Dharma

Have you heard of Ben Lee? He’s my new best friend: a goofy and grounded musician from Australia, whose album Awake Is the New Sleep makes me dance and cry every time I listen to it. I first fell in love with the song “Catch My Disease” on a Paste Magazine sampler–the toy piano riff makes me laugh out loud with joy. Shawn bought the CD for me in August, and I have been grooving and healing to this man’s music ever since.

Ben Lee has a blog, bless his heart. He is currently posting from his European tour. And the other day he wrote about dharma:

often we refer to dharma simply as “good deeds” like working for charity, doing our duties in our jobs, helping people etc.
but these relate only to our external world.

there is also a path of dharma to be followed internally, as an act of aligning our true souls with the world around us. this phrase realy stood out to me from the email “the birthplace of dharma is the heart”.and there was my answer! any action that emanates from the heart as a pure idea, when translated into action, is dharma. so its not just things that have a clear element of service in the world that can be said to be righteous actions, but any action that is a reflection of your true heart.

maybe this is why we sometimes find it difficult to find the “righteous” action when breaking up with a friend we dont want to see any more, or telling someone we are unhappy. remember the “righteousness” of the action is determined by if it comes from your true soul. you dont really need to understand why some actions must occur in the world, just do them if they seem to come from your heart. SURRENDER. following the path of dharma will lead to the unique expression of your true self.

That’s what I’ve been hard at work on this summer: learning to live from my true self, instead of an exhausting false image cobbled together from misconceptions and inhibitions. I have so much news to share, so many momentous changes! I have been very quiet here, because I couldn’t talk about what was going on until the dust had settled and I knew where I stood.

Now I know. And I’m ready to unveil the first of my acts of dharma.

Back in April I came home from the hair salon in tears. My Polish hair stylist and I had been fighting for years about the length of my hair: I like it short, she prefers it longer. When I insist on having it short, she pouts and complains through the entire appointment. On this particular day, I didn’t have the energy to stand up to her, so when she asked what I wanted done, I said “Just a trim”. I left looking like I hadn’t had a haircut at all, and wept at the wasted time and money.

That very same day, Shawn came home after having beer at a friend’s house and announced that he’d found me a new stylist. A sign from God, right? At the friend’s house he’d met James, who works at a chic salon on Sparks Street, and told him my sob story. So I made an appointment. James was more than happy to cut my hair short, but he said that what I really needed was a colour change. My first thought was, Yes! I’ve often wished for darker hair, prompted by the sight of my blonde ‘do when it’s wet, just after a shower. But then I thought, I’m not the kind of person who dyes her hair. Too fake and expensive.

At my next haircut, I asked James what colour he envisioned for me. He said, Red. Interesting, I thought. I’ve dyed my hair red with a drugstore kit several times in the past: once to play Anne of Green Gables in high school, and once before a three-week trip to Europe.

I couldn’t stop thinking of red hair. I decided to go for it.

My first inkling of trouble was after the dye was washed out of my hair and I was brought back to James’ chair. Keep in mind I didn’t have my glasses on, so could only see a blurry reflection. But my hair looked awfully … bright. I leaned towards the mirror and peered at my hair. The colour put me in mind of a clown.

“It’s awfully bright,” I said to James.

“Yep,” he said, grinning.

“Hmm. What exactly were you going for?” I said.

“Miranda from Sex and the City,” James replied gleefully, “She’s not a natural redhead, you know.”

We discussed the difference between blondes and redheads (apparently, the latter do what the former say they’ll do). I tried to avoid looking at myself in the mirror while James cut my hair. I promised myself that I would not cry. I lasted about two hours.

The next day, I snuck into the office and hid out in my cubicle. I plotted how to get through the next two months without anyone seeing me. To my relief, I was leaving the following morning for a women’s retreat, to spend five days with strangers I would never see again. I forgot to bring shampoo with me, and so scrubbed my hair every morning with a bar of soap, trying to make the colour fade faster.

One of the activities we did on the retreat was to look into a mirror at ourselves. I couldn’t stop fixating on my hair. I thought I would get a nice gentle auburn or strawberry blonde. Instead I had carrot orange. The colour looked fake and I felt ridiculous. I didn’t like the attention it brought. Dying my hair felt like an artificial and image-obsessed thing to do. By the end of the exercise I had decided that I hated my dye job and would pay to have my hair put back to normal.

As the retreat went on, though, I kept thinking about why I had decided to get it coloured in the first place. What did my red hair have to teach me?

I thought about how I sometimes label myself as the ordinary one in my family. My sisters are gorgeous and sexy, I am merely “cute”. I thought about how I dressed like an old woman in high school, buying clothes from Tabi and wearing skirts and blouses instead of jeans. I thought about how hard it is to accept compliments, assuming that people are “just being nice” or that I shouldn’t let it go to my head.

Slowly, I realized that the Lesson of the Red Hair was about opening myself up to praise, and enjoying myself as beautiful.

What a change when I got back from the retreat. Instead of ducking to avoid people, I grinned when they noticed my new look. I bought special shampoo to preserve the colour. I had my makeup done to complement the new shade. I thought of all the redheads in my life whom I admire, and enjoyed my connection with them. And I made another appointment with James.

Who knew that all this time there was a redhead inside me, waiting to get out?

I’m opening comments to this post, and I’d love to hear your stories about making a change on the outside that prompted or reinforced a change on the inside.