The Conscious Heart (23 page)

“When I got angry and asserted myself, and also didn’t eat very much, I felt free in my body in some way that I don’t usually, some new energy and liveliness. I’ve used food to deaden those moments of sharp shaking up of my system. I think I have believed that Gay has held me as an improvement project all these years. I’ve been afraid that he didn’t really love me just as I am but was always making some improvement in me. At some point I began to resent his criticisms. I responded to them and tried to improve in the desired direction while simultaneously resenting his lack of acceptance. As I get hold of that idea, I feel less diffuse and spacey, feel some more vibrance and focus in my body. That must be accurate.… I can sense the freedom of not being his improvement project now and having the opportunity to stretch out into my wants and hear the subtle urgings more clearly without the strong channel of Gay’s being.…

“I know that I carry the history of the devaluation of women in my cells, and I feel very sad about that. I know I am modeling a
strong and soft woman for others in the trainings and in presentations, but I sometimes get totally discouraged that I can make a real difference, that equality will really change and relationships be balanced, truly honoring the rhythms and flows of women as well as men. Fear, we need to get to the root fear that holds men in such a stance of opposition to letting women in. Maybe men are also afraid of losing familiar roles. If men don’t do the providing role and the dominant role, maybe they’re afraid they don’t matter?…

“Who am I without Gay? I told him the other day that who I am is totally interwoven with our relationship, and I don’t know who I am otherwise. I realized yesterday that part of this time is for me to discover what it is to be alone, that I’ve always been with someone and defined by someone.…

“I need to become unshakable in my experience of my own worth and contribution and simply do that, which I have, and let the rest go because I really have no control over it anyway, I can’t control how Gay feels or what he decides to do.…

“In the dream I was sitting on the carpeted floor and either cleaning my right toenails or just looking at them when a dozen or so worms of various kinds spilled out of the space between the flesh and the toenail, like emptying out. The dream was so vivid that I woke up, with a feeling of relief and almost awe that those had been in there all this time and I didn’t know it, grateful that they were out. They were all different-kinds and varieties and black and yellow and fat and tiny; totally gross like stomach turning and also new energy and the feeling that I’m not going to be sick now. Something too about my right toe, my right side, probably masculine, something rotting and decaying about my masculine or relationship to my masculine that has emptied out. Contempt comes to mind.…

“I’m reminded of the Hindu spiritual stages of building, sustaining, and destroying. We had been in a period of both building and sustaining for many years, and now it looks as if we are in a period of destroying the old structures and assumptions. I know I experience each day as a gift and an opportunity to expand my
capacity to love and encompass more aspects of being truly human. The wave is just building, but I can feel it underneath the surface a little way off, the excitement of opening to new cycles of growth that can come from unexpected sources. Routine is ended, and each day brings choices and events from the universe that give me the expansion of essence and opportunity to choose truth and deeper levels of taking responsibility for each moment of life, to be awake. The task of training my mind to move out of its old ruts into some new paths is splitting my body into jagged raw fragments where some light emerges in gasps.…

“What is different about this from the typical midlife crisis? Seeing it as a gift and wake-up call is one choice that has made a big difference. Before I went to bed last night, I was thinking about the possibility of an unconscious cooperation on my part, with a deep holding on to his grandmother on Gay’s part. I wondered if somehow I have continued to be like her for Gay so she isn’t really dead. Gay has often said that my love reminds him of his grandmother’s, that it’s the only truly unconditional love he’s experienced since her death. I wondered if I was becoming more like her or shaping my body to be somewhat like the way Gay remembers his grandmother and the vital love connection he felt with her. His grandmother had a soft and large body. She totally approved of Gay but expressed lots of anger and disapproval to almost everyone else. I had tried to lose weight for years and just couldn’t seem to change a fundamental doughiness. I had meditated about being released from that deep holding so I could continue to unfold my own journey. Then I had the dream about the worms coming out of my toe.…

“I’m afraid we will fall into some old patterns; I still feel tender in the places that got twanged, and I feel a little roily sensation in my stomach that must be fear. I am excited to see Gay—he is very important to me—and I am assuming nothing right now about the next day or the next interaction. I know that I love Gay. I tap a deep clarity for me when I realize that I love Gay. I know that Gay loves me, and beyond that, I don’t know.…

“I think this new emphasis on harmony in closeness and
harmony in individuation is a key, and I hear that Gay wants this evolution to happen in ways that are friendly to everyone and particularly that don’t drain his bank account and cause him to live in a van down by the river. As I live on this edge, I seem to make close friends with fear every day, going deeper with each breath and discovering what to do each day as if I have no history.…

“I’m just having another set of waves of fear that I’ll be alone and unloved, that deep alone and loneliness that I experienced as a child. I am still not totally friendly with being alone, I guess. Gay was saying that he has stepped into a new relationship, closer in some way to me, of absolute love, that he has absolute love for me. Any pulling back from loving me is just ego, that there is no question. And he said he can understand my feelings about being in my forties and fearing being no longer desirable, although he sees me as beautiful and more beautiful every day, that he can understand from the culture how I might feel and some of why I was so upset. And that that is not his problem, it’s really my issue. He can’t deal with my getting older; only I can do that. And I can’t deal with his getting older; only he can do that. And we can honor each other in this journey.…

“So what about sex and sexuality? This issue seems to be about life-energy and the expression of life-energy. Whatever Gay decides—or I decide—at any point to do about our sexual feelings is something that we can honor in each other and just have to see what seems best to do. I can’t control that, nor do I want to, although I do feel scared when I think of the possibility of Gay having a sexual relationship with another woman. Some base, some home base disappeared this spring in which I could rest and have deep space. Maybe that time is just over for now and evolving into something else. I feel some profound dumbness rolling through, where I can only say, ‘I don’t know.’ The edge that not knowing provides is a daily lesson in the impermanence of life, that Gay could get hit by a bus, that I could drop out of the sky.…

“We started having sex, and it became really clear that the charge builds to a certain point, then my breathing goes on backward and the muscles in my belly tighten almost spasmodically. It reminds me of not being able to participate with pushing with my son Chris because of the caudal and because the doctor and nurses were saying, ‘Don’t push,’ when I couldn’t feel whether I was pushing or not. I had lots of tears and some new sensations began to open up in my pelvis, and I really appreciated being attended to and paid attention to so closely.…

“To declare our love complete in each moment is a new concept. To have love be the vehicle for going all the way in individual evolution is the new path. The usual temptation is to have love be a security blanket, a place to also go to sleep against the vast insecurities of life, a buffer against chaos. Most people get their mate and ignore or sidestep affairs or flirtations with others in order not to disrupt the buffer. To face into the attractions and use them to evolve consciousness, to learn from them, is my current challenge.…

“I want all my life-energy to be expressed, and I want all of Gay’s life-energy to be expressed, to really celebrate who he is and the moment-to-moment unfolding of his essence. I can only tell the truth and continue to take responsibility. I can’t separate my life from my being with Gay; that is my life, and what life gives me, I bless and use and dance with as far as I can. I want to fully honor my own intelligence—which is, if I don’t move, I don’t get it—and I want to come back home to fully honor the way my intelligence works and offer that to the world because that’s what I love. I am a work in progress with legions of projects and pages and questions to share. If partners lived each day into a question, or questions, that could open a new breeze through the routine and things that need to be done. What question could best serve me today? How can I experience and express love and full responsibility in each moment today?

“I want total passion in my life again. I want Gay to look at me with passion, to grab me and want to ravish me. I don’t want to
be the perfect wife who has no sexual energy, whom Gay doesn’t desire. I want him to tell me what he’s feeling and wanting, and want to touch me and be close to me. I want to be fully celebrated for my magnificence and to have my continuing magnificence supported. I take a stand for expressing and supporting my full magnificence.

“After being in the grip of fear on and off during the day and falling into the void several times during the evening, I popped through into a new sense of peace and excitement about ten-thirty or so. I realized at a new body level that I am responsible for all my life, my interactions, and my energy level and interests and responses and creativity and feelings. In the morning Gay had asked me to focus on letting go of trying to control any aspect of his life. I think that started the refocusing of my energy and thoughts. I feel in charge of my own life and ready to take on the task of creating my future.…

“I wonder what new rhythms and container will be created out of this new wave of growth? I feel happy to have these projects, to have my close friends and allies that I’ve developed over the years, and to have the opportunity to step into this new space. Some of these experiences are fleeting, and I want to have the permanent, unshakable ongoing experience of joyful responsibility that weaves and cycles up my body with each breath and allows me to create magic with people when I work, by myself or in Gay’s presence. I can blend so well and want to discover the firmness and definition of self, individual, resolution. Not will, or efforting, but flowing like a river of light that is so inviting that people just dive into their radiance and discover how to swim.

“The cellular program that drives me to compare is fused down in my cells, and it takes big medicine to bust it free. Ms. Disgusted Miserable Victim and Passionate Poet. I shifted into PP late last night in a conversation with Gay. To take total responsibility for my permanent embrace of PP, I need to take over the shift to flow rather than make Gay responsible and me reactive; to spot the places in life where I (and students) are reactive, where
the world is doing something to me, or them. The feel of victim in the body for me is: limp, drained, tunnel vision, sadness that is not genuine but rather totally about self and being wronged and comparing in my mind while wringing out my chest, I had been stubbornly clinging to reacting to Gay, which cannot happen anymore. Well, I could try, but I would just bark the skin of my soul against his enormity, and I wouldn’t stop him.…

“The pure excitement of consciousness and going all the way in this lifetime is the true impulse. I knew that by being with Gay I could have the best opportunity to go all the way in my evolution and possibilities. And I am truly grateful and feel blessed to have made that choice and have had this time. Whether it continues or not, I made the only choice that my soul could, given my longing to be fully human.

“There is some big rewiring to do in my pelvis, and Gay suggested looking at it as a one-year or ten-year project. Gay said yesterday that he realized, when he let himself feel sexual feelings for another woman, that he really didn’t want to have actual genital sex with her. It was more like a whole-body energy experience that he wanted, and he felt that allowing himself to experience this feeling had already opened up his creativity. He said he didn’t know whether that would always be true, but today that is so.

“We have the basis of deep friendship and caring, laughter and knowing each other’s history and preferences. A deeper door can be opened by becoming whole in this deepest realm that I had really given up on years ago, as Gay gave up in his way. I had thought that sexual ecstasy was not possible and had rationalized that by focusing on what was possible and channeling my life-energy into our relationship and the work. I said what I want is to re-create our relationship from both of us being whole, and that my quest over the next period of time is to follow the impulses that will allow me to regain my wholeness.…

“I still feel regular waves of territoriality and anger at this disruption of my life, and I’m grateful for the impact and the aliveness I’m already experiencing. I imagine that part of the shock is
having my base of reference so abruptly removed. When I look at Gay now, I see almost no sparks; I can’t read the looks, which are so different. I can see that Gay’s forehead is bunched, or that he looks turgid, but I don’t know what that means. I really like not being labeled and judged and interpreted; I think the future lies in our new set of commitments.…

“I have huge blank spots where meaning used to live. A whiteout of meaning and association, and still I can be happy. I love doing what I do and don’t know where that will take me. I discovered again yesterday that a withheld angry thought produces misery. I realized last night at the theater that I have been resisting the way things are. I had been hoping that if I just grit through this, that Kristin will disappear. When we were at the theater before the play started, Gay whispered something to her, and she whispered something back. My stomach dropped again, and I went crazy inside, got white-hot angry and wanted to get up and walk over them as I left. It must have reminded me of all the secrets in my family that never got communicated, how messages were indirectly delivered and delivered for someone else. And I didn’t say anything in the theater, got to accepting the situation inside before acknowledging the anger out loud. When I finally got the anger out in the morning, I returned to feeling fine.…