Encounter with My Inner Wisdom

When I was a young adult, I named two things I vowed I  would not allow to happen to me.  An ulcer was one of them, even though no one in my family had been bothered with ulcers, and I had only once in high school been diagnosed with a “nervous stomach.”  Throughout my 30s, however, and into my 40s, chronic stomach problems persisted.

The stomach problems were finally diagnosed as an ulcer, and I knew I had lost control of my life.  As related last week, I went to my pastor for comfort, only to hear him give me a strange directive.  “It sounds like a rebirth to me,” he said.  “I think you need to go home and listen to the message the pain has for you.”

He had never said anything so unusual to me–or so important.  I sat down at a table with paper and pencil and began asking the pain inside, “Why are you killing me?”

Immediately a response came. “Do you want to live or do you want to die?”  My head began to think about my life and all the drivenness that seemed to motivate my every action.  And I realized I did want to live but not the way I had been living.  I realized I did want to live–to be glad just to be alive without any need to drive myself, without any guilt over not constantly doing, without any need to do at all.

And in the short conversation, I realized that something in me needed to die in order for me to live in that new way.  And that I could not consciously sort out and kill the part that needed to die.  And that  the force beneath the pain in me could do for me what I could not do for myself.

And all it needed was my permission.

 

I Am a Transformed Humpty!

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall;

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Could not put Humpty Dumpty together again.

Thirty-five years ago I was dying.  One of the two things I vowed not to let happen to me had happened.  Cancer loomed large. I went to my pastor for comfort but received instead a strange directive.  He told me to listen to the message the pain had for me.  What ensued was a conversation between two parts of my personality which resulted in a cooperative venture that saved my life physically and allowed an entirely new personality to emerge.

Part memoir of a miracle and part unique insight into psychological phenomena, Humpty Dumpty Hatched: Transformation for Everyone has indeed something for everyone whose shell is breaking and whose wall is crumbling.  It tells the secret that is intended to be shouted from the rooftops.  No trying harder.  No giving yourself endless affirmations.  No getting busy.

As personal story, Humpty Dumpty Hatched suggests our kinship with the nursery rhyme egg, but unlike Humpty, our need is to break open our shell and allow a new being to emerge. A new being that is cleansed of anger and guilt.  A new being that has expanded space for creativity and authentic joy. A new being that finds itself satisfied in merely being rather than needing to justify its existence by doing.

Meet the person I was for much of my life—driven, controlling, determined to have life work on my terms.  Meet the me after of my shell-breaking, three-day crisis—free, laughing, whole, for all these 30 years.

My repeated question, “Why me? Why has this happened to me?” was, each time I asked it, answered with , “Why not you?  Why not everyone?”  And I realized that my story is intended for everyone.

Stay tuned next week for part of the Humpty Dumpty story. . . .