Stop Being Mean to Yourself: A Story About Finding the True Meaning of Self-Love (4 page)

Page 20

happened
,
too
,
that were an important part of that story
.
Do you know that three men
—
we call them wise men
,
or Magi
—
looked up in the sky and saw a
star
?
They had enough faith in themselves
,
in their hearts
,
in God
,
and in the universe to start out on a journey across the land to be part of something that
they couldn
'
t see
,
couldn
'
t know
,
couldn
'
t touch
—
couldn
'
t even read about
.
They just had a feeling
,
a sense
.
They knew how connected they were to the
universe
.
They knew that star meant something and it meant something important
.
They knew how connected God was to the universe
,
to the world
around them
.
So they started their journey to Bethlehem
—
a trip that took months
,
maybe years
,
across the desert
.

"
Yes
,
the day Jesus was born is important
.
So is the message of having faith and of honoring our connection to the universe and how it speaks to us
.
So is
the story of the wise men
,
and how they must have felt
,
and what it took for them to make that trip
.
That
'
s a Christmas story
,
too
,"
I finished quietly
.

Many subtle incidents and events had led to this trip and propelled me into it. I had known for years—in that quiet way we know things—that I would someday be journeying into Africa, although I hadn't known exactly when or where. As the time for this trip drew closer, my sense of knowing the right time and place became clearer.

Last year, to research a meditation book I was working on, I had loaded my computer in my Jeep and traveled for several months around the western United States.

That trip

Page 21

had been research for that book and a test to see if the universe would dance with me and tell me the story I was trying to write and learn.

It did. And that trip prepared me for this trip.

Now I was here as a journalist, a storyteller,
and
a student. I was about to test my skills in the Middle East.

In looking back, I think my whole life led up to this trip—or at least the last ten years. It was as if I had been searching for a missing piece. I had been searching for it since I wrote
Codependent No More
.
No matter what I did or tried, I couldn't find it. I suspected this trip would hold the key to that missing piece.

Then, on New Year's Eve, when the winds of that old vortex blew again, I knew for sure this trip would lead me to what I was looking for.

That night
,
I went to a party
.
I wasn
'
t feeling too social
,
so I left the party early
.
By then
,
the winds were blowing so hard I could barely stand erect as I
walked to my car
.

I went home and wrote a list of all my resentments
,
fears
,
betrayals
,
and dead dreams
.
I tossed the pages in the fireplace and set them on fire
.
I sat cross

legged on the floor and watched my list turn to ashes
.

Moments later
,
all the lights in the house blacked out
.
Then the winds blew so hard that the windows rattled and the house shook
.
My bird
,
Max
,
fell off her
perch
.
I opened her cage door and let her jump on my shoulder
.
I found a flashlight
, Page 22

turned it on
,
and set it on the table
.
We just sat there
—
my bird and I
—
in the middle of that floor
,
listening to the winds shake the house
.

The next morning
,
when I went outside
,
my trash can was gone
.
The winds had blown it away again
.

What I didn
'
t fully understand
,
or understand at all
,
was that on November 25
,
1995
,
the time when the winds had blown before
,
a group of people had
assembled in a back room of a small house in Venice
,
California
.
The house is only a couple blocks from the pounding Pacific Coast and the famous Venice
boardwalk
.
While roller skaters skated by the open
air shops
,
carefully avoiding the eyes of the deranged beggars
,
Master Huang ceremoniously awarded
the Tao to the twelve people sitting on metal folding chairs in the back room
.

First the men
,
then the women
,
were called by name to come to the front of the room
.
Each person knelt according to the place the Chinese woman
assisting Master Huang indicated
.
The altar glowed with candles
.
A girl of about nineteen tenuously took a position in the back row of the women kneeling
before the altar
.
The Chinese woman motioned for the girl to trade places and take the honored position in front of the incense pot
.
The girl held the
incense and placed it
,
at the appropriate time
,
in the container
,
as she had been instructed to do
.

Master Huang recited a series of liturgies in Chinese
.
Stumbling over the words
,
the participants repeated these sacred Chinese phrases
.
Master Huang
then told the partici

Page 23

pants that their names were now officially recorded in the Book of Life and that they had just received their Tao
.
He went on to say that just as the candles
on the altar burned brightly
,
so did the light within each of them
.
Those people who had received their Tao
,
including the nineteen
year
old girl
,
returned
to their chairs
.

Carefully
,
so as to be understood with his Chinese accent
,
Master Huang then gave each participant the Three Treasures
.
He traced the Three Treasures to
their biblical origins
.
Then everyone in the room took a vow of secrecy concerning these Treasures
.

Before the ceremony ended
,
Master Huang told each participant that he or she had now received the keys to the kingdom of heaven
—
in the afterlife and in
this world
.
Their karma had ended
.
Reincarnation would cease
.
They had reached and achieved the state the ancients called enlightenment
.

It was a sign of the times
,
a gift of the times
.

Now, lying on my bed in the hotel room in Casablanca listening to the prayers of Ramadan mixed with the howling winds, I knew I had chosen to be here—in the Middle East—at a spiritually powerful time. This wasn't an accident. It was time for me to remember, and trust, why I was here.

When my friend Angelo had cut my hair, he had called this excursion "an adventure." But it wasn't a daredevil trip. It was more than that.

Sometimes in life, we feel led to do things that don't

Page 24

seem rational. This trip was one of those things. People had scowled and said they could not understand why I would want to go to the places I was going. There had been times it sounded crazy to me, too. But I had scrutinized my motives and talked to a few trusted people, who agreed. Although it appeared crazy, it wasn't. I was willing to do anything and go anywhere to find the story—the story for this book and for my life. And I knew I could find that story in the Middle East.

This trip was a leap of faith.

This was a business trip. This was a personal trip. But this was a destiny trip, too," I said to the woman interrogating me in the airport in Cairo. "I had all sorts of illusions about this trip. I had dreams about traveling to the deepest parts of Africa, on safari. Maybe I'd learn something from the Pygmy tribes, some magical secrets to life. Or maybe I'd have a grand revelation in the pyramids about the mystery of life after death."

"Is that what happened?" the woman asked, her eyes penetrating my soul.

"What I learned about," I said, "was the mystery of life
before
death."

Page 25

chapter 3

Gunfire

Just as people report hearing a sound like the rumbling of a freight train before a tornado passes by, I heard the rumblings of the vortex that picked me up from my home in southern California and carried me across the northern rim of the African continent long before it hit. I knew for years that I would someday venture into Africa. But I didn't know it would be Algeria until the month before I left.

"Go to France. Go to Italy. Go to Greece. But don't go to Algeria," my friend Maurice had Page 26

warned me on Christmas night when he learned of my plans.

His warning wasn't news. I had read the travel advisory issued by the United States government. Terrorist activities were rampant. A number of foreigners had been kidnapped and killed in recent years. Traveling there was not advised, and Americans who chose to be there anyway were instructed to have armed protection. I would be a woman traveling alone, with no guns or bodyguard. Yet I was drawn there. I knew I had to go. I also knew I'd be safe. I couldn't explain this to Maurice.

I didn't try.

"I'm not kidding, Melody," Maurice had repeated. "It's dangerous. You could be killed. They're in the midst of a civil war."

"Maurice, don't fuss. I'll be fine," I had said. "I've lived most of my life in the midst of a civil war—mine against myself . . ."

Now, in Casablanca, I checked out of my hotel room, hailed a cab, and headed for the airport to catch my flight to Algiers. It was 6:00 A.M. The cab was dirty. It stunk. The upholstery on the seat was ripped to shreds. The cab driver looked as if he had slept all night in his car.

"You won't like Casablanca," my friend Maurice had said. "It's a dirty seaport city."

Maurice had been right about Casablanca. For just a moment, as I boarded the airplane, I wondered if he was right about Algeria, too.

Page 27

A few months before this trip, I had visited an old Chinese healer in Pasadena, a gentle Buddhist monk who used few words. He worked on my energy, my
chi
,
for a while. ''You're moving to a new level,'' he said. "That's all you need to know for now. Go through the motions of taking care of yourself. Sit with the pain, and all your emotions, the best that you can. Do your daily disciplines. And be gentle with yourself."

Video games, the kind that come with a computer, often have different levels of play: beginner, intermediate, and master. When you move to a new level of play, it doesn't get easier. It becomes more of a challenge. The playing field is larger. The action is faster and more complicated.

In Aikido, or any other martial art, there are many different levels, or
dans
,
of skill. Each time a student moves to the next level, he or she has to pass a test. And when the student reaches that new level, it's not easier. He or she is required to use all the skills acquired so far, plus learn new ones. The new level is more complicated, more difficult, and more of a challenge. And however accomplished, the student begins anew as a student at the new level.

The place where a martial art student practices is called a
dojo
.
That means place of enlightenment. Some people say our lives are our
dojo
.

I had moved to new levels before
.

Fifteen years ago
,
I was six years into a marriage

Page 28

to an alcoholic
.
In the process of frantically trying to do everything right
,
which then meant controlling everyone and everything but me
,
I lost myself
.
I
disappeared
.
In the mush of believing lies and lying to myself my spiritual
,
mental
,
and emotional powers waned into nonexistence
.
I became a vindictive
,

victimized
,
passively irate amoeba
.
I didn
'
t leave the house for years
,
except to go to market
.

That changed
—
or at least began to change
—
in one moment when I stopped pointing at everyone around me
,
screeching
,
"
Look what you
'
re doing to me
,

"
and instead began looking at myself
.