Wherever you go, whatever you do, your self-image, generally formed when you were a child, follows you. To change it, you need to get a sense of what it is and how it shows up in your thoughts and feelings and how it affects your relationships with others. Diamond has been married long enough to have three wonderful children, the oldest nineteen. She became a veterinarian but gave it up to raise her family. She is patient, kind, and trained in a number of modalities, including massage, Aqua Wellness, and Dream Yoga/Integral Deep Listening. She’s the type of person you would want to have as a close friend, because when you are around her you know that she is listening and that you can count on her.
Diamond has issues that are common for a lot of people, perhaps including you. What do you do if you are in a long-term committed relationship but feel distant from your partner? How can you market yourself better to attract customers? If you met Diamond, you would never guess that her self-image included something like a disgusting, gooey, shapeless, rotten lump that repels people so that she won’t get hurt by them. In this interview, Diamond is telling herself that this part of her self-image that causes her to take her husband’s comments personally instead of responding in a light or funny way, which is how he communicates. It also keeps her at an emotional distance from people, which keeps her from marketing herself and considerable skills.
From the perspective of parts of ourselves that have not gotten our childhood scripting and which do not do drama, such problems seem relatively minor and easy to solve. There are parts of you that are not immersed in the daily struggles that accompany the assumptions of our stuck waking perspective. Life would be so much easier if we could remember that our scripting, like misery, is optional, and that we can “come up for air,” by choosing to identify with parts of ourselves that are relatively free and powerful. While it is much easier to grasp such a vision than it is to live it, change starts with a vision of where and how we are stuck as well as who and what we need to be in order to get unstuck and stay that way.
In this interview, Diamond is given not only such a vision, but the experience of what it is like to live her life from such a perspective.
What are three fundamental life issues that you are dealing with now in your life?
1 Relationship with my husband
2 Business started
3 That I keep in touch with all the things that I want to integrate for my life or my business. I get so busy I don’t have time for things like yoga, Dream Yoga, running.
Which issue brings up the strongest feelings for you?
The relationship: Emptiness; there is not much left of feelings, a lot of distance. Deep sadness. Numbness. Our interests are very different. He thinks our relationship is better than it is for me. We are locked in routines, in our daily functioning.
If those feelings had a color (or colors), what would it be?
Dark brown.
Imagine that color filling the space in front of you so that it has depth, height, width, and aliveness.
Now watch that color swirl, congeal, and condense into a shape. Don’t make it take a shape, just watch it and say the first thing that you see or that comes to your mind: An animal? Object? Plant? What?
Something round, wobbling, and brown.
Now remember how as a child you liked to pretend you were a teacher or a doctor? It’s easy and fun for you to imagine that you are the shape that took form from your color and answer some questions I ask, saying the first thing that comes to your mind. If you wait too long to answer, that’s not the character answering – that’s YOU trying to figure out the right thing to say!
Brown lump, would you please tell me about yourself and what you are doing?
I am some jelly, sticky stuff and not really brown. I was once round but now I am like a gooey mess on the floor. A gelatinous lump in front of Diamond.
What do you like most about yourself? What are your strengths?
I like that everybody is disgusted by me. They don’t want to touch me or get in touch with me. My shape, color, and texture keeps them at a distance. Also my smell! It’s like rotten garbage! My strengths are in making people aware of how rotten I am!
What do you dislike most about yourself? Do you have weaknesses? What are they?
Maybe I’m a bit too small…
Brown Lump, you are in Diamond’s life experience, correct? She created you, right? What aspect of Diamond do you represent or most closely personify?
I am an aspect of Diamond that doesn’t want people to come too close to her because they might hurt her. The distance, being alone. I don’t have to share Diamond with others. I want her all to myself.
Stinky, disgusting brown lump, if you could be anywhere you wanted to be and take any form you desired, would you change? If so, how?
I would like to be as big as a boulder! But this jelly is more difficult in this size…Maybe I would just change into the shape of a multi-colored gummy bear. I’m less disgusting now. Being disgusting makes you lonely. I would have other gummy bears, like in a package. But we are all out on a meadow! We bigger than normal gummy bears. We are bumping around and having fun chasing and playing together.
Gummy Bear, you are in Diamond’s life experience, correct? She created you, right? What aspect of Diamond do you represent or most closely personify?
Flexibility, variety, playfulness, and joy!
(Continue, answering as the transformed object, if it chose to change.)
Gummy Bears, how would you score yourself 0-10, in each of the following six qualities: confidence, compassion, wisdom, acceptance, inner peace, and witnessing? Why?
Confidence: 10 Because we are strong! We are together and have fun! We have all that we need. We can congeal into a big ball. We can separate again.
Compassion: 10 We are good to each other. We know what we need so we can share and support. We are a strong community.
Wisdom: 10 We know a lot about life issues and how to function. We are not in her drama!
Acceptance: 10 We accept ourselves and we accept others too. If a cow stepped on us we would just congeal into a big ball and roll off!
Inner Peace: 10 We are very peaceful. We don’t need to attack anyone. We have inner peace within us.
Witnessing: 10 We see each other; we are all the same; we see each other.
How would Diamond’s life be different if she naturally scored like you do in all six of these qualities all the time?
She wouldn’t get so frustrated or upset when things weren’t working the way she wants. She would always have buddies to play with, to exchange with and be around.
If you could live Diamond’s life for her, how would you live it differently?
We would get more color in her life. Get more people around her that think like she does. She hasn’t because of this brown clumpy, stinky thing that’s inside her that keeps distance to others. We think she doesn’t need it and it doesn’t need her, if I can become a Gummy bear with other Gummy bears.
If you could live Diamond’s’s waking life for her today, would you handle Diamond’s three life issues differently? If so, how?
1. Regarding her relationship with her husband, we would be more flexible, and respond differently. If he is making direct and strange comments that he thinks are funny, she can respond in a funny way instead of taking it personally. She needs to stop talking so much and get on that level of communication. We think that if she would do that it would make their relationship better.
2. Regarding establishing her business, we would spread out and jump around and make people interested in what is going on that she has to offer to them. It would be good and easy! Just get people to know what’s happening there!
3. Regarding doing the things that maintain balance, we would roll along into a big ball and get her those qualities of moving onward. She needs to congeal into a shape that gives her the strength to practice and move ahead.
What three life issues would you focus on if you were in charge of Diamond’s life?
That she makes enough time to play around!
She could congeal into a big ball by rolling all together….
She needs others!
In what life situations would it be most beneficial for Diamond to imagine that she is you and act as you would?
A variety of situations: In the morning when she wakes up, so that she gets the feeling that she is in the community of a lot of gummy bears having fun. To approach her daily routine in this fun state of mind. In her work she can be this ball and really focus on what she needs to do: bookkeeping, deskwork. She needs our compact energy!
Gummy Bears, do you do drama? If not, why not?
No! We don’t need to!
What is your secret for staying out of drama?
We can bend very easily, change directions.
Why do you think that you are in Diamond’s life?
To support her with her life issues!
How is Diamond most likely to ignore what you are saying to her?
She’ll just turn into that brown lumpy mess. Then she’s quite easy to ignore!
What would you recommend that she do about that?
Buy some of us Gummy Bears and place them around in her home! Start jumping and bouncing like we do!
Diamond, what have you heard yourself say?
The Gummy Bears told me that in a group of Gummy Bears life is much easier. To live my life as if I was in a group of Gummy Bears! To create an internal Gummy-Bear-like structure. It is good to congeal, to have concentrated power for work issues. Feeling like I am in a healthy group will help me get daily book keeping and other work done. I need to bounce around to other people so they get interested in my work!
If this experience were a wake-up call from the most central part of yourself, what do you think it would be saying to you?
Get this group of colorful gummy bears around me and let them support me! I could visualize them jumping! I need to get in touch with people who have those qualities; cultivate the core Gummy Bear qualities in myself!
