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I was given a gift of a small book, "Gift from the Sea" by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the 50th Anniversary Edition.  

It is written by a wife, a mother and a woman…she asks, "What is the shape of my life?" referring to a shell.

"The shape of my life today starts with a family.  I have a husband, five children and a home just beyond the suburbs of New York.  I have also a craft, writing, and therefore work I want to pursue.  The shape of my life is, of course, determined by many other things; my background and childhood, my mind and its education, my conscience and its pressures, my heart and its desires.  I want to give my and take from my children and husband, to share with friends and community, to carry out my obligations to man and to the world, as a woman, as an artist, as a citizen."

"But I want first of all – in fact, as an end to these other desires – to be at peace with myself. I want a singleness of eye, purity of intention, a central core to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can.  I want, in fact – to borrow from the language of the saints – to live "in grace" as much of the time as possible.  I am not using this term in a strictly theological sense, By grace I mean an inner harmony, essentially spiritual, which can be translated into outward harmony.  I am seeking perhaps what Socrates asked for in the prayer from the Phaedrus when he said, "May the outward and inward man be at one." I would like to achieve a state of inner spiritual grace from which I could function and give as I was meant to in the eye of God." Anne

As I was reading this and picturing the life I carry, I couldn't help but see the difference between my life now, and my life before I knew about being abused.

Imagine the two different shells to carry and the state of grace or the lack thereof, living in them.

A woman living under the shell of abuse, can't move in harmony with how she feels…instead she moves to please others. The whole dance and composition of the shell is not about her; but about keeping the abuse a secret, her feelings a secret.  It is a shell and a life that is lived without her…yet lived by her.

That is a life that is moved by the shell or secret…where you are being moved along by its needs, not yours.

Once I knew what was upon my back, how my life was being orchestrated by abuse and its need to be unknown, I threw that shell off…and have been attempting to form a new shell (life) that reflects me…that I can wear gracefully…that is pure me.

The difference between my two lives is remarkable and how it feels to live under each, on opposite ends of the spectrum of life.

I am not sure if there is a graceful way to wear abuse.

And, it has taken time for me to walk gracefully in my new life.  And, there are still places and people where it requires herculean efforts to be grace.  Where I am once again challenged to match my inner(feelings) and my outer(actions)…in an awkward presentation, compared to my old responses.

Where my inner requires me to say and do things that they don't agree with or like and I then have to remain steadfast to hold on to my grace…while knowing it is upsetting to them.

It can't pretend to pretend to pretend to walk their way and my way is unfamiliar and unknown to them.  We are walking and expressing two completely different languages.

In one life I lived and moved to preserve abuse and in the second life I lived to preserve the spirit of me.

The cost to go back and just acquiesce, it isn't about the shell of abuse or that I am now a big girl and it can no longer hurt me, or that he is dead or that she did the best that she could, or that family is family no matter what, or that everyone did the best that they could and had their reasons….It would be about me losing my grace.

My harmony with self.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He writes about Shankara, 

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

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

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

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

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

And about Rumi, 

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

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

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

I guess we see God as we see our Self.