Time to Fire the Man in Me

I woke up this morning wanting to write, once again, about love - the love that's in me and all around me, the love that's in the little bird outside my window, that's in the wet green grass, and in the egg I ate for breakfast.

I'm starting to wonder how I ever lived, went through my days, without this love. I've come to see that I was always trying to get somewhere. If I wasn't trying to make something happen on the outside, you can bet I was trying to make something happen on the inside. I was always trying to get to something.

It seems ridiculous now that what I was looking for, what I was trying to get to, was inside me all along. There is no striving in this "inside me" love, nowhere to "get to." Amazing!

At times it's harder to find this love than at other times. It's easiest to feel it first thing in the morning, right between sleep and waking. At these times I milk it. I bask in it.

Ironically, it's harder to find when my partner is around - not because he's not lovable, not because our relationship is not loving, but because of my own, deeply ingrained habits of leaving myself, and therefore my own love, when my man is around.

It's wonderful to catch it now. I can almost feel myself stepping out of my body and going over to him to take a reading. "What's his mood? What's he feeling? Is he happy with me? What does that look mean?" I use my energy field like a sort of psychic periscope. It comes up and out of me to scan for safety, to scan for approval, to scan for love. This habit is so second nature to me that it must have started when I was really little.

Maybe, like me, you wanted to make your daddy happy. Maybe your daddy, like mine, was busy, distracted, or otherwise unavailable. So maybe, like me, you're still trying to figure out what daddy wants, still trying to figure out what you need to do and be to get love.

The man in me is a brutal tyrant. He is relentless in his running critique of how I'm doing. He doles out his approval in stingy morsels, thinking this will entice me to do better. It seems I could always "do better." In the back of my mind I'm always thinking, "Maybe next time I'll do it good enough, maybe I will be good enough." But, in truth, there never is a next time. For it seems it's his job to keep me looking, striving, working at it. It's like I'm addicted to the, "one day I'll be good enough" drug. And, he's my dealer.

I can now see the program that's been driving my disapproval of myself. It goes something like this, "If I can see what I'm doing wrong (disapprove of myself), I'll feel motivated to improve myself, and then there's hope that one day, if I work hard enough, I will be worthy of approval."

INSANITY!

The approval I'm looking for is in me, right here, right now!

So, as I approach my 52nd year, I'm finally ready to say to the man in me, "Enough's enough. I'm tired. I'm too tired to try to please you. I've been trying so hard for so long and I don't want to do it anymore. Plus, it never works. I'm sorry if you're disappointed and I'm sorry if you're not happy. But, I'm done here. You can go now. I want to be free."

And, I think I can finally say . . .  today . . . . . I am.