I M Perfect lady

Category: Examples of an Imperfect woman

  • Keeper of the Door.

    The Warrior Inside – Iron Man by Robert Bly

     

    The warriors inside American men have been weak in recent years, and their weakness contributes to the lack of boundaries, a condition which earlier in this book we spoke of as naiveté.  A man six feet tall will allow another person to cross his boundaries, enter his psychic house, verbally abuse him, carry away his treasures, and slam the door behind; the invaded man will stand there with an ingratiating, confused smile on his face.

     

    When a boy grows up in a ‘dysfunctional’ family (perhaps there is no other kind of family), his interior warriors will be killed off early.  Warriors, mythologically, lift their swords to defend the king.  The King in a child stands for and stands up for a child’s mood.  But when we are children our mood gets easily overrun and swept over in the messed up family by the more powerful, more dominant, more terrifying mood of the parent.  We can say that when the warrior inside cannot protect our mood from being disintegrated, or defend our body from invasion, the warriors collapse, or go into a trance, or die.

     

    The inner warriors I speak of do not cross the boundary aggressively; they exist to defend the boundary. The Fianna, that famous band of warriors who defended Ireland’s borders, would be a model.  The Fianna stayed out all spring and summer watching the boundaries, and during the winter came in.

     

    But a typical child has no such protection.  If a grown-up moves to hit a child, or stuff food into the child’s mouth, there is no defense, – it happens.  If the grown-up decides to shout, and penetrate the child’s auditory boundaries by sheer violence, it happens.  Most parents invade the child’s territory whenever they wish, and the child, trying to maintain his mood by crying, is simply carried away, mood included.

     

    Each child lives deep inside his or her own psychic house, or soul castle, and the child deserves the right of sovereignty inside the house.  Whenever a parent ignores the child’s sovereignty, and invades, the child feels not only anger, but shame.  The child concludes that if it has no sovereignty, it must be worthless.  Sham is the name we give to the sense that we are unworthy and inadequate as human beings.  Gershen Kauffman describes that feeling brilliantly in his book, Shame, and Merle Fossum and Marilyn Mason in their book, Facing Shame, extend Kauffman’s work into the area of family shame systems and how they work.

     

    When our parents do not respect our territory at all, their disrespect seems overflowing proof of our inadequacy.  The slap across the face pierces deeply, for the face is the actual boundary of our soul, and we have been penetrated.  If a grown-up decides to cross our sexual boundaries and touch us, there is nothing that we as child can do about it.  Our warriors die. The child, so full of expectation of blessing whenever he or she is around an adult, stiffens with shock, and falls into the timeless fossilized confusion of shame.  What is worse, one sexual invasion, or one beating, usually leads to another, and the warriors, if revived, die again.

     

    When a boy grows up in an alcoholic family, his warriors get swept in the river by a vast wave of water, and they struggle there, carried downriver.  The child, boy or girl, unprotected, gets isolated, and has more in common with snow geese than with people.

     

    The snow geese, treading, blowing Dakotah snows,

    Over the fence stairs of the small farms come,

    Slipping through cries flung up into the night,

    And setting, ah, between them, shifting wings,

    Light down at last in bare snowy fields.

     

    The drunken father pulls the boy inside.

    The boy breaks free, turns and leaves the house.

    He spends that night out eating with the geese.

    Where, alert and balancing on wide feet,

    Crossing rows, they walk through the broken stalks.

     

    Robert Bly

     

    It is no wonder that such a child, when a teenager, looks for single rooms, maternal women, gurus, systems, withdrawals, “nonattachment.”  When he is older, thirty or thirty-five, he will still feel unprotected, and be unable to defend himself from other people enraged at their own unprotection.

     

    Every Adult or older sibling who wants to enter the child’s psychic room does so, because it is as if there is no doorknob at all on the inside of the door.  The door moves freely in, opening us to improper intimacies that the mother may insist on, to improper belittling the father may insist on, to sexual fondling any older child or baby-sitter may insist on, to incest, physical or psychic.  The door moves freely, we could say, because the doorknob is on the outside.

     

    I think it’s likely that the early death of a man’s warriors keeps the boy in him from growing up.  It’s possible that it also prevents the female in the boy from developing.  We know that Dickens for example, endured a horrendous childhood, and we also notice that his female characters tend to be sentimental and girlish. It’s possible that these girlish beings are projections of his stunted interior woman, whom his warriors could not protect from the violence all around him.

     

    The inner boy in a messed-up family may keep on being shamed, invaded, disappointed, and paralyzed for years and years.  “I am a victim,” he says, over and over; and he is.  But that very identification with victimhood keeps the soul house open and available for still more invasions.  Most

    American men today do not have enough awakened or living warriors inside to defend their soul houses.  And most people, men or women, do not know what genuine outward or inward warriors look like, or feel like.

               Robert Bly

     

    This is wonderful for me to read, especially when I now have a doorknob on the inside, that I revived my inner warriors, that by having boundaries it means you have a warrior manning the line.

     

    As I wrote the word ‘line’ it came to me that my husband accused me of drawing a line in cement, not in the sand, that once that line was there, I was adamant about it, there was no moving that line.

     

    Guess my inner warriors stood guard.

     

    Imagine I have a knob on the inside, and I can ask ‘who is there and what do you want?’

     

     My warrior is front and center as my sister ambles up to the door.  I am comforted knowing I have warriors once again.

    A door on my inner psychic room, or my soul’s castle, how awesome to be the keeper of the door!

     

     

     

  • What will be the reply?

    A broken family, what does that mean?  Maybe it would be easier to describe a not broken one.

     

    I have another sister that requested me as a “friend” on Facebook, can that really happen?

     

    We are broken sisters, our relationship is severed there is nothing there right now.

     

    We are two islands with an ocean of disagreement between us, can a bridge really be made over the sea and what would it be made of, pretend?

     

    What would a bridge of pretend be like?  Wouldn’t we both have to pretend to be someone other than who we are to get along?  I am way not interested in a game of ‘pretend sisters’.

     

    We are two girls whose life began in the same home, we each experienced similar, but not the same ride, as we grew up and then left. 

     

    We shared parents, but we no longer share the response to life, we do not act the same given the exact set of circumstances.

     

    What would we have in common except our histories?  Our present and our most recent past is totally the opposite.

     

    When truth knocked on your door, you slammed it shut, and continued to treat this man as a father, only. 

     

    I on the other hand welcomed it in with shaky legs and a broken heart, I crumbled under the weight of it all, I opened the door. 

     

    I brought truth into my home and I looked at it and its damage, I did not shut it out, I did not turn my back, I did not close my ears, eyes and heart to what this truth had to say.

    I opened the door.

     

    When I opened that door what I didn’t know that I was walking out of our family.

     

    And now you are beckoning me back?  Really?

    You want me and the truth to come back in your world, when the first time around you could not hear my words, you really are asking me to come back in?

     

    I am not that naïve.

     

    I did not open this door you did, are you coming out with me, or are you asking me to come back minus the truth?

     

    You all claim you seen what I seen, that you understand who your father is, but what you fail to see is how your actions do not reflect that, your actions are that of a loving daughter, not a victim of his abuse.

     

    As you sit inside the family with your hand on the door, are you ready to come out, or are you happy to shut the door one more time so not to hear me speak?

     

    I stand as a little girl again, one who is outside the family, one who walks with courage to face the darkest truth, but one who longs to be part of a family again.

     

    As you open that door requesting me to be your friend, who do you want?

     

    You may not know this of me, but I can’t even begin to pretend to pretend to pretend that I didn’t see the truth.

     

    When you ask to be my friend, you are asking for the truth, can you accept that?  Is that what you want?

     

    You opened the door, what is it you want?

    Are you coming out? 

     

    For I will never walk back in to the home of abuse, neglect and pretend it is called love.

     

    A little girl waits. 

     

    What will be the reply?

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  • My Walled Garden.

     

     

    More from Iron John, by Robert Bly.

     

    “If a man or woman has been sexually abused in childhood, or has lived in any form of a ‘dysfunctional family,’ he or she will need sooner or later a ‘heaven haven.’  The story says that each of us needs it.

     

    The walled garden is a shelter from the world, and a place to recover your broken trust…..A walled garden also is a place to develop introversion.”

     

    Rilke says:

     

    I am too alone in the world, and not alone enough

        to make every moment holy.

    I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enough

    just to lie before you like a thing,

      shrewd and secretive.

    I want my own will, and I want simply to be with

       my will,

    as it goes towards action,

    and in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times

    when something is coming near,

    I want to be with those who know secret things

    or else alone.

     

    “We could say that in the walled garden, as in the alchemical vessel, new metals get formed and the old ones melt.  The lead of depression melts and becomes grief. The drive of success, an insistence tin, joins with Aphrodite’s copper, and makes bronze, which is good to make shields and images of gods.  The enclosed garden then suggests cultivation as opposed to rawness, boundaries as opposed to unbounded sociability, soul concerns as growth for the soul desire opposed to obsession with a generalized greed for things……

     

    In the garden the soul and nature marry.  When we love cultivation more than excitement we are ready to start a garden.  In the garden we cultivate yearning and longing – those strangely un-American feelings – and notice tiny desires.  Paying attention to tiny hardly noticeable feelings is the garden way.  That’s the way lovers behave.

     

    The enclosed garden is a right place for lovers…..

     

    Garden work may begin unexpectedly.  An illness that confines the sufferer to a room for weeks may be his enclosed garden. An accident may bring it on.  Thoreau, on the other hand, chose to live for some months in a cabin he built himself, and he and his cabin and Walden Pond were his garden.  He knew very well that he had become a lover, and said, “A match has been found for me at last: I have fallen in love with a shrub oak.”

     

    Some men entering the garden begin by getting up at 5am, and keeping an hour for themselves each morning before work.  A father, in order to do that, may have to resist his own insistence that life belongs to his work, his children and his marriage.

     

    Making a garden, and living in it, means attention to boundaries, and sometimes we need the boundaries to prevent caretaking from coming in and occupying our time.

     

    I am too tiny in this world and not tiny enough

    Just to lie before you and be a thing.

     

    Addiction to perfecting, as Mariann Woodman reminds us, amounts to having no garden. The anxiety to be perfect withers the vegetation.  Shame keeps us from cultivating the garden.  Men and women deeply caught in shame will, when they tend their garden, pull out both weeds and flowers because so many of their own feelings seem defective and soiled.

     

    What do we love so much that we want to protect it from strangers?  That is a good question for garden makers.

     

    No matter how deeply I go down into myself

    My God is dark, and like a webbing made

    Of a hundred roots, that drink in silence.

         Rainer Maria Rilke

     

    I love the analogy of being in a walled garden.

     

    I love that when we seek to know ourselves we have to put up a wall and cultivate ourselves.

     

    I truly lived in a walled garden and mended my wounds, my sorrows and tears fell there and helped grow a new me.

     

    To put up boundaries and to lean into yourself, going deeply into the dark places to find answers and then to sit with those answers awhile. 

     

    In your own world you will find ways to have garden time.

    I was blessed to be at home, alone.

    My house was my garden and it expanded to the road along the river.  It became my sanctuary, my walled garden.

     

     

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  • A Big Bubble of Me.

    The word LOVE brings with it such energy and Light, it brightens up spaces and brings wholeness where before less than appeared.

     

    People walk around feeling so defeated, if they don’t HAVE love.

     

    Like Love is an object we can go and pluck out of a store, search and find like a hidden treasure, it remains outside of us, and we hunt like predators to capture it.

     

    It steals our peace, and keeps us running in anxiety for fear that without it we will not be whole.

     

    This love is like a devil to those who need it, it becomes a drug that we can’t live without, and will do anything to anyone to get it.

     

    My brother is sitting with the ‘love’ our parents gave us. 

    In our hands we look down devastated, for what we see surely isn’t love.

     

    How is this possible?

    How did we receive such a messed up version of love?
    Is it even a fragrance of love, does it hold a hint of love?

    What is this we received from our parents?

    What did we go forth and replicate?

     

    The love we received was not love.

    It is the opposite.

     

    I have read numerous times that there are only two ways of living or Being.  In Fear or in Love, those are the only two choices.

     

    In my childhood love, fear ran rampant.  Fear of them not liking you, that you were not good enough, that they would leave you, a very clutching manipulating demanding love.

     

    It wasn’t free.

    You weren’t free.

     

    The love of my childhood, the love that I replicated in my own home with my own children was that they had to do this or be that, and I would love them more.

     

    I focused on their behavior and how it impacted me, but I didn’t focus on how their behavior impacted THEM.

     

    Now I have given them back them selves.  I am no longer interested in owning them for my happiness.  It seems vulgar and twisted.  Like my children’s only role was to live to make me happy.

     

    I will be a better mom if you are a better kid! I will be a happier mom, a nicer mom, a this mom and a that mom, DEPENDING upon your behavior!

     

    It left me irresponsible for my own happiness.  It left me powerless.

     

    But what was even more important it had them looking away from themselves to only focus on me.

     

    Their lives were for me.

     

    Not only was I powerless, they too became powerless in their own worlds.  A house full of powerless dependent people!

     

    It was when I unplugged them all that we each became free.

     

    I recall the conversations I had with each of my children, how I was telling them that from now on, their only job in this house was to do them selves.  That they and they alone were responsible for what they did or didn’t do.  I fired them from making me a better mother.

     

    As I fired them, I hired me.  I hired myself to be myself.  I hired myself to be a mother.  And I recall telling them that as their mother I was only going to be the consequence lady.

     

    That was my one job as a mother.  That every action has a consequence and it is up to me to figure out that consequence.

     

    To their benefit they were both excited and fearful.  For no more wasted words would fly out of my mouth. 

     

    In fact it still pops up where I forget my role as consequence lady, and I focus more on their behavior than mine.  When I feel out of control, it is usually me.  I am forgetting my control.

     

    When I gave them the responsibility of their lives, I got mine.

     

    It was a great independence day in our home.

    Where 6 individuals were born.

    We all claimed our own worlds.

    We all can shine as one person, separated and free to be who ever it is we are to be.

     

    Sure there are common house rules, but for the most part I celebrate each child doing themselves alone.

     

    My youngest is still clutching on to being irresponsible, and as parents our role is to keep placing the responsibility of his life in his hands.

     

    In as much as we love freedom, we are more afraid to be free.

     

    Free means no one to blame when we are unhappy.

     

    Our whole lives are free for us to express or be or do as we feel, and no one stands in the way of us living our greatest life, but ourselves.

     

    Once we stop searching outside for love, when we know that it isn’t their job to bring us love, or peace or joy, we can begin doing this for ourselves.

     

    Learning one step at a time to be independent.

     

    A separated soul, a free spirit!

     

    What can another bring to a free spirit?

    What does a free spirit need?

     

    I love that I am one self- contained unit of one.

     

    I walk around a big bubble of me.

     

     I M perfect Dance!

     

     

     

  • Reality is a mixed life.

    I am reading Robert Bly’s book “Iron John.” 

     

    Here are a few paragraphs that caught my attention.

     

    “If a human being takes an action, the soul takes an action….. The soul itself which does nothing if you do nothing; but if you light a fire, it chops wood; if you make a boat, it becomes the ocean.”

     

    ”When an artist is at work on a painting, images he or she had never thought of arrive instead of the images the artist planned to set down.”

     

    “ The sacred response depends on a serious decisive effort made by a man or woman.”

     

    The key is the serious decisive effort….and I suppose the knowing of who walks with us.

     

    Imagine the free will to decide how to move and the soul responds. 

     

    The Universe is waiting for us so it can respond in kind.  If you are not building a boat, no need for an ocean, if you are not in your studio playing with fabrics and design, an inspired image will not fall out! 

     

    How exciting to know that our serious decisive efforts are the key. 

     

    Maya Angelou on the radio yesterday said, “We are equal to the mountain we face.”

     

    In my experience that is true, you have to trust that you will conquer the mountain you face. 

     

    Maya also said that the greatest virtue is courage, for without courage you can’t maintain the other virtues.  I am not even certain what the ‘other virtues’ are, but I do know that I am learning to become very courageous.

     

    And one more thing I heard yesterday, and I believe it was from Carly Simon.  She was asked if she was in a good place in life, and she responded that she doesn’t believe you ever get to a good place and those that say they are, are lying.  Instead she says that she has a mixed life. 

     

    Meaning that it is ever changing and there are ups and downs and all in between.

     

    I would say reality is a mixed life.

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  • Be Here Now.

    What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be. – Ellen Burstyn

     

    The word alone can seem like a very lonely and depressing thing, unless you are whole and alone. 

     

    You can also be alone in a room full of people if no one there really understands you, or maybe it is when you don’t understand yourself.

     

    I now have very little trouble being alone, for it seems near impossible to be alone. 

     

    When I step outside with nature, I feel that I am with a million friends.  I feel that I am interacting with it all the time, that the Sunshine is for me, the moist damp fresh air of rain, for me, the windy air, for me, the crunchy crisp frost, again for me.

     

    And each day is there for me, and what lies ahead, for me.

     

    Sometimes it seems there is a huge salad bar of things offered up to me, and I can select that which fillls me with peace, joy and love, other times it seems the bar is less selective, and then I have to make the best with what I am offered.

     

    My choices at work today will be decided upon a girl who has the option to choose and then I get her leftovers. 

     

    One route she did yesterday and took half the mail.  I may have to carry half of her work along with all of mine.  The other route is smaller but unfamiliar to me.  I would like to choose ‘none of the above’.

     

    Whichever route I get that is where I will be today.  No point is wishful thinking or getting all worked up in “if only”, it will just take me away from the moment.

     

    My brother’s blog, www.messyguru.typepad.com has referenced a book, Jon Kabit-Zinn's, "Wherever You Go There You Are.” 

     

    Wherever I go today, that is where I will be.  It is like we walk around with a spot on our backs saying, “You are here.”

     

    At times I get caught up in playing out a scenario of what it will be like way ahead of time arriving.

     

    I almost delivered half the heavy route before I even woke up today. 

     

    I am still sitting at home, yet I was almost done lifting all the heavy trays.  Trays that I may not even have to do or only do once.

     

    Isn’t it amazing how we can slip quickly into ‘victim’ clothes, how I could give my power over to the lady who chooses first, yet maybe she has the harder job, we don’t know ahead how each mail route will be that day. 

     

    My friend who passed away this summer used to say to me, “Just Arrive!”

     

    Life is asking me always to just arrive. 

     

    Jon Kabit-Zinn's book, "Wherever You Go There You Are." He writes:

     

    "So there can be no one place to be.  There can be no one way to be, no one way to practice, no one way to learn, no one way to love, no none way to grow or to heal, no one way to live, no one way to feel, no one thing to know or be known.  The particulars count."

     

    We don’t have to preplan all the planning is done for us.

    No need to choreograph life, not need to practice steps before their time.

     

    Here I was dancing dance moves before I even hear the music.

     

    The music is be here now!

     

     

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  • God or Non-Reality.

    In an email I received, there was talk about faith in God and also a group who gather who “truly love the Lord and are very interested in learning and growing in their faith in God and only want to learn about the truth.”

     

    I found this interesting.

     

    How do you put a gauge on your ‘faith’ in God?  How do you grow that faith or learn more about the faith in God?  What truth are they seeking of God?

     

    What is being challenged, God or you?

     

    The words faith and truth seem to be such honorable things to have towards God.

     

    How does that work?  How can you tell if someone has a bigger faith than you, or know more truths than you do?  Is there a better religion to find this?

     

    Of course I had to look up the meaning of Faith;

    belief or trust: belief in, devotion to, or trust in somebody or something, especially without logical proof

    – religion or religious group: a system of religious belief, or the group of people who adhere to it

     

    – trust in God: belief in and devotion to God

     

    “Especially without logical proof” stands out to me.

     

    To have faith without logical proof is that without a direct experience?  It seems that religions are asking you to believe in something without ‘logical proof’.

     

    What is logical?

    -sensible and based on facts: based on facts, clear rational thought, and sensible reasoning

    – able to think rationally: able to think sensibly and come to a rational conclusion based on facts rather than emotion

    – of philosophical logic: relating to philosophical logic

    Based on facts, clear rational thought isn’t needed to have faith?  Is that right?  How can they want us to leave our clear and rational thoughts behind, to not think sensibly and not come to a rational conclusion based on facts rather than emotions.

     

    It does seem to me, and this is my experience, that rational thinking or facts do get left behind, and it brings you in to a pretend world.

     

    My childhood religion was based on ‘forgiveness’ of sins.

    Of having the ‘faith’ that they indeed would be washed away.

     

    It came to me shortly after discovering who my father was, that this religion had been ‘forgiving’ him all along.  It (religion) had the power to erase or delete reality. 

     

    To believe or have faith in words erasing an action just seems impossible to believe in. 

     

    You really have to use your mind and conjure up a clean slate, even if your feelings are not so easily fooled. 

     

    And the sentiment is that if you can’t “forgive” you are worse than the original sinner!  It is our duty to forgive, our duty to erase the actions of another.  Do we really have that power?

     

    To have faith in certain religions means to step further and further from the truth of life itself.  When they have rituals and rules and words that can upright the fallen is weird to me.

     

    If you look at my father alone, it is impossible to cure or heal or right his wrongs.  They are done. The bells have been rung!  He and he alone sit with his actions.  His mind is very confused and no amount of forgiveness can unravel that mind.  It will take years of work to correct that, and a willingness to do so.

     

    Again, Martha Beck’s meaning of forgiveness rings more true, “Forgiveness is accepting the past cannot be changed.”

     

    What are religions selling?

    What is the actual application you are signing up for?

    What is their connection with God that you have to go to them to get?

    Where is God kept?

     

    I know this may sound like sour grapes or the mental ramblings of a mental woman, but I am truly and indeed seeking to know what it is they are selling?

     

    What I know is that reality wins only but 100% of the time.

    That a confused mind does confusing things.

    That when you clear your mind you clear your actions.

     

    I am much more inclined to seek to broaden my awareness, to see and question more and more in reality and sit less and less in a pretend space of ‘faith’.

     

    What I know is that reality is truth and truth is reality and both are God.  I need no faith to know this.

     

    It seems to me when I wasn’t in reality I needed faith, but once reality hit me smack in the face, religion and faith flew out the window.  It was useless and pointless in the face of reality. 

     

    There was no amount of faith that could change what was.

    No amount of forgiveness within me that would un-ring the bell that had been rung in my childhood.

     

    It seems that religion takes the place of reality.

     

    Faith to me is like a new F word. 

    It separates you from reality and logic.

     

    We need new religions that are reality based, instead of ‘faith’ based.

     

    Ironically I found God in the midst of Truth and Reality, where he was all along. 

     

    He and I were on the same page.

    I saw what God saw.

     

    The more aware I became the more I saw God everywhere, in fact there is nowhere where he isn’t.

     

    To me there is only one choice, either God or Non-reality.

     

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  • Peace is our birthright.

    There is a dueling going on, two sides meeting each other in conflict.

     

    I feel my brother’s great resistance to stepping into a new arena, one that should strengthen his speaking abilities and make him more comfortable with himself.

     

    I am not suggesting, (and in fact this wasn’t my idea in the first place but his to join Toastmasters,) that he join a group that will take away his self esteem, to tear down and rip apart who he is, but you would think so.

     

    It is not a group that weakens your sense of self, but instead empowers your abilities to think on your feet.

     

    Now here is what is even a more odd, he already can speak well on his feet, he gives speeches in his work to small groups of 20 or so, and he is a salesman doing an awesome job.

     

    So, I am surprised as he is, that Toastmasters brought up this fear.

     

    I read their intent, and it is to make you a better communicator and leader.

     

    My brother already leads his own branch office, and he as I said can communicate well, so perhaps this isn’t what he needs. 

     

    His work is his area of expertise, and perhaps what they are asking is for you to be your self, an area that is right now under construction for him.

     

    He can no longer define himself from a past that has just been revealed as trauma filled, and he isn’t fully whole, so he is in the land between, where he is still discovering who he is.

     

    I bet if he went in there as a half built man he would blow them away with his insights. 

     

    It is not up to me to strong-arm him into going, I am just so puzzled as to his resistance.

     

    When we talked last he said that he would prefer to go back to some of his unsavory past places than to attempt entering into this environment.

     

    To me this is a trigger talking that wants to stay the same.

     

    How often is it that abused women go back to the man who harms her, she feels safer with a fear she knows, than with a new fear.

     

    I am wondering if this is the same with him!

     

    He may be at another cross roads a fork in the road where he has to again decide which road to take.

     

    We have to let go of who we are to become who we want to be….I believe Einstein said.

     

    It is harder to let go than it is to grab on.

     

    Letting go of an old fear definition is like parting with a limb.

    It is who we are.

     

    I suggested to him to walk backwards into places he ‘used to feel comfortable in’ and explore what was really going on there.

     

    What he did and what was done to him.

     

    When I really had to look closely at what my parents did to me, and then what I allowed to be done to me, I was able to see where I had it all wrong.

     

    So maybe Toastmasters is not where he will find his answers, instead if he goes back to the places that are not good, but he felt good at, he can see what is upside down.

     

    This is not an easy task to readjust your readings on fear, or to readjust your readings on love.

     

    For what we love we should fear and what we fear we should love.

     

    Toastmasters is only half of the problem, the other half, the opposite is where he may find the key.

     

    He lost himself back there, he sold himself back there, he allowed others to victimize him self back there, maybe the answer is to see yourself being less then who you are.

     

    I was mortified and horrified in my lack of caring for me, the ways that I never saw me in the picture.  I am wondering if he would see the same.

     

    See your self without your self.

    How often are we silent for the other?

    How often do we do this or that for the other?

    To see your self whoring your self for others pleasure is an awful thing to see.  I have said that I was a whore for love and peace, and I still stand by that today.

     

    I allowed myself to be less for the peace and love from others.

     

    No more.

     

    May he find the place that steals him, may he find the leak in his life where he loses his sense of self, where his power drips away.

     

    It is just one more hole in a damaged psyche that is seeking repairs.  The fear is a signal that something has power over you. 

     

    As Bikram says, “If anyone can steal your peace, you are the loser.”

     

    Peace is our birthright.

  • Control of our Selves.

    FEAR;

    -feeling of anxiety: an unpleasant feeling of anxiety or apprehension caused by the presence or anticipation of danger.- frightening thought: an idea, thought, or other entity that causes feelings of fear- reverence: respect or awe for somebody or something.

    TERROR;

     

    the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.
    2. the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.
    3. a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government

     

    My brother and I had a discussion on whether he should have to do something that he fears or is the fear a way of telling him, not to continue.

     

    There seems to be two kinds of fears, one where there is danger and the other that has you feeling as if danger is present.

     

    I remember reading Fear is False Events Appearing Real.

     

    How do you know if your body’s signaling a false event or a real threat?  Is it possible that our bodies are protecting us falsely?

     

    Are there fears that you should not attempt to conquer and are there fears that keep you feeling less empowered and they should be faced, and how can you discern what is what?

     

    Feelings of terror seem to be fear and submission or being coerced to do something you don’t want to do.

     

    That is interesting, being forced to do something you don’t want to do.

     

    Isn’t that the nuts and bolts of being abused, especially sexually?  Would it then make sense that our ‘terror’ button has been activated at a very young age? 

     

    Now even as a big adult, when we get into situations we can’t control, we feel the imbalance and fear arises, and our terror button goes into overdrive.

     

    Due to the fact of undeniable trauma in early childhood we have an unreasonable relationship with fear and terror.  We bring into each new experience the unfounded terror or maybe misplaced fear.

     

    What is unfounded terror? What is misplaced fear?

    Or maybe what is more real is that our perceptions have us believing we will lose our power and control.

     

    It is very terrifying to be placed in a spot where you have no power.

     

    What does that mean to be powerless?  Does that mean controlling others and all situations?  Is that possible?

     

    What is the difference between surrender and submission?

     

    Submission; The act of submitting to the power of another.

     

    Surrender; To give up in favor of another. 3. To give up or give back (something that has been granted): surrender a contractual right. 4. To give up or abandon: surrender all hope. 5. To give over or resign (oneself) to something, as to an emotion: surrendered himself to grief.

     

    It seems that submission is giving your power to another.

    Surrender is to give up in favor of another, to surrender all hope stands out to me.   What comes to mind is Martha Beck’s quote, “Forgiveness is accepting that the past will not change.”

     

    I surrendered to the past, I did not become submissive and a let the past have power over me.

     

    There seems to be a fear and terror that rules my brother, that stands in front of realities that appear harmless, yet to him feel harmful.

     

    How can you correct or right yourself if you have terror of ‘normal’ things and then not fear what most do?

     

    Is it possible to be a victim with power?

    That seems like an oxymoron.

     

    Either you have power or you become victim to situations that you fear.

     

    What came to mind is how women become prostitutes.  It seems that we will control ourselves to be controlled.

     

    Does that make sense to anyone but me?

     

    It is like talking yourself into be powerless and being ok or powerful in the mode of powerless.

     

    Do you all recall seeing the faces of the women in the Religious Cult, and how they stated, “we are free to leave, but we choose not to.”

     

    Who but themselves believe that? 

     

    I recall feeling so shaky and inept to take the wheel of my mind, to be the only one standing there making choices.  No one or nothing stood between my reality and me.

     

    I had no rulebooks, and all past feelings were based upon a past that wasn’t grounded in normal, so I couldn’t even trust them!

     

    What was bad in the past was now good and what was good was now bad!

     

    Picture the ladies of the religious cult coming out in the world of so called sin and devil making.  How they feel ‘normal’ and even of purer status to be behind gates and subjected to being controlled.

     

    Isn’t it a tragedy that we fear the fearless and can eat Sunday dinners with a pedophile and be able to swallow.

     

    Our fear and terror button has a totally faulty sensor.

     

    I don’t know how my brother can flip his switch to off in places that are not harmful and then readjust the switch for places that are.

     

    How overwhelming it is to be so wrong in such a right situation.

     

    Yet we were trained that way.  Imagine being trained backwards.  Just as the ladies in the cult believe that they are doing ‘god’s will’ when in fact they are playing with the devil himself.

     

    The devil has his hands on the fear switch and is pushing it in places that he will lose control.

     

    How could the Serial Pedophiles of the Cult Religions have control, if the gates were open wide, if the ladies could talk and share with other normal people of the world, or if the world could come in and see what is hidden behind the gates?

     

    Are the gates to keep the ladies/girls in or the world out?

     

    It was spoken often and suggested firmly that we curtail all relationships with folks outside of our religion. 

     

    The devil was anyone outside of the religion.  Put the Fear Of God in us.  And isn’t that true?

     

    We feared God, but were faithful to the devil himself.

     

    Astounding to me even now.

     

    All I can say to my brother is to continue to walk into ‘devil realities’ and look again with your own eyes, hear with your own ears, to experience life and readjust your fear switch.

     

    It is broken and shattered and has been that way since you were four.

     

    You be the one to reset it, you can now freely say what it is you fear, for the devil is controlling it now.

     

    This is what happens when someone you love, trust and have faith in molests you, rapes you, and makes you be submissive to acts that are deviant.  You make real fear fearless and then take the fearless and make it fear.

     

    When an ‘uncle’ sexually abuses you, you are set backwards in fear from hence forth.

     

    You feel in control in uncontrollable places, having control in being a victim.

     

    And fear more the power of being free.

     

    Like the rats in the shock box, like the ladies behind the gates of the devil’s religion, more at home in places where real fear lives.

     

    “You are more afraid of your brightness, than your darkness,” says Marianne Williamson.

     

    It is like we were raised with the Devil and thought it was God, and we now have to totally flip every last thing around.

     

    Our journey to heaven turns out to be one to hell.

     

    It is like being kicked out of the compound and you now have to learn to live alone.

     

    What is fear and what is love, what is normal and what is not normal, what is functional and what is not functional.

     

    Little did we know that all our switches are not functioning?

     

    That is what it means to be dysfunctional.

     

    In order to become functional we will rewire our switch by walking fearlessly into normal situations, to have fear but go in anyway, to take back the control of our selves.

     

  • My Speakers.

    On Monday, with a car loaded down, I settled myself into the middle of the seat, and proceeded to plug in my flashing light, and I jostled a dime that rolled perfectly into the cigarette lighter, which responded with a crackling sound.

     

    The sound rang familiar, and I immediately knew that I had blown a fuse.

     

    This one little fuse, also controlled my radio, and while I could dare drive without a flashing orange light, I didn’t want to be in a silent car.

     

    I turned up the volume on the radio, praying that it wasn’t so, but all that came forth was white vacant noise, a loud sound of nothing.

     

    Imagine the speakers still work, but they are standing separated from the instrument that uses them, a mouth with static and no words, or maybe no mind to form the words.

     

    What occurred to me is that the radio is like the mind/ thoughts, the speakers like the mouth spilling forth what ever we tune in to.

     

    I didn’t just miss the noise; I missed the message, the insightful thought provoking talk that I usually listen to.  I missed the delightful music I hear when I select a certain channel.

     

    So I spent 5 hours in a car with a silent radio, although for the first few miles I was speaking in utter disbelief that I had to go all day without tantalizing information and that I was to just simply ride along with the sounds of the car.

     

    It took a while to for me to realize no one was going to entertain me on this ride that I had to entertain myself.

     

    I became familiar with the sounds of the car, and near the end of the route, the wheels began making a squeaking sound, which then turned into a grinding sound, the sound of break pads wearing out.

     

    I brought home this car with troubles, and yesterday took out the ‘backup mail car’, which I am so grateful we now own, for I had to work again.

     

    This time all the features of the car worked, but the radio wasn’t hooked into the wide assortment of channels that satellite radio has.

     

    There is a difference between local radio and what is offered on the satellite. Some choices are better and others are much worse.

     

    You get to decide what it is you will listen to.

     

    I have had the wonderful opportunity to tune into the Oprah and Friends channel, where she had wonderful authors and doctors on that delve into subjects I love learning about.

     

    She now has mostly herself and past TV shows and a smaller variety of others, but still I always hear something that I hadn’t heard before.

     

    Deepak Chopra has a show on Saturdays, and he interviews people and shares noted doctors and scientist, authors etc, all pondering life.  Here too I am always hearing a new prospective, or at least thought provoking words, that keep me excited as I ride along.

     

    Who knew that my learning could stop on a dime!  That this one little dime could stop the flow of information to me!

     

    I learned that our bodies are much like radios, our mouths like speakers, and I am not sure who decides what comes out of our mouths. 

     

    Can we exercise our minds, stretch them into new areas and become more like a satellite radio?

     

    Maybe by asking the questions, “Who am I and what is my purpose?” or by simply being willing to ask questions, to observe and view life from a new point of view, we can change the amount of channels we have.

     

    Perhaps we can look at our thoughts like different channels, how we can focus on the negative or we can focus on a better channel, or let it play out like a bad song. 

     

    How interesting to learn that we have voices/speakers, that we also have either a limited radio, or one that has volumes of interests, and that we are the ones with our hands on the knobs selecting what we want to hear/speak.

     

    Imagine our mouths are speakers, we can either shout, or say wise things, curse or saying loving words, give direction or scream orders, sing wonderful songs or lament at life’s drama, oh the power of our mouths.

     

    What I do know is that some people are locked into a very narrow station, with limiting beliefs and thoughts, so you will not hear variety coming forth from their speakers. 

     

    People are not so easily controlled as radios, and so far I haven’t seen an ‘off’ button. 

     

    What radio station are you hearing?  What is coming from your speakers?

     

    I love that I am the one who controls my speakers!

     

     

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