I can still vividly recall doing my big art show back in high school. I was a promising young artist. Art was an outlet for my creative expression which gave me relief from an otherwise uncomfortable and insecure mindset.
As long as I was creating as an outlet, art was healthy and non-threatening. Once my work began to attract attention, it became something completely different. It brought me so much discomfort.
During senior year, my art teacher took a particular liking to me. He saw a lot of potential in me that was difficult for me to see in myself. He tried to mentor me. He began showing me special attention. This sort attention was one that I was not used to receiving.
I was one of the most disruptive kids in my class. I would do almost any-thing to gain “negative” attention. This is what I was most comfortable with. I thrived on being the “underachiever” or “trouble maker”. The attention he bestowed upon me was something entirely different.
It made me so uncomfortable. I literally believed that he was just faking the whole thing to somehow get to me and cause me harm.
Due to my early experiences with male figures, I had become conditioned to irrationally react to men in general, especially those who showed me special attention.
I was only used to criticism.
Or worse yet, emotional and even sexual abuse. I did not know how to accept love and support from a man. This being said, I began the unconscious ritual of trying to push my art teacher away. It literally felt like he was an evil demon to be avoided at all cost.
The thoughts in my mind would race.
Why was he being so nice to me?
Why does he keep praising my art?
What did he really want?
What the hell is wrong with him?
After all, there must have been something wrong with him. Why else would he be so nice to me?
This must have been confusing for him.
He was trying to convince me to apply to art schools upon graduation. I resented him for this. I believed that I was not good enough.
I was afraid of being rejected.
Throughout high school I had poor grades. I barely graduated. I had a combined score on my SAT’s of 640. Obviously, this and a “D” average was not going to be enough to gain admission to any of the universities that all my friends were getting accepted to.
I felt like a failure.
I did not trust what he was telling me and simply believed that my art was not good enough to pursue at a university level.
The school year was drawing to a close. Part of the final for art class was to participate in this art show. I can vividly recall the morning of the show. All of the students were assigned spots in the main corridor of our school. We were supposed to set up our sections and stand there with our art all day.
There were almost 5,000 kids in my high school and the prospect of having to display my art and have it be subject to public scrutiny was more than my 17-year-old mind could bear.
What if they hated it? Or worse yet, what if they loved it?
That morning I packed up my work and a bunch of beers I stashed in an old tree fort in the woods behind my house. I pounded one on the way to school and had a couple more in the car before I even went in. I drank a couple more during my lunch break.
Needless to say, I was pretty drunk by the end of the day.
It wasn't that I had to drink beer every day. It was more about the fact that I was insecure and sensitive.
This would be a theme throughout my life.
I used alcohol and drugs to change or control how I felt. Over time I relied on them to create a different experience. Living life burdened by my critical and insecure mind-set was cumbersome to say the least. These mechanisms somehow turned that part of my mind off at times, which allowed me the ability to create a different experience.
Sometimes I would use these mechanisms to help me “be a part of”, while other times I would use them to lower my awareness. Sometimes, it was about communion while other times it was so I could “act out” and not feel the repercussions of my actions. In other words, not feeling the guilt, shame or regret.
These mechanisms helped to keep me from seeing my part in things. On this particular day, I needed some relief from my own self-defeating mindset and to sabotage an opportunity, as well.
I finally got my installment up. All of the art I had been working on over the last four years was proudly on display for everyone to see. In this moment I can see that showing my art is a way of sharing myself. It is a way of loving others and allowing them in. Back then, I did not have this viewpoint.
I was too afraid to open up.
I loved creating those pieces. In those moments, as I was making them, I could connect to a part of me that was sacred. I could connect to a beautiful Being that was obscured most of the time, that part of me only knows how to love and be loved.
As you may be able to relate, there was another part of me that was afraid, confused and believed he did not measure up. It was this part of me that always kept that sacred part of me locked away.
The scared part of me was so critical of that sacred part.
The fearful part of me was very uncomfortable with putting himself on the chopping block for all to see.
As the other kids began to come and experience my art I was only focused on comments that would confirm what I wanted so badly to believe. There could have been 100 praises and only one comment that could be taken as being critical. My magnifying mind would only focus on the comments that could be perceived as critical or demeaning.
It was like this for me.
I would always focus on the person who I believed did not approve of me. I would obsess on gaining their approval. I would do this as I also resisted acknowledging those who did love and appreciate me.
By the end of the day I had convinced my-self that my art was horrible, that I had no future in it and was doomed to work a crap-py job while all my friends went off to school and lived the lives of their dreams. This is the literal storyline my burdensome mindset sustained for much of my life. By the end of the day, my idea of things and perception of my value had done a number on me. The beers just amplified my mindset and primed me for what happened next.
Towards the end of the show, my art teacher came up to me and could tell that I was in a very dark place. He asked me what was wrong. He tried to love and support me for the final time. I made sure of that this was the last time by completely freaking out on him.
I don’t remember what I said. I only know I picked a fight. I was so mean to him that he had no choice but to leave me alone. He walked away, obviously hurt by my comments. This made me feel even worse. What if I was wrong? Why was it so hard to let him help me?
Those are all questions that would take twenty years to fully answer.
Those answers are what this book is about.
After that interaction I was so emotional and distraught that I left myself no choice. I decided in that moment that there would be no art school for me.
I would not run the risk of trying and failing.
Besides, I had already decided that I was not worthy. I had accepted this belief long ago. Finally, I decided that I was not going to remain in my hometown and work some stupid job.
At the end of the school day I packed up my art and threw it in my car and drove directly to the U.S. Navy recruiting office. In that moment I decided that I would join the United States Navy.
I was quite sure that they would take anyone.
Rather than run the risk of being rejected or worse yet, seeing that I really was a talented artist, I took myself down to the recruiting office and signed up to be a cop in the Navy.
A cop in the navy?
Being a cop in the Navy was about the furthest thing I could think of from art school. Three months later I was in boot camp in San Diego, three months after that, I was shipped off to the Middle East on a helicopter carrier in support of Operation Desert Shield.
I would not create any art again for many years.
This short story is a mere glimpse into my own self-defeating mindset. Over the course of my life this sort of a mindset played out in every way one could imagine. I had opportunity after opportunity to enjoy love, intimacy and creative success throughout my life. This long and treacherous journey of self-sabotage led me to becoming a drug addict, an inmate, and homeless.
From The Conscious Creators Handbook
COPYRIGHT 2014 Retro-Collective Publishing Group
