In January, I was invited by Jaana Kunitz, world champion Latin-ballroom dancer, performer, choreographer, and fitness celebrity, to be a backup dancer in her teacher-training videos. It was a huge honor, and it forced me to get back into dancing shape. For the month of February, as I struggled to learn her routines and build my aerobic capacity, I kept trying to get myself fired, telling Jaana I couldn’t do it, that I was too out of shape, that I did not dance well enough, that she should hire someone half my age and much more talented, but she refused to let me off the hook.
She tirelessly coached me through iPhone videos, constantly encouraging me when I wanted to give up. “I want you,” she said. “You can do it. Keep trying.”
When I showed up to film, I realized the only other dancer besides Jaana and me was a finalist on So You Think You Can Dance. I had to hold my own next to these two. Two hours into filming, I pulled my hamstring and threw out my back. I quietly mentioned both to Jaana and then got painkillers from a cameraman. The only reason I made it through the video shoot was because I had been training at an altitude of 8,000 feet and was now filming at sea level.
I walked (well, hobbled) back to my hotel room at the end of that day changed. I caught my reflection in the mirror. I was different; I was a dancer again. A huge chunk of my spirit came flooding back, a huge piece of my soul.
This change gave me the courage I needed to drive by my house the following day. I had been afraid to return there. I knew I had to sell it. I could not bear to even look at it—so many painful memories. I called my real estate agent and told her it had to go. I was willing to lower the price; losing so much money in New York had taught me that emotional and psychological freedom was so much more important than money. The house absolutely had to go. She put a “coming soon” sign in front of it that afternoon. My heart sang with relief. I was a dancer again, and my ashram had to go.
I returned to Colorado. I had not dated in close to three years. I wanted my sexuality back. I had to figure out how to incorporate sensuality with the “new” me. I couldn’t be celibate forever. I was a dancer; I used my body to express myself. What better way to express love of another than through the physicality of sex? I signed up for pole-dancing class and then I began snowboarding in earnest. I was no longer afraid to fall, and I was no longer afraid to sit next to strangers on the chair lift. It had taken me two years to get to this point, and the freedom that came along with it was blissful. I now had the energy and the confidence to ride all over the mountain on my own. My love of snowboarding returned. I could not believe that, for the last year, I had been terrified of doing more than the one run by my house, and I was so scared of strangers that I only went to snowboard at 8:45 a.m., as soon as the mountain opened, so I could ride the lift by myself. I had been embarrassed that the lift operators saw poor sad old shy broken me every morning by myself, never with friends. I kept my head down and never looked at them. Now I smiled and said “hello” to the lift operators. I danced a little while waiting for the chair if they had music playing. I high-fived them as I whizzed into the singles line and rode up with strangers, listening to them tell me about their lives the whole way. It is amazing how much joy interacting with others brought to me; it is amazing how liberating it felt to trust people again; it is amazing the change in my world when I decided, rather than seeing everyone as “being in my way” or “draining my energy” or “out to get me,” to see everyone as a friend I had not met yet . . . to see them as angels being sent to remind me I am not alone. And it is amazing how just being me suddenly, after so much time of not being me, brought me more joy than I ever could have imagined. It brought me to nirvana.
The more I smiled and the more I talked and the more I danced and snowboarded and went to yoga, the happier and fuller and larger my life became. And as I became happier, I radiated that light and love and joy to everyone I met. A happy me was a radiating me. A happy me was an accepting me. A happy me was a nonjudgmental me. My key to becoming saint-like, to having patience and compassion and radiating love and light and peace and God, was—oh my God—just doing the things that made me me!
Part 6 Whole
“Just let go. Let go of how you thought your life should be, and embrace the life that is trying to work its way into your consciousness.”
—Caroline Myss
Chapter 37 Wild Monk
Slowly but surely, I was assembling my pieces. It seemed like I had so many of them, they would never fit back together. I felt like I had split identities: One side of me loved being a monk and living a quiet life of contemplation and solitude. Another side of me loved men and sex and dancing and drinking and surfing and snowboarding and being naughty. One side of me wanted to leave society all together and spend my life alone with religious books and devotional chanting and sunrises and my cat and God. The other side of me wanted to move back to New York and be a best-selling author. How could I be such an extreme dichotomy? Which side was going to win out? Who was I, really? Which parts of me were real and which were façades? I still could not tell . . .
With pole-dancing class and going to bars again, the “bad girl” started shoving her way to the surface. She wanted back in my life, and she wanted back with a vengeance. In order to become whole, this side of me had to come back. I had shoved her away for so long, covered her in sack-like clothing. I had run over her surfboards with my car and burned all her leather jackets and platform heels. Even in my healing, I had decided the young, sexy, wild, fun girl had to die.
Not completely true.
The sex kitten had to die, but the untamed side of me had to remain.
She is a part of me. A powerful part of me. Her passion is the manifestation of the spiritual in physical form. Her desire is the summoning of Life Force Energy moving through her. She is freedom. She is a rule-breaker. She is unbound.
The difference is this:
I am now all of it. I am the older, wiser, slower, more grounded, kinder, more compassionate monk woman, and I am the sexy, fun, dangerous, pole-dancing, leather-wearing, freaky wild child. I have found a way to combine them and to honor them both. It’s not easy. Most people who first meet me dancing on a bar are shocked when I tell them I am a monk and an introvert. They can’t understand how I can be so fun and wild and free and still want to spend most of my time alone at home in silence. Most people who meet me in yoga, when I am centered and quiet and shy, are shocked if they happen to see me out at night wearing leather pants and knee high boots, spinning around a stripper pole. I have stopped trying to be one or the other. I am all of it. Sometimes I need to be wild. Most of the time I need to be contained.
I’m proud to be me.
I’m proud of all I went through.
I’m proud of every single decision I made, because it was the best I could do at that time.
And, the most important of all: I would not undo any of it.
Chapter 38 Graduation
May 19, 2015, I sit in the backseat of a taxi, bumping along FDR Drive on the east side of Manhattan. I have just landed at LaGuardia airport and am on my way to a hotel in Soho. A huge smile spreads across my face.
I did it. I fucking did it. I, Renee Linnell, ex-professional dancer and bikini model, have just graduated from the Executive Masters in Business Administration program at NYU Stern. I cannot believe it.
As the taxi rattles along in rush-hour traffic and the hot humid air from the open window hits me in the face, I realize it was all worth it.
I lean back into the dirty leather seat and look at the river. I feel peace. I feel a deep, deep peace—all the way to the depths of my soul. And I feel joy. I feel overwhelming joy. And I feel a sense of accomplishment that I cannot describe. Tomorrow I, along with over eight thousand other graduates, will walk into Yankee Stadium dressed in purple.
I close my eyes, overcome with gratitude. I am so incredibly grateful. Grateful, at long last, to be returning to the entirety of myself; grateful to be, finally, rising from the ashes like a ph
oenix. I hold this vision in my mind: a phoenix, large, graceful, powerful . . . rising from the ashes in victory, wings spread wide, chest arched and open, head held high. Unashamed. Unafraid. My skin tingles with goose bumps. I feel stronger than I have ever felt, more grateful than I have ever felt, and free.
Epilogue
It has been five years since I moved to Colorado. I never imagined it would take this long for me to heal. But, I have to say, I feel as if I’ve been rebuilt from the ground up. As if every single piece of myself that came back, came back stronger, more grounded, more sure of who I am and what I want, more appreciative of all life has given me, and more Free. I learned so much and for that I am truly grateful. I’m not as needy as I used to be. Not as insecure. I give more than I take. I spend time every day in silence. And I try my hardest to always be kind.
I did not just survive the burn zone that first night I met Lakshmi, I lived in and survived the burn zone for close to ten years. Like the Samurai sword, I endured being held in the flame, being pounded down and flattened by life, and I came out the other side as a version of myself that I truly love.
I will never understand what Lakshmi and Vishnu wanted. I will never understand how Lakshmi could flood a room with Light and be so hateful at the same time. I will never understand if Vishnu was just a narcissist that craved power or simply a wounded and confused man filled with self-hatred and desperate to believe the lies about his “magnificence.” And I am still trying to figure out how to undo the lingering paranoia left in my mind by their incessant teachings on the occult. But I do know that Lakshmi did push me toward freedom. She did teach me to grow up. She did help me to expand my life in magnificent ways.
Lakshmi and Vishnu taught me to fear others. To separate myself from them. To push them away. To disdain anyone that was not on the same path I was on. I became isolated. I became cold. I became distant. I became self-righteous. I became judgmental. I became mean. They taught me to hate myself, to hate every part of myself that was “unspiritual,” to hate every part of myself that was human. The more I hated myself, the more I hated others, and the more I hated others, the more I attracted hateful people into my life. This is how I got so incredibly taken advantage of in New York; this is how I let hate begin to consume me.
Mind control is no joke. It is incredibly damaging. Planting seeds of self-doubt and hatred in other people’s minds is the antithesis of spreading light. And it amazes me that it could happen to me, that it could happen to my friends, that it can happen to anyone if we allow others to tell us who we are.
In New York, I had a quote on my desk from St. Catherine of Siena. It said, “Be who God meant you to be, and you will set the world on fire.”
I would look at that quote every day and say to myself, sometimes out loud, but always in great emotional pain, “I don’t know who God meant me to be. I have no idea what to be, what to do with my life. I am so unhappy, and I feel so small. If I knew who God meant me to be, I would do it. I would love to set the world on fire.” And then I would go about my day.
One day, my eyes landed on that quote and Love popped into my head. Simply the word Love.
And then I got it.
God meant me to be love: a walking, breathing, living manifestation of love. God meant for all of us to be love. When we love ourselves, we love others. And when we love others, we bring out the best in them; we create a beautiful safe space for the vulnerable, gooey, raw parts to come out from behind the ego and shine.
And the truth suddenly showed itself, after I had spent a lifetime searching: Love.
My search for God led me through hell and back. I destroyed myself. I destroyed all I loved. And the most important thing I got out of all of it at the end was this: when I love, I feel God. When I’m grateful, I feel God. When I’m giving and kind and patient and caring and compassionate, I feel God. The rest doesn’t matter. Nothing else matters. And the key to feeling love and kindness and patience and compassion is loving and accepting—completely accepting—myself.
God made me. S/he wants me to be me. With all the flaws and cracks and broken bits. And s/he wants me to be happy. S/he wants all of us to be happy. And s/he wants us to love each other. When we love each other, we create heaven on earth. When we don’t, we create hell. It is up to us. It has always been up to us.
At least, after all my searching, this is what I now believe. It doesn’t mean it’s true. It doesn’t mean I know exactly what God wants. It doesn’t mean anyone else has to believe it. But imagine if everybody did: instead of suicide bombers we’d have anonymous acts of love, generosity, and kindness. Instead of “sin and confession and redemption” we’d have joy and fun and self-acceptance and play. Instead of altercations with grumpy strangers that provoke “What’s your problem, asshole?” we’d understand a mean person is suffering and say, instead, “Are you okay, can I help?” or at least walk away without being mean back, without perpetuating the cycle of hate, understanding that a mean person is a person in pain. Instead of holy wars, we’d have holy love fests.
I look back on all I went through and I can’t believe I put up with being treated so badly for so long. Now that I’m out the other side, I find the whole story mind-boggling. But maybe that’s the whole point of a spiritual path, of this journey on earth: to come into this world perfect; to lose ourselves through childhood; to allow ourselves to believe we have to look, walk, act, talk, dress a certain way to fit in, hold a certain job to be important, make a certain amount of money to have self-worth . . . to walk that path until it breaks us, and then to slowly come back to our authentic selves at the end.
A part of me believes we have all been brainwashed to some degree. Anytime we believe we are unworthy, we have been brainwashed. Anytime we believe we are ugly or stupid or not good enough, we have been brainwashed. Anytime we believe we need to buy another product to be happy or hide our sexuality to fit in or cut into our face and body in order to be beautiful, we have been brainwashed. We are bombarded with messaging that tells us we are not okay the way we are. It is time for messaging that tells us the opposite: there is room for all of us, with all our diversity, and each one of us is incredibly worthy. By believing in and loving and being true to ourselves, we add our light to the sum of light, and we shift the consciousness of this planet from fear to love. Is there anything else more worthy of our time?
People hear my story and ask what I learned as a monk; they ask whether I found Enlightenment. They ask me about religions and spiritual paths. They ask me what to believe. This is how I respond:
When you are walking toward fear and hate and judgment and condemnation and isolation, you are walking in the wrong direction. When you walk toward faith and love and community and acceptance and kindness and compassion, you are on the right path.
I can’t know The Way that is right for you; I am not you. But I do know that if you get quiet, if you allow your mind to go still for just fifteen minutes every day, even if you just try to allow your mind to go still for fifteen minutes each day, you will begin to hear the Wise Voice within, the one you were born with, the one that is always there guiding you. You already know the answers you seek, you just need to get still enough to listen. No guru can replace your own Inner Knowing, no one outside of yourself should. Follow your heart, follow your dreams, follow your passions. They are given to you for a reason, implanted inside of you on purpose. They are the key to your destiny. And above all else, find a way to be more playful, more childlike, less serious. Give yourself a break. Trust the unfolding. Love yourself; be amazed by yourself. You are a magnificent creation of the Divine.
About the Author
Renee Linnell is a serial entrepreneur who has founded or cofounded five companies and has an MBA from New York University; before that she was a model and professional dancer. Currently she is working on starting a publishing company to give people from diverse walks of life an opportunity to tell their stories. Linnell divides her time between Colorado and Southern Californi
a. For more information please visit www.reneelinnell.com.
Author photo © In Her Image Photography
Acknowledgments
“Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.”
—Rumi
First, I have to thank August Gold, my therapist. Without you I would probably not still be here. Next, I have to thank Cherise Fisher, my editor, who turned 500 pages of my journal entries (“vomit,” as you lovingly called them) into a book. Third, I have to thank Fauzia Burke, who is not only the world’s best marketing consultant but also a great friend and a fantastic coach. Next come Brooke Warner and the team at She Writes Press: thank you for believing in my story and for doing such a wonderful job polishing it . . . and for being so amazing to work with. Thank you to Cait Levin for keeping my project on track, to Mimi Bark for the beautiful cover, to Heidi and Tara of In Her Image Photography for making me feel like a goddess and for capturing so many amazing photos for my covers and my branding, and to Sanyu for introducing me to Cherise. And now the ladies—Shawna, Luann, Adrienne, Jane, Julia, Sachi, and Allison—who tirelessly listened to me talk about “working on my book,” who read numerous manuscript versions, and who made me keep going each time I wanted to quit. I thank you from the bottom of my heart; you make me feel so safe in this world. Thank you to Bruno for being my rock and for always making me laugh; to Sharon C for telling me I had to write a book; to Jason G for making me pull my manuscript out of the trash and look for a publisher; and to Jaana for making me dance again and for believing in me and for being so wild and crazy and sparkly and for reading and endorsing my manuscript. Thank you to Madisyn Taylor of DailyOM for reading my email and being willing to not only respond but read an entire MS sent to you by a stranger and then endorse it. Thank you to Meredith Rom for your wise guidance and for also taking the time to read my MS and write such a lovely endorsement; to Diane R for offering to proofread and instead losing yourself so completely in the MS that you quit proofreading a few chapters in; to Aaron S, my “party coach,” who got me back into the bars and back into the world; to the Sarasota Book Club ladies, who offered to beta test my manuscript and gave me wonderful feedback—I think I implemented all of it. Thank you to Nathan at GLBG for your edits, you helped make my book so much stronger; to Richard C for your legal advice, your fabulous NY accent, and your fantastic humor about the whole thing; to Jonathan K for your support and legal guidance. I have to thank Gary, my brother and womb-mate, for never giving up on me and for saying, “I don’t care how weird you get or what kind of a cult you join, you are not kicking me out of your life, I am your family,” and Tameka, my sister-inlaw and my soul sister, for supporting and loving my brother and for giving me great marketing advice. I have to thank Kristin A and Kasey G for forgiving me for ruining our debutante party; I was selfish and a jerk and I am so sorry. Thank you to all my NYU classmates (A13 and J15) and professors; you supported me and encouraged me more than you know, and without you I would still be “just a dancer.” Thank you, Jeff C, for offering to proofread and for taking me in off the street when I was basically homeless in Hawaii. My list could go on and on. Thank you to everyone who has ever been kind to me, I am still here on this planet because of you. And a huge thank-you to all of my friends who allowed me to push you away and go radio silent for almost eight years, and then welcomed me back with open arms. I could not live in this world without you. Thank you to every single person who has ever fanned my flames.
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