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Thursday, May 20, 2010

A Week of Epiphanies

I am participating in a two-year masters in spiritual psychology program through the University of Santa Monica (USM); we are heading into the final stretch. As has always been true to a greater or lesser degree, I’ve spent the last few months beating myself up regarding how much more I could have/should have done during the last two years. I could be so much further along in my life, in my growth as a person, as a writer, as an actor, as a human being. Then, a week ago, my niece ran a 5K race for her college. For almost all of the 16+ minutes of the race, Ari was toward the back of the pack, but in the last two or three laps, she began to pull ahead, and in the end she streaked past the stunned leader and won by a second – long in race time.

Ari – you are my metaphor.

I had another defining moment solidifying my intention to move to the front of the pack (my own pack – consisting of only me – let everyone else run their own race). I experienced that when I look out at the world, I see only myself. When I see peace and loving, it is because I am living in peace and loving, and when I see judgment and annoyance, it is because I am experiencing judgment and annoyance – against myself.

I am not much for jewelry or other adornments, but I tried on a USM class ring. It was a magical experience – Harry Potter finding his rightful wand. This ring was at home on my finger – my wedding ring finger, but I decided it was an unnecessary expenditure of money and walked away from the table. For the next 10 minutes or so all I saw around me were people ignoring me, people looking at me funny, and I started to feel insecure and drop back into my loner self. Then it hit me, I had ignored myself, I had ignored this ‘uncommon’ desire to own something. I realized I had to purchase the ring and at the next possible time did so. Later that day, I won a raffle for an evening valued at $1,000 dollars.

I honored myself.

Last night I went to bed weary to the Soul; I could barely stand up. It didn’t feel like I was physically exhausted though it was manifesting that way. It was, as I have come to realize, spiritual exhaustion. I woke up remembering a dream – a bad one – I never remember my dreams. My meditation was an exercise in negative thinking – lots of dark thoughts – as a matter of fact, there have been a plethora of negative thoughts since I got off the plane yesterday, and then it hit me. I had, once again, ignored myself and my Self was getting exhausted from me not listening.

The morning had been great – I got on the plane – getting to the gate just as my group was getting on. I got my perfect seat in the back by a window, and later a nice gentleman sat on the aisle. Then the plane started to fill up and at the end, there was an African American family – mom, dad, and two young boys – who were all going to middle seats. In a rush, business men and women rearranged themselves to sit in middle seats so that this family could sit together. My seat mate, another frequent flying business man, moved to the center so that the dad could be on the aisle just one row behind his family. I was touched and started to tear up. I was moved by the kindness of strangers – in Orange County; white folks inconveniencing themselves to be kind to black folks. I was moved and called to write about it right then. It was so present in me, but it was inconvenient. I didn’t have the paper and didn’t want to dive into my backpack for it; I figured I’d remember it and write about it later. At one point during the trip the baby seated right behind me started to scream. She screamed and screamed and when I could no longer block it out, I looked over my seat and made unfriendly eye contact with mother and aunt. I wanted to strangle the kid. The rest of the day was uneventful but never felt quite right, the class I had flown from Orange County to Oakland to attend that night did not have the juice it normally did for me. The evening back at home with sister, brother-in-law, and boyfriend-in-law was empty and exhausting and I needed to go to bed. I woke up still tired and cranky.

I made myself get out of bed; I made breakfast for my brother-in-law and myself, and then sat down to e-mails and other things and the realization that once again, I had not listened to myself. It seemed so simple, and went by so innocuously, I didn’t write when called to write. And so I looked at everything else and realized there was an e-mail that I had to write to a few people I had done a process with at USM last weekend, and I had to write this experience down, and I had to commit to following my intuition and do what it tells me when it tells me or I would be going against myself and not pulling up as I said I wanted to for those last two winning laps. My dreams, or one of them, is to follow my intuition, to follow ‘my truth,’ to listen to myself and obey it – obey myself – not someone else telling me what to do, but me telling myself what I really, truly want. The affirmation I have been using this year is: With loving discipline, I am following and honoring the truth of my heart, embracing my dreams, and living them fully and playfully with enthusiasm and authentic self-expression.

Not sometimes, not even most of the time. It is time to win this race by listening and following all of the time (or at least as all of the time as my humanness will allow).

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Another One Bites the Dust

by Susan Cameron

I patted my old Saturn goodbye yesterday.
I loved that car. It was
Hard-working, reliable and fun –
The perfect partner, yes?
But car years are like dog years.
So at fifteen,
Unless there was costly life support,
My Saturn was at the end of the final road.

The air conditioning fan had failed, so
I listened, window down, as we squeaked
To a halt at the stop light –
Listened to the death rattle of the exhausted engine,
Clattering despite the half-quart of oil it drank a week –
Smelled the faint whiff of sulfuric rotten egg
From the failed catalytic converter
Making its way through the rumbling muffler
And out the rusty tailpipe
As we headed to the junkyard.

But it was a good car, a great car, a noble car,
Even as it struggled and gasped –
A dying car
From a dead division
Of a near-dead car company
In the dying city of Detroit –

My Saturn, tough and gutsy to the end,
Knowing this was a good day to die,
Sang mariachi music at the top of its lungs
And I saluted
As it headed to the crusher.

copyright 2010, Susan Cameron

Monday, May 3, 2010

Legacy

The two farms near tiny Colfax, Illinois were in our family for decades and as such figured in our history. We are not a family of farmers. We didn’t work the land; we only owned the corn and soybean farms our grandfather, the town undertaker, bought cheap in the early 1940’s. Still, the farms were our family legacy, the last tangible connection to our Illinois roots.

“You’ll always have the land,” my mother told my sister and me with an obvious sense of pride that she had something of value to pass on to us. It was a comforting thought, that no matter what, there was a safe place for us.

My mother and her sister inherited the farms in the late 50’s. With tenant farmers installed, my mother became the long-distance farm manager, first from Chicago, then from California. A homemaker, she seemed ill equipped to be a farm manager, but she blossomed in the role. She learned about soil, seed and crop rotation, grain bins, combines and the commodities market. Amazing everyone, she developed an uncanny sense for the best time to sell the crops, and the family dubbed her the Soybean Queen in honor of her farm management prowess.

As kids, my sister, four cousins and I cared nothing about the farms. Our Colfax was the brick house in town where our mothers grew up. We all came together there in the summers – my aunt and cousins driving from Iowa, my mother, sister and I from Chicago. We kids explored the attic and swayed on the porch swing until we almost threw up. We chased each other up and down the grand central staircase, flicked box elder bugs off the sunroom windowsills and played checkers on the cool concrete floor of the screened-in backyard summerhouse. Colfax was the place where we were all one family once a year.

Then the six of us were off to college and getting married and having children. Colfax faded into memory. We had no relatives left there and strangers owned the brick house. As if a farmer had blown seeds into the wind, we scattered all over the world, taking root in Iowa and North Carolina and Seattle and Denver and California and Australia, growing our own families. We had little in common anymore.

First my aunt died, then my mother, and we had to decide what to do with the farms. The cousins wanted to sell them. My sister and I made the case for keeping them - our roots are there, we said. But it was complicated. We were all so distant from the land, physically and emotionally, our lives so diverse. With all our children, there were now so many more heirs to consider. Finally, a tax problem compelled us to hold the land for ten more years. In compromise, we all agreed to sell after that.

Management fell to me, but I didn’t have my mother’s knack for it. I was busy with my family and a business. I stressed and waffled on when to sell the crops. What did I know about such things? I couldn’t even find Colfax when I went for the annual visit, always getting lost amid identical fields of corn and soybeans, until miraculously the Colfax water tower would rise up on the horizon like Brigadoon in the mist. But when I stood on our land and talked to our farmer about our crops, I felt like I was home.

Finally, it was time to sell, and I thought I was ready to let go, ready for the money to be in my bank account, ready to be free.

It was March when my sister and I met our farm manager at the Colfax farm one last time. We talked about price and terms and methods of sale, settling on the best way to market the property. I had driven right to the farm without getting lost, which struck me as ironic. Just as we were letting the farms go, I’d figured out how to get there.

Afterward, we stopped by the brick house in town. It was for sale and looked worn out. Climbing the front steps to the porch we’d played on as kids, we knocked on the door, hoping to be able to go inside. A dirty lace curtain rustled at the dining room window, but no one answered the door. We looked around at the porch’s peeling paint and rotten floorboards, before giving up and driving the 150 miles back to Chicago in silence.

By Christmas we had sold the farms, and everyone was pleased with the deal. I was glad it was done, glad to have the money. But when I opened the envelope and pulled out the substantial check for my share, I felt an overwhelming sadness. As I looked at that check, held it in my hands, I thought how flimsy it felt. It couldn’t compare to the solid promise of the land that had been our family legacy. The land that kept us all connected, the land that nurtured my mother’s talents and confidence, the land she said we’d always have – that land was gone. And even though I knew we’d done what needed doing, I cried for our family’s loss.

Copyright 2010 by Liz Zuercher