

So all these years that I’ve been blaming the guys I dated it was ME all along. Oh the horror.

The more I thought about it, the more it became clear to me that I knew the truth along. I knew better than to place blame outside of myself. I’ve known better for a long time, but I was hanging onto to this story I’d chosen to tell myself about it. That, in my dating life, I was the long-suffering victim of what Bridget Jones called “commitmentphobics” and emotional “f***wits”.

The more I think about it the more sense it makes and I realize how obvious it has been all along  and just how tightly I was clutching onto being right instead of seeing what in my heart and head I knew to be true.

I know that nothing in our lives is ever about other people. The relationships in our lives are but mirrors which reflect back to us all our own beliefs about ourselves and about the world.

They mirror back to us what we believe we do or don’t deserve and what we expect.

Even if we’re saying we want something different with our mouths -it doesn’t matter. The mirror will always show what we BELIEVE we deserve.

I’ve been saying I want all kinds of thing but truth be told I’ve been believing something totally different.

If we’re willing to admit it we’ll see that the mirror shows us the stark reality of all our fears. All our wounds.

The good news is that when we change our true beliefs, the mirror can reflect back abundant  joy, peace, love, and all that is good!

We just have to give up our stories. Delve beneath the surface for the beliefs that no longer serve our good and let them go!

It all starts with being willing to see things differently…

This is how I’ve been feeling lately. I can’t believe I’m still talking about certain issues in my life.

Just when I think I’ve grown in a certain area, I seem to come circling back to it. In fact often it feels like I come back to it in an even worse way then I did the last time. It’s like putting on the weight you lost, plus a little extra.

It’s certainly happened to me with my weight, but there are a number of hot topics for me. For example I can’t believe I’m still talking about the same issues around relationships. I can’t believe that I am still experiencing insecurity and neediness in this regard. Shouldn’t this have stopped in my 20′s? How can it still be such hot topic?   How can a tiny little thing like seeing a picture of an ex-boyfriend with his new girlfriend send me spiraling into a frenzy of comparison which leads me to conclude that our relationship didn’t work because I am not as beautiful/interesting /sexy/brilliant as she is. No wonder he broke up with. Who could blame the guy?  I get to feeling so bad about myself that I have to call for help – being talked down from the precipice yet again by my lovely friends. They remind me of  how wonderful I am, administering the kind of emergency care that only girlfriends can give.  A good bottle of wine, a decadent meal, lots of laughter, lots of love and praise. After a while I am able to step back from the precipice. The bottom line though is I can’t believe I’m still talking about this!

There are other places in my life where this happens. Lately its started to make me feel really disheartened. When does it ever end?  Why doesn’t it ever end? Why doesn’t it get better? Why am I back here again?

Last night, after listening to me talk about an issue yet again, a friend asked me “Are you ready to be wrong?” I couldn’t answer immediately.

As I thought about it, it occurred to me that maybe all the things I’m still talking about are those which I haven’t yet been ready to be wrong about. YET.

So many of us hold on to things – whether its feeling bad ourselves or having anger and resentment towards people in our lives because we are so committed to being “right”.  If there is a place where we can’t heal, can’t forgive, can’t forget, can’t move on – its a sure bet that we are clinging  tightly to the way we’ve always seen the situation and we are not yet willing to be open to the possibility that we are wrong about it. Even if its painful we cling on. Even when on some level we KNOW better – know that we need to let something go because its hurting us – we continue to hang on. “Why am I still hanging on to this when I know better?”, I asked my friend.  “Because it doesn’t hurt enough yet” she replied. Ouch.

It hurts enough. In fact it hurts more than enough.

I’m ready and willing to be wrong about a this.  I’m willing to see it differently.

I know for example that it’s immature to want to prove to all the men who -  in my mind – have rejected me just how wrong they were. Yet I continue to cling to the  “I’ll show him what a big mistake he made rejecting me / he’ll be sorry he let me go”  bone.

It’s a little childish, but it’s comforting. Empowering somehow to gnaw on this bone in anticipation of  it finally breaking open to release the sweet juices of  vindication I am convinced will be my reward.

I imagine how thrilling it will be when realization of regret hits those foolish rejecters. When their blindfolds are removed to reveal to them my true brilliance, beauty and uniqueness. They will be amazed by how skinny and successful and brand-spanking-shiny new I’ve become. I imagine how shamefully they’ll be forced to slink away upon seeing me with the handsomer, taller, better and obviously more intelligent man who snatched me up.

How dumb will they feel when recognition of what they COULD have had hits home? Opportunity missed. Gift horse looked dead in its gaping, slobbery mouth!

So I keep at my bone. Biting down a little harder as I imagine myself looking sadly upon the rejecters as they weep at the lack of foresight which led them to not choose me.  I imagine impassioned pleadings for second chances and magnanimous forgiveness.  The jerk of sobbing shoulders. The clutching of fistfuls of tear-soaked tissues. The mournful hanging of heads weighed down by regret and anchored by defeat.  The dragging, shuffling walk of men walking away from the treasure they know they have lost.  Me!

I sigh  blissfully as I picture myself shaking my head in pity while I turn back into the arms of  my new, anatomically correct, emotionally mature, spiritually enlightened , good-smelling, well-dressed, generally perfect new man.

See what I mean?  It’s really easy to shore up my battered self-esteem and tattered pride with these rampant and overly dramatic imaginings.

I know I shouldn’t do it. I know it’s spiritually immature and I’m better than that.  I really do know better.  I also know that I’m running out of excuses for me living from that place of ego. I’ve read the books, attended the classes. I received and read the memo.

Yes. I definitely know.

It’s time to loosen my grip, unhinge my jaw and let the bone drop.

I know all this.

However, in the interests of being kind to myself, I’m letting myself gnaw just a little bit longer.  Like a dog backed into a corner, I  see that there is no escape. The universe has been gently tugging this bone away from me for a while and its inevitable that I will soon have no choice but to drop it.

It will soon be time for the letting go.

I won’t get to bury it, or hide it away. There is no treasure in it after all.  I’ll just drop it onto the ground where it can be bleached by the sun and pounded on by the rain until it dissolves down into the dirt.

Yes. I’ll have to drop it soon, but until then…

I consider myself to be a spiritual student/seeker/being.  More importantly I consider myself to be a “conscious” spiritual student, meaning that I now understand it to be the very foundation of WHO I am. I choose to focus energy on nurturing and developing in this area. It’s so clear to me that my ability to be happy, loving, productive and functional correlates directly with the amount of energy I put into my spiritual health. That being said, if you haven’t been living your life with this understanding, when you take it on you’re forced to rethink that whole “WHO AM I?” question.  Take it from me; it can be really be challenging to reconcile whatever notions you used to have about who you are with the new spiritual notions of who you are – particularly if, like me, the whole “Who Am I?” thing has been kicking your butt for most (OK all…) of your lifetime. The spiritual component adds another sometimes perplexing layer to it.

There are so many assumptions placed on the word spirituality and even those of us who consider ourselves to be spiritual carry our own set of misconceptions, judgments and stereotypes about what spirituality looks like. This is what causes many of us to shy away from coming out of the “spiritual-closet” – as Lola put it so beautifully – when we become consciously spiritual because we’re afraid some of our family/friends/colleagues won’t get it and will think that we’ve lost our ever-loving minds.

Early on in my spiritual journey, I remember telling a friend that I’d started taking a basic meditation class at a local Buddhist Center. After 10 minutes of me excitedly telling him about it in great detail, he laughed and said “You have to pay someone to teach you how to sit still and close your eyes? That’s some kinda of BS”. After that I became very careful about who I shared the details of my spiritual life with. I also no longer spend time with that friend because his energy is so out of alignment with my own. This is not a judgment. It is what it is.

What Does a Spiritual Person Look Like?

When I first read Elizabeth Gilbert’s book Eat, Pray Love almost a year ago, one of the things I loved the most about it is how it debunks so many of the stereotypes that exist about what it “looks” like to live a spiritual life or be a spiritual person in these times.

Not long after I read the book, I attended a talk by one my favorite spiritual teachers, Marianne Williamson. I’d listened to countless dozens of her recorded talks, but had never seen her speak in person.

I was amazed (and not a little bit envious) when she stepped onto the stage in a FIERCE as in fabulous pair of black Christian Louboutin pumps. With their signature red bottomed soles, these are probably THE sexiest shoes on the planet! Shoenista that I am, I was deeply appreciative of their jaw-dropping fabulosity, but part of me was also really shocked that she would be wearing them. I had to ask myself why I was so surprised. Clearly there was some idea in my head about what kind of shoes a spiritual teacher should wear – and a sizzling hot pair of Christian Louboutin pumps was not it.

Upon further reflection it became apparent to me that I held some deeply embedded beliefs about what a female spiritual teacher ought to look like. I imagined she should wear robes. A habit perhaps. At the very least it seemed reasonable to expect that she be outfitted in a long, shapeless skirt, high-collared blouse and a pair of “sensible” shoes. Not a stylish pencil skirt and sexy pumps.

I was forced to hold my preconceptions up to the light and I realized just how meaningless and illogical they truly were.

It’s very easy, and patently unimaginative to paint an either or picture of, not just spiritual teachers, but spiritual people in general. Many of us labor under the delusion that living a spiritual life necessitates giving up all worldly pleasure. For years I was so terrified of becoming in any way spiritual or religious because I was convinced that I’d also have to become much less fun.  Gone would be my days of wearing sexy shoes or sipping pretty-colored martinis out of sugar-rimmed glasses.

What I’ve learned however is that I’m not required to give up anything at all in order to live a spiritual life. Yes, since I’ve started living a more spiritually conscious life I’ve stopped doing a lot of things I used to enjoy – but that’s because I just don’t enjoy them anymore. In reality I’ve given nothing up. The beautiful irony of truly conscious spiritual life is that a bunch of stuff falls away because you no longer need it – not because someone says you should get rid of it. YOUR spirituality is what YOU want it to be.

I’m not discounting the possibility that someday I may decide that my spiritual practice must include foregoing the purchase of all fabulous shoes, but that day has yet to arrive. So in the meantime I’m coming out of the closet. Yes, I declare to the entire world that I am “SPIRITUAL”. I meditate. I pray. I read spiritual books, spend time in silence and all other kinds of touchy-feely, new agey, woo-woo stuff. However, until further notice I will also continue to buy fierce shoes and fabulous purses, occasionally drink red wine and French martinis with my girlfriends and sit down faithfully at 9pm EST every Monday to watch One Tree Hill. (Yeah, I said it!)

The bottom line is that our spiritual lives are as unique as our fingerprints. To think that we can look at someone and instantly judge their spirituality or lack thereof is not only ludicrous and devolved, it is the least spiritual thing I can imagine!

I’ve spent a lot of time in the relationships classroom – after all this is a required course- and I must admit that there are certain lessons I’ve had to re-take many, many, many times.

Today’s lesson – learning that I do not need someone else to complete me and make me special.

For the past year or so I’ve been feeling like I’ve made a lot of progress in this area, but the test I had to take yesterday proves that I still have some work to do in order to master the lesson.

I have a friend for whom I have feelings which are more than platonic. It may or may not be a case of “unrequited love”. I’m not really sure. I don’t know whether or not he has expectations about the form our relationship might take in the future.

The reality is that it doesn’t really matter what he thinks about the future of our relationship. What matters right now is how I think about it.

Even though I often assert that I am modern woman who doesn’t have need for romantic frivolities, I’ve watched also watched my fair share of Julia Roberts romantic movies and like many people I have certain expectations of romance and relationships. Many of us expect our relationships to unfold like a 90 minute movie. You know the classic storyline; “boy meets girl – boy loses girl -boy realizes he can’t live without girl – boy declares undying love for girl -boy and girl live happily ever after”.

We believe that having someone fall in love with us is will make us special and whole and we are convinced that if we can get the movie ending to our story it will prove our worth. So we seek this kind of validation in our relationships. We look for someone to complete us. This implies that until we get our guy/gal we are incomplete. It also logically follows that if we get said guy/gal then lose them, we once again we become incomplete.

This puts some of us on a life-long roller coaster ride of finding and losing this illusive completion. Each time on the ride causes more damage to our already shaky sense of self-worth. Once we get the guy/gal, our focus then becomes about holding on to them at all costs. We become anxious, paranoid, suspicious and wary, waiting for someone to attempt to snatch them from us. We obsess about all the things conventional wisdom tells us we should do in order to convince them to stay with us, knowing that if we lose them we will once again be back to feeling incomplete and unworthy.

If you’re watched the movie Jerry Maguire, you probably remember the scene towards the end of the movie when Tom Cruise makes his declaration of undying love to Renee Zelwegger with the classic line. “I love you. You… you complete me. “ I confess that I still get the chills when I hear that line. This is what millions of us are longing to hear and longing to say. The hopes of an entire generation of women hang on the possibility of someday hearing those words and being able to say them back to someone. Apparently I’m not immune to this desire because yesterday this is what I wanted more than anything.

I got caught up in my own movie storyline. I wanted to be made to feel special. I wanted to hear what I wanted to hear, and when I didn’t all my insecurity kicked into high gear. The details aren’t important. What is important is the fact that I wanted to hear someone tell me that they loved me and that I completed them, because somehow that would then make me feel complete. How perverse. I wanted to feel special and I was looking to someone else to give me that feeling. I didn’t get what I wanted and as a result I felt really awful. I felt rejected, stupid, ugly, unlovable, unworthy, foolish, sad, mad, hurt. You get the gist. This is why looking for completion and a sense of being special in someone else is a trap that leads to all kinds of suffering. If you’re not constantly being validated or being told what you need to hear your insecurity will play havoc with your mind and emotions.

The craziest thing about this scenario is that the drama unfolded in my head unbeknown to the other person. Even if he had been aware of the movie script that I was running through in my head there’s still no guarantee that I would have heard what I wanted to hear. This is life. Its happened to me before and could certainly happen to me again. Anytime I’ve experienced rejection of this kind I’ve automatically assumed that it was proof positive of the fact that I’m unlovable. Clearly something must be wrong with me, otherwise why would I be rejected? I’d convince myself that this wouldn’t have happened if I’d been 10 pounds lighter. Or maybe if I was a little smarter, a little funnier, a little taller, a little sexier, a little more interesting, a little more…

The truth is I am more. In fact I am more than enough. We all are. Not because someone wants to be with us. Not because someone is in love with us. It’s not our husbands, wives, girlfriends or boyfriends that make us good enough. We are enough because we come into the world being whole and complete. We just forget and then end up living into the false idea that we need other peoples love and validation in order to be whole.

When we find a sense of our own completeness, we can come into our relationships in a way that is free of expectations, neediness and drama. In this state two people can come together not to complete each other, but to complement each other. Freeing ourselves from the need for validation will open us up fully to the experience of enjoying the true gifts of relationships that mirror back to us the highest version of who we truly are.

The ten million dollar question is how do we detach ourselves from this need to be validated by other people and how do we learn to honor our own specialness, independent of anyone else?

I believe the solution is simple. We have to learn how to love ourselves unconditionally. Yes, I know its such a cliche. But thats the thing about cliches, they often carry within them basic truths. And while the idea of loving yourself is stunningly simple in logic, I also know that it can be hard to put into practice. Particularly when you first realize that you haven’t been loving yourself for your entire life. The pattern of looking for validation of our worthiness from other people is so deeply conditioned that we’re often not consciously aware of it. It’s only when you start to pay attention to yourself and your emotional reactions and patterns of behavior that you start to realize whats happening.

I have found that the easiest way to start is by just focusing on paying close attention to yourself. What I’m realizing for myself is that the lesson is gradually sinking in. Each time I have the kind of reaction that I did yesterday, the amount of time I stay stuck in a place of feeling badly gets shorter. This is progress. So while I still haven’t passed the final test on this particular lesson, I’m well on my way. Some day soon I’ll pass. I’ll master this lesson and realize that I finally have an unshakable sense of my own worth.