In her book Steering By Starlight: Find Your Right Life No Matter What, Martha Beck discusses the lizard brain, a primitive neural structure that first evolved in reptiles. Its purpose is to keep us alive primarily via fears of death and scarcity. For wild animals the lizard brain is vitally important.

Humans have the unique ability to foster and cling to our lizard fears. Gazelles don't sit around awash in existential angst because a lion tried to get them that afternoon. We hold onto our fears, though in our modern world they're usually totally unfounded.

"The economy's in the toilet and I’m going to end up a bag lady!" "Everyone always leaves me/betrays me/tries to steal my cookies!" "Swine flu, OMG, we're all gonna die!!!"

Beck's inner lizard is a little winged dragon named Mo. She says, "Whenever I notice [lizard fears] blaring in my mind, I picture myself giving poor old Mo a grape. I pet it on the head. I say, 'There, there, Mo. Thank you for sharing. Now go to sleep.' Caring kindly for the reptile, rather than either believing it or struggling against it, is the way out of dread and into peace."

My inner lizard likes to whisper in my ear, "There's not enough. You have to eat that cupcake, because there might never be another one. You can't be hungry--you'll starve! No one will ever love you the way you are. Everyone leaves you."

The fact is, those fears are unsubstantiated by my own experience and my intellect. I have never once gone hungry. I have always been loved. Most of the people who have left my life have done so because I left first. There's always another cupcake.

To remind myself of this truth I decided to draw my inner lizard and carry her picture with me as a visual cue. Her name is Moosh.

Moosh is very similar to the Five of Cups in Tarot: there are dozens of cupcakes all around her, but the only one she can see is the one she doesn't have. She's afraid that if she doesn't eat every cupcake, she'll starve. She's afraid if she lets go of anything she'll be left with nothing. She's a hungry ghost: her belly is huge but she'll never be satisfied. She can't see anything past her terror of going without.

So, this is my little ACEO portrait of Moosh. Isn't she cute?

The lizard brain is hard-wired into us. We're animals, after all. There's no turning it off--we can only learn when to listen to its broadcasts and when to give it a grape and tell it to take a nap.


2.5 x 3.5"
Prismacolor and ink.
May 6, 2009