“I’d love something like that, an exposed brick wall,” I said to Paul, as though he could magically order one out of a House Beautiful catalog and have it shipped, or maybe blink his eyes like a cartoon genie. It was preposterous and pretty obvious that this desire was cooked.
Yet the heart’s desires are often like this. They defy logic. That’s why I’ve come to believe that following what you genuinely want will take you to your radical spiritual power. Because your answers are in you. Yet you don’t see how they could happen. And that’s the journey. Because the part of you that is intuitive enough to know the exact truth also knows the way to translate that truth into reality.
Anyway, you know how when you start to focus on something you want, you start to notice all the reasons you want it? I began to notice movie scenes with people who had cool lives and living rooms. They often had exposed brick walls. Naturally this meant they had marvelous conversations, cheeses, sex, iPads, and income levels. Exposed brick. It was just subliminal shorthand.
One day, standing in my living room, I was again talking to Paul about painting the walls. He looked like he wasn’t listening (which, by the way, would never happen to people who lived in cool living rooms). He was staring at the fireplace in the living room and the large plaster wall (which I’d painted purple—“blueberry yogurt,” says a friend) above it. It jutted out from the rest of the blueberry yogurt walls. “You know,” he began, “that wall that juts out is probably plaster over the chimney to the fireplace.” He stared intently.
“Mmm,” I said, as though he was beginning to explain the periodic table to me, when, really, I was more interested in end tables.
“Well, if it is the original chimney to the house, then it’s probably brick.” I still didn’t follow his thinking, because there is the small possibility that I was too busy judging him. So, he spelled it out. “If we break off that plaster wall, you might have part of an exposed brick wall.”
What? Had my dream been here all along? Could it be? I was afraid to get my hopes up. But even the thought of the possibility was a rush. We decided to try our theory. We have a large wooden Buddha face from a Thai temple hanging on the wall above the fireplace. We decided to poke a tiny hole in the plaster wall, figuring that even if we were wrong, Buddha could hide the emptiness and imperfection. It seemed metaphorically appropriate, so I was all in.
Paul chipped away a hole, kind of like a baby bird pecking through a shell. Sure enough, there was a tiny hint of red brick, a rustic ruby, peeking back at us from the hole. It was like a bindi, the holy red dot on an Indian woman’s forehead, and to me, it was every bit as devotional. I gasped. My crazy, improbable desire might actually come true.
The next day, after an all-day meeting, I came home to find Paul covered in the white dust of plaster. He looked like a crazed baker. He smiled at me as I beheld his “cake.” We had an exposed brick wall above the fireplace. Worn-out brick. Textured brick. Brick that changed the whole vibe of the living room, even more than I had imagined. I couldn’t believe it. Who needed a fantasy genie or a stinking catalog? Real life was the real miracle.
“Yet the heart’s desires are often like this. They defy logic. That’s why I’ve come to believe that following what you genuinely want will take you to your radical spiritual power.”
The answer had been there all along. It had always been there. I’d lived in this house for more than seventeen years. It’s always been there. This house is more than a hundred years old. Really, it’s always been there. But I never would have discovered it if I had only looked at the room I thought was there.
In A Course in Miracles, there is the teaching that a miracle is about “undoing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence.” In English, that means a miracle—the existence of a loving perspective or resolution, which is the signature of Spirit—is always present. But you have a belief in the way. You have an assumption or “reality” in the way. You have a way of seeing in the way. I had a thick purple plaster wall in the way.
But more than the plaster, I had a blind spot. I was trying to decorate the room I believed existed.
Yet it was only when I asked what I really wanted that I found a direction that had wings and leverage. It wasn’t about fitting a solution into my existing circumstances. It was about finding an answer or direction that changed my existing circumstances. So, are you ready to design your life? Never mind your current situation, or what you think about your current situation. What do you really want?
In my coaching practice, I see this repeatedly. I ask people, “What do you love to do?” They tell me, “I have an MBA and I’m in advertising.” Or “I’m the manager of a home association.” They tell me what they’ve been. The ten years they put into one direction. What they’re trained for. Their age. The market. Their pained beliefs about the market. They do not tell me about the destiny that is hunting them down.
They do not initially admit that they’d like to leave it all and ride an elephant in India. They do not mention the movie script that thrums in their veins. Or their instinct to adopt a child, be a ski bum in Aspen, or start a foundation.
“What do you love?” I ask. Each one treats me like I’m pretending to be Santa Claus, despite the fact that I’m Jewish, and as serious as chicken soup about this question. I stand strong. I know that real desire is the only way you will ever find your truth. The truth awaits you. The truth has the power to take you into the life in which you belong. Every limit you believe in will bow before the real truth within you. There is always a real truth.
In my case, there was always a brick wall underneath the plaster. It’s such a great metaphor. Because there is always the presence of everything you want—though it’s veiled by the mental hurdle of a familiar story. It’s waiting for you. It’s been there all along. There’s an astonishment beneath your confusion and habitual way of thinking. There is another way to see this situation. Let go of your grip on what you think the situation is.
There is always love awaiting us, beyond every single fear.
TURNING POINTS:
Everything You Need Is Here
When you stop blocking what you really want, you stop blocking the inexplicable, unthinkable good that already awaits you.
Apparently, the Universe loves an irrational desire.
The heart’s desires are often like this. They defy logic. . . . Following what you genuinely want will take you to your radical spiritual power.
Your answers are in you. Yet you don’t see how they could happen. And that’s the journey. . . . The part of you that is intuitive enough to know the exact truth also knows the exact way to translate that truth into reality.
It was only when I asked what I really wanted that I found a direction that had wings and leverage.
It wasn’t about fitting a solution into my existing circumstances. It was about finding an answer or direction that changed my existing circumstances.
Every limit you believe in will bow before the real truth within you. There is always a real truth.
There’s an astonishment beneath your confusion and habitual way of thinking. There is another way to see this situation. Let go of your grip on what you think the situation is.
NOW TAKE A VOW: I’M NEVER GIVING UP
That is the real spiritual awakening, when something emerges from within you that is deeper than who you thought you were. So, the person is still there, but one could almost say that something more powerful shines through the person.
ECKHART TOLLE
I saw a young man in Trader Joe’s wearing a black T-shirt that said, “The ego is not your amigo.” I don’t believe in a devil, but if I did, it’s the voice in your head that talks you into giving up on your dreams. It’s a voice that lies to you, shows you scraps of things, only half truths. It whispers to you, Never. Always. Stuck. Forever. Loser.
TAMA KIEVES (journal entry)
; Sometimes in transition you have to say, “Enough,” to your demons, as in, I will not listen to your stupid voices for one more second. You have to remind yourself that inner voices that exhaust you do not have your best interest in mind. There comes a time to decide you are going to believe in a higher strength within you, no matter what.
We all spiral down at times. One of my friends once drawled in an exaggerated Texas accent, “Lord, life is plaguing me. It’s everything but the locusts.” During these times, we feel lost or like life is not worth the pain. We may start giving up on moonlight. Our hopes turn to stone.
These are times of initiation. You are being asked to make a choice to love and advocate for yourself in a more powerful way than ever before—enough to choose faith in your own good life.
When uncertainty feels like a monolith of pain, here’s what thriving looks like: Breathe deeper. Be kind to yourself. Put one foot in front of the other. Keep going. Resist devastating conclusions. Fight defeatism; don’t fight yourself. And make this vow: I will not be taken down.
My parents’ house, in the Mill Basin neighborhood of Brooklyn, had burned down. It was a tragic, unreal, unholy, and holy time. My father, who had been ill, had died in the fire. My mother had been injured but lived.
A year or so later, still grieving, my mother and I visited our tiny summer country cabin in Lake Peekskill, New York. The property had drifted into complete disrepair, and with my father’s death, we needed to sell the place. That morning, still an unpublished writer, I’d gotten another rejection letter from a literary agent telling me there was no chance in hell that anyone would ever want to publish my pathetic writing or read my words. Really, the letter wished me “best of luck” in my “endeavors.” Same thing.
As we pulled up to Cherry Place, I was shocked. In my memory, the “country house” was a magic cottage, an outpost of innocence. It was the seat of our happiest, sanest family times, swimming in the nearby lake, breathing in sweet grass, beady-eyed, Monopoly games rich with paper money. We’d flee Brooklyn’s pounding August humidity. My father, away from his office, lost his rage, and played baseball with my brother. The portable radio aired the Carpenters or the Bee Gees. I played with Barbie dolls on the screened-in porch. It was the nectar of my childhood.
I wasn’t prepared to see the place destroyed. Shreds of cloth from the curtains stuck out, like a home-and-garden magazine that had gotten nauseated and thrown up on itself. The grass was tall like battered wheat, neglected. Bushes and trees that had created a natural fence line had been hacked away, leaving the property exposed and brutalized. It felt as sickening as rape. I’d already just seen this same crazy dismantling of everything I knew when I’d visited the remains of my childhood home in Brooklyn.
It was all too much. The rejection. The death. The house I’d grown up in devastated. And now this, the crown jewel of my childhood, shattered. I felt myself sinking into a haze of despondency, where nothing mattered. I know I wanted to leave my body. I wanted to leave this moment. I wanted to leave this lifetime. I wanted to give up, float away on an endless wave. I didn’t want to have to face anything anymore. I just wanted to disappear. If I wasn’t in my life, I wouldn’t have to deal with my life, I thought. Vacancy sounded like a plan.
And then the finale. That same damn day, my mother began saying things like “Did you love this country house?” which was kind of like asking sincerely if I knew somebody named Tama. My mother knew how attached I’d been to that tiny house. But this mother was showing signs of early dementia, triggered by her own trauma.
Everything but the locusts. And in the dark middle of it all, it didn’t seem as though “everything happened for a reason,” or that things would get better. It was just a parade of pain.
Sure, I’m what they call moody. But when it came to the big picture, I’d always been buoyant. I believed my future would work out somehow, no matter what was going on. I’d come to trust in an inexplicable flow that would gradually untangle life’s knots. I believed in a benevolent Universe, even one that favored you like a special aunt. This unseen love had always peeled my oranges for me, spoken to me via synchronicities or license plates on the highway.
But now it didn’t seem like enough. My nuances couldn’t stack up to the reality before me, this onslaught of continuous devastation.
Something about seeing my personal symbol of happiness destroyed, unglued me. This was ripping up my sense of well-being from its roots. This was breaking a promise I didn’t know existed. And I was tired. I could barely carry the weight of my own eyelashes. A wild woman raged within, someone let out of the attic, waving her manacles, someone who could not take another minute of enduring.
Then through my silent tears, I felt this other presence take hold in me. It welled up like a wrath, only it was a wrath of self-love. In retrospect, I’ve called it my will. It said, “I will not let you take me down.”
I am not a biblical girl. I am not someone who uses words like evil, other than in a good way, like “You look evil in that dress, girlfriend.” Wicked is a compliment in my book. But this was like something from another place and time. This presence roared within me in quiet. I will not let you take me down. I will not let you take me down. I will not let you take me down. It was as though I’d been drowning, and finally I started fighting with everything I had to save my own life. I would not give up.
Sure, I’d have “good” reasons for giving up on my dreams of writing. I could abandon my views, too, my reliance on a life-affirming intelligence stamped into every aspect of life. I’d just be considered realistic. Hell, bitterness is always considered brainy. And I was tired of seeming naive, as though my faith made me sunny and lamb brained, without much going on in the critical-thinking department upstairs. Like I should be so lucky.
But I knew active faith wasn’t weakness. Faith is proclaiming the undiluted power of your own mind—like a ninja employing unshrinking focus, even when the locusts do come. It doesn’t get me off the hook. It puts me on it. I know I’m responsible for what I believe and that my beliefs determine every action I take in this lifetime.
Still, on that really crappy day, it was tempting to believe that there was nothing to believe in except my failure and pain. But this presence within me, my Inspired Self, the one who is the keeper of my dreams, said no—do not let the distortions of self-deception take you down.
It drew a line in the sand. It brandished a sword of integrity. I didn’t know how I would heal. I didn’t know how I would soar. But in that moment, I held myself with heroic tenderness.
I was making a vow. I was not giving up on myself or my belief in some intelligent grace in this life. I would never give up. I knew I would face doubt and disappointment throughout my journey. Yet this would be my wild, courageous practice. I would return to the light that fueled me. It sounded hard. But the alternative was a butchery of meaning. I chose to fight for my life.
Something transcendental within me knew that all houses will crumble. All memories might have tears in them. All lives will be littered with rejection and ridicule and the ripping up of our own private scripts of how things should go. Yet we are more than what’s in front of us. We are what’s inside us. I trusted in an infinite spirit. I believed my Essential Self would generate new possibilities. I will not let you take me down. I will not give up on who I really am. I am born to rise.
“These are times of initiation. You are being asked to make a choice to love and advocate for yourself in a more powerful way than ever before—enough to choose faith in your own good life.”
I made a choice in that moment. I ripped a piece of curtain from the pile to place on a small altar in my home. (Later my sweetheart decided to wash that strip of curtain and it was so old, it disintegrated, so I didn’t even have that.) I chose to put my faith in life. Something within me had pushed back the dangerous current.
I imagine a tap-dancing preacher yelling out, e
yes bulging, sweat pouring, skin dancing with electricity, “Get thee behind me, Satan!” And I was that preacher that day. I was a daughter of the way. I stood up to the self-denial that threatened to have its way with me and trample all my chances. I trusted I would find a way. I trusted that somehow the way would find me. I did not give up. I allowed myself to ache deep down. But I did not go down.
“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you,” said Jean-Paul Sartre. There is a moment when you have to resist the temptation to believe in powerlessness. You have to resist the lure to see yourself as a victim, instead of as someone who can still choose to create a new life with heart, integrity, mud, spit, and whatever else you’ve got in your emotional cupboard. You are not the story of your conditions. You are unconditional freedom.
My definition of evil is the reverberation that makes you believe you are forsaken. It makes you believe that this is it. This negativity denies your chances by convincing you to deny yourself of chances. Don’t do it. Don’t believe the lie.
Let appearances crumble. But do not give up on yourself. Things will shift. Everything changes. The sun will pierce the cloud cover. There will be other houses, people to love, and opportunities to thrive. We as human beings have the tremendous capacity to reinvent ourselves. We can leave behind countries, former injustice, physical abilities, betrayal, and more. We can cry. We can grieve. But we do not have to die to who we really are.
You are meant for good. You are meant to thrive. You have love inside you always. Love can always create new life.
TURNING POINTS:
Now Take a Vow: I’m Never Giving Up
Inner voices that exhaust you do not have your best interest in mind.
These are times of initiation. You are being asked to make a choice to love and advocate for yourself in a more powerful way than ever before—enough to choose faith in your own good life.
Thriving Through Uncertainty Page 7