Ewwww. Gross. Is it true? (+ First Friday 15 hours away, join me).

Tomorrow morning is First Friday! Which means open inquiry for anyone and everyone–listen or participate, you get to choose–from 7:45-9:15 am PT. (Also, for July, it will be SECOND Friday, same time…July 12th).

If you do NOT want to speak or be called on, and you want to listen-only, then pick Broadcast for the way you’re joining if you’re on your computer. You can also use your phone and remain on mute (you can let me know you can’t share if you want). I love how people join this call from their offices and headphones everywhere.

To be heard and to share, give feedback, or do The Work, use phone or WebCall.

We always start Monthly Friday with filling out a Judge Your Neighbor worksheet as a meditation. Bring your pen and paper, or your device where you write….and we’ll begin right on time.

Join me here. Or dial 425-440-5010 pin code 305799# at 7:45 am PT.

If you like First Fridays….then you may also love Summer Camp for The Mind. Some wonderful inquirers join every year. It’s sliding scale donation, Monday through Friday daily inquiry sessions from July 8-August 17th. This is the best way ever to get the hang of group online inquiry. Simple telesessions in The Work. Come and go as you wish.

Read about Summer Camp here.

So where does our inquiry go right now, as I sit with laptop?

I just gazed out my cottage living room window into the trees I seem to look at daily when writing. It’s the very same chair I use when I meditate, or do zoom calls or facebook videos.

Something in the thoughts landed on relationships, since I’ve heard about them a lot lately with individual clients.

Those people. 

The ones we’re troubled by. Mild concerns or bitter despair in every interaction, or one past incident, doesn’t matter.

Especially those people we’ve had a hard time with in romance. 

Those people.

Three people came to inquire on trouble with romance in the past ten days or so. And I got a text from someone I briefly dated over a decade ago, who I did a lot of worksheets on back when.

The inquirers with their romance pain: I shouldn’t be reacting, I should let it go, they shouldn’t be so intense, they should support me more, they shouldn’t have been like that with me, I’m heart-broken. 

Funny, the minute I saw the text I received, my thoughts careened a bit off the road: WHAT?! Why is he saying he hopes I had a happy Mother’s Day and asking if I got any nice gifts? What a materialistic ridiculous person. 

In the extremely short exchange (I had said basically something like “surprised to hear from you!” in response back)….

….he let me know he’s had the same girlfriend for seven years.

Inside my mind: “Why are you telling me that? Is that why you wrote to me, to brag about something you’ve never done before in your life until your 50s? Do you think I give a rat’s ass?”

Heh.

Yah, it was that mean and it was there almost instantly. All the pictures in my head of dealing with him, almost wanting to wipe the phone off, like it got smudged. Eww.

Sigh.

I had a wonderful exploration on why the intense response to a simple text after over a decade. That’s how long the time period was between the last time I’ve ever spoken with him or texted or emailed or even heard about him from anyone else.

Yet this disgusted response was still there.

It’s almost like the inquiry was on this thought: “Ew”. 

Eeww.

Is it true?

Yes.

Can you absolutely know “Eew” is true?

(How do you spell “ew”)?

And, no. I can’t know a thing about the truth in this situation. I’m having an emotional mini-seizure. I see letters making words on a phone. And a bazillion images from the past and wonderings about who would ever date him and an urge to lash out. Past fear, hurt, confusion.

This is what happened when I saw his text and thought “ew”.

Imaginings and pictures about what is so, or guesses about his life and having the shivers, ten years older, and what it looks like–which is all based on thin air and mental creativity. Based on nothing but a feeling of “ew” in the past.

So who would I be without this repulsed and repulsive story of “ew”?

Noticing I have no idea who is writing those words as I read his text. There’s something incoming, I look, I notice, I write some letters and words (spells) back, there’s an exchange and a wave of remembering….

….there’s slowness and waiting and noticing.

“All life is imagined, without exception”. ~ Byron Katie

There’s even an honoring of the “ew” that appeared, like a teenager, and the memory of acting like one and considering him to be one as well at the time all those years ago.

No one doing it wrong, including me.

Turning the thought around: to myself. Ew.

Could this be just as true?

Yes. I could experience disgust and playful teenish angst towards me-myself-and-I and wonder what the heck I was even doing there in that relationship back then? Distracting myself from the heart-breaking pain I had just been moving through during divorce. Doing the best I could.

And what about the moment of reading the text? Am I not conjuring up old memories of being grossed out?

I notice them, I notice I’m not even trying to conjure, its just happening, and I can stop and not follow the trail of disgust.

Turning it around again: Welcome. (What’s the opposite of “ew”? It feels like “welcome”–you can be here, memories, response, reaction, texted words….it’s OK).

How is that just as true, it’s OK the words appeared there on my phone, as a text?

That’s all they were. Maybe 8 sentences total. Noticing waves of feeling about that whole era long ago, and that person’s name. Aware of how valuable our exchanges were for my growth, maturity, clarity.

Later on the same day as reading the text, I had the thought “I should have texted back that I’ve been married for seven years.”

Noticing the bizarreness of my wanting to one-up him, or annihilate his share, or brag myself.

Wow.

“Defense is the first act of war.” ~ Byron Katie

Turning it all around: thank you. 

Thank you for the crushing honesty, the cruelty, the desperate neediness, the grabbing, the pushing away, the attempting to control, the trying hard, the disappointment, the sadness and loneliness….the surrender.

From others, from myself. All of it.

Thank you all the romantic interests and exchanges and dramas for bringing me back to myself, and back to nothing. To surrender.

Can there be freedom after feeling so hurt by love?

Yes. Freedom beyond belief.

Freedom to have no idea what’s going to happen next. Freedom to have nothing else to say to Mr. Texter. Freedom to see there is no more texting, or communication, and it only took the tiniest reminder (a few sentences on my phone) to find the wind lets out of the sail quickly and a little more peace comes alive about the tortuous dramatic story over a decade ago, where it seemed I lost everything as I knew it.

I found everything as I didn’t know it. 

Turned around: Love. Roses. Yum.

Much love,