It’s been interesting to watch my mind and ego handle having my book published. I find myself recalling the past more often than usual. This bothered me. Maybe writing about the past, even as I was facing it to let it go, was a bad idea. Maybe having done so is stirring up the old stories in a way that is not healthy. I’d started dreaming about my father who has not shown up in any of my remembered dreams in as long as I can remember (he died when I was 19). I told him, in the dream, that I had written a book and his reply was not the supportive congratulations I had imagined, but instead he dismissed me by saying he’s written something too. Ah, the fear of not being enough no matter what I do has surfaced.

I spoke to a friend about this and she helped me recognize that this process of the past  “intruding” on my present was not necessarily a bad thing. I am in a stronger place emotionally than I ever have been and am ready to continue facing the dragons of the past.. I’ve never claimed my enlightenment experiment resulted in actual enlightenment, yet I was blaming myself for not being more enlightened because the past was disturbing me again. However, as my friend pointed out, it’s likely that even people like Jack Kornfield, after facing his “demons” of the past, faced them again and again as he wrote and after he wrote. This is the process, not the problem I thought it was. Once again, and probably the rest of my life, I will come face to face with old traumas like recalling hiding under the stairs from my mother’s wraith. But each time, I will learn more about compassion for her, for myself and for others.