Freeing the Lion

Astrologically speaking, I am a Leo.  A Leo I, to be exact, I was born in the Week of Authority.  I have always loved lions and legitimately try to fashion my hair like a lion’s illustrious mane.  And the idea of authority has always been a puzzle to me.  I am deeply respectful of teachers, healers and mentors who are in positions of authority, often blindly bowing to the answers they seem to provide.  However, I have struggled with finding and respecting the authority within, failing to trust my own internal compass, and sense of knowing.  It is difficult to have faith in oneself when you are in the grips of the roar of the inner critic.  For symbolic purpose, I will hereby refer to my inner critic as a lion.  Its characteristics are similar to that of a lion, being strong, powerful and fierce.  And boy, has its roar been loud lately!  So loud, that it has made my essential self ever smaller, to the size of a little mouse.

As a Four, one of my greatest strengths and alternately my greatest weakness is my romantic idealism.  I have incredibly high hopes, high expectations, high ideals, and high romantic visions.  They are so high that they all live above me, in a Kingdom of my own creation, nestled sweetly and safely on a cloud.  I love that Kingdom on a cloud.  I love to look at it and wistfully dream about the one day that I will live there.

A challenge that I have been experiencing, as of late, is questioning on whether I will ever get to those dreams in the sky.  I try to set goals that would be like stepping stones, or Jack’s beanstalk, carrying me little by little up to that pristine palace of romantic vision.  To set goals is not difficult for me.  In fact, they become their very own little castles. 

Let me be specific, a goal I am currently trying achieve is to create a self-care routine that I can commit to on a consistent basis.  It’s a beautiful goal I have for myself, one that includes treating myself with love and respect.  In this dream of a goal, I would be implicitly healthy.  I would wake up early in the morning, excited to meet my day.  I would have a practice of meditation, and gratitude and prayer, being thankful for all that God and the Universe has given to me.  I would treat my body like a goddess, feeding it only those foods that are most life affirming and nutritious.  I would go for long jogs in the park, able to clear my head of negative thoughts.  I would practice yoga, feeling the strength and length of my beautiful body.  I would go for dance classes, feeling free and having fun while letting my heart beat fast.  Oh, this goal of self-care is so beautiful.  But oh, to get there seems so impossible.

So, I have carefully constructed this goal, this dream.  It is pure and untouched and full of endless hope and possibility.  I stand outside of the castled creation, a little mouse underneath the drawbridge door, waiting for it to lower so I can enter.  The lion stands beside me, berating me with its critiques.  Every step I take, the door recedes, eluding my small efforts.  The lion roars loader, taunting me, tearing me down with its claws.  “You are worthless.  You are nothing.  You have no willpower.  You have no strength or courage.  You’ll never achieve what you want.  You’ll never be who you want to be.  You might as well give up.”  And on and on he growls.  The fire of his roar is singeing my little mouse body and I feel completely and utterly useless and powerless. 

I am reminded of the Aesop’s Fable, The Lion and the Mouse.  It was the mouse that rescued the lion from the hunter’s snare, by slowly nibbling away at the ropes, ultimately freeing the lion.  Inspired by the strength that this tiny creature exhibited, I looked up the symbolism of the mouse, and what I found was quite amazing.  The mouse is a symbol of trust in the Divine, of humility and simplicity and gentleness.  It is the mouse that is able to break a large problem (or goal) into smaller pieces and deal with one part at a time, slowly but surely, achieving its goal.

I know my lion has a purpose.  I know its roar comes from a frustration, of wanting to be free, so that I can be my best self.  It is instructing me on what it is that I really want and long for, on what is important to me and why.  In some way, it is encouraging me not to give up.  And I can use the gentleness of the mouse to assuage the lion’s fear and to free it from its ropes of imprisonment.  Not to be crippled by the lion’s grip, or reduced to a puddle of shame by the lion’s shadow, but to treat my inner critic with compassion, as I go about my merry way, taking my sweet time, of slowly and deliciously nibbling towards my dream.  Maybe it won’t be as fast as I want it to be, maybe it won’t be as grandiose as I imagine it to be, but I know for sure, if I can free that lion from off my back, I’ll get there one way or another.

Be. Still.

Growing up my dad use to say that when either one of my four siblings or I was being rambunctious…in car rides, on the sofa, at the dinner table, “Be. Still.”  It always annoyed me because it was usually when we were just having a good time, laughing, and being silly. 

Yesterday, I pulled the muscle located on my right side, somewhere midway between my shoulder, and all the way up my neck.  I returned from the Enneagram Intensive last Thursday night and since I’d been back, I’d been go-go-going.  Creating this blog, setting up an accompanying Facebook and Twitter account.  I’d been reconnecting with my beau, with my friends.  I am doing Dallas Travers “Actors Business Breakthrough,” an Eight Week Tele-course designed to help actors break through whatever current blocks they are facing.  I’ve been trying to incorporate all that I learned in my Enneagram Intensive: meditation, staying with myself when I feel reactive, eating healthy, exercising, etc. 

Occasionally, I get stuck in old familiar loop patterns.  I loop back around to the place where I feel anxious about where I am on my path.  I play the “should game.”  I should get another agent.  Should I quit acting?  Should I go back to my restaurant job?  Should I eat this or eat that?  Should I wake up earlier so I can meditate?  Should I?  Should I?  Should I?  It’s gosh-darn crippling!

So…it’s no big surprise that with all my striving, aspiring, trying, that a part of my body just pulled back and insisted.  “No.  Just slow down. “  I recalled my dad’s voice, “Be.  Still.”

Ah!  What a relief it was!  To lie down on the couch yesterday as the Nor’easter tore its way through New York’s still-recovering streets.  To watch “The Good Wife” on television while feeling the warmth of a heating pad on my back...to dismount that hamster wheel of my own creation. 

The ironic thing is, if I learned anything at all from my Enneagram Intensive, it was be still.  Stay with you.  Breathe into your belly.  Receive.  We are a nation of strivers and doers.  We are slaves to our egos.  We praise those in our culture who can multi-task the most, who can make the most money by being workaholics, who put so much of their energy out into the world that they are left as depleted shells of their former selves.

I don’t want that.  I want to be awake and present to my life.  Yes, I want to support myself financially.  I want to make a difference in this world.  I want to give freely with the gifts I’ve received.  But there has to be a balance.  I was taught this past week, that we cannot have a spiritual experience unless we allow ourselves to receive.

I’m not sure what my next move will be.  For today, I am just going to be still.

“Make your ego porous.  Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing.  Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything.”  -Rainer Maria Rilke

Freedom of Choice

I thought, with it being Election Day and all, it would be apropos to write about the freedom of choice.  I’ve never been a political person.  I get confused on where politicians really stand, what their policies are and how that would affect my life and the lives of my loved ones.  If I talk to my boyfriend, who is much more informed than I, being an avid news watcher, he can go into detailed explanations on the benefits of Barack Obama’s policies.  If I talk to my father, who is a business owner and a very smart man, he gives an equally persuasive account on why Mitt Romney is the man to elect.  I listen to them, hear their points of view, and get very confused at how they seem to be saying opposite things.  It’s enough to make me want to walk away and never vote again.  That being said, I did indeed, vote this morning at approximately 9:15am and I am proud of my freedom to choose.

It is easy to feel powerless when you feel like you have no options, like you must do things the way you’ve always done them, like you will inevitably be circling back to the same issues that crippled you seven years ago.  History repeats itself and all that. 

Understanding the Enneagram, and my type within that system, helped me gain the freedom to choose my actions.  I will use an example from my mother, because I want to bring awareness to the benefits and detriments of other types beyond Fours.  My mom is a Nine on the Enneagram, the Peacemaker or Mediator.  One thing challenging for Nines is inertia.  They are creatures of comfort.  They don’t like to be disturbed when they are relishing the confines of their comfy cocoon. 

At some level, my mom has always felt this.  She loves to be home alone, the house all quiet, curled up underneath a warm, fuzzy blanket and diving into a alternate universe in one of her beloved novels.  She enjoys all things related to comfort…the delights of a delicious meal in a beautiful atmosphere with my siblings listening to my dad reminisce about their early courting, being surrounded by the pure giggles of her grandchildren, eating popcorn and drinking diet coke sitting next to me in a dark movie theater. 

Alternately, she does not enjoy being pushed out of her comfort zone.  You will never see her skydiving, or competing in a triathlon.  If she is interrupted from some delightful hobby in order to call the air conditioner man to come out and fix the broken A/C in the midst of the sweltering summer heat, she resists being called to such tasks. 

A Type Nine struggles with inertia, meaning if they stop, it is very hard to rev their engines back up, hard to get their momentum going.  That being said, once they can kick the engine into gear, they have an easier time continuing a task.  Once she discovered the characteristics of Type Nine, and how this relationship to inertia played out in her life, she felt she had the power to choose.

A few months after our first Enneagram workshop, she was visiting me in New York.  We had been walking a lot, but had not gotten our hearts racing.  Our bodies felt a little stiff.  We were discussing whether we would spend Sunday morning going to church, or perhaps a museum, or even the Farmer’s Market.  I realized that what I wanted most of all was to get my body moving and sweat a little, so I threw in the option of going to the gym as a curve ball.  

My mom tightened up, resisting this new suggestion.  As she later explained it to me, her thoughts were as follows, “I don’t want to have to get sweaty, and then have to take a shower, what a nuisance!  I thought we were going to do something fun, like go to a museum or the market, not work out!”  I could see her body stiffening to my prospect, and since she and I had both learned about Nines and their issue with inertia, I encouraged her, “Come on, Mom, you’re gonna feel SO much better after we get our bodies moving and blood pumping.  Then, we’ll have the whole day free to do whatever fun stuff we want!”

Sure enough, that’s what happened.  She later reflected on that moment, and described feeling free to choose her actions because she knew her type.  “Do I want to be a slave to the grips of my personality?  Or do I want to feel the power and freedom that comes with choosing my actions?”  What do you choose?

Knowing Your Type

There is great freedom that comes from knowing your type.  In the spring of 2011, I took my first Enneagram Workshop in New Orleans with my mom.  She and I love to talk about personal growth.  (Side note: One of our favorite movies is “When Harry Met Sally,” and we love the scene in the bookstore when Marie [played by Carrie Fisher] says to Sally [Meg Ryan] referencing Harry [Billy Crystal]: ‘There’s a man staring at you in Personal Growth.’)  Anyway, we often trade new books we’ve read, articles we’ve perused, and practices we’ve heard about with each other.  The Enneagram Workshop seemed right up our alley!  

Before the workshop began, I had had difficulty determining my type.  I had taken some of the very lengthy quizzes in various books and online, and kept coming up with different possibilities.  At the start of the workshop, I decided I was a Type Two: The Helper or The Giver.  

I was going through a somewhat stressful time in my life in New York City.  I was working as a waitress in a restaurant, I was frustrated with the lack of acting job opportunities, and my days were structure-free.  I was going home whenever I could get a ticket.  I had no stable romantic relationship in my life.  All in all, I was having trouble committing to myself, and my life in New York. 

I was boundary-less.  If a friend wanted to meet me for coffee or lunch, I would go to their destination of choice.  If I had plans to work on an audition, and got invited to see a movie with someone, I would drop my plans.  I would be overly available to my loved ones, putting my needs aside in favor of others.  It even went so far that when I would sit down for a meal with a friend, I would measure my eating with hers, eating the same quantity and at the same pace as her, in an effort to be on the same page and stay connected.  Relationships were (and still are) pivotal to me…they are my life-blood.  But it was at this time of stress when I went towards my Type Two point.

So, at the workshop, I spent the entire time thinking I was a Two.  The workshop I attended is taught in the Narrative Tradition, meaning we learn about Type by hearing panels of people telling stories of what it means to be their type.  As I sat on the Two panel, I felt the urge to take over, wanting to make it about me, “my stories are so interesting!  Listen to how and why I think I am a Two!”  I noticed that the others on the panel didn’t seem to have that same amount of self-absorption or need to stand out.

Then, it was time for the Type Four Panel: The Individualists.  I looked at them and noticed that they were all wearing similar colors: black and cream, chartreuse, and cherry red.  I looked down at what I was wearing, black jeans, and a cream shirt with geometric designs in black and red.  As they started sharing their stories, I could see in their faces and hear in their voices that little bit of self-satisfaction I recognized in my own sharing.  I also felt drawn into them and the way they described suffering and melancholy, and the ease at which they could hold a space for other’s pain.  A little light bulb went off in my head: That’s where I belong!  With the Fours!

This is not to suggest in any way that all Fours are self-satisfied, self-absorbed sadists.  It has more to do with the Fours desire to stand out, to be different and unique, in order to feel that they are worthy and alive.  After the workshop, I did a little more reading about Type Fours, and my synapses were firing.  Everything seemed to fall into place.  I felt seen and understood.  Parts of me that I’ve known at my subconscious level came flying to a conscious surface. 

A few years ago, I was talking to my friend Lisa, who happens to be a Five.  I was saying to her, “You know how right before you go to bed, you daydream about your ideal life,” assuming she’d jump right in with a resounding, “Oh, totally!”  Instead she said, “No, what are you talking about?”  I was shocked and tried to explain it to her more fully, certain that it would resonate with her.  “You know that moment before you fall asleep, and you close your eyes and think about your perfect future.”  I went on to describe the romantic moments I would daydream about, the beautiful romantic handsome man with dark hair and blue eyes, myself looking like a lithe ballerina in a lovely ethereal dress, the way we would come together in an filmic embrace on a faraway exotic land, complete with fresh, succulent food and warm breezes next to picturesque vistas. Again, she didn’t connect.  It was one of the first wake-up calls I had as to how different other peoples inner worlds could be. 

Once I was finally able to determine my type, I felt known.  It allowed me to truly understand the perspective I was operating from, awareness being the first step towards self-acceptance, self-acceptance being the first step to freedom.

The Comparing Mind

As a Four on the Enneagram, my Passion or Vice is Envy.  Each type has a vice, seven of which correspond to the Seven Deadly Sins: Anger (1), Pride (2), Envy (4), Avarice (5), Gluttony (7), Lust (8) and Sloth (9) with the additions of Deceit (3) and Fear (6).  Your Passion or Vice is basically the underbelly of type, where your negative mind may go when you are not present in your life.

Envy does indeed creep up in my life.  It can take on many different forms.  For as long as I can remember, I have had a bit of a fixation on US Weekly.  Without even knowing it, I scan the pages of that magazine comparing myself with the celebrities I see in the photographs.  I see what they wear, how they look, dissect their bodies; covet their relationships or their careers.  It provides some sort of sick pleasure.  It maintains my status quo.  Providing some image, ideal, idol or goal that I strive to achieve, emulate or be helps me know where I am. 

However, this comparing mind is a dangerous place to go.  It makes me hard on myself, never being able to measure up.  It makes me focus on what I am not, what I lack, what I am missing in my life as opposed to what I am, what I have and how I am complete and whole.

I was triggered into my comparing mind yesterday.  By trade, I am an actress.  I have put in my time training for the past 13 years, completing a BFA and MFA in Acting from great Universities. And yet, I am not making my living as an actress.  I was dropped by my manager and agent in 2011 and have yet to re-sign with representation, that makes it more difficult to get auditions, and furthermore difficult to get roles and thereby make a living.

I saw an acquaintance of mine on television.  My head immediately spun into comparing myself with her, on our looks, on our level of training, on our talent.  Before I knew it, I had contracted a tight knot in my stomach.  Walking with my boyfriend, Michael, through Central Park, I was unable to see the trees before me, unable to breathe in the fresh air, unable to admire the first blue sky post-Sandy.

As Michael and I sat down in a warm cozy restaurant, I couldn’t relax my mind enough to take a deep breath and enjoy our meal.  All that was parading in my head were thoughts of how I don’t measure up, how I will never reach my dreams, how I’m a failure.  He so gently reminded me to stay present, to focus on what I do have, to honor my own path.  For the first time that morning I was able to release the briar patch that occupied my diaphragm.  I could see the blueness of his eyes, admire the smooth wood of the table, let the warm chicken chili sooth my overstressed belly.

That is my journey as a Four…to keep coming back to the Present, to breath, to see what is in front of me, to practice Gratitude for all I do have.  Because it is in that place that everything I lack lacks power.  It is in that place that I can be more loving to myself.  It is in that place that I can stay present with my loved ones.  And it is in that place where I have faith that I am exactly where I need to be, on my own path, on my own journey.

Coming Home

I spent last week, while Hurricane Sandy was tearing up my beloved New York City, at the base of the Black Mountain range in North Carolina, attending an Enneagram Intensive taught in the Narrative Tradition.  While people were coming together on the Eastern seaboard in an effort to support each other during the Natural Disaster, nearly 30 others and I were uniting in a spirit of healing and rebirth.

The Enneagram is a powerful system, a system that illuminates the dark edges of one's soul, a system that unites all differences of personality and perspective.  It is a difficult system to describe, due to its depth and complexity.  I am a new student of the Enneagram, having studied it only for the last year and a half.  However, after all of my seeking into self-help, personal growth, therapies, and spirituality practices, I have never found a teaching that is more resonant than the Enneagram. 

Simply put, it is about compassion, for oneself and for others, it is about uniting the three forces of being: heart, mind and body, it is about transformation.  In childhood, we each formed an adaptive strategy to reconcile our inner world with the outer world.  The Enneagram teaches the nine different types of personality, or adaptive strategies.

Before learning about the Enneagram, I was certain that everyone saw the world in more or less the same way.  If my friend hurt me by an action she made, I took it personally, thinking: Why would she do that to me?  If I had done that to her it would be in the spirit of malice.  What I came to discover was that everyone sees the world differently, yet everyone's perspective can be understood through the view of nine different types.

Once I learned about my type (Four- The Tragic Romantic) and the other eight types, I felt seen and understood.  I felt like I could see and understand others.  If my friend hurt me, she was not coming from the same place as I would have, had I executed the same action to her.  I could take things less personally.  I could treat myself kinder.  Before learning the Enneagram, I was constantly trying to change who I was, make myself different, make myself better.  Now I know, the path to peace comes from accepting myself, opening my heart, living inside my body, being awake to myself, others and the world.

I am so grateful to everyone I met this last week, who shared their stories, who listened, who created a safe space for us all to be vulnerable and present.  I look forward to creating this same spirit of unity and sharing my compassion now that I'm home with my friends, family, and fellow New Yorkers.