11. The Manicure (Just Don't Close)
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Overview:
Overcome with tears, I find myself in public, sitting across from a manicurist, with little place to hide. Feelings of risk, uncertainty and overhwlem overtake me, and I do my best to navigate this very vulnerable proposition -- when strong emotions arise quite inconveniently. It takes everything I have to open myself to The Guest House of being human. To not explain myself. To not believe I am being embarrassing. To not apologize for this very human and authentic experience I am having. This is an example of inviting it all in without collapsing or closing.
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Hey creatives, I’m C. Jordan Blaquera, and welcome to the Whispering Worth to the World Podcast.
I’m a Master-Certified Life and Artist Coach who specializes in working with creatives. This is where I share what I would tell my younger self, if I could, what I’ve learned about the art of being human, about our inherent divine equality, and how it all relates to navigating our creative expression in the world.
[THE MANICURE (or JUST DON’T CLOSE)]
I want to preface this track by sharing that early in my path as a coach, a peer coach asked me if I actually felt my feelings?
Ummm….uh…hmmm…Wellll…I think so…Sure??? What kind of weird question is that?
And then she asked me, what I thought it would be like if I were to allow myself to feel my feelings? And my answer came in the form of two images:
One: A Mack truck barreling down on me at freeway speeds, ready to run me over.
And two: A woman barefoot and wearing a burlap bag as a makeshift dress, dirt smudged on her face, her arms, her legs. Her hair ratty, knotted and unkempt. Hands grimy with dirt packed around the edges of her nailbeds and also under her fingernails. Basically, a feral woman in a scratchy burlap bag who was completely unfit for society.
So not exactly inviting images. You could surmise that I wasn’t that open to allowing myself to feel my feelings. And I think in our society it’s not generally acceptable to feel all the feels. It seems men have two settings available: angry or fine. And women bear the brunt of this too. We shouldn’t be angry as opposed to men, or hysterical or too emotional. We shouldn’t ruffle feathers, and we should take care of everyone else, and take responsibility for their feelings too.
So, when I imagined feeling all my feelings, I was pretty repulsed by those images of One, a Mack truck that would mow me down and; Two, a feral woman, a pariah, an outcast, living on the fringes of society, not acceptable at all.
And from that point on, I would embark on a process of understanding my feelings more deeply and also opening to, and actually being willing to feel my feelings to a greater and greater degree while also going in and out of resisting my feelings or suppressing them or hiding from them like I had done much of my life up to that point.
With that said, here is a recent real time report with regard to feeling my feelings.
THE MANICURE (or JUST DON’T CLOSE)
I sit down and place my left elbow on the cushioned horizontal strip on top of the small work table between us. I’m here for a manicure, and I give the petite Vietnamese woman my left hand. The bottom half of her face is eclipsed behind a black safety mask. She starts her drill and begins removing my gel polish.
Next, I take nothing more than a deep breath in. And I am surprised when she asks: “Did you just get off work?”
It was like she thought, with that deep breath, that I was trying to offload a pile of stress after a long day at work. Little did I know how perceptive she was, and I answer with the best description I can think of for how I’m feeling at the time: “Oh, I’m very tired.”
And then just a few minutes pass, and I become aware of a hot wave rising through my neck that is creeping toward my face. Am I going to start crying? Now? During a manicure? It seems like I am and I wonder if I can suppress it and knock it back? But this wave seems to have a life of its own. And what’s more, I feel so tenuous and on edge that I’m not sure I could even muster the energy to suppress this right now if I wanted to….so I decide to go with it, to soften and surrender, to open the door of the Guest House as Rumi, the 13th-century poet, describes in his poem of the same name.
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
So here I am getting a manicure, and I open the Guest House door to my heart and invite this – whatever this is -- in. I want to understand what is going on with me. So I get curious. What are you feeling? I ask myself. The answer that arises is overwhelm. That feels about right. Yes. Life in general does feel overwhelming right now.
I feel a heightened, intense vibrational field tight around my shoulders, surrounding my upper torso and head. I am not used to these feelings, and it’s been building and hanging around for a few days. And it keeps sustaining itself like it has an internal life force of its own.
Within minutes of that wave starting, silent tears begin to fall. Seriously? In public? During a manicure!!!
In Star Wars, there is a scene where Luke, Leia and Han Solo are in a huge trash compactor with metal walls that begin closing in on them. This is what it feels like, but my walls are invisible, overpowering, intense energy fields on the left and right side of my body, barely held open to just the width of my shoulders. I am fixed right there between these two powerful walls of vibrating energy. Intense. Overbearing. Tightly pinned in by these two forces.
Three words filter up from my unconscious:
JUST. DON’T. CLOSE.
I recognize this phrase as the main message of the book, The Untethered Soul, by Michael Singer. I read it many years ago. JUST. DON’T. CLOSE.
I am expending an enormous amount of effort to just maintain a wedge of space for myself between these imposing, invisible walls. Almost too much to manage while in public, getting a manicure, and sitting a foot away from a stranger who has one of my hands in hers. It feels like one lapse in attention and focus, and it would be so easy to just let these walls obliterate me.
Michael Singer writes, “You know exactly how to close your heart and put up a psychological protective shield. You know exactly how to close down the centers to avoid being too receptive and sensitive to the different energies coming in and causing fear.”
And he is right. I am tempted to collapse and just let the walls swallow me whole, but there is that phrase again inside my mind.
JUST. DON’T. CLOSE.
I think of the woman across from me, one of my hands in hers. What must she be thinking?
I tell myself that I don’t have to explain myself. I don't have to be embarrassed. I don’t have to apologize for this experience I’m having.
JUST. DON’T. CLOSE.
Feel the overwhelm, the enormity, the intensity of the vibrations. It’s okay.
JUST. DON’T. CLOSE.
Michael Singer also states, “You only have to be willing to open your heart in the face of anything and everything, and permit the purification process to take place.”
That’s all. Just open your heart in the face of anything and everything. No matter where you are. Even if it’s a nail salon.
I raise the fingertips of my right hand to my forehead, my right thumb on my right cheekbone. I am leaning into my hand, which is tented and blocking my face from the woman across from me who is working on my nails. I’m doing my best to create some modicum of privacy, here in this public manicure chair, so that I can feel what I’m feeling.
I think I should leave this woman a big tip. She sure didn’t know what she was getting into when I got assigned to her schedule today. Maybe this is more than a manicurist ought to have to handle.
And it is then that I hear her small, quiet voice:
“Ma’am?”
Oh, God. No. Please. Just let me be here in silence. Getting through this the best I can. Just ignore me. Focus on the nails!!!
“Ma’am. Are you, all right?”
A simple question. What a relief. I nod my head twice, hoping it will send her attention away as quickly as possible.
She is silent. Thank goodness.
But she has slayed me with 5 words. So delicate. And just enough to say, I see you. And that feels like warm rays of sunshine infusing my skin on a bright spring day.
The tears, now like mini-waterfalls, spill continuously out of my eyes.
I continue hearing the refrain: JUST. DON’T. CLOSE.
Right now, with my nervous system lit up, feeling overwhelmed, all circuits flooded nearly to capacity and no understanding about what is happening to me or in me…it is taking all my concentration to just not close.
Deep focused breath in. Longer breath out.
Again, I name what I am feeling: Overwhelm.
And then…Risk. Risk. Risk.
Yessssss, so much in my life right now feels like risk.
Uncertainty.
So much uncertainty. And uncertainty is the epitome of risk to the brain.
Deep breath in. Longer breath out.
I finally speak, “Do you have a tissue?”
She immediately gets up and heads to the back of the salon.
Quick. How can I calm my nervous system? Fast? Before she returns.
I think of a tapping technique. Tapping on the top of my head, I silently say to myself, “I release and let go….” Tapping between my eyebrows: “Feelings of overwhelm.” Side of the eye: “Feelings of risk.”
Oh! She’s on her way back. I stop.
What else can I do? Something inconspicuous. I squeeze my wrist. Deep breath in, longer breath out. This helps to relax the vagus nerve.
She sets down a box of tissues. I wipe my face and blow my nose several times, and return to the privacy hand tent in front of my face, this time with my left hand. As she alternates which hand she is working on, the face tent changes hands as well.
The intense invisible walls are still at my shoulders. Overwhelm, risk, uncertainty with no apparent, specific cause or source. Crying in public.
JUST. DON’T. CLOSE. I repeat inside. JUST. DON’T. CLOSE.
And after about 35 minutes of withstanding this vibrational tsunami, and purposefully not closing in the face of it, as mysteriously as it arrived, this --whatever this is -- abates. The intensity drains down my face, down through my neck, and miraculously dissipates before reaching the bottom of my torso.
I lower the hand tent from my face and place my hand in my lap, and I can finally sit up straight when something captures my attention.
I ask about the bracelet on the manicurist’s tiny wrist. She tells me her family in Vietnam gave it to her and asked her to wear it. And she does, always. Even while showering. And all her family members in Vietnam wear one too. She never takes it off.
From this point forward, I can never un-know that she is the one who asked me, “Ma’am. Are you okay?”
I can never un-know that she brought me that box of tissue.
I can never un-know what that bracelet, wrapped on her wrist into several loops, means to her.
I can’t un-know that she gracefully held the space for me, a crying client (going through who knows what) in the chair across from her.
I can’t imagine her being a stranger ever again so I ask her what her name is. And of course, the answer is, Sun.
I have been sitting in the warm glow of a petite, Vietnamese Sun.
And I have made it through a passage of powerfully uncomfortable vibrations. Not knowing how long they would last. Withstanding them all. Overwhelm. Risk. Risk. Risk. Enduring the uncertainty. And JUST NOT CLOSING.
I have met this moment that was more intense than most. Longer in duration than many. Acting as a shepherd for myself. A witness to myself as I walked through this fire.
Perhaps this is an example of the purification process Michael Singer refers to in The Untethered Soul. He writes, “When a blockage gets hit, it’s a good thing. It’s time to open up internally and release the blocked energy. If you let go, and permit the purification process to take place inside, that blocked energy will be released.”
And it feels like I have somehow been recalibrated to a new way of being in the world -- maybe?
Has the experience I’ve just gone through made it possible for me to be more open in this world.
Is it possible to be in the world…and just not close?
Is it possible to go through life…and just not close?
Could I withstand moving forward in the world in this new way and Just Not Close?
Years ago when I read The Untethered Soul for the first time, the idea of “just not closing” was far-fetched, almost out of reach, a mystical idea for the highly evolved. And if I’m being honest, just not closing was a seemingly dangerous proposition in this world we live in.
And Singer addresses this: “If you let go of your façade, and don’t try to trade it in for a new one, your thoughts and emotions will become unanchored and begin passing through you. It will be a very scary experience. You will feel panic deep inside, and you will be unable to get your bearings.”
So, when I get home, I retrieve The Untethered Soul from my bookshelf and I re-read it over the next several days, and Michael Singer likens not closing one’s heart to not smoking. How do you stop smoking? You just don’t pick up a cigarette and smoke ever again. How do you not close your heart center? You just don’t close. Ever again. That’s how.
JUST. DON’T. CLOSE.
He elaborates: “As you pass through the state of turmoil, the consciousness itself is your only repose. You will be aware that tremendous changes are taking place. … You see that your emotions and your mind are reacting to these moments that are coming through, and you’re doing nothing to stop it. You’re doing nothing to control it. You’re just letting life unfold, both outside and inside of you.
“If you take this journey, you will get to the state in which you see exactly how the unfolding moments bring up a sense of fear. From this place of clarity, you will be able to experience the powerful tendency to protect yourself. But if you really want to break through, you have to be willing to just watch the fear without protecting yourself from it.”
And right there, Michael Singer has succinctly explained my manicure experience to me. In the nail salon, I felt so unmoored and so unanchored, and my nervous system was amped up. I was acutely aware of a desire to protect myself by just collapsing and being swallowed by those two imposing walls of energy. But I also felt the imperative to just not close, regardless of how uncomfortable I was.
Four days after my Manicure Experience, I experience “just not closing” during a holiday visit with my family. I watch the parade of life in front of me. I stay open. Not closed. I engage. I listen. I observe. I stay in my center. I have conversations that wouldn’t have been possible if I had been protecting myself and closing. I laugh like a 4th-grade girl when I test out the new e-bike a family member has recently gotten. I let it out. I let it be seen. I don’t shut it down. I enjoy it. Any moment that my brain suggests that I might be better off closing…I remind myself: JUST. DON’T. CLOSE.
It is a wondrous experience. Even joyful at times. I feel free, and this day was made possible by the recalibration of the manicure experience where I remembered and practiced the idea:
JUST. DON’T. CLOSE.
Which was also the urging in Rumi’s poem, The Guest House.
On any given day, he writes, life may deliver “unexpected visitors.” And sometimes those visitors arrive in a nail salon while you are getting a manicure.
Can I welcome and entertain them all -- these unexpected visitors?
Wherever and whenever they arrive? By opening the door to my heart, and inviting them in.
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