Learning from Outlander's The Devil's Mark (SPOILER ALERT)

This morning I was watching Outlander on my DVR.  This morning I saw Jamie's reaction to Claire's Time Travel story.  I saw his reaction to her admission that she had tried to go back to her own time and her husband, after being married to him.

For those who aren't familiar with the show, Claire is transported from her own 20th century to Jamie's 18th century.  She is married to a man in her own time period who looks very much like the bad guy in Jamie's time period.  On television, the viewer has actually spent more time with the actor as the bad guy rather than the husband, so if I'm average, I'm all for her staying in the past with Jamie.

Perhaps it was with a lifetime of silly romances under my belt that I winced a little when Claire admitted she had tried to get home to her husband AFTER being married to Jamie.

"Oh.  Don't say it like that!"

But I was in for a surprise.  Jamie asks if Claire was trying to return to her time and husband and rather than going to a place where he complained that he meant so little to her, he looked grief-stricken as he said,

"and I beat you for it."

You notice what he did there?  He didn't make it about himself.  Rather than look to where life affected him, he earnestly tried to put himself in Claire's shoes.  

I myself can't count the number of times, in the face of a loved one and confrontation, I've looked to where life affected me rather than being like Jamie.  But if I were to make a list of all the things I love about me, at the very top would be the fact that I have been able to do it sometimes..  

It's not about right, wrong or anything being a sin.  It's about living your life in a way where you can be happiest.  You can be happiest when the people who surround you are happiest and all of that happens when everybody stops looking for where there is shortcoming.

Rather than whine about her leaving him, Jamie delivered his wife to the spot she needed to be to do just that.  As a husband and a lover, he acted selflessly and put her needs before his own.  It was a beautiful moment, even if it only happened in fiction.  That sort of love requires not just a willingness to be vulnerable, but an acceptance that sometimes I will be hurt.

All weekend I've been thinking of a friend of mine.  I know him to be a dog person even though he hasn't owned as much as one pet during the entire time I've known him.  I know because he has told me a story of his two dogs and how they died.  He has told me he was so heartbroken he could never own a dog again.  That is how we normally behave.  We get hurt and we build a list of things to avoid so we are never hurt again.  We will be hurt again.  It is unavoidable.  When we guard ourselves from everything that may hurt us, it is love that gets shut out.  Consider my friend.  By never owning another pet, he shut himself off from all of the love and happiness a dog would bring. Worse, he kept his love away from dogs who badly needed a home and for what?  Did it make him any happier?  Did it remove the pain he felt from loving a creature and losing it?  No.  I think it would be more accurate to say it memorialized his pain and kept it precious.  Rather than allowing it to fade to a memory, it kept the emotion alive.  We cling to pain in order to avoid pain.

Consider this.  When you lock a door to keep something undesireable out, you barr anything good from coming in too.

What I see most in response to the Outlander episode, is a revival of the saying:

If you love someone, set them free.  If they come back to you, they're yours.  If they don't come back, they were never yours in the first place.

The problem with that is our traditional interpretation of the saying.  Generally we see it as proof of love, when really it is an instruction in how to love.  If you love someone, set them free.  Allow them to be who they are and do what they have to do.  That oh-so-judgemental second part?  The one about whether or not they were yours?  I see it as reassurance.  You see, if you allow someone to be free that also includes the freedom to stay with you.

My mother used to have a cat.  I can remember going to her room to ask her something when she wasn't feeling well and being told "Shut the door!  Don't let the cat out!"  Now I myself have two indoor cats that I have said nearly the same thing about.  The difference is my mother was locking her cat in the same room with her.  The other difference?  When you opened my mom's door?  Her cat wanted out.  He wanted freedom.  That's the way our pets were when I was growing up.  We controlled them and they resisted us.  As an adult, I have made other choices.  Right now I am sitting in my bedroom with two cats, neither of which have to be here because I have trapped them with a door.  The final difference?  You will never ever feel as loved as you do when a creature, human or animal, chooses to stay with you when they have the freedom to leave.

A Little Self Knowledge

It's Tuesday and time for me to try to make sense of the lessons I've learned this week and the whirlwind of accompanying thoughts.  This week I have been reading four books.

Dying to Be Me:  My Journey from Cancer to Near Death, to True Healing by Anita Moorjani

What if It All Goes Right?  by Mindy Audlin

A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin

Cat Fear No Evil by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

Go ahead and think it.  "Four books!  What are you, crazy?  Aren't they meant to be consumed one at a time?"  I used to think that too.  It came to the point where, instead of reading several books at once, I read no books at all.  A foolish solution because reading has to be one of the top ten things I enjoy doing.

My coaching coach, Gil McIff, frequently says, "The cause of suffering is ignorance of our true nature."  In my experience, it is a somewhat uniquely Buddhist concept and is referring to our attachment to what Eckhart Tolle would call "The World of Form."  While we wear this suit of flesh, we forget that we are more than this suit of flesh.

I think that is actually limiting things a bit.

This week, I would say that the cause of all suffering with a capital "S," the life and death questions, is because of our ignorance of our true spiritual nature.  The cause of the "every day" sufferings, the mere annoyances that give us road rage and petty grievances at least some of the time, might just be our ignorance of our true nature while living in that suit of flesh.  In other words, not knowing who we truly are.  Like forcing ourselves to read one book at a time, when our mind wants to juggle four.  It turns out there is a moment in each of the books that illustrates just what I'm saying.  Well, except for "Cat Fear No Evil."  Cats, whether they are real living breathing ones, or fictional talking ones, always seem to know who they are.

In "Dying to Be Me" cancer survivor Anita Moorjani tells us of her multicultural upbringing and how she tried to force herself to comply with the expectations of her own culture despite having a personality which thrived on much fewer limitations.

In "What If It All Goes Right?" Mindy Audlin describes a moment I recognized as very similar to ones I myself have had, where she makes assumptions about a person based on her own beliefs of shortcomings or limitations.  In other words, she judges someone as being guilty of judging her.  What does she think the person is judging her about?  She doesn't say it outright, but all of the things would seem to be the big bad ugly things she sometimes tells herself or hears in her head.

In A Clash of Kings, George R. R. Martin gives us poor Theon Greyjoy.  Born a Greyjoy, but raised by his father's enemy Eddard Stark, Theon has no idea who he is or what he thinks.  Desperate for love and acceptance, to the Starks he will always be a Greyjoy and to the Greyjoys, he seems uncomfortably indoctrinated as a Stark.

In my coaching studies, I've learned that negative emotions are good indicators that you are resisting "what is."  Eckhart Tolle sees it as a special sort of madness, resisting "what is" and wanting it to be something else.  These moments of mad negative resistance are also good signposts to limiting beliefs.  In my case, one of them is "others will see and understand things the same way I do."  

Have you ever found yourself doubting a romantic partner because "if he/she really loved me" he or she would behave in a certain way?  I had the opportunity to talk with a partner I had formerly questioned like that.  Before my coaching studies, I found him very aggravating and compared talking to him with talking to a dog.  (As Mindy Audlin, who suggests if we are making assumptions about others, we should always make good ones, would say, it wasn't a very empowering way to view him.)

Specifically, there were times when we were together where I would have preferred he spent the night at my house or showered there instead of going home.  When I mentioned it to him at the time, we both would behave as if we felt our own opinion and approach was the more sensible one. Since learning about NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming,) I've come to understand that he and I have very different reference maps as to how the world works.  That's at the core of why we see things differently.

At the same time, if it was just a question of different maps, why did the misunderstanding strike me as a lack of love on his part?  As it happens sometimes, asking myself that question was like finding a corner piece in a jigsaw puzzle.  Things suddenly made a lot more sense.  You see, one of my favorite things to do in most of my relationships, has been to spend some quality time, frequently by myself, in a partner's living space.  Not to do any snooping.  I have never once searched a partner's drawers.  For me, there is something deliciously intimate and special about sleeping where my partner sleeps or showering where he takes a shower.  Every time I offered my living space to my partner, I was offering intimacy.  Every time he rationally chose to go home instead, "because that's where my stuff is," I felt rejected and unloved.

My aha! takeaway?  Those moments of resistance and disappointment?  What if, instead of using them to judge partners as to whether or not they are a comfortable fit, we used them to better understand ourselves?  After all, if we all have different maps of how the world works, how can your partner begin to understand yours if you don't understand it yourself?

At the same time, we are told that before we can truly love someone else, we have to love ourself.  I don't necessarily agree with that.  You see, my "self love" has always been there.  It's a stubborn persistent sort of thing.  I know it's there because I never really give up on myself.  At the same time, I have had an instance where I was willing to sacrifice myself nearly completely for someone else because I loved him.  It was a futile exercise, pointless, misguided and doomed to fail.  Totally resisting "what is," in other words "mad," but that doesn't mean it wasn't "love" and it has given me a blueprint for what I need to do.  With that same intensity and detailed emotion, I need to sacrifice my Theon Lovejoy-esque need for love and acceptance nearly completely.   For me.  Because I love me.

I think we fall in love by meeting someone, noticing things about him/her and telling ourselves stories as to who that person is.  We fall in love with our own stories.  This week I got to know Angela a little better.  She likes to read four books at once and sleep in a bed or with a pillow scented by someone she deeply cares about.  Isn't she great?  I just love her.