I M Perfect lady

Tag: byron Katie

  • A good NO.

    There are two small words that I feel are crucial to every relationship and most important to the one between you and you, and they are Yes and No.

    If you haven’t found the inner power to use these words freely, than you are at risk of being abused or most likely have been.

    I think back on the terrible twos my kids went through, and mostly what they were doing was activating their power to use these words and most parents are not happy about this, this opposing powerhouse in a tiny body.

    I do believe that we come with the natural ability to say yes and say no, to speak of our feelings, but during our ‘upbringing’ they are slowly eroded away.

    We are much easier to handle without this freedom.

    In fact I believe my childhood religion thrived on stealing away most of my power, which was the perfect partner for abuse, I had been removed of my tools to fight the enemy.

    When I see very submissive children being so obedient, I shudder now, for I see them being helpless and easy targets.

    My children came with much self -knowledge and I wasn’t able to remove all of it and it is unimaginable what we call raising; for it seems it is more like erasing.

    Erasing their natural abilities to survive in this world.

    I had mentioned to my brother that we would have been better off being raised by wolves, he laughed but then agreed.

    I would raise my children completely different if I had the chance, and perhaps I have been able to reset their buttons in the past six years as I reset my own.

    In fact I believe if we all sat back and followed a child, we could relearn how to be a full and happy adult.

    Who we grow up to be begins in childhood, and in order to change who we are now, we have to head back and see what rules we were taught and what things inside of us were squelched due to the fear of reprisals from our parents and or church.

    We have to learn how to say yes and for stand solid in the word no, become a stubborn two- year old!

    We need to reclaim our freedom that was stolen in our terrible twos!

    I love that we can begin to act like a two- year old and find our power, but how cool, we are two- year olds who are the head of the house and can drive…I say No parents allowed!

    It is time we reclaim our lives, our yes and our no.

    I am not sure, but I feel depression is when we lose the power inside, when we are stuck powerless, without a choice. And brainwashing has to be removing the flexibility to say yes or no that is against what the other wants.

    They brainwash away the free will to say yes or say no…

    These two little words and your freedom to use them will set your free and you will begin to see life as a child full of wonder and delight, for you have the power to steer clear of what you don’t like.

    There is nothing like the power of a good NO.

    Again, as Bryon Katie says, “Saying no to you is a yes to me!”

  • The Only Place I Can Be.

    I am wondering about the Bug called Worry and how it can bite at anytime, how it can sneak up and take you out of any enjoyment you may be experiencing or perhaps not even let you go to enjoyment, instead you dance and waltz with Worry.

    My brother spoke of a Panic Attack, would this be an attack from the Worry Bug?

    That out of nowhere this bug sneaks in and steals your peace, attacking this moment of time?

    When I found myself right side up in what felt like my upside down world, it was a world that opposed what the bug dreamed up.

    It seemed like there were two worlds, the Mind Bug and Reality.

    This Mind/Worry Bug was relentless, and what I did was to take that bug and slam it with Reality over and over again, showing it what is.

    I literally had to put pen to paper to see what this Damn Bug wanted me to do.

    Mostly it pulled me away from my life and into lives I had no control over, it ripped me away from my peaceful home doing what I loved to do, to go into someone’s life I had no business being in. It painted people in colors that were so off color from what they were actually like and then had me worrying about letting them go.

    Maybe its nickname could also be Meddling or Hell.

    Even today I may take a quick trip with it and see a future fear or horrid life, a sad and lonely existence, but it feels so bad, I yank myself back and hold on to something in my nowadays world.

    If you had to pick this Worry Bug out of a lineup what would it look like, where does it live, how does it operate and who invented this???

    I am sure some religions call this Bug the Devil.

    What I think it is an untrained mind. A mind that is totally out of your control and one that hates reality.

    This bug lives anywhere but in the here and now.

    In the past six years I have been treating this mind like an unruly child, and find that I can oppose many of its thoughts and when it comes in and tromps into a moment of enjoyment, I can listen for a moment, but can make the choice as to what to believe.

    As a woman who lived for many years in the land of pretend, I find great comfort and peace in the land called reality.

    It is here that the Bug has a hard time beating; it usually falls down when faced with what is.

    Byron Katie says, “Reality wins only but 100% of the time!”

    I welcome this bug into my reality, but I usually have a dialogue with it before I head out into the land of unknown.

    When I find myself powerless, stressed and out of sorts, you can be damn sure that the Mind/Worry Bug has led me astray from reality.

    What I do to bring me back is grab on to anything that I can hold onto and be with my breath. For where my breath is the bug can’t be.

    Where am I breathing, who is here now, what is going on, feeling my reality as a blind person uses Braille; I settle back into Now.

    For Now…is the only place I can be.

  • My mind’s point of view.

    Byron Katie says, “There are no mistakes” and I have to agree. We do that which we do with the knowledge and awareness we have at the time, when we know better or believe differently we do better.

    It isn’t a mistake it is a level of understanding.

    I even looked up the word Mistake and here is the definition,

    An error or fault resulting from defective judgment, deficient knowledge, or carelessness. 2. A misconception or misunderstanding.

    Some how we were taught that mistakes were bad, yet in reality it is a case of deficient knowledge and defective jugement.

    We can only act at the level of understanding, it is impossible to be above your level of knowing, it simply can’t happen.

    Byron Katie’s passion is to question stressful thoughts, to go after the thoughts that make us suffer.

    Mostly I think we suffer believing we are supposed to be where we are not, doing things we didn’t know how to do.

    We are where we are.

    We know what we know.

    And we can’t know what we don’t know.

    And once we know we can’t not know.

    It seems that life is all about being here and agreeing with what you know now, accepting yourself in this moment fully.

    Looking backwards you can see with your new found wisdom the places you missed the mark, but due to your level of understanding in that moment, it makes perfect sense, so no mistake, just the lack of knowing.

    On that dreadful day when I woke up to the fact that all I knew was not all there was to know, I found that I knew much less than there was to know.

    My greatest strength was being able to let go of all I knew to begin to learn about the things I didn’t.

    I simply sat down in the fact that I lived a life at the tip of the iceberg and it was to my own benefit to get to know me. Imagine living as me but knowing me.
    An incredible frightful place to find yourself living as someone you don’t know.

    My first step was to admit to myself I didn’t know me, know where I came from who the people I called family were, I began looking at my life as a stranger would.

    I began from the stance of I know nothing.

    And by doing so was able to be open to everything.

    I had lost confidence in all I knew and had no pre-sets or standards to adhere to, I was standing naked in an open space willing to see reality without my minds concepts.

    Mindless I stood.

    The landscape I then discovered didn’t match my old mind at all.

    We then danced this dance between reality and my old mind, like a game of old maid, trying to see what matched and what did not.

    In the end my mind lost only but 100% of the time.

    As Byron Katie says, reality is God and God is reality.

    I guess we could say the only mistake is believing an unchallenged mind.

    For I challenged my mind against reality, nothing was too sacred for the test, no family member, no title, no past cute deeds, all I dragged into the game of matching mind to reality.

    My mind was so far off the mark, that I began to understand that I fell into reality with a broken mind.

    Or you could say I went out of my mind on that day when I discovered a pedophile instead of a dad.

    And I did.

    My mind had a story that didn’t match reality, a story that I held sacred was an illusion, it couldn’t walk in reality.

    All my love, my life and my way was poured into an illusion that wasn’t even true.

    At 46 I awoke in the middle of a nightmare, in a play where I was the star but it was based upon lies, lies that I called truth. My fantasy world crumbled and a nightmare slid in place.

    Harsh reality boldly took over where my pretend mind stood.

    Yet this reality was actually kind to me, it affirmed my path, it resonated with my body, and it set me free from the mental mind.

    If your mind is not clear and you can’t see reality, you are then living in a foreign land, once removed from reality.

    You can live there for a lifetime and not touch reality.

    I know this seems insane and it is, to be in reality and not know it.

    I lived for 46 years in a mind that was blind to what is.

    Doing things that no one in their right mind would do.
    Saying and believing things that only an insane person would do.

    Yet there are no mistakes in my past.

    My past life was lived from my mind’s point of view.

  • Free to be you.

    At the end of Dr. Jill Bolte’s book, “My Stroke of Insight”, she writes what she needed the most to heal, and I too would like to share what was most beneficial to me as I made my way out of the legacy of dysfunction.

    When you wake up and find that you lived in denial for 46 years, you are smack dab in the middle of a pretend life and you need to begin finding truths everywhere and living truth.

    Here are some things in no particular order…

    The book, “Loving What is” by Byron Katie helped me embrace the idea of acceptance and how it is much easier to walk with reality and to separate whose business is whose. My lines of responsibility blurred and I was lost in other people’s lives and absent from my own.

    “Be Here Now” by Eckhart Tolle helped me live in this moment while unraveling the past. Showed me how to not deny but to embrace the moment right here and all that it delivered.

    Martha Beck’s book “Leaving the Saints” showed me the way abuse blinds you and how the family situation and religion has a great impact on how you then go forward, abused and confused.

    My brother’s ears listened, his eyes sought the truth like I, and his hand reached forward in healing always. Together we bravely walked deeply into what we had experienced to find where we lost ourselves, felt the pain or discovered the things we missed, clues that led us to our self. It greatly helps to have one family member in a dysfunctional family that wants to get out as bad as you, that wants to end the legacy in their life. His understanding of dysfunction as well as his desire to be free was the perfect companion on my journey. His willingness to bravely let go of family in dysfunction to be whole gave me strength.

    My husband bravely walking with me in the unknown, of me and the future, of allowing me space to figure it out, of hearing the truth and not fighting it. He made no demands for me to Not change, nor did he make demands on how I should be, he simply stood by and let me find me. We both had no idea if when I healed if there would be a we. Love is letting go and being free. We found a love that has no strings, you be you and I be me kinda love. His freedom was key.

    Friends. Well, I lost some old friends and old family members who were unable to bear the new me and my new found truths, and I am way okay in letting them go, for I don’t want to make them believe that which they don’t.

    New friends arrived, deeper, wiser, more understanding and caring, they match my new me.

    Playing in Art was my saving grace, a place where I still could play with colors designs in fabric, creating and letting go of the heaviness of dysfunction, there I felt free to be. My Art carried messages to me, like letters from the Universe, showing me I was on the right path and that I would be okay.

    I M Perfect Lady blog, is a key component as well, it has be a sacred space for me to bring my truths, to lay them on the white sheet and to dissect each morsel and to find answers. While I often hoped it would help another person, I have selfishly gained the most. It has beautifully displayed all aspects of me, the broken wounded little girl, the mental survival woman, and the sprouts of the real me. I grew to love this imperfect me and know that each part is perfectly me! There is no part you could take out, for each part hold up a section of my life, each part has a hand in making me me!

    What we need the most is freedom and for others to hold the space of our innocence until we can find our way back.

    We need to use reality like Braille watching all actions as they brilliantly say what words can try to cover; we need to have narrow vision staying with the evidence of actions.

    As we tear down our life of denial, we need to build a life in reality, we need to build up our strength, add wholeness to support what we want to become, while saying good bye to the things that kept us down.

    We need to find the stamina to go against old beliefs and life patterns.

    We need the courage to face all we turned away from.

    We need to reconnect to our bodies and yoga is a spectacular way to join, the mind, body and soul.

    Mostly we need the space to be free.

    Abuse steals our power; we need to become powerful again from the inside out.

    Abuse steals our love; we need to become loving of self.

    Abuse steals our faith; we need to become faithful to self.

    Abuse steals our trust; we need to learn how to trust our judgment, our value, our morals again.

    Denial or dysfunction or abuse has us living from the outside in, where we will please other before self.
    We have to turn ourselves inside out and begin living from inside. Listening to our quiet inner voice, and following our feelings inside.

    Mostly become one. Separated from the leagues and groups and piles of folks that wanted us to be something for them. We need to become a sovereign nation of one. One wave in the Ocean of the Universe.

    What is great about victims is that they bring love, trust and faith and give it to another. In order to heal, they now need to use all those great gifts to heal themselves, to now treat thy self, turn inward.

    All my strengths I had for helping others, I used to help me. I became my biggest cheerleader, my strongest friend; I learned to love my self.

    It is like having the wounded heal the wounded.
    The ultimate healing, I who was broken healed myself.

    The blind learning to see.
    The deaf learning to hear.
    The dumb wanting to know.

    The desire begins with you.

    “Ask and yea shall receive.”

    Seeks the answers of who you are and you will move into being you.

    It all begins in wanting to know the truth.

    The truth shall set you free.

    Free to be you.

  • Peace In the Present Moment

    A book by Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle

    “The most important, the primordial relationship in your life is your relationship with the Now, or rather with whatever form the Now takes, that is to say what is or what happens. If your relationship with the Now is dysfunctional, that dysfunction will be reflected in every relationship and every situation you encounter. The ego could be defined simply in this way; a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment. It is at this moment that you can decide what kind of relationship you want to have with this present moment.”
    Eckhart

    “If your relationship with the Now is dysfunctional, that dysfunction will be reflected in every relationship and every situation!” I know this is true.

    The word dysfunctional almost covers up what is actually happening, it is like a cover deflecting the actual event.

    People fail to notice that by not being with what is actually happening, they are having a dysfunctional relationship to what is, no matter what it is and that alone makes them dysfunctional.

    They are not functioning as one with reality.

    I love how simple he breaks down dysfunction.

    In my head it was all one big vast tangle mess, when it happens little at a time.

    A moment in time presenting itself to you and you changing it into what you need it to be…

    What is so exciting about all of this is that you can stop the dysfunction by greeting what is as it is Now.

    Dysfunction begins each moment in time you fail to see the beauty of what is.

    The darkest beauty as well as its opposite.

    “The simple truth of it is that what happens is the best thing that can happen. People who can’t see this are simply believing their own thoughts, and have to stay stuck in the illusion of a limited world, lost in the war with what is. It’s a war they’ll always lose, because it argues with reality, and reality is always benevolent. When you argue with reality, you lose – but only 100 percent of the time.”
    Byron Katie

  • The Land of Pretend.

    “Notice When Your Thoughts Argue With Reality”

                Byron Katie

     

    I know as I approach working full time, my head has to be on board; my thoughts have to agree with where I am.

     

    If I am riding around in the mail car, ‘wishing’ I were at home, it will be hellish working. My attitude at work will be affected by how I am thinking, and my demeanor will reflect my thoughts.

     

    Tossing mail will not make me suffer, but the thought that I should not be tossing mail while I am tossing mail, will.

     

    It is amazing it is never where you are that makes you suffer, but ‘thinking’ you shouldn’t be there that does.

     

    Accepting where you are at all times seems like a no brainer, but Notice When Your Thoughts Argue With Reality.

     

    Notice how many times a day you say, ‘I should be…, this shouldn’t be, I wish it didn’t, I don’t want….

     

    Those little phrases are the doorway to hell or illusion.

     

    Each time something happens and your first thought is, ‘it shouldn’t be, you are attaching to a thought that is arguing with reality.

     

    “It shouldn’t be is a thought…it is a ticket out of what is.  It is hailing you to come on board, to leave the scene of what is, to walk away, to escape into the land of pretend.

     

  • Search Out the Lie!

    “You don’t experience anxiety unless you’ve attached to a thought that isn’t true for you.  It’s that simple.  You don’t ever feel anxiety until you believe that a thought is true- and it’s not.”

                    Byron Katie

     

    Attached to a thought that isn’t true for you or believing a thought is true and it’s not.

     

    I didn’t know that the anxiety was from lies, from believing in something that isn’t true.

     

    What I guess we fail to notice is that there are false thoughts; untrue thoughts that we attach to and ride while anxiously holding on.

     

    Which is why Byron Katie’s first question is, “Is that true, can you positively know that it’s true?”  Then she asks,  “Who would you be without that thought?”

     

    What is the most amazing thing is that by believing or not believing our thoughts we can turn from suffering to not suffering, from anxious into peaceful.

     

    Changing what we believe is all we can do, reality is as it is, it flows and moves and changes, it is in our minds all within our heads that we suffer the most.

     

    Watch which thoughts you become attached to and how they make you feel?

     

    When you are feeling anxious, search out the lie!

     

  • Loving What Is…

    We would rather be ruined than changed;
    We would rather die in our dread
    Than climb the cross of the moment
    And let our illusions die.
    ~W.H. Auden

     

    What is so unreal is that we believe we can stop change that it is up to us to keep things the same, and it is viewed worthy if we remain unchanged.

     

    Not only unchanged, but that if you change it is somehow seen as bad, wrong or that you succumbed to a new circumstance, instead of standing hard against change.

     

    I have come to see that change happens often and mostly for my benefit, and the more I get used to letting go of rigid beliefs about my life and how it is supposed to flow, I am much more relaxed and willing to bend with the next thing that changes.

     

    Our bodies change, the days change, the seasons change, our roles change, our attitudes change, our energies change, our feelings change, our world simply doesn’t stop changing.

     

    I think we can accept change as long as it goes according to our vision of our futures, but as soon as it changes and creates a kink in our plans, we then stand strong against that change.

     

    Standing against change feels stronger, yet it is actually a weakened state.  The strongest is to surrender and accept with grace whatever is happening, for it is happening.

     

    Accepting what is, as Byron Katie says…is really loving what is, and if you are not accepting it, you are fighting with reality and you only lose, but 100% of the time.

     

    I think we think we are good at navigating the changes in our lives, until the unthinkable happens, when we are forced to look upon something that certainly goes against our dreams, or our plans, and then see how you accept change?

     

    I have found that it is in accepting the most difficult things that we truly see ourselves; see where we truly are, how we are and how we are really living.

     

    Are we living in reality or in a dream about reality?

    Are we flowing with the Universe and living in a love hate relationship with it?

     

    Loving the Universe when our plans are going according to plan, and despising that same God, when things fall through?

     

    It has taken lots of disappointments, lots of changes, and lots of moments of utter disbelief to finally see the gifts in all the changes that have happened in my life.

     

    I was forced to look for gifts among the piles of changes and in doing so always found the thread that lead me to understanding the change.

     

    In seeing a bigger picture or seeing that which I failed to acknowledge, it was my perspective of change that was needed.

     

    Instead of sitting in the land of ‘expecting no change’, I now live knowing all life changes…I am comfortable with change, and if not, I know that it is my mind that has to be changed, not reality.

     

    Reality changes whether we agree or disagree…it is up to you how long it takes.

     

    I have found the quicker I change my mind, the more peaceful I am.

     

    Byron Katie says there are three little words that cause suffering…should, could and would.

     

    And there are three words that bring peace, Loving what is…

     

  • My Mother’s eyes.

    Misperception of our environment is the key that turns your body into dis-ease. 

     

    A misperception of the world is the cause and the spread dis-ease.

     

    Again going back to the two different perceptions of our world between my mother and I, between my family members and I, shows how the disease of my father continues to contaminate generation upon generation.

     

    The dance of misperception blows my mind.

     

    He is able to continue spreading his disease because of her misperception of him and his children’s misperception of him. 

     

    Misperceptions lead to wrong action and as Byron Katie says, “confused minds do confusing things”, and Jesus says, ‘forgive them they know not what they do’.

     

    I am expecting the confused mind to see clearly, or I am writing and speaking to confusion hoping for clarity, it has occurred to me lately I am speaking to the wrong crowd.

     

    My intentions and deepest desire is to make them see, and to wake them up.

     

    And what seems to be happening more and more is I am working on me. 

     

    I am learning more and more and seeing more and more and becoming more aware of how this all works.

     

    My long held misperceptions are unraveling bit by bit.

     

    I am the one who has benefited the most by writing, by taking my thoughts and bringing them to paper I get to see what I didn’t see before.

     

    What an incredible journey out of the misperceptions I lived behind.

     

    I had wrote to Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, author of the book, “My Stroke Of Insight” and told her that I had a stroke in my reality, a stroke of truth. 

     

    Truth flooded my brain, bursting apart my misperceptions.

     

    The journey in the past five years is the re-wiring, re-labeling, and learning to see reality as it is and living without the lens of my mother’s eyes.

     

     

     

     

  • You Be You

    “I don't know what is best for me, or you, or the world. I don't try to impose my will on you or anyone else.  I don't want to change you or improve you or convert you or help you or heal you. I just welcome things as they come and go. That's true love. The best way of leading people is to let them find their own way."

               Byron Katie

    An old friend surfaced and I felt myself not being seen or validated, and what instead was happening, is that I wasn’t validating her. 

    The stress inside of me was that I wanted her to be where she wasn’t, to speak and think in a way that was impossible for her to do so.

    I wanted her to have my relationship with God, my experiences of life, and my views and to feel what it is like to be in my shoes.  Insane?  How unkind of me to not understand that she simply can’t, for she is in her own life doing her own thing. 

    How awesome we each get our own life, our own business and our own pathway to God.

    There is an article “Seana Corn’s First Lesson in Yoga, (on Oprah.com click on Spirit) which again expresses that all people are on their own path, which is what I needed to read today, it cemented in me, that her and I are both right in our own way.

    I no longer feel the need for her approval or validation, I allow her to be on her own pathway, but without resentment towards her.

    So quickly I get lost in the community approval thing, where I seek another’s validation, like that will make my life better, easier or more than it already is.

    I truly honor her path, wherever IT leads her, and I am sooo grateful that I am not a ‘leader’ for her, for I have no clue what is best for her, like not even a little.

    It is amazing the way the resentment dies as soon as I accepted her as herself.

    You be you…

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