3 posts tagged “keeper of secrets...translations of an incident”

There are secrets that are best left alone, actions we’ve committed and our sharing of them would do no one any good. There are also the ones that we might consider how we might broach with the adults in our lives that we are intimate. Then there are those that beg for us to open up and r elease for in doing so we liberate not only ourselves but aid those close to us in seeing that life, while chocked full of tedious tasks and myriad of uncertainties, can be endured and enjoyed.

These secrets are usually the ones we keep from our children.
For me it was the fact that I didn’t’ have any friends during my time in elementary and through to high school.  I wasn’t necessarily hated, nor did I hate others. I just wasn’t one of the in crowd.

There’s a lot of us out there.  I meet them as parents whose children attend school with mine and I’ve come to know them in therapy, both as adult and those adolescent clients undergoing what I experienced.

It was and is easy to talk fellow parents and other adults about my trial. They, like me, survived. The fact that we joke about it evidences we got through it fairly unscathed. Yet some battle scars remain, those we keep hidden—and mostly from our children.

I know I have a secret tearing to come out when one of my children begins to tell me about an incident at school, usually hurtful, that they’ve experienced at the hands of another, either a classmate of another student.  My chest tightens. My breath grows short. I want to march to the school and inform this student how much hurt my child felt in response to their words and actions. But it’s not only my child that is bothered. I am too.

Truth be told I’m back there on the playground as that little girl who in third grade was squeezed out of a threesome that became a twosome taking with it the girl I though was my best friend, or I as in high school learning that I hadn’t been invited to the party that would begin after the prom.

And though my friends who like I have survived, know that in the scheme of things, these events, however much they hurt, lose importance over time, I also know a residue remains.

I happen to think the memories remain not to haunt me, but to make me a better parent, someone who can identify with my child. This only happens when I share my secret—that like my daughter, I too had a childhood. And some days, more than I want to admit, truth be known, were difficult, challenging.

What’s in a secret? 

A lot if we’re honest.  And even more if we choose to open up and show we’re human.

“Our minds are always sometimes keeping bad company, sometimes good company. When it thinks well of it- self and looks favorably on other people, our mind is keeping good company, and when it thinks ill of itself and other people, our mind is keeping bad company. When the intellect makes good decisions for itself, when it resolves to act well and thinks well of other people and understands them to be good, it is keeping good company or satsanga. And the imagination is keeping bad company when it imagines the worst things possible about itself and about other people.

… if it were to think good things it would find peace. So our company, both internal and external should be good.” Baba Muktananda (excerpted from Keep the Company of the Self, DARSHAN/ Good Company, Great Resolve, Glorious Destiny 125, August 1997 pp. 35-37)

As artists it is imperative that we “keep good” so that we might continue to create our works of art and experience joy in practicing our artistry. Then what we offer to the world will heal and promote well-being. But as Baba Muktananda points out, the company we keep resides both inside and out. And that company influences both what we create and karma and the energies it invokes.

As an artist who is also a psychotherapist, I know as well, that the company of thoughts that reside and that we nurture within ourselves determines to whom we are drawn and move toward in our external walk.
The internal and external company we keep determines the nature of our success both emotionally and financially.
The recent publication of my first book, Keeper of Secrets…Translations of an Incident, explores a violent event through the eyes of the protagonists that live and move at the center of my eight stories. The first story displays the story. This first story and each successive story reveals a secret, long held and rumbling, within the lives of the characters that witness or hear about the event. The secrets, long held and rumbling wreak a silent havoc upon the lives of the protagonists and their fellow characters, often family members.
The clandestine moments of histories of my protagonists live as close to them as their breaths. They emotional residue dripping from the sad and painful occurrences stand between my protagonists, and those whom they most love, and who love them. These secrets separate the protagonists from their most essential self. They, and the thoughts they give rise to are not good company.

And yet these mysteries form a piece the identity of the individuals who shelter them. They shape their personalities and thoughts, how they see the world, the beliefs they hold about themselves and others. Would the quality of their lives have been better without the meanderings of their haunting thoughts often oblivious of their own existence?

By what standard to we assess the value of our living and presence in the world, the creations we render from this experience?

On observance and in truth we are pressed to find anyone without secrets, any person lacking something–an act or a deed committed or omitted of which they do not hold the slightest bit of regret. It would seem that the passage from infancy to toddler hood with which the entrance into preschool and kindergarten follows is thereafter fraught with things we all wished to not have done. Our first response is to forget them.

Freud concluded that one of the main features that distinguishes depression from sheer grief at the loss of a life or material object was not only the past presence of that person or object, now gone or extinguished, but the fact of having known or seen, or held the destroyed piece or having known or held relationship, however slight or brief with person now deceased.

In Freud’s opinion, which often varied from subject to subject but remained focused in his intent to heal, depression was the loss of something the person [depressed] had never possessed, or of that which had not existed. In simple terms depression was the loss of the intangible, unmanifest, an illusion, or more aptly put, an erroneous belief.

Are secrets real? Or are they erroneous beliefs long held and hesitantly relinquished, if ever, abandoned?

What are the dreams that haunt our nightly deaths, of which we desert and forget on rising in the morning?

What would we have to give up to make those dreams come true, infuse them with vitality?

What death would we have to die to make room in our lives for their fruition?

The protagonists of Keeper of Secrets…Translations of an Incident realize that to dispel the power their secrets hold over them, they must not only acknowledge or reveal the secret, if only to themselves. More importantly they must let go of a falsely held belief concerning who they are.

As artists we face our secrets each time we approach the blank page, face the canvas, attempt the first note of our warm-up scales. The sound we hear with that first note, the image we begin at the easel, the first word of our poem or story, is a call to adventure–a dying of sorts to the old of what we have created, and a surrendering to what is emerging on the horizon. Each time we ignore or forget that call and opt for the road filled with travelers, our soul cries out. Will we respond and unleashed it from the secrets of our past, the lies we were told about ourselves and world and what we can do in it? Will remain hostage to the illusions and what has never existed except in the minds of our detractors and, and live separated from our destiny?

What comprises your satsanga?

When in just the presence of yourself, alone, do you feel comfortable, and safe?

Or do you long for more?

If so what can you give yourself today, this moment that will bring your closer to freedom as you practice your art?

Yesterday, at the suggestion of my internet publicist, I released a book into the wild.  I did it through using the website, bookcrossings.com.  

Basically you register with bookcrossings.com as you would with facebook.com or myspace.com. Once a member you give the title of the book you are going to release, and the name of where you have left it. The site manger configures the actual address according to the information you have given.  

I left a copy of the book I wrote, Keeper of Secrets…Translations of an Incident, in a café in Berkeley.

On leaving the café at 6pm—the internet publicist and I were the last patrons and they were trying to close—the person closing up noticed the book, and asked, “Did one of you leave your book?”

My publicist and I exchanged giddy glances.  In addition to the book I had left a $10 bill in the back flap for the finder to have a cup of coffee or tea and a pastry on me. I included this in the instructions given on bookcrossings.com and in the front of the book where I signed my name.

The publicist remained silent as I disclaimed owning the book.

The café worker, a little puzzled, glanced at the book, as we looked on, I wondering whether the worker would be the person who would become the book’s owner.

Once outside the publicist explained that she had remained silent because months ago she had gone to the counter in the café’ and asked if she could leave with them a copy of another client’s book she was promoting, and they give it to the person—a person who had read on bookcrossings.com about the book being left at the coffee shop—who would come there and ask for it. The person behind the counter had said, “No.” That person had been the worker who had seen us out, asking if one of us had left the copy of my book.

And now she had my book, essentially not knowing I had left it.

She may have later figured out I was the owner of the copy. A color photo of me is in the back flap. That’s also where I left the money.  The publicist said, “She’ll probably take the money,” and leave the book.

This morning I received an e-mail from a member of bookcrossing.com. They were so excited at what I had done, despite stating they probably would get there in time to get the book.  They live outside of Berkeley and weren’t sure they’d be coming in today for Mass as they usually did.

The person added they had researched Keeper of Secrets…Translations of an Incident and felt it to be a thought-provoking read.  The person praised my venture—that I had released something positive into the universe—and considered the $10 an added treat. They wished me blessings on my week ahead.

I would like to have sold a copy of my book.  Isn’t that the name of the game in America?  What I did goes against the grain of all we are taught in the publishing business. Don’t give your writing away.  

But the internet is forcing us to change our ways of doing business.
And I need blessings.  

What to do?

I’ve already spoken with workers at the Starbucks near where I live.  Their manager arrives tomorrow morning at 8:30.  I’ll speak with her about leaving a copy of Keeper of Secrets…Translations of an Incident there too.