Being Gentle With Oneself

When people argue with you and you feel defensive, you are implicitly accepting what they are saying to be truth. If you saw things differently and were able to stand strong in your own knowing, you would be interested in why they think or feel the way they do, instead of feeling defensive.

Being gentle with oneself is going through the stage Siddhartha went through when he was faced with armies and rage attacking him in his psyche while in meditation and he let all that be without defending himself, just accepting the onslaught, accepting the feelings, watching it all happen calmly until there was nothing left in him to fight. He had tried everything else and had nothing else to try except to try this revolutionary thing: surrendering. Not surrendering in defeat, surrendering because he knew the onslaught was his ego fighting for dear life; it was not real.

The defensive option or the fighting for one's worth or for respect, are violent because they don't come from knowing we're not guilty. They accept the accusation. It hurts.

In surrendering, Siddhartha took his own side, the side of his higher self, of his true self. That is what being gentle with oneself means.

Fiction exerpt: Did You See the Moon Tonight?

Some time after One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest …

A man plays the banjo from the street. It is nighttime. He faces a house. There are no lights coming from inside. He looks as though he’s been sleeping outside for days with the same clothes. He’s middle aged, or he may be ageless. He plays for a while, perhaps longer. A light is lit, and a bedroom window opens. A woman, a little younger, not much, pokes her head out, with laughter reserved for daytime.

 “Did you see the moon tonight?” he sings playing the banjo.

“I was drinking from the stream,” she sings back.

“Did you see the stars tonight?”

“I was closing my eyes to imagine love in the world.”

“Did you see the present I left at your door steps?”

“I come in and out through my bedroom window.”

“I want to share my world with you.”

“Sure, if you will enter my world too.”

She comes out in her nightgown. He puts his instrument down. They hook their right pinkies together and cross over with their left hand to hook their left pinkies. They recite together:

“Nurse Ratched, pills and order,

The world isn’t round, try no further,

Notice how night turns brighter,

So the grass you step on is greener.

My name is Candy, my name is Randle,

We pledge together to be the spindle,

To ignite, rouse and kindle,

Passion and magic, all with a candle.”

Still holding firmly to each other’s pinkies, they bring their faces close to one another and give each other a kiss on the right cheek followed by the left, and, they rub noses, moving their heads left and right 4 times.

(soon to be published in a collection of shorts called CONSTELLATIONS)

Fiction exerpt: Awakening

Sandy was driving. The traffic light was green. Everything is quiet. We’re not moving. We must have had an accident. I can’t open my eyes or extend my arms, or move anything. I feel nothing. I hear nothing. I only have my thoughts. What happened to me?

* * * 

“Any signs at all?” Sandy asks the nurse.

“No Ms. The EEG is normal: activity, sleep, dream … but his body is not responsive.”

Sandy enters the room and sits by the body. She puts her purse on the edge of the bed and she ignores that it falls on the floor.

“I’m so sorry sweetie!” She says, choked up in tears, “I’m so sorry.”

She holds his hand; it feels relaxed and warm enough. The EEG shows no difference as she talks to him.

“Randy … It’s me, your sandy beach! You must think I’m a bitch! That truck came out of nowhere. I tried to turn away. It was too late. By the time … You must believe me. Please forgive me.”

“Ms?”

“Yes.”

“He can’t hear you. See the EEG isn’t reacting to your words. He is in his own world.”

“He’s gotta come back to me.”

The nurse leaves shaking her head.

Sandy looks around and slips her hand under the sheet, finds the top of his thigh and tries to arouse him.

“Randy … remember … you used to like this.”

She cries.


(soon to be published in a collection of shorts called CONSTELLATIONS)