Windmills of the Mind

In the staff meeting this morning, my coworker showed a scene from the old Muppet's TV show called "Windmills of the Mind." It was some sort of little monster who was sitting in a chair and saying "see, I appear calm on the outside, and cool... but inside...." and then it goes into this whole song about how the windmills of the mind are spiraling out of control and the song gets faster and faster until he literally runs into a windmill. Cute, funny, and fitting!

So what windmill has been spinning for me since the last blog? Well, there's actually two of them. I don't think either of them have answers, but I'm putting them out into the universe to see what I get back.

Question 1: How do you really see things as they are, and not your perception of them?

I started reading a book by the Dali Lama called, "How to see yourself as you really are." I'm only in the first chapter after reading the long introduction, and the first cause is ignorance. Not in the sense of "stupid" but in the sense of not seeing what is really there. I'm asking how do human beings see, without interrupting what they are seeing. That's how the mind works. That's what makes us intelligent beings, we can add meaning and communicate it. So to get back to the basics of seeing actions, words, and events as they are and not attributing some sort of personal meaning is the first step.

I know that I don't see myself as I really am, as the ego has defined me, just like everyone else. And that is not the true me. I also read a line in one of the books that said something like, "a stranger can tell you in 5 minutes what you were searching to understand about yourself for a lifetime." Which leads me to question 2....

Question 2: What am I not seeing about myself?

One place that I continuously get stuck, and I think it is my lesson to learn as it keeps coming up, is that men "respect me too much to get involved with me." Now, if it happened once or twice, I would use logic and say "its the typical line - It's not you, it's me - but we all know it really means you." I'm not an idiot. But I can say with about 90% reliability that every man I have been involved with has said this to me at one point. Sometimes it is when I've first met them, and they haven't had a chance to know me yet. I've heard, "Look, I really like you, and want to be friends, but you deserve someone better than me." Or I've heard it when the relationship was ending or changing. I even heard it as a side comment from an observer, "I wouldn't introduce you to any of the single guys I know, they don't deserve you." What the hell does that mean? What am I projecting to the world that shows this? I think I'm normal, and like any other woman walking down the street.... so why do I keep getting this statement? If they aren't interested in me, I would rather them just come out and say it, then to say that. I'm not better than anyone. I also get, "I respect you too much." So what, you want to go find a woman you don't respect to spend time with? Yeah, that's real healthy.

Anyway, my mission, according to the Lama is to stop having questions and just live.