10. New Script (OS 2.0)

Now that I had turned the ocean liner of my life toward authenticity and personal passions, I really started to get some traction at living in the present. I decided it was finally time to rewrite my original script by taking the pen from others and putting it in my own hands. So I started the busic playlist New Script (OS 2.0). However, much to my dismay, when trying to live out this new script, I still often stumbled upon what felt like roadblocks.

Allotting time for passivity and play had definitely increased my access to enjoyment. But I always stopped short of being truly child-like, without any focus on benefit or result.  True play has a fun-loving quality to it that felt so diametrically opposed to proving that it remained out of reach.

Likewise, the ability to be sincere and authentic had gone hand-in-hand with greater self-worth and assertiveness. But I still always cut myself off before being comfortably self-assured when stating my own views. Self-assured still had a not “nice” flavor to it, which was so opposed to my original pleasing, that it also felt inaccessible.

Whenever I tried to incorporate these new more playful and self-assured aspects, which were so markedly different from my original script, I would hit a wall. My ego-mind would set up its familiar roadblocks.

• “If you continue going passive on me and start playing around, you’ll be seen as incapable and disabled – just like before.”
• “Self-assured? Why would you want that? The people who say what they think are bossy and other people don’t like them. You want to go there again?”

These roadblocks often short-circuited my efforts. I would think of something that would feel pleasurable – like a hot pad on my shoulders. I would heat the pad in the microwave but then never go back to pick it up. OR I would think of something I wanted to say – like a request for my husband to do something differently – but then never find the time to actually say it. It felt like I was fighting with myself.

My ego-mind clearly didn’t want me to move in the direction I knew I still needed to go. Needed, that is, if I wanted to use the theory of personality cross training to help me get closer to living in the present.

The reason why I was still stymied in my attempts to make change was best explained by Deepak Chopra. Here’s the bad news of what he says:

“If our whole idea of self is based on past conditioning, the only way to gain another kind of self-conception is to gain a new experience that goes beyond conditioning.” (Deepak Chopra)

Thus, there’s a Catch 22 to being human: Any particular original script was created by a particular set of experiences. To create a new script, you need to have new experiences. But you can’t get those new experiences because your original script determines your experiences. I called this the Closed-Loop Problem.

My particular experiences had caused my original proving and pleasing scripts. To get a new script, I had to experience alternative interactions that would support the development of new beliefs and behavioral patterns. But I couldn’t get those alternative experiences because my original script was still hell bent on supporting its familiar patterns.

As I kept a critical eye on my behaviors, I began to see how I was getting in my own way. It wasn’t that any external circumstances prevented me from living in the present with acceptance of my self-assured and playful aspects. I was standing in my way with the behaviors I continued to  choose.

Here are two quotes from my journal of that time:

• People don’t give me support because I don’t say I need support since I’m still overly focused on productivity in order to look capable. AND the reason I want to look capable is that I still have underlying fears about being disabled.
• People don’t pay attention to my feelings because I don’t say what I’m really feeling since I’m still overly focused on being accommodating in order to look considerate. AND the reason I want to look considerate is that I still have underlying fears about being rejected.

My original script had been built on fear. Or, more specifically, on the assumption of the need for fear. The fear that others would always see only my disabilities and never acknowledge my abilities. And the fear that others would always see my differences and never allow me to be included. This mistrust of others was imbedded in what I had been taught to believe and in the ways I had been taught to behave. My ego-mind was still unwilling to let go of its fear-based survival tactics.

About this time, I got a perfect lesson for the need to let go of past programming and foundational fears … from our dog. Every morning, we invite her up onto the bed for some snuggle time. Every day, after about five minutes, she gets up turns around and lays down facing out toward the bedroom door. Clearly, protection is her hardwired, fear-based pattern. So when I say to her, “You know, Shaina, there haven’t been any wolves here in Southwest Florida for hundreds of years,” her doggie-mind always replies, “And I plan to keep it that way.”

Like Shaina, I was afraid that if I weren’t proving and showing what I could do, the wolf of being seen as disabled would be back at my door. Likewise, my fear that if I weren’t pleasing and accommodating to others’ opinions, the wolf of being teased for being different would be biting my heals. Those fears kept me out of the wide open possibilities actually available in the present moment. That’s why the acronym for F.E.A.R. is: False Evidence Appearing Real.

So I took a new stance in relation to my underlying fears by asking myself one question: Do I really need to be that afraid? That simple question gave me breathing room to make different choices than my fear-based programming wanted me to make. As Wes Nisker said, all that’s needed is “shifting out of gear into neutral, disengaging the drive shaft of our survival brain and putting our reactive self in idle.”

With this understanding, I finally got to the point where I could hear my ego-mind’s fears, but not need to heed what was said. I began to be able to subdue my tendency to feel anxious if tasks were incomplete or imperfect and to quiet my impulse to feel on edge if other people were displeased with me. With these modifications in my feelings and brave conscious awareness, I began to be able to make different choices.

I became less intimidated about asking for help and saying what I really thought. I started to say things like: “That’s hard for me.” Or “I need some help.” Likewise, saying things like “I don’t like how you’re treating me” or “You’ve hurt my feelings” had also been disallowed as choices. It was true that telling the kids on the playground that they had hurt my feelings, would have been unwise. But I wasn’t with those kids anymore. So now I brought those choices back.

These were precisely the new experiences I needed in order to get off the Closed Loop and create my New Script. Once armed with that script, I began to live more fully into the open field of possibilities. That is the gift of any new script: the freedom to make new choices in this present moment and in all of the present moments yet to come.

Back in the Dark Sides busic, I said that I had wanted to title it Dark Sides and Vulnerability, but I had avoided that title because I was afraid no one would read it. You probably knew the truth. What had been true was that, at that point, I had still been too afraid of my own vulnerability to write about it. I had been too afraid to face the fears of being vulnerable that I had denied all my life. But at this point, I had finally felt safe enough to unpack my childhood fears and trust that all would be well.

I think you hear that level of trust in the lyrics of the songs in this New Script busic. The images are clear: breaking chains; cutting strings to the sky; rolling away the stone; getting off the circle; defying gravity; and my personal favorite, not dancing to someone else’s beat. The songs honor the human ability to grow into new ways of being… even when you are unsure what in-the-world you are doing. In the words of Ray Bradbury: “You jump off the cliff and you build your wings on the way down.” 

The ability to let go of an original script and create a new script is provided by the human capacity for consciousness, which allows seeing and stepping away from established patterns. That level of consciousness, when paired with the courage to relinquish the grounding previously provided by a pre-set original script is all that is needed. Still, such endeavors are never easy. As Faulkner said: “You cannot swim to new horizons unless you have courage to lose sight of the shore.”