Little Shmoos Everywhere
On turning two, the splendor of recognition, and other things tumbling about in my head.
There is so much I want to say that I’m not sure where to start. Writing took a back seat in the last couple of weeks between my business, taxes, life and its myriad decisions, plus a general sense of overwhelm. When I missed posting on Wednesday last week, I heard myself saying, “See, there you go again, not following through.” I didn’t start this newsletter to add another ‘to-do’ to my list, though. I started it to add a ‘want-to’ into my life and my calendar; I started it to write, so here we are. I tend to think prefacing writing isn’t my jam, but I contain multitudes and so do you, so just know that this essay isn’t about anything, yet it’s also about many things.
Also, know that whatever is happening for you this week (and beyond), I’m writing this for myself and you in the hopes that it can give you something, whether it’s a reminder you’re not alone or a few minutes to come home to yourself, too.
Sending love, Savvy.
I turned two this month!
Universe, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.
Attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr, with a ‘Universe’ tweak.
I didn’t go the AA route to choose sobriety, yet I’ve known this prayer (which, fun fact, is actually longer; did you know that because I certainly didn’t) since before I ever started drinking. My grandmother passed away with 30+ years of sobriety thanks to AA meetings. She introduced me to the prayer years and years ago, and, like so many special words, it has risen back into my consciousness in the two weeks since my second ‘birthday’ at the beginning of March. I don’t count days, so I only know I ‘turned two’ sometime in the first week of this month.
This prayer has been whispering in my soul lately, and I hear the words so differently now.
I hear how, in my eating disorder, I conflated courage with control. My body held such fear and fragility that calling anorexia and bulimia a kind of courage seemed the most logical solution, giving me an entryway into the idea of courageousness through control at a time when I felt so entirely afraid and out of control.
Drugs and alcohol were my way of bypassing serenity, a way for me to believe I’d let go of the control and gain a sense of freedom without doing the work of becoming spiritually, emotionally, and mentally free.
I am still rarely ‘free’ if I’m defining freedom by a sort of enlightenment-standard. Yet I find small glimpses of true freedom in my stillness now, unlike any kind of serenity I experienced at the peak of my addiction.
In those moments, I traded serenity for numbness and disconnection. I’d gotten the knock-off Amazon version to save money, as it cost me everything. The facsimile seemed close enough for a while, even if it only lasted an hour or two each time.
What I hear in this prayer is how strangely sacred my addictions were to me. Martyrdom, cleansing, purity, and ecstasy. Surrender, void, and obliteration of the self. Being drunk and hungry enough to disappear me from myself, however briefly, offered what seemed like the closest I could ever get to peace.
In the last two years, I didn’t find God. I found myself, and now I’m working out how not to lose myself again, and maybe now to find God or Spirit or Divine love, too.
The Splendor of Recognition
You can listen to this wondrous, full explanation of this concept by
on We Can Do Hard Things ep. 269, chock full of food for thinking.I loved it all, but these were my favorite parts.
“What do you do once you can create anything, and once you know everything, right? So God’s like, I’m going to play this incredible game of hide and seek with me. Because there’s nothing that I’m not. So there’s nowhere that I’m not, but I’m going to see if I can hide myself so thoroughly from myself that I forget that I am myself. And where better to do it than in the mind of a human being, which is the most chaotic arcade game of consciousness? … So God’s like, I’m going to hide my God consciousness in the last place anybody would ever look for it. Inside a fucking batshit crazy human mind.”
That the Divine was so bored with its all-knowingness and omnipotence that it said, “Hey, I’m going to go hide me from myself in those lunatics on Earth,” has got to be my favorite interpretation of this thing I’ve been searching for.
“And we’re just this chaotic thing where God is constantly hiding to entertain itself. And because the joy of the finding and the rediscovering, and then the losing and then the finding, and then the rediscovering and the losing …”
There are brief moments of recognition in me now—a new seeing of me from outside of me—that happens every so often when I meditate or walk or slow down enough. What heals me in her explanation is the fleetingness as inherent rather than failure.
“God’s like, “I was right here the whole time! L-O-L!”
Little shmoos and spiritual bypassing
I’ve been meditating on releasing judgment on and off since the beginning of February, making me keenly aware of just how outrageously judgmental I am on any given day at any given moment. I find myself exhausted by myself, begging for this monstrous voice to shut the hell up despite knowing that it will only encourage more judgments.
“What has changed is that before, my neuroses were these huge, big things that were very frightening, and they took me over … And now they’re sort of like little shmoos. They’re little, friendly beings, and I invite them in for tea.”
After all, I meditated for an entire week, and judgment is still there, so clearly, there is something wrong with me.
Even my aspirations to stop judging become judgments. (L-O-L.)
I didn’t know what this meant until I heard the phrase, ‘spiritual bypassing.’
‘Spiritual bypassing,’ a phrase I’d never heard before and then heard twice in less than five days.
“Spiritual bypassing is a term I coined to describe a process I saw happening in the Buddhist community I was in, and also in myself. Although most of us were sincerely trying to work on ourselves, I noticed a widespread tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.”
My craving for self-acceptance via the spiritual route won’t overcome all the things in me that refuse to accept me, my life, and the people around me. I meditated for an hour a night for a week and thought, “I must be doing it wrong.” Meditation seemed like a utopian island after being lost at sea, only to arrive on the island and remember that wherever I go, there I freaking am.
In my defense, I’ve done much to soothe the storm raging in my head, learning the beliefs, thoughts, and memories as intimately as the back of my hand, and awareness isn’t the same as forgiveness. I’ve become tired, though, of the excavating (yes, I know I’m switching metaphors, please forgive me), and thought I could throw my shovel to the side, sit down next to the gaping hole, close my eyes, do some box breathing, and be cured. You already know how that’s going for me (not ideal).
Then I hear Ram Dass talking about shmoos, and my brain says, “I don’t know why I like that, but I LOVE THAT, so now we will use this phrase.”
Hello, mean thought. I accept you.
You think I’m an idiot? I hear you.
You’re entirely wrong, and I hear you.
Again and again.
Welcoming these little shmoos running around, starting fires in my brain, screaming and growing, growing, growing themselves to be heard. It does something, this kind of recognition. An imperfect opening into removing my obsessive self-seriousness.
Disarms them? Confuses them?
I don’t know what it is. There’s something within spiritual bypassing and little shmoos to be untangled. That I am untangling.
Savvy (barely goes) Surfing
I’ve been on a surfboard once in the last five weeks, and it was barely for an hour before I was cold, over it, and tired. When my old blog was called Savvy Goes Surfing, it gave surfing a weight I’d forgotten about until I started writing here on Substack by the same name. My little shmoos make surfing quite a drag, despite my love for it. Between life and responsibilities (see paragraph one) plus a slew of 8 foot+ or wind-riddled days, this Savvy has barely gone surfing.
Maybe I’ll change the name of this newsletter. In some ways, I feel constricted by the name. I also don’t know what else I would call this piece of the internet for my writing. “All the Feels” is a front-runner replacement. If you have kind opinions, share them with me in the comments. I worry I’m misleading you and anyone else who stumbles upon my Substack, reeling them in with promises of soft ocean breezes and surf-inspired metaphors, only to disgruntle you and them with a series of essays that (so far) have nothing to do with surfing.
Really, I’m just a sucker for cute alliterations. It is my writerly cross to bear.
For now, I guess I’ll go surfing again one day. And I’ll leave room for this name to change. Please forgive me if you feel hoodwinked.
“You can’t abandon me, that’s my job.” – Byron Katie
All the feelings came up this weekend. Abandonment lives in my body, one of my most aggressive shmoos that I don’t yet know how to let be a little shmoo. It feels like an abyss or a fire or a punch in the gut.
The fabulous Byron Katie said this—along with so many other things—that, in true Byron Katie fashion, first make me angry, then delighted, and then willful.
Angry at the truth of words like the above, delighted by the possibilities they open within me, and willful in one direction or another, depending on the day. On the good days, I see how I might come home to myself in this quote. On bad days, I am willfully resistant and stubborn. After all, this complex feeling of abandonment can’t possibly be caused by just me, goddammit.
Byron Katie offers the work, which I recommend, especially if the quote above makes you angry, like me. There are four simple steps, concluding with the turnaround, where one replaces the first part of a statement with ‘I.’
“You abandoned me.” → “I abandoned me.”
And I do. I leave myself alone, raging back at my shmoos. I leave myself hungry for love and out in the cold.
“Serenity to accept the things I cannot change” frightens me because I so desperately want to believe I can change all the things I most certainly cannot.
“Courage to change the things I can,” ugh—Why? The only things I can change are how I think, act, and behave, and who has time to change all of those?
“And the wisdom to know the difference,” there it is—this splendid recognition—seeing myself in all the differences—my not surfing, my addictions, my rage and bitterness, victimizing, and self-pity—wisdom in knowing when to hold on and when to let go.
I’ve Lost the Plot
I’ve lost track of why I wrote this. I decided to let myself write something disjointed, random, and bumpy because it’s all I had in me to write—all of it tossing in my head to get from pen and paper to typed words to here. Sometimes, I lose the plot, floating away, and sometimes, I think there is no plot at all to lose. I’m also working on being less angry with said plot that may or may not exist.
There are moments when I get closer and moments when I am so utterly far away from it all.
Is there a reason for this life and all this unwinding and untangling and loss and loving? I don’t know. I’ll think about it again tomorrow.
Until then, it’s all just possibility, isn’t it?