Is He Out There?

Before I was born, my mother read Gone With the Wind and named me Tara after the plantation in that book.

Tara, shown here, is a feminine deity of compassionate action. Historically she was a princess told she could not be enlightened as a woman. Tara bucked this myth, achieved enlightenment as woman and her commitment to is be with us, ready to take action, on even the smallest human challenge. 

This column is named for Tara so the best, most wise advice will go out.  Send questions to Jennifer@jenniferlauck.com & see what Tara has to say.__________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Tara,

I have a relationship question for you. I am an Eckist. I understand and accept my adoption experience as a necessary and chosen part of settling up my karma.  But in order to fully transcend this karma I must have and take the opportunity to face it on all levels and that includes the EMOTIONAL one that has been forced underground by society and my relationships. I am the good girl who leaps into forgiveness for all the abuse without saying, wait a minute, I feel like a doormat! I am in pain! Stop hurting me! I fuc*$ing matter!
That is what my writing is about. Finally mattering enough to put my emotional life into words. Being real.
All I want is a relationship and all I do is pick people who are unavailable or if they are available I undermine the relationship because it is not the right one. How do I know when I have done the work I need to do before getting into another relationship?
I know I have to be in relationship with myself first and am really OK that.  What does that look like and feel like?  
In Eckankar we learn from our dreams. I recently dreamt my red miniature poodle caught a snake to protect me. I told him to drop it and when he did, it turned into a 30 foot long mottled brown cobra/boa constrictor, racing after me with head erect and intent to kill me. I made eye contact with it, turned and began to run, but I am sick of running and I stopped and turned to face it square on and yelled at this snake everything I ever held inside. It turned to black glass and crumbled like Voldemort.
I have what it takes to face my fears. But I cannot identify them because I have lived with them so long they are like snakes that have taken up residence in my subconscious and only come out in relationship when I feel under attack. How do I identify and rid them from my psyche other than through relationship? I cannot discern who is and who is not a safe choice for a partner. Each one is a reaction to the previous.
In actuality, I think nobody is the right choice for me even if they look like they are.  Even if Mr. Perfect comes along, I feel confident I will focus on his or the relationship's faults and undermine it all. I pick traumatized men who express their pain via alcoholism, so my relationships are set up for failure from the beginning.
Human nature, however, offers a smorgasbord of failings to pick from and I feel like I will simply trade one major dysfunctional attribute for another, ignore the red flags, get married, feel like something is wrong that I cannot identify, finally see the red flags and wonder if they are the culprit, adapt then blame, draw some weak boundaries, not defend them, get angry, suffer through abuse and abandonment until I have had enough, leave my lifestyle and identity behind, struggle through it and move on to the next for more of the same. Is there any way to get off of this ride of self sabotage? ~ Kathryn, Colorado

Dear Kathryn: 
They say “bucket’s” of rain but that’s silly.  Buckets of rain do not fall in Portland today.  It is a body drenching rain.  Go out, stand on the sidewalk—bring a bar of soap—and you could take a shower. 
Out my window, under all that rain, electric lines make a superhighway for squirrels, those fearless tightrope walkers who dart through the tops of the plum, the lilac and the cedar. 
The cedar is closest to my house and its boughs are an eye squinting bright green and yellow.  A rowdy jay, equally vivid in color only blue, lands on an edge of a flimsy cedar branch, hangs on with clawed feet and its entire bird body flips upside down.
That bird is as big as two of my own hands, you’d think it would fall, but it doesn’t fall.  No.  In defiance of gravity, the wings flap wide and the bird winds its body into the boughs until it goes beyond my view.  Magic.  What’s under all those boughs anyway?  A nest of babies?  Peanuts?  What?  What?             I write all this about the bird and the moment of right now to settle my mind as I consider the many questions that lift out of your life.  These are soul-drenching questions born of anger and fear and worry and so much anxiety.  Oh my dear, it’s okay.  It’s okay.  It’s going to be okay.             You write that you have what it takes to face your fears, as if it’s time to go to battle and fight, but hold on.  Can you not turn on yourself and scream but instead, sit down and listen for a moment?            “I feel like a doormat! I am in pain! Stop hurting me! I fuc*$ing matter!”
Of course you matter.  Of course the hurting must stop.  Of course you are in pain.  Listen to you and respond with acknowledgement. 
This is how you begin a relationship with yourself.
Take that moment, right now, this second, and let’s just go back to the earliest hurt you mention here.  Look at the little baby you were, taken from your mother all those years ago.  Close your eyes and just be with the panic of that little one.  Arms and legs beat and kick at nothing.  Her fists are tight and then open.  Her face is bright red from crying and screaming.  Oh, how that little one hurt.
Give her the dignity of being heard and understood. 

The world will not give this to you right now.  The world does not agree that babies hurt in this way--we are told we are lucky we were adopted, we are fine and all that is true (perhaps).  But when a person--baby or child or adult--is in pain, it doesn't help to be told "you're so lucky, you are fine."  It helps to be heard. The world will not hear you, did not hear you, but I hear you and now it is time to hear yourself.  Hear and respond with attention.                          When I am in the place you describe, and I am there more than you might imagine, I do a practice called Taking and Sending.            We’ve actually already started but here is the rest:  Go sit somewhere where you can be undisturbed for about 30 minutes.  Breathe in and out in a quiet way for about ten or fifteen minutes.  Put your attention on your exhale.  Don’t worry if your attention strays, it will.  

Bring your attention back as if it is a little child who has wandered off toward danger.  Come back to your exhale—just the exhale—and follow your own breath.  After a few minutes of this, see yourself as a little baby taken from your mother so long ago.  Listen to the pathetic and deep cries.  Let yourself feel all those feelings: shock, pain, humiliation, terror, fear and incomprehension.  

We’ve all heard babies cry like this.  Inconsolable.  Who among us isn’t moved by the tears of a child?  Of a baby?  

Let yourself be moved by your little self of so long ago.  Be with her and breathe.  As you exhale, breathe out all your current understanding, caring, affection, assurance and support.  Inhale again, taking in the suffering she went through and again, exhale all your compassion for that little one.
Yes, you are going to cry.  Let it happen.  Cry from the compassion you feel for yourself.  Let it out and out and out.  Did you know your body releases toxins through the tears that cannot be released in any other way?  As Clarissa Pinkola Estes wrote in Women Who Run with Wolves, tears are not a solution to any problem but they will get your boat out of dry dock so you can float downstream to another, better place.
And you have now started your relationship with yourself.  What is a relationship anyway?  It’s just “being with” another person. Being present. A relationship with yourself means you stop and attend to what is going on inside.  You pay attention to your worried mind, you settle down and be with it (gentle, gentle, gentle) and in cases of terrific traumas and abuses, you send all your love to that wounded part of yourself like we did right here. 
“But I should be over all that!” 
Oh my goodness, how many times have I said those words?  “I’ve written all these books,” I’d say, “I spent all this time thinking about myself. I know every single loss by heart.  I’ve been in therapy too.  I should be better, I should know better, I should be past all that.”              All that self-judgment and self-condemnation were ongoing ways I would deepen the pattern of abuse and trauma originally inflicted on me as a baby and then as a child.  I did not realize that if I were truly “over it,” I’d be over it!               It’s like going to a tall wall and trying to climb over, only to fall down again and again.  If I am not over the wall, I am not over the wall and lamenting the fact that I’ve tried to get over the wall doesn’t change the fact that I’m still not over the wall.             Beating ourselves up because things are not different, being angry and critical of ourselves, worry and even anxiety, all these churned up states of mind are the results of being caught in old patterns of helplessness and of course this is how you feel (and how I feel and how millions and millions of others feel).  Who is more helpless than a little baby taken from her mother?  Or a child who has been misunderstood, dismissed, abused and neglected? 
The great gift of writing about your life is that, if you write with care and allow yourself to remember, you will be able to line up all the moments when you were harmed and helpless and you will be able to take in the pain and then send out caring to yourself. 
You may have to go back a thousand times.  Okay.  Go back a thousand times.  If that is what it takes, that is what it takes.  Go.  Go now.              You will learn to love yourself and be in deep relationship with yourself and it will take time.  Don’t worry.  Take the time.  It’s worth it. 
And yes, you will fall down along the way.  You will fall asleep into that grand illusion of romantic love and “the other” as savior.  All of us fall into that dream.  We have been trained by the myths of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White.  We all want to find “the one,” our prince, the man of our dreams who will make it all better somehow.  But he’s not out there.  He’s not.  I’m sorry princess.  The perfection you seek is within. 
When you realize how amazing you are.  I mean, stunning, brilliant white hot light amazing, you will laugh at the idea that it takes another to make you more.  It doesn’t.  You are everything.  You are the entire universe.  They don’t call it Buddha-nature for nothing.  You have it, I have it, we all have it.
Imagine for a moment a world of Buddha’s, all shining bright. 
Romantic love is nice, a little pastime, but come on.  Buddha universe or a romance?  I’ll take the Buddha universe, thank you very much.             All you need is within. 
As within, so without. 
Let me say this in a way that is loving but direct.  You keep attracting people (just like I have done) who are unavailable because you are unavailable to yourself.  This is not saying, “oh, you really screwed that up,” I’m not saying that at all.  I’m saying this, “stop now and go inside.”  Go in and see your remarkable self and that means seeing all the snakes too.  Each snake is a wound ready to be transformed into wisdom if you just look at yourself with care, compassion, love and understanding.  You don’t have to scream to be heard.  Not anymore.  Just be with yourself and breathe.
I can’t walk this path for you.  No one can do it for you.  Only you.  It’s all you. 
The rain has finally stopped.  The jay has popped out of the cedar and with a peanut in its beak.  Crazy bird.  Good memory.  How did a peanut live there and not get discovered by all our fat squirrels?  Or perhaps the bird just committed robbery and stole the nut stored by the squirrel?  Who knows?  Off he goes to have his meal.             For me, it’s time to make breakfast, play with the children and pedal to the top of my favorite hill.               I hope these words are helpful to you, Kathryn. Be well.