Excerpt

Chapter 4: Step Two – Being with the Feeling

I dreamed I roared
like a lion
with a sound
that shook my chest….

And the voice said,
“Dream, dream
onward.”

Simon the Turtle began to poke his head a bit further out of his shell. He was noticing things now: things around him as well as things inside him. It was a sunny afternoon when he dozed off, watching birds, colors, sky and clouds…and dreamed. He dreamt he was a lion living inside his shell, trying to roar, but couldn’t. It was too tight, too cramped. He awoke suddenly and felt a pushing and a longing, but he had no words for it. He only knew it wouldn’t go away.

The birds, colors, skies and clouds he was noticing didn’t go away either. They became pictures, taking up residence inside his head. He began to think about the G32

strangest thing. Strange, at least, for a turtle. He wanted those wonderful pictures inside him to last forever. He wanted everyone else to see them the way he did. He actually began to see himself…

“No, no,” he thought. “That is just too weird for a turtle. After all, I have to live in my shell.”

But those images wouldn’t leave him. He dreamed again, this time of leaving his shell behind, feeling quite naked, and following the beautiful things of the world and…and, drawing and painting them! He awoke remembering a turtle without a shell, on a journey with no destination, carrying an enormous pencil over his shoulder.

“Oh, oh! Weird, bad, bad, weird! Turtl-soup time! ” he worried.

Yet the feelings pushing and straining inside his body wouldn’t let up. He didn’t have names for them, since turtles don’t pay much attention to things outside, much less things inside. He couldn’t tell his mother about the dreams or what was happening inside him. She would just tell him to ignore them and be content inside his shell, where things were safe and sure. Yet, the more time he was aware of those pushings and yearnings, those fears and the excitement, the more he knew things would never be the same…

*****

Isn’t that what we often fear the most? That things will change, perhaps change forever. Charles Dubois wrote: “The important thing is to be able, at any moment, to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.”Yet even “good” feelings can scare us as much as the “bad” ones.

So feelings are often ignored or buried. Yet they are the movement of the life inside of us. The emotion knocking on your door is letting you know that you have reason to be excited or fearful and that your aliveness is calling you to a larger version of yourself. Both negative and positive emotions can be unnerving invitations to get real. They ask us to attend to what we want or don’t want in our lives, to what is good or not good for us. They ask us to hold onto ourselves.

In the thirteenth century, the Persian poet Rumi wrote:



The Guest House



This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.



A joy, a depression, a meanness,

Some momentary awareness comes

As an unexpected visitor.



Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight….



Always, there is a purpose for feelings, but we cannot listen (Step One), much less react if needed (Step Four), if we are not able to be with the feeling. This is what is meant by “tolerating” or managing the emotion, rather than being overwhelmed by or denying it. As my mentor would often say, “You must learn to be strong in all of your emotions.” It is our task to stand on the firm ground of emotional awareness and emotional being. From this place we can journey forth with our guidance system, listening to our anger when we’ve been violated or to our guilt when we’ve truly wronged another, feeling the truth of sadness, or delighting in the joy of a relationship or job that fulfills us.

If Simon doesn’t find the courage to feel what is happening inside him, he will go back to his shell. This courage will require the awareness of and the capacity to be with his feelings. He needs to tolerate happiness, joy, expanded living, for it is often the fear of being too much or of being disappointed again that drives us back into the shell of our comfort zone, where we know what to expect.

Betty spent her childhood in the shadow of an older brother who was born with Downs Syndrome. Her parents struggled in every way imaginable in order to create a life for her brother, leaving Betty invisible. She tried to be the perfect child who never upset her parents, who never expressed a need. They had enough to deal with.

She grew up and married a man who bullied her verbally and emotionally, relying on her inability to speak up or to ask for what she wanted. She developed anorexia and compulsive housecleaning in order to feel some kind of control whenever she felt the anger, lack of control and invisibility that had lived just below the surface, but could never be revealed.

She finally divorced her husband, and now, 43 years old, she sits across from me, wondering why she still isn’t able to speak up to her mother.

“Betty, what’s the worst thing that would happen if you spoke up to your mother?” I ask.

“She would get angry!”

“And then?”

“I’d get a little scared, and I’d feel bad!””

“What kind of bad?”

I gave her plenty of time, figuring that she would have trouble with the “g” word.

“Guilty.”