I M Perfect lady

Category: Books

  • In Charge Of Me!

    What a great realization that their mess is their mess, their enlightenment is their enlightenment, their life is theirs, to put into prospective what is rightfully my own.

     

    Imagine living with a bunch of lives within you, to be so connected that their poor choice feels like your poor choice!

     

    Last night I read again from The Presence Process and the following paragraphs caught my attention.

     

    “We can discover the identity of the negative emotion beneath the charge that we are carrying by stopping habits and/or addictions.  The emotions that consequently erupt will reveal the nature and the intensity of the negative emotional charge that unconsciously drives our self-medicating behavior.  All addictions are self-medication, and all are passed on through vibrational, emotional, mental and physical imprinting.  Effectively decreasing our negative emotional charge is the only causative treatment for addiction that has any real and lasting effect.  The outer physical self-medicating habit is an effect of an inner emotional condition, so quitting our self-medicating behaviors without releasing the attached charge accomplishes nothing real.  It is ineffectual.  All that will occur is that our self-medication will be transferred from one behavior pattern to another.

     

    The extent of the negative emotional charge is what separates a person who is “in charge” of his or her life from a person who is “carrying a charge” through his or her life.  When a person enters our sphere of awareness, it is not immediately apparent whether they are in charge or carrying a charge.  However, observing their behaviors over a period of time will tell all.  Everyone who is carrying a substantial negative emotional charge will exhibit physical, mental and emotional drama sooner or later.  It will manifest automatically in their outer life experiences.  They will also have to lace their life with self-medication behaviors; they will have to establish their means of sedation and control through habits and addictions.  Society’s acceptance of alcohol and cigarettes enables us to self-medicate openly without feeling awkward about our inability to integrate our uncomfortable inner emotional condition.”

                    Michael Brown

     

    I way love how we either are In Charge or Carrying a Charge.

     

    It is my experience that I felt that it was me that ignited the charge, that I was able to send fireworks flying upon a word or deed I did.

     

    Instead it is my understanding that we walk around fully loaded, or fully in charge.

     

    It is amazing that self-medications are to keep the charge from exploding and going off, and what we need most is to get to the bottom of the charge.

     

    To explore the stockpile of explosives we are carrying around, to see what unexpressed or unfelt emotions are riding shotgun in our lives.

     

    This is so freeing to me that the explosive charge is not mine to explore in others, the only place I can have lasting peace is to express and feel all that I stored within me.

     

    I love how the more in charge you are, the less of a charge you carry.

     

    You know how it is when you feel that someone has buttons to push everywhere, that it seems you are in front of a live wire, or an explosive device but are not sure what will send it flying, now I know that it isn’t so much what I say, but what kind of inner charge they are ignoring.

     

    He gave examples of this inner fire.

    “In the heat of the moment.”

    “Hot under the collar”

    “Going to blow my top”

    “Letting off steam”

    “Losing my cool”

    “I’m in hot water now.”

     

    Isn’t it amazing how we say such wise things, but really don’t understand the totality of what we are saying!

     

    To be in charge, to face our lives without the past voltage of negative energies is a huge accomplishment, and I feel it takes going into the fire of past hurts, pains and discomforts to take the charge out of them.

     

    To express our feelings which we were unable to do back then, we get to go back and drag them up, and be with them awhile, to finally lay them to rest.

     

    Until all that is left is an empty bullet shell, an incident we fully expressed.

     

    If we don’t, we are like hidden land mines and others pay the price, our shrapnel flies everywhere injuring everyone in its wake, when they happen to say or do the wrong thing that sets us off.

     

    This gives me such comfort to know I am not in charge of your charge; I am only in charge of me!

     

  • You Can Walk Alone.

    I saw a glimpse of myself yesterday, a reluctant woman standing there, unable or even having the desire to walk away.

     

    The game is over, the race is completed, the field is empty, it is all over and I am still standing there like there is more to come. 

     

    Looking for more, unwilling to see the end of the parade or the final fireworks, hoping for something, waiting unfulfilled.

     

    Unfulfilled with reality and waiting upon its completion to serve me my expectations, I sit and I wait.

     

    Inside I am left with the feeling of being letdown, again, disappointed and sad and the feelings of profound loneliness and grief arise and the finality of never.

     

    If never arises then all hope has to die, if all hope dies then I have to own never.

     

    Never is such a barren place it reaches far beyond the stars, its hollow silent sounds echo inside of me.

     

    Never means the game is over.

     

    What happens if the game is over, finished, complete?

     

    It seems like in order to move on, I have to own that I did what I could and now it is fruitless to continue to sit waiting.

     

    At some point you have to know when to say when.

     

    This all goes back to my being responsible, for me being the one in charge, in control of saving or helping or doing something for my siblings. 

     

    Something, anything, but to get up and walk away!

     

    Even if I haven’t been in their presence for many years, it was my hope that they would read my words, and use them as a guide,

    that I was writing many signposts along this journey, for them.

     

    I wrote for myself sure, but one eye was always on how they too could use what I said as guide.

     

    I guess it gave me a sense I was still helping and being responsible, somehow I still needed that.

     

    Below is what I read last night in The Presence Process, and it seems to explain to me, me.

     

    “Many of us in this world appear to be helpful, but when it comes to the necessary ability of knowing how to nurture ourselves, we discover that we are at a loss.  We also realize that we tend to feel a deep sense of guilt whenever we attempt to do anything real and loving for ourselves.  This is because it is only our unconscious sense of helplessness and neediness that drives us to sacrifice ourselves in the name of helping others. The behavior of running around and trying to help everyone to our own detriment is always fueled by the reflection we see of our own helpless plight mirrored in the world around us.  We cannot give away what we do not have, so only when we have learned how to truly nurture and unconditionally love ourselves do we develop the propensity for authentic service. Unless we consciously step into present moment and own our life, our ability to be truly of assistance in this world will remain shallow and ineffectual.”

     

    How sad that I was trying to nurture and care for them, while sacrificing myself.

     

    How sad that I was given the task at such a small age to take care of and nurture so many lost children, while being a lost child myself.

    One lost child taking care of so many other hurting lost children.

     

    It seems that I am forever falling short of the mark, and that all my nurturing and caring is for naught.

     

    Suffering children everywhere.

     

    Unless and until I can nurture myself, guide myself and find my innocence, I will be unable to nurture another.

     

    Mostly what I tried to do was both.  I was unable to let the hurting children hurt while I walked away to heal my own wounds.

     

    And sadly, not one of the hurting children are asking for me to help them, or to nurture them, lead, guide, teach, talk, speak, or be with any one of them.

     

    I had taken it upon myself to view them as hurting as I am hurting, view them as suffering as I am suffering, see them through my pain.

    Perhaps even take on their pain as mine.

     

    To stop the pain, the discomfort and the knowing that there is no mother coming, no father taking care, I will stand in front of and protect them from knowing and feeling.

     

    Feeling so alone, hopeless, helpless and uncared for.

     

    Yet this whole blog has been about the failure of our parents to parent, the affects of being abused, the pain and confusion of growing up in a home so twisted.

     

    Maybe the guilt comes from letting down that façade I tried to build for them, by now revealing what is.

     

    Somehow inside of me, I felt like I was the buffer of it all, that I could hold some of the pain back, and take on the burden by lessening their load, while my own load wobbled carelessly in the balance.

     

    I somehow feel like a failure not being able to present them with a family.  Like somehow I failed to give them what they needed the most, and in the end I let us all down.

     

    I had built up an inside expectation perhaps, that if I could save but one child, it would all be worth it, I just never knew I was only saving myself.

     

    It seems so selfish and so wrong to simply save yourself.

     

    To make moves to take your self away from abuse, while leaving the rest behind.

     

    My mind has a hard time seeing the difference between the cold mother and me.

     

    Yet inside I feel that my little girl is in a better place today, and that I have nurtured her and have guided her as a parent who

    loves unconditionally.

     

    I have loved her broken and twisted state, and have been with her as she stumbled forward without a map to follow, unsteady and unsure.

     

    I have watched her walk on and away from the only love and family she ever knew, to rebuild and grow.

     

    She did not walk alone.  One brother set out on the same path, together leaning upon each other, they moved forward, leaving behind many, two broken souls on a journey to becoming whole.

     

    I had said this Blog is the longest good-bye, and perhaps it is.  I couldn’t just walk away uncaring, I had to leave words, even if they are just for me.  The book I wished I had.

     

    Good-Bye is final, I could not carry you then and now, I leave you where I first picked you up, broken and twisted.  I am sorry, I have to put you down so you can walk alone. 

     

  • To What End?

    Between going back in my blog and reading Martha Beck’s book, “Leaving the Saints,” I see how it always falls into just two sides.

     

    It seems very cut and dried, just two people and their view of the same exact event, failing to agree. 

     

    What if the event is between father and daughter in abuse?

     

    Martha Beck met with her 90-year-old father after a ten-year estrangement and shares this.

     

    “Well, see, Dad,” I say carefully, “I find your reaction to the scar thing kind of strange.”  I notice his eyes widening a little, perhaps because I’m openly disagreeing with him, perhaps because I called him dad.  This suddenly feels right.  It feels like rebellion.  It’s the harshest, most disrespectful word I’ve ever deliberately said to him.

     

    “If one of my daughter’s turned up with a lot of weird scars,” I go on, enjoying the giddy reckless feeling of saying what I actually think, “I wouldn’t just blame the Evil One, and drop the subject.  I would want to know what happened to her.”

     

    “Nothing happened.” My father’s voice carries a ring of absolute assurance, absolute finality, that has made him a safe haven for so many Mormons whose faith is getting a little wobbly. The debate is resolved, the balcony is closed, the fat lady has sung, the last dog is hung, that is all she wrote.

     

    This dead-certain tone is characteristic of many deeply religious folk, but Mormons are trained to use it about as thoroughly as any group of people I’ve ever known.  As soon as they can talk, Mormon toddlers are held up to microphones in church meetings, lisping to hundreds of onlookers the words their parents whisper in their ears; “I know the Church is true.  I know that Joseph Smith was a true prophet.  I know our president is God’s prophet on the earth.  I know these things without a shadow of doubt.”

     

    Mormons tend to know a whopping lot of stuff beyond a shadow of doubt.  I envy them.  My whole life is shadowed by doubt.  The only conviction I embrace is this; whatever I believe, I may be wrong.

     

    For a moment, looking at the stern pioneer conviction on my father’s handsome face, I’m so disoriented that I feel my brain twirling even faster – not in agreement but in familiar hopelessness, in the sickening conviction that no one will ever take my word over his.  Everything seems to slither right off the hard drive in my head.  “He’s right:” People underestimate the capacity for things to disappear.  At the moment, I can’t even remember the chain of events that took me out of Mormonism, that have made me “a hiss and a byword” not only to my father, not only to my family, but to an entire religion.

     

    Then I remember Miranda and Diane, just a few feet away and my vision seems to clear.  The whole thing comes back to me, the journey that has taken me out of religion and into faith.  I recall its horror and beauty, the enormity of things I have lost and the incalculable preciousness of the things I’ve gained.  I wouldn’t give up the journey, not a moment of it.  On the other hand, I have no desire to live it again.  If Santayana is right, this means I must be willing to remember the whole story.  I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and force myself to go back to the beginning.

                 Martha Beck

    Her and I share a common story, being abused by our fathers and having to deal with religious overtones, is like attacking two sacred cows at once.

     

    The Dead-Certain Tone is how my mother speaks and her certainty is beyond the shadow of doubt and leaves no opening for another’s view. 

     

    My father said more than once, “I don’t remember” or “whatever they said I did.”  He never once brought forth remorsefully his own personal responsibility in the ‘event’ of child abuse.

     

    Yet as adult children of this ‘event’, what we want most is for there to be an agreement towards the ‘event’, not even so much as who is to blame, but that the actual ‘event’ really happened.

     

    She had scars, literally physical scars to her bottom from her ‘event’ and he still, at 90 years old says, “Nothing happened.”

     

    Neither side is willing to recant.

    To retreat, to surrender, you stand at an impasse.

     

    Can a relationship be found on the island of impasse?

    Is this where you are supposed to agree to disagree?

    To each respectfully bow to the others point of view?

     

    I feel huge amounts of angst in the frustration to face such a figure, to bare your wounds in a show and tell, and have them dismissed in a dead certain tone.

     

    A lone voice against loud chatter of canned responses, where it seems we are not even granted access to the man behind the tone, the woman behind the religious front, we stand outside and alone, shunned and our words falling on deaf ears, two sides so horribly off balanced.

     

    We finally have the courage and the words and we shakily stand, heart and soul in hand, pleading for them to see us.

     

    Our family stands Dead tone certain against us, like a cold front bringing in bone chilling truths.

     

    To feel the cold, to experience the dead certain tones spoken without compassion or empathy, freezes something within you, covers with ice, the coldness of their lack of response.

     

    Death to a relationship, dead it now stands.

     

    It wasn’t the ‘event’ that killed the relationship, but the cold dead tone after it.

     

    What I feel most from them is cold, bone chilling cold, remorseless, dead certain tones, that I am wrong.

     

    I feel the tiredness and hopelessness.

    I feel the artic blast towards me freezing me out of that family while they will state in dead certain tones I left!

     

    I left?! 

     

    I left and am now writing in a blog about it, but to what end?

     

     

     

  • A Hoarder of Pain and Discomfort!

    “When we accept all of life’s contradictions, when we can comfortably flow between the banks of pleasure and pain, experiencing them both while getting stuck in neither, then we are free.”   Deepak Chopra

     

    Below is from “The Presence Process” by Michael Brown.

     

    From the moment we enter this world, we are taught by example of others to fear and therefore resist pain and discomfort by controlling it, sedating it, distracting ourselves from it, numbing it, drugging it, and even going so far as cutting it out.  By the examples of others, we are led to believe that pain and discomfort are our enemies and that when they manifest in our experience, we must escape or conquer them at all costs.  We are led to assume that pain and discomfort are always indicators that something is wrong.  In this world, it is very rare that we are invited or encouraged to respond to our experience of pain and discomfort by listening to them instead of running from them.

     

    During The Presence Process we are being asked to consider the possibility that the experience of pain and discomfort is deliberate and therefore on purpose.  In other words, when these experiences occur to us, it is because they are supposed to happen.  We are asked to open our mind to the idea that pain and discomfort are essential forms of communication that have necessary and valuable function in our life experience.  We are being invited to change our perception of what pain and discomfort are and what the nature of our relationship is with them.

     

    We are being invited to consider that pain and discomfort are our friends, not our enemies, and that they have come to assist us, not hurt us.

     

    Consider what the experience of pain and discomfort automatically accomplishes. It always obediently brings the focus of our attention to a specific place in our physical, mental or emotional experience. Why? 

     

    Consider how we impulsively react to this experience.  Metaphorically we run in the opposite direction by pulling our attention away from area that is experiencing pain and discomfort.  We do our best to annihilate our awareness of this experience with tablets, alcohol, or various medical procedures.  In other words, we automatically attempt to resist and suppress the experience through control and sedation.  What are we assuming?

     

    Our reactive behavior never resolves the pain and discomfort; it merely suppresses and postpones it for a time.  Inevitably, the pain or discomfort will reappear at a later date and continue its attempt to gain attention or show up in another form elsewhere.  Consider this possibility:

     

    The most painful thing about pain and discomfort may well be our resistance to it.

     

    During The Presence Process, our suppressed memories are going to be surfacing deliberately so that they can be integrated by our compassionate attention.  Pain and discomfort in the body, mind, and heart are our physical, mental or emotional bodies calling for our attention so that we will attend to them.  Yet our impulse is always to run away from these experiences or find someone else to attend to them.  What we are now being asked to consider is this:  maybe our lack of success in resolving our pain and discomfort in the past is because it is not possible for someone else’s attention to integrate our experience on our behalf.  What we are being invited to consider is that because it is our physical, mental or emotional body that is in a state of imbalance, that it is therefore our attention and only our attention that can really restore balance to our experience.

     

    All of our prophets, spiritual masters, and sacred texts tell us that the omnipresence that we have named God resides within all of us.  If we can on some level begin to accept this, even initially only as a concept, then we can also begin to accept another possibility – that in our life experience, our direct link to the intimate presence and unlimited healing power of what God is to us is to be found in the presence of our consciously wielded attention.  However, the possibilities contained in this realization remain mental gymnastics until we begin exploring them experientially. The only way we can know if this is true is to consciously and compassionately wield our attention with the intention of resolving our own states of physical, mental, and emotional imbalance.  In other words, our experience must become our own laboratory, our own testing ground.

     

    During The Presence Process, we are deliberately using the breath as a tool to bring our attention back into our physical, mental, and emotional bodies to temporarily anchor it there.  One of these consequences of this practice is that we become aware of pains and discomforts that have been with us since we were children, but that we have successfully suppressed from our awareness. 

              Michael Brown

     

    What I find so affirming to my experience is that all the pain and discomfort in my body and mind, as well as the volume of emotional pain were here to bring me messages. 

     

    Not just a simple message, but books of messages that I had discounted for 46 years, they all came running forth once they understood that I was willing to hear them.  It seemed they lined up for miles and months eagerly spilling forth what I failed to notice for so many years.

     

    Here to show me just how out of balance my life was. The further from reality you are, the greater the discomfort and pain and a longer line of unfelt and unexpressed emotions!

     

    Isn’t it amazing that they waited so long, crammed into my body, one discomfort piled upon another, heaped to the brim and overflowing, pain leaking out into various body parts screaming to me, I was busting at the seams! 

     

    A hoarder of pain and discomfort!

     

     

  • I am a Perfect Guru of Me!

    I am in the 9th month of blogging, and am looking for my top ten posts, it seems an impossible task, to put favor one over another. So, here is another one that I wanted to repost.

     

    Without the understanding of ordinary perfection, spirituality can put us at odds with our life.  The images we have been taught about perfection can be destructive to us.  It is like the Eskimo hunter who asked the missionary, “If I did not know about God and sin, would I still go to Hell?”  “No,” said the priest, “not if you did not know.”  “Then why,” asked the Eskimo earnestly, “did you tell me?”

     

    When I read that in Jack Kornfield’s book “After the Ecstasy, the Laundry,” I was taken aback.

     

    First to see the application of Knowing and Unknowing, second to see the innocence gone, and third, the questioning of why.

     

    I can visualize the child skipping along in the ‘adult’ world happy in their innocence, and we are the Missionary Priests that come along and offer a place called Hell.

     

    There was another part that caught my attention….

     

    We cannot know death.  Death remains a mystery.  When one Zen master was asked what happens when you die, he answered, “I don’t know.” “But aren’t you a Zen master?” continued the questioner.  “Yes,” he responded, “but not a dead one.”

     

    I love how honest that answer is, for how can any living person ever know for sure for sure, just what death is all about.

     

    Eccentricity means uniqueness, finding the freedom to be utterly one’s own person.  Even if outwardly we do not appear different, inwardly there is the fearless ability to be wholly the embodiment of yourself.

     

    When the emotions are free and the heart can express itself without concern for the opinions of others, that freedom extends to every aspect of our character.

     

    I was amazed to read that and to discover being eccentric isn’t odd at all, but rather being ones self.

     

    The true task of spiritual life is not found in faraway places or unusual states of consciousness: It is here in the present.  It asks of us a welcoming spirit to greet all that life presents us with a wise, respectful and kindly heart.  We can bow to both beauty and suffering, to our entanglements and confusion, to our fears and to the injustices of the world.  Honoring the truth in this way is the path to freedom.  To bow to what is rather than to some ideal is not necessary easy, but however difficult, it is the most useful and honorable practices.

     

    To bow to the fact of our life’s sorrows and betrayals is to accept them; and from this deep gesture we discover that all life is workable.  As we learn how to bow, we discover that the heart holds more freedom and compassion than we could imagine.

     

    Those two paragraphs were in the introduction of this book.  I love how we only have to bow to what is, to accept all that comes our way.  And in doing so live a spiritual life and one with our hearts wide open, to accept the joys and the sorrows.

     

    This book set out to show that even the Guru lives a life that is not stress free if they were to leave their ashrams and come and join us in mainstream life.

     

    Pir Vilayat Khan, the seventy-five year old head of the Sufi Order in the West, confides his own belief:

     

     

    Of so many great teachers I’ve met in India and Asia, if you were to bring them to America, get them a house, two cars, a spouse, three kids, a job, insurance, and taxes…..they too would all have a hard time.

     

    All in all it was a book that showed the humanness of the great masters, teachers and gurus.

     

    In the end, we are all gurus in our own lives.

    I am a perfect guru of me.

  • No One Can Do It For You.

    I first heard about the five stages of grief in Forgiveness from Connie Domino and her book “The Law of Forgiveness,” which I have not read, yet.

     

    I heard her in a conversation about how feelings and thoughts have to be in harmony, when she spoke on Sirius Radio.

     

    She is saying that you can’t forgive just by saying the words, or using words alone, you have to feel it.

     

    And this is where I think people get it wrong, you can’t fake feeling okay or fake feeling peace, or fake feeling anything, and try to believe the words have more power over what you are feeling.

     

    She is saying to be in harmony with your words and feelings. 

     

    And I would say use your words to describe your feelings, feel it and give them words.

     

    If you are angry, give it words!

     

    Bring in the five stages of grief into whatever situation you are dealing with and trying to find forgiveness in, the five stages of accepting what is you have to accept.

     

    First you have to accept it, and in order to get to acceptance, there are four steps in front of that.

     

    Denial

    Anger

    Bargaining

    Depression

    Acceptance

    I looked this up and here is what I found.

    The Kübler-Ross model, commonly known as the five stages of grief, was first introduced by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying.

    It describes, in five discrete stages, a process by which people deal with grief and tragedy, especially when diagnosed with a terminal illness or catastrophic loss. In addition to this, her book brought mainstream awareness to the sensitivity required for better treatment of individuals who are dealing with a fatal disease.[1]

     

    1. Denial — "I feel fine."; "This can't be happening, not to me."
      Denial is usually only a temporary defense for the individual. This feeling is generally replaced with heightened awareness of situations and individuals that will be left behind after death.[1]
    2. Anger — "Why me? It's not fair!"; "How can this happen to me?"; "Who is to blame?"
      Once in the second stage, the individual recognizes that denial cannot continue. Because of anger, the person is very difficult to care for due to misplaced feelings of rage and envy. Any individual that symbolizes life or energy is subject to projected resentment and jealousy.[1]
    3. Bargaining — "Just let me live to see my children graduate."; "I'll do anything for a few more years."; "I will give my life savings if…"
      The third stage involves the hope that the individual can somehow postpone or delay death. Usually, the negotiation for an extended life is made with a higher power in exchange for a reformed lifestyle. Psychologically, the hi is saying, "I understand I will die, but if I could just have more time…"[1]
    4. Depression — "I'm so sad, why bother with anything?"; "I'm going to die . . . What's the point?"; "I miss my loved one, why go on?"
      During the fourth stage, the dying person begins to understand the certainty of death. Because of this, the individual may become silent, refuse visitors and spend much of the time crying and grieving. This process allows the dying person to disconnect oneself from things of love and affection. It is not recommended to attempt to cheer up an individual who is in this stage. It is an important time for grieving that must be processed.[1]
    5. Acceptance — "It's going to be okay."; "I can't fight it, I may as well prepare for it."
      This final stage comes with peace and understanding of the death that is approaching. Generally, the person in the fifth stage will want to be left alone. Additionally, feelings and physical pain may be non-existent. This stage has also been described as the end of the dying struggle.[1]

    Kübler-Ross originally applied these stages to people suffering from terminal illness, and later to any form of catastrophic personal loss (job, income, freedom).[1] This may also include significant life events such as the death of a loved one divorce, drug addiction, an infertility diagnosis. Kübler-Ross claimed these steps do not necessarily come in the order noted above, nor are all steps experienced by all patients, though she stated a person will always experience at least two. Often, people will experience several stages in a "roller coaster" effect – switching between two or more stages, returning to one or more several times before working through it.[1]

    Significantly, people experiencing the stages should not force the process. The grief process is highly personal and should not be rushed, nor lengthened, on the basis of an individual's imposed time frame or opinion. One should merely be aware that the stages will be worked through and the ultimate stage of "Acceptance" will be reached.

    However, there are individuals that struggle with death until the end. Some psychologists believe that the harder a person fights death, the more likely they are to stay in the denial stage. If this is the case, it is possible the ill person will have more difficulty dying in a dignified way. Other psychologists state that not confronting death until the end is adaptive for some people.[1] Those who experience problems working through the stages should consider professional grief counseling or support groups.

     

     

    I thought of these stages in death, but to use them in all tragedies or when facing forgiveness allows us to be ‘normal’ in abnormal situations. 

     

    I am wondering about the action of forgivenes if we have to do all five stages?

     

    If you can skip a few and still get to the end result of feeling total acceptance and finding peace there?

     

    I am sure most never contemplated the thought that forgiveness is a death process. 

     

    What I felt was a huge loss, but what I didn’t know was forgiveness was a loss.

     

    I never considered this a grieving process, yet I felt that I had lost my whole family in one tragic event.

     

    I grieved the event and the family seemed like colateral damage, but maybe it was reverse.

     

    There are seem to be many levels of acceptance and owning the finality of it all.

     

    The final stage of letting even the teeniest of hopes go, the slightest desires of hope, all hope must die.

     

    Hope becomes a bargaining or denial tool that can keep you in a stage without final and complete acceptance.

     

    It keeps you in a land between, in a place of noncommitment. 

     

    The fight that seems to carry on inside.

     

    The fight inside of me was always between, me alone with acceptance, or me with them and not accepting.

     

    I could not have it both ways. 

    In order to forgive I had to walk alone. 

    Forgiveness is like dying no one can do it for you.

     

     

     

  • Manifesting Hope.

    In Martha Beck’s book “Leaving the Saints,” she wrote she read somewhere that,

     

    “Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having a different past”

     

    And there is a freedom that comes when you realize that all hope is gone, when you are standing on the edge where the past is glaring at you in all its horrible honesty, and where the mind can no longer build dreams of past memories to sing a different tune.

     

    When the tune comes out the same no matter how you spin it, turn it, twist it, there is only one sad song and there is no hope of making it sound different than what it is.

     

    While it seems to put you in a hopeless state, that state of hopelessness is actually a good thing.  From there you have not thing left to lose.  It is over and done with and it requires nothing from you.  It is not a place to put your hope.

     

    Looking for a different past is just not possible. 

     

    It is hope less. 

     

    I had to go and look up that word.

     

    1. Having no hope; despairing. See Synonyms at despondent. 2. Offering no hope; bleak. 3. Incurable. 4. Having no possibility of solution; impossible.

     

    That meaning sounds so hopeless if you are in the state of hopelessness, it sounds downright depressing, wow. 

     

    So I had to look up the word hope. 

    Hope – to want or expect something: to have a wish to get or do something or for something to happen or be true.

    – confident desire: a feeling that something desirable is likely to happen

    – likelihood of success: a chance that something desirable will happen or be possible

     

    I wonder if you can get left in a spot where  you are hopeful of changing a hopeless past?  Where you use your hope wrong in a place where hope is use less.  It seems like people need to be taught where to use hope.

     

    I did not put my hope into the past changing, nor did I put my hope in even them changing, I only put my hope in that I could change.

     

    My hope was to change so the past is not repeated.

     

    All I had inside of me was hope, just hope.

     

    I took all my hope from the past and placed it in an unknown future.

     

    I stood behind hope and began walking a different walk, singing a different tune, and walking away from hopeless, while feeling the pull of hopeless I resolutely walked on.

     

    It literally seemed to always come down to two choices.

     

    In each choice I always picked hope.  I followed hope.

     

    I didn’t know where I was going, what I would look like when I got there or even if I would know it, but I followed hope.

     

    I blindly followed hope.

     

    I recall walking one day along the river sobbing, huge gulps of sorrow and my custom was to allow sorrow to walk with me in one direction, but when I turned around to head home I had to be possitive.

     

    This particular day, it was cold, very cold, clear and bright, snow crystals decorated all the trees along the river, the river itself a ribbon of sheer white, the sky the deepest blue and the sun shining bright lighting up everything in diamonds, and I said to my self, “I will go forth with love, joy and peace.”

     

    Love, Joy and Peace was the place I was headed.

     

    It seemed near impossible to comprehend a day where the sorrow would receed like a bad tide, but within me I placed all my hopes that eventually the tears would stop, that I would come to an end of painful things to look at, that all the years of blindly living, its karma would finally run out.

     

    Looking at this today, I can see that  I walked with hopelessness, despair and anguish in one direction, feeling my past, going into the emotions and feelings of abuse and when I turned around I was carried by Hope.

     

    I had to go and look up hopeful too.

     

    Having or manifesting hope. 2. Inspiring hope; promising. n. A person who aspires to success or who shows promise of succeeding.

     

    My walk back home was manifesting hope.

     

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  • The Dance Begins and Ends with You!

    Martha Beck writes in ‘Steering by Starlight’ she writes in a chapter called, Quick Stargazing Exercise for Beginning at the End.

     

    Try this:  Think of someone whose approval you covet.  It might be your lover, someone else’s lover, your boss, a celebrity who may never even meet you, or (if you happen to be an approval whore like me) every single person you ever meet.  Get all those needy feelings front and center.  Let them fill you whole mind.  Now imagine that you get to spend an hour with those people whose approval you seek.  Can you feel the desperation, the grasping, the sick sense that this hour isn’t nearly enough?  Excellent.

     

    Now, begin at the end.  Imagine you already have this person’s approval, that they adore you, that nothing on God’s green earth could ever diminish their total approval.  You are awash in approval. You couldn’t possibly in a million years soak it all in.  Letting this mental position fill your mind, picture interacting with your hero again.  Can you feel the freedom, the ease, the humor suddenly available to you?  Can you feel yourself start to smile without trying?  Can you tell that this version of you is way more likely to get approval than the version who’s always desperately seeking it?

     

    If so, you have just visited the observatory in your head and focused briefly on the truth as your Stargazer self knows it.  If not, try again.  Sometimes it takes a while to focus the telescope, but you’ll get there with a bit of trial and error.

     

    Once you do this exercise in your head, try it in a public place.  My favorite social avenues are coffee shops, so that’s where I do most of my experiments, but you might choose another location:  a book store, a shopping center, a rock concert, exercise time in the yard.  Just choose a place where there are lots of people milling about.

     

    For Trial One, walk into such a place thinking, “I need these people to like me! I need them to do what I want! I need their help!”  Notice how people interact with you.  For trial two, go into the same place the next day.  This time, prep  yourself by thinking, “These people love me. They think I am clever, handsome, talented, and gracious.  I rock their socks.”  If you can keep such thoughts in mind, you’ll notice you move differently, talk differently, smile in a different way as a sock-rocker.

     

    Do this exercise several times, and you’ll start to notice how differently other people act around you.  The more desperate you feel, the more they’ll move away.  The more sure of their adoration, the more positive interaction you’ll get.  If you want extra validation, have a friend precede you into the space you’re using for the test and observe the way other people interact with you.

     

    I’ve supervised this experiment with clients who have very low self-esteem, including juvenile delinquents and ex-convicts.  The results are amazing.  In a self-critical, fear-based mindset, the clients seem to physically repel people – everyone in the space literally moves away, some slightly some dramatically.  But when my clients manage to hold on to thoughts of being worthy and lovable, others move towards them, usually smiling, appearing to relax, as they get closer.  No one seems to be doing this deliberately; it’s like watching a field of tall grass bend one way, then the other, as the breeze changes.

                  Martha Beck

     

    I had a conversation with a friend this morning and brought up this section of the book, explaining to her, that while she would like to look at others for their treatment of her, she literally is the one who begins the dance.

     

    Just by how she feels inside, she is the ‘breeze’ telling them which way to bend or respond.

     

    It is almost if they can’t help but be swayed by her dark desperately seeking need, and that desperate need never attracts love, only pushes others away.

     

    What she desperately feels she needs literally stays further and further away.

     

    And ironically when she no longer needs their love, attention and approval she will have it.  When inside she is full of Knowing she has their approval, she will get more of it, when she feels herself being loved by them, she will get more.

     

    “0e the change you want to see in the world,” Gandhi said.

     

    I can also feel my brother and sisters desperate need of me, and it indeed does push me further away.  I feel their need for my approval, and the lack of their own self- approval.

    This goes as well for my mother, they are desperately seeking or needing ‘something’ from me. 

     

    And no matter how much I would say, do and be love in their presence it will not outshine or overshadow what is inside of them.

     

    That pulsating bundle of energy that is thirsty for outside approval is an endless sucking noise that we out here can’t fulfill.

     

    The switch has to be made inside; you have to feel it to get it.

     

    It is so hard to imagine that our inner view of ourselves matters that much, that we and we alone are directing how the world responds to us, how the dance begins and ends with you.

     

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  • Enlightenment Always Tastes Of Freedom

    I am reading a book, (I have many going at one time) by Martha Beck, “Steering by Starlight,” and in it she speaks of how will we know if we are making the right decision.

     

    The Buddha often said that wherever you find water, you can tell if it’s the ocean because the ocean always tastes of salt. By the same token, anywhere you find enlightenment – whatever improbable or unfamiliar shape it may have assumed – you can tell it’s enlightenment because enlightenment always tastes of freedom.  Not comfort.  Not ease. Freedom.

     

    In other words, the way you can tell you’re following fear away from your North Star is that while this course may feel safe, it will also feel imprisoning.  The way you can tell that something lies true north, even though inner lizard fear says to run from it, is that it feels liberating.  If you pay even basic attention to your own reactions, you can identify what I call a ‘shackles on’ sensation and distinguish it from a ‘shackles off’ sensation.  The difference will be perceptible to whether or not you are afraid to take a certain action.

               Martha Beck

     

    Enlightenment always tastes of freedom…….Sit with that awhile!

     

    How awesome that I am reading this book on how enlightenment tastes and feels, of freedom.

     

    This morning I awoke early and actually had gone to bed early thinking about who is more delusional my brother or I?

     

    I can see him sitting there and him looking at me like I have lost my mind, which I did, and him wanting me to be different that I am.  And then I am sitting here wanting him to be different than he is, so we both are delusional about each other.

     

    Delusion can happen any time we are sitting in reality and not seeing what is in front of us or when we want to change what it is we see.

     

    Delusion is when we are not happy with reality.

     

    Delusion will not accept what is going on now.

     

    Delusion will always want something or somebody to be different.

     

    Delusion or Reality, pick one.

     

    In the book, “A Thousand Names for Joy” by Byron Katie, she says it like this.

     

    “I don’t know what’s best for me, or you, or the world.  I don’t impose my will on you or anyone else.  I don’t want to change you or improve you or convert you or help you or heal you.  I just welcome things as they come and go.  That’s true love.  The best way of leading people is to let them find their own way.”

     

    So as I sit here one day later, I can see how delusional I can get, when I feel that there is something I am supposed to do, or say or if I jump high enough, shout loud enough, use the correct words, the perfect books, I can change what it is they are.

     

    I am delusional when I feel I want them to be different, to see different, act different.  I am delusional and shackle those people to me.  You be this way for me!  Who cares what you want, I need you this way, FOR ME. 

     

    Talk about conditional love!

     

    What freedom there is to let them do themselves in whichever manner that is.  I am free then to do myself. 

     

    I can be a great ripper girl, ripping apart my own delusions.

     

    It isn’t my job to go around ripping to shreds others delusions or even pointing out their own deluded states, I just must keep an eye on mine!

     

    Enlightenment always tastes of Freedom!

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  • Life is Reality’s Parade!

    Another segment from the book, A Million Miles, A Thousand Years, by Donald Miller, I love is this.

     

    “A good storyteller doesn’t just tell a better story, though.   He invites other people into the story with him, giving them a better story too.

     

    When we were in Uganda, I went with Bob to break ground on a new school he was building.  The school board was there, along with local officials. The principal of the school had bought three trees that Bob, the government official and the principal would plant to commemorate the breaking of the ground.  Bob saw me standing off, taking pictures of the event, walked over and asked if I would like to plant the tree for him.

    “Are you sure?” I asked.

    “Absolutely,” he said.  “It would be great for me to come back to this place and see the tree you planted, to be reminded of you every time I visit.”

     

    I put down my camera and helped dig the how and set the tree into the ground, covering it to its tiny trunk.  And from that moment on, the school was no longer Bob’s school; the better story was no longer Bob’s story.  It was my story too.  I’d entered in the story of Bob.  And it’s a great story about providing an education to children who would otherwise go without.  After that I donated funds to Bob’s work in Uganda, and I’m even working to provide a scholarship to a child I met in a prison in Kampala who Bob and his lawyers helped free.  I’m telling a better story with Bob.

     

    Nobody gets to watch a parade.

                 Don Miller

     

     

    Including others into your life, whether it is in the trying times or the joyous ones, weaves a common thread, a line that connects us with each other, and has us marching along in friendship. 

     

    He has a great story of a New Years Day parade his family started in his neighborhood, one where no one could watch, and all had to participate in, which ended in a big picnic.  You could opt out, but not watch.

     

    Isn’t that a great metaphor for life, a parade without spectators?

     

    Even if you are out sitting, that is your contribution to the parade, sitting down, while the parade moves forward, or are you on a float of pretend?

     

    I will remember that by allowing another to be part of a great moment, it more than doubles that moment.

     

    Life is Reality’s Parade!