Read my essay: “I guess I’ll be smokin’ up all this heroin myself.”

The impromptu essay update you didn’t ask for about my flash sale.

FYI…

That I wasn’t planning on writing this today, and also fyi that I normally go over my essays a whole whole whole lot more…but it felt important that I send this sooner than later. So here we go!

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Who is Leslie?

And now, on to the essay!

So, the short version of this story is: I created an IM sale this weekend, the deadline for people to buy sessions was set for noon today, it was a complete fail, and this ended up being terrific news.

Ahead is the longer and more fun version of this story.

I did the sale because I needed an initial $250 to join Luis Mojica’s somatic practitioner support group. He’d closed registration in December but then opened it back on Saturday morning. It would close this morning (Monday morning).

I had money in December but didn’t get the bodily interest to join the group until an hour after registration closed. I didn’t know it was closed at that time, I thought I’d caught the deadline. But I hadn’t. Rats, I’d thought. I could’ve sworn it was for me to join, but apparently I was wrong.

And then I saw the email this past Saturday morning.

It felt like it was for me to join.

But now I didn’t have the money. I had some of it but not all.

I would’ve had all of it but shit had happened as shit will—some money that was going to come through didn’t, and then Arden’s phone broke and of course, Arden’s urgent puppy dog almond eyes assured me, had to be fixed now, and then the next night I’d very wisely self-soothed with a decadent meal because I was lonely and sad when I had to bring her to her dad’s and was delaying going back to the house without my little bestie.

As soon I saw Luis’s email, regret, or maybe defensiveness, sprang up like acne, instant and itchy.

None of this was my fault, came the thought, hot like a shit bog. It’s not my fault I don’t have the money.

And real talk, it was fucking true. I’d needed that meal, goddammit, and I’d needed it to be decadent, and it did help me go into the house.

Also, I’ll expound just ahead, but let me say here in case it’s tempted to come up in the mix: fuck the notion of responsibility, and double-fuck the notion of radical responsibility, too. That shit is not helpful when you’re in the thick of what some well-meaning fuckface might call your golden opportunity to take it or reach for it.

Taking responsibility sounds good. But it doesn’t help.

---

I mentioned my knee-jerk regret.

Alongside it, though, I found something new. A new thought.

I do have the money, said the thought. It just doesn’t look like it right now. But I do have the money.

This thought was firm and pliable and cool and quietly self-certain of its firmness and pliability and coolness, like new playdough or very fertile packed dark soil.

This thought had efficacy.

Why was it there?

Well, well, I thought admiringly. Come thru, greater capacity.

Capacity is not a matter of will. When something is a matter of will, as responsibility is, there’s some force somewhere in the mix—as in, you’re supposed to force efficacious thoughts and actions along if you don’t feel them. You’re supposed to force yourself along.

But we aren’t able to do or not do things because we’re responsible or irresponsible.

We are able or unable to do things because we either have or don’t have capacity for them.

Anyone can develop capacity.

Greater capacity is the natural biproduct of practicing being with oneself regularly--of offering oneself sweetness and softness and approval when distressed.

(Normally, we offer ourselves sourness and hardness and disapproval when we’re distressed.)

Another word for capacity is sensitivity—sensitivity in the manner of ever-advancing technology, in the manner of techie devices detecting, picking up, sensing, evermore data, and thus becoming evermore powerful.

I have been practicing being with myself.

Thus, my capacity, my sensitivity, has grown.

Anyone can become more sensitive.

Anyone can become more powerful.

---

Aligned with my greater capacity, I found myself able to consider ways I might find this money that I could feel was with me.

I considered asking a couple of people for it. Perfectly fine option.

But I found myself shaking my head no: I had the money, and it would be more fun, it would be an adventure, to find it myself.

I settled on doing an IM sale.

Necessarily, it would have to be a quick sale. Hence, the short deadline.

And I didn’t want to burn myself out doing a bunch of sessions. Hence, the limited number of sessions for sale.

Plus, I needed only one sale to happen by Monday morning to be able to pay what I needed for Luis’s course. Surely I could gin up one sale by then.

It took me alllll day Saturday and well into the night to pull the sale details together. My capacity may have grown, but I still really really really agonize over the goddamn details of this business. If I keep practicing, my capacity will grow here, too.

In the meantime, I know that I agonize because I care. Because this work is an act of great, great love.

I did pull the deets together. It took all day, but I did it.

I sent out emails on Saturday night and Sunday morning.

And then, I waited.

---

And by Sunday afternoon…

Nothing.

Nothing had happened. Nobody had bought shit.

I’d shown up, I’d put together a plan, I’d enacted it, and nothing.

Damn, I thought, I can’t even summon $150?

I stared at my schedule, at the 11 IM session times I’d organized in preparation for all my eager meditators.

And here is where the difference in acting from responsibility vs finding yourself acting from capacity comes in.

For right there, right there in the midst of my powerlessness to summon a measly $150, I found I was…delighted.

“Welp,” I found myself saying out loud, “I guess I’ll be smokin’ up all this good heroin myself.”

Do people smoke heroin? Is heroin even smokable? I didn’t know, but now I could fuck around and find out, because now, since I couldn’t sell it, I had all the time in the world to practice IM on myself! I could get high as hell off my own fucking supply! And if you’ve done IM with me, you know what’s possible in one session.

So, 11 sessions?

All in one week?

My next thought was, I’m rich, biatch!, because it was true! By this time next week, I could fuck around and become the fucking Buddha!

And then I knew the thing that had needed to happen, had happened.

Because if my first thought was excitement that I could have all that time to practice IM on me and for me, then I could know that I really believe in this work.

And for the first time, someone else buying what I make didn’t matter.

I could see that other people buying what I make—in this case, an IM session—has, on some level, impacted my determination of IM’s value and worth.

In other words, I could know that I have reached the level of capacity, the level of joy, the level of power, that is self-validation, that is being self-validating.

I already did believe in IM.

But now, I knew, I’d become aware, of just how much I believed in it.

And I could know that I already have what I thought success would give me, what I thought only success—money and recognition from others—could give me: validation.

And I could see that believing in one’s work to the degree of self-validation: that is success.

And true success, true validation, true confidence in one’s work—in other words, not needing other people’s recognition-- is exactly what draws that -–and money, and resources--to you.

What I get now is that the only true validation is being self-validating.

Being self-validating is the energy frequency, the feeling tone, of being attractive.

Validation is what being attractive, magnetic, feels like.

Validation is that critical energy that parents give their kids that is more valuable than anything else: the energy of, “Gosh, you are so irresistible that I cannot help but love you for who you are, not for anything you can do or can’t do.”

(Sidenote that even if we don’t get the all the validation we need in our younger years, we can always build capacity for it. That’s the good news of IM.)

What I am saying is, I know now for sure that IM is irresistible.

I know now for sure that my offering is the Real Fucking Deal. (And there are many many Real Fucking Deals out here. IM is one of so many Real Fucking Deals out here.)

Here is what I wrote down yesterday at 4:44 p.m.

I hope no one takes me up on my offer now.

I hope no one rescues me.

I sooo sincerely feel this way.

Thank you so much for arriving me here, failed offering.

Thank you so much for letting me know: I am arrived.

To be clear: I was already arrived. We all are.

Our journey is in knowing this.

---

By last night (Sunday night), I wasn’t sure what would happen with buying Luis’s class.

I wasn’t sure what was to be come Monday morning.

But I wasn’t worried. Invested, yes. But not worried.

I did know my Sunday afternoon high would come down.

By late Sunday night (and no sales), it had.

But because I deal in really good drugs, the after-effect was soft. Like the exhilaration of flying on a dragon, the wind in your face, and then you descend to grass, and the dragon drops gently to its knees to let you down under the natural light of a setting sun. Or, since we’re talking about dragons, like the exhilaration of a new Game of Thrones episode in a season before the producers had to make their own storylines because George R.R. Martin’s books ran out. In any event, it was a very pretty comedown.

And then, of course, this story ends as it must.

Because true validation, being self-validating, is indeed irresistible.

At 11:19 p.m. last night, I got this text (name changed).

Hey Leslie! Sorry about texting you so late. This is T. I have been thinking about seeing you for a while and I think I am finally ready to try inquiry meditation. Can you please let me know how we can get started to find out if this is a good fit?

So the money was not to come via my flash sale but via someone reaching out to do the IM Experience, which is an introductory 1-hour level of the practice that I price at $145.

It was close enough.

And of course, because this story has to end this way, T wanted my earliest available slot—which happens to be tomorrow—and, of course, paid on the spot.

And so it was that this morning that I signed up quite peacefully for Luis’s class.

---

I said at the beginning of this essay that I created an IM sale this weekend, the deadline for people to buy sessions was set for noon today, and that no one bought anything, and that this ended up being terrific news.

As I wrote that sentence earlier today, I noticed I’d used the word “terrific”.

Something about that word choice stood out to me.

I actually paused writing and checked out something I had never noticed and suspected and, and I was correct—that the word “terrific” comes from the word “terrified,” or “terror,” if you want to go with that instead.

The positive meaning we give the word today came centuries after its origin.

But the word feels meaningful in this essay.

As in, something that should’ve been terrifying for me was exactly not that.

As in, something that has been terrifying for me—what if I can’t make a living doing this IM work that I love and that I know is good??—it isn’t terrifying anymore.

Maybe it’s that being terrified means there’s something big you’re afraid of losing—life, a person, etc.

And maybe terror can become terrific if we can acknowledge the great, great love that must be present in that potential loss.

It worked for Meg in A Wrinkle In Time when she saved Charles Wallace from the evil IT brain. She couldn’t defeat IT. There was no way she could fight IT. But she realized she could love her brother.

Terror, it seems, cannot resist great, great love.

Maybe capacity is simply matter of accessing our love. Certainly not easy all the time, but simple. And pretty fuckin’ terrific.

What I know at this point is, my love for this work has saved me yet again.

And all I can think is, “Gosh, IM, you are so irresistible that I cannot help but love you for who you are, not for anything you can do or can’t do.”

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Thanks so much for reading!

Jan 7 update: My friend reached out Saturday night about buying me a belated birthday drink. IM came up. We’re doing a session this week! On Sunday, I took myself out on a reading bar date—I like to read booksat certain restaurant bars—and the bartender asked what I was reading, yada yada yada, we’re doing a session this week! I’m sharing the heroin! #Irresistible