After the whole splat thing yesterday, I found I'd been linked to by a guy whose blog I'd discovered. I really liked the blog, and commented on it. It then tumbled into a conversation about Amnar, how I came to find it and know it was My Thing (my purpose, my reason to be, etc), and the whole splat-healing process.

This kind of relates to how I feel about advice and why I haven't opened myself up to comments too much. Last January I went to see an Oscar Wilde play, The Ideal Husband. It features a guy who at one point says he has no use for good advice, so he passes it on. I rather felt I knew what he meant. I've never been good at taking advice, and rarely have people offered it. Once somebody said I always seemed to know what I was doing. It's true. I do know what I'm doing, even when I don't. Usually I don't consciously know exactly what I'm doing, and I'm not a great Planner. But I do have a sense of knowing. And deep down, it's a sense of trusting.

I've seen many people out there offering others the key to finding their purpose, knowing where they're going and what they're doing. It's all wonderful for those who need tools to help themselves out. But I wonder, is this a bit like all the advice given to new parents over babies? Have we forgotten how to trust ourselves?

Liaison's lesson

After I met Liaison in the summer, he kept telling me what I should be doing. This would go on for hours. He was very good at it, so I just let him blaze away about how I should do this, I shouldn't do that and I was getting it all wrong. The apartment is a good example. I needed to get out of my apartment, he said. We sat on a lawn somewhere and he told me all about how I couldn't stay in that apartment, I had to leave. Too expensive, too much rent to pay. It went on for about nine hours, I think. Then he walked in the front door of the apartment and like everybody who sees it for the first time, his jaw dropped. For the next nine hours he apologised constantly. He would never tell me to ever leave my gorgeous apartment ever again.

He asked why I never argued with him. "Fight me!" he said. "Tell me I'm wrong!" What's the point? I asked. I know you're going to learn for yourself eventually, I'm not wasting my breath.

A month after we split he acknowledged, ruefully and painfully, that whatever advice he ever gave me was wrong, and that therefore he didn't feel he needed to tell me what to do. I knew, and I would do it anyway whatever he said.

I don't think I'm alone in this. Genetically I may have inherited the Bloody-mindedness Gene from my grandfather, which makes it slightly more obvious, but I think we get lost in the slew of advice and stuff that's out there, and stop listening to ourselves, our small quiet voice inside saying "hey... what about...?"

The comments thing

I felt a bit guilty for talking about not allowing comments on my blog at In These Heels? I thought, "People will think I'm so big on myself they all want to write Outpourings of Love and Support to me!" Well, it was only based on experience. It has happened in the past.

During the summer, when my world fell apart financially, a friend considered writing me a big thing about how wonderful I was. I was in a very weird scary space and not really talking to anybody. I'd walked off a financial cliff and had to hope I'd either grow wings or that there might be a trampoline at the bottom waiting for me. She didn't tell me until after everything had worked itself out - which it did, it always does - that she had actually written a whole piece for me and then deleted it without sending. She said it didn't feel right.

Of course, in part, it's my programming. It doesn't take well to lots of outpouring. It finds it distrustful. It was about respect though. It was about realising what I needed and that what I needed was the stillness of being alone, going through this thing and finding my own way. It happened that it was letting go and trusting. Letting go and trusting are my new big things.

Let go and float

There's something to be said for letting go and trusting, letting life take you where it will. I have an inner sense when something is right for me. What I'm doing right now is waiting in that space until I know the next time to take a step, to make a move. Sometimes it can be terrifying. It's also a learning experience. Learning to be in the moment, not believing that endlessly doing will necessarily take you somewhere else. 'Not doing' is a tough thing to learn.

There's only so much of this stuff that you need

I had an email from the universe. It said that as much as it was happy to help me Work My Shit Out, it would much rather do the whole Making Life Happen that comes next. Point taken. Like many people I was getting caught in the self-development trap where you go from seminar to course to thing to course to seminar. You get seminar-high and think your life will change. But it doesn't. Feeling confused and empty we look for something to fill the space, to tell us what to do. We want a plan, a set of steps. Guarantees that it will work. Our lives will be magical.

We feel like, when it doesn't work, we failed in some way. Maybe it's time to do this: to be with the emptiness and confusion. To learn emptiness and confusion. To approach it with kindness rather than thinking we have to fix something. An answer will come. You might not realise until you're there and you're already doing it. You might be doing it now. You don't know. This is what I've been learning this week. To sit with the confusion until the little compass inside starts to point and says "Over there." Or life approaches, which it always does, and says "Hey, this!" And I know it's time to do.

Thank you for reading.