Grand Deception
I hope I can fairly assume that we are all “readers” here, and so don’t have to tell you that reading before bed is good and you should be doing it. Not only can it significantly relieve anxiety and depression - better than listening to music, drinking tea or taking a walk - it helps maintain mental sharpness, enhances your creativity and emotional intelligence, and reduces cortisol levels, the stress hormone. All it takes is six minutes.
Your muscles relax, your breathing slows, your mind drifts, leaving its daily stresses, worries and fears behind and enters someone else’s world for awhile. Tension recedes and you feel calmer and more ready for a restorative night of sleep. I read every night, even if six minutes is all I can muster before my lids start closing involuntarily.
Triggering these changes in brain chemistry can also open your mind to surprising insights and alternative ways of looking at things about your day - things that trouble or dog you. So reading before bed is not only a fun and relaxing thing to do, it also just makes you better at life.
On this night in May, I was about halfway through an old favorite. Enchanted April, by Elizabeth Von Arnim, was first published in the early 1920's, and is a quiet-paced gem of a story that I just can’t get enough of. It is about four British women who escape squelched and dreary home lives to spend a month in the Italian countryside, and who experience a range of personal and emotional transformations along the way. As they rediscover connections to their own selves and each other, they awaken to a more fulfilled life, a deeper understanding of the relationship between past, present, and future, and where home resides. I’ve read it multiple times and watched the movie at least twice. I can’t describe the feeling of well-being I get when I am drifting between its pages. It is simply lovely.
So it was in anticipation of the relief that I knew I would find there that I reached for the book on my bed stand. A picture fell out, which I had been using for a bookmark. It shows me, aged about 2 or 3, in a red (of course!) windbreaker, hood cinched around my cheeks and tied securely under the chin. I’ve got my two fingers in my mouth and my “sniffy” bundled in one arm, and Dad is kneeling on one knee behind me, one arm pulling me close and the other held out straight pointing at something in the distance. There is brilliant sunshine and scudding clouds and wind; I believe it’s a marsh in or around Dad’s home town of Savannah, GA. He is protecting or sheltering me and showing me the wonder and the way.
I held the picture for a moment to take it all in, smiled wanly at it, and was about to put it aside and begin to read when the small quiet voice in my head broke in, taking me quite by surprise. I hadn’t gone looking for it, but it appeared that it had something to say.
“The grand deception, of course,” it said, “and a source of your suffering is that you have let yourself believe that love, shelter, protection and guidance come from outside, from other people and that you have somehow lost your connection to those things now that the people you associate them with are gone. But you still have access to all of these things within yourself, you know. Love, shelter, guidance…these are all an ‘inside job.’ Everything you see in that picture - all of it - can be found inside yourself.”
I thought about that for a minute. It seemed a reasonable proposition, but I despaired at ever really knowing how to do that. The voice continued:
“Your grief and suffering have come in part from a feeling of disconnection from love, security, and guidance or wisdom.” Yep. “But what is this but a disconnection from Self? Reconnect and find yourself at Home again.”
My inner voice always talks to me in the third person like this and uses diction I don’t recognize as my own. “Grand Deception”? Who talks like that? It is always calmer and wiser than I feel and I take a lot of comfort from it. It never lets me down and, since I’ve started actively listening to it, frequently leads me to wonderful places, remarkable things, and stunning revelations. As such, while I find it a bit mysterious, it is always a trusted friend.
I put the book aside for a few more minutes so that I could close my eyes and get quiet and follow up on this unsought advice. “Show me the truth of my situation,” I murmured under my breath.
Mom has been gone for over seven years already, and Dad for close to three. Although I certainly did not mope around all the time anymore, I was still repeatedly laid low by the feeling that all the color had gone out of things and that this would also never change. That I would have to content myself with contentment, be satisfied with satisfaction. Real joy sometimes felt beyond me now. To be clear, laughter wasn’t beyond me. Love was not. Enjoyment was not. But real joy - deep seated, hopeful, serene, and unencumbered - eluded me and had done for some years. I sometimes felt sad, disconnected and lonely, even around people, with the exception of my children.
On this night, however, I felt tired of it all; I didn’t want my life to be sad and lonely and colorless. I didn’t want to hope only for contentment as the high point, never joy. This was the essence of my request when I said to myself, “Show me the truth of my situation.”
The words came to me like ticker tape unspooling across a blank movie screen in my mind, rolling from right to left, written in block letters, and glowing from within: “YOU ARE STARVING TO DEATH, SITTING AT A BANQUET TABLE.”
That felt like a punch to the gut, but I felt the truth of it. My mind scanned all my many wonderful blessings and the low-hanging fruit that surrounded me, simply there for the picking. It is a banquet. Intelligent, soulful and wickedly humorous children; a partner who is also a best friend and champion; a beautiful home and garden; good friends and confidantes when I need them; soul-quenching work that taps into all of my creative urges - photography, painting, teaching, writing. It is a veritable feast for the heart, soul and senses. So why can’t I eat? And when I do, why doesn’t it taste better?
The ticker tape disappeared and I now saw an image of myself encased in a block of ice. Grief, I understood, had erected an invisible wall around me, preventing me from connecting with others or my own true self, leaving me feeling isolated and alone in a land of super-abundance and plenty.
My inner voice had just told me that this connection can be rediscovered within myself, however. Well, then this, I thought, must be my current work. To retrieve my connections to the world, to my family, to my soul friends and to myself. But I was troubled. Obviously I had not been consciously disconnecting from these things. How do I stop doing something I’m not even aware that I’m doing? I waited for the answer. Within moments, the voice responded with a list. I grabbed my journal and scribbled it down, as if taking dictation. In essence, I was.
Slow down
Simplify
Take stock
Practice and express gratitude
Make time
Set intentions
Take action steps daily
Once finished, I sat back and closed my eyes again to process what I had just written, but was surprised to find myself suddenly in another scene, this time standing by a very tall hedge. I was looking up and saw a bird flitting about in the upper branches. I’m no birdwatcher; it looked like a pretty average bird to me, two-toned, small and lively. Cheerful to be sure, but I didn’t see the significance. “Nuthatch!” said the voice with emphasis, and I opened my eyes.
Well, what I know about Nuthatches is exactly nothing. They sound like something that might turn up in a whimsical children’s book with beautiful watercolors. But the word had been made with such emphasis in my mind, I decided to look them up. Why would a Nuthatch, specifically, appear in my mind’s eye like this?
Turns out, the Nuthatch traditionally symbolizes not only knowing how to dream big, but how to do (turning intuition into action). I looked back at my list. Take stock, set intentions, take action steps daily. I lifted an eyebrow.
It is also traditionally thought to have the power to see things “reversely,” which can be a boon or a detriment depending on the situation. For example, the Nuthatch can see beauty where others might see only ugliness or sorrow (hmmmm, I thought. That kind of sounds like the mission statement of my whole blog! Literally). On the other hand, in the midst of abundance, Nuthatch can get stuck in a poverty mindset, noticing only what’s missing. Starving to death, sitting at a banquet table.
On the 3rd hand (if you will allow me), though, once it knows what’s happening, it can also reverse that again and thereby get itself back on track.
“Wow.”
I had no choice but to say it out loud. And then again. “WOW. What…is happening right now?” I felt my very tissues become infused with a sense of wonder, like a trickling tide coming in and filling the whole vessel of my body, for these are things I am beginning to think of as Great Mysteries with which my scientist’s left brain continues to struggle. Nevertheless, I felt supported, held, seen, and understood. I felt guided. Are these not the very feelings I thought I had lost, not 15 minutes before, looking at the picture of Dad and me? Had my inner voice not broken in to tell me that these can be found within? And was I not, in point of fact, right here, sitting in my room - still alone - 15 minutes later, just suddenly not feeling lonely anymore?
The next day I decided to take my first real action to start “reconnecting with myself” again. It’s an “I am” exercise I learned on a yoga retreat I was photographing in Spain. The idea is to let your body talk to you and fill in the blank. Don’t overthink it, just “listen” to each body part and write whatever comes. Here is what my body said to me.
I am my feet and I am…swift.
I am my legs and I am…strong.
I am my hips and I am…inviting.
I am my navel center and I am…grounded.
I am my spine and I am…unbent.
I am my hands and I am…nimble.
I am my arms and I am…love.
I am my shoulders and I am…sturdy.
I am my neck and I am…tall.
I am my throat and I am…true.
I am my face and I am…facing always forward.
I am my crown and I am…waking.
I am…”phenomenal woman.”
I am…creative soul.
I am…love, wisdom, home.
And do you know what the real magic is? In the six months since this happened, although I, of course, have had bouts of sadness about my parents, I have not been lonely, the world has not seemed colorless, my table is full, and I have been able to eat.
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