I M Perfect lady

Category: Books

  • Happiness for me is Peace.

    In Sarah Ban Breathnach's book, "Simple Abundance" she asks of us today, what brings Happiness for us?  

    I heard Oprah once say that many people want to be happy, but when asked, what would make them happy, they are unsure.

    So, what I wondered would make me happy and am I happy now or are there things and changes I needed to make?

    I don't have any pressing unhappiness that I need to escape from or remove, so that is good.

    I do know that my body feels at peace…like the energy or feelings inside of me are like calm waters, not choppy and upset.  I am not carrying lots of things that need my attention and I am avoiding.  Or situations that I have said yes to, that I needed to find the courage to change to a No.

    I feel that I have been working on my happiness for a few years now and learning that if I am making choices based upon my feelings and not avoiding things, even if I am afraid of how it will affect others…I am creating an atmosphere of happiness for me.

    I am thinking happiness isn't a thing, but rather a path of authenticity, where your choices create the space so that your self is comfortable.

    I used to be the one who made others comfortable and Sarah even says, that often we know what makes others happy, but are not as clear when it comes to ourselves. I used to live 'unhappy' by saying yes when I should have said no…and I did a lot of things to please others.  I was a happy maker, but not so much for me.

    Now, I am clearing my path of things that poke me and make me uncomfortable…

    Often we don't want to bare the uncomfortableness that confronting the things that stand in the way of our happiness.  But, I have found, that a few moments or encounters with being uneasy, leads to wide open spaces of happiness.

    So, I guess my things are not really things, but choices. Choices I have made to eliminate things that don't make me feel at peace.  Perhaps happiness for me is peace.

  • See Our Self.

    I picked up Deepak Chopra's book "God" in the Library…and began to read.

    What he does is he writes about different men and their experiences with seeking God or their view of God…and then what he calls, "Revealing the Vision"…where he sorts out or pulls apart the man and how he saw his path to God.

    He writes about famous men in the Bible, Paul, Job, and he also writes about men in the East, Shankara and Rumi and even Socrates.  I am enjoying the revealing the vision part, for it shows how God doesn't change, but how we depict him varies.

    For example, about St.Paul "…Paul drummed one formula into his readers; believe and you will be saved,  It's not a universal formula.  In the East, religions like Buddhism and Hinduism have no murdered saints, no emphasis on faith in the supernatural events, no resurrection from the dead.  Instead, the common thread in the East is consciousness.  A religious person seeks to escape pan and suffering by finding a higher reality that leaves pain and suffering behind, rendering them irrelevant.  The entire journey is done within, and therefore Gnosticism, or direct contact with the divine mind, finds in the East a refuge where it isn't a heresy."

    "This isn't to say that religion as it flowered in Asia lacks divine love and miracles.  In popular Buddhism the young Prince Siddhartha was carried over the walls of his father's palace, where he lived a life of suffocating luxury, on the magical white horse held aloft by angels.  A devout Hindu sees the beautiful god Krishna as an exemplar of love.  But, Christianity isn't  a religion based on higher consciousness, it is based on salvation, the ultimate personal miracle."

    He writes about Shankara, 

    Shankara describes a permanent state that is very similar, in which you fully participate in the world, but you faintly know that you are dreaming.  This state of so called witnessing is the Vedic version of what Jesus names as being in the world, but not of it.  It is a very desirable state, because you become creative instead of passive.  Poised on the edge before you wake up from your jungle adventure, you know that the dream belongs to you. Suddenly, you are the author. Some lucid dreamers can even re-enter their dream, willing themselves to not wake up. they can do this because they are, after all, the authors of their dreams."

    "In the same way, you are the author of your life.  It may seem that all kinds of outside factors hem you in and deny your authorship; disease, aging, the forces of nature, social rules and strictures, and ultimately death.  But Shankara asks a simple question that explodes these external limitations.  Has anything that ever happened in a dream actually hurt you? When you wake up, the whole dream is gone.  Tigers, angels, demons, pursuing enemies, and voluptuous lovers.  All share the same unreality."

    "Mastering the dream is good news and bad news at the same time. The good news is that you are the author of your life with the capacity to make anything happen. To arrive at mastery takes time.  There are cautionary tales, like the reckless and unfortunate Giordano Bruno, who saw the light, but did not escape the dream. Shankara outlines how to undergo the process of mastery using all the tools of Yoga.  These tools are all about consciousness. They teach you how to use your mind instead of allowing your mind to use you."

    "The bad news? It's not the prospect of failure. Once the process of awakening begins, it is unstoppable, even if you have to cross into new lifetimes to reach your goal. The bad news is that mastering your dream isn't being Midas. You won't turn everything you touch into gold.  The lure of riches, endless pleasure, power, and even saintliness starts to fade once you know that it's all a dream.  Unity consciousness is the ultimate mastery known to the world's spiritual traditions, but it cannot be described in worldly terms.  When the two domains of reality, "in here" and "out there" finally merge, a new existence dawns.  It is indescribable before you reach it, which is why there's another saying that Skankara's tradition insists upon; "Those who know It speak of it not, those who speak of It know it not."

    "Making God disappear from the physical world is either a sign of progress, because it removes the self-centered belief that the deity must look and act like a human being, or it is a scandal, just as it was to the first Westerners, because you can't just wipe God away like that.  He will notice, and his reaction won't be pleasant. What is liberation in the East remains heresy to many in the West.  The only certainty is that God has more faces to show.  Matters are not settled by any means."

    And about Rumi, 

    "If the West wants an antidote to the East's habit of making God disappear, Rumi doesn't fit the bill. He offers a personal God who is approached with love and devotion, but the path of devotion makes the seeker disappear.  The light that embraces him extinguishes personality.  It even distinguishes the lesser love between lovers.  In the evolution of God, holding on to the image of a patriarch sitting above the clouds becomes more and more a stubborn habit. This is especially so when, as with Rumi, the divine is a feeling in the heart that expands to all-consuming bliss. Bliss has no name or face. The world's visionaries go in a different direction.  Their paths mingle, but still no single picture of God emerges.  A deeper transformation is taking place."  Deepak

    What I find so interesting about this book is the relationship these men have had with God and their experiences…how they write about it and then how others have used their version as a rule or a religion to follow…and to see the evolution or the depiction, depending upon growing up in the East or in the West.

    I see how personally I have changed my belief or perhaps understanding of God and how I appreciate the writings of others, but can see how my God has changed from the vengeful and fearing image, to one where I am having a personal relationship…with a wise loving all knowing Universe.  

    I guess we see God as we see our Self.



  • Made of this cloth

    Today's reading in "Simple Abundance" By Sarah Ban Breathnach she writes,

    "When we can't access our inner resources, we come to the flawed conclusion that our happiness and fulfillment come only from external events. That's because external events usually bring with them some sort of change.  And so we've learned to rely on circumstances outside ourselves for forward or backward momentum as we hurdle through life. But, we don't have to do that any longer.  We can learn to be the catalysts for our own change."  Sarah B

    To switch gears from outside to inside will require you to change from being passive to being agressive….from a bystander to movement…from wishing to doing.  It will require YOU to move Before there is a crash on the outside; to become the change you wish to see in the world as Ghandhi said.

    I was forced to go inward, for my outer world became littered with debris, and each piece carried with it a mountain of dyfunction and lies.  It appeared to me that the only place that held peace, was inside of me….in a far corner, a place where the Me of me lived.  Untouched by the wreckage outside.

    I clung to this space. 

    Small though it was.

    It was a complete change…finding and being me from the inside, instead of being defined by the outward events.

    I guess, I fled to the inside, for I did not feel that it was right to be defined by my father's pedophilia.  "This will not define me", was a war cry, a plea to the Universe to see me from a different view.

    It wasn't that I denied who my father was, but his life and my life were not going to be one.  It was the beginning of separation…of searching for a Me that I defined.

    Who was I?

    I knew that even if I was abused, that wasn't the whole of me…nor was it something that I designed for me….it happened to me, but it wasn't my choice.  

    In deciding that I would not be defined by my father, I literally changed my perception of me; from the outside to the inside.

    I used to say, "I am living my life from the inside out…."

    What I believe Sarah is working towards is the same. To live life from the inside out, but without having to experience a total life crash on the outside…and being forced to alter your life.

    She then writes about the 6 threads of contentment…

    "There are six principles that will act as guides as we make our inner journey over the next year.  These are the six threads of abundant living which, when woven together, produce a tapestry of contentment that wraps us in inner peace, well-being, happiness and a sense of security. First there is Gratitude. When we do a mental and spiritual inventory of all that we have, we realize we are very rich indeed. Gratitude gives way to Simplicity – the desire to clear out, pare down, and realize the essentials of what we need to live truly well.  Simplicity brings with it Order, both internally and externally. A sense of order in our lives brings us Harmony.  Harmony provides us with the inner peace we need to appreciate the beauty that surrounds us each day, and Beauty opens us to Joy.  But just as with any beautiful needlepoint tapestry, it is difficult to see where one stitch ends and another begins. So it is with Simple Abundance."  Sarah B.

    I do believe it is possible to make these changes ahead of the crash, but I do wonder what the impetus would be?  It almost seems that we as humans wait for life to become unbearable, before we look for a new way.

    I can't see the reason for creating a new tapestry if the old one is not thread bare and full of holes.  

    I do believe that I have woven a new tapestry, a new cloth and pattern that is a full composite of me, even the dark colors of abuse are weaved in, but along side of them are my free choices…choices that bring me Love, Peace and Joy.

    There is a flow and harmony in my world by what I allow and what I do not….

    I see the cloth of abuse being dark….minus the sharp colors and bright hues…I see it as a blinding cloth.  Blinding you from seeing you.

    My new piece of fabric is filled with contrast and legacy, but it is now stitched with awareness and truth, layered with what brings me happiness and contentment.

    Perhaps what we do is use the blinding dark cloth and add our passion, our creative choices, like making stitches of color that define us.

    I can almost visualize a quilt that represents this….the dark with added pieces of bright….it could be the six threads.  Gratitude, Simplicity, Order, Harmony, Beauty and Joy.

    I truly feel that my life is mostly made of this cloth.

  • My Lady, as Me.

    I am reading "Simple Abundance" by Sarah Ban Breathnach with a few friends.  It is another daily reading book.  I also took out my journal and have enjoyed the hand writing again.  I love the sharp pencils, the blank page and unknown answers and the freedom to investigate…me.

    Our first assignment was to explore our deep longings and aspirations…and I wondered what mine were.

    What desires were deep in my soul?

    As I wrote, it came to me that my longings have changed.  I have been working for years on myself, to become some one who did not hurt others, control others or steal their lives; to be independent and no longer co-dependent on others to fulfill my life.  I have been working to fill my own self.

    In releasing others, I became free too.  

    Now, as a free bird, if you will, what now are my longings and deep aspirations?

    I don't know.

    Not for sure for sure.

    I do however have hints…

    It is like my soul's purpose and passions were shelved or have remained hidden until the time was right to bloom.  I will discover who I was born to be…that all my years thus far have prepared me…to be Me.

    All the detaching and self care that I have done, is not for naught, it has given me the tools I will need to continue…

    I am open to the unknown future and feel fairly certain it will contain writing, quilting and being with women who inspire me as well as inspiring others.  To live more present in awareness…as Me.

    I see myself as the Lady from my Art Quilts…that I am now living my Art.

    I believe that new deep longings and aspirations are waiting to be born. I believe I have now opened the space for them to rise up and be heard.

    I create my quilts by feeling…and I believe this will be the way forward for me.  I will do what feels right for me, even if it doesn't feel right for others.  Honoring me, will create a living work of Art.  Me.

    Perhaps my deepest longing and aspirations was to just be me.  No appologies, no excuses, no fears of the consequences…of saying no to you and saying Yes, to me.

    I am excited to see My Lady, as Me. IMG_0101

  • Bring into the New Year.

    As I sit here on New Years Day, I am not filled with wishful expectations, nor am I hoping for a better year…and then sitting back to see what happens.  

    I have learned that Life is a game where you get what you give….and the more you put into it, the more you get back.  I know that karma works.  I know that the Universe doesn't just randomly give out bumps in the road for no reason, that each hurdle comes with a gift of freedom, IF I face it squarely and be completely honest with myself.

    So, there is no point in wishing. However,  I remember Oprah saying she wanted to have a year of Love and Peace….and all she got that year were challenges for her to find peace and love in the worst of situations.  A challege if you will, in loving the unlovable.

    With that in mind, be careful what you wish for.

    For your wishes are God's command.  

    I don't really have wishes, but it does feel like I have just begun to live…or perhaps grasp what living is about.

    In Elie Wiesel's book "Open Heart" he writes,

    "Yes, I have written much, and yet, at this stage of my life, at the very threshold of the great portal, I feel that I have not yet begun."  

    "Too Late?"

    "Similarly, I question my many other activities. For example, in my combat against hatred, which I wished to be unrelenting, did I in fact invest enough time, enough energy, in denouncing fanaticism in its various guises? Evidently not, since all of us who have fought the battle must now admit defeat."

    "At the time of the liberation of the camps, I remember, we were convinced that after Auschwitz there would be no more wars, no more racism, no more hatred, no more anti-Semitism. We were wrong. This produced a feeling close to despair.  For if Auschwitz could not cure mankind of racism, was there a chance of success ever? The fact is, the world has learned nothing.  Otherwise, how is one to comprehend the atrocities committed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia…?"

    "I have initiated many actions, in countless locations, with many companions. And fought so many battles. Was it all in vain?"

    "What shall I say to God?  That I was also counting on His help?  Shall I have the nerve to reproach Him for His incomprehensible silence while Satan was winning his victories? While my father, Shlomo son of Eliezer and Nissel, lay dying on his cot?"

    Later on he writes,

    "A credo that defines my path: "I belong to the generation that has often felt abandoned by God and betrayed by mankind. And yet, I believe we must not give up on either."

    "Was it yesterday – or long ago- that we learned how human beings have been able to attain perfection in cruelty?  That for the killers, the torturers, it is normal, thus human, to act inhumanely?  Should one therefore turn away from humanity?"

    "The answer, of course, is up to each of us.  We must choose between the violence of adults and the smiles of children, between the ugliness of hate and the will to oppose it. Between inflicting suffering and humiliation on our fellow man and offering him the solidarity and hope he deserves.  Or not."

    "I know – I speak from experience – that even in darkness it is possible to create light and encourage compassion.  That it is possible to feel free inside a prision. That even in exile, friendship exists and can become an anchor.  That one instant before dying, man is still immortal."

    " There it is: I still believe in man in spite of man.  I believe in language even though it has been wounded, deformed and preverted by the enemies of mankind.  And I continue to cling to words because it is up to us to transform them into instruments of comprehension rather than contempt. It is up to us to choose whether we wish to use them to curse or to heal, to wound or to console."  

    "As a Jew, I believe in the coming of the Messiah. But of course this does not mean that the world will become Jewish; just that it will become more welcoming, more human.  I belong, after all, to a generation that has learned that whatever the question, indifference and resignation are not the answer."

    "Illness may diminish me, but it will not destroy me. The body is not eternal, but the idea of the soul is. The brain will be buried, but the memory will survive it."

    "Such is the miracle: The tale about despair becomes the tale against despair."  

    He also writes in chapter 15,

    "Such are the thoughts that the patient, a prisoner of his condemned body, confronting his fate, is experiencing the ferocious intensity. As I face the gravity of this moment, I feel the need to search my soul."

    "I am eighty-two years old.  As it has often before, and now more so than ever, the fact that I am who I am leads me to look back: What have I done, and what have I toiled to do, during this long journey filled with dreams and challenges."

    "Strange, I suddenly remember Baudelaire's outcry in his Mon coeur mis a nu  (My Heart Laid Bare): There exists in every man, at every hour, two simultaneous impulses; one leading toward God, the other toward Satan."  Have I distinquished the path to Good from the one leading to Evil?"

    "My life unfolds before me like a film: landscapes from my childhood; adventures in faraway, sometimes exotic places; my first masters, followed by my first moments of adolescent religious ecstasy as I and my friends at the yeshiva recieved from our old masters the keys that open the secret doors of mystical truths."

    "Have I performed my duty as a survivor? Have I transmitted all I was able to? Too much, perhaps? Were some of the mystics not punished for having penetrated the secret of forbidden knowledge?"

    "To begin, I attempted to describe the time of darkness. Birkenau, Auschwitz, Buchenwald.  A slight volume; Night.  First in Yiddish, "and the world remained silent," in which every sentence, every word, reflects an experience that defies all comprehension.  Even had every single survivor consecrated a year of his life to testifying, the results would probably still have been unsatisfactory.  I rarely reread myself, but when I do, I come away with a bitter taste in my mouth:  I feel the words are not right and that I could have said it better.  In my writings about the Event, did I commita sin by saying too much, while fully knowing that no person who did not experience the proximity of death there can ever understand what we, the survivors, were subjected to from moring till night, under a silent sky."'

    "I have written some fifty works – most dealing with topics far removed from the one I continue to consider essential: the victims' memory.  I believe that I have done all I could to prevent it from being cheapened or altogether stifled, but was it enough? And if I often publish works – articles, novels on other themes, I did so in order not to remain its prisoner.  My battle against the trivialization and banalization of Auschwitz in film and on television resulted in my gaining not a few enemies.  To my thinking, it was my duty to show that the sum of all suffering and deaths is an integral part of the texts we revere."  Elie Wiezel

    He continues to ask great questions of himself at 82 years of age….and his reflection will be ours someday.

    I wonder if we ask his questions of ourselves today, will we at 82 still be living with questions…and perhaps the questions are how we move into a deeper life…to fully live, aware.

    I do understand how knowing the evil of mankind, he yet believes in mankind.

    How the silence of God doesn't have him no longer believing there is a God.

    And, when or can you write enough about the subject of victims?

    He and I are not on the same scale on the specturm, but even at my lower end, it matters.

    Have I too, distinquished the path to evil?  

    I still am a faithful believer in mankind…that is the energy I bring into the New Year.


  • Who Didn’t See.

    "I See You!  Here I Am!" – Mark Nepo's last entry for 2012…I love it. 

    "For centuries, African Bushmen have greeted each other in this way.  When the one becomes aware of his brother or sister coming out of the brush, he exclaims, "I see You!" and then the one approaching rejoices, "I Am Here!"

    "This timeless bearing witness is both simple and profound, and it is telling that much of our modern therapeutic journey is suffered to this end: to have who we are and where we've been seen.  For with this simple and direct affirmation, it is possible to claim our own presence, to say, "I Am Here."

    "Those people in our lives who have validated our personhood by seeing us and exclaiming so are the foundations of our self-worth. Think of who they are. For me, the first to rejoice at my scrambling into the open was my grandmother. If not for her unequivocal love, I might never have had the courage to express myself at all.  And, after all, isn't art in all its forms the beautiful trail of our all too human attempts to say, again and again, I Am Here."

    "It is important to note that being seen enables us to claim our lives, and then it becomes possible to pass the gift on to others.  But just as important as bearing witness is the joy with which these Bushmen proclaim what they see.  It is the joy of first seeing and first knowing. This is the gift of love."

    "In a culture that erases its humanity, that keeps the act of innocence and beginning invisible, we are sorely in the need of being seen with joy, so we can proclaim with equal astonishment and innocence that of all the amazing things that could have been or not, We Are Here."

    "As far back as we can remember, people of the oldest tribes, unencumbered by civilization, have been rejoicing in being on earth together. Not only can we do this for each other, it is essential.  For as stars need open space to be seen,as waves need the shore to crest, as dew needs grass to soak into, our vitality dependson how we exclaim and rejoice, "I See You!" "I Am Here!"  Mark Nepo

    It is not so much having the other person truly see you, but for you also to proclaim "I am Here."  A full disclosure of who you are.  I see it as two people fully standing in their truth, uncovered and without pretend…seeing each other, while being authentically themselves.

    This may seem like an easy task, to get someone to say "I See You", and an even easier one to state, "Here I am", but it is not.

    In the past 8 years, I have been standing outside of the woods of abuse and not all will say I see you and Here I am…in the light of day.  Most will secretly whisper, "I see you….and here I am" while showing me their battle scars.  They are too afraid to stand out in the light and proclaim, "Here I Am!"

    The other very important part of this writing is to the the people who first said, "I see you." 

    Those are the ones who believe your experiences and validate the foundations of our self worth.  Without them, it would be hard to exclaim, "Here I Am" with strength and courage and finally pride!

    I have to think back to the very first weeks and months after my father's arrest to know who these people were.  My brother Carl, never once doubted what I was saying. The ladies within my Art Quilt group, when unbeknownst to them and I, my story came stumbling out in one meeting, they too said "I see you"….allowing me to stand taller in "Here I am."  They opened the space to be okay with being me.

    It were the first few who validated my personhood, that allowed me to express myself with the truth of who I am.  It was then, that the initial courage was born.

    I had said in the very first days, that all we would have needed as children, was one eye to see us, one ear to hear us or one hand to pull us out.  His writing today has affirmed this sentiment I felt so deeply and so tragically, that so many knew and no one said, "I see you."  Instead, they turned away.

    So many believe that not talking about it, not bringing it up is better, but in my experience, being able to hear someone say "I see you" especially in our battered state, in our confusion, pain, shame etc…allows us to say shakily, "Here I am".

    Here I am, as I am.  Not whole. Not perfect, but perfectly me, coming from whence I came.  Here I Am!

    If the person who first sees you can hold your gaze and not turn away…if they can hold not only your gaze but see you as okay and not the abuse, that you are/were innocent, that it happened to you, it isn't you…you feel their courage to see you… and they are okay.

    My mother did not see me…and I believe she acted similar as she did just 8 years ago, she made sure Ray was taken care of. She made sure others outside of the house were appologized to. She made sure she 'cleaned' up the scene…but, she never not once said she seen me as an abused child. She only wants to see me cleaned up with the mess (old news) behind me.  Forgive and move on.

    I will be accepted when I put it away.  Until then…there is no rejoicing to see me. There are conditions to her 'love'.

    I am forever thankful for the ones who did See Me, for they gave me the courage to say, "Here I Am"…they allowed me be proud of being me. Even if I was the daughter of a pedophile and his wife who didn't see.

    (I wrote this and then went to do yoga, and it came to me that I had a lot of people who saw me…and I need to acknowledge them for each gave me courage to continue on.  

    My husband.  He never once doubted me or asked me to do something that I wasn't comfortable with.  He allowed me to be "here I am", with out condtions.  My children too, have all left me be where I am comfortable and in turn, I have given them the same freedom.

    I also had a few sisters in the early days, who listened and cried with me. Their being there in the early days were extremely helpful. And I honored their decision to leave me be…and in turn I honor them.

    And, I had close friends who also listened, cried and understood…to the best of their abilities and I am sure often my 'troubles' were beyond their level of comprehending, but the listened and saw me.

    It was because of you all, I had the courage to be me, imperfectly.)



  • My Song of Freedom

    Mark Nepo – December 29

    "As long as we sing, the pain of the world cannot chaim our lives."

    "Through cancer, through growing up in America, through learning about the innumerable struggles for freedom around the world, all different but the same, through being with the people of South America, it has become very clear that giving voice to what is the inner essential to surviving what is outer.  No matter where we live or whom we love, no matter what we want or what we can't have, this is the lesson I can't repeat or learn enough."

    "When everything in life presses from outside of us, we have no choice but to sing like scared children relying on their song to stop the pain, the way that fire stalls the cold. This is the secret of all spirit, why it cannot stay inside, but must be brought from within us into the world. For it is the song from within that keeps the pain of living from snuffing our lives. It is the song from within ignited again and again, that keeps the world going. When we do this for ourselves, we do it for every child not yet born."

    "As night and day takes turns of this massive Earth spinning nowhere, the song we share within takes turns with the catastrophes of living. When we go silent, the age goes dark."

    "Sing, then, in whatever tongue your pain has taught you. Sing, though you have no training and never went to school. Sing, because the cry from all the places you have kept quiet will stall the cold, will soften the danger, will keep the world possible for one more turn…."  Mark Nepo "The Book of Awakening"

    Singing for me means to share your life, to give voice to your experiences and words to your pain.  Singing is being you.  Singing is not silencing your life, but to sing even if you can't carry a tune.  Sing out loud from deep within you.

    Most often the second stage of abuse is forced silence.  We have to stop singing our life…we are controlled by the silence we feel we must keep.

    We are only allowed to sing about things that don't matter and the ones that do, the life altering events, we stifle those words…go mute in fear and shame.  We learn to not talk about our truths…for we were told that it is shameful and we will lose those we 'love'.  So we don't.

    When we dare to speak of the abuse, we get our song back…and we may lose relationships.  But, in my experience, the relationships were based upon my silence and keeping my song inside of me; my truths.

    How can you have a relationship where the truth is left unsung?

    What I feel is the most devasting and long lasting affects of abuse is that our singing voice is silenced.  That we have to bear witness alone without a voice…we become part and party with our fear of singing out loud what happened…and to keep singing until someone hears us.

    In the past 8 years, the way I have been treated as a big adult who began singing, is that you will not find a familiar ear to hear your words.  

    Families of dysfunction are all tone deaf to your words.  They only will hear songs of praise and good memories and will fall deaf when you sing words of abuse.  Oh, they will say they hear you, but they will continue on with their life unchanged.  Like your words passed through their ears without falling into their consciousness.

    What I have come to know is the ability of the human mind…how it can take the least amount of information and weave the most plausible story, or it can in 1 10,000th of a second, disregard what it hears and replace it with what It believes.

    I also believe that it is not our singing voice we fear, but the lack of being heard and for the world to stop spinning in its normal routine.  What I am most perplexed by and even admiral about, is the way most lives will return to back to normal, like nothing happened…with barely a skipped beat.

    What I called life changing and life ending, was just a small blip on their screen.

    It shows to me their controlled minds…and how their beliefs block my song from entering. It is wildly intriguing and at the same time extremely maddening.  It shows live living proof the affects of abuse…an abused mind.

    The greatest feat of our abusers is their ability to convinve our minds to believe something that isn't real.

    And, once they flip our minds out of reality, we then live from this skewed view.

    Imagine if you will, we BELIEVE that our abusers Love us.

    We believe that we did something wrong.

    We believe we did something to be ashamed of.

    All the beliefs are attributes of the abused mind.

    It isn't the fact that we endured the physical act of sexual abuse that leaves us scarred for life, but rather the way our minds has been turned.

    If you were abused and had a loving parent see it for what it was, you would not be left with an abused mind.  

    The abused mind flips around all the facts of the event of abuse and the characters that are involved. Where you take on the traits of the abuser and the abuser becomes innocent.

    In order to flip this around, you literally have to go against your mind and your beliefs and literally stop living life by what your mind says and rely instead upon actions that your eyes can see.  And sing what you see.

    I refused to be swayed by the words that many wanted me to hear to 'explain' their actions away.

    I did not care for words, but relied instead upon actions.

    Imagine if you will how a child is convinced that the perpetrator loves them while forcing them to preform sexual acts. This extreme juxtaposition is made 'right' in your mind.

    When you can finally get right with reality, you are no longer under the affects of abuse…the flipped around mind.

    I sang my truth against the protesting mind…knowing it was my way to being free from the affects of abuse.  My writing and blogging is my song of freedom.



  • Listen to ourself!

    December 28 – Mark Nepo

    "Integrity is the ability to listen to the place inside oneself that doesn't change, even though the life that carries it may change.  Rabbi Jonathon Omer-Man

    "Much of our journey throughout this book has been about discovering that place inside and cultivating the ability to listen to it, while having compassion for the life that carries it."

    "It moves me to share the story of a troubled man who,exhausted from his suffering and confusion, asked a sage for help.  The sage looked deeply into the troubled man and with compassion offered him a choice: "You may have either a map or a boat."

    "After looking at the many pilgrims about him, all of whom seemed equally troubled, the confused man said, "I'll take the boat."

    "The sage kissed him on the forehead and said, "Go then.  You are the boat.  Life is the Sea."

    "As we discovered so many times, we have everything we need within us. This ability to listen inside is our oldest oar. You are the boat." Mark Nepo

     

    We truly are all boats riding along in life….and we steer our boats by what we hear from inside ourselves.  Not only hearing what we feel is right for us, but then the follow through, to point our oars in the right direction.

    I used to be a boat that bobbed along with others pushing and pulling me; I did not have any oars in the water.

    Now, I have strong oars that are connected to my insides.  I can and often stand against the majority for the sake of my self.  This has been 8 years in the making, to use and be confident with this oar.

    In the past, my comfort was to be in a crowd and going along…like bunches of boats tied together floating down the river of life…with the sentiment, there is 'strength' in numbers.  Now, that would panic me. To be tied and bound to other boats; not free to move independently.

    I believe, that in order to have integrity, you have to be free to move.

    Perhaps integrity is freedom…love is freedom.  

    Being able to be yourself no matter the circumstances you find yourself in.

    I used to blend with the circumstance, I was ever changing…now, I am me and it often seems like I am going against the current or what some feel being nice would dictate.

    My integrity now matters more. 

    Having integrity to be me…is the freedom to be who I am…no matter how life flows. There is huge comfort in being comfortable with who I am.  Before I tried to become comfortable with the ever changing outside….now, I get it. 

    If you are comfortable with who you are….you know you can handle what life delivers.  It may not always be comfortable, but you will know how to respond.

    I love that the oldest oar is the ability to listen to ourself!

  • Lives in Now

    "If all I have is Now, where will I look for Joy?" 

    Mark Nepo's, Book of Awakening, December 27th.

    "Without hope for the future, without hope that things will change, with no hope of finding what's been lost, and no hope of restoring the past, with only the risk to crack open all that has hardened about me, what will I do with what I have?"

    "At first,this might seem scary or sad, but as a tired swimmer comes ashore surprised to find pearls washing through his legs, I lift my tired head again and again to find all that I need is right where I am."

    "But, being human, I stray and dream of lives others than my own, and soon I am busy wanting something else, somewhere else, someone else; busy imagining something just out of reach to strive for."

    "It leads me to say if you are unhappy or in pain, nothing will remove these surfaces. But acceptance and a strong heart will crack them like a shell exposing a softness that has always been, exposing a soft thing waiting to take form.  It glows.  I think it is the one spirit we all share."  Mark Nepo

    We are getting to the end of Mark Nepo's book, The Book of Awakening. I read a passage each day, and I commented on many of those that struck me as true in my experience.  He writes not about finding the perfect life, but being perfect with life…

    He also uses nature as a guidepost or reference in knowing how to respond.

    It is our challenge always to find Joy here…and not look ahead or beyond where our breath is.  In this moment of time.  I feel joy in being calm, in relaxing with the tree lights, in writing cards to send to friends…in sipping tea…in being online, wirelessly!

    I like that joy is found right now…joy lives in Now.


  • Flow with Grace

    "Sometimes I go about with pity for myself and all the while Great Winds are carrying me across the sky."  Ojibway Saying

    In Mark Nepo's Book of Awakening, he writes…

    "Our crucial task when in pain or dispair is not to let the sour feelings spill into everything, so that we stain our sense of the world. Yet we must also take care not to so contain our feelings that they fester and infect our sense of ourselves.  Somewhere between the two extremes waits the life of healthy expression, not personalizing everything and not painting the world with our troubles."

    "Our inner work is often most demanding when we are sad and afraid, for we can easily be overwhelmed by the power of these emotions that we can start to believe the world less possible or ourselves diminshed.  Once feeling less than, we stop feeling the truth of what is genuine and start losing touch with the Great Winds of life."

    "Yet, somehow life has a way of carrying us along whether we are aware of it or not. Just as the stream carries both the hungry fish and the sleeping one downstream, the Great Winds carry both the agitated heart and the peaceful one into tomorrow."

    "Thus, the work of prayer, when we feel least like praying, is neither to inflate or deflate the world or ourselves, but to restore our connection to the powerful currents of life."  Mark Nepo

    What I like about this reading is the thought that the Winds of the Universe will carry the hungry and the sleeping, the peaceful and the agitated; all go at the same pace….so, it is up to us how we enjoy the ride or become stressed and worried.

    I was in an online discussion about Burdens and how the native americans hang a burden pouch besides their entry, so you don't enter into their homes heavy laden, and they believe that the only place you bring them is to the Wise Elders.

    It is an interesting idea.  I believe that we each should hang a Burden Pouch on our body, so that we are continually considering what to carry and what to place in the pouch. I decided that the pouch should actually remain empty….for we either can fix/change something or we are being asked to accept it.

    The only burdens we carry are the things we cannot change or have no control over….so, they truly are not ours to carry. 

    I find that when I start to frett, I am usually in someone else's life…I am worrying about another's life and wanting to get involved in something that is not mine to move around.

    In our own lives, you will know immediately if it is something you can change of it it is something that you have to accept.  I believe our burden bags are full of things we prefer not to accept, so we are fighting what is.

    If you do as the old saying goes, The Serenity Prayer…..to change what I can and to know the difference.

    What I believe many carry around their necks is a Pretend Pouch, where they believe they can magically change the very things that cannot be changed, but they are not willing to gracefully accept them…instead they carry around an untrue reality.

    Not sure what is more burdensome, the weight of worry trying to change what is impossible or pretending there is nothing to change?  Both leave you fighting the Great Winds.

    You are not going with the flow of reality.

    It is not easy to accept with grace and own to your soul some things…but once you can master this task, you flow with Grace.