Tao and Zen

I think sometimes it's easy to draw conclusions about the stuff I post in here if you don't talk or interact with me every day. I don't post here often, and when I do, it's usually the stuff that's deep, deep in my brain, much of which may be negative. If it's your primary source of info, it's going to be very misleading. Actually, that's true of any of my journals, or even all of them taken together.

Most recently I posted about my self esteem, or the lack thereof. I was talking about a conversation I'd had with someone and how this conversation made me realize that I had no self esteem. What was happening was that we were flirting (in amongst some serious discussion) and at one point I was thinking, Oh, he wouldn't really be interested in me, a guy like him, what am I thinking. And that's when it hit me that I have no self esteem.

But that wasn't really accurate, even then. It's not that I don't have any self-esteem. It's that sometimes, when I'm in a situation like that, I get scared. I don't want to get hurt (again). It's easier to tell myself, at those bad times, that some of the things that other people have said are true. And it's easier to blame myself for things that I didn't do or that were not my fault. But would I say that that's how I feel all of the time, or even most of it? No. I mean, there were periods of time when that was the case, sure, for various reasons. But these days? Oh no.

Anyway, the point of that last post wasn't that I have no self esteem, per se. It was that I have no reason for not having any self esteem. This is something I've been thinking about for years and years -- the last dozen at least. I had a conversation with my mother in mid-1995, shortly before my grandmother died, that really had an effect on me. We were discussing something that had impacted me negatively since a very young age, and she said, "But you have to realize that it wasn't your fault - you did nothing to cause it." I drove home after that conversation in a fog of revelation, and even though I subsequently made some very poor choices for myself, that conversation has stayed with me and gotten me through some very dark moments.

At some point after my most recent post here, I was meditating, as I often do, in my bathtub. One of my beliefs is that realizing true unconditional love is the basis for changing the world around you. Ergo, I began to chant the following:


Over and over I chanted this -- murmured it really -- to myself. As I chanted I envisioned a fountain of white light flowing up from my toes, all the way through my body, and out of the top of my head and then flowing down all around me. It "snagged" a bit at my throat, and I understood that I still had some issues there to work on, but still, there was quite a lot of white light everywhere. This was not the first time I'd chanted this mantra, but it was the first time I'd done so and not cried (an expression of the fear that I felt despite the words).

Since that day I've been quite a bit calmer about situations that used to drive me crazy, and I'm very, very happy about that. I'm beginning to think that everything that has happened in my life since that conversation with my mother has been one long lesson in the art of Letting Go. If so, then I think this chapter is almost done, and I am ready for the Next Thing.

I am becoming Love.

I will not be afraid.