Mystic Cookie

Emotions are powerful things. They can keep us paralyzed, unable to move forward in life even knowing we must. I believe it is actually much easier to go through life unaware of this paradox rather than being aware but yet unable to find the way forward. Failure is not a kind companion and ignorance must truly be bliss in this instance.  

As a student of mysticism, I have found this journey to be a powerful tool for breaking down these blocks and as a constant spiritual support when falling short time and time again. As an emotional being, I have a constant dialogue in my mind directing, criticizing and contemplating.  It is nonstop and exhausting.

As a young child I often felt my mind spinning faster than the outside world. It was very dissociative and scary and often made me feel “different”. Fear was also a large part of my reality.  I was afraid of just about anything, my parents leaving me, going outside, meeting new people, talking in public. The list goes on. Fear can manifest in the body as a constant low level of anxiety. Those suffering from anxiety may not wear it on their sleeve, by the very nature of anxiety; the sufferer desperately tries to hide it in the hopes of fitting in. It becomes a cat and mouse game.  “I don’t want to stand out “or “I want people to notice me, but not too much or the attention will make me nervous”. This often goes hand in hand with the development of the constant need to please. I am most definitely a people pleaser.  It is one of my worst fears that someone will harbor dislike or even hate for me. I lose countless hours of sleep rethinking and analyzing interactions with others trying to get a sense of why they acted out the way they did.

Enter in food and emotions. In my mind there are two ends of the spectrum in this area and I have wavered between them for decades, the first being food restriction.  It often begins with the misplaced idea that by not eating and looking a certain way, everyone will like me, admire me. A method of perverse control over what one feels they have no control over.  In other words, I cannot control this crazy world, but one thing that I can control is what I eat and I am going to be the best “non-eater” there ever was. This may sound a lot like anorexia to you. Depending on the level this is taken, it can become very much like anorexia. It is not eating fears but swallowing them and internalizing them in a tightly controlled body.

The other spectrum is overeating or binge eating. Have you ever come home from an especially difficult day of work and headed straight for the kitchen to whip up a batch of cookies that you know you don’t need? Yup, me too. The act of baking is therapeutic for me, a form of nesting and reclaiming of space. It is like a big soft sweet hug when I am feeling fearful and anxious. I know this and am absolutely aware of what I am doing, yet I still do it and quite often.

Why do we eat our fears?  Is it for the instant feeling of gratification or the feeling of control when creating something of our own design?  Maybe the question is not why we do it, but rather how do we stop? The only true answer to this is to face our fears as scary as this can be. Fear is a strong emotion and one that likes to take the lead. Hildegard von Bingen really speaks to me in her above quote.  If I spend my entire life trying to live as others expect me too, am I really living? While I understand that the answer should be no, this is easier said than done when fear rules the day.

Mystics have for centuries challenged the status quo and chosen a different path from their peers. I am sure they felt a good bit of fear and uncertainty on the journey. Knowing this and reading their stories has given me some peace along the way.  I try to internalize this and am gentle with myself when I miss the mark.  After all, we are all on the same journey as it were and find different remedies for the discomforts of the lessons we must learn. If I feel the need to bake cookies once a week then so be it. There are much worse addictions that people use to mask fears in a lifetime. Mysticism allows for a relationship with fear rather than an escape.  It is in the ability to sit quietly in the discomfort, allowing one to feel the fear but not be paralyzed by it. Another mystic, Hafiz, really drives this point home with, “Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I’d like to see you living in better conditions.” I would like this to be the case for all that I love.

In this life, I have been blessed with two beautiful children.  Now young adults, I often look back at the person I was as a very young mother (19) and how much I have changed. Without the journey of bearing and raising children, I do not think I would have had as many opportunities for growth.  This is not to say that one has to have children to grown as a person.  It simply is a statement that in my life, the role of mother has been instrumental in my spiritual growth.

From the very beginning, after discovering that I was pregnant, it was as if the world had issued a giant detour.  I had just graduated from high school and was in my first serious relationship. I was a late social bloomer in every sense of the word. I remember clearly thinking, “How did this happen?”  Sure someone could have given me the whole sperm and the egg talk, but at that moment I simply did not understand how the pieces went together.  My mother was conservative with sex education, a direct consequence of her upbringing.  When my sister and I got our periods, she handed both of us a book titled “What is happening to me” with drawings of how a women matures. Yup, that was it. Many things were left without the benefit of discussion.  Pregnancy was the last thing on my mind.  I was sure that I was going to be a dancer and had already completed my first semester of college. I had no idea that the choice I had made was life changing, career altering and one that would detoured me for two decades. I also didn’t know it then, but grace was working within me.

When I was young I wanted nothing more than to be a mother. I had written down “mother” as one of my career choices in school.  I am a nurturing person and even when not asked, I end up mothering everyone. This very nature is what I believe saved my children and I. Being so young, I often made up the rules as I went. In a relationship that quickly proved to be emotionally abusive and controlling, I was hanging on for dear life. It was in those very moments of complete despair that I experienced grace. My children gave more to me than I could ever give back in return. They provided a reason to wake up the next morning along with hope, love and laughter. They allowed me room to breathe in my ever suffocating reality. Each moment spent loving them felt like such a blessing. The rest of my troubles melted away and I was whole if only for a moment.

As time passed their independent personalities started to emerge. What a surprise it is for a parent to find that your children can be so much like you, but at the same time so different. I struggled to connect with them. They no longer were the eager young children that found happiness in the smallest of things but rather, they became intensely themselves. They demonstrated an intensity of concentration to enter the adult world, taking their chance on creating a life. This was a time of much prayer for me. I simply could not understand how to parent them and prayed often for divine intervention. Why was this so hard? The push and pull of our divergent personalities was weighing heavily on me. I had given birth to these two beautiful humans, why then did I not understand how to communicate with them?

As they continued to grow, the nagging feeling of inadequacy continued to fester. Upon taking their first strides of independence and experiencing their first tastes of failure, I feared I would never have the relationship I had hoped with them. They were out in the world as they should have been, taking risks and living. There was little time for quality parental interaction and the few times we did speak were like speed dating. A quick check in, running down a list of “how are you?”, “what are you up too?” and what are you working on?” At the same time my marriage of two decades had finally come to an end and my level of trust was at its lowest point in my life.  I was hurt, lonely, scared, and angry. All of which were not desirable emotions to sit with when trying to find a sense of lasting peace. Once again I prayed for guidance. I most often prayed that I could be shown how to be the parent that both of the children needed in that moment. I envisioned them with blankets of white light protecting them from the certain pitfalls of life. In those moments of prayer I felt the familiar connection as when they were in the womb and I longed for it. It gave me some peace but I still had feelings of anxiety and unrest.

After moving through a very difficult situation with one of my children, it occurred to me that maybe I had to stop trying to direct or control their happiness and let go a bit. This was another glimpse of grace in action. Even if I sensed the right way forward as an inherently flawed human, I did not always choose to follow my intuition.  I desperately wanted to let go, but the resolute mother in me would not always cooperate. No amount of reading self-help books and saying affirmations out loud seemed to ease this unrest. It was as if I was simply trying too hard. This period was marked by intense indecision. Back and forth about how I should be interacting with them, feeling like I had a good handle on it one moment and then feeling completely lost and confused in the next.  Sounds like the internal dialogue of a diet, right? Should I eat the cookie? Yes, I deserve the cookie. No, I should not eat the cookie. Who cares what my mind is telling me, just eat it anyway. What an intense case of whiplash.

Ultimately, it was my children, unbeknownst to them, which encouraged me to have faith. Not always spoken, but a knowing that I needed to look within myself and believe that I had done the best job I possibly could. They were going to be alright. How did they ever become so wise and full of insight?  They saw me, I mean really saw me. Stripped of every possible descriptive title, I was simply the one who they have known the longest.  I was connected to them from the womb, a meeting of souls in the most beautiful of ways. Maybe this is why we can be so hard on one another at times. Sometimes it is the ones that know us in the most authentic way that can dig the deepest, in both a loving and hurtful way. Letting go of all the pretense of the relationship was completely freeing. I continue to worry and say a copious amount of prayers for them, I don’t think that will ever completely cease. But in the interim, I find more moments of calm. It is such a wonderful feeling.

Mysticism has also helped me learn to listen to my children and take things at face value. I am still human and therefore challenged with this often. Some days I have more success with this than others, the point of the exercise is that I hold an awareness of the process. My children continue to teach me lessons and I hope that I am better at listening. If the Divine is in all of us, then it is certainly present in my most intimate relationships, including with my children. Each difficult interaction is a lesson waiting to be learned, internalized. I firmly believe that I am presented with the same lesson until I finally get it right. That, to me, is grace. Surrender to the divine loving of another, without actions or supplications.  I am loved not only when it is easy, but when it is not. It is a goal of mine to transfer this love to every relationship that I have. It is at its core a good and honorable life work of which I am certain will take a complete lifetime to fulfill. I am stubborn, difficult and moody at times, but also gentle, loving and filled with an enormous capacity for empathy.  If I can learn from grace to let go most of the time, my heart will be content in the trying.