If you're blue in the face, dive for the space.
Posted by John on December 13, 2002 at 18:11:30:

We can play the awareness game until we're blue in the face, but if we realize finally, and it's obvious and apparent, that receiving that kind of healthy
treatment from us doesn't move the other person to start meeting us halfway, then it is beyond our power to control them. The best thing, and the
kindest thing, is to let them be who they are . . . and, at the same time, to go on being who we really are, if we can do it. Sometimes this means letting
go, and diving for the space.

You seem to have grown up a kind of person, Sally, that finds it very hard to acknowledge that *anything* is beyond your power. In this sense, you
may have too much strength and courage for your own good.

The idea of letting other people be who they are is a magical formula. For one thing, it is a means of recovering all of one's own squandered strength,
and being able to devote it to things we like better. But, people being people (their highly conditioned lives created out of their ego-driven
personalities), when they are faced with the blessed opportunity of accepting the reality of such situations and letting go, that's when the
manipulations of their personalities come jumping into it, trying to get the other person to change into being who they want them to be.

So it is that couples fight. They don't understand their own fighting, but they just go on and on doing it, out of habit. And for all their fighting, they
cannot change each other. It goes on being the same. The only change that can be introduced into such an entanglement is change that is created
within.

Tough as she is, and beautiful . . . demonstrating, as your Mom has done, that it is humanly possible to be as tough as she is, to hang in with
everything the way she has done, your Mom has created a truly daunting model for you (and your Sister) to live up to, Sally. Your dear Mom has
instilled in you a code that the woman has to hang in there and take it, no matter what happens. She has instilled in you a code of honor that the
woman has got to take whatever is dished out to her, and *take care of everything* no matter what she has to go through. The woman has got to
hold it all together, and keep it all under control, while saving the necks of the men they are sharing their lives with.

Now, I don't know this. I'm just guessing about all this, from some of the things you've had to say. What about it, Sally? Is there some truth in this?
I'm not thinking that your Mother "laid a guilt trip" on you (as one of every three parents in the world might do). I don't think it's guilt that's
generating your dilemma, Sally. I think it was "a control trip" that you had laid out for you as a little girl. And I think you may have adopted this—
without further study and reflection, nor understanding—as "the code" that you try to live by. And with the great strength that you obviously do
have, you can keep this daunting code much farther than most other people around you could do. I think you grew up believing that you have to be
able to live up to being able to keep the whole thing under control, and save the men's necks.

You have been dedicated to doing this for many years now. You have become almost superhumanly strong in doing this. I can't think of anyone I've
ever known who could stand up to the dilemma you have been living with the way that you have, even up to now when the father of your kids has
been stricken with cancer. Jesus, what a job has been given to you . . . . or so it would seem. But, in a real world of mindful warriors living by what's
obvious and apparent, what part of it is your job? And what parts of it are the jobs of the others around you?

You've grown up surrounded by *big men*, basketball and football player size, and you've had to be tough to survive in the midst of the rough and
tumble of it. Who got the best parts of the chicken around the table when you were a little girl, I wonder.

In a way, in your scheme of it, they all might seem a bit like "big children" that you are devoted to saving the necks of. What was once ten pounds of
diapers has become a hundred pounds of wet levis and levi jackets. As a woman taking so much care of a bunch of grown men (as well as the
younger fellows), you have the toughest job of that kind that I've ever heard of. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it is this code that your Mother has
instilled in you that has enabled you to cultivate the sheer strength to go on and on that way, year after year.

And your life has been a demonstration that you do have the strength and courage that that takes. You have been brave with this beyond the call of
duty.

Is the question here what are you going to do with your strength and qualities, if you decide one day to be free? Or is the question more basic: in a
dilemma such as this, is there any way to be free?

To start becoming free means working on changing any parts of it. You start out working within the whole of it, working on the things that you can
work on.

Becoming free doesn't necessarily mean you don't go on doing the healing things you ought to be doing for others . . . . . it just means being free
whatever it is you are doing. It is being free to do what is healing, and being free to not do what is weakening.

The anguish you are feeling these months is that you are not getting to be who you really are. You aren't getting to be authentic. I can see you are
beginning to sense that now in your sharings about your situation.

You see that it isn't really You, being forced by the circumstances into a life of serving others who not only don't appreciate what you do, but are
willing to hurt you over their dissatisfactions that you don't do more, more, than you are already doing.

I wish I knew how to heal them of that, Sally. It is robbing them of the best to come in their own lives. But they certainly wouldn't ask for any help
from me. So it is not my place to attempt that. Even so, their plight, in being in that situation, touches me very deeply—much as I am touched by your
plight. And I can empathize with them in real ways, in remembering my own selfishness and mistakes in the relationships I've had with women during
the course of my life. (This is a broad issue, really, the dilemma of so many women facing the almost incomprehensible selfishness of so many of us men
who grow up without a code of honor that starts with taking care a fair share of our own selves.)

I know several women who have been in this class who can relate to what I'm saying here. Older women who are on their own are not looking
around, in their heart of hearts, for yet another man to take care of. If us older men don't wise up about this, too bad for us if we have to fret about
it alone.

Let's look around the wheel, Sally, to see if we can see how you got your Self into this dilemma. Can-Do/Dictator patterns involved in this? I say yes.
It seems to me that in your case, it is mostly a control issue, and the fact that you can do all the massive helping that you have been doing. I'll come
back to this.

Teacher/Con Artist? You'd have come up with a much better contract with the rest of them than this one if you'd been a Con Artist, Sally. That you
have the potential to be a fine teacher—yes, I'd say, absolutely, that you have. But you didn't con your way into this dilemma. That ought to be clear.
Being a Con Artist is not your trip.

Player/Judge? I don't think that's you. Oh, you can get angry, and judge behind that. Yet you don't typically do much of the rest of the typical
Judge patterns at such times. I think that's because you feel bitterly rejected when these engagements are happening. And you can react to that
explosively.

It's your Artist/Rebel. You can be "a bitch on wheels," sometimes. As you well know, that's one of your characteristic personality reactions. You've
worked on that habit. You've made obvious progress on that here in class. I'm sure you tried hard to work on that around home, too. You *can
rebel*. You can quit . . . . and come back again to quit all over again. You can quit over and over again. Little explosions, every time. That's all Rebel
stuff. And you keep coming back to reject and quit again.

We all have a natural God-given spiritual *right* to reject! That's why "No" is the first phrase on the candid communications chart. But, coming back to
reject over and over again is not really exercising your right to reject. It is exercising your habitual Rebel personality, and it makes a jangling vibration
that hangs over your household and makes all of you miserable just sounding there.

Reject when you are really going to say goodby. You do have a right (and might even have a spiritual duty) to do that. But serial rejections and
threats of rejection can become a habit, born out of desperation, attempting to get others to change by playing it that way. You have seen by now
that it doesn't work. They don't change.

It takes up a tremendous amount of your energy to be a serial rejector. Stop doing that, as much as you can. There have to be ways of working on
the situation that are better than that!

Hard-Worker/Doormat. Well, Hard-Worker, in the essence of it, you can be. Doormat? I don't think that fits with the music of who you are. You
are certainly a "survivor," who can trudge through hell and high water, which are Hard-Worker/Doormat traits. You can take a lot of punishment.
Yet . . . . I just don't think you do all the super-helping that you do because you are shy, passive, helpless, easily pushed into it through weakness. I
think you do it because you have too much strength for your own good . . . because you can. And because you think you are supposed to live up to
that. (Again, Can-Do/Dictator.)

Student/Believer. As great as you are as a Student, clinging to others for security and having them taking care of you has not seemed to be your
way. You aren't really dependent on them. They are dependent on you.

Lover/Martyr. This one deserves more study. You are hardly a typical Martyr. You seem far too stoic for that. Yet the Lover and the Martyr may
play a much bigger role in your life than I've been able to appreciate. Dictator, Rebel, and Martyr could be your big three, personality-wise.

If Dictator, the question is how much more will you try to control than you actually can control. If Rebel, the question is whether you will go on
rejecting over and over again, or if you will finally blossom and choose to go your own way at last and be who you really are.

If it might be that actually rejecting, and leaving your present situation, may be a soul-answer for you—that is, if you feel that—then start preparing
for it—prepare them and you for it, and then do it.

But you are caught on the horns of a dilemma. You still do love him, in a small place deep in your heart. There's enough Lover/Martyr in you to
suffer over the lost love in your relationship. You realize that love is there sometimes after you've been crying for awhile (which is a healthy thing to
do. Try to cry mindfully, being aware of the bodily experiences of it, to get the most purging of those tensions of sadness out with your crying. In
this way, you make your crying *work for you*. Chaperone your sadness on out of your body with your mindfulness, every time you cry.)

Could your basic message simply be: "I love you so much, and I can't take this being rejected by you any more."

But, you are caught in a powerful *side current* in this code of "woman's strength" that you have adopted. You have to be in control of the situation.
You have to be able to do everything you can do to save their necks, and even what no one could do, to save him.

Stop controlling this man, I would coach. If he doesn't want to take vitamins and minerals, or research new medical procedures that might control his
tumor, allow him that. Let go of the researching that you are doing for him. He doesn't seem to want it. Let him face his Fate in his own way. Even
if you were able eventually to find a perfect remedy for his condition, he couldn't do it anyway. He couldn't sincerely put his heart into it, which is
what any such heroic remedy would take.

If he is resigned to his Fate, let him be. It's his life, and his death. Let it be personal to him, the way he wants it to be. He shares little of his life with
you. Let it be. Either the cancer will go into remission through his own way of living his life, or it won't. Letting him be would call for a great sacrifice
on your part, a sacrifice of the belief that you can, and are supposed to be able to do anything.

You may seem to be acting as if you have to control his very survival. Probably you just can't, if that's so, and need to accept the reality of that. (And
do all the crying that brings. Let it all out. That honest sadness in you is part of your righteous part in the whole tragic situation. Even if you *could*
control his life or death challenge, would that be your choice if it meant having to take over his life for him? Is he asking you to do that? If the roles
were reversed, would you want him to do that to you?

Being super-humanly strong can only work until you encounter forces in life that can't be controlled. This is a tough reality for any Can-Do/Dictators
to accept, and, typically in society, they go on and on attempting to be in control of everything anyway.

Perhaps you can begin accepting that death can win in the end. Death cannot always be controlled. That would be asking for more strength than
humans are given. Perhaps you can begin accepting letting him die in his own way, if that's what he's insisting upon. Isn't that his call? Doesn't he
seem to be asking for that? Or am I missing the boat here?

Surely, if a one-woman rescue team was what he needed and wanted at this time, you would be there, ready, willing, and able. But is that what is
really being called for? And if that is not what is really being called for, then there may be a whole other life for you that is waiting to be discovered—
other ways for you to use this same strength and courage for the benefit of humanity as well as to be a healthy and wholesome example to your kids
and support their future chances of harmony in their own lives.

The life of a spiritual warrior is not always doing, but also of pausing and *not doing*, when that is the most appropriate alternative. Sometimes
pushing forth is called for; sometimes letting go. Sometimes the letting-go can be the best for everyone concerned. I'm glad you have been seeing a
therapist. Me, or anyone in your shoes could need that to survive the situation that you are living through. I agree with the things you said your
therapist has told you. You are taking far too much onto your own shoulders.

The situation is so remarkably double-bound in so many ways—with the younger kids, and the older kids, and your ex-husband's critical health
problems. It's so valuable to have someone to share all this with, person to person and face-to-face, and open your heart and just be real in sharing
your experiences of it all. Therapists are devoting their lives to getting very good at this kind of work. It's good to have a living, caring person there
with you, to cry with.

You may have thought about taking the younger kids and starting over living with your sister's family. (I don't know if that would be practical, but it
seems she's a good enough friend of you now, for that. What about Australia? Would Pauline help you get a new start there? I've always attempted
to study and understand your whole situation from a standpoint of what is the most humanitarian thing to be done. I'm thinking especially of the
younger ones, growing up seeing their mother not being treated with sweetness and appreciation for all you are doing for all of you. I wonder what
effect that will have on their future lives. I don't know the answer, Sally. You must find the answer within you. I'm not there. I can't give advice, or
even take sides. Decisions for what directions to take must always lie in the instincts of you students in this class, and not in me. Yet I can't honestly
see any better possibilities for all involved, and after all that you have conscientiously tried already, than considering diving for the space.

Never have I felt so unwise as I feel when I contemplate your dilemma, Sally. I don't know if the things I'm saying here are any value to you, or not.
Chances are my input has only made you feel worse. In my own thinking I keep coming back to thoughts of how very much you have to give, over
the course of the rest of your life, in healing, and teaching, and pitching in where help is needed and asked for, and *appreciated*, in putting the
wonderful strengths and qualities you were born with into play in living a life where you would *know* and feel you were being authentic.

I pray for remission of that man's cancer, too, and I pray that you can find a place where you can be wholly who you are. By not attempting to do
more than an ordinary human being is supposed to be able to do, and yet attempting to realize the whole of it, of what you *have been* born onto this
planet to do—in a balance of this you can find that place.

You might try this. Ask, who is your greatest ally? From here, it sounds like that is your sister. And I couldn't imagine a greater ally, in her own
strengths and qualities. And she has a common understanding with you of some of the things that are being taught in this training. For you two,
when you meet, it could be like two mindful warriors, two samurais in studying things that are obvious and apparent to both of you in the experiences
of each of you. You two could have the same kind of relationship that Perk and I have with each other, and I have with each of you, a relationship of
mindful warriors, studying the mastery of the human problems that come up in life.

It seems to me I've seen you two grow closer over the years you've been students here. Hi, Suz, if you're listening in! Even in the midst of such a
terrible dilemma as you find you are in now, Sally, this could be a very propitious time for you sisters to begin cultivating closer ties with each other, on
purpose, as fellow observers of life.

Among the spectrum of possibilities that lie before you now, is the possibility of deliberately teaming up with her for awhile, with the younger boys, if
that's okay with everybody all around—maybe taking *a health break* from all of these weights and pressures you have been piling up on your Self,
and visiting with her for awhile.

Since I don't know the others, I probably can't guess what each of them wants. I guess what I'm looking at here wouldn't be it. But even among the
spectrum of your possibilities is the possibility of deciding to go your own way. You are already divorced, after all. In later years, you've decided to
sort of ignore that . . . I'm guessing it's because you are the only one of all of you with that much superhuman strength. You've had the strength to
accept a role of taking everything that they all dish at you, keeping it all together for them, and saving their necks from having to do . . . . . what???
Having to do all that work for themselves . . . . . And you have had the strength to be living without seeming to need friendliness, sensitivity, caring,
compassion, empathy and people around you who love you and are spontaneously sweet to you, people who pitch in, just as much, *to help you*!!!

And you've proven that you haven't *needed* that kind of caring for a long, long time, Sally. You have not only lived up to your Mother's code,
you've lived up to an even greater code than that. How much strength is a woman supposed to have?

It's an old awareness game "dogma," I guess you could say (since we're talking about people's real lives here), that I've coached again and again over
the years to classes. If a person can't find a way to have the others play for harmony, too, then . . . . . playing for harmony, itself, is where it's at in a
warrior's life (obviously, this is some dogma). So, in the awareness game, speaking generally to all students of this approach, this is where the "dive
for the space" exercise comes into play. If playing for harmony isn't happening around you, dive for the space, and watch for the places where playing
for harmony shows up and is happening. (And it may not be in the first few places you pass by after that.)

Even if you should happen to know in your heart that going your own way is the choice that you resonate with the most—that is, even if you know
you'd like to move right on along with being a divorced woman with the duty of taking care of only herself and the kids with her, that doesn't have to
happen at once, without preparation. In short, even if you know in your heart that splitting is the appropriate way for you—and this is important, I
say—you don't have to be in any big hurry about the action you know you will be taking.

In the meantime—according to the awareness game, at least—if you go on practicing daily mindfulness (not only with your problems, but in all ways,
indoors and out) when you remember to, avenue that contribute to what you are intending *will come to you*. Right gestures, right moves you can
make to handle the situation masterfully little by little, will come to you. By meditating, and practicing mindfulness, that is, by practicing observing
your life while being "in there behind those eyes," ideas and answers will come to you. By this process of mindful practice, the answers to what-to-do
will come to you.

In the meantime, stop rejecting as much as you can. By rejecting I mean telling the other person, "No! You can't be thinking, believing, wanting,
needing *that*!" When you tell a person that, you are rejecting them. Watch out for doing that, and see if you can practice stepping aside from doing
that whenever you can. It doesn't do you any good, as you have seen proven for years. All of the "Psycho-Sal," as you used to call your Self, that
you have put out there on the stage of life hasn't changed them a single bit. They go on being the ways they always have been being.

See if you can catch on when you are about to jump into being the "flaming bitch" *before you do it*. You've done excellently in your work on that
here in Classroom Talk. I do know how tough it is to keep your Self from acting-out that volatile dance in reaction to the circumstances you are facing
now. But, the work that you do on that one characteristic, Sally, is going to further "your next life" to remarkable degrees. I'm talking about your
next life on this planet, of course. And you will have earned it, Sally, as a classical warrior earns it.

To the degree that you can keep those knee-jerk behaviors of serial rejection tamed, the easier and easier it will become to be able to move when you
know the appropriate time has come for doing that.

Again, I am not telling you that is right for you! I am telling you about it if you find it is right for you. I don't know what the answers are for you.
The dilemma you are in—and I can empathize with all sides of it, that is from the points of view of the others, too—is one of the toughest and
thorniest dilemmas I've ever seen. It's only now, after years, that I feel I am finally starting to have insights on this that might be valuable to you, like I
am sharing in this class. But only in your own experiences can you tell what to do, Sally. And I hope if you respond to this class, that you speak up
candidly about the ways that I seem to be missing the point here, or am off-base, in the things I'm coaching here.

I think what's helped me to start "cracking this case," so to speak, was the chance happening of Eddie's making up that syndrome nickname, "The Not
so Kind Helper."

Somehow, that really rang a bell for you Sally. It bothered the heck out of you that you could see what a collosal helper you are with so many other
people in this life, and yet you *knew* beyond a shadow of a doubt from years of Self observation that you were not being "kind" about it. In fact,
you knew that you resented it. Oh, at times you really, really loved the person you helped. But often you resented doing this immense amount of
helping fiercely, where you were seeing day after day that there was no appreciation, no caring, no sweetness, no loving coming back.

Although you are too stoic to have played the Martyr very much in Classroom Talk, hardly at all, if that description there fits with your own
experiences, that is, in fact, the pattern of the Lover/Martyr. The Martyr feels sad and is hurt (becomes martyred) when, for all of the love that they
give, there is no love coming back. That is a Martyr scenario, and this is the first time in all this time of knowing you, Sally, that I felt a flash that said:
"Along with Can-Do/Dictator, and Artist/Rebel, going on counter-clockwise around the wheel, Lover/Martyr looks like the third major type in Sally's
repertoire of Essence/Personality. I remember long ago I gave your experiences serving the old woman where you were volunteering in that
homeless shelter as an example of Essential Lover in a class.

The thing about you—it seems to me—is that you keep up such a powerful front, with the Can-Do Dictator, and the fierce Artist/Rebel, that the
Lover in you may be obscured for the rest of us in the background. Does that make any sense to you, as you are looking at you? So—if that type is a
match with you—in your next life around, after going through everything you're going through nowadays, it would seem righteous and appropriately
*balanced* if the Lover in you came to play a richer and more abundant role in your life, balancing out the Can-Do Woman and the Artist that you've
got going for you.

I have never been able to see you in the role of the Kind Helper on our wheel. The Kind Helper is the personality side of the quintessential *mother*
who mothers everybody. We used to call this "the Jewish Mother," before that became inappropriate. And the Kind Helper is all about familiness. To
the great extent that *familiness* plays such a major part in your life, and being the actual mother of all those strapping boys, after all, it might seem as
if you would have grown up to be a Kind Helper.

But you do not really fit that type. I may be wrong, but I think you may have been agonizing, thinking "I do all this helping, yet what is wrong with
me that I don't have that kind of kindness that Kind Helpers have?" There's nothing wrong with you. It's just that you aren't built that way, so to
speak.

I chose the name "Kind Helper" for that type, because I thought it would have a vibration about it that would enable awareness game players to
recognize it very easily in the world around.

But I can see it could be misleading, too. Because the "kindness" of the Kind Helper, although obvious to see, is *kindness that is being taken too far,
coming from a sense of guilty obligation. It is helping coming out of too much kindness, coming from guilt.

After all these years, I still don't feel I'm hearing the music of guilt coming from you, Sally. It just doesn't seem to fit for me that you would have the
Kind Helper as one of your three primary personality types. Not so long ago, you used the phrase "I should" in a sentence, and it caught me by
surprise (i.e. "should" being "the guilt word"). My take on it then was that it seemed somehow "out of character" for you, as I've seemed to know you.

Everybody feels guilty now and then, usually without knowing it. I pick up on the music of guilt (i.e. the Kind Helper) as readily as I pick up on the
music of the other seven types on our wheel. Guilt music has a "worry, worry, worry" quality to it.

You don't seem to me to be doing your superhuman helping out of guilty worry. Take the superhuman research of the Internet for the most
outstanding teachers of mindfulness that you have contributed to our TTMT School over the years, as a legacy to others who might come along here
in later years. You didn't do that superhuman web searching because you were worrying about me, or those who would be the beneficiaries of the
powerful work that you were doing all those times. You did it because you were strong enough to do it. You didn't do that helping beyond the call
of duty coming from a Kind Helper personality. You did it coming from a Can-Do Woman, who was able to go out into the world and collect those
magnificent mindfulness teachings. You built a mini Library of Alexandria in our field. That's pure can-do. That distinguished collection of findings is
still one of the most powerful things that's happened in Classroom Talk.

And, coming from your own hanging in with your Self-observation work, you know in your bones that, much as you help other people, the Kind
Helper type in our wheelbook is not a good match for you. You are—and congratulations to Eddie for coming up with it, even in fanciful play as it
was, by serendipity—you are a living, breathing, walking, talking Not So Kind Helper, Sally, and it's okay to be who you are (and who you aren't).
It's okay to be who you are. All these kinds of trainings are about finding this out. "Who am I?"

You are a powerful helper, par excellence, as I and others have been telling you around here for years. It wasn't bullshit. It was phenomenology.
And you didn't do it to be kind. You did it to be competent, to be powerful.

The helping you do doesn't seem to come from a guilty obligation to be doing it, but from a fear of not being so powerful that you can do anything . . .
control everything. It is as if you live by a code that you have to be so powerful that you can keep everything under your control, to such an extent
that you are stuck being there where you are. Keeping the family together and helping by so much taking care of everybody requires that you *be
there* with them all, from a strategic point of view. How could you, for instance, take care of them all, if the older ones moved on to start having lives
of their own? But if you are *indispensible* to them, by doing so superhumanly much for them, will they ever take responsibility for starting out on
their own lives? And where are your boys ever going to find other such superwomen to live with them, who will pick up with them and everything
that you have been doing where you leave off?

You, Sally, have lived by Nietzche's code ("That which does not kill me makes me stronger."). But you have not allowed your sons to start learning to
live by that code. Doing their own dishes, and their own laundry, running a vacuum around the place every few days, and keeping their Dad's water
pitcher filled up are not things that would kill them. Indeed, they are things that would make them stronger.

There is one over-lapping thing that the Dictator and the Kind Helper have in common in their relatings with the people they are helping so much. In
both cases, doing too much for other people, doing things for them that they really ought to be doing on their own, weakens them. In an over-all
holistic model of health, doing too much for them is as weakening as poor nutrition and lack of vitamins and minerals would be.

The giving and helping-too-much of the Kind Helper comes from obsessive obligation, too much "kindness" . . . even, to a certain extent, a pretended
kindness, at times, a false role they think they should play because they are obligated to. In contrast, the giving and helping of the Dictator could,
possibly (I'm not sure if any of all this is hitting the mark with you Sally, in your own experiences) it seems to me that could come from adopting an "I
can do everything for them" kind of a code that is based on a model of Superwoman in a world of far less than super men.

For all I know, being a man—and I *know* we men can be such terrible fuck-ups in our relating with women—maybe your Mom's code is exactly what
the world needs for the salvation of the human race. There are so many less-than-super men out here to give away your Superwoman lives to, in
trying to save the necks of all of us weak and selfish men. But the metaphysical question, to me, at least, is, is this effort doing any good? Or is it
weakening?

I suppose this may sound hard-hearted—but I know you know, Sally, that I care about your ex-husband as much as you. And I know you care about
him, too. I've heard you on the phone, crying and crying and saying: "I love him so much." So write what I'm about to say off to an old man's
craziness, if you would be so kind.

It seems as probable to me that he would get better and maybe even have a spontaneous remission, living entirely by his own choices of how he wants
to relate with the cancer, and doing what he wants to do during the life that is left to him—it seems as probable to me that that would heal him, as for
you to continue attempting to get him healed, *even in ways* that are *so truly righteous* and *right-on*, Sally. If it was any of so many other men,
they would be thanking you for saving their lives for so long. But, in his case, he just can't see that. If he would indulge in whatever life he wanted to
have, carrousing with his friends if he would be given to that, whatever, whatever degree of looseness and relaxedness, and even cheerfulness that
that might bring him, that might do him just as much healing good.

Sally, you are great, and you are a lover, and you can do more of what you set your life to than almost anyone l know. I know how hard these times
must be for you. This too, shall pass. There is another life after this one that is coming, feeling your feet on the ground, knowing you are in there
behind those eyes, and being a woman of power, as Carlos Castaneda put it . . . . . and yes, putting the Superwoman-Helping syndrome behind you,
for an honest day's work in whatever you like the most and are best at, instead.

It's nice to have all that power at your disposition in your hip pocket and be able to bring it out and put it into play with awareness and intention when
that's appropriate, but most days of the week, most days of the month, doing an honest day's work is enough. And doing more than that is too
much—in the view of the awareness game, at least.

It seems to me that in your case, you've got too much of a good thing in the strength and courage you've got. An honest day's work is enough.
There must be time for rest, and play for anyone's life to be balanced. An honest day's work from a woman like you, is already like having a one-
woman team on the job. An honest day's work is enough. An honest day's work is one in which, when you lie down at night, you feel your own
satisfaction in having gotten the work done that you have gotten done that day. This feeling of inward satisfaction is natural, and innate. And with
mindfulness practice, it can be experienced within when it is there.

I'm experiencing it now, in fact, as I'm nearing the end of this class, which I've been composing over the last several nights. I don't know if all of this
will be any help to you, Sally. It's just a bunch of experiences and hunches that have come to me. But I feel a tangible satisfaction at having put in the
best of what I've got in me into it. Yeah! And I pray there is value in it.

"Diving for the space," is taking a chance, in leaving a place where there is obviously little or no love or appreciation, and going into the void again,
with our mindfulness turned on as often as we can, to see what comes to us. Finding loving companionship is possible along this path. And what-to-
do will keep coming to you. How do you find the kind of work where you lie down at night with that kind of satisfaction. Dive for the space.
Practice mindfulness. It will come to you.

I love y'all, students in this class. I don't know everything, and I try to be honest about that, but I do share whatever I can of what comes to me.

Coach

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Archived 02/04/2003