ONE MIND

The first 30 years or so of life are often spent in a state very much like sleep. Like me, maybe you ran through life making choices based on what you had been told about the world and your place in it, rather than what you knew or experienced yourself. Like a blindfolded person in a forest running unceremoniously into random trees and consequences, we are not yet aware of the landscape of our lives or the experiences that contributed to who you believed yourself to be. In my own life, I cared more about what others thought of me than what I thought of myself. This is what I had been taught by my culture, my family and friends. I had lost the ability to listen to my own intuition, having been taught to mind my parents and the things they cared about more than what I felt inside. In adulthood, I went about making important decisions based on motivations I didn’t even know I had. It is normal that we are told as young people what the expectations we should have of our life are. It is also necessary in adulthood to take responsibility for what we believe and this time presents itself differently for everyone.

I was governed almost entirely by fear of failure and regret- my ego or the part of my mind which identifies me as human and finite fully defined my choices. I was more devastated having disappointed my parents or teachers than if I had disappointed myself. Very often I found myself afraid and feeling quite hopeless and helpless. I had no clue what it meant to live life joyfully and fully immersed in my own capacities. Despite all the Sundays I attended church with my family and having my first communion and attending Sunday school, I didn’t have the first idea what faith or God was. As i grew older, the world increasingly felt like a crazy out of control place that was going to eat me alive. And, looking at my parents as an example of what life looked like, I figured you grew up, worked allot, got miserable and died. Nothing looked very promising from where I stood for many years. I developed the “chameleon” ability of blending in with my surroundings to gain acceptance of the world around me. Soon I was unable to distinguish between the “masked” and the “real” me.

I became as increasingly unhappy as everyone living an incongruent life can be. Over time this hopelessness unravelled into what they called clinical depression and I was misdiagnosed with bi-polar disorder. The doctors tried to find solutions to my “emotional confusion” through a variety of pharmaceuticals interventions. My family tried to reason it away with our personal family demons and friends did what they could, but until I experienced a deep personal shift of my own, happiness would forever elude me. After 19 years of doctors and drugs and exterior solutions I eventually found that there was no person, no pill, no drug, no situation that could create happiness for me – it would have to come from within a deep hidden place that I had lost access to a long time ago. It would have to come from a total change of my mind – I needed a miracle.

I have learned that we always get what we need. All ways.

Around 1997 my life began a complete unravelling process. Looking back now it almost seems choreographed perfectly, although it certainly didn’t seem like that at the time standing in the middle of a chaotic mess; it felt more like I was about to drown in circumstance.

My father had died leaving a great rift of fear, sadness and lack of resolution in my life. My marriage was dissolving before my eyes and I was home parenting my three young children who were at the time all under 6 years old. Everything I thought life would be like when I was younger was the opposite of what I had created. My family of origin had become uncommunicative and distant and I felt increasingly alone in a world full of “normal” people. I had long before given up the many forms of creative expression I enjoy; playing guitar, drawing, writing or painting, feeling as though these activities were a waste of time since they did not contribute to the family coffers. Value was associated always with money. Eventually my world became smaller and smaller until I stopped answering the door or the telephone and holed myself in, firmly resolved to be as uninvolved in people and relationships as possible since everyone else seemed to be the problem. I had not yet identified that the common factor throughout all of these unhappy situations was in fact ME, and it would take me another decade of trial and error, a near death experience and a transformative intervention by the universe.

The marriage fell apart and I moved out with my three children, the dog and cats, a coffee table and the children’s bedroom furniture. I got a job and began attending a self help group which emphasized use of the 12 steps. After a while, I found my voice again, and began to play guitar with the new friends I was making. I began to draw and paint and write slowly, shaking out the stiffness of so many years lacking in self expression. Just the smallest act of saying YES to a few good things made it so that my world began to open up. In a few years I found myself in a completely new life, with a new husband and now seven children. But the same problems, now unresolved, still hung around my shoulder like a iron shawl.

Luckily, my second husband was a musician and so we pursued music together and found so much happiness in sharing this experience. My life as a professional musician took off with his support, and for a long time, things developed neatly along these lines. But, creativity can only go as far as the creator, and so my music was not evolving after a time because I wasn’t evolving. Although I had changed many things about my exterior circumstances I found that my perceptions about life had followed me because my thinking had not changed. I was repeating the same mistakes, just in a different context.

I was terrified of major changes again after the experiences I had during my first marriage and subsequent divorce, and that this fear was controlling many of the decisions I was making - or avoiding making. I was standing still, not moving forward, afraid to create any chaos and change which I didn’t feel I would be able to handle – walking on eggshells around my own self. My life had become “good enough” and I coasted through it, trying to maintain the precarious balance, hesitant to shake up any of the waters. I was trying to control the uncontrollable until of course the Universe interceded on my behalf and really shook things up.

With seven young children running around it was very easy to hide behind the circumstances of my life. I was busy, involved, teaching, professional soccer mom, making meals, 16 loads of a laundry every three days and balancing an impossible budget. There were tons of issues to rely on to take me away from my central issue, which of course was ME. We had a large house, a garden and a pool. It was easy to find ways to stay busy. But, quietly in the background this unease and discontent was once again festering inside of me. I piled activity upon activity until I was certain I wouldn’t have to stand still and face the ultimate challenge – my own untethered mind.

But as you already know, avoidance only makes problems grow. I became so deathly afraid of change and even just normal life situations that I suffered from horrendous anxiety attacks which would cause me to pull my car over in the middle of a busy highway unable to continue moving forward or not answer the phone and never ever go to the mailbox. I recall a trip to the grocery store once where I had to turn my car around before even entering the store after crying helplessly in the parking lot for twenty minutes unable to overcome my fear of encountering a situation “out there” in would not be able to handle.

I took absolutely everything personally. I believed that the Universe hated me. Soon I perceived every event in life was present designed speficially to cause me pain and fear and stress. I remember often saying in my head “I must have been VERY bad in a previous life” that obviously if there was a God- He was punishing me. And this was the basis of my relationship with God; as the coordinator of my misery.

Over time, I created everything I feared. I feared loneliness, so I found myself alone. I feared failure, so I failed. I fear attack from others, and was attacked. I feared negative judgement from my community and found myself branded with a giant scarlet “S”. Physically I became frequently sick. I was overweight from the medications doctors plyed me with, and my heart would beat so quickly that on a couple of occasions I thought I was having a heart attack. Even worse, my only sanctuary had been found in singing, but had now become so terrifying for me, I was sick before nearly every performance. My songs were tentative and didn’t flow from my heart and I worried constantly about what the audience thought of me so I stopped writing music afraid to reveal too much of myself to the world.

My struggles ran off into my family life; about ten years after all of this began we found ourselves bankrupt and needing to leave our home where we raised our kids.

What to do? No choice but to surrender.

I wrote these lyrics for a song called Path of Least Resistance:

Walking down the road, all by myself

Thought I saw you up ahead,

in the distance.

Held out my hand,

Asked if you can,

Show me the way to least resistance.

Then I saw a light,

Shining way down yonder,

I saw a light,

Past my last surrender.

And I put on foot in front of the next,

Walking down the road.

The world began to open from the moment we began to loose what I felt -was our “foundation”, I let go what what I thought was supposed to be - and we moved onto our first farm. I believed this would be the answer to finding happiness. However, the farm became another perfect opportunity to dive into work and avoid myself again. The unhappiness continued to grow. My life was developing with or without my help. Being on a farm had been my dream since my earliest memories. I had always loved farm work and now I found myself working 16 hours a day, running a riding school, boarding stable, lessons, shows, kids, school, driving, meals, shopping, stalls, singing – there was never a time in my days where I sat quietly to gather myself. I just kept running from one marathon to another until I was exhausted beyond recognition.

Two years later I was done. I had reached a bottom of unparalleled depths. My children now older didn’t need me as much, we had moved to a new farm and life had become quieter since closing the riding school and just having our own quiet country life. I found myself with a great deal of open space and time which I had no idea how to fill. Without any chaos to fill the quiet spaces, I unravelled once again into a seven week depression that lasted pervasively until one night I decided that I could not see any possible future for myself and would end it. I felt without purpose and without hope or desire. I no longer had children, family or chaos to blame my unhappiness on, I didn’t have an extremely busy life; I only had TIME and it felt like horrendous torture, alone with my mind. I couldn’t even decipher my own thoughts, they were pent up and running so fast.

I went to bed one January night with a new resolve. With all of my pills lined up beside me; Lithium, Seroquil. Desyrl – I was an emotional cripple. I didn’t know where I belonged in this life anymore and I wanted to check out. The plan was that I would sleep until everyone was asleep; until 3:00am which had lately become my weird hour of waking. I would get into my pick-up truck leaving a note that I couldn’t sleep and had gone for a drive (not terribly abnormal for me in those days). During that drive, I would go as far as I could until I would find the perfect highway underpass to run my truck into, causing myself to die and no one else. I didn’t want my children living with the legacy of suicide and felt this was the best option. I felt a kind of relief on this decision. Another surrender: ironically and because I had simply “given up” control over my future, I fell into a rare and deep sleep. My life was about to completely turn around and I didn’t even see it coming.