September 15, 2008

Shifts taking place in my inner world:

A voice emerging saying: I will heed my own council. I have been an independent thinker for years, but this is another level of understanding that I am the authority in my life. What I want counts. I’m so often trying to do the “right” thing, and reading and learning and trying to understand what that is from people outside of me. I think that’s great, but then, after I gather information, I get to decide. Now the idea that I know what I want, and I know what is good for me is emerging and I’m realizing that its true.

Cool outside mirror of this inner shift: I just read about a lecture that I want to attend that talks about listening to our own inner voice:

Thomas Patrick Lavin, Ph.D.
Sins of Obedience: Giving Too Much to God and Caesar

Why can’t you just do what you are told? This is the question many of us heard often between our pre-kindergarten and post-graduate rites of initiation. Obeying the “powers that be” seemed a necessary stage in adjusting to the demands and expectations of the collective into which we were born. Until—like the prophet Samuel and the Irish poet W. B. Yeat’s “Wandering Angus”—we heard our name called by a new voice and knew we had to spend the rest of our lives following that voice.

I want my mind to be a happy place to be. I recently re-read a book called There is nothing wrong with you written by Cheri Huber and designed and illustrated by June Shiver. When I first read it, about ten years ago, it really irritated me. “There is a LOT wrong with me! I’m NOT perfect just like I am right now! I need to work and improve myself!”

I couldn’t grasp most of the concepts, but one image stayed with me, an illustration of someone yelling into a baby carriage, “You horrible, needy thing!” I started to think, wait, babies ARE perfect, and they drool on themselves and poop in their pants! They can’t even walk, but they are perfect just like they are… that was a little seed that stayed with me through the years and I thought, “Maybe I’m a perfect 20 something year old… even though I (metaphorically) drool on myself and am still learning to walk?”

In the past few days, I’ve been remembering Kris, a fellow exchange student with a sunny disposition. I don’t remember the context of the conversation (it was about 18 years ago,) I said that I thought I was too nice sometimes. “You can never be too nice.” She told me.

I think I have been too nice at times if you think of nice as socially polite and suppressing your own wants. But, I haven’t been as nice as I want to be in my own head.

I wonder if Kris was talking about the happy-in-your-head kind of nice?  I wonder if people who feel really safe and good to be around have a happy head?  I think they do. I want that for myself and the people I’m around. I want my head to be a really nice and happy place to be. Not nice in a syrupy way, but in a kind and accepting, and fun, and life-affirming, and forgiving way.

I’ll tell you about how I’ve started making my head a nicer place to be in my next post.

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