Here is a poem I wrote in 1993 that
attempts to capture the new me, trying to emerge. It's called, New.
I notice I
am without structure.
I have no container to put life into.
I have no framework to form walls around which I could call me.
The me of me is changing before my very eyes.
I don't know me anymore.
I feel fear.
It's so scary, yet I know it's next.
I know I must welcome it
Even though I'm afraid.
It feels like I'm plummeting to my death,
Yet the death is only a passageway to a new life.
What will the new life be?
I don't know.
That's why it is so scary.
Shedding this old skin feels like a complete un-doing and re-doing.
And the being on the other side is only a faint, far- away vision.
It's new. And I know it's next.
Isn't it also true that what we
resist, persists? Psychologist Coue' says the average mind is governed
by the law of reverse effect. Meaning that we collide with the very
thing from which we're trying to escape. Why? Because the object of our
fear becomes the center of our consciousness.
OK, but what does that have to do with what we're talking about?
Maybe nothing. But I wonder how the law of reverse effect would apply to
you? I wonder if it could be termed "the fear factor?" It's
like the story of a child, learning to ride a bicycle on a road that is
big and wide, with plenty of room for swerving and correcting. But
there's a small rock, very small, on the side of the road. Very little
chance that he'd hit the rock even if he tried. But because of his fear,
he's drawn to the rock, unaware of the expansive roadway; he is
hypnotized by the small rock and ultimately collides with it.
So he is attracted to the very thing he is repulsed or frightened by.
The object of his fear became the focus of his awareness, and he created
his worst nightmare. Got it.
And, maybe you’re wondering how this “attracting the very thing we
wish to avoid notion” relates to your undying, constant, bull-dog-like
approach to discovering the truth, right?
Yes. I wonder if I’m resisting my fate. I know what my fate is; yet I
keep resisting it. That the problem would vanish IF I just accepted this
is my truth, my role, my destiny and stop trying to conform and contort
in any way to fit into society’s mold?
Perhaps all the stuff I tout is actually true, but I don't really
believe it. Because if I really believed it, I wouldn't experience
conflict. And, perhaps it could be said that I would no longer attract
the very things into my life that continue to cause me pain, if I didn’t
focus on them? An author I respect a great deal, Gregg Braden, talks
about focusing on the positive, rather than the negative, in his book,
“Walking Between The Worlds.” He basically is saying what Coue’
said, but with a different twist.
So, intellectually, you know that focusing on the positive, what you DO
want, is better than focusing on what you don’t want. Perhaps you've
just not integrated it all yet. Knowing something intellectually is very
different from having it become a part of us.
You wonder, but I'm haunted by it. Plagued by it. Made to feel crazy by
it, and live constantly in a chaotic state because of it. So, it's a bit
more to me than wonderment. I wonder how babies are created exactly, but
I don't agonize over it. I don't lose sleep at night about it. It
doesn't haunt me day in and day out, bubbling and gurgling just beneath
the surface like these piercing, burning questions do. I'd much prefer
heartburn.
Part 2 of Ms. Permentier's article
will appear in the next issue of psst!
magazine.
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