I live with a crazy person who rarely stops talking.  If I don’t purposefully shut her up, she will monologue from the moment my eyes flutter open in the morning until I finally fall asleep at night after fighting insomnia due to her incessant fretting and scolding.

Her name is Simone and she lives inside my head.  I call her by name to differentiate her from myself.  Because if I am not careful, I will believe her rolling commentary and it is not pretty.

You might wonder how a born and bred Southerner like me chose a name like Simone.  I wondered that myself for a long time.  I thought I must have read it in a racy book or heard it in a French indie film.

As it turns out, Simone self-identified.  In her defining insidious way, Simone infiltrated my brain and announced herself.  I only realized this recently when it occurred to me to research the meaning of the name.  Then I understood what had happened. Simone means “heard” in French and American definitions and, in Hebrew, it means LOUD.  And she is most certainly heard loudly by me.

But I digress.

Simone is a master when it comes to diagramming sentences.   She loves to carefully scrutinize every verb, noun, pronoun, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction and interjection of every sentence I have spoken.  She likes to think of herself as Editor Extraordinaire of My Life.  She carefully analyzes each word and its placement in any given sentence or thought and then uses this information to harass me  on such topics as:

Why did you say THAT?

Oh, my goodness, did you SEE the look on her face when you said that?  She thinks you are an absolute IDIOT.

Geez…Why did you wear that?  You looked like a total FASHION CATASTROPHE.

In addition, Simone just happens to be clairvoyant.  Her crystal ball oracles a future so ominous that it makes Dorothy’s little run-in with the Wicked Witch look like a sunny afternoon tea party with girlfriends.

She usually starts with, “Oh, my gosh, I cannot believe you said that. You will no longer have any credibility in this job.” And by the time she has completed her prophecy, I have lost all my jobs with all my clients, am completely unemployable, without a home or car, bereft of all friends, family and colleagues, and am living a dark, destitute, lonely, cold and hungry life in a tattered tent in the middle of winter in Siberia.

My aim these days is to silence Simone and, with a little help from my friends and teachers, I have learned a few ways to do this.  On the off chance, that you have a voice inside your head, maybe this will help you, too.

* Give the voice a name.  This is a gentle reminder that the voice is NOT you.  It is just something inside that feels the need to bring words to your daily experience. Everything from the observance that it feels cold or hot, hungry or full, happy or sad, to the judgment of all that you think, say or do.

* Again, really realize the voice is not you.  I know that sounds strange, even difficult to comprehend, but it is true.  It is not you – it is simply a voice that wishes to ruin your life by robbing you of the present moment.

* Speaking of which, realize that this being human is a temporary, but precious, thing. The continuous scrutiny of our history is unnecessary. And the future is completely unpredictable and not worth worrying about. Mark Twain famously remarked that most of what he worried about never happened. (Okay, some of mine has…if you must know.)

This last point really hit home with me when I comprehended that Simone NEVER shows up in the present moment.  NEVER.  She finds her home in the unchangeable past and in the unpredictable future.  I never hear her when I am enjoying the present moment at a romantic dinner with my husband or reading a great book or laughing with friends. She is deadly silent when I am in the middle of an insightful movie or trying valiantly to balance in Royal Dancer Pose at yoga.  And, honestly, she is fitfully silent right this moment as I am truly enjoying writing this expose of her as the con artist she is.

* Consciousness helps to quiet the voice.  That is why I think it helps to to assign it a name.  Then when you hear the voice,  you can say firmly, “Simone, I know you are trying to get my attention but I refuse to listen.  Your chatter is nothing but destructive.”

* When my yoga teacher teaches meditation, she instructs her students to use the Buddhist term,  “Dukha,” meaning “suffering” when the voice attempts to distract us. Simply whisper “Dukha” when the voice begins to assert its false credence that we are tempted to give this voice.  Name it what it is and cease the suffering.

* Just breathe.  Wherever you are, take a few centering breaths and focus your full attention on counting.  Try six counts breathing in the good and six breathing out the not so good. Over time, your breath will provide the mechanism to release the self-defeating voice within.

As often as I can, I ban Simone to my sixth grade English class with Mrs. Lee in a hot, old school house in Eastern North Carolina.  If I can keep her head down with all the sentences Mrs. Lee made us diagram, she doesn’t have time to bother me.

And I am a lot better off without her.  All of us will be.

“If we can recognize that change and uncertainty are basic principles, we can greet the future and the transformation we are undergoing with the understanding that we do not know enough to be pessimistic.”  Hazel Henderson

Standing beside a dark swamp as the sun was descending, the air was cool, and in the distance, I saw a small, one story, ranch house on the other side. Its outline was barely visible, but its indoor lights gazed back at me and I yearned for the safety I felt I might find inside its warm, yet unknown, interior.

Feeling alone, frightened and frankly, scared to pieces, with no place to spend the long night ahead, I watched the darkness descend and stared at the grey trees growing out of the swamp.  Each was missing its leafy top and all were standing like oversized toothpicks mired in the murky waters. Amidst the unnerving quietness, I heard a loud ripple and realized a creature was swimming rapidly across the waters straight towards me.

I was terrified as I watched the alligator barreling at me. Even as I tried to run, I found that my feet had become like heavy stone statues, immobile at the water’s side. No sound emerged as I tried desperately to scream.

Then it was at my feet.

I tried to make sense of it as I stared. Relief washing over me, I realized it was not an alligator. It was a manatee! In my dream, as he watched me, he jumped from the water and rolled and played and sent love across the space between us.  My horrible fear had emerged into one of nature’s most lovable creatures!

When I had this dream twelve years ago, I was in the midst of thirty months of the most trying and stressful time of my life – divorce, illness, job woes and a very threatened financial situation, all at once.  Finally understanding finally that security and safety were illusions that I had created in my own mind, I learned I would have to find a way to survive.

To do that, I had to embrace, as the Sufis coined, my Divine Inheritance – the gift (in my case) of unwelcomed pain that helped me to become stronger, more compassionate, more accepting, more loving and even a tiny bit more enlightened about life.

I was forced to step up to the plate like the Cowardly Lion who became courageous when Dorothy’s life hung in the balance.

All these years later, I am grateful for that experience. Even when I felt I would never find joy and happiness again, I was swiftly moving toward some of the best years of my life.

Change is always happening because that is what life is. These days I celebrate the good times with more gusto and I try harder to squash fear during the tough times.  As  Ms. Henderson said, we simply do not know enough about our future to be pessimistic.

Once I read that if we were born just one hour earlier or later, our whole lives would be different than they are today. Hmmm….maybe that one hour would have made a difference.  However, I do believe, many everyday choices have ramifications that alter our lives forever.

At the crossroads, we look one way and then the other, shift from foot to foot, ruminate about which way to go – marriage, committing to a life partner, divorce, which college to attend or whether to go at all,  jobs, big moves, whether to have children.  We debate, ask advise, lose sleep, make lists of pros and cons, fretfully strain to to see as far down the dark road as we can in order to make the best decisions. And occasionally, we even energetically and enthusiastically embrace a decision feeling certain that our choice will transform and shape our lives for the better.

Then there are those times that we are thrust unwittingly and unnervingly where we do not want to be.  At a routine physical checkup, the physician frowns and orders some extra tests.  A boss informs us the company is downsizing and our position, regrettably, will be one of the first to go.  A spouse or partner announces he has found a new love.

But in the end, all that happens is simply part of the the great mystery.  We cannot  know how choices we make and things that are thrust upon us will manifest in the story of our lives.

What happens involves decades of past events, people who have come before us,  where we were born, what we were taught as children, what we learned as we grew older and begin to form beliefs of our own.  We are woven together in surprising ways that intersect the most unlikely of us and produce the most unimagined events.  If we trace back to crossroads (wanted and unwanted), friends we have, choices we have made, we can get the only the slightest idea of how we managed to find ourselves where we are today. (Just as an aside – at your next dinner party, think for a moment how all those people ended up your table and where they grew up and where they came from and how you all managed to be sharing a meal together.)

Sometimes we fantasize about what if…I had gone to a different college…took that other job…studied harder…not met that man…not had that car accident…Things would be different.  Yes, different, but probably not in the way we might think or hope.

The Bhagavad Gita, that ancient Hindu text, reminds us to act well without attachment to the fruit of our actions.  To make the best decisions we can at the time and then let go.  What will be will be.

Helen Keller talked about this, too.  “Security is mostly a superstition,” she stated flatly.  “It does not exist in nature nor do children as a whole experience it.  Avoiding danger is not safer in the long run than outright exposure.  Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”

In the end, I believe we have to embrace an unconditional “yes” to life.  One of the first purchases my husband and I made together is a wrought iron piece of art that says simply, “Yes.”  It reminds us that yes really is our only choice.  It calls us to embrace life on life’s terms.  To make the best decisions we can at the time we make them. To react the best way we know how.  But to know we do not control the consequences of our decisions or actions.

I have been in love with words since I was a little girl who faithfully watched that old classic television show, The Waltons.  Each episode ended with John-Boy sitting at the desk writing late into the night – trying to make sense of the day’s events and somehow trying to bring meaning to it all with words.  As the lights in the house diminished one by one, and only the Divine was left awake, his words willed a better day for the morrow.

I have loved words all my life.  The way they feel when I draw them in cursive with a fountain pen on a clean, creamy sheet of paper.  The way the appear on the computer screen – effortlessly materializing from simple key strokes into something which can be shared later in black and white.  Or be destroyed by a simple touch of the delete button that render those words mute, null and void forever.

I love the way they jump up  from pages of books – so excited when they are opened to be read.  And when the light of the Kindle parts some of the darkness on a sleepy night and words help rock me gently back to sleep.

I love the way they are crafted hopefully on white sandy beaches with the side of a broken shell broadcasting that Billy loves Carol – bragging with mock self assurance that yet is fearful the great ocean waves will drown those words literally in its frothy mouth and send them to a watery end.

I have loved words as far back as I can remember.  Growing up in Eastern North Carolina, I spent hours trying to emulate Daddy’s beautiful handwriting. Extracting a small twig from one of the many white pines around our house, I would carefully write his name in the sandy soil over and over again – working hard to achieve his beautiful artistry.  J-A-M-E-S.  James with a curly looped “J” at the top and bottom and ending with an “S” with that same loop at the top.  His letters were slanted just so and commanded an impeccable penmanship – that sadly passed years later when Parkinson’s Disease shook his sweet hand.

I love the way words paint the world.  The way they educate, incite, describe, emote, inspire, motivate, provoke and challenge our lives.  The way they draw and sustain our days.  The way they call us to action.  The way they hold us like hostages to the next syllable in the great mystery that is our lives.  They way they offer hope that just around the next corner, they will finally, laboriously, get to the point and show us the meaning of our lonely and confusing lives.

Words – the way they string together – the way they make music, make love, deliver song, keep the righteous battle going, celebrate the Spirit, at times crush the Spirit, make the Word whole again and yet, oftentimes, fail in that attempt.

But most of all I love words when the words do  not come from me at all.

When I am typing, laboriously, painstakingly, searching for right expression, and somehow out of nowhere, my fingers cease belonging to me, my mind becomes lucid and without a thought, and incredible words appear through a Power beyond me.  It is like being one with the Divine.

Like in yoga, when we take in a great, long, nourishing breath and then just a bit more and then we hold it – at that very spot where the Divine lives – and then the breath and Spirit tumbles out and we realize that for just a second we were a part of that great Divine.  Not the Divine who is like the whole ocean – but a drop of that Great Ocean where my small voice masquerades as something much greater.  Namaste.

“The Twelve Angry Men” who come together in the play by Regional Rose has always fascinated me in its exploration of right and wrong and how we as humans quite often reach completely different conclusions regarding both of these and the gray that lies somewhere in between.

His famous story binds twelve jurors, a dozen very different men, who must determine the fate of a man accused of capital murder.  As the play unfolds, we witness the unveiling of the experiences, prejudices, personal histories and biases of each of these men and watch as they develop their own determinations and then argue them to the group in an effort to determine the fate of the defendant.  The battle heats up at times and once, or twice, the jurors almost come to physical blows as they witness their own stories in alignment with the case.  In the end, what is the truth? And who really has it?

One day a dear and trusted friend and I discussed the issue of black and white and the gray that lies between.  He brought up this scenario.  “Crissy, consider this.  You are a non-Jew living in Germany just before World World II.  Even though you are not a Jew, you have close Jewish friends and are petrified about the horrible travesty rising against your friends.  So one day, you decide to  hide a beloved family  to keep them safe from harm.  Against the law, you harbor them in your basement.  Then one day, the Gestapo pounds on the door and demands to know if you have Jews in your home.

“Without a thought of the fact that you were reared to always tell the truth and to never lie, you outright and boldly lie.  With a perfectly sincere and straight face, you lie,”‘No. I am not harboring Jews in my house.”

I nodded and considered the scenario while my friend asked, “Did you do the right thing?  You lied.   You did not tell the truth.”

“But,” I said, “I saved the lives of my friends.”

“Exactly.’

In many cases of difficulties between human beings, we do not find black and white but a whole lot of gray.  I am not talking about brutal murder, incest, rape or abject cruelty.  I am talking, however, about all manner of human relations, sometimes that which even ostensibly involves love.

During this Year of Altruism in Greenville, we are discussing some hard issues – including gay and lesbian marriage – race relations – acceptance of all religions and so much more.  If you live here, I encourage you to review the schedule on the site of Year of Altruism in Greenville.  Get into the dialogue.  Our future depends on it.

The Dalai Lama once said, “Whatever we say, let us speak clearly and to the point, in a voice that is calm and pleasant, unaffected by attachment or hatred…If we are able to transform adverse situations into factors of the spiritual path, hindrances will become favorable conditions for spiritual practice.”

Discernment is almost never as easy as it might appear to be.  Think carefully.

In Thich Nhat Hanh’s beautiful book, Peace Is Every Step, The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life, he writes about suchness, saying, “In Buddhism, the word ‘suchness’ is used to mean ‘the essence or particular characteristics of a thing or person, its true nature.'”

I have been thinking about this as I have read this book in relation to yoga teacher training.

Water has suchness.  It is the nature of water to be the vital element that keeps us alive.  Without water to drink, we will die.  Because of that, we welcome it into our homes through numerous taps – some to drink from, some to bathe in, some to cook with.  It is also the nature of water to come down as rain – nourishing our crops, our yards, our feathered and furry friends, making things look shiny and new.  It is also the suchness of water to storm – sometimes terrifyingly so – tsunamis that kills hundreds, hurricanes that obliterate entire neighborhoods and small towns.  It is the suchness of water.

It is the suchness of wood that constructs buildings, dwellings, chuches, temples, yoga studios, businesses.  It provides the enclosures that we humans rely on for safety, warmth and comfort.  It is also the suchness of wood that builds barriers and fences, crosses and sticks that can be used to break bones.  That is the suchness of wood.

Love, too, has so much suchness that the world is made of it.  Love that is deep and strong that uplifts, that carries us to the heights of esctasy, that makes us feel so worthwhile and so vital and so needed by the other.  Love that is celebrated by its very own special holiday, that is the cement of marriages and partnerships and families and significant others.  Love is the suchness of joy.  It is also the suchness that can break our hearts, cause us to let other people down, create groups that let others in or out, cast us in the place of being totally misunderstood, create tears that flow into rivers and sometimes it is the suchness of love to cause hurt, deception, blame, judgement and banishment.  That is the suchness of love.

Yet we welcome it into our hearts daily.  Knowing its suchness is never a given…one way or the other.

As humans, we also have our suchness.  We ourselves of a nature composed of love and joy and, when provoked or misunderstood, we find ourselves acting of a suchness that we will most likely regret when it is all said and done.

Yet we welcome each other into our hearts daily.  Not knowing how it will all turn out in the long run.

The world is made of just this suchness.  There are no promises either way.