Stop Being Mean to Yourself: A Story About Finding the True Meaning of Self-Love (19 page)

It is the walk of the Christ.

I have a friend
,
a diva
,
an opera singer from the East Coast
.
Early on in her career
,
when she was a beautiful young woman
,
she resonated to the Mozart
Requiem
.
Her instructor at the Juilliard School of Music
,
Leonard Bernstein
,
asked her then why such a young woman with a brilliant future was so
interested in such a heavy work
.
She replied that she didn
'
t know
,
she just was
.
Over the years
,
she continued to sing
.
Then she married and gave birth to
two beautiful sons
.
When her younger son was twenty
,
he was killed in a motorcycle crash
.

"
Now I know why I was so passionate about the
Requiem,"
she said
.
"
It was my destiny to sing that song from
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the depths of my soul
.
The problem was
,''
my diva friend said
,
"
by the time I learned to sing the Requiem with passion and understanding
,
I was so
embittered and brokenhearted I no longer wanted to sing
."

My diva friend told me another story about a composer who lived in another time
.
This composer considered him self a craftsman
,
someone who diligently
worked at the job of composing music each day the way a shopkeeper goes to his store or a dressmaker fits and sews dresses
.

The craftsman
composer had hit a wall with his creativity and his work
.
He was stuck
.
He couldn
'
t write a note
.
One day while feeling tormented over his
dilemma of not being able to write music
,
the composer opened his window
.
Outside
,
he heard three notes being played beautifully on a horn
.
The notes
seemed to be coming from a barn nearby
.
Each day for days
,
when he opened the window
,
the composer heard these same three beautiful notes being
played
.
Finally
,
the composer left his room and went in search of the origin of these three hauntingly beautiful sounds
.
He then discovered a young boy
hiding in the barn playing a horn
.

The composer talked to the boy for a while
.
He learned that the boy
'
s father beat the boy terribly and refused to let the boy play music
.
To avoid the daily
beatings and have the freedom to play his horn
,
the boy hid in the barn and played the only three notes he knew
.

The craftsman
composer went on to use these three beauti

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ful notes as the inspiration and foundation for the next piece of music he would write
—
the lovely
,
lilting
"
Strauss Waltz
"
by Johann Strauss
.

Some of us hear and learn to sing a wide range of emotional notes in our lives. Others learn to sing or play only a few. It doesn't matter how many notes we're called to sing. What matters is that we sing them the best, the purest, the finest we are able. When we do, our lives and work not only bring healing to the world, our work brings healing to ourselves.

In an afterword to the stories she told me, my diva friend told me something else. If we struggle and work to learn our craft of living and creating with emotional honesty and joy, we will train our voices and our souls to sing the final, high, resonating sound that is the purest note in the scale, the one divas work so hard to achieve.

It is the full, rich tone of peace.

In less than half an hour, in my hotel room in downtown Cairo, a lifetime of dissatisfaction had shown its grim face for what it was. It was as though a vortex had whirled through me, cleansing me of these dark remnants from my past.

These grim emotional secrets that had been buried in me were not necessarily news. I had lived with, through, and in spite of them for years. What was an innovative thought was that I could be healed, or freed, from these

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beliefs and emotions that had colored my vision and spirit for so long.

I wasn't elated or euphoric. But my emotional state had spun around distinctly for the better. In the whirlwind that followed my excursion into the pyramid, my skepticism had dissipated. So had my contempt. In its place, I now felt excitement, a rush of joy, and a sense of purpose that had been missing for a long time.

Something
had
happened inside that mysterious tomb. There was a power there. I could feel and see it now. This journey, this grueling excursion, was leading someplace. It had a
point
.
Even though it hadn't
felt
as if anything was happening, something important and magnificent had been taking place all along.

Mysteries, secrets, ancient wisdom, and special powers had been buried in these tombs. Now this wisdom and these powers were being released. I had touched the edges of a world unknown.

The mystery of my life was being revealed.

Until now, I had been living out of an unpacked suitcase in one room in a downtown Cairo hotel. I had been indecisive about how long I would stay in Cairo and exactly where I would go next. I had originally planned to finish my trip by flying to Greece and writing my book Page 169

there—but that leg of the trip still hadn't materialized.

Despite the language barriers, the unbearably chaotic traffic, the overcrowding, my great caution about the food, my lingering stomachache, and the large number of people who wanted gratuities whether or not they had performed a service, Cairo—and its suburb, Giza—had become my home.

I immediately decided what to do next. There are times and places of heightened and accelerated spiritual growth. I had just entered one.

I would stay in Egypt and write my book.

''What is written on that piece of paper you're hiding from me?" demanded the interrogator in Tel Aviv. I sheepishly showed her the two words scrawled at the bottom of the sheet. "Vampire Art," I said. "That's all it says. It's a note to myself."

"I see," my interrogator said. "Open your computer," she said. "I want to see what you've written in there."

"I would gladly show you what's in my computer," I said. "But there's nothing in there to show. I didn't get around to writing. Something happened that changed my plans."

She looked at me as if she didn't believe what I had just said.

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I began to stumble through the next part of my story. I didn't completely understand the shift yet either—the one that had wrested me out of Egypt and propelled me into the interrogation first in Cairo and now here in Tel Aviv.

What I couldn't yet explain was about to become clear.

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chapter 11

The Pounding Continues

Essam had given me the address of a small hotel in a residential neighborhood close to Giza. He had been gently harping at me for days about moving to a less expensive hotel, one where I could feel more settled and at home. Now I decided to explore and make that move.

When I went to check out the hotel, the manager showed me a suite. It was nothing fancy—basic Egyptian decor. But the price was right. It was almost like an apartment. It had a large bathroom, a living room,
and
a bedroom.

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It would be a perfect place to write. I'd be only a few minutes from the desert. I could unpack my computer, set up shop, and alternate times of intense work with powerful meditation sessions in the pyramids.

The ancient energy I had tapped into here would keep me highly charged.

I returned to the hotel in downtown Cairo, checked out, and loaded my belongings in a taxi. Instead of going directly to the hotel, I headed for the sandlot. I wanted to return to the pyramids for another dose of their powers.

I left my belongings at the perfume shop and mounted a camel for my trek to the small, potent pyramid that had unleashed its energy on me yesterday. I had packed away my white head covering in my suitcase. I didn't think wearing it today would be necessary. But Essam insisted that I again wear white "to get the powers."

As the camel clopped down the narrow path on the way to the desert, I purchased yet another white cloth and stuck it on my head. I didn't understand what had taken place in the pyramid. I didn't see how wearing a white rag on my head connected to this mystery. But undeniably, yesterday
had
affected me greatly. I wanted more—even if it meant looking ridiculous.

Essam's young nephew rode alongside me again. I smiled at the same bulky sundried pyramid guard and followed him through the tiny opening in the side of the Page 173

tomb. I crouched down and walked through the narrow curving passageway. The guard placed four white candles on the rim encircling the small room in the center of the pyramid. He and my guide then departed, leaving me alone to receive more of the "special powers."

This time, I sat crosslegged on the floor, closed my eyes, and asked God to help me. I began to meditate, breathing in the air and energy of this dank mysterious vortex. In moments, just seconds, it hit me. It entered through my crown.

The force of the energy whipped me backwards, knocking me flat on the ground. The hair on my arms stood up, electrified. From my head to my toes, this mysterious vortex whirled through me with the force of a tornado, charging me with its powers.

It had probably done the same thing yesterday, but I'd been too clogged with my own dank beliefs and dark emotional residues to feel it. Today, I could feel it while it was happening.

Yesterday had been a critical step—a preparation for today.

There are higher places we can go to connect with ancient energies, power, and wisdom that have been entombed and hidden from sight. The purpose of the powerful energy being unleashed is to clear us out so these longforgotten powers can manifest in each of us.

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When I finished meditating, I tipped the guard, rode the camel back to the sandlot, paid my guide, and thanked Essam. I made tentative plans to return to Essam and the pyramids in a few days. I was ready to get to work.

When I arrived at my new home, the small hotel near Giza, the owner checked me in and gave me a key to my room. I took the slow, creaking elevator to the ninth floor, went to the room number I had been assigned, and opened the door.

I looked around, my eyes widening in disbelief. This room was dark, and it was the size of a large closet—nothing like the apartment I had been shown before. I walked to the one small window, opened the grimy curtains, and looked outside. The room was not only small and dark, it directly overlooked a construction site.

This triggered a memory, an unpleasant one that had begun the summer before this trip.

I was renting a small cottage by the sea
.
I could hear the waves from every room in my little house
.
The warm California sun rarely hid behind the clouds
.
I
could write
,
walk on the beach
,
go for a swim in the ocean after my morning coffee
.
I could live and write my books with nature at my side
.
It wasn
'
t
necessarily a dream home
,
but it was heaven to me
—
until the pounding began
.

It started with a simple
"
For Sale
"
sign that went up on the house next door
.
Soon new owners purchased the property
—
a
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sprawling mansion that dwarfed my little cottage
.
The new owners gutted their huge house and began major reconstruction
.
In California
,
there is often
little space between the homes
.
Their home was only a few feet from my office
,
my bedroom
,
and my living room
.
Every morning
,
the noise from the
hammering
,
the radios
,
and the loud voices of the laborers woke me before my alarm
,
which was set for 7
:
00 A
.
M
.
Most days
,
the noise sounded as if it
came from my living room
.

The pounding continued day after day after day
—
six and sometimes seven days a week
.

It would go on for almost a year
.

The noise seemed to intensify each time I went in my office to work
.
Even the healing forces of nature
—
the sun
,
fresh air
,
and frothy surf
—
weren
'
t enough
to diminish the colossally annoying forces of the workers
'
hammering blows
.

I explored moving
.
I looked at over fifty other dwellings
.
No door opened for me there
.
I was stuck living next to a construction site
.
I tried to live with the
situation as best I could
,
acknowledging my neighbors
'
right to renovate and my right to be annoyed
.
But the combination of their noise and my frustration
blocked me from working or living in peace
.