Category: Examples of an Imperfect woman

The right-mind according to Dr. Jill, “is all about the richness of this present moment.  It is filled with gratitude for my life and everyone and everything in it. It is content, compassionate, nurturing and eternally optimistic.  To my right mind character, there is no judgment of good/bad or right/wrong, so everything exists on a continuum of relativity. It takes things as they are and acknowledges what is in the present moment……to my right mind, we are all equal members of the human family.”

 

My left mind is the tool I use to communicate with the external world.  Just as my right mind thinks in collages of images, my left mind thinks in language and speaks to me constantly.  Through the use of brain chatter, it not only keeps me abreast of my life, but also manifests my identity.  Via my left brain language center’s ability to say “I am,” I become an independent entity separate from the eternal flow.  As such, I become a single from the whole.

 

From the book, My Stroke of Insight, by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor.

 

Just knowing that there are two minds, “I am of two minds…” I wonder where that saying came from.

 

Anyway, just knowing that inside of my head is an instrument that has two sides, two separate ways to process life, helps me understand my unravel or my fall into what I call reality.

 

Isn’t it amazing that we can be inside of us looking around and using this side or that side of the mind to process our lives? 

 

And I believe we switch from side to side unknowingly most of the time! 

There are times in my life that I am at total peace, where I am overfull of gratitude that it literally overwhelms me.  When I am in my right mind creating wonderful Art and not even knowing there is a me, just Art.

 

There are also times that ME is front and center, and I am way an individual and very much defensive in my stance against life, reality and others.

 

What would happen if we just rode along for the ride, to welcome thoughts coming and going, to even welcome which side of the mind we are experiencing life with, to see this body as a body and not take it all so personally.

 

I am learning that the more I am disconnecting my sense of self in things, the easier it is to just be.

 

It is when we treat each incident in life as a personal part of who we are.

 

The body runs alone, it surely doesn’t need us to tell it what to do, we are not forever reminding it to breathe, to digest food, to pump blood, it all seems to move gracefully without our input.

 

The world also runs without our running agendas, we really have little control of anything, not the world, our bodies, or even our thoughts.

 

It seems it is all run for us.  Like we are the queens of life itself.

 

Sit back and watch and listen to all that happens for you.

As I sit now, I am in a Library by the lake, birds fly by from time to time, boat motors by slowly, a woman sits nearby, raindrops are tapping lightly on the window, voices in a distance, warmth of the laptop on my lap, so much to take in, in this one breath.

 

For now I am viewing life from the right mind and using my left mind language center to tell you about it.

 

I am just a woman sitting here observing.

How much time do we observe, compare to the times we literally are talking against what is happening.

 

Talking or whining about what is happening. Like our long drawn out dialogue will change anything outside. Is that when we get lost in our left mind file room sorting out what should have happened, what we could have done, instead of being with what is.

 

Mindlessly is really meandering around oblivious to what is occurring, we are not aware of reality, the sky, the birds, the ground, the flowers, our bodies wonderfully operating silently without any recognition, we are meandering around in our heads instead.

 

Mind talking in our heads is so loud sometimes we can’t see for the loudness.

 

That now stresses me out, and I have to walk outside sometimes to get back to now and then I seem to switch to Right mind.

 

I am happy that I have both sides, and I am happy to be aware of them and their functions.  I am in utter amazement at this body and how life unfolds.

 

We literally have no idea what will happen next.  It is like being in an action adventure, being the main character and not even knowing our lines, it will all depend what will happen next.

 

Isn’t it a cosmic joke, that we focus on ‘owning’ things, when all along, there is so much at our fingertips, even our fingertips are ours to use.

 

Imagine what your hands touch in a day, what they do for you, just little fingertips.

 

Our bodies are ours to use, the planet is set up with a zillion things for us to use.  Whether we see the sunsets and sunrises, the flowers and intricate designs of the clouds, they simply are there.  We did nothing for them.

 

The more you see, the more there is to notice, the more you hear, the more sounds appear.  It seems that it was just there waiting for you to notice!

 

No need to get ahead, to plan ahead to even contemplate the future, the future is here, while your busy trying to get somewhere, somewhere arrives!

 

What is there for me to do, but notice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What happens when you no longer fit your roles, when you can’t step into the role and do it?  When the costume and lines no longer fit, you can’t even pretend to pretend it is working, not even one little bit.

 

Roles seem to shadow our actions or maybe make us act in ways we wouldn’t typically act or accept behaviors due to another’s role.

 

I am beginning to really hate roles and how they seem to have more clout than what is really going on.

 

The role of mother never worked for me as a kid.

My mother did not wear the same costume as other mothers, there seemed to be a crack in the façade, like she couldn’t really pull it off. 

 

I too have the same affliction, that beneath the role is me, and most times me and the role are not in agreement.

 

Mothering doesn’t work on big kids.

 

My mothering doesn’t spew forth love and kindness, it instead states that which most will not say.  My mothering will not lie especially just to make you feel better.  Instead I walk fearlessly into your life and tell you things you know, but don’t want hear, much less do. 

 

It seems that roles are living out our lives, that the roles take precedence over the person beneath the role.

 

I am not tired of being me, but tired of trying to mother kids too big to mother.

 

The Role of mother needs to be shut down after a certain age.

 

Behind the role of mother and daughter lie two women.  That is what I want to address.

 

Let the roles die, let the actions that are attached to the roles die, and let us deal with each other woman to woman.

 

Woman to woman, maybe now we are close to being on an even keel.

 

Even keel, fair or in balance, where one is not tipping over the scales and making the other resentful.

 

Unbalanced relationships were where I was raised and I was forever dragging along someone who for what ever reason didn’t carry their own weight.

 

I no longer have an interest to accept less, to concede and allow imbalance to be ok.

 

The roles and titles seem to carry excuse cards or set up bars of a prison to which there is no escape.

 

Families are with us forever, until death do we part, no matter what actions are tossed at us from the role of sister, or daughter, or whatever.

 

I am so tired of dealing with roles instead of the people hiding behind them.

 

Step away from the role, lay down the title and let us see who you are?

 

Now who are you as we stand eye- to- eye, with our actions and past behaviors as our only measure between us?

 

How does each one of us measure up?

I will not cheat and say you are better than you are, and I want no favors from you.

 

Let us just stand in the land of what is.

What is it you are doing and what is it that I am doing.

Who are you and who am I?

 

Let us meet each other for the first time.

Again.

 

When we met the first time, you were but a moment old.

You were a child and I the mother, now you are a lady.

 

It is impossible to mother a lady! 

 

I know that when I lay down the cloak of mothering, we will both have to stand alone, naked but for ourselves.

 

I am no longer able to have the upper hand, just because I said so, and you no longer can hide behind the innocence of a child.

 

We will meet in this space called now, bringing only ourselves, no roles.

 

Free to stand as an individual, freed of actions and rules that no longer fit.

 

Disposed roles, what happens to them?  Where do they go?

Is there a place where old roles go?

Or a place where you can find new ones that fit better.

What will our new roles be to each other?

Can we be role less and just be two ladies?

 

I vote no roles! 

 

…we often think that somehow we’re going to improve, which is a subtle aggression against who we really are.

                                                                          Pema Chodron

 

That line of subtle aggression against who we really are stood out for me and has been tumbling around in my head.

 

Aggression isn’t that like fighting?  How is it that “improvement” turns into aggression?  That is scary to me that the opposite is happening and we do not even know it!

 

What is that when your body turns against itself, and destroys its own cells? 

 

Inside of me, I had this mistrust, this feeling of being wary of those type classes, and I had to go and see just what was going on.

 

This sentence to me makes more sense than anything else I have thought about in regards to improving ones self.

 

If we were to do the total opposite, instead of aggression we had acceptance our whole demeanor would change. 

 

In the past four years that I have been on this life journey but with my eyes wide open, I no longer am fighting who I am and where I have been and what I have done.  When my sense of self crashed, I was without self.

 

Maybe if we remove the self, there will be nothing to improve, just feeling our life’s experiences.

 

Can you really improve the feeling of love?  How about the feeling of sorrow? What can we improve on those experiences?  How about when you experience the feelings of overwhelming gratitude, can we add a morsel more? 

 

I began calling myself by the things I was doing.  Perhaps because the Me of old, no longer existed, I became “the cooker girl.”

 

You then just enjoy the experience of the moment.

 

The cooker girl was never the same, sometimes her meals were wonderful, sometimes not so much, sometimes she would forget she was cooking and became a ‘reader girl’.

 

Life became much less serious, and I became more at ease with life.

 

I can see where I could have become aggressive with the cooker girl when she forgot, but by then I was accepting she was a reader girl.

 

If I were to try and take ‘cooker girl’ classes, I would learn how to do that action better, but it would not make me better or worse if I failed to learn how to cook better.

 

I still haven’t found my self, but I see glimpses of where I have been.

Clothes are done, so I must have been a clothes washer girl, quilts are finished, so I must have been a quilter girl, the blog is added to, so I must have been typing.

 

But at the end of the day, a body lays down, closes its eyes and rests.  Heart beating, blood flowing, all knowing what to do.  I do nothing but comply to its tiredness.

 

In the morning, resting seems to be over, I get up.  How can I improve on something I have no control over?

 

I was trying to think of what I would improve each day?

And thinking back I use to have aggressive thoughts of I should have done more, been this or that.  Yet I did what I did, it is over.

You can’t go back even a minute and do a redo.

 

We have original minutes, and original experiences in real time.

And if you focus on you, you lose the moment, if you even talk between the experience and you experiencing it.

 

Try thinking and being in joy, or sorrow.  Both seem to eclipse the sense of you.  That is how most life is, except you may have a running mind saying stuff over the top.

 

Have you ever driven miles and not remembered driving, for you were so deeply thinking.  That is how life can slip by unnoticed.

 

I have no aggression towards myself.  I accept I do what I do as I do it, and have no regrets.  For if I knew better, I would have done better, but I didn’t.  I accept my not knowing.

 

When I find myself in the midst of being a ‘don’t know mom’ I embrace that as well.  And in the end, I do know and not a moment too soon…or too late.

 

I love the states of don’t know, for that means I am about to learn.

I love that I am not finished, that I don’t have to go out and seek to improve me.

 

I am me, completely me, fully me, with all my past unknowingness, and even my future unknowingness.

 

I can’t undo the past and have no desire to do so.

I can’t know the future, and have no desire to do so.

I can only be that which is asked of me in this moment.

 

I may be asked to cook, to be a mom, to be a wife, yet beneath it all, it is just this body some call mom doing tasks.

 

I love that line, “All it takes to become an Artist is to start doing Art.” Ellen Langer

 

You don’t even have to begin doing you, you already are!

 No improvement needed.

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

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

I am a perfect guru of me.

In the old days I think they used to call them Snake Oil Salesman, or the ones selling bottle of potions that held magic inside.

 

It seems in our day they are selling words, messages an idea, without a bottle.

 

How do you know if the idea holds up to the reality test?

How can you tell if what they are selling actually works?

Is it a mind game, a sleight of hands, words to actual deflect your attention from your reality or your body’s inner messages?

 

Who chased the wagon eager to purchase a bottle of hope, an ounce of dreams, a correcting potion that would undo years of desperate confusion?

 

Also, did the ‘seller’ believe in his goods?  Do they really truly believe that they hold the answer in their message without the bottle?

 

I am confused at best on this?  It would be better to believe that the ‘seller’ is oblivious to their errors.  For some reason the “forgive them they know not what they do” brings me consolation. 

 

I just can’t imagine that the sellers are selling false hopes and swinging around grandiose ideas and charging people to hear their words, knowing that they do not work.

 

Is the Seller better when She believes in her work?

And just because She believes does it make it the truth?

 

What can we as listeners of their words do to discern what we are hearing?

 

It seems to me, it is in the application or how it feels to your own inner truth?

 

But here is the problem, the speaker and the listener sometimes match in truthfulness, or awareness and they both can be a world away from reality.

 

I have heard that the Preacher is preaching to himself.  He is preaching to himself hoping to get rid of his inner demons.  You have to wonder if the listeners also have matching inner demons?

 

Does this also apply to our Speakers of workshops we attend?

 

What is their message and what are they trying to convince themselves of?  If we believe does that add credence to what they are selling?  Would the message stand by itself without someone listening?

 

Who would they be without a listening audience?

It almost seems that they need US to do their job.

Without a needy person, then what?

 

The needy arrive with money in their hands.

Looking for what?

What are they all looking for?

 

What do we want?

What do we get?

Who decides if we got our moneys worth?

 

I went out of curiosity I wanted to see if I could spot the message, the real deal.

I even asked one Speaker, for her message got tangle up and disguised somehow, it wasn’t in plain view.  She managed not to respond.  I let it go.

 

There is a saying from India, “if you see the Buddha along the way shoot him.” 

 

The Buddha lived his life and it will not help to follow his footprints, for there is only one Buddha.  You can have the same experience, but in your own way.

 

It is not the path, but the experience!

 

Maybe what I felt is that the speakers were discounting my experience wanting me to instead follow theirs.

 

I am so much happier just being me, not following along and to not have anyone following me.

 

For you can’t be me and I can’t be you!

 

There is comfort in that.  I am not here to teach others experience, and I love that we all are in the exact spot we should be in experiencing that which we are experiencing, a personal experience called life.

 

It is so perfect that experience cannot be sold in a bottle or given out, it is absolutely wonderful that there is no way to present experience.

 

Experience is the real deal.

 

I experienced a class that was trying to present experience, and it failed.

 

I love how you cannot imitate experience, like truth experience stands alone.

 

 

 

Picture Perfect a novel by Jodi Picoult, is the dance of abuse between a husband and a wife, both seem unable to wrestle themselves free of the relationship, or able to change the behavior.

 

Love gets twisted up in the middle, and during the happy times seems perfect, and during the dark times lost.

 

The juxtaposition between love and abuse and the way it can survive in the same relationship boggles the mind.

 

How is it possible to love and fear a person in one relationship and call it whole?

 

It is a stormy relationship at best, the contrast of two fronts hitting up against each other, the calm before the storm, or the wreckage after.

 

Is love mixed in or is it just the thoughts of love are easier to look at then the darkness of abuse?

 

Can you keep both, or does one ultimately win?

 

My relationship with my mother had the signs of an abusive relationship, there were times when I was in her favor, but I knew where the boundary lay, to easily fall out of her kindness.

 

It seemed I was the one controlling her depending upon how I acted she would either smile on in approval or huff off in silence withdrawing love in her wake.  I had the power to make her like/love me or hate/dislike me.  She had nothing to do with it, it was simply my behavior.

 

To me love was something tangible that the other carried, it was a thing like a tug-a-war rope that was held between to people.  The one with the most power always had more of the rope of love!

 

It wasn’t something inside of me, instead it was a conditional thing that was yanked back and forth.  Depending upon the mood of the other, you had more or less of the rope in your hand.

 

In the middle of my unravel, or maybe it was more in the first 6 months, my husband and I felt that yin and yang of that rope, the fleetingness it seemed to have.  I was forever sitting in a spot of change, changes so great that I was sure that that last change would break the rope called love.

 

So with the thread of love seemingly thin, our marriage was precariously balanced on, we began saying “I love you today”, it seemed the most honest, some days we literally did not know if the relationship between us would hold.

 

The honesty on both sides, the willingness to accept changes beyond what either of us foresaw, kept us in a state of influx, but real.

 

Once we separated our selves from the relationship, once our sense of self was removed, it was just a marriage relationship, and there we were two beings not knowing for sure if we matched!

 

We matched at one time, and now our life’s circumstances were so drastically changed, there was no way it couldn’t affect the individual as well as the relationship between us.

 

The space that opened up for each of us to be ourselves, to see just where it was we now were, the freedom to not have to match that old relationship, was to honor each of us as we were today, and without blame.

 

And I literally would not have blamed him, if he couldn’t have weathered the changes both inside of me as well as my new behaviors. 

 

We found ourselves in a spot of reintroducing ourselves, and once again relearning what the other likes or dislikes.  A new relationship was being born in the midst of the same two people.

 

Without a divorce or death, we were made to renegotiate the terms of our relationship.  The roles of husband and wife took a backseat to the role of self. 

 

A willing partner is key of course, and we both had to grieve our loss, acknowledging the old person could no longer be.

 

When one changes so drastically, the other has a choice to either go along and accept, or refuse.

 

Relationships should never overshadow the individuals within them.  The two separate individuals are the key factors of any relationship.

 

If one is weak, the relationship is weak, if one is lazy, the relationship is lazy, it takes two to tango, and the quality of dance depends on both people, one individual should not be made to carry the whole.

 

I have walked on both paths, and highly suggest not losing yourself in the relationship, but instead find one that fits you.

 

My laziest relationship was with myself.

I allowed others to control me.

I let them have the switch for my behaviors and feelings.

 

I love that I am now riding along with my hand on the switch!

 

Can you have a lazy relationship with life?

Can we just sit back and let life decide just how we will feel and behave?

 

That seems unfair to life that IT has to carry us.

 

I want to dance with life, be a full participant and carry my part.

 

What is my part of life?

 

I think my part is to receive life.

 

 

Fearless – oblivious of dangers or perils or calmly resolute in facing them.

 

Fear – A feeling of agitation and anxiety caused by the presence or imminence of danger.

 

When you read those two meanings, anxiety appears in the face of danger and we have two ways to deal. 

 

The acronym for fear is, False Events Appearing Real.

 

To me there seems to be two sides of fear, the real and the perceived.  Is it possible that you can become oblivious to real danger and then makeup a pretend danger?

 

In the case of dysfunctional families, the real danger is overlooked, we become oblivious or fearless in the presence of danger. We certainly are not resolute in facing our fears, for we don’t even know we should be in fear.

 

No one told me to fear my father, yet my body held the real emotions, anxiety, and uneasiness when I was in his presence.

 

It seems possible to become fearless in a dysfunctional way, oblivious to danger.

 

I have experienced the two sides of fearlessness.  The oblivious and the calm and resolute, the two are worlds apart.

 

One is to walk in step with reality the other is to be way off track.

 

I was pleasantly surprised in the meaning of fearless, to see the two sides.

 

When hearing others speak of fearlessness, what is it that they are asking you to do?  Is it to become oblivious, to overstep and slip around a real and present danger, or to see the danger and become calm and resolute.

 

Oblivion – The fact or condition of forgetting or having forgotten.

 

Isn’t that meaning incredible.  I am amazed and tickled that it is exactly as my experience.

 

I lived in oblivion, the condition of forgetting.  Incredible to me!  That is exactly where I lived for 46 years.  Amazing.

 

The land of forgetting!  My mother had a saying to “forgive and forget”, to move on.  It is the act of forgetting that is the key here.  She had to work magic to stay oblivious.

 

We are now the two sides of Fearless, she is fearless oblivious to danger, and I am the calm and resolute.

 

Well the calm part I am still working on, but I get there after much struggle. 

 

The thread that I was pulling on, the part that had me off kilter with two of the classes I attended this week, is that they seemed to be speaking of the oblivious side of fearless.  Or at least that is my humble opinion.  That is what left me so unsettled.

 

I am tickled beyond tickled to know that there are two sides of fearless, just as I am thrilled to know that oblivious is the condition of forgetting!

 

My handicap was that I was a good forgetter girl.

The perfect participant in the land of oblivious!

Fearlessly wandering in the land of danger unknowingly.

Blind.

 

“Her strength was her blindness” is what I say of my mother.

She is incapable of being in the land of remembering.

I can now see how she feels fearless.

 

Who would have thought there were two sides to fearless!

There always seemed a fine line, one word and two complete opposite ways of being.

 

Fearless can be so deadly to reality.

 

 

 

 

Lately the “Spiritual” teachers or “Self Help” teachers are really sticking in my mind.  I keep wondering how in the world they could have taught me what experience did?

 

Who am I?  Can they know?

 

Who has the blueprint? Do they have information from the Universe about me and where it is that I am going, what I am learning now and what path I have to take to get there?

 

Isn’t the synchronicity and choreographing done on High and we are just being moved around?

 

A thought comes in and we move.  Who is thinking the thoughts? How can a teacher “give us new thoughts?”

Can the teacher slip in between the Universe and add or take away thoughts?

 

Excitement moves me or when I feel dis ease I may back away, I feel moved to move!

 

It seems the planet is being hoodwinked by a bunch of people charging money to tell you how to BE different than what you are!

 

I find that rather shocking to say the least.

 

Today I was trying to create ‘Lady Accessories’ to bring up to Calumet for a Gallery.

 

I woke up early and decided to make Journal Covers with the Lady and I M Perfect on each one.

 

While I enjoyed the creative part, when I had to think about prices to ask for each, how to sell and to make a ‘profit’ stress arrived. 

 

When I focus on the money and not the message, is where I lost interest.

 

And then my next thought was “what is your message!”

 

Do I even have a message?

 

What gets me excited about the “Lady” what is her message?

 

My quilts for some time now, have been trying to get my attention, pulling on my shirttails, or heartstrings.  It was not my intention to find a message in a quilt!  Yet without trying to bring a message forth, one would arrive in the finished product.

 

A surprise, a knowing that I did not know before about myself, really an unknowing making itself known.

 

After a few of these I would try and watch for the hand of the Universe at play in my quilts, but soon would get caught up in the creation, and in He would slip in and add His touch.

 

Quilting has been my way of escaping, a place where I could let go and let be. To be myself without a care in the world, let my worries and stresses fall away, and just play.

 

Be myself doing what I love to do.

 

I did not try and make a certain thing, I did not even have an idea, I would just monkey around with a new technique and maybe think about how I could express an emotion.

 

I started making Ladies, they were just silhouettes, just bodies floating out of what I called the matrix, or confusion, floating on air, free and boundless!   Ladies floating free of the box, leaving the rules behind!

 

Then came the silhouettes of dresses, yarn hair, and yarn arms and legs, I could make them dance, and oh what movement and energy seemed to spring forth.

 

The ladies came in different sizes and shapes, but one was remarkably similar to me.  I loved my ladies. 

 

Layer by layer I uncovered me, as I played with quilts.

Art Therapy is what the proper term is I suppose, but in playing and doing what I love, I discovered me.

 

The lady was me, or I was the Lady!

 

There I was just playing around, not trying to be myself and I was doing myself perfectly.

 

There seems to be too much trying to be that which you already are, in fact the more you try the more fake you become, or so it seems to me.

 

How can a dog try and be a dog?

A tree try and be a tree?

 

People  are out there charging you money to come and hear about how to TRY and be a better you, a fearless you, a this or a that you!

 

We need more classes on not trying!

Maybe more on doing you!

You do you.

Don’t try, just do you. 

How about try and NOT do you.

 

Show me how to NOT do me.  I dare you to try.

Give me just one simple example of how I cannot be me.

Even when I didn’t know me, I was doing me.

 

In fact it was to my horror I discovered I was doing me while I was asleep at the wheel, but I still was doing me.

No one came in and took over control instead I was following them.

 

Me in a cult following along mindlessly, that was me!

 

I learned about my mind and how it can be controlled and how I look following along, how I act, what I do and what I don’t do!

 

How can we experience a free mind, unless we first experienced one in prison?

 

My lessons are personal and special just for me.

I really don’t know your lessons or your way.

For how can I, for I don’t even know my way.

 

Like snowflakes we are all original works of Art created by the Universe!

 

I really don't want another person in my work of Art, changing it up, making it better or putting themselves in me.

 

I am an original piece, there is not another like me, or you! 

 

We are perfectly being ourselves, always.

 

The Art of Being Me!

 

 

 

 

 

If Spence had written this himself, he would have written “Gone on another trip. See you later.”

It brought a smile to my face, and wistfullness inside.  I knew the man whose obituary I was reading.

That one line said it all.

I met him in 2000 doing the Census.  He brought such an energy with him when he entered the room.  You would wait to hear what his latest discovery was, what thought he just discovered, what class he took, what trip he had planned, what humorous tale he had to tell!

He carried a notebook and was forever jotting stuff down. 

Life was there to be lived, to explore and ask questions a stranger he never met, he would begin talking and a new friend was born.

I didn’t see him much after our work ended.  But our brief time together is one that I will always remember with a smile, he shared his whole spirit and by example alone we knew life was here for the taking!

He took classes, at least one a year to maintain his ‘student’ status to gain access to college priviledges, but mostly to remain young and open to new ideas! 

He was a Teacher, but was already retired when I met him, but he taught, he just didn’t get paid.  And maybe he did, by all the smiles and laughter that bounced back to him!

A student at heart and willing to learn and share, eager and looking forward to the next idea, the next trip, the next sight to see. 

The one personal line in his obituary left me thinking that how nice it would be if we all could write our own obituaries.

What would I say?

If there was a final report to be written at the end of my life, would I make different choices, would I see things differently?

Who would I speak to and what message would I have?  What parts would I focus on in the re-telling? 

Maybe it should be like an acceptance speech and we can thank all who contributed in making us who we are today.

To live like you were dying, maybe instead Live like you have to write about it!

Do you want to write a boring paper or one filled with delightful ideas and discoveries, one that is humorous and entertaining?

We are living out a Non-Fictional book, you are the main character, you speak your lines, move as you move, you are a living and breathing work of art, a novel in the making!

The exciting part is we don’t know the ending, who will appear in the next chapter, what our lines will be, what the scene will be, what types of emotions will be required, will our hearts expand or shrink, will we grow or get stuck, will new ideas spread our understanding open or will we turn back to our old tried and true ways?

Each day we are writing sentences, book, chapter and verse in the book titled “Life” written daily, moment by moment and each now moment is recorded in another book called time.

We are here for a set amount of time, no one knows the ending, where we will be, what project will be incomplete, what lesson we almost got, all we can do is be engaged until our last breath.

It pays not to worry about when it ends, we just have to keep writing our book until the end, don’t leave things unwritten, dreams untried, things unlearned.

Time doesn’t run out until it does!

The clock is ticking.

We know not the hour,

Hurry and write, adding as much as you can.

What will I add today?

What imprint will I leave behind?

What fragrance of spirit will linger long past my last breath?

Who am I and how long do I have?

Like a the greastest books ever written, the ending is a surprise!

In a novel I am reading, one of the characters sighs and said, “ I guess it is my lot in this life to be the one to say the difficult things.”

 

As I pondered that sentence, which struck a cord within me, I wondered ‘what are the difficult things?’

 

What do we classify as ‘difficult’ and what in our world is difficult to speak of?  Is it difficult to say or do we fear the response in the speaking of it? 

 

Difficult to me is stating the obvious when the obvious isn’t obvious to others.  It is to stand opposite against the other person, to be coming from it from a completely different view.

 

The strength of the mind to hold on to its ideas and its arrogance that it trumps reality is way beyond my comprehension.

 

When you are unable to assimilate a new incoming change, when your mind refuses to accept what Is, Life doesn’t listen to your mind, changes are not slowed down and deviated from, instead life continues on.

 

Life simply changes without your permission, it keeps moving on, and you are lost back in time, unable to keep step with the reality around you.

 

You become lost in a mind of wishful thinking, of pretending of a reality that isn’t there, in a believe-a-head world.

 

Each new piece of evidence that comes in that doesn’t match with your ‘mind’ you fling it back into reality.  You now become lost in your story of reality, but not in reality.

 

Does dis-ease come from being out of sync with reality and when you are not walking hand and hand with reality are you then making choices based on ideas in your head, rather then what is in front of you, even heart choices instead of reality choices.

 

Somehow reality has gotten a bum rap, it has become the bad person, the odd man out, the difficult child in the room.

Why is the mind kind and reality bad?

 

In my case, as a child my Reality was bad.

 

But somehow we weren’t to speak of it, keep this a secret, or were threatened, or we ourselves were ashamed and blamed ourselves, but whatever, this difficult thing we were not allowed to talk about it.

 

Difficult Things were to be kept quiet, to not look at them and for God’s Sake, please don’t speak of it!

 

That is weird as I just reread that.  God would want us to lie about reality?  The all knowing and all seeing God wants us to tell a story that is different than His…..really, I know that is way not right!

 

My memories of my childhood are few and far between and different.

 

I have one where I am little, and lying on my bed showing my mother my bottom, and there are other little kids standing around the bed, their heads barely clearing the bed to see what I was showing.  I have no words to go with the memory, but I can recall physical pain, burning to my vagina.

 

I have No recollection how my bottom got hurt, or what she did to fix it.

 

I am Blessed to have this memory, for it holds part of the puzzle of me. 

 

Did I as a little girl speak of difficult things?  Did she tell me not to?  I don’t recall…..

 

One of our last conversations ended when we could not agree, our perceptions of my father were an ocean apart. 

 

I now saw him being a pedophile, and her heart and mind wouldn’t allow her to go there.

 

In Forty years she hasn’t moved from her spot.

 

Forty years later, my voice came back. 

 

It is loud, clear and unrelenting and it cannot be swayed.

I am not leaving reality.

 

I see no difficulties in reality.

 

I was the oldest of 6 girls and living in a neighborhood of girls, and had three girls myself and had many nieces. 

 

My reality today is that my silence came at a cost. 

 

It may be difficult to speak up, but is it much worse to be silent, for the problem doesn’t get smaller and disappear. 

 

There is a place in me, a dark spot, a sacred corner where it holds all the tears and regrets, the sadness and suffering that my silence caused.  A file I don’t open too often.

 

“Forgiveness is accepting that the past cannot change.”

                                                                                   Martha Beck.

 

I have forgiven myself for my silence.

In my heart of hearts I know I was but a little girl.

 

“There are two ways to be fooled.  One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”

                                                                          Soren Kierkegaad.

 

It is my greatest desire to never be fooled again, to step out of reality just because it is the path of least resistance!