Past Present Part 2

May 2009 continued....

So this visit, I tried a new tactic, really wanting to stay in a blissful state through the week of my mom's visit.  I convinced myself that at the end of the week, I would win $7000.  That's $1000 per day.  But to receive that gift from the Universe, I would have to stay in a blissful, buoyant state the entire week.  Second by second. I’m good at stuff like this:  I loved it as a fantasy designed to motivate myself, and I also loved it as a potential reality, thinking if I rocked the week, the $7000---maybe in some form other than money, would materialize.  Because…my life works like that.  

But, I didn’t rock the week.  I have to be honest.  I demotivated pretty quickly, thinking I’d be lucky if I just stayed neutral.  The moment she got into the car Saturday morning at 11, smelling like alcohol, I separated into three of me:  one, the reaction, the girl who says, “What the FUCK?  You’re on your way to go hang out with your granddaughter!”  Two, a more mature, empathetic therapist-Rachel, who realizes that she is just fortifying for a full week of not drinking and she probably feels like she needed to toast the impending week of dryness…and three: me as the Awareness that knows that everything just IS--the yoga teacher, spiritual coach, tantra-doer. Everything just is. But that one-third never really expanded back into its fullness, for the rest of the week.

I got it up just fine to teach, and even had fabulous first-time session with a lesbian Tantra couple…then, coming upstairs, expanded and buoyant, I watched one of the women take a left at the top of the stairs, heading to the bathroom, and I heard her, surprised, say, “Hi!” to my mom, who was apparently sitting at the kitchen table—I couldn’t see her from my vantage point.  But I spiked, oh, I don’t know, 400%?  Because, what the eff was she doing in my kitchen?  I had told her SO clearly, just short of being offensive, NOT to be around for my client referrals, not to even have her purse and shoes around—so what the eff?

Where am I not clear?

And I don’t mean, where am I not clear about explaining to my mother that her presence was not a boon to tantric sex couples’ sessions…where am I not CLEAR?  Because if I were clear, as a person…her presence in my kitchen wouldn’t spike me 400%.

Now, on one hand…the hand of clarity, it is hilarious that the first time I ever get a lesbian couple from the Berman Center, my mom is there to witness it.  Because, not only is she homophobic, her most homophobic moments have occurred in regard to my lesbian friends and lovers.  And, hilariously, I have spent a lot of energy hiding the nature of these relationships from my mom.  Because…it’s almost like taunting her.  Lesbian tantra students in my kitchen are her worst nightmare.  And her, in my kitchen saying hi to my lesbian Tantra students, is mine.

I know enough to realize that even when I least want to know this, …my mom is a mirror for me.  All kinds of crappy stuff, writ large.  I don’t want to look at this stuff!  I don’t want to think it’s a part of me, this negativity, and judgement, and overwhelming stream of consciousness that is a hundred times louder than the voice of Spirit.

But there it is, and I’m staring at it.  Day in, day out, for a week.  And saying to myself, “If I can just be present this MINUTE, I will be on the road to happiness and abundance.”  Well, I did get through the minutes.  But I didn’t ROCK the minutes,{so I am not sure if I qualify for the seven grand, but I am looking for a loophole in the rules and regs}.  What if this was the best I’ve ever done with my mom, the most positive and healing I’ve been with her since I was in high school?  What if, even though it didn’t feel like it in the moment, she was indeed, tuning into a higher vibration..and is at this very moment integrating it, and turning into a happier, healthier version of herself…you never know.