I M Perfect lady

Tag: children

  • What my mind can hold.

    Glancing through the book “Truth vs Falsehood” by David Hawkins, I read this headline, “Cultism”…so here it is.

    “Cults ensnare the unwary by their specialness and false promises. Members have ‘insider’ status and a special ‘lingo’. The group leader is charismatic, seductive, and courts the intimate, who is flattered by the attention. The leader is very ‘special’ and treated with adulation, which is quickly turned into control of members, including especially their money and sex lives, as well as lifestyles, diets, clothing, etc. Members must take allegiance and break off relationships with family or even spouses and often associations or groups.”

    “The group often forms a geographic, restrictive enclave and develops a group paranoia as well as a characteristic “cult glaze” (cal. 120) as though in a hypnotic state (the effect of isolation and brainwashing). Once detected, that glaze is easily recognized (the “programmed cult look,” as one observer described it. There is a flatness and automation style to rationalization where content is like a “party line” that is parroted from having been programmed. Cults especially target celebrities and exploit them as showpieces.”

    “The influence of the cult leaders is so strong that large groups of people will willingly kill not only others but also themselves (e.g. Heavens Gate, Jim Jones, Islamic terrorists, suicide bombers, Aum Shinrikyo subway gassers, Bolsheviks, Nazi party, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, White Supremacists, Ku Klux Klan, liberationists etc.”

    “Another characteristic of cultism is proselytizing and insistence of following the party line of a pseudo-religious group belief system by which individuality is scorned or even threatened. Leaders are very power-oriented, and control plus paranoid egoism are dominant themes.”

    “Sometimes a spiritual leader will calibrate as integrous early in their career but then will fall victim to the seduction of prestige, money, sex, or the adulation of followers. Then the original spiritual group degenerates into a cult, or a spiritual technique becomes actually trademarked and then commercialized and marketed by hired publicists. In that case, the technique calibrates above 200 but the organization itself falls below 200 and becomes primarily a marketing organization that trades on the original concept or exclusive technique. The technique is thus only taught for a price and ‘trainees’ are forbidden to reveal the secret teachings (which are usually merely a few simple phrases or sentences with a general application to ‘improve health’, “attract abundance”, “increase love life,” “be more popular”, fulfill your potential success”, “attract a mate”, etc) Some of the promoted techniques can be found in any fortune cookie, e.g. “One smile can change your life forever” (cal. 350), or “Success goes to one who is kind.” (cal. 360)

    “The true value of such workshops is not the magic of the central concept or technique, but the disciplined practice of actually applying it with regularity in the daily life instead of merely quickly dismissing it as “I already know that.” The value of training workshops then lies in the learning of the value of steady application and actually putting a valuable tool into practice and steady focus, e.g., the “faithfulness” of A Course in Miracles workbook.”

    “Another expression of cultism is the cultification of splinter groups from traditional religions, e.g., the far-right “fundamentalism” most prominent and visible in Islam, Christianity and ethnic variations of worldwide religions.”
    David Hawkins

    While I know when you are in the midst of a cult, you can’t see the forest for the trees, but when you step out and find your own freedom to be an individual to feel the open space where the programmed mind used to be, it is mind blowing.

    Most feel and think that a cult is this small hidden special group, but if you look around within many religions, you will see what they are doing to the individual, they are controlling it.

    Any organization that tells you what to wear and what not to wear, what is acceptable and what is not, what you can and cannot do with your own body is a cult. Albeit a milder level for perhaps your religion hasn’t asked you to kill, yet.

    In my childhood religion, there was a phrase that could erase all sins and we literally believed in its power. “Your sins are forgiven in Jesus name and blood…” By believing in this phrase, ‘there was no sin to great to forgive’. All transgressions against others was deleted.

    With this phrase, many criminal behaviors are washed away without ever needing the police, the law or the court of the land.

    It is insanity at its best and what happens to the victims of these crimes? Who is there to protect them, when it is know and approved to have pedophiles preying upon the children, and the only consequences are they have to ‘confess’ and be ‘forgiven’?

    Where are all these sins? Do they really believe that Jesus is carrying the weight of all the tortured children? Is he indeed that forgiving to allow the children to suffer while the adults get a new cloak that is whiter than snow? Come on people wake up the sins are living in your midst, they are the abused, the confused and the broken.

    There are no magic words that will take away the physical act of abuse on a child’s body nor erase the terror and the shattered trust and innocence….

    The most evil words that I can now hear are “Your sins are all forgiven…” For what it means to me, is that the monster has been blessed to abuse again.

    When will the people in the cult wake up and see the bleeding children? When will they understand that the words spoken are destroying the spirits/souls of the children among them?

    As they sit in the pews singing “Bless be the tie that binds us…” I want them to know, they are the chorus in a ring of child abuse!

    I wanted to believe that my family was an oddity that we were not the popular way within the church, yet I fear that I was the tip of the iceberg and what lies beneath is beyond what my mind can hold.

  • Uncontrollable me.

    My Art Quilt group was challenged to work with silk and yesterday we shared our experiences.

    If you all have seen or felt or worn silk, you know that it is a moving fabric, it is slippery and slides like it has a life of its own.

    As I played with the silk, I enjoyed it self-expression, its fluid nature lent itself to being used for water and it stands out instead of laying flat pressed neatly like the typical cotton quilt fabric. Used for Lady’s skirts it was fabulous, for it moved and flowed easily.

    It stretched our imaginations to use this alive moving fabric, for you can’t cut it easily, it doesn’t lay down stiff, it glides and wiggles, so in order to make it behave, you have to put a ‘stabilizer’ under it.

    I sat and listened to how some ‘controlled’ the silk to make it lay down like cotton and I was confused. How they added a straightener to back side to take out the fluidity and light airy movement.

    I didn’t quite get why they wanted to take away what is so alive and electric…yet did understand in order to make it fit into their patterns, they had to.

    Last night as I was about to fall asleep, it came to me. They were trying to control the delightful movement it naturally has, the way it just is uncontrollable and instead have it perform like cotton.

    It isn’t cotton, but if you add a foundation of interfacing or another lightweight ‘controlling’ fabric, it will now act like cotton.

    Then a thought came in that the silk fabric represents how live moves and flows and how we all want to put a ‘stabilizer’ on it so we can know how it will go or so we can ‘control’ it better. We are not comfortable with the unknown or with the flow speaking to us, we like to speak to the flow and tell it how to move.

    So, as children do we arrive like silk, flowing, moving, uncontrollable and not easily handled, and then our parents and society add ‘stabilizers’ or straighten us out, and we become rigid and flat. We may have a shiny surface, but we don’t move with the freedom from within, our natural self has been hardened for control.

    We may look the same, but we don’t move the same or respond in our natural free expression, we have been added layers of beliefs and programs so we fit into the pattern of society, we line up and become a piece of the quilt our family has been creating long before we arrived.

    When I played with the silk fabric I was extremely excited about the way it moved and slide around, how it challenged me to find ways to adjust to its nature, I never once thought to make it work differently and I was so shocked that others found a way to settle it down.

    While it does lend shimmer and shine to the cotton that lays next to it, it somehow made me feel sad for the silk to see it so lifeless, its wiggle unwiggable, its flow flattened like being in a straight jacket.

    I love that now I feel more like silk, I move in my own natural way, I don’t want or need ‘stabilizer’ that comes in shades of religious beliefs and societal conformities.

    I want to be the wiggly uncontrollable me.

  • Mother for them.

    I want to say “Happy Mother’s Day” to all the mothers out there who stood up and did what was hard to do.

    Who had a voice that spoke out when their hearts were breaking, who walked away from their home and family to end abuse.

    Who were willing to leave all they have ever known to change the course of abuse in their children’s lives.

    Mothers who walk with shaky legs and confusion, but walk anyway, the ones who can see the hurt child…and then nothing in life matters more, they walk against many who demand their silence.

    The mothers who will give up her dreams for the safety of her children deserve all the accolades of this day.

    The mother who is in fear, but walks anyway, who leaps into the unknown to save her child, I cheer you on.

    These are mothers of true courage and strength and willingly walk face to face with life’s greatest fears to save a child, theirs and others. They do not sit silently and watch and not get involved, they leap when others sulk back.

    They are the heroes who this day belongs to.

    Mothers, who mother in love, walk fearlessly against evil, and are a strong secure place to be held. Who you can trust and who will lead you to your highest good.

    My Happy Mother’s Day wishes and good energy go to you.

    May you stand tall when the world is falling, when your voice is the lone one in the sea of silence, may you find your courage within you, and know that the Universe walks with you always.

    Feel inside and you will feel the strength of all the mothers who sat in fear, they are cheering for you to show them the way.

    Even mothers need heros, you are a mother for them.

  • Warn the Authorities.

    I had a multifaceted dream just before waking this morning, confusing about places, time lines and doings, but yet totally clear with overall theme.

    I was at a high school reunion that was taking place at my childhood home and I left early, just walked out. In my car as I was leaving I seen my old neighbor running through his house with little boys chasing him. The next time he passed in front of the big bay window, he is wearing underwear, boys still laughing and chasing him. He then heads for the upstairs, stops midway and I see his underwear have fallen and his butt is showing. He stops on the step and turns…it is like he wants me to see him…doesn’t move for a second or two and then ascends the stairs…little boys following.

    I even notice that the stairway has been moved, for in the old floor plan, I would not have seen him taking the game to the upstairs bedrooms, out of sight.

    In the dream I call my brother to tell him…and then the next thing I am in a grocery story and see another old neighbor boy who is now an older man with a gray haired ponytail, and he is carrying a little boy who wants to get down…he lets him go. He and the boy are fully dressed and appear normal.

    I am buying a drink for my son who is in the hospital for a surgery and have witnessed in the dream my husbands loving teasing ways with him.

    This underwear game man juxtaposes the normal or regular men to boy scenes. The cat in the matrix, that something isn’t right, showing me the differences…and how I didn’t run over and wrestle with the man who was in the midst of a pedophile game.

    Yesterday Oprah asks her audience after listening to the Freedom Riders, what do you know that is wrong and what are you doing about it?

    What do you know or sense or feel isn’t right and what are you doing about it…?

    Leads me to sit with my life and ask what do I know that is wrong and is there something I should be doing about it?

    It just occurred to me in the past few days, that I don’t recall others talking about pedophiles to me. Of me being aware of knowing about other families. I just have no memory of them warning me of creepy men…and then I had a flash of knowing, it was me they were talking about. I lived in the creepy home. I was in the subject of what others were talking about, they didn’t tell me, for I was already there.

    This was shocking to know. No one brought the discussion about pedophiles and creepy men up to me, for my father was a known one.

    I find it fascinating and sickening to know that many knew and only warned others to stay away.

    In order for this disease to stop spreading, the ‘early warning’ system has to be ended, we have to learn how to step in, speak up, tell the authorities…do something.

    Even if you have known for years, now is a good time to do something different.

    I was taught to not speak ill of others, to not point out their negative behaviors, ‘for we all have faults’…silence was my first response.

    And I know I am not alone, there are pews full of well-intentioned good people, silently sitting by warning others to stay away, but not wanting to use their voice in a ‘negative’ way, to use it to tell someone suspicions of a child being abused.

    All it takes is for someone to alert the authorities and they will ask the child.

    It takes someone from the outside in the land of normal to come in and rescue those who were born in captivity.

    We know no different, we need you to speak up on our behalf.

    I have heard a few stories in the past six years, but I too didn’t move on it, didn’t speak up, for I who they spoke of I didn’t know, didn’t know their children or who they had access too. But what I also didn’t do is tell the person who told me, to not warn me, but warn the authorities.

    “What do you know that is wrong in the world and what are you doing about it…” Oprah Winfrey

  • Normally intolerant of Abuse

    Addiction is an uncontrollable compulsion to repeat a behavior regardless of its negative consequences. The condition of being abnormally dependent on something…being abnormally tolerant to and dependent on.

    My brother brought to my attention that addiction is to be abnormally tolerant.

    Abnormally tolerant regardless of its negative consequence…to me it is to be addicted to negative results.

    Imagine being addicted to negative outcomes!

    Being abnormally tolerant of negative results.

    Dr. Maya Angelou says, “Children’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.”

    What she calls our talent to endure, becomes our abnormal tolerance to negative consequences.

    We have a unique talent to tolerate bad behaviors or treatment to ourselves. I find this highly intriguing, that it isn’t the substance, but the abnormal tolerance to the substance that is our demise.

    Abnormal tolerance…to negative outcomes.

    What a cycle.

    When we have this abnormal tolerance we can withstand and endure what most normal folks couldn’t begin to fathom, and the rougher of a childhood, the stronger this endurance is the more negative treatment we can withstand.

    And mixed in the mix is love. In fact we endure for love.

    We are taught that parents love, that families love and we endure all treatment for the sake of love.

    What I know in my experience is that I tolerated a lot in the name of love.

    What is so striking as well, is that when I began separating myself from the bad behavior I couldn’t find the love.

    I guess what is the most tragic of all is you suffered, endured, tolerated, and withstood huge amounts of pain, in order to be loved, and in the end all that lay on the ground is abuse.

    The negative consequences to abnormally tolerating or being able to live under such dire circumstances is that we don’t know how to be normal. To rise up to the tolerant level, to know what is normal treatment, to thin out our thick skin, to make boundaries from a normal point of view.

    I was tough and I could endure and tolerate lots, but I had to find out how to become weak and vulnerable, to soften and feel the slightest insult and own it.

    I had to become aware of my softness inside and protect it, refusing to tolerate again for the sake of love.

    I had to become normally intolerant of abuse.

  • My mind now knows it.

    My feelings are like energy magnets and they seem to either be drawn to someone or pushed back, I am unable to steer my feelings, they have a life of their own.

    I can be friends with someone, and then they do something that changes who they are, and I don’t even have to wonder what to do, inside of me the desire to be with them changes and I move away.

    Some will say the friendship or love began to cool, and what I believe happens is new information comes in and it changes the ingredients of their energy system. And then we act differently, it isn’t a conscious thought, but unconsciously our body is leading us.

    I am now very astute as far as my body’s signals are, even a slight change sends a ripple across the water inside of me.

    In the past I believe my insides were very choppy waters so I couldn’t tell if an outside stress was stressing me, for the insides were already such a mess, it is like looking for ripples on 8ft waves.

    Each time a new ripple comes in I stay with it, I discern where it is coming from, what is going on in my world, and who is carrying it?

    My body doesn’t lie; it knows when something in my world is off kilter, when peace has been disturbed, when an untruth has walked into my space.

    Hints to my dis-ease float to me, unannounced and land like odd objects in an otherwise normal world, beckoning me to notice. If I miss one, a second one appears like messengers relentlessly waking me up.

    Once you notice these mess enders, the mess in my understanding clears up, and I see clearly.

    What I see isn’t always what I want, but what I need to see.

    I used to dismiss these signals and over sedate my body so I didn’t feel their uncomfortable truths, now I know if I don’t get the first message the problem doesn’t go away, I am just wanting to play in denial.

    The land of denial is only a temporary home, a respite on a journey towards the truth, and it seems the longer you put it off, the more you have to face in the end.

    I now prefer to face things one at time and as they happen, and to see the nuances and changes in people’s personalities and stay recent with the affects of their behaviors, so that we are not familiar strangers.

    My daughter’s face is familiar but everything else is getting stranger and stranger, my body no longer is comfortable with the ‘truth’ that she presents, it seems to be a token or crumb tossed my way to chew on, and bit by bit I am being fed a book full of lies to deflect me away from who she really is.

    To be honest, I wish my body believed what my ears are hearing, it would be so much easier, but they disagree and there is dis ease inside of me.

    My body is a lie detector and my mind now knows it…

  • Fully Engrossed in Her Life.

    “There are three kinds of business in this world, Yours, Mine and God’s. If I am in your business, it leaves no one is in mine…” Byron Kate.

    When you have children it seems that our business is their business at least until they are capable of doing it for themselves and actually that is the greatest sense of freedom we will get when we can see our children flying well in their own business; their lives.

    When they fly way off course it seems that we do have to leave our lives to help them navigate back and at the same time be present in our lives.

    My fear and challenge is to return to my life and allow them to make corrections needed to get theirs back on track.

    And the most important thing to learn is not what knocked you off course, but also how to get your wheels spinning in the right direction again, and the only way to do this is to do this.

    To do the walking, to make the changes, to gather your life back.

    I just didn’t think that we both had to do our parts and return to our separated worlds, somehow I got stuck in my child’s life and my meddling there was actually slowing down the progress of healing.

    I am grateful that she told me what it felt like to have me crowding her world.

    I am also grateful I could hear that and can rejoin my life that has been somewhat neglected. Okay pretty neglected.

    What a gift to return to my business, to relax and give her back business.

    There is finesse to this mothering thing, to help but not takeover, like a hostile takeover I bet it feels similar to.

    Where at a weakened point another entity comes in takes over.

    I don’t want to be a corporate raider, but a loving mom and when I overstay or overstep my bounds, it is like taking over a company, or my daughter’s world. I have the image now, and I can see that I was lurking on the sidelines waiting to snap it up, instead of giving her space to shore up the weak spots.

    I love that I know this now.

    I love that I am not in the business of taking over other people’s business, I love that I can be very content with one business, mine.

    I guess the best mother is there for consulting services and will be asked when needed…until then, she carries on in her world, doing what she loves to do, growing where she needs to grow, learning how to navigate into being a mom in the ever changing landscape of our children’s lives.

    We must remember to keep the woman in the mother healthy, happy and fully engrossed in her life.

    IMG_5623

  • While waiting…

    What came to me today while mindlessly tossing mail, was that the reason I was so sorely affected by my daughter’s life, was that her life was in my life, that we didn’t have a clear and separate space between what is hers and what is mine, the apron string was still connected.

    The impact upon my body and psyche was equal to it happening to me, where my inner wounded child responded, my ‘mental lady’ mom came out ready to fight battle, and the Loving awareness arrived all fully engaged in her life as soon as she spoke of her crisis.

    What was so beautiful and tragically displayed were how all the parts of me felt and responded and finally released her to be on her own, a completely felt separation and liberation for myself but more importantly for her.

    She was given her life without any strings attached to me.

    While it was the hardest thing for me to do, to let my child go it was almost like a second birth, but this time a birth of freedom.

    And a three-week labor of intense inner working and letting go.

    As long as I feel the strain or worry of what her actions will be, there is a string attached into my world, and I have to snip it to let her be fully and completely free.

    It is not to say, I will no longer give word of wisdom or point out what I see in reality, or how I see changes happening between her and I, I will. But the greatest thing is, that our bodies and psyches are separated.

    It almost seems like this was my last co-dependent exam, a lesson with huge consequences one that my old co-dependent self would have longed to get wrapped up in like an old cozy blanket.

    Yet this time it felt like I was being possessed by another’s life, that their choices had the power to make or break my life, take my peace, destroy my inner sanctity of love and joy and that I was once again riding shotgun in another’s life.

    It was the ultimate life review of how it feels to be a victim in a co-dependent relationship.

    When I look at my daughter there are no strings attached to my happiness or my unhappiness, instead I am sitting in a place of wonder.

    I wonder what it is she will do.
    I wonder how it will affect her.
    I wonder, but my life isn’t totally eclipsed by her life, I feel space opening up and distance coming in.

    A place where If she is to suffer, I can be there as the non-suffering one, we are no longer one big animal of two.

    Today, I was listening to a CD by Sarah Ban Breathnach called, “Romancing the Ordinary.” What she is teaching and talking about is how to romance your self and be fully engaged and in love with you and your life.

    It is simply delightful in the very simple ways we can look around where we are and see what is all there. How we can listen instead of just hear, how we can use all our senses to connect to the Universe.

    I am thinking as long as I was connected to the lives of so many, there wasn’t space or feelings of my senses left for me to use in my life, for me to feel for me, to see for me, to be for me, for so long my life has been used by others.

    Sarah spoke of the waiting. And in my case I have been waiting for my daughter to make a choice, breathlessly waiting, life stopping waiting.

    What Sarah suggests is to make use of the time while we wait, while the Universe and her soul converse and decide, I can use this time in a million little ways.

    While I wait, I can quilt, I can read, I can sit and watch the sunrise, I can sip tea and watch the fire, feel the warmth of a quilt, smell the scent of a candle, and the waiting will pass by…in delight.

    I can’t know tomorrow or what or when or if, how her life will go, but I can get busy in my life while I wait.

    I love this.

    I already listened to a few CD’s while I waited.

    I enjoyed a bowl of soup and homemade bread, while I waited.

    I love that I am free to pass the time while I wait, instead of sitting and worrying while I wait.

    What a huge gift to live my life while I wait to see what transpires in hers. When she needs me, I can stop enjoying the waiting and act.

    I can’t tell you how this simple idea freed me or gave me permission to enjoy my time while waiting.

  • Find Their Own Way…

    The battle of the wills end when you allow the other to have free will, it is pretty hard to fight with freedom.

    The tighter you hold and the more you force, the less the other person can feel and find their own sense of what it is they want to do.

    When I was in the beginning stages of my mental breakdown, my husband and I found a place to stand that left us both in total freedom, a place called “I love you today.”

    In this spot, it allowed each of us to change our minds and to gauge our own feelings about whether we wanted to stay together. This free space to be yourself, to feel that which you feel and to express it daily allowed us the time to re-configure a new normal in our relationship.

    We fell into this spot after weeks and months of feeling the instability each of us had during the most stressful event in our marriage, Me not knowing who I was.

    Pretty hard to promise tomorrow, when today is unknown.

    It felt so much easier to breathe when we embraced the unknown and lived presently with each day and even each moment.

    “I love you today” is an honest and alive relationship and we both promised the other that if and when we didn’t want to be here we would tell the other.

    It isn’t a piece of paper, the ‘happiness’ of our children, or a million other reasons that folks stay together, but instead we individually get to choose if we fit together, if we are happy here, if we enjoy this place, if we are at peace here, if it is a spot for us to grow and change….

    It is like a free-range relationship, where each has the freedom to be who we are, and when who we are no longer works together, we will be brave enough and honest enough to let the other know.

    I just don’t feel then, that we can blame the other; we will always hold the power within us.

    I love you today, and if it changes I will let you know.

    I am thinking this same idea can be used upon our children. Instead of raising children who must remain in our pen (religion, mind set, pathway, etc), where we tell them how to be and grow, that we instead open the gate and let them roam free.

    Let their will be done.

    Let them decide which way to go and how to be.

    It releases both of us to be who it is we were meant to be.

    This reminds me of the paragraph from one of Bryon Katie’s books,

    “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 of 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.”

  • The Door is Open.

    I listened today to a mother and daughter speaking about a time in their lives where the daughter wanted her freedom to do drugs and the mother wanted her daughter to stop using drugs.

    These opposing desires had them in a battle of the wills.

    Until the mother realized she couldn’t do this anymore and she let her go, allowing her to leave the rehab and set out on her own. She believed that in three weeks the daughter would be back home.

    Three years passed while the daughter went deeper into the drug world, selling her body to buy drugs, being homeless, until she almost died and had a near death experience, did she realize doing drugs wasn’t a good thing.

    What caught my attention was that no matter what the disagreement is, until you both agree, there will be a battle of wills.

    This battle of wills seems to make each person dig deeper and find reasons for their side and tearing up the relationship with each fight.

    I can’t even begin to imagine letting a daughter go to sink deeper into the drug addiction, but I can also see the struggle to keep her out, when everything inside of her screams for drugs and the freedom to do what it is she pleases.

    However, the mother did not allow this behavior to ruin her home; the daughter and her drug habit left her house.

    This exchange I heard this afternoon, shown me that what my daughter and I are going through is mild in a sense, and that the freedom I have given her to make up her own mind is a good thing.

    That she gets to decide what is good for her self.

    While I know my perspective is clear and she knows it, she now has to decide what is good for her, her life, and her future.

    Letting me down is the smallest of affects, for she will have to live with the choices fully just as the daughter who lived with all the things that come with the drugs, my daughter will have to live with all the things that come with a married man; the three kids, and ex-wife and the very beginnings of a divorce.

    My life, my home, my inner peace and happiness are separated.

    I will ‘think’ of her, but not experience her life, she will do that, she will feel the affects of all that comes with this man she has feelings for, he comes with a ton of baggage, all of which will spill into their relationship, but I will not feel it, she will.

    I am willing to let her go.

    Time will tell if the pull to go is strong enough to make her leave…there will be no battle of the wills. The door is open.

    “A woman convinced against her will is of the same opinion still.”