I M Perfect lady

Tag: awareness

  • Birthing the New Me.

    “How often in life we complete a task that was beyond the capability of the person we were when we started it.” ~Robert Brault

    This paragraph sums up how it is that I began my journey to find myself, in a state of total mentalness, upside down and backwards, emotionally and mentally in need of something bigger than I.

    I recall early on in my writing, when I was driven to paper for my head couldn’t hold the juxtaposition between what my old beliefs wanted me to do, and the new emerging me challenged, how incredible inept I was at being me.

    Two drastically different approaches to life, one driven by the outside the other by the inside.

    The new emerging inside me seemed to have this amazing and tantalzing connection that was beyond anything I had ever experienced, its orchestration would leave me speechless and totally supported.

    No matter the most dire of situations, I found humor and incredulousness at the audacity it expressed to bring me awareness at just how off base I had lived my life.

    The condition of my old self was unstable at best, blind and totally caught in a web of religious and family restrictions, tied down and gagged.

    There is no way in hell, this girl should have been able to extricate her self from that old life with no self esteem and self worth. She had nothing within her to guide her, yet she set out anyway, poorly packed, no destination, alone on a trail she had no clue where it was leading, and if that new person would be someone she would even like.

    I am not certain how far into this journey I am, or who I will be when it is all said and done, but I am totally amazed that someone like me has gotten this far.

    It is indeed by the Grace of God, go I.

    What is so thrilling to me is that the person I started out as and who I am today don’t even resemble each other.

    One was lost in the darkness without awareness.
    The other became aware of the darkness.
    “I was blind, but now I see.”

    It is like heading out blind for a destination unknown and finding it. Who is more amazed than me? Oh my God, if you only knew how big a task this has been, to tear your life apart while you are living it.

    And I am not done, my journey isn’t over, and actually it feels as if I have just begun.

    As my friend said, “it is like having a life review while alive…”

    It is like watching the old me die while a new me is being born, or the old me birthing the new me.

  • Thank you.

    As I sit here on Thanksgiving morning, I look back at this year and find so many moments of gratitude, it seems I had a year full.

    My moments of gratitude are interrupted with moments of sheer pain, frustration, sorrow, confusion and tangled thoughts; it is only when I truly see the whole picture that I am overwhelmed with gratitude, knowing I was spared.

    Spared a lifetime stuck in that thought pattern, or held prisoner by that belief, to be forever at the mercy of another, while never seeing me.

    It isn’t so much that they didn’t see me, but I didn’t see me.

    Seeing and feeling me, learning how to respond that is respectful of me, what honors my soul, bringing forth a new version of me, one that is authentic and uniquely me, one that brings me to life.

    Gratitude of such magnitude, there isn’t a word that adequately expresses this freedom; it is like breathing or not breathing, love or fear, living or being dead in your life.

    To not be dead in my life is beyond what words can hold, to be alive in each moment, aware that I am connected to the Universe, that there are no mistakes, just opportunities to expand further and further, that even the darkest of the darkest moments are bringing me back to myself.

    The Universe only wants the grandest version of me; it doesn’t want a replica of someone else’s dreams.

    This past year I have been shown all the places I was still stuck, lost in the dark, and each time I become aware, I bring peace in to me.

    In peace I am overwhelmed in gratitude.

    I am thankful on this Thanksgiving Day for all the moments of pain, the untangled thoughts, the dark stuck places, and sorrow of what isn’t, for they all came bearing gifts.

    They all delivered a part of me that wasn’t free.

    Hell doesn’t seem like hell when it comes bearing gifts.

    I am grateful for my pain and for my suffering, for it was grieving the loss of me.

    It was telling me where I wasn’t present.

    In the darkness I mourned the loss of me.

    It was in the dark that I found me.

    On this Thanksgiving day, I thank you.

  • Letting go of Perfection

    Courage lies within us in a very deep place, buried behind the walls of fear of imperfection, coated in false ideals and fantasies that are impossible to attain, courage waits for us to uncover it.

    Peeling back the layers and layers of deceit we have of ourselves, piles of unrealistic desires and impossibilities, a mound of what I am not.

    Courage comes when we are able to stand alone in being who we are right now without improvements, without the completion of dreams, minus the goal, but instead standing right here right now, completed up to this point.

    With no excuses, no reasons, just as I am.

    The courage it takes to drop all the idealized versions of your self and just be okay with the raw deal, the real complete version of you, up to this point.

    For some reason we continue to not look at what we are, but instead of what we are trying to become.

    While we focus on where we are going we miss this step in the creative process, this step called today.

    I have no idea of what my final creation of me will be, but I do know who I am today.
    I know where I walked, how I walked and sometimes even why, I don’t know where I will step, but I know that each step will be me.

    It takes courage to be truthfully half done, authentically complete, and yet fully perfect as you are right now.

    Am I whole?
    Am I normal?
    Am I perfect?
    Am I sick, mental, imperfect?

    Whose measuring stick am I using?

    My intention is to be with myself as I walk forward in my life, not a fraction more perfect than I am right now, and not a snippet less.

    It takes courage to accept yourself as you are today, to toss aside the blueprints and be complete now, without a new version in mind, but to be a success thus far.

    Courage is letting go of perfection.

  • Behave my way into love.

    What I didn’t know about self love is that it wasn’t a word in the head,
    a thought in the mind or even a feeling, but rather Actions.

    The actions you have towards yourself, not how you appear in public, how you walk,
    talk or behave, but rather is is the obvious and the not so obvious.

    Self love is the food you eat, to the way you move your body, to the places you bring it, to the people you subject it to, all comprise the love you have of your self.

    Somehow I think I thought, it was a saying in my head.
    Perhaps the absence of saying, “I hate myself.”

    Yet my self hatred was exposed for all the world to see.

    It was in the food I ate and how much.
    It was in the way I didn’t exercise or even take my body out in the fresh air.
    It was in the silence instead of speaking up, hidden in the yes when I wanted to say no.

    All in all the evidence of self hatred lay literally everywhere, and no amount of positive affirmations planted on the pile of self neglect would change a thing.

    I had to act differently.

    I had to behave my way into love.

  • One Real Me

    “How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?  Four.  Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.”   

    ~Abraham Lincoln

     

    I love the simplicity of how this shows you can name anything you want, but that doesn’t make it so.

     

    I have been learning about my self, a part of me that I didn’t even know existed, it was like I was a tail, but was called a leg.

     

    I knew myself the best as a leg, and I created a life as a leg, learned how to live and be and love and enjoy life, as a leg and I was really a tail.

     

    It isn’t that neither is wrong or right, except that if you are one thing and think you are something else, then it is.

     

    That is where the psychological damage is done.

     

    Somehow it slipped my attention for 46 years that I was not who I knew myself to be.

     

    It is beyond what a thought can hold to not know that you didn’t know that you are not what you thought you were.

     

    Its like my only normal was to be two things, yet could only see one of them, I saw me as a leg, yet I acted like a tail.

     

    The two were never fully in my awareness at one time. 

     

    I am now working to merge the two selves inside so that I become one real me.

     

  • Posing as me.

    “The Toltec compare the Judge, the Victim and the belief system to a Parasite that invades the human mind. The parasite is a living being made of psychic or emotional energy.  It can also be compared to a program that dreams through our mind and lives through our body. From the Toltec point of view, all humans who are domesticated are sick because we have a Parasite that thrives on the emotions that come from fear and suffering.”

                   Don Miguel Ruiz

     

    Unless and until you have noticed that your mind has control over you and not you over it, you will not believe that a parasite is living your life for you.

     

    Or if you can’t stop your suffering, a parasite is using your body to be alive.

     

    If you are in fear or suffering, you know that a parasite is living your life, it has taken over the motherboard.

     

    When you are unable to sit in the now moment and find peace with all that is around you, no matter what it is, you know that the parasite has gotten a hold of a thought in your mind and is replaying it over and over.

     

    Like a bad DJ, it doesn’t offer up a new peaceful reason to drop that worrisome thought that keeps you out of the now moment.

     

    Or it has gotten a hold of your emotions and playing tunes on them that have nothing to do with reality, but perhaps an echo from the long long ago past.

     

    Emotions, thought, thoughts emotion, around and around they go… false events appearing real, stealing away your life from you.

     

    The dance of the parasite in your mind.

     

    If you are not in the now moment hearing what is playing in reality, you are listening to the parasite strumming a mournful tune.

     

    I called my parasite “My Mental Lady”.

     

    I could literally tell when she overtook me, my whole body reverberated with tension and stress, and I was fighting with reality, going against it and what would bring me peace.

     

    It truly does seem that she enjoyed my suffering, like it was dessert for her, while hell for me. 

     

    A dance of opposites, she owned my body until I was aware I wasn’t here.

     

    Imagine aware I wasn’t here.

     

    Unaware I was lost.

     

    I was living my life but not aware.

    Not even aware I wasn’t aware that I should be more aware.

     

    It was quite embarrassing to note that I wasn’t aware of my life.

    Like I didn’t even know I was allowed to be part of my life.

    My life was running without me.

     

    I recall when I woke up to the fact that I was unaware of being aware, and I looked around my house, there was no part of me there.

     

    Nothing I loved, no reflection on me, it was like my life, minus me everywhere. 

     

    I woke up in my life but didn’t know who I was, and as I took my life back, I found me.

     

    I wouldn’t have believed this book five years ago, for at the time I was a parasite without awareness, it was all I knew of me.

     

    Me as a mental lady without awareness, a parasite posing as me.

     

     

  • The Four Agreements

    On the inside cover of the book, “The Four Agreements” Companion Book by Don Miguel Ruiz with Janet Mills reads…

     

    BE IMPECCABLE WITH YOUR WORD

    Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean.  Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others.  Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

     

    DON’T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY

    Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream.  When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

     

    DON’T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS

    Find the courage to ask questions and do express what you really want.  Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama.  With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

     

    ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST

    Your best is going to change moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to when you are sick.  Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.

                    Don Miguel Ruiz

     

     

    I can see that I am a new student of these, sometimes I am able to successfully maneuver myself into a new way, other times I fail and resort to the old reactive way.

     

    What fills me with hope and inspiration is that there is indeed another way to live, to be yourself, and it’s your right to do so.

     

  • Serves Me!

    In Waking, by Matthew Sanford, he writes again about his experience with yoga.

     

    “Maha mudra is a strange pose.  In yogic lore, if a yogi practices it enough, he or she can eat anything, even something poisonous. Regardless, it has a magical feel to it.  Seated on the floor, one leg is straight in front of you.  The other leg is bent at the knee, with the sole of the foot pressed against your inner thigh of the opposite leg.  One reaches down, hooks the big toe of outstretched leg with the thumbs and forefingers of both hands, lowers the chin toward the chest, inhales, and tightens the abdomen, pulling it back toward the spine and up toward the diaphragm.”

     

    “As I move into this pose, something clicks or snaps into place or becomes manifest. I experience a new ding.  I suddenly feel a tangible sense of my whole body – inside and out, paralyzed and unparalyzed.  I am stunned.”

     

    “Jo, this feels different, something is different.  I can feel where the pose goes, the unity between the actions.  I can feel it actually moving.” I gasp. “The abdomen hits back and up, and the straight leg thigh pushes into the floor…right?”

     

    “Yes.” She says, breaking a smile.

    “Then the…energy” – I struggle for words – “moves out through the heel.”

     

    “Well actually, the physical actions is to hit down with the thigh and stretch out through the heel,” she says, her tone informative. “….as the spine and chest life in opposition.” I chirp in.  My mind is racing.  How am I feeling this?  How is this possible?  I am perplexed, but the moment is mine.  My entire body is working in concert.  It has been a long time – some thirteen years.  My lost body and my potential body have joined in this pose.  My past, my present and my future are touching.  Although I am choking with grief, I am also an excitable boy.  I have worked so hard to make it back to this moment.”

     

    Jo and I do not say much.  It is too big, too fresh, and not to be spoiled.  Silence – the lamp’s light, the darkness outside the window, our reflections in the class, my creaking house.  My world has changed its shape tonight.  A new level of me is coming alive.  I am overwhelmed with the feeling that my body has been waiting for me to stop neglecting it, waiting for me to quiet down and listen.  My heart is breaking. I feel grateful.” 

                        Matthew

     

    My heart is breaking and I am grateful is exactly the correct sentiment.  To sit in awe of all the neglect and how the body still worked to serve me, given what I have fed it and how I moved it.

     

    I have done lots of yoga this year, working to help my body process all the stressful situations it has endured, and giving it flexibility and strength to move easier.

     

    My mind, my body and my soul are all being greatly helped in yoga each day.

     

    What a great vehicle we get to ride around in!

     

    I too am heartbroken and grateful, many times a day as I witness how it lives and breathes and serves me!

     

     

     

     

  • Awareness of Self

    It is interesting to me that when you see someone in denial you automatically think that they just need to see reality.

     

    What is a much deeper problem is the ways in which they have lived to ‘not see reality’.

     

    And it is from there that you begin.

     

    You don’t need to see what is in reality; you need to see what you are doing to cover up reality.

     

    It is the cover up that needs to be explored.

     

    The cover-ups can be dismantled by doing as Martha Beck suggested, begin telling the truth no matter what.

     

    Instead of ‘hiding’ the fact that your eating is out of control, face the fact that it is.  Name it to claim it, is a term Dr. Phil has used.

     

    As I explored the affects that sweets had on my body, and how I overindulged them, and how they left me empty of the very thing I thought I was getting, love, I knew I was on to something.

     

    I loved sweet treats.  I felt good eating them, yet the final out come was not love or good.  I had an overweight body that was sluggish and one that I didn’t like.

     

    My life style of indulging in sweets and looking for opportunities to ‘treat’ myself, and them giving me something wonderful, really gave me the opposite.

     

    Denial is not recognizing what the affects of ‘treating’ your self is actually doing.

     

    You somehow just have a thirst for sweets, and feel you deserve the treat, but never look at the actual almost scientific reading of the outcome.

     

    Denial is a twisting rope that never allows you to see all sides at once.  You can either see the thirst or the bloated body….

     

    Once I decide to stay awake for both parts, to watch the sweets going in and I didn’t tell myself a limit, I ate as many as I could, but I also had to monitor myself during and after.

     

    Denial seems be cured by being truthful on all sides, there is no side that will slip away.

     

    It is refreshing to be honest, to expose the secrets of understanding how you operate and why, it allows you to be free of the unexplored agendas that you have somehow overlooked.

     

    Once I understood that the sweets didn’t really bring me good feelings, I was able to sit with what they really were.  What they were comprised of and what they really did to the body.

     

    Denial is the doorway that will lead you to full awareness of self.

     

     

     

     

  • All the Gifts Awareness Brings!

    One hundred and four days into a new habit, the habit of being aware, of being responsible for my response to life, of knowing that I will always get the results I want depending upon my actions.

     

    My actions in the past 104 days has been to do yoga daily, to make it a priority to take care of this body, by giving it my attention, by moving stretching bending and stretching it into becoming more and more flexible and strong.

     

    I can’t get the results I want, without doing the action step.

     

    The action step is to get out of bed, to carve out time and space in my day to work on my body, to begin sculpting it into a new design.

     

    There seems to be only two habits in the world, the mindless effortless sleep habit or the action based awareness.

     

    I am making it a new habit to be aware in all things.

     

    It makes life alive and very responsive and I have the best seat in the house to experience and feel all the gifts awareness brings!