I M Perfect lady

Tag: addictions

  • Living on the Blocks.

    Week 9, The Artist Way…Julia Cameron writes,

    “We’re more comfortable being a victim of artist’s block than risking having to consistently be productive and healthy.

    “An artistic U-Turn arrives on a sudden wave of indifference. We greet our newly minted product or our delightful process with “Aw, what does it matter anyhow?  It’s just a start.  Everybody else is so much further ahead…”

    “Yes, and they will stay that way if we stop working. The point is we have traveled light-years from where we were when we were blocked. We are now on the road, and the road is scary.  We begin to be distracted by roadside attractions or detoured by the bumps.”

    And here are a few sentences from the exercises at the end of the chapter.

    “Your choice to block is a creative U-Turn – we turn back on ourselves.  Like water forced to stand still, we turn stagnant.”   Julia

    These blocks are in Life and in Art. And we use them as an excuse as to why we can’t live a better life or create art. 

    And it is only ourselves that turn us around and heads us back to our old vices and excuses or fears.  We keep turning our backs on our truths, our desires, what we love, what brings us peace, our joy…in the good energy flow. 

    I see my life as a river where others lives are rocks cropping up or interests that are not crucial to my pathway, and instead of floating on by, I stop.  I stop my own flow in life.

    We each have specific rocks that stop us and then there are bends in the river, opportunities that float by, but we are too afraid to slip into the flow…or we are so busy doing things that are not important and they go by unnoticed. 

    It is just so interesting that Artist Blocks or Blocks of Addictions keep us from creativity…and they are all our choices.

    It is up to us to stop clinging to things that don’t serve us, that keeps us from living. 

    One big boulder in my life is ‘Responsibility’ and getting my work done first. 

    I focus on cleaning up my space instead of using that time to create.  I put so many rocks ahead of my flow, that my life seems heavy and hard. 

    I never looked at it this way…even though I lived it more often than not.  In fact slipping into the flow of life and playing in the currents and relaxing and letting the river take me, without saying no…is not very common in my life. 

    Most of my life has been spent on heavy rocks and in other people’s responsibility.  Getting used to flowing in my life will take some effort and will mean turning my back on ‘work’.  Who knew that work is a blockage in your life.

    Today, my one day off, and again I am working on cleaning up our house, the sewing machine sits…however, I did make a date with my husband for later on.

    In time, I will be able to discern how much free flowing time I have had and how much I have spent on the rocks, for I will feel its heaviness and know I got lost again living on the blocks.

    "Saying No can be the ultimate self-care."  Claudia Black

     

     

  • Confines of a Well

    There seems to be two perceptions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    There is no common ground between the two worlds.

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

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

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

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

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

  • Change will Happen!

    If you are not trying to change, you do not have any choices to make, you just keep repeating what you have been doing, there will be no inner struggle, no wondering or thinking, no stressing about how you will handle each new moment that arrives, where you will again be asked to make a choice, differently.

    If you don’t make a new choice you remain unchanged, and if you do make a new choice you will be changed, but grow further and further from your old familiar ways.

    Not changing is easy; it is mindless and falls effortlessly within your life, like smoke seeping into each minute.

    Change is like breathing new air into each choice we are asked to make daily, the small and the large, the complicated and the simple, each little decision has to be dealt with as a if you were a new arrival on earth, yet with the magnetic draw of a long held pattern.

    To jump the track of an old pattern isn’t as easy as one suspects and you will not know until you are actually the one doing the heavy lifting.

    Heavy lifting is doing the opposite of what you are used to, the complete and total opposite is required in order to change.
    You can’t change your life by doing nothing different, by not affecting your world and each relationship in it, the only way to change is to allow waves of new you flow into everything in your life.

    Since you are the common denominator in your world and with all whom you spend time with, if you change, all will feel the ripple affect.

    If there is no ripple, you haven’t changed.

    In the book, “Tattoos on the Heart” by Gregory Boyle, he is speaking to a gang member who is asking “How many homies have you buried…you know, killed because of gangbanging?
    “Seventy-five, son,” (this was some years ago. If he asked today, it would be more than twice that number.)

    “Damn, G, seventy-five?” He shakes his head in disbelief, his voice a bare hush now. “I mean, damn…when’s it gonna end?”

    I reach down to Omar and go to shake his hand. We connect and I pull him to his feet. I hold his hand with both of mine and zero in on his eyes.

    “Mijo, it will end,” I say, “the minute…you decide.”

    The moistening of his eyes surprises me. He grabs my hands in his.

    “Well,” he says, “then, I decide.”

    “Omar,” I tell him, “it has always been as simple as that.”

    “How many things have to happen to you,” Robert Frost writes, “before something occurs to you?”

    Change awaits us. What is decisive is our deciding.
    Gregory Boyle

    When you decide, change will happen!

  • How I Treat My Body.

    “There are many ways to deprive yourself:  You can deprive yourself of cookies or you can deprive yourself of feeling well after eating them.  You can deprive yourself of feeling your sadness or you can deprive yourself of the confidence and well-being that come from knowing you won’t be destroyed by feeling it.”  Geneen Roth

     

    It really struck me that we are deprived one way or the other, and you get to decide what you want to deprive yourself of.

     

    I love that there are two choices, which you can either feel good or not feel good. 

     

    When I do yoga I feel good, that I am taking care of this body, moving it and stretching it, and making it stronger. I am depriving myself the opportunity to beat me up.

     

    I have begun to also be aware of what I am putting in my body, most of the time.  When I eat whole foods, I deprive myself of feeling bad about myself.

     

    Here is another section that caught my attention.

     

    “My mother had spent years telling me I was selfish, and it was upon that nub of information that I built a monument of deficiency.  But as I widened the myopic gaze on I-me-mine, I saw my mother at age twenty-five with two small children, a loveless marriage and a desperate need to have a different life.  With the little information she had, and doing the best she could do, she called me selfish for wanting more that she could give.  And since I would have died for her, and since every child needs her parents to be right, I took myself to be the sum of her limitations.  I saw myself through the eyes of a lonely, depressed, troubled woman – and never questioned my loyalty to her vision.  And then there was my father who saw me as a ditzy dumb blonde. Add ditzy dumb blonde to “selfish, fat, and unlovable” and you have who I took myself to be for almost fifty years.

     

    Psychologists and spiritual teachers alike call this learned version of our selves “ego” or “personality” or “false self”.  It’s false because your idea of yourself is based on who your mother took you to be, and her idea of herself was based on who her mother took her to be, which was based on who her mother took her to be, your idea of yourself – the person whose feelings get hurt, who takes offense at being criticized, who is webbed to her opinions and preferences or ideas- is based on those of someone who’s never met you.  Your self-image is refracted so many times – with learned inferences and memories and conditioning- that it is nothing more than a hall of mirrors.

     

    Talk about a hoax.  You are not who you think you are.  Hardly anyone is.  Because although kids come into this world with an implicit understanding of who they are, they have no self-reflective consciousness.  They know who they are, but they don’t know that they know.  And the only way to find out is by seeing themselves in their parent’s eyes.  We become what and who are parents saw.  Figments of their imagination. 

     

    Then, as my teacher Jeanne says, we spend our lives following instructions given to us ten or thirty or fifty years ago by people we wouldn’t ask for street directions from today.”  Geneen

     

    In my experience my whole self was designed from my mother’s point of view and how my father treated me.

     

    Here is more from Woman Food and God,  “The obsession will end when you love discovering your true nature more than you love being loyal to your mother or father.  The obsession will end because you care enough about yourself to stop damaging yourself with food.  Because you love yourself enough to stop hurting yourself.  Who doesn’t want to take care of what they love?

     

    If you pay attention to when you are hungry, what your body wants, what you are eating, when you’ve had enough, you end the obsession because obsessions and awareness can’t co-exist.  When you pay attention to yourself, you notice the difference between being tired and being hungry.  Between being satisfied and being full.  Between wanting to scream and wanting to eat.

     

    The more you pay attention, the more you fall in love with that which is not obsessed: that which is blazing itself through you.  The life force that animates your body.  Food becomes a way to sustain the blaze, and way of eating that keeps you depressed or spaced out or uncomfortable loses its appeal.  When that happens, you slowly realize that you are being lived by that which is God and you wouldn’t have it any other way.”  Geneen

     

    I love how she writes this, for it is exactly true in my experience…. Once I had redefined myself, I then began to treat myself better to the point I love myself enough to take care of how I treat my body.

     

     

  • Ultimately you are the one in control.

    In “Reinventing The Body and Resurrecting The Soul, Deepak has a chapter called, In Your Life: Creating Your Own Epiphany.  Here is part of it. It is long but very interesting to read.

     

    “ It’s unfortunate that the word epiphany is limited to a religious context.  People assume that epiphanies are about God and occur only to saints.  An epiphany is really a mini-breakthrough.  One piece of conditioning is shattered.  Instead of being a victim of a rigid belief, you feel released.  What causes such a mini-breakthrough?  You have to shift your attention to the soul, because that is the aspect of yourself that is not conditioned.  The soul represents higher awareness in that sense- it is free from all conditioning.  Or, to put it the most simply, the soul never says no.  Anything is possible.  Whatever can be imagined comes true.  If you can keep your attention on your soul, you will experience an epiphany every day.  Instead of no you will experience unlimited yes.

     

    To get beyond the power of no is crucially important.  No is very convincing.  People reject all kinds of experiences because they believe it’s right to reject.  They oppose because they can’t bring themselves not to.  The spell of no holds them so strongly that little else matters.  Some concrete example will help here, then we will see how each one can be reversed.

     

    Getting past no.

     

    ·     You must break the spell when your mind:

    ·     Tells you that people can’t change

    ·     Keeps you trapped in rigid habits

    ·     Traps the mind in obsessive thoughts

    ·     Creates craving that cannot be appeased

    ·     Puts up fear as a threat if you try to break free

    ·     Forbids you to have certain thoughts

    ·     Makes natural urges seem illicit or dangerous

     

    It takes mini-breakthroughs to get past the power of no because there is so much negativity to overcome in so many areas. But in each area the same principal holds:  to make life easier, you need to stop doing whatever it is your doing. I know this sounds terribly general, but in reality if you were doing the right thing, you would be in contact with your soul already, and your life would be unfolding day by day, on the principal of yes.  So you have to stop what your doing and shake things up. 

    Now let’s look at the specific areas where the power of no needs to be dislodged.

     

    Negative belief #3:  Obsessive thoughts are in control.  Most people don’t think they are obsessive. They identify obsessions with mental disorders, when in fact an obsessive-compulsive disorder is just an extreme variation on a universal condition.  Obsessions are yet another way that the power of no removes your ability to choose.  At any given moment you might obsess about keeping safe, avoiding germs, getting angry in traffic, spending money, disciplining your children, defeating terrorism- the possibilities are endless and ever-changing.  You can’t assume that a thought becomes an obsession only if it’s immoral, wrong or irrational.  One can obsess about things that society approves of and rewards.  We all know people who obsess about winning, or getting back at those who wrong them, or money, or ambition. By definition, an obsessive thought is one that’s stronger than you are.  That’s where the power of no does its damage.

     

    From the soul’s perspective, thinking is an expression of freedom.  The mind isn’t compelled to prefer one thought over another.  Much less is the mind a machine programmed to repeat the same message over and over.  What keeps us trapped in repetition is the belief that “I must think this way.”  Other alternatives are closed off by fear, prejudice, self-interest, and guilt.  To break out of obsessive thinking, you must examine this deeper level where “I must” holds sway.

     

    ·     Don’t struggle against thoughts that keep repeating themselves.

    ·     When people tell you that you keep doing the same thing, believe them.

    ·     Don’t accept that always winning, always being number one, or always doing anything is productive.

    ·     Don’t pride yourself on consistency for consistency sake.

    ·     If you feel trapped by an obsession, ask yourself what  your afraid of.  Repetition is a mask for anxiety.

    ·     Stop rationalizing.  Put your attention on how your thoughts feel, not what they say.

    ·     Be honest about the frustration you feel with have the same idea over and over.

    ·     Don’t defend your prejudices

    ·     Take active steps to reduce stress, which is the major cause of obsessions.  Under stress, the mind keeps repeating the same thing because it isn’t relaxed or open enough to find an alternative.

    ·     Through meditation, seek the level of your mind that isn’t obsessed, that has no fixed ideas.

     

    Negative belief #4 Cravings can never be appeased. 

    When cravings keep returning, they force you either to give in or resist (the futility of this struggle was touch on earlier) The power of no insists that you have no alternative.  Once again, a repetitive pattern imprinted on the brain overrides free choice.  Your craving takes on a life of its own, and if taken to extremes, it becomes an addiction.  The difference has to do with just how limited you become.  Someone who craves chocolate can’t resist eating some, but if addicted, they would eat nothing else.  Even in its milder forms, however, craving can make you feel that you have no other choice.

    From the soul’s perspective, a craving is another example of a shortcut imprinted on the brain.  The person who always eats chocolate has made an implicit choice that chocolate is the best kind of sweet, and therefore, instead of his bothering every time to consider a variety of sweets, he chooses chocolate automatically. But setting your mind on autopilot doesn’t mean that you can’t change it.  The option to reset your reactions always exists.  Under the spell of no, you willingly gave up that option, but anything you give up you can also reclaim.

     

    ·     When a craving arises, don’t make it an either/or choice.

    ·     Instead of either giving in or resisting, do one of the following:  walk away, postpone your choice, find a distraction, pause and watch yourself, or substitute another pleasure.

    ·     Don’t’ think of defeating your craving. Think instead that you are gradually erasing an imprint.

    ·     When you feel discouraged for giving in, be with your feelings instead of pushing them away.

    ·     Realize why appeasing a craving never works: you can never get enough of what you didn’t want in the first place.

    ·     Find out what you really want, whether it’s love, comfort, approval, or security. These are the basic needs that cravings try to substitute for.

    ·     Pursue your real need. If you do, the craving will automatically lose its grip and in time will vanish.

    ·     If for any reason you can turn away from your old craving, seize the moment, even if your craving soon returns.  Every small victory imprints your brain in a new pattern.  Don’t see this as a temporary victory – see it as a sign that you can find the switch that turns your craving off.

     

    Negative Belief #5: Fear keeps you from being free.

    The power of no uses fear as its enforcer.  Like a hired gun, it holds a threat that is merciless and indifferent.  Under the spell of no, the mind finds any and every reason to be afraid.  The simplest things become objects of anxiety.  The most unlikely risks loom as dangers that can befall you at any moment.  When you find yourself in a defensive posture, you have denied yourself the most basic freedom, which is to be safe in the world.  It’s not the external threat that creates this situation.  We project our fixed beliefs onto every situation, so feeling safe or unsafe becomes a personal decision.

     

    From the soul’s perspective, you are always safe.  The universe cherishes your existence.  Nature is designed to uphold your well-being.  If you find yourself under threat, it can be quite realistic to assess the danger and escape it.  But if you are paralyzed by anxiety, the threat becomes inescapable.  Some one with fear of heights, for example, finds it impossible to climb a stepladder.  The danger of falling doesn’t prevent other people from climbing the ladder, because they are free to access that the risks are small.  But a phobia takes away the freedom to access danger realistically; fear acquires absolute power, the power of no.  To get beyond a phobia, you must call its bluff and reassert that you are safe.

    ·     Don’t fight your fears when you are actually afraid.

    ·     When you feel calm and safe, call your fear to mind so that it can be examined.

    ·     Fear is convincing, but that doesn’t make it right.  Make sure you can see this distinction.

    ·     Anxiety tends to obsess about reasons to be afraid, stoking its own fire. Don’t be fooled by repetition.  A situation doesn’t become dangerous just because you keep thinking it is.

    ·     Separate the energy of fear from the content of your experience.  Instead of worrying about the thing that makes you anxious, go directly to the feeling of anxiety and move the energy as you would any other, through physical release, toning, meditation, and other techniques.

    ·     Realize that you are not basically afraid.  Fear is a passing emotion that can be released.

    ·     Know that you have a choice to either hold on to fear or let it go.  If you feel anxious, take immediate steps to let go. Don’t dwell on fear or try to reason with it.

    ·     Avoid blaming yourself.  Fear is universal.  It is felt by the bravest strongest people.  To be afraid doesn’t mean you are weak.  It means you haven’t yet let go.

    ·     Be patient with yourself. Fear and anxiety are the biggest obstacles for everyone. Be thankful and congratulate yourself every time you overcome fear.

    ·     Don’t consider it a defeat if fear returns. The time will soon come when you can sit calmly and move the energy of fear.  Ultimately you are the one in control.

    Deepak Chopra

     

     

  • A no to you is a yes for Me!

    If someone said to identify yourself how would you do that?

     

    What do you consider your identity?

     

    We can’t use our bodies, or our titles, but our own inner identity, what would that be?

     

    How do you explain your own inner identity?

     

    I am sure self has to be connected with identity, or otherwise we would be describing something outside of us.

     

    It is not our bodies, it is not our brains, our thoughts our minds, is it the heart of who we are?

     

    Is it our passions, our joys, the things that make us smile, laugh and do what we do?

     

    What is our identity that gets stolen with abuse? 

     

    Dr. Robin Smith spoke of this on her radio show about addictions.  That little children who get abused lose their identity.

     

    What happens to us at that time, what leads us on a life of addictions, of being cold and treated like an object? 

     

    I have been trying to write about this, but damn this seems like a puzzle with no answer, that the more you look and the more you twist the less clear it becomes.

     

    If I can’t use this body to identify myself, then how do I do that?  My actions?  Do they point the way?

     

    What is taken out of us so that we are left a barren vessel that we will use and abuse trying to get back what was stolen!

     

    When a two year old learns the word “mine” is that how we begin to identify ourselves?

     

    But usually the child is referring to an object that she wants.

     

    It seems we have many ways to prove who we are by credit cards, driver’s license or social security cards, but does that really tell us our identity, for when a small child is abused, she has none of that, so how do we identify our self?

     

    Stolen identity is when someone creates a false life using our identity.

     

    Did my father steal who I thought I was, and replaced it with his idea?  Did he take who I thought I was and make me into a new thing?  Did I go from being his daughter to something else?  Is that what Dr. Robin means?

     

    Did I change from being a little girl into a thing that no little girl can describe, but a little one who is used for things that she can’t comprehend? Is that how it was stolen, my young little innocent girl identity was stolen from me?  I then became a part of a twisted dance.

     

    Instead of seeing myself free to be me, I am now an object for him. 

     

    How did I let my identity go so easily to be replaced by something so sordid?

     

    Why was I so easy to convince that this new me was a better one?  What did he do to win my approval to make me lay down my own sense of self?

     

    Did he threaten me, shame me, blame me, did he convince me that this is what I wanted to, to be this new me?

     

    It seems hard to go back to that point in time, to the innocence of a being such a small girl, to put my big lady self back there, in that land that is even hard now to view.

     

    We have to picture an innocent girl doing acts that are way beyond her years and understanding, with a man who holds the label father.

     

    Maybe his identity is what really changes, maybe he no longer looks and acts as a father should but convinces me it is.

     

    Perhaps Dr. Robin is partially right in that we lose our identity, but we also lose the father’s identity too.

     

    He no longer acts nor behaves like a father, but instead of changing our identity of him, we change ourselves.

     

    Is that what is meant by our identity getting stolen?

    That being a loved and protected daughter dies, and is replaced with one who is damaged.

     

    Not loved, not protected, no longer good enough to handle with care and compassion.

     

    So the loved and protected part of me, the trusting part was stolen and it was replaced by the opposite.

     

    There is a small book I picked up a few years ago called “when I love myself enough.” 

     

    After living 40 some years in a body without love of self inside, I now am able to speak of what I need, what is good for me and what I want.

     

    I am free to move away from people who hurt me and treat me like an object, I no longer see myself that way.

     

    I see myself as love.  So the identity inside is Love?

    When love disappeared, I lived in Fear.

     

    Reaching forever outside in fear trying to grasp on to the love that is missing inside.  That makes sense in my experience. 

     

    I also heard Dr. Robin speak of boundaries, and that once they are trampled down as a little child they remain down until we build them back up.

     

    So we are walking around in fear, exposed and vulnerable with no inner sense of love and boundaries, easy prey to be manipulated and tossed about.  It is no wonder our bodies are forever anxious, for no one is minding the door, there is no inner guard, we are wide open for abuse again.

     

    This is very intriguing to me, it explains my lack of knowing, my lack of control, my lack of love, my lack of boundaries, it explains how I built a mental lady identity.

     

    When I look at myself now, I can see how I slowly erected boundaries, each little no set this in place, each time I refused to attend a gathering of folks with lost identities, I succeeded in gather more identity for me.

     

    I am amazed, grateful beyond words to have this inner Love.  My words and actions match what is now inside, I no longer feel so out of control, to be whipped around in the wind in a thousand directions for my long lost love.

     

    Instead I stand with my Love in hand, looking out at the world, with the greatest understanding and awe at those folks who are still empty inside, I know, for I walked there, “forgive them, they know not what they do.”

     

    I recall telling my brother that it felt like I was walking out of rehab, that each time someone asked me to go back to the family with no boundaries and lost identities, it was like a drug that I had to resist.

     

    Now I way know why.  They were my drug of choice, my responsibility for them was my drug!

     

    Addicted to responsibility. 

     

    I am a recovering addict, I am recovering my self, my love and my control, I am outside of the rehab and now the real walking begins.

     

    A no to you is a yes for me!