Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark Teacher

Teachers come in many forms and not all of them are the kind, wise old man or woman who opens up a whole new world of miracles to you. Sometimes the universe sends you the dark teacher. The one who comes at you aggressively or condescendingly or critically. While you’re in the middle of facing a dark teacher, it’s next to impossible to realize that you’re actually receiving a gift, but often these people make our best teachers. He or she is there to test you. Do you really want what you say you want? Just how much are you willing to endure? How hard are you willing to practice? Can you develop a coat of armor so strong that you continue to work for what you want even when the dark teachers show up?

The dark teacher appears in many forms: an actual teacher, a lover, a boss. What dark teachers have you had? What have they taught you?

When it’s time to let self-protection go.

I’ve worked lately on rooting out some belief systems I developed as a child. One of the ideas I took on as a youngster was that I had a “spine of steel” and could live through anything. It served me extremely well in challenging times of my life and I became very proud of my strong steel spine.

Perhaps it won’t come as a shock to the bodyworkers reading this that I have had chronic back pain for a decade. I have seen physical therapists, chiropractors, and personal trainers. I’ve done yoga, had electric shock therapy, and balanced on a ball while I work at my desk–all in an effort to reduce the pain.

Recently I’ve been working with a man who has come at my back pain from the front by working my soaz muscles. At the same time I’ve meditated on this idea of the steel spine. Perhaps having such a heavy form of self-protection weighing me down isn’t the best thing after all.

And guess what? The back pain is going away. For those of you who have chronic pain of any kind I know you’ll understand what a freaking miracle this feels like. It brings tears to my eyes right now to notice that I’m sitting at my desk and my back doesn’t hurt at all.

So my question for you is this: When you were a child, what mechanisms of self-protection did you develop? Do you still need them now or is it time to release them?

Do for yourself what you’d do for others.

Last week I stood up for my three stepchildren fiercely and quickly. A librarian at our local library refused to let me help them get library cards because I am their stepmother and not a legal guardian. She told me this was a library policy in front of all the children. When I  emailed an irate letter to the head of the entire county library system, the director, a stepparent himself, responded with an apology and an outline of the action the library would take. The registration documents for library cards will be reprinted to include stepparent on the parent/guardian line and the library staff will be trained in how to deal with blended families. This experience led to a discussion with my stepchildren about how they didn’t have to be embarrassed to be part of a stepfamily.

The entire experience reminded me of dealing with my own inner critic. Often I am silent in my own defense when my inner critic makes me feel stupid for wanting to go after my dreams of writing fiction full-time. But when my stepchildren were threatened I became a fierce warrior. The next time I hear my inner critic try to make me feel like a loser I’m going to become a warrior and stand up for myself.

How do you know you’re on the right track?

I am one of those writers that is blessed with ideas. Too many ideas. And so it is easy to get lost in the number of things I could write about. But writing a novel is like giving birth to a child. It takes all the time and energy I have to focus on one at a time. But how do I decide which idea is strong enough to go full term?

The only thing that helps me figure out if I’m headed down the right path or not is to pay attention to the ideas that keep coming back. Clearly there is something there that has not let me go yet.

This week consider this: What dreams keep coming back to you? What idea hasn’t let you go yet?

Lost in the chaos.

When I’m in the middle of doing a project I love but am also terrified of, I find myself returning to old habits and patterns to distract myself. Instead of working on my novel I will do a search on the Internet for something that is really “important ” and lose myself in the chaos of information available online. I did this last week to avoid writing and as I went to save a document with all the new research I’d found, I realized that I had already done that very search six months ago during a different avoidance session. As soon as I saw what I’d done, I returned to the novel and wrote another 1,000 words for the day. If you’re lost in the chaos, how can you simplify? How can you return to your project and simply continue to move forward one step at a time instead of distracting yourself with meaningless tasks?

Will you or won’t you?

If you say you want something but find yourself avoiding the very thing you say you want, do you know why? Once you choose to say yes to moving your fantasy into reality, will you or won’t you do what it takes to create it?

Be an extraordinary machine.

“Be kind to me or treat me mean, I’ll make the most of it, I’m an extraordinary machine.” –Fiona Apple.

Stretch your inflexibility.

I have struggled for the past year with the idea of letting go of beloved rituals and habits. Because writing is what I do for a living, I knew I had to create a structure for my life so I wouldn’t succumb to cleaning the house or watching Oprah instead of heading to my home office to do my work. Every morning I made coffee, spent quiet time reading and writing in my journal. Then I would head to the desk, check emails and my calendar, then write. Break for lunch. In the afternoon, I conducted interviews or researched a new project. Break for exercise.

I was very attached to this schedule. And in fact, would get irritated at any interruptions of it. I clung to my schedule as a way of shushing the Inner Critic who reminded me constantly that I was really afraid that if I didn’t have my habits, I would do absolutely nothing. My schedule was shot to hell the second my daughter was born. At first I fought the death of my schedule, struggling in vain to continue to work at the same pace as before in exactly the same structured days. Disaster.

Lately I’ve been meditating on flexibility. I’ve experimented with writing at 4 a.m. before anyone is awake, snatching time during naps, and asking my mom to watch the baby so I can sneak a few hours in. I’ve purchased a notebook that I carry with me and have started writing in longhand again, a paragraph at a time, while I watch my daughter play at the park.

Today, stretch your body. And consider if there are any areas of your life in which you have become too rigid. How can you experiment with different ways of approaching the same old problem?

Find your authentic self.

What if you want to do something that goes against the training you’ve received from society about what is “cool” or “literary” or “responsible”? Can you turn your back on the Inner Critic when its voice sounds like your teacher, your father or your best friend? Can you continue to shed layers to become your authentic self even if you think it makes you a little bit selfish or cheesy or irresponsible?

Find the always.

I finished reading The Elegance of the Hedgehogby Muriel Baybery two days after we buried my stepgrandmother. The story is narrated by two wonderful characters, one a 12-year-old girl and one a 50-something woman. One of the thoughts that struck me was this: Find the always within the never. I don’t want to spoil the book for you if you plan to read it so I’ll simply say this: When something difficult happens and you are within your deepest despair from which you will never recover, there is always beauty within the experience somewhere.