Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Dalai Lama rehab

It's been over two years since that day I sat in the presence of greatness. And when I say greatness, I mean GREATNESS. It has taken me so long to write about it because I've needed this time to let the experience mellow. That and, for the sheer practical reason being, I couldn't see the screen beyond my tears of immensity and joy. My soul had yet to register it's own worth and being in the presence of greatness seemed to require a vast amount of time to adjust my own groove before I could fathom it's explanation.

to wish or not to wish - that is the question
You see, prior to this experience, there was nothing that I needed or desired except perhaps for a roof that didn't leak. I have abstained from writing wish lists for a while due to their unique position on the horizon as a veritable thorn in my side. I composed my last bucket list as I waited for my sister and her girlfriend to arrive in their private jet at the Danbury Airport. Bathed in jet exhaust, feeling meager and incomplete on the tarmac,  I decided what I needed to fill my bucket of low self esteem were three simple items. Over the course of  a couple years, I had purchased my killer pair of black Lucchese, scalloped edged, angled heel boots, bought myself an epic Canon Rebel gazillion pixel-just-shy-of-an-XRAY camera and decided to dismount the third thing on my list; A classic Mercedes wagon, silver with tan interior,  a sun roof and a dog barrier in the back. Once it became clear that my inner stats would not be elevated with this purchase (and that I'd have to clean the garage),  I opted instead for the hippie chic and understated fully-loaded Suburban Outback.

My bucket list was comprised of stuff that, in the end, held very little weight - easily discarded or dinged to the next bit of stuff that flashes across the dashboard of trends, harbored insufficiency and insatiable ego. The mere thought of a wish list infers a lack-mentality.

subconscious at work
But there my subconscious was, hard at work rummaging through my hard drive and devising invisible flow charts, detours and byways to creating an experience I never even knew I wanted. Never had it occurred to me to dream big. BIG I say. Dare I even put a parameter that might even pair BIG and CONVENIENT in one sentence? Heavens no.

There is a great quote that I keep in my email inbox.  I forwarded it to myself with a different subject heading so that it wouldn't be inadvertently discarded. The note I wrote to myself was, "Read EVERY Day." and it goes like this:

Someone has said, "the Universe has imagined it even better than you have." And we like to add to that: The Universe got all of its information about what you like from you, and it has remembered every piece of it and has put it together in perfect formation. And so, the things that are on their way to you are so much better than you even know that you want. And as you allow them, the essence all of these things that the Universe knows that you are wanting make their way to you and appear in perfect timing for you.                                                                                                                                                --Abraham

The way I know the immensity of this quote's truth because I've lived it. My subconscious delivered my ultimate experience without me even having to ask.

living under a rock
Let me preface by saying I live under a rock (almost). Since we moved into our current home ten years ago we haven't had cable TV. I don't watch the news, read the papers or nor follow any reality crack shows. I figure that if there is important news that I am supposed to know about it will find me. And this is how being in the presence of GREATNESS happened.

in the presence of greatness
It was August when the news found me that the Dalai Lama was scheduled to speak (big) 30 minutes away (convenient) at Western Connecticut State University in October. The tickets were being offered by lottery only. So,  I submitted my name with gusto and waited. Three hundred-twenty seven hours, sixteen minutes and seven seconds after the lottery opened - the day my name was chosen, every particulate in my vicinity localized in extreme focus and clarity with the wattage of a beam of light shooting towards the moon. How could something so epic have also heard my meek necessity for convenience? My humble self, trudging along in the ruts of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, dirty laundry & dust bunnies heard over the din of dinner dishes and sibling rivalry, heard over my own inner dialogue of oppression and obligation (worlds tiniest violin). Never in a million freaking years would I ever have put this type of greatness on a bucket list, let alone have the audacity to write his name on a piece of my recycled scrap paper. Yet my wishes were heard even before I could hear them for myself.

So I went.


All's I can say is thank God my husband went with me. Actually it is more like my husband took me. I was a raw bundle of emotion sobbing in the passenger seat. It required the same amount of energy as what I experienced being driven down to the hospital to deliver my babies. The same amount of energy to focus the contractions as it was to stay solvent and not totally disintegrate into a puddle. There was absolutely nothing that could stop my tears; The closest experience I have ever had to truly coming home - feeling so totally supported that this experience had been provided to me. The combination of gratitude, faith, incredulity, self-worth all grafted together to form a matrix of otherworldly proportions orchestrating this vast symphony in which I was called upon to take part.

As if the greatness couldn't get any better, I sat there in the bleachers all red eyed, clutching my Nana's heirloom hanky, nearly hiccuping for breath when along comes Richard Gere. My hand slithered into my coat pocket in search of  lip gloss. My husband's suggestion to breath into a paper bag circumnavigated by the mere sighting of  R i c h a r d  who was making the introduction for the the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso.

We sat on the right side of the stage, mid way up on the bleachers listening to the voice of this amazing man. He tugged continuously on his honorary scholar vestments that indicated a type of restraint that I would have been hard pressed to ignore. Just in the way he exhibited his patience with these superfluous additions to the perfect simplicity of his saffron robes gave me pause for admiration the same way I am in awe of  women in labor who don't rip off their own hospital gown at eight centimeters. Yet, despite this wardrobe malfunction, his message of kindness and compassion, periodically facilitated by his translator, were punctuated with riffs of laughter and joviality that elevated the audience into a gleeful hum.

rushing the stage
As the event came to a close the body guards ushered the Dalai Lama to the right of the stage and down behind the royal blue curtains. This was my husband's call to action. Primed and ready, Jeff pierced through the crowd improving on his personal record from seat to stage in 5.7 seconds flat. Jeff's Grateful Dead, special ops, stage rush training - minus the opposition - brought him face to face with the Dalai Lama faster than running on the human conveyor belts in the airport. But when he turned around expecting me to be right by his side, instead he saw me still up in the bleachers stuck behind a granny and her retractable, metal cane.

Jeff had rushed the stage for me and was poised to make introductions by expounding on my countless hours of inconceivable silent sitting, (as if that should be merit in and of itself) and prayer flags that flutter in the wind suspended by the trees in our front lawn and maybe, just maybe ask him if he wants to come over to watch the Bruins and have some pizza.

But I was stuck, and mortified, and too emotionally wobbly to approach at any faster a speed for fear that this affliction of tearful dissolution might just actually happen and I'd collapse into the Dalai Lama's arms, breathing into a paper bag and a medic hauling me into the back of an ambulance or a straight jacket with intentions to never ever shower again. But, I just couldn't be a good wing girl and suffer the humiliation of of what it would look like in public to love someone so much that it hurt to be near him.

Dalai Lama rehab
My overwhelming emotions became such an issue that in order to desensitize myself from the mere thought of him I had to devise some Dalai Lama rehab. The only way I knew how to do this was to print up a gorgeous black and white picture and hung it at the window alcove by my kitchen sink. From there he could (and still can) oversee the Sunday through Thursday peanut butter and jelly production line, dirty dishes and watch the kids jump on the trampoline outside with the same joy his spirit possesses.


hot mess
After six months of Dalai Lama picture therapy I progressed to being able to look at his image without shedding a tear. However, in April on a four-day retreat in San Luis Obispo, I inadvertently revealed my hot mess to a table of eight strangers, one of whom was Martha Beck's CEO, Bridgette Boudreau. The exercise she gave us that expedited this unraveling was the requirement to write two letters; A letter to a person we loved (see picture above) and a letter to a person we despised. (Despised is such a treacherous word I could find no one that I held with that much venom.) Afterwards, we were then instructed to change the name of the person to whom the letter was addressed to the word "I".

Well Just Crap. I might as well deliver a third baby in the back of a taxi.

Because I had been unable to find a nice tidy exit strategy for these unexpressed feelings of my experience with the Dalai Lama I had to endure the vulnerability and extraordinary humiliation of being totally exposed amidst a group strangers as I diverted my love for the Dalai Lama back to myself. It was an effective bait and switch strategy that illuminated our tendencies in general to witness in others exactly the issues prevalent at the forefront of our own consciousness. I was surrounded by eight highly sensitive and compassionate women strangers and as they sat there somewhat wide-eyed while I blithered along in over-sharing laboresque convulsions, I can now fully endorse them as some of highest caliber friends I have had the pleasure of sobbing before, leaving me with the thought that there is something peculiarly refreshing, authentic and terrifying about the experience of vulnerability in general.

progress?
Now, over two years later, I am happy to report that my Dalai Lama rehab is progressing steadily. I can say his name out loud. I can look at his picture for hours and I can write this post which only made me weep once. I can watch videos of him giving talks similar to the one I attended that October, 2012. Yet, just a week ago my husband commanded that I come downstairs and interrupt my bedtime ritual to watch something on the computer. As I harumphed and stomped my way down to the kitchen, toothbrush busy on my lower left molars, I came around the corner to a vision of the Dalai Lama wearing a Boston Bruins hat and shuffling his way through the arena before he made his way to his next speaking engagement. Apparently, I'm not completely cured. In the clip I watched he didn't even say a word and I got all weepy and toothpasty. This is going to be a problem if I am ever asked to be his adviser.


Ask Yourself: 
What rehab will it take to own my own GREATNESS?


Julie Bowes - Metalsmith/Spiritual Facilitator/Indentured Hash Slinger
P.O. Box 82
Sherman, CT 06784
203.240.4397 


No comments: