How Did I Get Here?: Navigating the unexpected turns in love and life. Barbara Angelis De
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teacher with whom I’d recently begun studying. I knew the answers I sought weren’t going to come from anything I did on the outside but rather, as they always had in the past, from turning deep within.
From the moment I arrived at the retreat, I threw myself into the daily routine with my usual determination and firm intention. I followed the schedule diligently, listened to my teacher’s lectures with total concentration, and dove into my meditation practice with renewed enthusiasm. I was going to figure all of this out. I was going to get things under control again. I was going to get back to my old self. “You’ve always been great at fixing things,” I reminded myself. “You can do this!”
One day while I was sitting alone having my lunch, a woman on the ashram staff approached me and introduced herself. “My name is Catherine,” she said with a warm smile. “I have a message for you.”
My heart raced with excitement. This was the moment I’d been waiting for! I had been praying for guidance, asking for direction, and even though I hadn’t met privately with my teacher on this particular visit, I secretly hoped that she would know I was struggling, tune in to my agitated state, and point me in the right direction “This is amazing,” I thought with tremendous relief. “At last I will know what to do.”
“Yes, Catherine,” I replied. “I would love to hear the message from our teacher.”
“The message she told me to give you is: ‘It would be good for you to be a nothing and a nobody for a while. You won’t learn anything if you keep doing what you are already good at.’ ”
I was stunned. This was the message? I was supposed to be “a nothing and a nobody”? I didn’t understand. I had worked my whole life to be the opposite: a something and a somebody! All my efforts, all my dreams, all my contributions were about doing whatever I could to make a difference in the world. And she was right—I was good at it. I had struggled to become good at it.
I prided myself on being able to juggle ten projects or activities at once, like many women I know. I had always been inspired by the sacred goddess figures in Eastern religions, female deities depicted with multiple arms representing their many spiritual powers and gifts: the Hindu goddesses Durga wielding various weapons of protection to fight off evil, Lakshmi grasping symbols that bestow beauty, wealth and liberation, and Saraswati holding knowledge and self-realization; and the Buddhist goddess Quan Yin doling out mercy, compassion and healing.
My own life reflected this same attempt at superwoman multitasking. I had just recently ended a year during which I had been writing, producing and appearing in my own national television show; writing and promoting a new book; running a full-time seminar business; traveling around the country giving workshops; appearing regularly on other TV programs; and working on developing several new projects. I was, indeed, a many-armed wonder.
Ever since I can remember, I have always had a dread of coming to the end of my life and feeling disappointed in myself that I hadn’t done the things I believed I was meant to do. I’d been driven to achieve, not only for the reasons we all set goals—the desire to accomplish something significant and meaningful—but also because I was terrified of not doing enough, not making enough of a contribution, not using enough of my talents. Now I was being told to do the opposite—to be “a nothing and a nobody for a while,” to focus on something I had feared and fled from.
There are moments in our lives when someone speaks the truth in a way that finally compels us to hear it. For years people close to me had said: “You should slow down” or “You should take some time off—you’re working much too hard.” I knew that these were healthy suggestions, but the inner voice that had always pushed me to achieve and excel warned, “You can’t stop, even for a moment. You will lose momentum, you will lose ground, and then what will happen to your career, your dreams, your vision for yourself? If you slow down, you won’t get enough done, and you will feel like a failure.” This time I had been softened up by the onslaught of so many unexpected challenges one after the other—by loss, by disappointment, by heartache, by my own dissatisfaction and disillusionment. And so when I heard my teacher’s words that day, finally I listened.
I returned home and immediately began looking at my life through the revealing lens of the message I had received. Who was I without all of my achievements and roles, without my hectic schedule and important meetings, without my to-do lists and my interviews? Who was I without an audience, without students, without clients? Who was I when I didn’t have to be wise or inspiring, when I didn’t always have to have answers for everyone, including myself? What did it mean for me to be a nothing and a nobody for a while? What would that look like?
Since I was eighteen years old, I had been on a conscious path of growth. In my twenties, long before I began my career, I spent many years immersed in spiritual studies and meditation retreats that lasted for months at a time. From this platform of inner awakening, I launched myself as a teacher and a writer, and it catapulted me into several decades of success, accomplishment and profound fulfillment. Now I found myself at the summit of that success. It was as if I had been climbing a very challenging mountain, thinking that if I reached the highest peaks, I would have accomplished my goal.
So here I stood, having finally made it to the top, and as I gazed around in amazement, my new vantage point brought into perspective another alluring horizon I never knew existed, a horizon I instantly knew I had to explore. I would never have seen this new vista if I hadn’t climbed this far and this high. But there it was, glittering in the distance, beckoning to me to come and stand on its majestic peaks, which would offer me yet another enlightening view, and I knew I had to answer its call.
The only way to get there, however, was to do the opposite of what I’d been doing in my long and arduous climb—I needed to descend, to leave this sunny spot from where I could see everything and go back down the other side of the mountain into the cold gray shadows of the waiting valley. Once again, it was time for me to pull back and journey deep within myself. I had come full circle.
In order to do this, I needed time—time to question, time to contemplate, time to find myself outside of my successes and the constant attention and demands that came with them. In order to find that time, I decided to pull back—not to abandon my life and my work totally, but to walk a few steps away from it for a while. I had a very successful personal growth center in Los Angeles where thousands of people a month would come to participate in seminars and trainings, and I closed it down. I had a television show in development, and I decided not to go forward with it. I said no to people and opportunities that had been waiting for my energy and attention.
None of this was easy. It went against all of my deepest instincts, which were to hold on tightly to everything I had and to the promise of more. Instead, I had to let go of my attachment to writing and publishing one new book every year like clockwork, my attachment to never going for more than a few months without being on television, my attachment to giving enough seminars to make a certain amount of money, my attachment to being the biggest something and somebody I could be. Even though I knew I was doing the right thing, I still wasn’t completely sure why. I secretly dreaded that rather than coming together in a new way, I was falling apart. “You’re going through a rebirth,” the courageous part of me whispered reassuringly, but the truth was, I felt as if I were dying.
Digging Deep for Wisdom
One night soon after I began the process of making these dramatic changes, I had a very powerful and vivid dream. In this dream, I was using a large, heavy shovel to dig a deep hole in the middle of a beautifully landscaped garden. The garden was filled with lovely, cheerful flowers, perfectly planted in orderly designs, but I wasn’t paying attention to them. I just kept vigorously digging away, dirt flying everywhere, ripping up the flowers with each thrust of my shovel, crushing the delicate petals under piles of stones and debris.
At this point in the dream, a woman came along, and when she saw me digging, she became very upset.
“What are you doing?” she yelled. “You’re destroying the garden. It was perfect. Now you’ve ruined it. What’s wrong with you?