Self-Portrait / Light of the World
Recently, I re-started doing something weird in my morning routine. Weird and beautiful. I used to not be all spiritual guru woo-woo like this, but now I know this is the juice. I try to reprogram my subconscious, because, every so often, the wires in my head get tangled with fearful thinking, self-doubt, shame and a general sense of just not being good enough. Why is it so easy to fall back into that awful swamp of lies?
So, I untangle them by brushing with my opposite hand, telling my subconscious, “We’re learning something new. Something better. Get with it.” It’s awkward. Toothpaste foams over my chin and falls over my knuckles like I’m a toddler.
The next step is the rewiring part. Even though I’m alone, I notice resistance, like there’s a part of me that would rather wallow in self-pity all day. But I ignore that ugly temptation and keep moving. I walk over to my circle mirror in the bathroom, flip on the light, and gaze into one of my eyeballs. I notice the intricate pattern of earthy brown and jolly rancher green mixed with emerald, and some shades of teal, evidence I’ve been surfing a lot lately. I look into my soul, my being, through the window of my eye, and fifteen times repeat “I love you.” I make myself feel it, too, me loving myself, valuing myself, being worthy and being good enough just because I’m here, just because I have a reflection to look at. And by the end, it’s God saying it to me, through me.
The result is that everything I see becomes a mirror to myself, at least for a little while. I look across the street and see green palm branches dangling over my neighbors brown fence and see my hazel eyes staring back at me. I watch the cranes flying overhead as I drive across the bridge, with middle-of-the-Pacific-Ocean cumulus clouds embroidering the horizon, as the sun rises unto another hot, Hawaiian summer day; and I feel the freedom of birds in flight and the magnitude of the ever-changing clouds. I feel the air under my own wings. I feel the blue sky of my soul as the clouds morph within me.
And then I go to work to clean houses with Tyla, and I see myself in her too, and it’s easier not to judge her or have expectations but just to see her and love her and accept her as my friend, my sister. Or I go surf and see myself in the turtle who pops up to say hello, just cruising. I feel myself connected to all things, and all things staring back at me with my own reflection. It’s a trip. I think this is what I was looking for when I did LSD. I would have never guessed it was actually in sobriety. Well, sobriety with some woo-woo efforts.
And then usually, sometime around two o’clock, I forget about the mirror and my afternoon melts down into alternating bits of worry, fear, and self-loathing with moments of acceptance, courage, surrender and self-love. But that’s how it goes. That’s grace, the space to move between the lies and the truth and choose what I want to listen to. That’s progress! I used to be in a continuous state of those swampy lies; but now I know they are not true, just fragmented memories of a societal conditioning that God is ever in process of healing me from. Those bad thoughts are my shadow side, I recognize, and in my best moments, I’m grateful for them because the shadows show me where the light is. And in the light, I am good enough.
I’ve been writing my first book, a direct result of time spent repeating love in the mirror. It feels different than it did before. I’m still scared, I still have self-doubt, but before, when I fantasized about my name at the bottom of the cover and New York Times Best Seller at the top, it was like my whole self-worth was based on the accomplishment of this grandiose dream. Fame would be my savior. Success was my mirror, and in the lack of it, or the distance away from it, I saw only a face in anguish, cheeks melting, eyes red and full of tears; a little boy wanting attention so badly and not knowing how to get it other than to do something great. Then my high school sweetheart would regret she left me, possibly even leave her family for me. But I was afraid to write because I was afraid to fail. It was a vicious catch-22 of identity. I never believed in myself, except when I was stoned. A big fat spliff in the morning held me in imaginationland for about thirty minutes, where I could pretend I had done it. Nevermind all the effort it takes.
But after the weed wore off, I found myself wading waist deep through swampy thinking, once again. And around that time in the day, I smoked more, this time to hide from my fear and just go surf. Then I drank to forget about the whole damn thing. And then I did cocaine to feel like somebody while I mowed down a pack of cigarettes.
I used to step outside of the bar, all coked out, light up a cigarette and hold my phone to my ear for a pretend phone call. I spoke out loud so the passersby could hear me closing a big real estate deal worth millions. “Okay let’s increase our offer to 7.2, that will get the deal done. Thanks Brian. Let’s golf Pelican to celebrate. Okay, good job. Bye now.” This was after telling every pretty girl I saw that I was a published author, but I didn’t want to tell them the name of my book because it would change their opinion of me. I told them I missed the days when I was a nobody.
And that was my best effort to cope with the carnival of fear my life had become.
Today is my birthday, not the belly button one, but my sobriety birthday of two years, and I don’t have pretend conversations on the phone anymore or lie about who I am.
This picture of me is the first self-portrait I’ve ever taken. I caught my reflection in the mirror of my laptop as I was editing, and welcoming the procrastination, I set up my phone and found portrait mode and snapped a shot.
The whole frame is filled with light. It was the afternoon and this time of day the sun shines directly through my windows. You can see the background is bathed in hot, white light.
And the light is casting shadows across my naked body. I’m still in progress. I still sin. My mind is not as clear as I know it can be. I sometimes burn with lust and the need to be validated by a brunette in a thong. I’m mostly unaware of my pride. I’m an idiot sometimes. Recently, at the end of an AA meeting, I got impatient during the announcements which seemed to be dragging on and on, so I twirled my two fingers around in the air while saying, “wrap it up.” I recently confessed to my elementary crush via Instagram by using the romantic line, “well, your hot,” grammatical error included, a simultaneous sin of the left brain and right brain combined. Sometimes I pick my butt.
Perhaps my most daunting shadow is the wounded child that still wants to be famous for my writing and receive validation from everyone. I want everyone to like me. I’m constantly aware of what other people think, or I think I am, which causes me to project my own dislike onto other people. “I know for a fact that Autumn is judging me because I am a self-proclaimed artist, and when I write a book she will tell everyone how I act in real life, and expose me as a fraud!”
Even though I’m on the other side of spiritual enlightenment, I still think money will solve most of my problems. Yeah, the present moment is cool and all but it would be a lot cooler with $3,269,455.45 in my bank account.
I worry about failing. I worry about growing old. I worry about being alone. I sleep around and can’t commit.
I am full of shadows.
But when I consider them, you know what? It’s okay. I accept. It doesn’t mean I’m worthless. It means I’m human. It means I’m in progress.
Most of all, it means I am bathed in light, because that’s what creates the shadows. Yet, I don’t feel the shadows, I feel the warmth of the sun. That’s what I’m trying to teach myself with the “I love you’s” in the mirror each morning.
In this self-portrait, I have long curly hair, like it used to be in eighth grade when I felt the most freedom to be my unapologetic self. I tied a bandana around my forehead and rode around on my skateboard with an Iron Maiden shirt closepined onto a cut off jean jacket. The only time I ever apologized back then was to the vice principal for political reasons. “I’m sorry for throwing the piece of pizza into the crowd at the pep rally. I promise I won’t do it again.” (I would have lied but we literally locked eyes as the slice was leaving my finger tips.)
Two years ago, after I betrayed my fiance and she gave me the ring back, when cocaine and infidelity came into the light, and I admitted I was an alcoholic, I kept shaving my head because I was grieving. I’m dramatic like that. I haven’t shaved my head in a long time and my curls are just as ferocious as they were in middle school. I’m returning to that unashamed freedom of my youth. I left my corporate job and moved to Hawaii to double down on life as I pursue my dream of becoming a published author while chasing tropical barrels. I surf as much as I want, I just got a skateboard, I have an Iron Maiden shirt. And I throw pizza into crowds of tourists. (Just kidding).
But that’s all light on the outside. I’m proud of all that stuff, my actions and my life path. I’m proud to be counter-cultural, off the mainland and out of the rat race, pursuing a career path as an artist. Yet when I look at this photograph of myself, I see light on the inside. I see myself as inherently good, pure, innocent and beautiful. In my best moments, I hold myself in my hands like the face of a dog that you swear is smiling at you. Or like a baby who is learning how to smile and can be blamed for nothing. I feel it most when I make other people laugh, or when I look into your eyes and see that same light, the light we share. Purity, goodness and love.
When I look at this self-portrait, I see the stars in the Milky Way, the sun glistening on the ocean, and the illuminated orange wings of two butterflies dancing in thin air. I see God in me; the same God I see in you.
I’m holding a pen against my lips, a pose I naturally do when I’m reading and editing. The pen is the key to unlock my lips to speak the words in my heart. Words. Little pieces to stitch together, to create pictures of reality, to connect us all, to entertain, inspire, encourage and soothe. I cradle the pen in my hand which looks strong and sturdy. Hands. To caress, to build, to create; to hold truth and inspect it. To open and receive.
My eyes are focused on something I’ve created, peering through the glasses of a new perspective. This is a picture of me sitting at my desk, but I see a young man paddling out in forty foot Waimea Bay. That thing I’ve always wanted to do, the one that scares the shit out of me… I’m doing it. I’m winning the battle against fear. Before, when I lived stoned and was a fugitive in fear, it was “nevermind all the effort it takes and focus on failure.” Now, in sobriety, it’s “nevermind the possibility of failure and focus on the effort it takes.” I am being who I was created to be and contributing my gift to this world. Yes, with apprehension; yes, with constant fear; but yes! with belief and courage and a sense of God’s wind blowing in my sails. All I have to do is stand up from this desk, butt naked, take a razor and unzip my body from head to toe, wipe the blood off the screen, and explain my inner parts until you feel less alone. Until you feel connected and seen. Until you believe you’re worthy of love, too.
In this picture, as I sit half naked, I see the courage to be vulnerable.
I know we’re all vain and conceited these days, since Instagram has hijacked most of our subconscious minds and it’s all “Look at me! Like me!” But what do the pictures we post say about our measure of self-worth? For me, my self-worth is in everyone else's approval of my projection of myself. In other words, I project images of myself which I believe will be liked, which will make me feel worthy. But the more I rely on those projections, the less connected I am with my shadow self, where the key to self-love really exists. To see our light coming out through the shadows. To accept the naked picture of ourselves.
We all have a tendency to avoid vulnerability: the unashamed display of our humanness, which I believe is defined by the fact that despite our ugly weaknesses, we are Divine. In other words, the path to the treasure of self-worth goes through the forest of vulnerability. To accept your weaknesses is to love yourself. Or something like that.
I know it’s ironic, and you could dismiss me as a hypocrit, because here I am writing a whole fucking article about me, me, me. But the point is this: I used to hate myself, and now I love myself. My whole self, not just the projections of my ego. Through the journey of sobriety, I have learned to face myself in the mirror and actually like what I see. I recognize the goodness of my soul.
Henri Nouwen wrote, “Prayer is when you are quiet enough to hear God say good things about you.” This self-portrait is a declaration of my new self-worth. How I can look at myself and feel good about what I see, beyond the physical. Sobriety has given me the courage to face myself in the quiet, with God, and learn to see me, and all things, as I am and as they are, through the lens of pure light and love. I am beginning to see my value, like when you drive past a bunch of trees with the sun behind them and the light flickers on your face again and again. My value is not something to be achieved, as I believed before, but my inherent value as a divine being is something to be accepted, like how you accept the sunset is good.
And then all that’s left to do is shine, because I am the Light of the World. And you are too.