Dear Paul,

Thank you for the compliment. I’m glad you decided to pay it, for it truly means a lot me. And I’m also glad you decided to share the circumstances surrounding it. It’s that kind of straightforward, no bullshit honesty that makes this tiresome journey through the dull grey fog of the 3D world worth the effort.

I’m gonna go out on a limb here and share a reflection with you that suddenly landed with me after reading this last comment of yours. I hope you find it ok. It’s merely a suggestion, and you can completely disregard it, but it has come to me twice now on two separate occasions. So, as it returns to me now, I feel pulled to share it with you. When you mentioned feeling a resistance to sharing something that would sound too sweet or complimentary, my immediate (second) thought was wanting to ask you – How do you feel when receiving a compliment of that kind yourself?

I suddenly remembered something that I had felt shortly after the whole Green Snake trip we both went on. Something I disregarded at the time. I recall paying you a deep-felt compliment on the way your sharings here made me feel. How your approach through your spiritual challenges excited and inspired me. (And now I’m sitting here contemplating whether I should really write this or not… f*** it, what have I got to lose?) Yes, I paid you a deep-felt compliment with the purpose of returning some of the positive energy that you had offered me. Interestingly enough, your next sharing, one or two days later, did not reflect my intended effect at all, but instead revealed you diving into and ‘dredging at the bottom of the barrel’, if you remember? (another post I really appreciated, btw). When I read that, I remember a distinct feeling that perhaps it was related to the compliment I had just recently paid you. I had/have no backing for this of course, and it makes me quite uncomfortable sharing it because I don’t want to make any assumptions or put you out there in any way, but when you just now expressed the current resistance you felt to offering a heartfelt compliment, the feeling came back to me.

The reason I’m making this possible connection is because there have been some defining moments in my life where compliments were involved. I want to share one with you because it has been coming up for me as a hindsight reflection recently. Plus I just love these synchronicities. When I was in my early twenties, I trained to be a professional dancer. My last year at dance academy, we had an artistic leader/teacher who broke me down to the core. It wasn’t personal towards me. She was awful to most of us (the girls), but I think I was more sensitive to the constant criticism she was dishing out. When I graduated, I had absolutely no confidence I would ever make it as a dancer. I was too fat, too weak, my technique was too poor, my feet had the wrong shape etc. I felt completely worthless and I thought there was no way any decent choreographer would ever hire me. My very first audition after graduation was for a famous, innovative, highly popular choreographer at the time. It was a dream job for many. I got it.

My first few months as a professional dancer went quite well. I compensated for my internal inferiority complex by working hard and disciplined and by eventually allowing myself to relax a bit, as I realised this choreographer had a much more open and compassionate approach towards us dancers than the school of Hitler I had graduated from. So far so good, until the day arrived that I received ‘THE COMPLIMENT’ (Now you have to imagine some dramatic music).
Yes, the choreographer’s assistant and partner, the one who was basically doing all the work with us, approached me after rehearsal one day and said to me in the sweetest and most sincere way “You’re really good and you’re doing such a good job!”

What happened inside of me at that moment is hard to describe. It was as if two opposing worlds, two incompatible realities suddenly crashed into one another. The feedback mirror she so sweetly placed in front of me did not at all match my image or my experience of myself. It was an impossible equation that unleashed hell itself inside of me. I was literally face to face with all my demons. I did not have the spiritual skills or understanding at the time to deal with something like this, but I remember that moment as if it were yesterday. I couldn't see it then, but it was one of the most defining moments of my life. That which was meant as an uplifting compliment became an increasingly oppressive demand for me to live up to something my low self-esteem couldn’t match. Shortly after that I started getting serious pains in my calves. I had had minor problems there before, but now the pain was beginning to reach excruciating levels. The inflammation in the muscles eventually became so severe it began to initiate stress fractures in the bones. At this point, I had to abruptly quit dancing for several months, so as to not aggravate the injuries any further. Not to mention I could hardly walk. This forced leave of absence paved the way for my first complete psychological breakdown and what I experienced as my first ‘dark night of the soul’, which lasted a long time to come.

It’s quite amazing, to be able to look back like this and see how it all interrelated. Recently, after doing a theatre performance, I received some positive feedback from someone that had serious meaning to me. It wasn’t about my performance, rather about how I answered a question from one of the audience members afterwards. There was a profound sadness that came over me at that moment, and as I felt deeply into this sadness afterwards, I found it came from the fact that I was deeply touched by this inconspicuous but heartfelt compliment. It mattered, and it reminded me of that incident all those years ago when I couldn’t handle it. It also revealed to me that what I was given, was an honest feedback loop from the universe that yes, I was doing something right. And I'm happy to say that this time… I could receive it, I could look at it without cringing, and I could contain it inside myself. There was no crash, no collision, no mismatch. Just a humble feeling of gratitude.

Feel free to compliment me any time. I can handle it now.

All my love,

Anastasia