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I remember when I was younger I met men who wanted me to play the role of girlfriend, sex object, devoted wife, etc. While I initially liked feeling attractive, the role bored me after about five minutes. To my dismay, with wanting to be just like everybody else, I just couldn’t be somebody I wasn’t. I still don’t like to role play.
The other day I read about Werner Erhard, who while travelling across the San Francisco Bridge, had an epiphany that consisted of his realizing that he did not have to be Jack Rosenberg with all the encumbrances and roles that went with it. He subsequently left that role and went on to play Werner Erhard and in fact, took a lot of people with him on his ride. In his seminars, he might laugh at people who thought they were conveying the worst tragedy in the world to him. But it wasn’t the tragedy he laughed at; it was the self-pitying, victim role that went with it.
Where does that victim role come from? Why do some people do it better than others? I know someone plays it so well that she has alienated many dear friends. The sympathy that she has sought for a very real illness is not there for her because of her victim role. What she has not understood is that the victim role is one that is also drawing energy from somebody else’s solar plexus, the place of power. Unconsciously, she is stealing energy from others’ power center because hers is lacking. I have seen people contract when she approaches them. What they are not aware of is that they are instinctively protecting themselves from the siphoning off of their power.
In a word, Werner Erhard really sought to restore people’s power to themselves. I know a sister and brother cast into a role. He was the older brother and even though he played the role, he resented doing it. The younger sister came to depend and expect that the brother would continue to play his role. After all it had been given to him by his dying mother who on her death bed said, “Take care of baby sister.” While neither of them auditioned for these roles, they were actually perfectly cast for them and stepped into them as stars of their own demise. Many years later when both woke up to the fact that these roles were written not for them, but by the needs and conditioning of others, they struggled to step out of them. And luckily they did, with resulting feelings of freedom.
As with religion that should be evolutionary, so should role playing amongst siblings, mothers ,fathers, husbands and wives, and even friends be discontinued. Some roles of dependency are cast out of necessity and one steps into them out of necessity. Psychiatrists often talk about transference where they take on the role of “ultimate daddy and mommy” to enable their patient to have a role model so they can be re-parented. Or of course, at baby’s birth, mother and father roles are set for some time. But when the situation recedes, and people continue to play a role for which neither wish to continue, it is sometimes necessary to wake up and see that the relationship is woven together from guilt and habit rather than freedom of choice.
What makes one wish to discontinue the role and inhabit a new one? I think it is when one no longer hears his or her own voice, the voice that was originally theirs alone.
Are you interested in discarding a role that no longer serves you?
In the early days of living at my ashram, there were some people who carried a lot of anger and who didn’t hesitate to express it outwardly to others. Many hurt feelings arose and when we spoke of those “benighted” souls, a lot of judgment was cast their way. Easier for us to point to them as the “angry people,” somehow we passed over our own anger as if it didn’t exist. As the years passed and those people “improved,” we felt a lot better, many of us still not acknowledging our own anger.
This year I woke up, and finally got it that I was a very angry person. Is the awakening because I finally hear my guru saying that anger kills the moment or do I get it that anger doesn’t serve me in any way and actually makes my life more difficult when I express it outwardly. I have also come to realize that my anger is really judgment. I am saying that so and so has not lived up to my expectations in the moment and they really should. Who made me God?
Anger perpetuates my ego, that thing that covers my soul and wants to be right, smarter than anybody else and maybe if you live in an ashram, better than anybody. Anger no longer is needed to move me away from that lion that will eat me up. In fact, anger has become something that eats my soul.
A psychologist tells me that anger covers up hurt, so it’s best according to him that I get in touch with my hurt. Well, I did that for a long time and found that it just led to depression and the “blame game.”
So is there a solution? I have concluded that it lies in true compassion for me. I move from hurt to anger because I do not stop to give myself compassion for my pain. When I can extend compassion to myself and see how hurt arose, regardless of what others think of me in that moment, it has the possibility of both evolving into compassion to the person whom I feel has hurt me and displacing ensuing anger, whether repressed or expressed. This doesn’t mean that I just lie down (like the snake who resolved to stop eating people, but got beaten up cause he didn’t even hiss,) that I can’t speak my truth. The difference is that I hopefully am not asserting my “ego” or judgment via anger. However, if I express what I feel without anger, I can at least speak my truth and trust it has a chance to be heard at least, if not acted upon.
I don’t think that I will ever be free of hurt and anger. But I hope for the choice of not indulging in either of them for an extended period of time. And maybe when they arise, I can choose to mix them with lots of compassion and forgiveness, for myself and everybody else in my life. That would certainly be the enlightenment I long for.
Uma Simon has always wanted to be enlightened and every time she thinks she has made progress in that regard, she writes about it. You can read about Uma at www.umasimon.com or write her at umasimon@comcast.net. She is the Resident Intuitive at Kashi Ashram and is also a gestalt therapist and counselor.
When I was 27, I ate my first hot fudge sundae. I looked at myself in the mirror, saw myself as overweight, and asked myself what I had been waiting for. My story was that I had gotten fat eating a lot of cottage cheese and pineapple with some sedentary activity as accompaniment. My girlfriend Virginia looked at me with her best face of compassion and asked me if I was sure that I was ready to jump off of that cliff. I assured her I was. We thereafter went to a place called Cookies in Miami where, still ashamed, I proceeded to order a glass of water, while my friend Virginia ordered a pineapple soda as well as a hot fudge sundae. I was so excited to see the hot fudge sundae in full spotlight under those restaurant lights. Unfortunately, my waitress did not have the same anticipation and when she served up the hot fudge sundae, the hot fudge had become cold and the ice cream warm; the whipped cream sagged and so did my spirits.
However, I was not to be thwarted. I thereafter ran to the soda shop across the street, ordered one again and was again disappointed by the quality of the ice cream and fudge. Thereafter, a strange obsession began to brew in me for the perfect hot fudge sundae. I shortly thereafter left Miami and came to live in a commune in Berkeley with eight other New Agey people interested in dissecting the past and hoping for a better future. Now I would like to think that the paucity of good sundaes was not why I left Miami, but in my cynical moments, I wonder. Anyway, Berkeley was a veritable Mecca of good food and great ice cream. My commune mates quickly learned of my obsession as did all my other acquaintances. I’d like to think I spent the better part of my days working and being interested in something other than food, but I have to admit a great part was spent checking out the latest tip from my friends of fabulous hot fudge sundaes. Having exhausted the greater part of Berkeley and San Francisco, I began to feel discouraged.
Then as I turned 27, a monumental time in people’s lives, Saturn return, etc. a new idea popped into my head. Why didn’t I compile all the good things I wanted in the sundae and make my perfect hot fudge sundae? And so I did. I gathered together the creamiest, most organic ice cream (gallons); true real hot fudge to slather upon it, homemade whipped cream with big, plump salty nuts and fat maraschino cherries on top. My most important condition was that the hot fudge had to be very warm and the ice cream totally cold with the expectation that the coming together would have to provide a sort of sizzle. Well, maybe not actually sizzle, but it’s the best I can do. Years later, my guru explained that the feeling of samadhi was similar to feeling very cold and then suddenly stepping into a warm bath. What I was looking for kind of seems similar.
The night of my birthday arrived. All inhabitants of my commune were there to perform the ceremony. Anthony, my beautiful gay boyfriend at the stove heating the hot fudge, my friend Gayle in readiness at the freezer door, waiting to bring forth the ice cream, Harris, the tax collector, whipping the whipped cream, Mertie, dear Mertie, with her bought bag of fresh, aromatic nuts, Tom who had managed to get the fattest maraschino cherries around and Jeanie the crazy psychic who was convinced she should probably perform an exorcism on debauchery.
As the sundae came together, they all gathered around me, waiting for me to ingest this perfection. And that I did. While the “condition” was met, ice cream brilliantly cold and the hot fudge temperature in its “warmest” mode, yet I felt something missing. When I finally looked up from consuming my sundae into the shining eyes of my friends gathered together, happy for me, without judgment for my eccentricity, I began to feel an extraordinary feeling of joy arising in me, similar to what I’ve heard described as a satori experience. (A kind of “I finally get it). I was realizing a momentary fulfillment of my long-term longing for acceptance and love, and that made the “perfect” hot fudge sundae.
As a postscript I never longed for a hot fudge sundae in that same way again. But sometimes when I find myself still searching for perfection or love in myself or others, I have to remind myself of the lesson I learned that night: That it would never come in the fulfillment of some desire or even in the eyes of somebody else. That underneath those desires is a desire for something much more elusive and non-material and that would be, the love and acceptance I felt that night. As I climb into my 68th year, I have also found out that it is not something to be gained or received outside myself but something that is within me if and when I choose to look deeply enough.
A woman whom I will call Susan came to see me today for a tarot reading, looking for a possible solution to her problem. She was torn between two choices in which she saw herself losing if she chose either of them. I call it the Scylla and Charybdis choice. Scylla and Charybdis were mythical sea monsters. Scylla was a rock and Charybdis a whirlpool located close enough to each other so that avoiding either one of them meant passing too close to the other one to be devoured. The hero, Odysseus, was forced to choose which monster to confront while passing through the sea. We now call this as being between a rock and a hard place. In this case, Susan was trying to decide whether to stay with her husband who was a great father to their child, but not a great husband, or leave him and perhaps deprive her child of what she believed would be a “secure” childhood. She was tortured with making the decision.
It has been my experience that every time we advance in our lives that we must somehow pass through Scylla and Charybdis. Expressed differently, this choice could be said between leaving comfort and security, be it emotional or financial, no matter how painful, into a new place. Of course, it is more difficult when you think that you are making a decision for a child; it is not only your destiny that you are tinkering with. However, as I have found out in my own life, there is what I call the Third Choice. It is when you choose yourself without thinking you are being “selfish.” It is also about releasing bondage to what one sees as security and possible consequence whether it be real or imaginary. Sue really didn’t know that her son was going to suffer from the divorce. There was the possibility that she actually might be doing him a favor by leaving an unhappy environment to which he was sensitive. However, when we opt for the third choice, there is the inevitable fear of loss or pain, because we are jumping into the unknown, with potential peril.
A friend of mine likes to call me several times during the week. Many times I am busy writing or doing something where I don’t like to be disturbed. I was telling myself that I had to sacrifice what I we doing in order to be a good friend to her, but I didn’t enjoy being so available. She would tell me how important it was to her. I realized I was afraid of losing her emotional friendship if I chose to retrieve a part of myself lost in the friendship. I finally told her how I felt.
Navigating through Scylla and Charybdis is not easy. It requires the desire to choose oneself and not be so fearful of consequences real or unreal. There is a card in the tarot deck that shows a woman bound by ropes and surrounded by swords. It makes me realize how often we bind ourselves to escape from loneliness or fear. Every time however that I choose myself and release these emotional ties, I feel stronger,lighter and closer to my Spirit for which I am grateful.
Uma Simon is a gifted intuitive, gestalt therapist and tarot reader. You can read about her at www.umasimon..com She welcomes your comments.
Great Beings Who Walk the Earth: A Burden Lifted: Dedicated to Ma Jaya Bhagavati
Early on in my days as an ashram resident, I practiced celibacy, only to one day meet a man to whom I was very attracted. He was of all things a Baptist minister. An exceedingly kind man, what surprised me was not the feeling of intense attraction, but when I was in his presence, of all things, I felt Christ. I don’t know if it was because his passion for Christ was so authentic, but something spiritually significant awakened in me. Being raised Jewish, Jesus was not significant in my life and in fact, I probably still harbored a prejudice towards him, having been raised by post World War II Jews, for whom a Gentile could still be scary.
One day after meeting this man, driving down U.S.1, sending outward prayers to be rid of these distracting feelings of sexuality, I had what might be described as a vision. It was almost like a meditative state, being able to look within and yet focus outwardly simultaneously. I was seeing Jesus, carrying a heavy cross. Viewing him laboring under the great weight of the cross, I was to feel an extraordinary compassion and love for him, but then, my heart seemed to expand and expand until those singular feelings expanded to overwhelming feelings of love not only for him ,but all of humanity. What an extraordinary experience this was.
Through this experience, I felt I understood the true meaning of Jesus carrying the cross; how he as a Holy person, undertook to carry the pain under which we labor. Being human, we do carry a weight of human imperfection. Some religious people might call that “sin.” For me, that imperfection means my own laziness, fear, cowardice in situations or unwillingness to forgive and have compassion towards either myself or others. As someone who had committed herself to a spiritual life, I struggle with my lack of spirituality in situations; and sometimes feel that much of my time is spent hating my human frailities. But here now was this holy figure willing to help me carry the burden of myself. My experience awakened a gratitude that someone had come to earth to help me in my “burden.”
Counseling others who live in convents, monasteries and ashrams, I sometimes feel that they perhaps have cultivated a sensitivity that actually makes it more difficult for them to be compassionate towards themselves and others because they that they are constantly routing out that one black spot within themselves that only they are aware of, and as a consequence of self-hate only continue the unacceptance of both themselves and others.
The experience made me realize more deeply my own attraction and willingness to commit to my Guru. In her presence I have felt oneness within myself where I am no longer torn by judgment of myself and others. How wonderful to be in the presence of someone who having once found their place of inner peace, now sacrifice their lives and live amongst us as holy inspirations. Those who have had the fortune of being in the presence of Jesus, Mohammed, the Bal Shem Tov, Ma Jaya, or other enlightened gurus and teachers, how lucky we are. As we strive towards emulation of them, they help us and show by their light the way. They look upon our struggles with compassion; they do not blame us for our imperfections, they feel infinite compassion towards us and are willing to carry their own version of the cross.
I sometimes forget that what I see as their perfection is very same compassion that I must show to myself and that this self-compassion and love is the ticket to my own holiness.
Uma Simon is an intuitive, gestalt therapist and tarot reader. You can read about her at www.umasimon.com She welcomes your comments.
The tentacles of friendship: Loneliness and Aloneness
A friend of mine in a rare show of candor tells me that she is lonely and wishes she could have a really good friend on whom she can rely. I instantly think of another friend who has myriad acquaintances and friends. A cell phone attached to her ear, she is either calling someone or being called. She is successful in her quest in that she is hardly ever alone. Luckily for her, she is appealing enough so that she is able to attract the many friends she needs in her life to dispel feelings of loneliness. Unlike many of us who seek comfort in food, alcohol or drugs, her addiction of choice might be said to be the accumulation of friends and acquaintances.
I have certainly fallen into spaces where I have felt unbearably lonely. Several years ago, I absolutely keened for a close friend who had left the ashram and the emptiness felt unbearable.. Not so long ago, I renewed an old relationship with somebody with whom I had previously been friendly; I had discontinued the relationship in the past because of what I felt were certain boundary issues. I had always loved the aspect of his personality that was very nurturing and caring and now realize that I encouraged the renewal because I felt fragile about some health problems. The same boundary issues between us arose, but this time I was stronger and clearer in stating my needs and we established certain guidelines. However, as time went by, I saw that a certain personality trait of his that had previously driven me crazy was still in operation; it wasn’t something I could ask him to change because there are certain traits that we have that are very deeply ingrained and why should I ask him to change? In the end, those qualities that I valued were strongly over-ridden, and I actually felt worse through his company. Even though I tried to suppress my feelings, and concentrate on his positive traits, eventually, my feelings of fragility actually became a gift since I did not feel strong enough to maintain a façade of camaraderie.
Withdrawing from the relationship, as kindly as I could, brought consequent feelings of guilt. One day as feelings of loneliness and some guilt arose, I was about to renege on my withdrawal and ask him to go to the movies with me. As I sat with my desires, I suddenly realized that the guilt I was feeling was a very familiar one that I had often felt with my mother who had expected me to unselfishly turn my life over to her and the guilt carried for many years towards both my parents for not submitting to their irrational needs and instead seeking my own joy. This realization became a true “Aha” experience and I “got it” that I did not have to continue relationships from a “guilt” place. My teacher, Ma, would call this a “root,” one of those things that configure your life, but are so deeply ingrained that you are not aware of their existence until they arise through relationship and become so painful that you must “root” them out.
How many times have I encouraged people to remove themselves from a relationship that no longer serves them but perpetuates their weakness or feelings of failure? I tell them that if they make a sacrifice to be in a relationship, make sure it doesn’t diminish them or a piece of their character that they value. That is the litmus test of staying or leaving a relationship. In a much more subtle fashion, we continue to endure relationships with our friends or those not really close to us that really no longer serve us, but instead reinforce feelings of weakness and fears of being alone.
Once I realized what I was really doing in my relationship with my friend, I saw that I had to brave loneliness and make the next step towards “aloneness.” For me that meant sitting through the waves and fears of loneliness until some of them either receded or no longer had the same hold over me. I realized that what I had to do was contact my spiritual Self, the self that is always with me and which eventually serves me. It too has a conscience, but it is not a conscience fueled by guilt or need. When we can brave our loneliness, we can encounter the self that lies beneath our fears. Then loneliness becomes aloneness which can be a rich fount of experience.
Uma Simon is an intuitive, gestalt therapist and tarot reader. You can read about her at www.umasimon.com She welcomes your comments.
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