The next night I had another dream. This one in response to the question: How can I invoke my artistic muse?

You see I had watched Elizabeth Gilbert’s brilliant TED talk:

Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of Eat, Pray, Love and in this talk she makes a case for believing that our creative genius comes from outside of ourselves instead of having all the pressure of being a creative genius on our own heads.

Anyway, if you have 20 minutes do watch it, it’s possibly life-changing. Actually, if you click on the link to TED, the transcript is in the right hand box so you can read it instead of watching it.

Back to my dream.

I am in a car dealership. Terrorists rush in and take a group of hostages. I am there, but somehow not part of the group of hostages. I am the means by which these hostages might be freed. My very straight-laced Dutch co-worker pal from my past is there, possibly he works at the car dealership. My task to free the hostages: make a film. The right film. A good film. But no other parameters than that. My pal Darren the Dutchman is conscripted in service to aid me in this task. In his customary good-natured way, he’s going with the flow. And then somehow, I know that I need Wendell (Who is Wendell?). Wendell is the genius. He is going to tell me what to do. He will bring the genius to the film. And somehow the idea of Wendell morphs into this stereotypical gay. Think Gok Kwan or Mario Cantone (oh Google it, I can’t do everything for you). Wendell never shows up to save the day. And the situation instead of becoming more dire becomes increasingly silly. Clearly, no matter how long the film is delayed the hostages are not going to be killed. They are probably free to go if they would just get up and leave. Darren and I become giggly and slightly hysterical saying things like “Yes, when WENDELL gets here he’ll save the day.” ”Oh, of course, WENDELL will know what to do.” – always saying his name with the right breathy awe-inspired reverence.

And then I wake up both filmless and Wendell-less.

So, this dream seems to be telling me a few things:

1) Lighten up. It’s art, not a hostage taking. No one is going to die if you don’t make the right piece of art. This reminds me of something Hiro Boga said in the Follow the Yellow Brick Road teleclass. “Silliness is an important spiritual quality.”

2) Start before Wendell shows up. Don’t wait for Wendell.

3) Maybe Wendell doesn’t exist. Or maybe he’s not as much of a genius as I’ve come to believe he is.

4) Maybe I put too much faith in the knowledge of others. I too have to know what I know. It’s like I have forced ignorance on myself. I don’t know how to do that. Someone has to teach me.

Any other thoughts? I don’t know that I’ve fully plumbed the full meaning of this one.

Okay, so after writing all the stuff down that came up at my naturopath’s appointment (Like psychotherapy but with vitamins! That should totally be his tagline).

What I couldn’t figure out what was what the connection was between feeling forced to be on a diet (and resenting being forced) and being invisible–other than that one instance where I felt forced by virtue of a job description to be invisible. But how was a diet forcing me to be invisible? Yes, it was making me smaller, but in the acting world that only makes you more visible. Was I resisting becoming more visible?

What was the connection between the struggle of the diet and my parallel struggle to become a professional actor?

This is the question I wrote down before I went to sleep.

And this is the dream I had:

(Note: if you find people describing their dreams to be tedious and a drag, you might want to find another blog to read. Seriously.)

My dad is yelling at my mom about some large financial mistake she made. Something to do with an EBay account and transferring money and blah, blah, blah, details not important. My mom is lying ill in bed with cancer. Mrs. B. is there (a friend of the family, a woman I used to babysit for, a cancer survivor). Mrs. B is rolling her eyes at my dad’s hysterics and tsk tsk tsking without actually saying anything to him. But I can see her disapproval. I am trying to calm my dad down by yelling back at him, while I have this secondary focus of trying to attend to my very ill mother. I am angry that my Dad is yelling about something completely irrelevant to what is actually important in this scene — tending to this ill woman who is so important to us all.

A LOT of drama.

Here’s the thing. My Dad really does have a bad temper. I spent a lot of time in my youth dealing with his anger, mostly by yelling back. My mom really is ill with cancer — terminally ill actually. However, they do not have anything to do with EBay and Mrs. B. might see my parents at church but she hasn’t been at my parent’s house probably for years.

I woke up thinking that I had just had a weird dream, nothing to do with the question I asked.

Until I remembered what I believe about dreams, namely that we are all the characters in our dreams. I am my Dad. I am my Mom. I am the illness. I am Mrs. B. I am the sick bed. I am myself. I am the EBay account gone horribly wrong.

And suddenly it all made sense.

I’ve been raging at myself about my inability to do this diet correctly. Making the diet the most important thing. Making my diet the barometer of my worth. I can’t be on stage until I’m thin. And my very ill artist is trying to assuage the anger but she is too ill to really do anything about it. And really THE DIET ISN’T THE POINT. My artist needs healing and comfort. Diets are not creative food. I need to feed my artist first. The weight goal might still be a goal — but it’s not the most important goal. Healing my artist is the true focus–or it should be.

And then I wept for 10 minutes. I felt so awful for bullying my artist while not even finding out what she needs. No wonder she’s completely unwilling and perhaps unable to be on a diet. Maybe she is scared that I’m going to say — “Hey, I’ve lost 50 pounds, I must be a brilliant actor now.” Maybe staying stuck is the protection she needed since she wasn’t getting what she needed to stop being invisible.

My fat is like the quilt I’ve stuffed in the front of the closet to stop the rage from finding me hiding in the back of the closet. No wonder I didn’t want to part with it.

My only fear is that my artist is terminally ill, but I don’t think so. My subconscious used the most evocative imagery that it had on hand. Right? I could use some agreement on that point.

Now to make a practice out of finding out what my artist needs. And then doing it.

PLEASE DO FEED THE ARTIST!!!

Yes, I have. 16.2 pounds actually.

Good for me.

Back in April I started going to a new naturopath. It was such a good move. This guy is the most holistic practitioner I’ve ever been to. So sometimes it’s all about the practical. And other times it’s all about the woo-woo. For instance, in my first few weeks I had to drink algae (practical) and work through a belief I had that I was unable to lose weight (woo-woo).

But, in May and June, I’ve been getting stuck. No weight loss. Finding it harder to stay on the diet. Feeling resentful about how hard this whole thing was.

Back to the naturopath. He asked me where I felt this feeling of resentment (my solar plexus). He asked me to intensify that feeling (not hard, believe me). And then asked to remember another time when I’d had that feeling. What came up for me was when I’d started working my dream job for my dream company, but I discovered that part of my portfolio required that I be the liason to the board. Which meant I had to do minutes, stay late for meetings, and basically be this invisible person as I was the lowest status person in the room. So, be at the meeting but be silent and unseen. Not what I’d envisioned when I got the job.

Tell me more about being an invisible person.

Damn. I should have known he’d leap on that.

Well, I guess it might be a recurring theme. And when I look at, it totally is starting in my earliest recollection when I changed high schools and just couldn’t find my place there for two years. Then there was university where I felt like an outsider in my acting class, like I probably didn’t belong there. Then there was the awful job right out of university with the office full of women who hated me. Then there was my first professional acting gig.

I’d completely lucked into it. I got a call to audition from a resume that I’d sent in at least a year and half prior. My audition partner turned out to be someone I knew so I was more relaxed at the audition. And they needed some non-equity people. Me and my scene partner at the audition got the gig. So, great right? Well, yes and no.

The director turned out to be not very good. So it was hard to get information from him. The five other equity actors in the show were SO GOOD. Really. Like ohmigod fantastic. And I got caught in that vortex of “How did I end up here? They must all know I suck. I’m the only one here who has a real job (actually true). I am not good enough. Why am I not good enough? Why do I not know what I’m doing?” And then to make matters worse, one of the pros I admired let me know that the other non-equity person was driving him crazy and that he viewed this guy as a no-talent. So, I immediately assumed he felt the same towards me.

Man, I’ve been carrying this crazy monologue around inside me for more than a decade. I’m tired of it. Tired of it being an issue. But there we are. Still an issue.

This was my naturopath’s view. It’s like a car accident when time slows down and you can remember every second of it years later. It’s because your body has gone into fight or flight mode and in those intense times your nervous system gets easily imprinted. So, because of my anxiety — constantly finding myself in fight or flight mode — the whole few weeks got imprinted on my system. The energy of that time is stuck in my body.

Time to destuckify.

But that’s for another post.

And yet.

I think writing here more regularly will help keep me in the process.

Or make the process go faster.

Or something.

I mean things have been happening. It just maybe would feel more real if I wrote it down here.

So that’s what I’m a gonna do.

Okay, so the day before yesterday I happened on a website of a local professional theatre company. There is an actress in this company who is getting to play not one, but TWO major leading lady roles this summer in their reportory series. She is lovely. Like Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn lovely. Regal. Classically beautiful. Wonderful actress. I would love to be her. But I am not her. So, I just sat with this large stone of resentment growing in my solar plexus. I resented her beauty, her success, her ability – just the whole package of bitter, gnarled resentment.

Fast Forward to the next morning. I got up late — as usual. Because of this I wasn’t going to do the meditation that I’d promised myself I would do — as usual. I beat myself up about this — as usual. And then for some reason, I just decided, ah screw it with the ‘as usual.’ I’m going to sit my ass down and do some meditation. I pulled out Goddess Leonie’s chakra alignment guided meditation which I purchased last week. And I did the whole 32 minutes — even though my sons interrupted me at the second chakra so I’m not sure my poor second chakra got the full attention it warranted.

Anyway. When I was done I felt all buzzy. Like a real meditation high.

And that concept of resentment started coming up again and again for me.

I then remembered a moment back when I was I don’t know maybe grade 2? My sister and I were walking home from school and a couple of big kids asked us what we were going to be for Halloween. Now in my memory (which may be flawed) we were going to be flowers. But as the John Lithgow song goes “Big kids scare the heck out of me.” Plus I saw our costume from their eyes and decided they would think it was stupid. So I kept walking in stony, I’M IGNORING YOU silence. When they asked a second time, my brave little sister piped up and told them. And, surprisingly, instead of being mean about it, they said “Hey, that’s great. Boy, the little one is nice, but I don’t know about her sister.” And they were right. I was like a jaguar hiding in the leaves and darkness of the jungle, just watching with slit-eyes and a twitching tail for trouble. I was ready to pounce.

I’ve spent a lot of my time, effort and energy being a suspicious jaguar. It’s a protection for sure. But it’s also stopped me from doing what I wanted, because I was sure some big kid would mock me for wanting to dress up as a flower.

So, while I showered after the meditation, I talked to the big kids. I explained what my fear was. I also talked to the jaguar and let her know that she could probably ease up on the pouncing.

And then it was time to tackle the resentment of the day before instead of the stuff of a hundred years ago. I used an alignment technique that I learned from Havi Brooks. You write the name of the person you have a problem with on a piece of paper. You find at least 10 ways in which you are alike. Then you burn the paper. As I was in the shower I couldn’t do the paper thing. But I acknowledged her (the actress). I found ten ways in which we were alike (we both…have fabulous hair, are short, have worked with the same man, have worked for the same company, love theatre, live in the same city, are about the same age, played queens, have a particular love of the classics, work in the arts). And then I just told how much I admire her and acknowledged my desire to in some part be living her life.

Fast Forward to exactly ONE HOUR LATER and I get a phone call as I’m trying to run out the door. It’s a director from a local theatre company (an amateur one though, don’t get too excited) that I auditioned for LAST YEAR and did not get so much as a call back from, who is essentially offering me a lead role in her upcoming production.

Now, as it turns out, I have a scheduling conflict so I can’t do it. But what’s important here is the offer. Because it seems to me that working on my patterns at one end of the chain, unravelled a bunch of knotted stuff somewhere else down (up?) the chain.

PLUS — Remember how I said this was a person that I had auditioned for last year? Well that wasn’t just your ordinary run of the mill — oh well, I didn’t get a call back audition. This was my rock bottom. Because I felt at the time OH MY GOD!!! The day I cannot get a callback from THIS theatre company, is the day I need to hand in my acting license. Clearly I suck.

I was so despondent about it, my husband wouldn’t let me just sit there and cry. He kept after me saying there must be someone whom I can ask for help – someone who can give me some information. And I resisted. Oh, how I resisted. But finally like the Law and Order episode where the key clue is always preceded by the witness saying “Well, it probably means nothing but…” I said “Well I could ask Joe. But he’s so busy he probably won’t have time” “He probably thinks I suck as an actor and it’s been so long since we worked together ….” You get the idea. But in terror I sent the email. And then another. And then I had lunch with him. And then he agreed to help me. And then I got a host company on board. And then we got another guy to help. And now they’re both so excited about it, I’m just sitting back in giddy amazement. 

The long and short of it is that since that audition I’ve put together the course that I kept saying ‘someone’ should offer. And this summer (God willing, if all the remaining annoying pieces will just for the love of monkeys come together) I am not going to work with the amatuer theatre company that I thought was all I deserved but the pros  who are in my estimation some of the best — people that I longed to work with but didn’t think I deserved. 

So, today I bless that director for not calling me back, because it propelled me on to a way, way, like way to the power of 10, better place than I could conceive was possible to me a year ago.

But it’s still nice to know today, that my lack of a call back last year was for reasons other than being generally sucky. That it was a story that I told myself.

And the capper? Later this afternoon, that actress walked by me on the street. Even gave me a sideways glance like “Where do I know her from?” I mean we travel in much the same circles so I wouldn’t have been surprised to see her at the office. But just on the street? A woman who I actually haven’t clapped eyes on in person for probably a year or more?

Weird.

And fast.

Holy cow, if clearing out that Resentment Shoe Collection has such an immediate effect, I’m totally motivated to align myself with every single shoe in there. I expect to be offered a role co-starring with Meryl Streep before Christmas.

What? It doesn’t work like that? Well, my friend, the shoes beg to differ.

For example, some years ago I was (and I use the term loosely) “given” a manger scene. This is from a well-intentioned family friend who has a habit of giving me fat clothes. You know the kind? “I’ve lost weight, would you like my old clothes that don’t fit my anymore?” So, I felt more dumped on than given. But I didn’t have a manger scene, so for a 2 or 3 Christmases I tried to make it work.

But the thing was it didn’t work. I didn’t have a place that was big enough for them. I felt like they just looked ceramics class ugly. So, instead of feeling joyful and “oh how beautiful!” every time I looked at that manger scene all I felt was “Ack! That thing is ugly. It’s too big! Why did I have to get the ugly manger scene!”  

And then while at my sister’s house for Christmas I realized that she had a perfect spot for the manger scene and all she had was a teeny tiny manger scene that got swallowed up by the space it was in. So, I checked with her (see? not dumping.) and she thought she’d like to give it a try.

And here’s the crazy thing. Not only does that manger scene fit in that spot. It looks gorgeous in that spot. Like the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, it has been completely transformed into a shiny happy thing of beauty.

I had to let it go so it could find where it would shine.

Another example: I have a bunch of interconnected acquaintances. There is this one woman — let’s call her Beth. She was married to Josh. After years of staying married and then living together but separately, they finally divorced. Another woman in that same circle, let’s call her Amanda, had also been through a divorce. And now Amanda and Josh have discovered each other and are madly, madly in love. And she is shining like I’ve never seen her shine before.

The marriage that wasn’t working had to be let go of in order to find the one that does.

So, this isn’t just a case of one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

Here’s the lesson:

From manger scenes to marriages everything is meant to shine.

But sometimes we have to let those things go that can’t shine with us.

And we have to let go of the things that are dulling our own shine.

Maybe a deconstruction zone.

Maybe both at the same time.

At my office, I just survived several months of construction (power riveting, ratcheting, sawing, hammering, tile sawing, and yes, even pile driving). It was incredibly loud. Like loud to the point the contractor brought me earplugs. It was also inconvenient. I still don’t have an office that is back to rights and in fully functional condition.

And now, right next door to me the vacant lot is being transformed into a neighbourhood of 11 houses.

ELEVEN NEW NEIGHBOURS ARE IN MY FUTURE!

Can you feel my heart singing with joy?

Me either.

But my lack of joy has not stopped the big machines from coming in and now instead of having to go to the office to have the experience of a construction zone, I can have all the loudness and inconvenience of a construction zone right in the comfort of my own home.

This week pipes were installed underground. This required much digging, asphalt cutting, and pounding of dirt.

Oh the pounding! The glasses in the cupboard rattling. The windows and walls of my home shaking. It was a treat I tell you.

A flagperson had to flag me out of my own driveway.

Now I don’t want to go all Law of Attraction on you, but it’s got me to thinking…

Why would deconstruction and construction be happening quite literally all around me?

It has me feeling like Harold Crick in Stranger than Fiction. You know the scene where Harold has determined to do nothing to see if he can control his own fate? He sits at home watching whatever was on the tv when he turned it on, not even risking the simple act of changing the channel. And in the midst of his nothingness, a wrecking ball blasts through the wall of his apartment. A construction crew has read the address wrong on their orders.

But to me it means more than Harold can’t control his fate.

In our dreams our psyche is often represented by a house. A wrecking ball coming through the walls of your house indicates to me a change of consciousness. The old constructs of the psyche no longer apply.

Now my own home hasn’t changed, and my office has only changed insofar as it now houses a new pipe and I don’t yet have the new shelving installed — but all this construction around me is forcing me to change in response to it. Things are not the same.

And while I won’t go so far as to say I created this construction zone, it does reflect for me in the outer world my own inner reality.

I am not just in a deconstruction, construction zone. 

I am carrying a construction deconstruction zone with me. 

I am a construction deconstruction zone.  

Which when you come to think of it is pretty cool.

It’s alchemy.

It’s the Phoenix.

It’s the Dance of Shiva

It’s the continuos force of creation and destruction.

It’s flow.

Huh. Flow.

I construct.

I deconstruct.

I flow.

Awesome.

After all, if any base material will do for transformation into gold, then my obese middle-aged body should do nicely.

But what I’ve learned about alchemy tells me that the actual transformation of the base material into gold can be done easily.

I just need a philosopher’s stone.

Well that sounds easy enough.

Where do I get a philosopher’s stone?

Ah, here we’re getting to the nub of the problem. I can’t buy a philosopher’s stone. I can’t borrow one from my neighbour. I have to make it myself.

Oh, and making that philosopher’s stone? All kinds of difficult.

Number one, because no instructions exist for making a philosopher’s stone. There are mysterious drawings. There are riddles. There are hermeticists that draw mysterious drawings and talk in riddles.

The thing about making a philosopher’s stone? It requires my effort. 

Much like the spiritual GPS of intuition, the map requires that I enter it before it interacts with me. The philospher’s stone will not create itself, or by following a step by step instruction manual that someone else put together. I have to discover it myself, using only clues and path markers left to me by other seekers.

One of my first alchemical clues instructs me to explore the relationship between things.

In relationship to the weight loss quest, I thought ”What is my relationship to heavy?”

My heaviness seems to come from problems avoided and problems that don’t have solutions.

I feel heavy-hearted. Weighed down. Burdened. Held back. Tied down and buttoned up. I have gravitas, the weight of the world on my shoulders.

I delay movement on these things because they feel so very heavy and the effort required to move them so very great.

I mistook these problems for me and internalized their weight. Because I don’t need to move the problems. I need to move myself in relation to the problems.

Then the weight dissolves.

But right now, the continuous delay of action, the cut off of an action aborted, has become like a calcified ball.

I have kidney stones of intent and action.

And they’re balling up the works.

Now, how to exchange kidney stones for a philosopher’s stone?

We ideally metabolize things, take things in, let them flow through.

I am hanging on to them and slowly poisoning myself.

So, to dissolve these balls of calcified action what options do I have?

I can start taking small actions. Choose movement over stasis more often. Learn to clear out my chakras. I can draw a clear separation between myself and these problems.

It will be like water dripping on a stone. It will over time wear the stone away. (Ooh. Note to self: drink more water.)

Eventually momentum will gather and things will move faster, easier, with less resistance and less weight. I will find the flow easier and stay in it longer.

Let me reframe my goal to lose weight.

I will learn to dissolve heaviness and discover lightness.

I will exchange gravity for levity.

As the bumper sticker says “Gravity sucks!”

Oh, yes I did.

I very rarely go bowling. I find it kind of boring, and I want more bang for my buck you know? If I’m going to be physically active I want to burn more than 88 calories an hour. Plus it gives me a blister on my fourth finger which annoys me.

At any rate, in this particular game of bowling, I scored 202 points, which probably ranks as as my best bowling score. Ever. But that’s not the important part, because, as I may have already said, I don’t really care about bowling per se.

The important part? That score marks a shift in my patterns.

I bowled 6 strikes in that game. 4 of them in a row.

Please allow me to say that again, so I might glory in my achievement.

4 strikes in a row!

My typical pattern: at the moment when I could win, I send it back.

I muff my line. I stumble. I lose my focus. I pull back. I ‘forget’ that I know.

This Saturday, I kept what the universe gave me. I stayed in the flow. I did not send it back.  

I know very little about bowling techniques. This Saturday, I tried a new (to me) technique: I kept myself focused on the centre pin. I thought about the idea of looking where I wanted to go. I tried to think only of the pin. When the ball was coming off my hands I kept looking at the pin, gave no thought to the ball at all. Be the pin. And by God, it worked. And then, with the pressure of having the first strike, I sent another one down the lane. With the pressure of the second strike on me, I still sent a third strike down the lane. With the mounting pressure of the third I sent the fourth and final one down the lane. And then, the game was over.

A small thing in the great grand scheme of thing indeed. But a big example of how I do, can, and am rewriting patterns.

Because in that nano second before letting go of the ball, I could see the between of two possibilities. Two choices available to me. To succeed, however unlikely or to not succeed. To be honest, I felt pulled not to succeed. Like a gravitational pull. Break the streak. Go to the mean. Get back to realistic expectations. And this time, I chose to succeed. No wavering, buckling or folding. I found the zone and stayed in it.

Yay me!

But with that success, now, I see a lack of flow in my attempts to lose weight. I see a stuck. I see a story of the mean, the average, the typical.

You might say, I am not having the same success losing weight.

I lost 11.8 pounds. I’ve put 7.7 of those pounds back on.

I got into a small zone (losing about .5 a week) why did I retreat from success?

Same reasons as not get 4 strikes in a row I guess. The typical story: people gain weight. They stay heavy. They lose it with tremendous effort. They gain it back again, plus some. It’s unlikely that anyone can lose 65 lbs and keep it off. The transformation stories require Jillian Michaels yelling at you, the pressure of a television camera and celebrity endorsements, the grim reaper motivation of a critical illness. The pain and pleasure of a before and after picture. The story sucks me into its gravitational pull.

My story isn’t written yet and I find myself fearful of telling anything new. Just tell the typical story and that’s safer.

So, by using the bowling game as an example, I need to keep trying different techniques until I find one that gets me into the flow of losing weight. And then I need the courage to stay in that flow.

Is staying in the flow an oxymoron? Staying = static. Flow = dynamic. Perhaps I mean going with the flow.

If my previous experiences tell me anything, I probably already have the answer, but it will take looking off to the side and flapping around in the dark a little bit.

The answer often (always?) comes to me like a shade plant that can’t flourish or bloom in full sun. And you almost can’t look directly at it lest it vanish altogether.

How like a violet.

I sing a song and moments later it comes on to the radio. I go to a new cafeteria because I get a sense that a pattern wants to be changed, and discover the very person I needed to talk to eating lunch there. I ask a question to myself and an hour later I get the answer from someone outside myself.

It really feels as though I took one step into the universe and the universe is responding by coming three steps closer to me.

I hate the word universe to describe this thing. It sounds very woo-woo. Like a cop-out instead of saying ‘God’.

So, how else can I look at this great “It” ?

Let’s try this…

I’m standing on a map. I have an ‘X marks the spot’ place. I can think of this personal spiritual journey (proces, quest, adventure, wander) as moving towards the ‘X’. Using intuition feels like the ‘X’ moves closer to me. So, the ‘X’ didn’t move from its original spot geographically, it still is where it is. But I moved on the map because the map moved under my feet. I find myself in a different place because the map wanted me closer.

That works for me. I like the idea of a multi-dimensional map. A map that requires my participation but upon discovering me there interacts with me. Like a really really smart GPS of the spirit world.

I love intuition. Every time I experience it, I marvel and want more, more, MORE.

Invitation to interact: Intuition as GPS of the spirit. Is that what it feels like to you?