Zippered Self

ZOELAB DAY 356

Date of Original Post:  August 22, 2013

To return is to begin again.

Sorting out the selves, 

In holdable piles.

I try them all on at once.

They fit, sort of.

But then again, it’s too many selves to know.

Removing them, I start from scratch.

This is the place to begin again.

In between two worlds.

The large culture and the small.

Both, with their imposing language of distraction,

knock me down.

But there is more than that,

there is this thing I am doing, 

something radical and secret and quiet

something so very mine,

that I dare not say it.

Identity is a flimsy and beautiful thing.

It is a symbol suit to wear for others.

I try it on and zip it up.

Not ready yet for meaning,

I lie down, 

ready to receive the rain.

After all, I have a body that speaks to me

inside

with messages that reach beyond cultures.

The body knows more than the

flimsy zippered self.

Quotes as Prompts into Personal Truths: Anaïs Nin

A good quote is an invitation, an invitation into oneself. We resonate with certain sayings or phrases because they awaken a truth in us. They offer something we would have liked to say, but couldn’t quite get there. Certain words create an allowing, a sense that it’s okay to be who you are, or a push, to let yourself be more than you thought you could be.

Over the next few days, I will be sharing some of my favorite quotes, and why they speak to me on a personal level.

““The lasting revolution comes from deep changes within ourselves that influence the collective life.” - Anaïs Nin”

This is the quote that I chose to have on the front page of my blog because it, more than any other quote, speaks to the inner mission of the work I do. It speaks both to the smaller and larger purpose—the individual soul and the soul of the world. As I mature, and enter middle age, I see how important it is to me that the work I do has an impact on society, on the collective life. In fact, if I look closely at my history, I would say that that goal has always been there, even if it has sometimes been hidden from my view.

As a teenager, after watching the movie Pump Up the Volume with Christian Slater, about a teenage boy who was a secret rebel—through his radio show—he stirred up a conservative small town into acknowledging and rebelling against its own rigidity. Watching that film awakened me to my soul’s mission: to be a voice of impact and awakening for humanity. There have been times that I have gotten caught up in the ego’s desires to have fame or recognition, to be popular. It is clear to me now, after much inner work, that these desires link to a very old need for be respected and acknowledged. But when I look more closely, and open up to my heart’s mission, I see that my goal is to have an impact on how people live. I want people to experience life more fully and deeply. I want them to open up to who they really are. To experience both their unique soul’s manifestation as well as opening up to the universal Self.

In yoga yesterday, Marimar, the teacher, invited us to ask ourselves: “what is my life’s purpose?” Immediately, the answer came: “to be myself & to help others be themselves.” It was a feeling of happy recognition. After all, the title of the workshop I have led for the last five saturdays is Be All Your Selves, and this becoming my catch phrase, as well as the lyrics to one of my songs.

I have discovered that in order to be yourself, you must first allow yourself to explore and integrate all the smaller selves, or subpersonalities, or archetypes. This is my updated version of Jung’s discoveries about human as well as spiritual development. Personally, I have struggled deeply with being myself.  It can be so hard to simply just be yourself, when we often don’t know what that is, or what that would look like. But in any given moment we can contact an aspect of Self through a role we play, or an emotion we feel, we can explore that part, accept it, love it, the slow process of integrating it into the whole.

Its this process of integration that is the core of the work that I do: both for myself and for others, by focusing on the individual experience of self-actualization, we change the restrictive nature of our culture, one awakening at a time.

Do you have a favorite quote that reminds you of your life's purpose?

Come Forward with Your Art

Come forward with your art,
come share the truth of  your decay,
your ultimate humility.

come forward with your art,
with your seed gifts
    which sacrifice ego
and amplify soul.
The only real sin is
    being un-whole. Unholy.

Fragmented-like
a bird
  flying
with out a wing.

Come forward with your art,
I will bless you
  with bubbles
and manifest your heart
 into its proper dimension.

Come forward with your art,
     and feel how big you can be.
Just how much space
a soul is
when laid out
   against the world.

Come forward, my love,
with your art,
   and experience
 the rebirth of time.

Come forward with your art,
and you will learn
  (from scratch)
how to
     become one.

It is the mind that disappears
   when we awaken to our thousand
         mysterious destinies.

Come forward with your art,
           and you will look your most secret
most dangerous
   fear
 in the face
and feel your unfathomable
                                     darkness grow
into veins
     of gold.
Extending you outwards,
   tree branches
     fed by the ground and the sky.

And here, as golden tree,
   your rootedness meets its celestial mirror.

   And oneness is felt
as one tiny speck
 in the center of it all.

This speck—-
    this is your he(art).

I will meet you there.
                                

Poem Inspired by Andrea Gibson

                                                                  Video still by Mathew McNamara

What would I write

if I did not feel a need to sensor myself?

that I have the deepest love 

for my own body.

for my self 

that spills  out  everywhere, 

in spite of 

and past the 

shame 

that has kept me 

under wraps.

i am so tired 

of the hiding—-

it takes 

so much out of me.

and then what is left?

the skin, with its half truths.

my stuff has been spilled 

all over the floor

with the shit

and the grape juice

and the garbage 

from the storm.

the rigid inadequacies

swallowed whole 

rotting in the belly:

the pretending to be smaller 

quieter

prettier

sweeter

stupider

than i am.

where can i lie awake in this festival of hiding?

underground—

worming my way through the dirt

finding the bones of yesterday

announcing themselves

as living free.

down here

it smells like 

the love of everything.

Everyday/Everynight

Every night I die.
Every day I am reborn.

This wasn’t my plan—

but I stopped being able to shrink 

from its truth.

Why is it that the trees 

that surround me do not take in my fear?

They have no use for it—bending to the will of the wind.

Their roots know that fear is the opposite of shelter.

The trees are not self-hating, 

and have no magazines

telling them how to seem

or catalogues telling them what to want.

The self that dies dissolves

into the dreamless sleep

darkness its master.

I have learned to surrender.

After all,

it’s not my doing or undoing—

The passage of the planets, 

and their posses of playthings.

What is up to me is

already quite enough—

all five senses

keeping track of their inward knowledge,

unfolding to

art.

And the sixth?

the free agent organ.

the heart.

The brain has no business there.

And the heart —is it my doing or undoing?

Or is it simply my friend—when I remember.

I remember

in the morning,

when I am reborn,

and have just had my first sip of dew

and am stretching my fresh, fine pair

of wings.

These wings may get clipped today—

by fear.

The air has not yet determined it.

Or they may 

lead me to flight—

but only by keeping my wandering eye

here,

on my heart.

Turning Against The Self

ZOELAB DAY 68

Buddha was said to have said: 

“not getting what you desire and getting what you desire 

can both be disappointing.”

Sometimes we get what we want, and we rejoice.

Sometimes we get what we want, and fear makes us recoil.

Sometimes we don’t get what we want, and we learn and grow.

Sometimes we don’t get what we want, and we turn against ourselves.

There are times when my heart opens up with desire. Especially around my birthday. But if things don’t go my way, sometimes I identify with the child in me, and let it be about the ego. I tell myself a story that makes it all about me. This is how children are in the world. Not only do they easily get disappointed, but they personalize, they think there must be something wrong with them, and that’s why they didn’t get what they wanted. As the story that I tell myself continues, as a balm for the disappointment, I see the cause to be direct action against me. As if the world wanted it that way. And then, instead of soothing the hurt child, I turn against her, unconsciously aligning myself with my projected view of the world. This is perhaps an adolescent response--thinking the world is paying attention to our disappointments. And that we are the only ones feeling that way. When really, the world is in a constant flux of a totality of disappointments and triumphs, as well as everything beyond.

You may be wondering, what kind of disappointments am I speaking of? They are the same disappointments we all feel in a daily way: we didn’t receive the phone call we were expecting, our favorite tea cup broke, our life doesn’t look quite like we want it to. But, when I really think about it, the greatest disappointment is usually in myself. Ultimately I am disappointed by my own abandonment--by not taking care of myself, not keeping my life in balance, not giving myself enough rest, not taking care of my own needs. It is a disruption of function within the inner family of the psyche. It is easy to blame the world, but it is impossible for the world to take responsibility. It is more effective, and far more empowering, to take responsibility for my own feelings, and my own actions or lack of actions. Of course sometimes events happen that are beyond our control, but still, we always have a choice in how we respond. And in how we care for ourselves. Often, when the heart is vulnerable and full of longing, it is a sign that the inner child is needing attention, and the inner adult self, whose job is it is to take care of the child, is wrapped up in the outer world that seems to have no room for those quiet soulful needs.

However, that is not the end of the story. Even after I’ve caused further suffering from turning against the little self while it already feels vulnerable, I realize that as soon as I start to have compassion again, and show kindness, the little self didn’t actually come to any permanent harm. It never seems too late to show kindness. Again, like a child, the self is resilient. It can endure great suffering, and responds well to compassion. It is soft, yet strong, like a jelly fish. Maybe it stings a little in self defense, and instead of breaking when poked, it gives just a little, and then its body fills back into the space after the aggravator is gone. 

I notice with three year old Emilio, whose ego is not yet fully formed, that he does not yet personalize his disappointment. If he feels disappointed, which sometimes happens several times a day, his response sometimes is to go into arage, but more and more often, his response is to go into a corner of the room and hide. He goes under a blanket or a desk or a table. Perhaps this is how he tends to the hurt part of himself, or perhaps he is ashamed. Or perhaps a little of both. Either way, after only a few minutes of hiding, he returns to his world of play, bounced back in full recovery (just like the jelly fish.)

Another way to see this cycle of separation and reunion is as a spiritual longing for connection with the The Self. Here is a poem by Rumi to illustrate:

Love Dogs

by Rumi

One night a man was crying,

                                                Allah! Allah!

His lips grew sweet with the praising,

until a cynic said,

                             “So! I have heard you

calling out, but have you ever

gotten any response?”

The man had no answer to that.

He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.

He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of the souls,

in a thick, green foliage.

                                        “Why did you stop praising?”

“Because I’ve never heard anything back.”

                                                                   “This longing

you express is the return message.”

The grief you cry out from

draws you toward union.

Your pure sadness

that wants help

is the secret cup.

Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.

That whining is the connection.

There are love dogs

no one knows the names of.

Give your life

to be one of them.

The Self

ZOELAB DAY 34

One day about six years ago I had a sudden realization about what true self is. I have found the common advice to “just be yourself” was vague and hard to follow. What is “your true self”? How can you know what it is? That has been a difficult one for me because I am a person in constant flux, emotionally, mentally, geographically, even physically. This fluctuating sense of self  partly creates the need to make art. After embarking on a path of spiritual growth during graduate school, I began to discover that my true self is whoever I am in the moment. The truth is temporary. And subjective. And subject to constant change. The true self is a stream that is both within us and that we ride on top of. True self is contacted when we are present, spontaneous, integrated. We become familiar with our true self when we slow down and pay attention. When we are mindful. 

Children are the best teachers on how to be your true self. Children are constantly changing and growing. They are bursting with spontaneous energy. And their spontaneity is infectious. A healthy child is naturally integrated with mind, body, and spirit. They cannot help but be their true self at all moments because they are living in the present moment. As their guides and teachers in how to survive and thrive in this world, we sometimes need to teach them how to control this irrepressible true selfness. Not destroy it, or ignore it, but to recognize their present truth, and then to look outward to see what else is going on. Part of growing up is realizing we share the world with others and learn how to manage our true nature in balance with others.

Carl Jung’s theory of The Self, the ego, and the individuation process has greatly influenced my  personal growth and my work. The true self as seen as the whole self. Jung called it The Self archetype, often symbolized by a mandala (a circle or spiral with a center) to show completeness, as well as no beginning or end. “The Self is the ordering and unifying center of the total psyche (conscious and unconscious) just as the ego is the center of the conscious personality.” (Edinger, Ego and Archetype). Jung believed that we all born with original wholeness (where the ego (which only exists as a potentiality) and The Self are one, and the individuation process is the process of our ego’s separation from The Self. Simultaneously, we become conscious of our ego (our conscious personality) as it comes into being and separates. As our ego develops, we begin to reject certain parts of ourselves that doesn’t feel acceptable, these parts are our subpersonalities, that become our shadow. Our original wholeness becomes fractured, or at least it seems that this is so. As we continue to develop, however, we begin to long for our original wholeness, and these split off parts of ourselves. We reintegrate them by bring them back into the light by accepting them. The process of reintegration is the process of embracing our shadows and integrating our polarities. Archetypes are symbols or subpersonalities that emerge out of the collective unconscious that help this process. Jung is viewed as the grandfather of expressive arts therapy, as he experimented with art making, active imagination, sand play, as tools to aid in the process of individuation. Through out life, we cycle in and out of ego-self separation and reunion. It is a dance that gradually brings us closer to integration. When we are integrated, we live in consciousness of the ego and its needs, but from the perspective of The Self (the totality) and  we feel empowered to choose which parts of we want to embody or connect with. These parts of self, or archetypes, can be seen as signs, or symbols that have mutable meanings depending on the person, and the culture that the person exists in. We all have polarities within us, and in the collective culture, and yet we often see ourselves as only one half of a polarity. This is painful partially because we are ignoring significant parts of our truths and our experience, and partially because it is an isolation from our spirituality, or Self. What appeals to me about Jungian theory is its innate multiplicity, it creates more space for all the varied and in-between experiences of being human, across culture, gender and time. In a certain way, I believe Jung was a postmodernist. I continue to use archetypes in my own process of individuation. These are characters that continue to appear in my life, naming them, drawing them helps give me a more playful, curious approach to the sometimes painful experience of development. This has been a rudimentary explanation of a very complex, and beautiful theory. I will write more about Jung and his theories in the future, especially as I continue to gain more knowledge of his work.

This daily web check in gives me consistency while there is so little consistency in my experience of my self. To have this space to check in every day (in whatever way that feels most relevant and true to the moment) is one constant, while all other aspects of life are so variable. I see the site and the whole year (the 365 days) as the integration of all my selves and polarities. By allowing myself to freely flow, but keeping daily track of this flow, I am allowing an integration process of all aspects of self, while still finding a center point (represented by this site.) I have chose the spider web as the mandala, the symbol for The Self. This will become the organizing web map page. And, of course, the spider is a perfect symbol of creativity, wisdom, and the complexities of life.

the spider web is a spiral: the spider is simultaneously at the center and the circumference

Non-Linear Journal Entry: Androgynous Mind

Sometimes you just gotta take the guitar out of the case.

C F

When you go,

C G

I will be sad.

C F
You did go.

C G

But I’m not sad.

(i’m interested in indicating a scene/time change in songs. as songs from musicals sometimes do.)

September was a particularly heady month. Essay style writing. Drawing. Those are both, as we would say in the expressive arts world, dryer types of expression. They are more mental, more linear. more left brain. Than say, working with clay, which is literally, wet. It is a more emotional and physical art form than drawing and essay writing. Not to say essay writing or drawing is not emotional for other people. I love writing essays and drawing, but I feel a little off balance when I am not also doing more physically and emotionally expressive art forms (like acting or music). I think I focused on drawing and writing essays last month because they are safer forms of expression for me. It makes sense that I started with the blog with that. But September represents only one month,  only one season, one aspect of life, only some part of me.

The true self is not one self, but the self that unfolds daily, continuously. Each of our true selves really exists in the moment. That is the truest self there is the one that is now. We are constantly changing creatures, but we don’t always realize it. We limit ourselves when he recognize only certain parts of ourselves.  But who we are changes each moment. In this sense there is never an “always.” And there is also never a “never.” No behavior is consistent. 

I am being heady again, so that I can explain something I really don’t feel like explaining. I want to go back to being in a non-linear place. A place of relief for me sometimes.

We get the cultural message that it’s not okay to just be. We feel that in order to be valuable we need to be doing. doing = value    being = coping out  It’s all about culture vs. nature, culture vs. nature, I am always seeing things from this perspective.

But… it is when we are being, and aware of being we become who we already are.

Wavering between: 

not wanting to decide a focus until it happens naturally. Let the focus emerge organically.

and:

My intention is to focus this month on sewing and working on my label seis doce. 612. So that I can be part of the winter fashion show in todos santos and start selling knit tops and dresses at the farmer’s markets when they open. I am starting by going to my sewing place tomorrow while a family friend/babysitter takes care of Emilio. Let’s see where that takes me.

Being an artist is an exercise in being myself. Which is dropping into the constant stream of selves flowing out of me. And having the courage and stubbornness to have them be heard.