I M Perfect lady

Category: Books

  • Attend to me.

    In the past few days I have been tangled and untangled, in the present and in the past, with my mother and with my boss, young and then old, a child then an adult, feelings from the past trickling into the present, until I feel frozen in unknowing how to be, how to respond etc.

    The overall feelings I have is being neglected and under the rule if you will or under the care of a self absorbed person.

    My brother had me looking into The Presence Process book for a section he was curious about, and ironically or not, it was the words I needed to explain my past few days.

    I was perfectly set up to revisit the environment and the nature of my relationship with my mother, how she acted and how I then felt.

    It was so perfect, that even the home/office was falling apart and when my boss left the office she was replaced with a man who was irresponsible and a risk to be with.

    The choreography of the Universe leaves me shaking my head in awe.

    There is a line in the previous post that I took from the book, “An Unbalanced adult is an unattended child.”

    Looking back at my childhood, if I were to put one word on how I felt, it would be ‘unattended’, and I was given a tour back there via my experiences at work in the past few weeks.

    It’s re-creation was remarkable and my the feelings that surfaced were perfect little time travelers from the past.

    The resemblances between the two women brought to me the exact emotions I needed to feel.

    What kept me silent at work was that I was confused as to what now? I did question my boss about her choice making, and was met with defense, and even the defense was perfectly my mother.

    Each time there would be one more item from the past that completed a perfect picture of the dynamics that create the atmosphere where a child is left to its own devices.

    I could clearly see the shoes my boss stood in and why she made the choices she made, her inner constitution couldn’t take one more day in our office.
    It mattered less to her the kind of individual she left in charge or who was under his care, what mattered most was her rest and her sanity, she fled.

    And like my mother who ran away repeatedly in my childhood and in my teenage years she came back feeling better, not wanting to explain or hear my side.

    Feelings of resentment of her being able to escape and me being left to deal were perfectly felt.

    My mother left my father in charge, who wasn’t really a take charge kinda man, so I had to step up long before my age had this kind of responsibility tools.

    So, not only were we left alone with a pedophile, we are left with me, a unattended child taking care of unattended children.

    In a home that was falling apart or held together on a string, whose cupboards were lacking, mountains of clothes, piles of kids, endless disasters looming.

    As I sit here today, I am still silent and feeling.

    I know that the messenger/boss was delivering my past, that I am to feel my feelings releasing this fear of being unattended, and attend to me.

    What I love the most is that at the end of the day it is now my honor to attend to me.

    I am not stuck in the office, I am no longer a child, there are not children who are in vital need of care, I am not little girl who is unable to defend herself, it is not my worry if the furnace breaks or the water pipes freeze etc.

    I am able to witness and now see the scene before me and not feel that I am responsible and unattended.

    I am grateful for the set up for my boss playing the messenger, and for me being released from the fear of being left unattended.

    Unattended.

    Oh the ways I want to care for the unattended little girl in me…

    I will attend to me.

  • Dismissing the Messenger.

    In Michael Brown’s book The Presence Process, he speaks of dismissing the messenger.

    “The first step is to acknowledge that the person or event setting us up has nothing to do with what is actually happening; they are just “the messenger” (Mess-ender). They are reflecting a memory that is surfacing from our unintegrated past. It is pointless to “shoot the messenger” because the Universe has an unlimited supply of them! So the first step in the emotional cleansing process is to dismiss the messenger. Internally, we can thank them for their great service and let them be on their way. In other words, instead of reacting to and venting at them we can say, “I could use a little time alone right now.” In the beginning, this step of gracefully side-stepping our urge to react may require courage and powerful self control because it requires breaking our life-long habit of knee-jerking into drama.”

    Step two Get the Message. The second step is to not automatically resort to our predictable yet unconscious physical, mental and emotional drama, but instead get the message. We have practiced this too. To accomplish this, we turn our attention inward by describing to ourselves the nature of our emotional reaction we experienced from being set up. We find one word that captures our emotional reaction. We say out loud to ourselves, “I feel angry. I feel sad. I feel hurt. I feel alone. I feel….” We keep searching in this way until we find the word that resonates, physically with our emotional reaction. If we are angry, our face may flush, or our hands may buzz, or we may feel a downward movement in our solar plexus. Once we have accessed the word that describes reaction that the set up has triggered within us, then we have completed step two.

    Step three: Feel it. Instead of externalizing what is occurring to us by resorting to blame, we must now consciously internalize the experience. We must feel it. We have practiced this step as well. This particular step is a remarkable part of this whole procedure because instead of projecting our emotions out into the world as we normally did when we got set up in the past, we are now choosing to internalize and thus contain the experience. This is not to be confused with the act of suppressing our experiences. Our conscious choice is to internalize the setup so that we can learn from it is not suppression: it is discovery. It is also called “containment.” Suppression is the act of pretending it did not happen. Our choice to now be present with whatever upsets us enables us to realize that we can physically feel within our body what we initially thought was happening “out there”. So whatever the emotion is that we have successfully named is what we must allow ourselves to feel without censorship or judgment. In essence, what the messenger (mess-ender) has done, or has been attempting to do, depending on how many times we have been triggered by this same event is to bring to our attention the fact that we have an internal blockage that we resist feeling our way through.

    Step four: Come Pass On. Once we feel this emotional blockage as a physical sensation within our own body, we are ready to transmute it with “divine alchemy” by moving it out of our body by applying the power of our compassionate Presence. We have already prepared ourselves for this step as well. Take a careful look at the word “compassion.” Phonetically and visually it reveals itself as “come pass on”. Compassion throughout The Presence Process means: You can come to me and I will let you pass on without interference (entering fear) or judgment (agenda).

    At this point in the procedure we might justifiably exclaim, “oh come on! Here we are feeling angry, our hands buzzing, and our solar plexus all tightened up, and now we are suddenly expected to switch to compassion? Get real!”

    Getting ‘real’ is exactly what we must intend. Activating compassion when we are in the midst of an emotional reaction involves inclusion of our child
    self. To accomplish this, it is important to remind ourselves that the emotional reaction that was triggered within us by the messenger has nothing to do with our present adult life. It is a cry from our child self. It is an echo from the past calling for our attention because only our attention can restore real balance to the quality of all our experiences. We choose to respond to what we are experiencing emotionally therefore by closing our eyes and picturing our child self feeling exactly the same way we are as a consequence of being set up by the messenger. We have already practiced this too. By metaphorically embracing our child self, we automatically activate compassion. We are saying, “you can come to me, and I will love you unconditionally until what frightens you, making you angry, or making you sad passes.”

    When we become sincere in approaching our child self, our chest will automatically start to well up with the emotion that we have resisted
    feeling for so long. This suppressed emotion will surface in waves and dissolve into tears. We will feel the energy moving up and from our solar
    plexus, through our chest area, into and through our throat and eventually out of our body. Often we may even have the sensation of heat literally
    peeling off our body.

    Once this experience of release subsides, we will enter a sense of relief and peace. Through consistent application of The Emotional Cleansing Process, we will discover that the messenger that had repeatedly triggered us over and over again will not return. Why should it when we have consciously received the message? Sometimes, it will take going through this emotional cleansing procedure two and three times over a couple of days or weeks to restore balance to a particular experience. With devotion and commitment, balance will be restored. The more diligently we apply The Emotional Cleansing Process, the more proficient we become at wielding it and subsequently the more efficient it becomes. So the new pathway of learned responsible behavior is:
    Dismiss the messenger – get the message – feel it – com pass on.

    We can apply this technique to solve disagreements, to heal physical ailments, and to integrate any situation of conflict and confusion arising in our life. Every time we apply it, we will be equally astounded by the realization that we can transform the quality of any experience “out there” by moving consciously inot ourselves and compassionately making the internal adjustment. This technique confirms, without a doubt, reflection of our internal emotional condition. It proves that making peace has nothing to do with the other party. It shows us that an unbalanced adult is an unattended child. It also reveals that tears detoxify the Soul and that compassion is the key to reopening the doorway of our heart.”

    Michael Brown

  • Who has Control?

    My expectations of the New Year aren’t about the New Year but rather about me.

    The New Year is neutral, a pile of days linked together, and many hours in which we live our lives.

    What we do within those hours is how our year will unfold, or more importantly how we will emerge on the other end.

    I went back on my blog and read some of my entries in January 2010, the beginning of my first 60-day Yoga challenge.

    It was incredible to read about the beginnings of my year doing yoga.

    Below is a section I quoted from Bikram’s book, and it shows the reality of what we are up against when we strive to make changes in our lives, what we are battling is gaining control over the mind.

    “Without control of mind, you can do nothing. You have something, but you don’t know how to use it. The greatest challenge we face as human beings is controlling and properly using our own minds.

    The mind is the communications system between the physical body and the Soul or Spirit; its primary responsibilities are to control the body and supply the Spirit with immediate and exact information. When the mind instead gives distracted and wrong information, the Spirit cannot govern properly – in fact, it cannot assume control at all. The ego-driven mind has had to rule for itself, and now it does not want to give up its ultimate authority over your life. This is a bitter, perverse fact about human beings, but it is the truth.

    Without proper training, the mind will continue to give you the wrong information and divert your focus from your Spiritual goals. The way it does that so successfully is with fear and desire – its primary weapons. Like a drug dealer, the mind gets addicted to these two opposite but conjoined emotions, and when we are constantly reacting to our attractions and aversions to people, things and situations, we can’t see what really is and reopen the channels of our true Self, the Spirit. That’s why I say that the mind has become our worst enemy.

    To overcome this will not be easy. The weak mind is ever growing, constantly feeding on your fears and negative habits. And as my Guru taught me, the natural human attraction to something negative is NINE TIMES more powerful than our gravitational pull to toward the positive- another inconvenient fact.”
    Bikram

    So if you are endeavoring to make changes in your life this upcoming year, please take note, that what you will be going against is a very powerful pull, 9 times stronger than your thought of change.

    Say your desire is to stop eating sweets; you will have the power to eat sweets 9 times stronger.

    And if your desire is to exercise or do yoga each day, you will be fighting a powerful pull 9 times stronger to stay in bed, lay on the couch, and do nothing.

    What I am most impressed with as I look back upon my year of doing yoga (332 out of the 365) is the sheer effort was exerted in getting to the mat.
    Even though the actual 90 minutes of yoga is rough, it is nothing compared to the struggle to begin.

    The real battle is not in the actual doing; it is in the seconds or minutes prior to the event.

    The fight ensues in the actual debate about whether you are going to abstain or succumb.

    To do or not to do is the where the war is fought.

    It isn’t about the sweets, the beer or the exercise; it is about the seconds of power right before, the space before doing or not doing.

    It is on that edge of time, that second where your life is determined, who has control?

  • Confines of a Well

    There seems to be two perceptions.

    The Perceptions with choices and the perception of no choices or the perceptions of freedom or the perceptions of limited and no choice.

    And depending upon which land you occupy you will have a life that reflects that.

    I lived in both places. The first being the dark narrow hole of perception that I was frozen in, where I had to do what others wanted of me, where my life was led by the wishes of others, I had no free will of my own.

    We can call it a victim hole, and its perception is very one way, or co-dependent, where the quality of my life depended upon another.

    The perception in that land was very limited and the quality of life was at the mercy of another’s good will.

    It was from that darkness I fell out of onto the land of wide open expanse and freedom, where my strings to others were untied, where I was able to walk freely and express myself freely, where the victim chains that held me in place fell free.

    It was equal to walking out of Plato’s cave or the story in Sogyal Rinpoche’s book The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, about the frog who climbed out of the well to see the ocean.

    It is like your constraints and perceptions shatter into a million fragments, where you now have access to an unlimited choice.

    There is no common ground between the two worlds.

    I feel that I lived in a place where my boxes of choices were not available to me.
    It seems incredible to me now that I didn’t have access to my own box of choices that I waited for someone to tell me what to do.

    Imagine the difference of perceptions to having access to your own choices or not.
    Living, as a prisoner in your own life is pure hell, its living in a dark well and not knowing what freedom exists outside.

    So while I agree perceptions are a choice, it is way hard to phantom that inside the well.

    If you disagree that perceptions are a choice perhaps you best look around where you are living and see who holds your box of choices.

    You will either find the freedom of the ocean or the confines of a well.

  • Perception is a choice.

    Chapter nine, Perception is a choice, from “You are What you Love,” by Vaishali

    Perception is the magic carpet that either elevates us into Heaven or plummets us into hell. Perception is how we behold the divine in everything and everyone, or how the relentlessly tight grasp of hell demolishes us. Perception is a gift of free will from Heaven. Where we focus our attention determines whether we freely return perception to its rightful place, Heaven, or whether we surrender it to hell. We choose on a moment–to-moment basis.

    We do not choose according to our experiences or what our parents may have taught us. Nor do we choose according to how much money we have. We choose according to our Ruling Love, because it is our Ruling Love that creates our experiences. It is what we are giving our attention to that determines the outcome of what we have learned here. It is what we do with our love that is our true wealth, security, and happiness.

    To illustrate the power of perception, consider the story of two children who grew up with alcoholic parents. One child grew up to be a teetotaler. The other child grew up to be an alcoholic. When asked why they chose the path that they did, they both gave the same response, “With parents like that, what else could I be?”

    Dr. Phil McGraw, on his television program, The Dr. Phil Show, uses and interesting technique while working with a guest. He directly addresses the person’s perception of self. Dr. Phil will walk the person through a complete examination of their perception. One of his guests was re-creating great turmoil within the family due to the deliberate, insensitive overspending of the family’s financial resources. Dr. Phil walked this person through her perceptual trap. He explained to her that when she is driving around, and it hits her to go to the mall and shop, she should stop and shift perception instead to something more life-sustaining, such as spending time with her kids and spouse, or going to the gym and doing something nice for her body. Dr. Phil explains that each person has sovereignty over his/her perception. So if life, relationships or anything else is not working for you, then you and only you can shift your perception to something that does work.

    All of our suffering is held together by our perception or mis-perception of self and what is. Right relationship with perception is an inner event. It happens in the Heart, not the head. Right relationship with perception has nothing to do with the body’s physical visual ability. Perception based on what we think and believe, based on mind the projections of mind we are here to get over, is the basis of mis-perception or polluted thinking. Unrealized waves are coming from the head and not the Heart, so the perception of self and what is becomes highly distorted and extremely limited. All unrealized waves perceive no hope, no possibility for growth, no good faith in life and love in their story about what is.

    Once again, that is why the third rock from the Sun is here, so that we can as spiritual creatures have a place to come to practice right relationship with perception. This is the place in the universe to come and practice realizing what you are dong with your attention, because this is where we feel it. Having to feel the quality of our perceptions is the lesson we came here for. Most of us re-create very confining perceptual stories that keep us living narrow and severely restricted lives, compared to our potential as God conscious made manifest. Most of us live our perceptual lives within “the box” of duality. Perception is like a stamped envelope. We could perceptually live on the envelope that has the potential to go anywhere at anytime. But instead we choose perceptually to live on the stamp, and we let the “stamped perception” define our value, power and worth and tell us where we can do and when. How does one free oneself from the limiting perception that one is not even aware is holding them hostage?

    The following is a delightful story about an old frog who lived in a dark well, who is visited by an old frog who lived in the ocean. This story is from Sogyal Rinpoche’s book The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying?

    “Where do you come from?” asked the frog in the well.
    “From the great ocean,” he replied.
    “How big is your ocean?”
    “It’s gigantic.”
    “You mean about a quarter of the size of my well here?”
    “Bigger.”
    “Bigger? You mean half as big?”
    “No, even bigger.”
    “Is it…as big as this well?”
    “There is no comparison.”
    “That is impossible! I’ve got to see this for myself.”

    They set off together. When the frog from the well saw the ocean, it was such a shock that his head just exploded into pieces.

    We are just like the old well frog. We are so familiar with living in the dark hole of our perceptions – that we are the body, money, experiences, thoughts, and emotions, all things limited – that when confronted with the truth that we are in fact love, that we are in fact God consciousness realizing itself, our head just explodes into a million pieces.

    The good news is that it is not up to the government, it is not up to large corporations, it is not up to your family or co-workers to create a life worth living from the power of right relationship with perception. It is up to you. No one can eat for you. No one can sleep for you. No one can breathe for you. And no one can watch your mind for you. No one else can shift your perception from temporal to eternal, from lies to truth, except you. You re-created all your limiting perceptions. Therefore only you can create an end these limitations. It is up to you, and what you are freely giving your attention to on a moment-to-moment basis. No matter where you go or what you do, you cannot escape the truth: you are what you love and you love whatever you are giving your attention to.

    Perception is as unique and imaginative as whatever you are giving your attention to and choose to love. You cannot change your life for the better without changing your outdated illusions. You cannot change your outdated illusions without changing what you are giving your attention to. Perception…Change…Growth. They are all perceptual choices. The illusory perception tree produces only illusory fruit. You will find nothing life-sustaining there, only the un-ripe fruit of greater disappointment.

    We have all experienced the magical healing qualities of perception. Everyone has met someone for the first time that initially did not appear very attractive. However, over time you see and share their Ruling Love, and you grow to deeply love the person as authentically beautiful. Historically speaking Quasimodo and the elephant-man were perfect examples of this.

    You also know the opposite. You meet someone who appears in the temporal world to be very attractive. But over time you see their Ruling Love. They are strongly loyal to hell and inflicting pain. When this happens, the initial illusory perception falls away and the other person is then seen for the true ugliness that they give their attention to. It is then that we honestly perceive the deformed nature of the other. It is the Ruling Love of each wave that ultimately determines our perception of ugly or beauty in ourselves and everything and everyone around us.

    You are your perception. Not just physically or mentally, but emotionally as well as metaphorically. The ultimate goal of all self-witnessing, and the purpose behind all of the created reality is to master clear perception. Divine intelligence has given us all free will in our use of perception. You choose your perception and you are One with your choice. Due to the divine law that you are what you love and you love whatever you are giving your attention to, everything in this world is going to continue to go out of its way to keep you honest about what you are doing with your love. Contemplate this the next time your perception informs you that you have no value, power or worth. Not exactly a program you want repeated on the “inner syndicated” airwaves.

    To establish right divine relationship with perception, look back to Swedenborg. When he was alive, people would ask him, “What do you do to be such an actualized person?” Swedenborg would tell them, “It has nothing to do with doing. It is not a doing thing.” It is a remembering to give attention to truth, and forget everything else, it is a perceptual thing.

    To Be or Not to Be in the Present moment.

    The world at large values, even worships doing. The world perceives doing as the highest purpose of all created life. We reflect that perception back to ourselves in our language. We ask children, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” The first bit of information we get from people we meet for the first time is, “What do you do for a living?” We have a bad habit of measuring our happiness by what we can and cannot do. We perceive advancing age with great fear of all the things we may lose the ability to do. We as individuals, as a nation, as a planet, loving giving endless attention to doing and the value of doing. Anyone who has ever spent more than five minutes in America knows that American worships productivity. In America if you do not work unrealistically hard at doing something, if you are not producing, you are dead weight. Goals and quotas are the name of the game, and your worth is only as good as the last thing you produced.

    Being Simple – Simple Being. – Argisle

    The Eastern perception of mind, Ayurvedic psychology and Taoism, suggests a completely different perception on doing. These masters suggest that being is a higher state of mind than doing. Being in the present moment with an open Heart is the very purpose and nature of mind dreaming itself in a material arena. We are human beings not human doings. Nothing will ultimately work for us until we surrender to being here now. These ancient philosophies indicated that there is a way to stop all the problems and limitations, struggles and suffering. There is a way to simply end these in our lives. There is a way to create a final resolution to the on-going drama. How? To be. The instant we are willing to be with what is in the present moment, we are in a the feeling place, the Heart, not the doing place, the head. This is a self-corrective place, the place where the human and the divine become One.

    Ayurveda and Taoism warn us that all of the most menacing acts against life and love happen in the name of defending what we think and believe, and in the name of doing. Why did Hitler do what he did? To become the next world leader, of course. Why did Charles Manson do what he did? To lead what he thought and believed was the next Cultural Revolution. Why do large corporations squeeze the lifeblood out of their employees, and then fire them when their bodies can’t keep up with the pressure? Why do they replace these loyal workers with someone half their age at half the salary? It is done in the name of productivity – becoming more work efficient and cost effective. That is all that matters. It is truly an ugly attack on equability. This vicious cycle of ignorance and pain will unendingly feed upon itself until doing perception is broken.

    We have discussed at length the disease of duality. This disease infects our perception. Once the disease enters mind through the doorway of perception, it then immediately infects the frontal lobe with deep loyalty to subject/object orientation. I am over here- the subject. And everything not me is the object. A wave must be giving attention to duality; it must love subject/object in order to develop such a strong and abiding love for doing. In order to do there must be a you to start the action, and an object in order to for the doing action to become complete. If there is no subject/object, no duality, there would be no love for doing or doing to become. Instead everything would simply be about being here now.

    No wave can serve two masters. A wave cannot be giving attention to being and doing at the same time. The Eastern studies of mind say that being is One with eternal consciousness. Doing is one with the ego. The ego wants, needs to do. Without doing how could the ego tyrannize you with not good enough, and did not do it right? Doing is how we define our value, power and worth. Doing is the camouflage we wear to distract us from how we are treating other people. After all, isn’t getting the job done more important than how we treat others and ourselves in the process? Doing is the doorway to hell that comparison and judgment charge right through. We have trained the ego that we will rely on doing to define our identity. The ego will decide according to when and how the doing gets done what value, power and worth we are allowed to accept, if any. Doing gets more attention than sex. There is something just not right about that.

    Doing to become is our very most beloved demon of destruction. If the purpose of life were doing to become, then every workaholic in history of mankind would have reached enlightenment by now. But as we have all noticed, it does not happen that way. No one could produce enough temporal anything to evolve their way into an eternal place like Heaven. We did not come here to do things in our mind. We came here to be with our mind. We did not come here to do things to our relationships. We came here to be with our relationships. It is in being with what is in the present moment with an open Heart that true enlightenment is realized. Jesus did not come to the planet to model doing for us. He came here to model being with what is in the present moment with an open Heart. He came here to model an inner space of complete innocence form any thought or belief.

    In the life of the historic Buddha, when he left home, he scaled the walls of the palace leaving behind his wife, children and his parents, the King and Queen. The Buddha set forth upon a path of full awakening. The journey he set upon had nothing to do with doing. That is what he left behind. That is the false king he would not serve. This is the first thing he separated from his attention. The Buddha’s path was bout being fully awake, not doing to become fully awake. The famous Tibetan Buddhist master Sogyal Rinpoche says it like this, “When you realize the nature of the mind, layers of confusion peel away. You don’t actually ‘become’ a Buddha, you simply cease, slowly to be deluded.

  • Brand New

    As I sit here today 52 years on the planet, I see one huge pivotal moment, a second birth, mixed in with little life changing decisions. It is like a before and after life.

    While only one lifetime for me has passed, I feel like I have had two births.

    The first is the arrival on the planet, landing in the home of my parents, being raised by them and their beliefs, ingesting all unquestionably growing into a carbon copy of my mother.

    The carbon copy was torn to shreds when I discovered that beneath the surface of things, our family had a river of abuse running through it.

    My second birth was to find my self standing over her head in a life that she was unaware lived parallel to hers. While drowning in my old life, I gave birth to a new one.

    I was born onto me.

    A big grown lady feeling like a newborn inside, it was like I had arrived on the planet again, but this time with eyes wide open.

    My new discerning eyes, and the astute feelings my body carried, I led me into a new life while completing the old one.

    Sadly or maybe gratefully nothing from my first 46 years survived the transition, my insides were totally transformed.

    What Vaishali writes in “You are What you Love” is that we can live life from the mind or from the Heart.

    My first life was all mind driven, brainwashed and unconsciously walked, like a robot I carefully followed the trail that my mother walked, to a T.

    You can see evidence in all areas of my life, where my mind was the master of me.

    Vaishali writes that the mind keeps repeating itself for us to realize it, to see it, to see our mind working or playing itself out in front of us.

    Self-Realized is to see yourself and who is leading the charge, who has control over your life?

    Mind or Heart?

    While living life purely from the mind for the first 46 years, I was totally disconnected from the heart and feelings that my body felt.

    I lived as a head.

    My thoughts and beliefs led the way, thoughts and beliefs that had been given to me like second, third or forth hand me downs, generations of ladies in my past lived as me.

    To awaken to a life outside of the mind was to literally go out of your mind, a mental breakdown.

    My second birth was to begin living life backwards to unearth all the places where the mind had things incorrect, to discover the truths and expose the lies.

    The life review of sorts was taking place and it birthed the new me.

    Each segment of lies brought forth a new segment of me; an aspect of me was freed from my mind.

    Six years have passed since I went out of my mind and into my heart, six years of living life from the inside out.

    I am so grateful for the opportunity I had to explore the madness of mind, to see the shallowness and the narrow path it leads, its dark hallways of fear and denial, frozen areas of brainwashing.

    What a journey to be wide-awake while totally out of your mind.

    Very frightening at first to see the mad puppeteer, the mind pulling the strings of your life, to see in each relationship and task, my old response, yet so very thrilling to make a new Heart felt response.

    So, while the calendar says that I am 52 today, I am in heart years, only six.

    I feel I have lived more the last six than in the first 46.

    I am living my life, not repeating life as the generations before me.

    I have no clue where I am going, what will be asked, what direction we are leaning towards, for the heart doesn’t repeat itself or re-create the same cycle, the heart life is open, free, expansive, bold, creating, and unknown.

    The good news is that I don’t have to fit into anyone else’s life and their hand me downs, I get to live brand new.

  • You are What you Love.

    “Don’t just make up your mind, make up your heart” Argisle

    I am reading a book, “You are What you Love” by Vaishali, and it is interesting to read that we have two choices, listening to our minds or listening to our Hearts.

    And what you are listening to you love.

    Page 42, Chapter Ultimate Truth & Ultimate Lies.

    “The ego will always direct us towards the limited outcome just like we trained it to do. These ego-based stories, conclusions, thoughts and beliefs are now charged with the energy of our attention, which makes them the wound in the wave. The use of awareness that makes this impression or mark on the psyche is an incomplete action. In Hinduism and Buddhism, incomplete action, or incomplete cause and effect, is called karma.

    We can visualize the impressions as a kind of karmic map of mind. If we want to know our biggest nastiest karma, just look at what our biggest nastiest belief is about ourselves, about life, about relationships, about others and we’ve hit pay dirt. The ego is a lot like CNN but without commercials. If you watch your mind, your wave, it will parade in front of you all the news you have trained it to program and air over and over and over again, ad nausea.

    There is a relationship between unconscious and accumulating karma, and being conscious and burning off karma. It all depends upon what you are doing with your awareness. Let us approach understanding what happens when we are unconscious as the accumulation of incomplete cause and effects. When we are unconscious, we are not in the present moment, we are not accepting what is from an open Heart. When we are unconscious, we are listening to the ego’s limited, tiny version of reality from the head place. This is not what we came her to do with our will, love, service, and life purpose. It is therefore and incomplete action.

    When we are conscious we are in the present moment with what is from an open Heart. When we are conscious it is the Flame of Pure Awareness, the Heartfelt wisdom from the feeling place within, that observes with gratitude the perfection of every given moment. Since this level of conscious practice is the highest function behind the design and creation of the physical world, it is what we came here to do. It is therefore a complete action. Witnessing what is from the Heart is the conscious action that burns off negative and incomplete karma, which accumulates when we listen to the ego from the head.

    Incomplete action or duality happening within the wave would look like this: I give my attention to thoughts and beliefs about who and what I am; I give my attention to thoughts and beliefs about who others are, what life and relationships are; I understand myself, life, world and value system through the deeply trained habit of seeing everything from the subject/object perspective. This would appear internally as an inner dialogue that sounds like, “I am a successful attorney, superior to the dregs I squash in court. My power is that I command respect and am a force to be reckoned with in the courtroom, even though I respect no one other than myself. I drive a sixty foot long Mercedes and I live in a multi-million dollar mansion, in case you are interested in seeing my value and worth measured against yours. This behavior and these possessions make the appropriate statements about my obvious superiority and importance.” The dialog could run in the reverse direction, “I am a lowly piece of shit that no one could possibly love or respect.”

    With incomplete action, a person’s awareness goes out into the exterior world and touches an object: another person, house, care, whatever. Incomplete action occurs when the awareness coming back to the person tells them that whatever they perceive is exactly what they think and believe it is. No one came her to listen to the ego’s version of reality; that is an incomplete action. In doing so, we re-create a story of duality; another person with so much power and worth, who in turn affects my sense of power and worth. It is all cause and effect: thoughts and beliefs, which re-creates more limitations. It just keeps spiraling downwards until it is out of control.

    Action is incomplete because it is not witnessed by the aspect of mind we recognize as the Flame of Pure Awareness. The action was witnessed instead by the ego, by the disease of duality. So when action is witnessed, by the disease we are here to get over, it fragments the mind. It creates more duality, which in turn drives every known and unknown disease and limitation even deeper into the wave. We’ve created our own personal hell.

    The action needs to be witnessed by the aspect of mind that has the inherent power to return our mind to a state of wholeness, beyond the illusory grasp of duality, which fragments mind into tiny pieces. This action can only occur when we give our awareness to eternal consciousness for solving our eternal problems, without a thought or belief, because that is an action we came to the rock to complete. That is the sole action that makes the Flame of Pure Awareness the senior witnessing force in our lives.

    The action is made complete only when awareness going out into the exterior world touches something, and the awareness coming back to the person is then run through the Flame of Pure Awareness in the Heart, not through the ego-head filter. The Flame of Pure Awareness keeps the person in witnessing mode. Without it, we would fall immediately back into the limitation of what we think and believe life and self are. The Flame of Pure Awareness is beyond duality intelligence, beyond subject/object orientation. It is in unifying, indivisible quality of authentic intelligence, which reveals, recognizes, and realizes the interior through the process of witnessing it in the exterior.

    The Flame of Pure Awareness is the intelligence that sees and gets real about how the mind is organized by witnessing itself reflected back in the medium of the physical world. “This is what Jesus means when he refers to “those who have eyes to see;” those who see not illusion, but rather the movement of realized love, movement of the One everywhere.

    When awareness realizes itself, it is purified, and that is the action we came here to complete. When mind becomes self-realizing the action is complete. The purpose of all created life, the purpose of a physical world is for self-realization. It is to fully realize we are what we love, and we love whatever we are giving our attention to. Once we realize what we are doing with our love, manifesting either Heaven or hell on a moment to moment basis, then the action is complete. The purpose of being here is realized.

    When the mind realizes it is looking at itself, the seeds of karma become purified, or roasted by the Flame of Pure Awareness. Then, no karma sprouts up and grows from this action. The action is complete because we go from what it came here to realize. Karma is repeating whatever you need to, until you get it. In future chapters we will refer to karma of an incomplete action as re-creation. Anything born from a limited intelligence, such as the ego, will only have the capacity to re-create what is already here, which is itself limiting. Only healthy God consciousness is unlimited and can therefore create something new, manifest something from nothing. We all came here to create a new response to ultimate lies, to end the limitations we are all here to get over. Eternal consciousness has the power to create a new response to any old or new problem. The ego on the other hand, can only re-create over and over again. It cannot create something new. It is a limited form of consciousness. What do you want from it? If the ego is providing answers to all of your eternal problems, there is only one possible outcome for you. Look up the word futile in the dictionary, if you have not already guessed what that outcome will be.

    Understand what this whole shootin’ match was created for the convenience of your enlightenment. As God consciousness, as eternal consciousness, if there were a better faster way to reach enlightenment, you’d be doing it. You’d already be there. If you do not understand that everything you are experiencing here is the exact, perfect reflection of the relationship you have with your own mind, then you will be destined to re-creating what you think and what you believe it is. That would be re-creating the limitation you are here to get over. This will continue until you realize that what you are looking at is your own mind, and then choose to move on from that place of truth.”

    Vaishali

  • Learning Life by Soul

    Here is another section of Kim Rosen’s book, “Saved by a Poem” that I loved.

    “Have you ever had the experience of a friendship or a romance where it seemed like life had finally brought you the perfect person, whose tastes and beliefs and dreams matched yours, whom you were so connected with that you didn’t even have to speak? And then, after a month or three of this Eden, you inevitably began to realize your differences. It turned out that when it came right down to it, he didn’t actually share the same beliefs as you, and what matter most to you made him very nervous. Maybe she seemed to like your kind of music in the beginning, but later admitted it gave her the creeps. Suddenly one morning you wake up, look your beloved in the face and say, “Who are you? You weren’t like this when we fell in love!”

    At this point, the difference is sometimes too great to survive. You separate from each other. Or you deaden the aliveness of the relationship, relegating your togetherness to what small corner of the connection does not rock the boat.

    If you hand in there without fleeing or numbing your heart you may discover more about who you really are than you ever imagined. Your beliefs may be shaken and your masks may crumble. You might discover a connection with your partner that is not contingent on harmony and agreement.

    The same is true of a relationship with a poem. If you are willing to get curious about what is triggering your judgments instead of abandoning the poem or changing it to fit your comfort zone, you may find that the very lines that give you trouble hold the key to undiscovered layers of your own nature.

    Gina’s favorite poem was from Rilke’s Book of Hours. She carried it on a tattered index card in her purse and often pulled it out to read to friends. She was excited about deepening her relationship with it and came to my workshop with the intention of doing so.

    But as she began the process, she balked. Suddenly she decided she didn’t like the poem anymore. Another poem, Robert Frost’s “West-running Brook,” got very attractive to her. “The whole song of that poem is rushing through me,” she said. “I can’t concentrate on the Rilke.” She felt torn, drawn to the Frost poem but trapped by her commitment to the Rilke, even though she was no longer in love with it.

    She could have been describing a romantic struggle. She admitted that this feeling of being torn was a familiar refrain in her life, played out again and again in her relationships with men: as soon as the time came to do the work of going deeper, someone else showed up who became very compelling.

    I asked Gina where she was stuck in the Rilke poem. She pointed to the lines “Each thing -/ each stone, blossom, child-/ is held in place.”

    “Was that your experience as a child?” I asked.

    “No. I didn’t feel held. Each stone, blossom, child is not held in place,” she whimpered. “The poem is lying!” She and I both knew this was a deeply buried voice, drawn to surface by the poem.

    “Why did you originally love this poem?” I asked her.
    “Because I so long to be held like that. I long for that feeling of being safe on earth. But right now, I don’t believe in it.” She was choking back sobs. “I was so alone as a child. My great uncle abused me and nobody knew. I felt like I was living behind an invisible shield. My mom didn’t notice because she was so self-involved and distracted. I ended up taking care of her, hoping I could make her strong enough to take care of me.”

    Gina was rocking back and forth, her own arms wrapped tightly around her.

    “To really make this poem your own,” I said to her, “you may need to let yourself go through these feelings. Are you willing?”

    Reluctantly Gina began to repeat the line over and over. At first we could barely hear her. But as she allowed the waves of pain to come to surface, her voice became stronger.

    “It’s true, I have such a longing to be ‘held in place’ by something bigger than me,” she whispered. “I want to know what Rilke felt when he wrote this line.”

    “So I invite you to be ‘held in place’ by your commitment to this poem. Don’t get distracted like your mother did. Don’t go off to another poem. Hold yourself right here, as a healing to the unheld one within you.”

    Even through her tears, Gina knew that this poem was the exact medicine she needed to heal the heartbroken child who was so disillusioned by what had happened to her. She had unconsciously prescribed it for herself. Now it was drawing out a trauma that had been buried since she was very young. And even as this poem opened Gina’s wound, it gave her the perfect balm to heal it.

    Kim Rosen

    The line I love is I ended up taking care of her, hoping I could make her strong enough to take care of me.

    This is the ditch that most abused victims fall into, where they are diligently caring for people in order for them to eventually become strong enough to take care of us, become our heroes, bring us the love we know is there IF only they were strong enough to show it.

    Imagine the little one trying to take care of the adult, while the child needs to be held in place by someone bigger.

    The world is a scary place where you the child is the caretaker.

    Love this book….

    She speaks of the poems first settling in the mind being memorized, then moving into the heart and then unearthing feelings deep within, speaking the soul’s language.

    During my journey I too felt that I would get things first in my head, then my heart would recognize it, and then finally my soul resounded in knowing.

    She calls this knowing them by heart.

    I feel I am knowing life by soul.

  • The Journey….

    In Kim Rosen’s book, “Saved by a Poem” she writes,

    “ I discovered how the separating lines of culture and age can dissolve in the presence of a poem the first time I went to Africa. In Kenya, at the Tasaru Ntomonok Rescue Centre for Girls in the Rift Valley, I unexpectedly found myself speaking a poem to a group of Maasai girls, only a few hours after I met them. I had long wanted to visit this miraculous place, ever since it was opened by Eve Ensler and her organization V-Day in collaboration with Agnes Pareyio, a Maasai woman who dedicates her life to stopping the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). Tasaru, also called the V-Day Safe House, was created as a haven for girls escaping FGM. Fifty or so girls live at the house at any given time. Each has had to leave her family and community. Many have traveled alone for miles, barefoot over rough roads, spending nights hiding under the bushes for fear of being found by wild animals.
    My first few hours there were awkward. My shyness kept me from striking up conversations with the girls, most of whom though they understood English, did not speak it willingly. They were shy with me too, keeping their distance and watching me in twos and threes, whispering in Maa (the language of the Maasai) and giggling.

    Finally I decided to go over to the kitchen, where I heard a lively singing as a group cooked ugali (Porridge made of cornmeal) and cabbage over an open fire. I listened outside as the last song dissolved into gales of laughter and a cacophony of exclamations in Maa. But the chatter instantly hushed when I walked in. A tall girl who spoke excellent English came up to me and stood directly in front of me: “Do you remember my name?”

    I didn’t. I had been introduced to about 20 girls in the last couple of hours and could not for the life of me remember which beautiful Maasai face went with which name.
    “Salula?” I asked sheepishly, grabbing the only name I remembered. “No!” The girls shrieked with laughter at what must have been a big mistake on my part. “That is Salula!” They pointed at one of the youngest girls, who had arrived at the Safe House only months before at the age of 9, having been rescued in the midst of a forced marriage to a 42 year-old man.

    “I am Jecinta.” The tall girl spoke to me with exaggerated patience, as if to a two year old. “Do you know any songs?” Clearly she was giving me an opportunity to redeem myself.

    “I know some songs,” I said. “But what I really love most is poetry.”
    “I write poems.” An older girl with exquisitely chiseled features and piercing eyes was looking at me intently from behind a huge cauldron of steaming cabbage. She was dressed with more sophistication that the others, wearing a tight sleeveless shirt and matching short skirt that made her look more woman than girl. I noticed her gold necklace and earrings as they glinted in the light of the cooking fire.

    “Do you know any of them by heart? Can you recite any of them here?” I asked.

    “I am too shy to do that.” Her beautiful accent made even this simple statement sound like poetry. “I cannot.”

    “May I recite a poem to you?” I asked her. “Then maybe after you will want to recite yours to me.”

    She nodded. Suddenly I panicked. What poem might these girls relate to? I pored through the archive in my mind. Not one seemed remotely appropriate. Their life experience was so different from mine.

    The kitchen became strangely silent. The clatter of washing and cooking had ceased. The whispering and giggling that had been a constant soundtrack in the background was quiet. All the girls stopped their work and were waiting for my poem.
    Out of nowhere “The Journey” by Mary Oliver, a poem I hadn’t thought of in months, burst to mind. Without even taking the time to run through it silently to see if it was appropriate, I began speaking: “One day you finally knew / what you had to do.”

    The poem is about leaving home, turning away from the many voices that demand that you stay, risking the anguish of those who need and love you, and walking alone into a wild night in order to save “the only life you can save.” The girls listened, transfixed. Each of them had lived through such a turning point. Each of them, at a very young age, had defied tribal tradition and left her parents, friends, and community to save her own life. Who could understand these lines better than they?

    It is difficult to describe what happened in that crowded smoky kitchen as I delivered the poem. There I was, a white, middle-class American woman, speaking words written by another white, middle-class American woman, surrounded by Maasai girls who had grown up in tribal villages in the Rift Valley, in families so poor that two cows their parents would get when they gave their daughter to an old man in marriage were their only hope of a better life.

    But as “The Journey” filled the kitchen, there was no separation between us. We were transported into a timeless, placeless, languageless realm where we were the same. By the end of poem, tears were running down my face and several of the girls were crying as well. Several of them dove toward me, wrapping their arms around my waist. There was a long silence. The Jecinta asked, “Who is this woman, Mary Oliver? Is she Maasai?”

    I shook my head, barely able to speak. “American,” I whispered. “Mzungu. Like Me.”

    “How did she know?”

    In the silence that answered her question, the girl with the gold necklace and piercing eyes came from behind the cauldron of cabbage into the center of the dirt floor.

    “I am ready to say my poem,” she announced.

    In a single wave, the other girls and I moved to one side of the kitchen, spontaneously creating a stage among boiling pots of food.

    “I am just a girl child.” Her voice was surprisingly strong, pulsing with a natural rhythm as contagious as any slam poet’s vibe. “It sounds good but oh no-/ To my father I’m just a source of income.” She continued through the list: her mother who sees her only as a “beast of burden,” the boys at school who objectify her beauty, and “the sugar daddy,” for whom she was just “a juicy fruit to be eaten raw.” The poem ends with the wise and heartbreaking question, “Who cares for me?”

    By now there were about two dozen girls packed into the smoky kitchen or leaning in the windows. As the poet spoke her final question, we all cheered and burst into applause. I looked around the crowd that had gathered. Most girls were melted into each other, their arms draped around their friends. Two girls had maneuvered me into the space between them; one rested her head on my shoulder. For a long moment of silence gazed at each other through the smoke, our eyes full of light.

    In these moments of poetic communion when life comes into a harmony, miracles happen organically: the stroke victim’s brain starts making new synaptic connections; a sense of uncanny peace and joy pervades the Freedom Space as bombs explode in the surrounding streets; the armed Sunni soldier embraces the Shiite poet in tears of joy to discover they feel the same grief and longing; a runaway Maasai girl hears her own story told by a white
    American writer, and she is empowered to find her own voice. When you speak a poem that is written in the language of your soul, you become a voice for the heart in the world, and everyone around you is blessed by a sudden grace.
    Kim Rosen

    The Journey

    One day you finally knew
    what you had to do, and began,
    though the voices around you
    kept shouting
    their bad advice —
    though the whole house
    began to tremble
    and you felt the old tug
    at your ankles.
    “Mend my life!”
    each voice cried.
    But you didn’t stop.
    You knew what you had to do,
    though the wind pried
    with its stiff fingers
    at the very foundations,
    though their melancholy
    was terrible.
    It was already late
    enough, and a wild night,
    and the road full of fallen
    branches and stones.
    But little by little,
    as you left their voices behind,
    the stars began to burn
    through the sheets of clouds,
    and there was a new voice
    which you slowly
    recognized as your own,
    that kept you company
    as you strode deeper and deeper
    into the world,
    determined to do
    the only thing you could do —
    determined to save
    the only life you could save.

    ~ Mary Oliver ~

  • Tree In Tree

    By Deena Metzger

    “I am no longer afraid of mirrors where I see the sign of the amazon, the one who shoots arrows.
    There was a fine red line across my chest where a knife entered,
    but now a branch winds about the scar and travels from arm to heart.
    Green leaves cover the branch, grapes hang there and a bird appears.
    What grows in me now is vital and does not cause me harm. I think the bird is singing.
    I have relinquished some of the scars.
    I have designed my chest with the care given to an illuminated manuscript.
    I am no longer ashamed to make love. Love is a battle I can win.
    I have the body of a warrior who does not kill or wound.
    On the book of my body, I have permanently inscribed a tree.”
    Deena

    Today while delivering mail, I listened to the CD that accompanies the book, “Saved by a Poem” by Kim Rosen.

    There were many poems, or lines in the poems that spoke to me, but the image of this one stuck with me.

    If you go to her website, http://www.deenametzger.com you will see a fabulous woman who is fully embracing I M Perfect.

    She had a mastectomy and placed a tattoo upon the scar…