Ask Others, Trust Yourself by Elisa Balabram

During this time of intense emotions and animosity towards one another, it might make a difference to take some time to empathize and to consider guessing the stories/drivers behind someone’s attitudes and behaviors. Here are two examples of how I have done it using the "Maybe Game".

On a narrow one-lane road, driving to the ferry to head back to Seattle after a weekend away, we encountered a car that was not moving fast enough. I noticed they were moving close to the speed limit, and not at the unwritten rule of driving 5 mph above the limit or faster. As my husband started to get annoyed about it, since he had a meeting to go to back in Seattle and we couldn’t miss the ferry, I decided to distract him by coming up with reasons why the car in front of us kept that speed:

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During one of my morning meditations last week, I heard this message – It’s time. When I reflected on what it meant, I realized it meant that it is time to start posting on this site again. Here I am. Yet, I feel the need to share what I have been up to since the last blog I posted was in the summer of 2020.

I haven’t gone anywhere, at least not away from the computer for long periods. In the past three years, without posting here, I journaled daily, wrote a case study about my family’s business that got published, coauthored an academic book, and left a 10.5-year career in academia. A bit over a year ago, I moved west with my husband and started attending an MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics at the University of Washington - Bothell. Earlier this year, my father passed away, and I’m grateful to have been with him the month before. In the past year, I wrote about my father, I wrote assignments, and I conducted writing experiments that exceeded my comfort zone on many occasions.  It has not been much time without writing, although I did not post here.

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I have been painting my clothes for several years now. It started with painting shoes, than T-shirts, and dresses. (Some samples in this post’s image). My needs for authenticity, contribution, being seen, and self-expression are all met when I paint and when I wear my art. It also inspires others to do the same, and I’m always excited to share the process and tools.

Last year, when I got engaged, I wasn’t sure exactly what my wedding dress would look like, but I was sure I wanted to paint it. When friends asked about my wedding dress, I shared my intention. I received some support and some criticism about it. Both relevant but it didn’t matter. The decision had been made. It was hard to find a dress that I would be willing to paint, until a dear friend recommended a local shop in Brooklyn that makes custom dresses. I chose the high/low shape I wanted, and the dress was ready about five weeks before the wedding.

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Water

I signed up for a 6-day Intuitive Art painting class this Summer. I missed the first class, and attended the following four weeks, choosing to miss the last one. When I showed up for the second class (my first), the teacher showed a slide show of water images, piers, waves, etc, and she also asked us to close our eyes for a moment and let go of our day. Then, we could start painting water, and there were no instructions beyond that.

I had imagined that an Intuitive Art class would include deeper connections to one’s intuition. Perhaps a longer meditation time, ways to deepen our relationship with water for that specific class, and tips on how to use one’s intuition. I wondered if the main intuitive tool was taught during the class I missed. The directions were minimum to none, and therefore I chose to paint a waterfall I visited with my sister and friends in January. While I was painting it, I realized that I probably wasn’t using so much of my intuition, I was following pre-learned techniques and the usual way I’ve painted to date.

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I committed myself to 30 days of meditation – filling my body with light and sending that light through my right hand outward, to anyone who had radical views, who had so much hate in them, who felt disempowered, and whose only solution available to their awareness is to attack.

About the same time I made the commitment – I read an article criticizing “spiritual” people for sending love as not enough. A famous spiritual leader also did a video, which I watched on my Facebook wall, sharing her view that it wasn’t nearly enough to do so.

I thought about not doing it, but then I’d be doing nothing at all. And in reality it’s not all I did or do (more later). So although part of me had all the inner battles of my responses to the article and video, I stayed committed. Each day light was sent out to anyone who could possibly need light in their lives that day – Each day with a different intuitive message. I didn’t keep track of them all, but here are some examples of where the light was going, and the intentions behind it:

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Towards the end of the year, a friend and I bought a couple of tickets to attend Paint Nites together. We went to one in December, and our paintings came out nice – we both had fun. I hung mine at my new office in school. In early January I had this idea to paint another canvas as a wedding gift. I checked the calendar and sent my friend a couple of options, one on a Tuesday and one on a Wednesday, I was leaving on a trip to the wedding that Thursday. She chose Wednesday, and even though I wasn’t sure that it was the painting or teacher I wanted, or that the day before my trip was the best option for me, I agreed to that evening.

I was also debating if the bride and groom would enjoy it as I had never met the groom, and I’m not that close to the bride to know her tastes either. I booked the night anyway. On that Tuesday evening my friend texted me that she realized she couldn’t make it on Wednesday. By then, my intuition and/or gut feeling was saying don’t go, stay home, start packing, this is not the best time to go, and I don’t remember the other assertive thoughts I chose to ignore. Who won? The parts of me that 1- didn’t want to waste the ticket (once booked, you can’t reschedule it), 2- thought it was really cool to give someone my own painting as a wedding gift.

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A friend posted on Facebook that she was going to an “Ecstatic Dance” event. I checked the website and decided to attend it. No alcohol, shoes or talking allowed on the dance floor. Since I had never attended it before I asked her what to wear, and she said “think yoga class meets dance party” and wear something comfortable.

I thought of a short somewhat fancy blue dress that I could wear, but in order to feel the most comfortable, I’d need to also wear leggings. I’m not comfortable wearing leggings in public. If I need to wear them to go to a class, I usually put on a long skirt or another pair of pants. In order to feel more at ease with my outfit, I had an idea… as you can see from the post’s picture: I painted my perfectly black leggings, with blue fabric ink. Not only did I paint them, I also had the courage to take two subways, walk on the streets of Manhattan, visit a gallery in Chelsea with friends, and then go to the dance party a few hours later.

I still felt a bit ridiculous wearing leggings with my dress, but I was also giggling due to the fact that I had painted them. Instead of judging myself for wearing that “weird” outfit, the feeling was overcome by pride for wearing my artwork. I didn’t necessarily replace the uncomfortable feeling, I simply added a new feeling that helped me cope and face it with more ease and grace.

It got me thinking about other areas of life we could use the same strategy. How can we make the uncomfortable more comfortable, more bearing?

• By painting our own clothes;
• By seeing the lighter side of things;
• By letting go of perfection – be it our own standards or the standards we imagine others having;
• By being here and now;
• By adding new feelings to the mix, and therefore making the uncomfortable feelings bearable;
• By looking for creative ways to shift our perception of the situation or action.

How do you find ways to be more comfortable in uncomfortable situations?

Namaste,

Elisa Balabram

My niece asked my sister and me to take her on one of the adventures we had in January (I wrote about them here). We decided to go through a canopy tour at a different place. I wasn’t as afraid this time since for the most part I knew what to expect. I went first, then my niece, followed by my sister.

By the time I reached the last trapeze of the last obstacle, I lost all strength and mental will to continue. Somehow I sat on the trapeze instead of taking a few steps to the other end of it, and getting to the next tree (by stepping on the platform). The guides were on the ground, while my sister and my niece were approaching the previous tree. I sat down and enjoyed the view, breathing and wondering how I was going to get out of there, hoping someone would rescue me. It wasn’t fear that paralyzed me, it was the lack of strength, the exhaustion, and the lack of mental will I could do it. I think I lost the will a few trapezes before, when I had to use all my strength and raise my leg higher than usual to reach the next trapeze, and it felt daunting.

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In November last year, I attended a weekend retreat in Cape May, NJ and stayed at my friend’s B&B. He showed me a gnome sculpture, and asked if I liked it. I said yes. He then said that I should take it, that it was mine. And I gave him two reasons why I wouldn’t accept it:

• It’s too heavy and I have a long way home. (I had a ride into Manhattan but had to take the subway to Brooklyn). He responded that he could ship it to me.
• Gnomes belong in gardens, and I live in an apartment and don’t have one. No argument there.

Last month he asked for my address, and I thought he was going to send me a card in response to the one I sent him. A week later he sent a message asking if the package had arrived. It hadn’t. I thought he could be sending me the gnome, and I had to think about what to do in regards to the absence of a garden.

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The links in this article will take you to the sites of the places I went in Brazil.

In December 2015 I couldn’t get the definition of insanity by Albert Einstein out of my mind: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. For the previous three years, I had chosen to spend New Year’s Eve by myself, meditating, writing, reflecting on the previous year, and creating a vision for the new year. Since some of the key aspects of my life I wanted to change, didn’t, I decided it was time to stop the insanity, and spend the eve of December 31^st in a new way. I still see the value of what I used to do, I certainly experienced much growth and opportunities I hadn’t considered, but it felt like I needed a drastic change, to create deeper change.

I said yes to spending the evening at a friend’s home, who was hosting over 20 people I never met, and it was wonderful. Then, on January 1^st, I drove her, one of my sisters and another friend for a couple of hours to a beautiful waterfall. My sister and I swam close to the waterfall, but I felt shortness of breath and swam back. We decided to try again, and we met a lifeguard in the water. He showed my sister where to hold and where to stand right underneath the waterfall, and she did it. Then, I did it. It turned out to be a wonderful  experience, and I took it as a sign that there were great things ahead in 2016.

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