Hi.
I thought I would give podcasting a go this morning and, well, here we are. I do love the idea of telling a story, but hearing myself snuffling and clearing my throat and getting choked-up … this does not make for compelling audio. Also, a writer’s best friend is the delete button. With neither recording team nor editing skills, we remain here, for now. You’ll thank me later.
So, as you know, Coco and I were at a pretty fabulous wedding last week. It’s all over the tabloids now, though they have yet to mention the two of us among the star-studded guests. That’s fine; I do enjoy my quiet life here in Vermont. I’d hate to have to start locking the doors now, something we haven’t done in the thirty years I’ve lived here.
There was a moment … there were so many moments. That Grateful Dead line keeps coming up … It's all a dream we dreamed one afternoon long ago … there was this moment when Coco and I were talking with Martin Snow, who owns boxing gyms in NY and LA. Martin asked Coco a big question: are you great? He wasn’t talking about how she was feeling in the moment, he was asking her about her sense of self-worth. Like probably pretty much everyone else on the planet, she couldn’t answer yes. She stumbled and fumbled with this idea that she might hold greatness. I think she might have said, reluctantly … well … I’m good …
To which Martin replied, no you’re not, you’re great. You want to know why? Because you were born great.
I think I started crying then because that’s what happens to me when I meet someone who gets the truth of life.
Spiritual truths almost always come wrapped in the most unexpected packages.
Martin was at this star-studded wedding wearing a sweatshirt with the name of his gym on it and a red bandanna on his head. A very bold choice, I thought, which was what made me gravitate to him. I wanted to know his story.
You were born great.
Interestingly, though not surprisingly, this was exactly what I had been chewing on in the weeks before going to Italy. This idea that each of us is born with a core of beautiful truth. I named it The Goo of Truth. I visualize it like the core of the Earth: molten, warm, at the center.
We are born with this fabulous Goo and then the world starts heaping on all sorts of crap. Our parents, because of who they are and how they were raised, skew the narrative right out of the starting gate. Then we’re subject to lots of institutional sludge, depending on the things our parents cared about. In my case it was the Catholic church, which told and taught me at least a hundred different lies and hypocrisies before I was even ten. Schools, our peers, the community in which we are raised, all of these build the story and create what I would call encrustations around the Goo of Truth, making it harder and harder for us to access that beautiful core.
We go through life and the stories we were told become the stories we tell and live. We tell these stories often enough to ourselves and the world that they become the new truth. Only they’re rarely, if ever, true.
Eventually we get to the place in our adult lives where things aren’t going very well. Could be divorce, some kind of loss, someone important is dying or has died. We might be diagnosed with an illness, always a major red flag raised by a body that can no longer handle our bullshit. At some point we get tired of dragging the 100-pound duffle bag of lies behind us and we’re finally ready to do the excavation work on ourselves to get back to the Goo.
You can pay people to help you on this new path. There are many very talented healers and guides who can give you structure and support as you enter this journey back to yourself, but make no mistake, it cannot be bought. You have to commit yourself to the task. You have to be finally, fully willing to look in the mirror and speak the truth to yourself about yourself.
You have to take the stories that you have told yourself and the world about who you are and dig down to the roots. This will take time, patience, fortitude and a willingness to feel the pain that will come when you finally realize that the things your parents and the institutions taught you about relationships, money, success, your body, love, food are simply not true. And that many of the ways those stories have played out in your life have been harmful to yourself and others.
You have your own truths: you are already beloved, you can handle money, your body is perfect just the way it is.
And by the way, eating food and sex are totally awesome and two of the most wonderful ways we are meant to use these bodies.
You were not born to be the next chapter in the book your parents and their parents and their parents started writing. You were born to write a brand new story. Don’t be hard on yourself; no one told you this when you were growing up. But I’m telling you this now and if you are reading this then it’s not too late.
The Goo of Truth.
Here is what I’ve learned since I started doing the work it takes to get back to the Goo: that life will still bring all kinds of disturbances, but they don’t last as long, you won’t need to hold on to them so tightly. When something or someone bugs you, you go to the Goo and figure it out and move on. You will fall, but you will get back up a lot faster.
You begin to rest easy in your skin. You know you are right where you belong.
Because you are becoming more clearly connected with your Higher Self, life begins to flow very nicely. People and situations arrive that help you on your way. You will be delighted on a more regular basis. You’re not fighting life anymore; you’re in the river.
What you will find is that a profound experience of the law of cause and effect, through self-understanding, opens the universe and makes it accessible, with all its harmony and perfection. (The Path to the Real Self, Eva Pierrakos)
I’m going to leave you with this, for today. It’s a lot. Your task now is to discern, decide, if you’re ready, if you want to begin the journey back to yourself. Can you bear the idea of the excavation work that needs to happen?
I’ll say what I say so often to skeptics, to people who are afraid of change, who tell me this is who I am as a way of shielding themselves from having to face any difficult truths: you have to have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
And I will also tell you what I tell people who are in the process of dying, to ease their fears: you are not alone, you are safe and you are loved.
I promise. xomo
Lovely Message.
Go girl. Being a writer, I spend a lot of time thinking and researching. Some days I move at a crawl and other times I am completely absorbed in research. I try to live in the moment, and know that I am here to learn and Be. I call the planet, Earth School. I had to delete the first message because of errors, ever ongoing. Love to your day.