Doctortayria's Blog

I am in the middle of watching the movie The Young Victoria. I had some phone calls and interruptions and will finish it shortly. So far, however, much is resonating with me about this story. It is of a young girl, deprived in many ways of normal childhood enjoyments, learning what her path is about and how to take hold of her own destiny. I recognize her as an archetype in each of us, and possibly the general cultural fascination with royalty is due to this personal story it tells for each individual.

Who are these “advisors” in life who want to use us as pawns in their game? How do we throw over the powers that use us for their own gain, uncaring of our particular needs, rights and destiny? I feel internally a resonance with this young Victoria. We try to live up to expectations developed by culture, religion and those around us, and unconsciously don’t want to let them down, in whatever form they have become embodied or internalized in our worlds. To find the way through to decide for ourselves, to feel the autonomous power the universe is just waiting for each of us to claim, these stories of royalty also tell the myth of the individual journey. I am appreciating and learning from this movie. Let each of us step into our own destiny as she did.

What we do know is interesting, what we don’t know is fascinating. The drive to keep moving toward the incomprehensible, unfathomable mystery keeps our species going, I honestly believe. The textbooks that tell us what is supposedly figured out and knowable are very useful, but the incidents in life that insist that we must try to imagine a way to digest and assimilate the completely irrational and incomprehensible mystery of life demand a different level of creativity, commitment and attention from us. To attempt to come up with answers is absurd; to live into the questions, as Rilke words it, and into the mystery, without “grasping after reason” as Rilke elsewhere states, is the hardest and the only response.

I remember some years ago working with one of my mentors and telling her something about something I was experiencing that wasn’t good. She said, “You have to change your vibration.” I asked “How do you do that?” I don’t remember what she said, but I remember feeling clueless at the time. Do I squint my eyes tight and concentrate and make myself vibrate differently? How is this done?

Recently for some reason I have thought of those words and suddenly it just seemed easy, like “of course! Change your vibration!” I’m not sure why it felt so inconceivable before or why it feels somewhat obvious now. Driving down the mountain I became aware that I was vibrating to “worry” in every cell. I thought, “Change the vibration.” So I did. I decided to vibrate to something else. It was actually really simple. I found myself vibrating to feeling lonely. I thought, “change the vibration.” So I did. I vibrated to something else. Amazing. Why did I never realize how simple this is? What would life have been like if I had? What will life be like now that I’m working with it?

Actually it isn’t completely easy, it takes attention and effort, but beyond that it is easy. The old vibrations are just habits, I realize, bad habits I have developed. Changing a habit isn’t easy, it does take effort, but it is doable. I must have believed that my vibration is just who I am, but that’s not the case. It is changeable. I’m kind of excited about this. It may be obvious to anyone else reading this, but it hasn’t been to me.

You never know when the universe is going to present you with your worst nightmare, or your highest potential. Just remember that. Keep the door open for surprise.

I remember my father saying to me once that honesty is like pregnancy, either you are or you aren’t. He felt if he were to put one lie on his taxes that would make him a liar, and he could not live with that. I remember the emotion in his face and voice when he looked at me, his young daughter, and told me that the president of the United States, Richard Nixon, had lied to him. It was shattering for him. My father was a smart man, not unaccustomed to the ways of the world, but he carried an innocence about human nature, a willingness to believe in its goodness, which inspires me still.

And I remember Buckminster Fuller, a friend of my father’s, saying that he believed that if everyone on earth would make a committment to tell the truth, and only the truth, from this point forward the ills of the world would be resolved. The deceptions and the cover-ups create the problems.

Tonight I sat on a porch in Appalachia with mountain friends who told stories of people and histories around these parts that are utterly fascinating, entertaining, hilarious, heartbreaking, and  invaluable. These are not religious people, or dogmatic in any way. But the one moral they hold to is truth-telling. If someone comes in here as an outsider and says who he is and what he is planning to do, like or not, they will work with him and respect him. But if he says one thing because he thinks that is what they want to hear and then does another, that’s it. There are no more graces for that person among these people. Like my father said, either he is honest or he is not, and if he is not that is all they need to know.

I want to live this value. Forever. No matter what it costs me to tell the truth the best I know it. To in every instance be honest. I know this is tricky. Did you see the Geico commercial in which Abraham Lincoln, honest Abe, was asked by his wife whether her new frock made her butt look big or not? He stammered and was at odds with himself and it didn’t go well for him. Even in these cases I want to answer the questions with honesty. Who needs equivocation? We don’t!

Tonight I joined with a wonderful gathering of friends and some who came up to the mountain this weekend just to play music. We listened to a porch full of musicians singing heartful, heart-breaking, funny, hilarious, inspiring, great bluegrass songs as the sun went down across the Smokey Mountains, and the waning moon rose in the opposite direction over the Blue Ridge Mountains – with us sitting in this in-between world. I met a young man who used to work for the UN who said to me, “You live here? Wow, you’re living the dream.”

In truth, it was dreams that brought me here – dreams of the night, several powerful ones, as well as the day-light dream of doing my own work, starting a retreat center in such a wildly beautiful place, and partnering what I do with this quality of environment. It is a deep privilege to live here.

Driving home, my heart expanded as I saw the homey signs you see in way-back territory like this. These roads are pretty much off the map, so there isn’t a lot of government attention to them. The signing is mostly done by locals who care. In place of the big yellow reflecting cautionary road signs we are used to, you will see such things as a stake someone put in the ground with a sock tied to it or a stack of artistically stacked rocks to catch your eye. These signs say, “Cliff on other side of these weeds. Caution!” People who live in these parts put them up.

There is magic absolutely everywhere in the world. But the magic of the mountain is special.