It is done unto you as you believe. Eight completely unassuming words that can easily be ignored if you aren’t paying attention. If you ARE paying attention… JAB! Right to the neck.
A few things happened today. I would start from the beginning, but that almost makes too much sense. I’ve never ever claimed to want to do too much of that in one sitting. So, we start from the seemingly irrelevant part. Make this entire post a bit like a scavenger hunt!
I’m at the gym . I’m preparing (finally) for my Tough Mudder experience on May 13 and I’ve been very good about (at least) the running portion of my training. For ease and grace purposes, I get on a treadmill every day and run. I’m an interval training kind of gal so to break up the torturous monotony of feeling like a hamster in a wheel, I mix 5 minutes of brisk walking with between 5-15 minutes of go hard running–always looking forward to that little 5 minute break when it comes up never soon enough. Some days, I’m on that treadmill for 40 minutes. Some days, like today, when my body is as heavy as 30 trillion boulders sitting snugly on my back, 25 minutes is all I can do. Days like today, I’m just glad to be doing something. I’ve only got 2 weeks before the big show. Anything at all has got to be better than sitting on my tush and praying for the best. Maybe.
So I’m treading. I’m listening to my iPod “Training Camp” mix, but my eyes need some place to rest. The line of TV’s across the cardio section of the gym is tuned to every cringe worthy show known to man. Obviously, I can’t hear what’s being said, but just watching what’s going on and trying to keep up with the closed captioning is… blah, blah and blah. My eyes rest on Charmed. I used to watch Charmed until I stopped caring, but the good news is that if you’ve seen one show, you’ve seen all of them. I caught the tail end of the one episode where Phoebe was stuck in a nightmare. It turns out the assailants in Phoebe’s dream were a small army of obstinate masked “Jasons” complete with chainsaws. What a nightmare right? Imagine being chased around your house by an army of Jasons. Only thing is, while Phoebe was tucked away under a blanket snoring uncomfortably, the Jasons chasing Phoebe in her dream were chasing her family and ransacking her house in real life. The premise of Charmed is that Phoebe is one of three witch sisters. You would probably assume that all that is required to defeat the Jasons is a bit of threesome magic. You would be wrong.
So I’m half watching this while I’m waiting for my 5 minute walk to happen again, only half understanding what’s really going on with the show. At one point, Phoebe is cornered in her kitchen. The Jasons had chainsawed the door open and were slowly coming for her, like what those zombies in Michael Jackson’s Thriller did to Ola Ray. They get closer and closer. Phoebe’s doom is eminent. Then. In a completely necessary turn of television events, Phoebe says to herself, “I have to unmask him”. A jump kick happens to the Jason on her right and she snatches the mask off of another Jason on her left. Holy Doppelganger Batman! The unmasked Jason is actually… dun dun duuuuuun! Phoebe. The other Jasons’ masks magically disappear and reveal they are all Phoebe as well.
Cut to the living room scene where Phoebe is still sound asleep, the Jasons that have been terrorizing her sisters and brother-in-law are still doing the Michael Jackson Thriller zombie slow approach toward them. They brace for their last ditch magical fight. Then, in another television necessary turn of events, the Jasons disappear. Everybody breathes that unanimous sigh of relief that happens on TV and Phoebe jolts awake, refreshed and dewy as we all do after a life threatening nightmare has just ravaged our sleep for umpteen hours or more. She’s not even the slightest bit frazzled or groggy. Her family asks her how she defeated the Jasons. She says, slightly breathlessly, “all I had to do was unmask him.” They all look at her like, “Is that right?! Well who was it?!” The tension of the situation escalates as the next three words pour effortlessly from her perfectly pouted lips. “It was me.” She says. “I have a long history of self-sabotage. I guess this was my way of facing it.” (That part, I’m paraphrasing, I could only read some of what she was saying during my run phase). *sigh*
Fast forward to the stretches phase of my workout. As completely seemingly irrelevant happenstance would have it, one of my favorite talks by Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith is titled: Your Law, Your Life. It came on my iPod as I took my precious time stretching out my exhausted legs. I’ve listened to this talk at least a hundred times over the last 5 years. I know everything about it. I know when Dr. B says, “Let’s take a breath here”, it means in part, “you think this is just a wee little spiritual talk, but you will not leave this listen the same way you came to it.” Numerous times “the talk” has attempted to integrate my workout and I’ve rebuffed it for more suitable workout tunes. Like “Freakum Dress” or a “I’m Sexy and I Know It”. This time, I yielded. This sadness that has been lurking consistently just under the surface of my utter joy for the last several days finally reached its peak. Just like the first time I heard “the talk”, I needed to hear every single word today.
The gist of the Your Law, Your Life talk is literally the eight words I mentioned at the beginning of this post. It is done unto you as you believe. Think about that for a second. What does that mean actually? IT is done unto YOU as YOU believe. What you believe about your life will be your exact life experience. Period. Your law. Your life. He asks at one point, “what is your law?”
Let’s put this another way. I had a bit of a text vent this morning with my dear friend Shelton. I was telling him about this anxiousness I’ve been feeling. It’s an anxiousness I haven’t felt in such a long time, I was almost taken aback that it was there. It’s that knotty butterfly feeling that happens when subconsciously you know that either something amazingly hugely awesome is about to happen–or something amazingly hugely awful is on route. It’s that feeling of bigness. It’s the feeling that whatever is behind you is about to meet dust and you know in every amount of your guts that going back will no longer be an option. It’s a scary feeling if you’ve never actually acknowledged it before. For me, that feeling has been crowned with awesome accomplishment AND heart shattering failure. I know the feeling well. Sure, a few things have happened recently for this feeling to be attached to an accomplishment(s), but there was a something–a someone rather– who I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop, the sky to fall, AND my entire foreseeable world to end by way of this person for the past several months.
It is done unto you as you believe. May I admit something pretty embarrassing here? You sure? You may think less of me when I admit this. But okay. I, dear ones, suffer from a bit of what has been called a fear of failure. When I was growing up, I felt so strongly that my NOT being perfect had somehow altered the balance of the universe in such catastrophic ways, my imperfect existence could reasonably be blamed for everything from global warming to my neighbor’s hangnail. This weirdly unbalanced assessment of myself made me the kind of weird that weird people scoff at. Every failure was monumentally Earth shattering. Every success was almost surprising– which made me wonder when the failure was coming. My needing to be perfect at everything gave me the work ethic of champions, but it also gave me a very skewed opinion of what success and failure actually is. If you know anything about fear of any sort, it manifests in all sorts of self-sabotaging behaviors. Even creating a crew of Jasons. Or a Troll blocking your bridge.
The title of this post came from that tweet vent I mentioned earlier. I actually formed the words that my sadness was the fault of that person I was waiting for the bombshell about. Her energy was just sooooo bad. The toxicity to my spirit is heart wrenching. The disrespectful way she talks to me. There were all these perfectly logical reasons and actual facts from actual occurrences that built my argument to a stellar legal reasoning that the bombshell was coming for me and I needed a proactive exit strategy before my life falls apart. Again.
I came to this conclusion because EVERY single time I’ve been close to up-leveling myself to the next phase of my awesome, this person has come up with some traumatic whatever it is to make my life suck horribly at the time. Often times, it would cause such a great shift that I would be kicked back a few paces. Other times, I found myself having to start over from scratch in a very compromised place. Everything always worked out in the end, but the timing of the bombshell with this person and my pending successes is actually uncanny. Just when I’m just about there… Booyah! Based on my past experiences, I can only assume that I have associated my path to the “next level” with having to fight past the Troll on my bridge. If I had the energy and stamina, I would do it. Success! But if I didn’t… time to start over. Like some flipping video game.
I, being a bit arrogant and defeatist, had decided that the Troll on my bridge was this person. I, having revisited my fear of failure, had seen all the signs of the bombshell and allowed sadness to wash over me in such a way that I was simply waiting for defeat. I said, okay Troll. You got me. I’m too tired to fight you. I’ll just turn back and find something else to do with my life. You win. I can’t fight you Troll. I don’t have the same fight for the sake of fighting I once had. I’m a different person now. I’m a lover now. I can’t beat you now Troll. You win.
Just when I was bracing myself to be chopped to pieces… those words. It is done unto you as you believe. Those words which basically made it plain that whatever I believe, I make true. The reason why this person finds a way to do the stinky squat on my wings just when I’m about to fly is because I believe consciously and unconsciously that’s her role in my life. I’m afraid, so I give her the perfect script to give me the perfect reason to fight or flight. It never dawned on me that this person actually has ZERO power over my success or failure or that this person wasn’t actually the Troll on my bridge. It never dawned on me until today’s little visit with Charmed, to walk up to the Troll with my mini confidence and unmask her–just to be sure. It never once dawned on me that the Troll on my bridge was me.
The entire ride to my office this morning I was writing this post in my head. Once I got here, I didn’t pass go, I didn’t collect $200. I placed my hind parts firmly on my zafu and zabuton and stayed in prayer and meditation until the sadness that had been lingering found its way out of my face in ease and grace fashion. I prayed for peace of spirit. I prayed for ease and grace on my way. I prayed for the person who I had misjudged as my success blocker and I expressed my gratitude for the seemingly irrelevant experiences that helped me unearth the true nature of MY self-sabotaging behaviors.
Taking 100% ownership of our lives is actually how awesome happens. Powerlessness comes from giving our power away in blame and to fears that can’t actually exist when you walk in love. The actual bombshell I had been waiting for happened today. Turns out, there is no Troll on my bridge. So, I’ll just go on and walk across to where I’m designed to go with ease, grace, every amount of good imaginable and love lighting my way.
What’s YOUR Troll blocking?
The moral of this story? I can’t call it. Just some food for thought. Thank you for reading this though. Peace and abundant “your law is LOVE” blessings. Love, -e-