More Notes to Self

[More Notes to Self, written in my personal blog a year ago. Funny that they're still so current...]

NOTE TO SELF: STOP TRYING SO HARD!

Stop trying so hard to be yourself. It shouldn't be difficult or take any effort to be who you are.

Who are you trying to please?

How absurd that we all seem to be trying so hard to be the person someone else wants us to be - or to be more precise, to be the person we THINK the other person wants us to be. That's a never-ending and can't-win game that robs us all of our individual splendor.

Better instead to just be who you are; no more, and no less.

If someone doesn't care for the who that I am, then the fault lies in them and not in me, if I'm being exactly who I am. See through their confused and convoluted game. They haven't yet figured out who they are.

NOTE TO SELF: MONEY IS A PRODUCT

I used to think that money is a symbol: a tangible symbol of energy, and of the flow of energy between individuals and groups. As such, getting it to flow to me was simply a matter of aligning my energy with its flow. Think "money in" and money would flow in.

What nonsense!

Money is a product. But it is not the product of hard work. The most hard-working people in our society include those who are the poorest, those working for minimum wage. And it is not the product of risk. Those who risk the most sometimes win the most, but they can also lose the most. Money also is not the product of money. Children from wealthy families can blow their entire inheritance in no time.

Money is the product of entitlement.

Yes, I said ENTITLEMENT. Those who believe themselves entitled to wealth generally end up becoming wealthy. That's because they make decisions and act from that sense of entitlement to wealth which makes their becoming wealthy more of a probability.

So, what do I feel entitled to? "Not much!" if my financial net worth is anything to go by! I have less than nothing.

Does that mean I think I'm less than nothing?

umm... yeah, evidently so.

Oh, good god! That's gotta change - and fast! Rent's due and I don't have it - again. This is getting ridiculous!

So, here's what I believe I'm entitled to. I'm going to put it down here, in black and white, and send it out into cyberspace so that I can't reel it back in...

I'm entitled to work that I love; my own business, not scraps from someone else's kitchen; and clients, customers, and readers who love and appreciate what I do.

I'm entitled to an income that allows me to live well; to free myself of debt (money I'm grateful to have received but that now is a millstone around my neck), to have a home of my own, and to have the freedom and flexibility to continue to explore and write about it.

Life, send me that. All of it. With a beautiful big, red satin bow.

NOTE TO SELF: THE TIGHTER YOU HOLD ON, THE ROUGHER THE RIDE

The tighter you hold on, the rougher the ride.

We're in a time of great transition. That means great turmoil, but also great possibility. All of the balls are up in the air, and you still have a say in where they will land.

We've gone through these times before, and we'll go through them again. But this one is a biggie. A real turning point for humankind. Do we devolve into chaos and self-destruction, or do we evolve into a global culture marked by peaceful coexistence and cooperative action? Or do we each follow one or the other of those paths, thereby dividing into two distinct paths, two separate outcomes?

One thing is certain: you can no longer stand still; things can no longer stay the same. However much you may long for stability or for the good old days (which weren't all that good, if you'll remember back with absolute honesty), you are yearning for something that is gone - at least for the present. And the tighter you hold on, to the past or to some image of how you want things to be right now, the bumpier the ride will be.

So, let go. Instead of clamping on to something that feels solid and holding on for dear life, open your hands and your heart and your mind, and expand your notion of what is possible. How do you want it to be? Open up instead of shutting down. Expand yourself to include everything, instead of condensing and hardening around one thing or another, around one illusory anchor or another.

Choose what it is that you want to create, and head steadfastly in that direction. Let that be your anchor, your safe harbour. This is the time for deciding how you want the future to be.

And remember that times of great turmoil are also times of great fear. Yes, great opportunity for change, but also great anxiety in the process. Be gentle with yourself - and with your fellow humans. These are scary times. But it'll all turn out just right.

NOTE TO SELF: FROM THE INSIDE, OUT

Live from the inside out.

I wondered how far back my persona goes. When did it begin? And why? What is it there for?

I think it began in infancy, and was focused on meeting my needs. I was a tiny baby, born to an overworked mother with limited emotional availability and two other kids. Not to mention only a modest household income. Enough, but barely. I had to come up with something that would get my needs met - and fast.

But now it's not working as well. In fact, it's not working at all. I'm on the very brink of financial disaster and such deep personal unhappiness that I can hardly breathe and lately have often thought of suicide. My persona has become like a full-body cast, restricting and even constricting my real self, the person who stands behind the very real-seeming, very tangible, firmly established flesh-and-blood form of my persona.

So, who is that? Who am I really? And how can I be that?

This seems to be the single most important thing for me to get to the bottom of now. Nothing else matters.

Who I am is the bright spark of the child I was at my happiest, at my best. Bright, enthusiastic, fascinated, multitalented, with a deep love of learning, of understanding, and of being good (in the very best sense of the word).

Who I am is sort of like a human-size fairy. Complete with invisible wings. And now grown in to a queenly presence. I want to live full-time in that magical realm of the natural world, with its rhythms and its possibilities. I want to be a fully integrated human, fully integrated into the rest of the world, not just the false front of the human-constructed world of personae. I want to see behind the masks, my own and everyone else's, and operate from there.

And I want to be a bridge between the two worlds: human and everything else. A bridge that hosts traffic in both directions. I want to explain the natural world to humans who don't understand; and I want to explain humans to animals who don't understand us.

In short, I am that bright spark I was as a child. No apologies. No vacillating. No more covering it up.

World, you are on notice: I will now live from the inside out.

[More to follow.]