Summary of Week 2

I ate an avacado and enjoyed it for the first time in my life (it was in fresh made guacamole, so there). I went out for a beer with a group of Tico friends for karaoke night and felt like the stiff, proper American girl that I've always been.


And that was the extent of my worldly adventures during the last week.


I had forgotten the power of spiritual adventures; of facing fears, limitations, questioning yourself and everything you have been. But while my worldly adventures have been few, my spiritual adventures have been the type that take your breath away......stir up turmoil and a beautiful type of agony and end in a new awakening. My life during the last week has consisted of numerous conversations with many different people and each one has been about me. I started out in resistance, because I avoid talking about myself.....I don't really enjoy it and it frightens me to think that I might discover something ugly. If I can ask questions and keep the focus on the other person, I remain in control and it does not require the exposure or examination of anything I may wish to keep hidden.

But there are times when people show up and ask exactly the right question. One of those people showed up for me in the form of a 40-year old Italian life coach. After my first five-minute conversation with him, I felt as though my entire inner world was breaking down. This woman I had created to present to the world; amiable, always appropriate, educated, rational and in control of herself, who knew how to answer questions in a way that never exposed her weaknesses and had answers for everyone but herself. The woman that I had been working to create my entire life, whom I presented with pride and spent enormous amounts of energy maintaining----she is not really me at all.

In fact she is the one that holds me in submission, in bondage and fear of error, she is the one slowly destroying me from the inside out. The real me is full of ignorance, impulsiveness and stupidity. The real me longs to dance along the street and be free to talk to anyone. To make enormous mistakes and learn from them.

After two days of intense conversations with this man, I've been rejoicing in my humanness. It is liberating to welcome every thought and emotion instead of burying it. I suddenly feel as though I want to tell and show everyone how beautiful it is to be alive and how perfect we all are in our imperfection. I feel a craziness to find the words, the expression that will awaken other people to that realization.