Every Wednesday, I meet Arleen at her school for lunch. I always have a great time talking to her friends, too. We play this game where I spin a fork or something and ask questions like, “Who loves Barney and wants to marry him,” or “Who likes to drink their own pee.” Whoever it ends up pointing to is the culprit, and there’s always a lot of giggling involved. 

This week, a little Asian girl recounted this story: She looked out of her bedroom window and saw a clown destroying her father’s plants. She ran to tell her father who, of course, thought she was making it up. But after showing her the destroyed plants, her father said, “I’m going to kill that clown.” He went in to get his gun, which the girl explained was a bazooka, and shot the clown. Then she goes into this very detailed story about how her father wrapped the clown’s body in plastic wrap to dispose of it, but the clown started to come to. I can’t remember the rest of the story, but I did say, “Wow, you have quite an imagination.” I mean, she was so animated as she told her story. She replied, “No, it’s all true.” Still I dismissed it as a third grader’s fiction. I was telling two of my daughters this story, and they kind of freaked out. “Mom, what if she is telling the truth, and her father really did kill a clown?” Now I’m conflicted. Should I call the school? Right now I’m thinking, ‘Nah, it’s just a kid with a very active and vivid imagination.’ Your thoughts?

I completely forgot that I had one more part on Erik’s post about singleness. Enjoy and have a great weekend!

Me: All right. Let’s talk a little bit more about how singleness relates to the lack of comfort with who you are.

Erik: When I talked about earlier how a person can focus on their loneliness, that’s a distraction from looking at yourself.

Me: You can be your own best friend.

Erik: Right, and this goes back to how you can break out of that cycle of always focusing on being lonely. You have to ask yourself, “Well, why do I want to focus on that?” For a lot of people, it can be because they don’t want to look at themselves.

Other people can fill the holes in your identity and can make up for your perceived flaws.

Erik: They need to ask, “What habits do I have that are perpetuating my misery?” It depends on whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert. There’s no one size fits all. Introverts really like to get into the insides of themselves and observe themselves. Some introverts distract themselves from that by focusing on the loneliness. An introvert tends to feel lonelier. They feel very separate from everyone else because they do all of their exploring up here.

He points to his head.

Me: Well, what’s wrong with that?

Erik: Nothing.

Me: So why would that make you lonely if you really enjoy it?

Erik: If you don’t like yourself or if there are things about yourself that you’re scared to explore, you won’t be doing any of that work.

Me: Well, what if you do like yourself and you like exploring?

Erik: Then you’re not going to necessarily feel lonely. That’s because you’re always going to be engaged with looking at yourself, observing other people and things like that.

Me: Of course, there’s always a desire to be part of the collective because we are part of the collective. So there must be a pull.

Robert: For introverts to be a part of the collective?

Me: Or anybody.

Erik: Yeah, absolutely. We’re all wired to do that, but for some introverts, they can feel like they’re a part of the collective without actually participating with other people. I mean actively participating.

Me: Oh, I see.

Erik: They can be sitting in a park, surrounded by people, but no one is talking to them, and they’re perfectly happy.

Me: They still feel connected.

Erik: Yes, they still feel connected.

Me: Okay, so to be comfortable with yourself, what does that take? Processing what you don’t like about yourself and getting real about it? Letting go of certain things? Forgiving yourself? Not judging yourself? I’m just throwing it all out there!

Erik: The simplest answer is that you have to accept your humanness and all that that means.

Me: Okay.

Erik: And let go of all the shame that we, as humans, have taught ourselves to feel.

Me: And figure out where that shame came from. Maybe it was instilled by a parent or a peer or…

Erik: Right. It can also come from the culture itself.

Me: Maybe it’s not really your judgment.

Erik: Well, it never is. Judgment, shame, blame and regret are all rooted in fear, but their labels are taught. Those are behaviors that are taught.

Me: Damn society!

Erik: Throughout human history, especially during earlier times when we were more primitive and aggressive, those were behaviors that were necessary to keep ourselves alive. They were also there to ensure that we, as a species, worked through those things over time to start to bring ourselves closer to each other. We’re getting to that point now.

Could have fooled me.

Erik: Now, we’re being faced by getting rid of those old habits. This is what lightworkers are doing in various ways. Some are helping humans let go of their fear of no longer existing as a human or letting go of the fear of loss: people, animals, whatever. Mediums help them connect to those spirits and help expand their awareness of what it means to be alive. Other lightworkers are helping to expand the awareness of our emotional side. Some are teaching us how to manifest things. In order to do that, you have to learn to let go. If you really think about it, lightworkers, in general, are all about teaching us how to let go.

Me: Yeah. That’s so hard.

Robert: It really is.

Erik: Letting go would never even be a thing if human beings knew how to accept change.

Me: All right. So, last question on singleness. What do you tell a person who’s single, single, single—Hi Steve! I’m talking about you!—and doesn’t want to be single.

Robert laughs because he knows exactly who I’m talking about.

Me: I didn’t say his last name so we’re good.

Robert yells out his dog’s name to stop her from barking. I’m pausing to let my dogs out of the room because they’re barking, too. I come back to see Robert covering his mouth in embarrassment.

Me; What’s going on!

Robert: I yelled at Polly, but then I’m like, ‘Oh wait. I’m still on video!’

Me: Uh oh! Yeah, you’re a dog abuser and everybody knows it now!

Robert laughs.

Me: Bad. I’m going to call the SPCA on you.

Robert: No! She’s my child!

Me: I know. So what, Erik?

Erik: In that case, stop being so picky!

Me: Oh yeah, well, Steve. I know. Well, why are some people so picky? I do know a bunch of people in my life who are veteran bachelors because they’re so picky. That’s fear! It’s gotta be fear.

Erik: It’s a distraction from the self.

Me: What do you mean? They’re too focused on themselves?

Erik: No, they’re NOT focusing on themselves! They’re focusing on what society says would be the ideal this or that.

Me: Ah.

Erik: And that’s all external to who you are. It’s focused on all the external on everything. Some extroverts can do that. They look at all the externals and start looking for perfection because they, themselves, are perfectionists.

Me: So, they’re just looking externally at that person? Do they just look at the external aspects like whether they’re pretty or not, handsome or not, whether they have money—

Erik: It’s a lot of different things. It could be their looks or a habit that they have or maybe they breathe too loudly or whatever, but if you think about it, all of those things might be things they judge as imperfect in themselves. They don’t really like themselves.

Me: So what do you tell them? Do they need to look at the soul of the person.

Erik: No, no. You have to go back, “This is really about me not liking myself. If they breathe too loudly or they have a blemish on their face,” that person is just a mirror of you as another human being. They’re reflecting back to you what you don’t like in yourself. So, you have to get to a point where you really like yourself. Then you’ll stop picking apart other people, and you’ll also find you won’t pick yourself apart either. If you’re picking apart a partner all the time, you’re also picking yourself apart all the time.

Me: So, for Steve, he needs to basically figure out how to love himself?

Erik: Right, to accept himself as he is.

Me: Right. Anything else?

Erik: Once you do that, everything else will fall into place. You can’t do it backwards. This goes back to our talk about loneliness. You have to start within yourself. If you’re already feeling lonely and you go out into the world and find someone who you think will no longer make you feel lonely, you may still feel lonely. That’s because it all goes back to you.

Me: It always goes back to you. You have to work on your relationship with yourself before you can have a relationship with life.

Erik: It’s a contradiction because you realize that when you have whatever kind of discomfort you’re going through and it’s there to call attention to investigate yourself. The universe calls attention to that and tells you how it’s ultimately about focusing on yourself in a negative way.

Me: Right.

Erik: Once you go through those negative perspectives about yourself, all of a sudden you paradoxically stop focusing on the self. Then you start to realize that happiness comes from no longer doing that. This is where the contradiction comes in because you needed to do the work of focusing on the self in order to heal the things inside you that you were uncomfortable with—

Me: And accept and let go.

Erik: You accept, let go, and find you don’t need to focus on the self anymore.

Me: Easier said than done! Wise words though. One last question, and I’m not going ot share my political affiliation, and maybe we’ll have a longer session about this later on, but Erik, what presidential candidate would be better for this country?

Erik: Oh, Mom.

Me: And you have got to get your filters out of the way, Robert, because—

Robert: Oh, I know, I know.

Me: It’s going to be hard! Who would be better for humanity.

Robert: Well, first I’ll state what my thoughts are, and then Erik can state his. Maybe that will pull my filters out of the way.

Me: Okay.

Robert: Personally, I don’t like either of them.

Me: I don’t either!

I tend to be anti-politicians and government.

Me: But what’s the lesser of the two evils?

Robert: It just feels like the political system has turned into being about entertainment.

Me: It’s a circus.

Robert: And it’s about pandering to certain individuals who are a small minority that funds their campaigns.

Me: I’m going to get into trouble for this, but people, don’t shoot the messenger. Shoot Erik.

Robert: Right.

Me (sadly): Oh, that’s right. He already did that himself.

I hate remembering that.

Robert: That’s terrible.

Me (solemnly): I know. Sad. Very sad. But seriously, who would be the better of the evils?

(Long pause)

Me: Oh, this is hard for you, Robert. I know!

Robert: No, he’s just explaining to me. He’s going through the different scenarios for what happen when either of them would become president.

Erik: The outcomes for either of them would be the same. Honestly, Mom, it’s a wash between them.

Robert: He’s saying something about Trump.

Me: Trump sounds scary like a loose canon. Would he become a better statesman if he got into office?

Erik: Under Trump, a part of the country would be more vocal. They’d tend to be more aggressive and emboldened and potentially violent. It’s a very small group, though. That’s from the human psychology side of things. From the government side, with the Democrats or the Republicans, there’d still be the same things happening.

Me: Ugh.

Erik: Everything is so engrained.

Me: It’s bigger than a presidency.

Erik: Right.

Me: As it stands right now, who will win? There is free will, so it will change next week, I’m sure!

Robert: Oh lord, I don’t know if this will be accurate at all because—

Me: No because it can change. Everything can change.

Erik: At this point in time, it’ll be very close between the two of them.

Me: Okay. Sounds good.

I guess that’s all we’re going to get.

Robert: This might just be me, but I hear Clinton, but it could be Trump. I don’t know. That’s a hard one because there’s just too much information out there. That’s when, as a medium, it’s good not to have information. Then your brain doesn’t get in the way.

Me: I know! Don’t watch the news, people. I stay away from it. I watch the DIY channel now so I can probably build or remodel a house singlehandedly now. I know how to do it!

Robert: You know, it’s funny because I watch HGTV.

Me: Oh yeah. I love that one, too.

Robert: When I watch it, even if I’m just listening to it in the background, all of a sudden I have all this innate knowledge like, ‘Well, this is what I would need to do to fix that,’ even though I’m not mechanical at all!

Me: It’s fixing stuff and making things beautiful and functional instead of, you know, watching the news. Anyway, thank you, Erik! Thank you, Robert!

Robert: Thank you.

Me: Thank you to our listeners or watchers.

Robert: Erik’s blowing you and everyone out there a big kiss.

Me: I love you. Come visit me, okay?

Erik: Of course, Mom.

Here’s this past Thursday’s radio show. It’s a very powerful one that you won’t want to miss!