I M Perfect lady

Tag: awakening

  • Acknowledgement of Hurting.

    "Unintended hurt is as common as branches snapped in wind. But it is the unacknowledged hurt that becomes a wound."  Mark Nepo

    I believe we all will hurt others and be hurt…as long as we are living and in relationships.  It is the unacknowledged hurt that wounds us.

    "Even if our awareness of being hurtful comes years after delivering the hurt, the smallest word or gesture – owning what we've done – can reopen the heart."  Mark Nepo

    I was sexually abused as a child, but no one ever acknowledged that they hurt me.  It is the unacknowledged hurt that wounded me.

    Even when it all came to light 40 years later, silence stood in the place of acknowledgement.

    I have often felt it wasn't enough to acknowledge how I mistreated and hurt my children with my angry words and general dysfunctional mothering…this lesson today has shown me, that in owning how I hurt them, began the closing of the wound and opening of our hearts.

    This is the opening I was waiting to enter…the acknowledgement of the pain they caused me…would have allowed my heart to reopen.  

    That is the difference, the dividing factor between estrangement and growing closer…Acknowledgement of hurting.

     

  • Feelings feel felt.

    "The fastest way to freedom is to feel your feelings."  Gita Bellin

    "This sounds pretty simple, but though it's easy to know you have feelings, easy to know their weight and agitation and suddenness of mood, it is another, more subtle matter to feel them – that is, to let them penetrate your being in the way wind snaps through a flag."

    "This is necessary because if we don't feel our feelings all the way through, they never leave us, and then we do all kinds of unusual things to get out from under them.  This is the cause of many an addiction."

    "I've diverted myself many times by becoming involved in what surrounds my pain or sadness, while never feeling the thing itself.  So, when someone asks me how I feel, I wind up retelling the circumstances of the pain, but not feeling it.  Or strategizing what to do next, but  not feeling it. Or anticipating reactions, but not feeling what is mine to feel.  Or swimming in the anger and injustice, but not diving through the wound."

    "Though we fear it, feeling our feelings is the only clear and direct way to free our hearts of pain."  Mark Nepo

    How appropriate to have this reading this morning.  Feeling our feelings seems like it would be impossible to do, yet I quickly get caught up in the current of anger and injustice, the wide and swirling river of it…unexpressed feelings from long long ago.

    It seems that river never runs dry.

    What I believe happens is that if you can't feel as a child, then as an adult, you don't just feel this moment of feelings, but all the similar type feelings of the past pile upon  each other to be expressed.

    So, instead of being mildly put out, I am outraged.

    Instead of feeling a bit overlooked, I feel totally neglected.

    The wealth of feelings that I have to feel, truly feel like 50 years worth of bottled up negativity…and even joy.  

    Overreacting is standard for me…for in the past I under felt.

    I never felt all the way through feelings…

    And sadly, the more traumatic, the less I ventured in.  Now all feelings feel like tragedies are looming.  Simplistic and typical pulls and pushes of parent and teenage child, feel to me like I am being abused, again.

    Feelings stored in me find opportunities to be expressed…so of course it is in relationships that they line up, pushing and shoving to come out.

    Separating the old feelings from the new is very tricky.

    Letting out and airing the childhood wounds AND not inflicting wounds upon my children is crucial.  The two can't be joined…yet it seems this is where my expressing happens.  I get a voice of expression, but at the wrong time…

    When someone labeled feelings "Time travelers"….they were right.

    I am saying what I needed to say, but 50 years too late.

    How do I now feel them all the way through, without subjecting my children with their expression?  How do you get them to rise to the surface without something/someone prompting them?  Is it possible to get them to rise by myself? Is it possible to feel them, without a label?

    In yoga feelings arise without labels….I feel.

    In real life feelings are triggered, labeled.  Does it matter?

    Am I like a ticking time bomb waiting to explode?  Is yoga the place to defuse that bomb? Writing and acknowledging and knowing is good, but it is when I get an emotional response that the feelings feel felt.

     

  • In Control Within the Flow

    Today's reading, March 21,in the Book of Awakening, by Mark Nepo "To Harbor and Release"  I love this one.

    "Often the pain of resisting makes us rust like iron, and in order to re-enter the flow of life, we need to be scraped back to our original surface.  Our feelings, if not released, bread the heart with their grit. Like windows filmed by weather, we wait on loving hands to be rubbed clear.  It is inevitable.  Experience covers us over, and the expressive journey lets us come clean to the table of light. Again."

    "All things in existence participate in this involuntary cycle.  For human beings, the process of living stains us repeatedly with the grit of being here, with heartache and disappointment and the pointedness of being human, which can sicken us if harbored or make us whole if released.  Again and again, we, more than any other life form, have this majestic and burdensome power to harbor or release the impact of our experience."

    "Humbly, we are asked to keep the flow real between what is taken in and what is let out.  We have only to breathe to remember our place as a living inlet.  Experience in, feelings out.  Surprise and challenge in, heartache and joy out.  In a constant tide, life rushes in, and in constant release, we must let it all run back off.  For this is how the earth was made magnificent by the sea and how mankind is carved upright, again and again, by the ocean of spirit that sets us free."  Mark Nepo

    What we have to remember, what we take in, we have to let out.  I love, "Experience in, Feelings out."  This one sentence alone says so much.

    I believe that children who were abused in childhood, learn to experience and not to let the feelings out. We instead try and hold our feelings inside and do so til we explode in various ways.

    Rarely are children allowed to express their feelings after being sexually abused or physically abused.  We experience and then we have no outlet.

    This alone has created an unnatural way of being human. To take in things in silence our of fear of reprisals, is living half way.  This is how the rust builds upon us. And in my experience, only by expressing what has gone unexpressed, do we clear away the layers of film upon us.

    The natural process of Experience in, Feelings out, is disrupted in abuse and this alone is the cause of so much disease and violence…we are out of control, out of order, not able to work correctly.

    The term harboring resentment came to mind.  I didn't know that when we don't express our feelings (release them) we are harboring.  

    I had truckloads of expressions to release, and in the beginning they flowed like a rushing river, tumbling over each other, with volumes raised, they tore out of me…held back so long their force near violent in the outward flow.

    While it had to be shocking and out of character for others to witness this of me, it felt extremely healing to say what I had failed to say…for years.

    I wasn't the most prolific or articulate or kind as the words came rushing out, but I was scraping off the rust of old feelings I hadn't felt.  Some were not so pleasant or kind themselves…and all had to be felt in order to be released.

    Now, it is my intention to not let layers of unexpressed or unfelt emotions pile up upon myself, for it feels heavy and a burden to carry…so whatever I experience, I let my feelings out…I don't like holding on to feelings.  

    Harboring your feelings seems safer when you have been abused…we learn to keep them in order to get along and for sheer survival for some.  

    Abuse teaches us to live only taking in…never in a healthy release.

    I am still learning how to release.  Sometimes it still comes out very fearful or childlike in expression, but to me…it isn't about the delivery, but rather that they get out.  Maybe over time, with enough space and healing, I will be able to release them with a graceful kind and compassionate delivery…and not the hurried careless abandon that often rushes out.

    I will find my natural releasing stance…that isn't totally harboring or rushing abandon…but rather a fearless authenticity, beautiful yet powerful, in control within the flow. 

     

     

     

     

     

  • Completely whole all alone.

    In Mark Nepo's Book, "The Book of Awakening" for March 18th, 

    The Life of the Caretaker.

    "Accept this gift, so I can see myself as giving."

    "I have been learning that the life of a caretaker is as addictive as the life of an alcoholic.  Here the intoxication is the emotional relief that temporarily comes when answering a loved one's need.  Though it never lasts, in the moment of answering someone's need, we feel loved.  While much good can come from this, especially for those the caretaker attends, the care itself becomes the drink by which we briefly numb a worthlessness that won't go away unless constantly doused by another shot of self-sacrifice."

    "It all tightens until what others need is anticipated beyond what is real, and then, without any true need being voiced, an anxiety to respond builds that can only be relieved if something is offered or done. At the heart of this is the every present worry that unless doing something for another there is no possibility of being loved.  So, the needs of others stand within reach like bottles behind a bar that, try as he or she will, the caretaker cannot resist."

    "I have experienced this even in the simple issue of calling a loved one while away from home.  Even when no one expects to hear from me, I can agonize over whether to call.  Often, unable to withstand the discomfort of not registering some evidence of my love, I will end up going to great lengths to call."

    " In truth, caretaking, though seeming quite generous, is very self-serving, and its urgent self-centeredness prevents a life of genuine compassion.  In all honesty, to heal from this requires as rigorous a program of recovery as alcoholics enlist, including sponsors who will love us for who we are."

    "Within one's self, the remedy of spirit that allows for true giving resides somewhere in the faith to believe that each of us is worthy of love, just as we are."  Mark Nepo

    This is my disease.  This is where I felt my greatest hits of love and self worth, by how and to whom I gave.  I gave to get…I needed to be needed in order to feel worthy.  

    When I discovered this within me, I had to quit cold turkey…to stop giving with an agenda in hand.  I truly and completely felt the sentiments of "Accept this gift, so I can see myself as giving."

    I was unable to sustain my own self worth without a second party gushing or being grateful for what I had done.  My inner well of worthiness was nonexistent. Without doing for others, I was empty.

    It was very hard to purposefully not give.  I felt horrible and mean and uncaring.  The worse I felt, the more I knew how backwards I had giving.

    To give with the freedom of no returns was not something I had ever done.

    All my giving came with very fine print…."I give to make me feel special".

    I had to turn all my giving inward, to become a self contained container of worthiness, without using other people's needs to keep me afloat.

    My greatest sense of self was gained by giving…and my biggest hits of love came from what I did, not from who I was.

    It was horrifying to see that all or most of me was built outside of me…and the only way to find my true love of self, was to no longer give to be worthy.

    I had to become worthy by doing nothing for others…until my own well of worth was full.  

    The freedom of having your own well of worth is hard to explain…to be a self contained unit.  To have an inner source, a well spring of worthiness inside, to have it fed from the inside out…is to live a life completely different.

    One is empty…and forever seeking a new hit of worth.

    The other is full of self worth…self love and completely whole all alone.

     

     

  • Truthful to Respond to.

    "True inner responsibility centers on our willingness to give voice to whatever is happening to us in the midst of a relationship. This is important both for you and the person you are relating to.  If you are not present, there is nothing to respond to.  And love only becomes real in the world through our ability to respond.  Bringing who you are to a relationship – being your True Self- gives other the opportunity to transcend their limitations by acting on their love.  It gives the other person a chance to show up."  Mark Nepo

    What I hadn't considered is that it takes two people to be present in a relationship, to honesty voice their feelings… 

    While I knew this instinctively, I didn't know that there was an actual formula or general rule.  When I voiced my new-found truth or honesty, it then offered to others the chance to do the same. 

    Most however, opted not to respond in-kind.  

    So, while I have carried the full ownership of many relations falling to the wayside, what I hadn't considered is that I didn't have nothing to respond to when they failed to respond back.

    "So, while we dread voicing our fears and hurts to one another, love has no way of being acted on without something truthful to respond to."  Mark Nepo

    This paragraph alone sets me free…I didn't have anything truthful to respond to.


  • The Gift is in the Present.

    I am in a book club reading Mark Nepo's book, "The Book of Awakening".  It is written so that we read one reading per day.

    Today's reading I love.

    "So often we anticipate a reward for the uncovering of truth.  For effort, we expect money and recognition.  For sacrifice and kindness we secretly expect acceptance and love. For honesty, we expect justice.  Yet as we all know, the life of experience unfolds with a logic all its own.  And very often, effort is seen, and kindness is embraced, and the risk of truth is held as the foundation of how humans relate. However, the reward for breathing in not applause but air, and the reward for climbing is not a promotion but new sight, and the reward for kindness is not being seen as kind, but the electricity of giving that keeps us alive."

    "It seems the closer we get to the core of all being, the more synonymous the effort and its reward.  Who could have guessed?  The reward for uncovering the truth is the experience of honest being.  The reward for understanding is the peace of knowing.  The reward for loving is being the carrier of love.  It all becomes elusively simple.  The river's sole purpose is to carry water, and as the force of the water deepens and widens the riverbed, the river fulfills its purpose more.  Likewise, the riverbed of the heart is worn open over time to carry what is living."

    "All this tells us that no amount of thinking can eliminate the wonder and pain of living.  No wall or avoidance or denial- no cause or excuse- can keep the rawness of life from running through us.  While this may at times seem devastating, it is actually reassuring, because while the impermanence of life, if fixed on, can be terrifying, leaving us preoccupied with death, the very same impermanence, if allowed its infinite frame, can soothe us with the understanding that eve the deepest pain will pass."  Mark Nepo

    What I love so much about this is that I used to live solely in the reward system…and yet the rewards were often times not forthcoming.  I thought that I was giving wrongly, so I gave more and tried harder.  

    What I failed to realize is that the universal system had a logic all of its own…simply called experience.

    I was so focused on my just reward and waited and fretted and worried and hated and judged and stressed, that I long forgot the feeling of the experience.

    I lived, thought and acted all for a future reward.

    I literally gave for love and acceptance.  And when I stopped giving, the love and acceptance dried up.  It was an awful way to be loved…for it all depended upon me giving and they didn't have to give, all they had to do was give me love and acceptance. 

    I have said I was a whore for love and peace…and this is what it literally means.  I gave to get.

    When the justice system failed me and all the girls who were sexually abused by my father, it seemed that the universal logic was broke. 

    Yet our honesty worked supremely well. We got to experience how honesty and integrity feels.  

    If we put our focus on the 'just' reward, we would be sorely disappointed.  If you put your focus on the feelings and experiences of being honest with your past, it feels amazing.

    I can't even begin to explain the difference between living in the system of rewards compared to living in experience.

    To have zero expectations…

    When you remove the reward, all you are left with is the experience.

    And the experience is solely the focus.

    As Eckhart Tolle says, there are only three ways to experience life…Enthusiasm, Enjoyment and Acceptance….He says nothing about reward.

    I love that there are no rewards in living…that the gift is in the present!

  • Drink In Their Truths

    Mark Nepo writes in The Book of Awakening, “The unwavering truth is that when we agree to any demand, request, or condition that is contrary to our soul’s nature, the cost is that precious life force is drained off our core. Despite seeming rewards of compliance, our souls grow weary by engaging in activities that are inherently against their nature.”

    In another section he writes, “It’s taken me thirty of my forty-nine years to realize that not being who I am is more deadly, and it has taken the last nineteen years to try and make a practice of this. What this means in a daily way, is that I have to be conscientious about being truthful and resist the urge to accommodate my truth away. It means that being who I really am is not forbidden or muted just because others are uncomfortable or don’t want to hear it.”

    His words affirms how I found myself…first I was given the full frontal view of all the things I had said yes to when I should have said no. All the discomforts I had withstood for the sake of getting along, had grown even more uncomfortable and it seemed some discomforts had whole families of uncomfortable feelings.

    It is like all the little mole hill choices grew into mountains as the years went past. That one little situation, that I said yes, when my soul wanted to say no, was now way out of control.

    We fail to realize what each little tiny decision means in the direction our lives move and how often we neglect our souls to say yes to comply.

    In that brief moment we take the road of least resistance and then ‘forget about ‘ or at least try to. But the things we acquiesced to add up and soon there are a pile of misrepresented items of you.

    The total balance sheet of you shows columns of mixed up messages. Saying yes when you mean no weakens who you are and your life has no core value to stand up.

    The saying, “if you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything,” comes to mind.

    Mark Nepo and other masters, authors and teachers are trying to help us find ourselves…and the real self can be found in each authentic response to all of life’s little questions.

    What do you want for dinner?

    Where do you want to go for a ride?

    What movie do you want to watch?

    We think we will become enlightened by the deep profound questions, but actually we find ourselves in the small authentic answers.

    This also caught my eye…. “Well, it is no secret that slowness remembers and hurry forgets; that softness remembers and hardness forgets; and surrender remembers and fear forgets.”

    “It is beautifully difficult to remember who we really are. But we help each other every time we fill up the cup of truth and hold each other up after drinking from it.”

    I love beautifully difficult…and holding each other up after drinking our truths.

    My life is beautifully difficult and my passion or desire or where I find I am best used is in supporting others as they drink in their truths.

  • Feeling the Unbounded Heart.

    In Martha Beck's book, "Leaving the Saints" she writes,

    " I recall its horror and beauty, the enormity of the things I have lost and the incalculable preciousness of the things I have gained. I wouldn't give up the journey – not a moment of it. On the other hand I have no desire to live it again."

    My journey from not knowing to knowing has equal parts horror and beauty, for it seemed with each new glimpse into the vestiges of evil sprang a new wondrous insight and freedom…

    The dichotomy of the polar opposites and how you are plunged into the horrors that you failed to see and or acknowledge to your self, and then the beautiful release from them into the wide-open space of freedom leaves me breathless.

    We somehow believe if we sit smack dab in the middle of the horrors of our lives, we will get left there, that you will sink as if in quick sand, but that isn’t so.

    If you don’t go into what frightens and scares you, you will live in the space between.

    No terror and then no beauty.

    You are in the middle land, the purgatory space, neither heaven nor hell…

    When you leave the comfortable space of no feelings and dare to walk fearlessly into the emotions and truths you were too frightened to see as a child, it feels alive, electric and the enormity of it all leaves you overwhelmed.

    Fear keeps us out of those dark corridors where our unexpressed, unexamined life lives. And by leaving that door closed you live a life that isn’t alive…in its truest sense.

    You are forced to live without feelings and free expressions.

    Martha is so right…for I too recall the horror and the beauty, the enormity of the things I have lost and the incalculable preciousness of the things I have gained.

    You truly lose the world as you have known it, but you gain a self you have never met.

    I lived in this the middle ground for 46 years, where fear kept me motionless, frozen and lifeless. I followed life, but I did not live it freely.

    I never wavered from the path of least resistance, I had no individual thoughts and I was not connected to my body and its feelings.

    The middle ground certainly will not allow you to see the horrors, but it also keeps from you the intimate beauty of love and freedom.

    Stretched into the zone of nothingness…but keeping the static going so you never dip into the terror that lurk at the sidelines of your life… your life’s goal is to remain numb.

    You are frozen in place and have no conditions.

    No rules of your own, in fact I see this as being a lump, where the dark murky waters can wash over you and you feel not its affect, nor do you try and get out of the way…and sun is shining just above the surface, but you make no move to reach toward it.

    It is living and letting all manner of things happen and you don’t move…and the delights of life await and you are unable to reach.

    Waking up in this state left me horrified of what I had allowed and how I had not been aware…and as Martha writes about the Lion stage of awakening.

    “When we have discovered the hearts capacity to face any situation, the joys and sorrows of existence as they are, we awaken to freedom. Then the Golden Lion speaks with a roar. Out of the mouth of the lion comes the undaunted voice of truth, the liberation of the unbounded heart.”

    It is the liberation of the unbounded heart…whereas before it was wrapped up like a mummy unfeeling anything.

    And she goes on to say about the third stage of awakening, “In the last stage the lion gives way to the child, to an original innocence. This is the child of the Spirit for who all things are new. For this Divine child there is wonder, ease and a playful heart. The child is at home in reality of the present, able to enjoy, to respond, to forgive, and to share the blessings of being alive.”

    (I best give you the first stage as well…”In the camel stage of awakening, we make ourselves available to the Spirit through humility, prayer, repetition, and manual labor)

    The first stage was where I spent most of my life, ‘repetition and manual labor…not so much humility or prayer.

    The tumultuous unwrapping of going from living life bound up in the beliefs and thoughts and affects of abuse etc, to undoing it all is extremely horrifying and beautiful in equal parts.

    Isn’t there a saying from the bible, about ‘what is bound on earth is bound in heaven…? I believe that it is talking about the heart.

    There is truly an incalculable preciousness of feeling the unbounded heart.

  • Outside of Time.

    While listening to Mark Nepo (Author of The Book of Awakening) talking to Oprah on Sirius Radio, he shared a moment in his life where he had lost his job, had an unknown illness and was going to confront his father he had been estranged from.  He was afraid, in fear or in the unknown in the past, present and future, so he went deeper and sat with his soul. 

    I understood completely, for when my life turned upside down and my past seemed to horrifying to look at,  the future a vast landscape of empty and unknown and the present was littered with my father’s rubbish…I too went deeper and found my soul. 

    I didn’t call it my soul, but now I know that is where I went.

    A place that was untouched by time and events, but it was calm and knowing, a Self I had never met.

    I remember feeling this very deep calm knowing and strength, although I had no idea where it came from in the midst of such a churning moment in my life.

    Everything was falling down around me and I was deep beneath it all learning incredible lessons and seeing things that no one else could see. 

    I get this; I had connected with my soul when my life fell apart.  What I now know is that when your past, present and future fall down, you get left standing in the unchanging part of you, the place that survives all life experiences. 

    I went from living in time, to being timeless.  Time was too fearful to be in.

    What I also know is that once you take your self out of time, or are shocked and flung out of your life, you can see things from a deeper and wider view, prior to that I was tangled up in time and had no deeper perspective.

    I dwelled in the land of time without a connection to the deep well of wisdom, my soul.

    I love that I have this explanation.  

    One other thing he mentioned that really connected with me was that “Surrender doesn’t mean giving up, it means going with the Flow.”

    He explained that you have to flow all the way through whatever experience you are in in order to get the full lesson.  That giving up isn’t the answer, but being in it fully… going in all the way.  Accepting what is.

    Mostly I have heard that surrender is giving up or just letting it be, but I hadn’t heard that it means heading in fully.

    That is exactly how I faced my life situations after my father’s arrest.  I didn’t duck, I didn’t hide and I didn’t deny.

    Instead I walked fully into each moment of time, but I had this wonderful deep intimate connection with my soul, I never walked alone; I was connected to a place outside of time. 

    (What a great hour listening to him talk.  I bought his book, but gave it to a friend; I am thinking I need one for me.)

     

  • Pain Free

    "A huge part of our task becomes noticing unskillful reactions and learning to let them go. This is not a denial of some part of our self. It is simply the abandoning of actions that cause harm and suffering (mostly to ourselves). When we pick up a hot utensil on the stove, we don’t have to think about who we are before we drop it, or who we might become if we dropped it, or become afraid that we would not be authentic to ourselves if we drop it—it’s painful and we drop it!Most of us only make such a mistake once. It’s the same in the heart, except that the hot utensil has been in our hand so long, maybe most of our life, that we’ve forgotten what not buring feels like or don’t know who we would be without the burning, we are afraid to put it down. This may sound absurd, but when you think how hard it is to stop being defensive in the face of criticism, or to let go of self-judgment, it makes sense.  But that doesn’t mean easy.”                       Sean Felt

     

    I saw this posted on Facebook, and find that it is the perfect paragraph I was seeking to explain how it is easier to hang on and continuing doing the same hurtful thing instead of letting go and changing. 

    It seems incredibly insane to want to hold near and dear to you things that cause you pain, but if the only ‘normal’ you have ever known feels this way, it isn’t painful it is love.

    Which is why it is so very difficult to get people to drop the burning utensils, for they have become calloused and acclimated and have forgotten what not burning feels like.

    Not burning feels like an enemy when it is actually your friend.

    This flipped upside down reactionary response to clutch hurtful things and steer away from cool non-hurtful ones, creates a journey filled with self inflicted pain for we don’t know how to let go.

    As incredible as it seems it is ‘easier’ to hang on than let go.

    It is the only self we know, this painful hurting self, we fear being a pain free self.  

    I have found that it is incredibly hard to let go and drop that which hurts you, when you had labeled hurt love.

    I wasn’t dropping abuse… I was dropping love.

    It seems so silly that you will not release yourself from hurt, but we don’t call it hurt we call it love.

    And in this flipped out state, our reactions are the opposite of what is normal.  Clutching hurt we push away from real love.

    We live as this anomaly, upside down and inside out.

    It’s not easy to change this, it will take Herculean efforts to return your self to normal responses, to reset your reactions to what hurts and what doesn’t, to feel normal while pain free.