I M Perfect lady

Tag: death

  • Beyond the Mind.

    In Proof of Heaven, Eben Alexander writes,

    "When it came to Near Death Experiences, there are there basic camps.  There were the believers; either people who had undergone an NDE themselves or who simply found such experiences easy to accept. Then, of course, there were the staunch unbelievers (like the old me). These people didn't generally classify themselves as unbelievers, however.  They simply "knew" that the brain generated consciousness and wouldn't hold still for crazy ideas of the mind beyond the body (unless they were good-naturedly comforting someone, as I had thought I'd been doing with Suzanna that day)."

    "The more I learned about my condition, and the more I sought, using scientific literature, to explain what happened, the more I came up spectacularly short. Everything – the uncanny clarity of my vision, the clearness of my thoughts as pure conceptual flow – suggested higher, not lower, brain functioning. But my higher brain had not been around to do that work."

    "The more I read of the "scientific" explanations of what NDEs are, the more I was shocked by their transparent flimsiness. And yet I also knew with chagrin that they were exactly the same ones that the old "me" would have pointed to vaguely if someone had asked me to explain what an NDE is."

    "But people who weren't doctors couldn't be expected to know this. If what I'd undergone had happened to someone – anyone – else, it would have been remarkable enough. But that it had happened to me…Well, saying that it had happened "for a reason" made me a little uneasy.  There was enough of the old doctor in me to know how outlandish – how grandiose, in fact – that sounded. But when I added up the sheer unlikelyhood of all the details – and especially when I considered how precisely perfect a disease E. coli meningitis was for taking my cortex down, and my rapid and complete recovery from almost certain destruction – I simply had to take serious the possibility that it really and truly had happened for a reason."

    "That only made me feel a greater sense of responsibility to tell my story right." Eben.

    What I love about this book and "My Stroke of Insight" is how a person with the right and perfect background and formal training has an experience, that they intimately understand and do so while remaining conscious, when medically it is impossible or so we thought…and how they are able to write about it.

    Eben was shown how consciousness works by experience and it trumped all his prior learning.  It opened up a completely new space around his neurosurgeon's beliefs.

    What I find so fascinating and so enthralling is how so many old beliefs are getting left standing almost silly looking by the sheer fact that People of Knowledge are experiencing what they thought was impossible.  That it is happening to specific people and it does seem to have its purpose.  If to do nothing else but to tip down old belief systems.

    I have felt, and do feel, a kinship to these folks, but in a much more normal segment of the population. A regular person who was aware of her journey out of dysfunction. 

    To find consciousness, clarity and choices while fully knowing my brain was washed and cleansed and twisted by the church and abuse…respectively.

    It would seem, that a person such as I, would not be able to "know" what to do, what to say and where to go…that the very person I was trained to be, would the very tool against me.  And yet, I was able to walk clear.

    How?

    How was it possible for me to do what others didn't seem able to do?  How was I different than them?  How am I able to see what others can't?  How is it that reality and I are one, while they can't seem to grasp it?

    All, I can say is that I too had consciousness on my side. It wasn't my thinking brain that guided me…for it was completely damaged by years of cult like teachings and abuse's definitions…I used a totally different navigational tool…awareness – consciousness…a knowing that I hadn't known before.

    Everything that I had known prior was to also be found flimsy and weak, without a string to reality.

    The reason I write on this blog is to share my experiences of how abuse looks to an aware mind.  How religion's applications of forgiveness of sins is failing in reality. Without awareness or consciousness…you can only see the unquestioned beliefs…without doubts you will stand steadfast in the clutches of your unfounded beliefs.

    I know, that I am seen as "the crazy one" the one who is way out there.  I get it. And, I agree. I am not the usual victim.  I have been able to see my brainwashed mind and the way abuse had it so completely upside down.  And, I have been able to re-work those old definitions to put them back correctly.

    I believe that this is the new way forward. That the abused mind/brainwashed cult brain can be overcome…by consciousness.

    What I don't know is how to get consciousness, for it just was there for me. When my world shattered into a billion pieces all I was left with was that.  Which actually was much wider and more spacious than any belief I held dear.

    I have lost much, but I have gained even more.

    I write, for I believe that it will someday make someone else's journey less weird and feel less crazy.  

    These books legitimize the unbelievable and make a new belief…while kindly ridding us of the old paradigms.

    I have felt the strange aloneness, the echoes of no one before me. To be ahead of the time.  To look around and see so many challenging me with this 'weird' way.

    It is like there are new experiences coming forth…gaining consciousness.

    I wonder what we have called "Near Death Experiences" were actually brushes with consciousness?

    For, It changes you forever…knowing there is more beyond the mind.

  • Living Life.

    Today I was able to see the overall appearance of being broken and being the only repairman to fix me. 

    To see my life like a broken clock, and have the clock actually doing the repairs while still telling time, to be changing the insides while the insides were still being used; their intricate pieces falling together to make me who I am, without rendering them useless or forever ruined beyond repair.

    It seems literally insane that those of us from dysfunctional homes are the ones to get us functional, and we are to do this while living life, raising children, going to work, and navigating friendships and relationships. 

    To know you are broken and all mixed up and yet it is from that state you have to be the one to right yourself, to swim out of the swirling waters and find the calm sea and learn to stay there.

    What I first became shockingly clear about was how broken and upside down and backwards I was. It was a miracle I was functioning as a human being.  And it is from this inside out and backwards state that you begin to make corrections. 

    It honestly is like being a broken clock and making repairs on your self from the inside out, while remaining in working order.  Even though it was tempting, I just couldn’t fall apart! 

    There were literally times where I felt that what they were asking was far too much. 

    As the changes are happening inside, I can go from a little lost girl who needs a mother to mothering my own children, from being in need of nurturing to nurturing, without a breath of space between. 

    Life situations will bring to surface old working aspects of me to be worked on, and I can be overwhelmed by sorrow or indignant with anger and fear…I can be an indignant mother or a wounded child…and I also have to get the message while being upset.  

    Be the broken part and the solution.

    Situations arise that will bring forth that which needs to be healed, and at times, I get tired of being broken and being the fixer too. 

    Today the swings from old to new are swifter, but in the past, I could linger for days in a quandary trying to figure out what was wrong, what was being asked of me in order to return to inner peace.

     My old clock ran like a top for dysfunction and I am reworking it now to run beautifully on peace, love and joy.

     Using the same moving parts, I am getting them to respond differently.

    This has been a full time job and one that is best done in the middle of a full working life, for it is there we can fine tune our instruments to get them responding properly.  We have live living breathing humans to help show us where we are not, where our thinking and beliefs are broken. 

    Each time I respond in fear…I have found another broken piece.  At times it seems that this work is never ending, for the more I fix, the more there seems to be broken. 

    I fix the inside and then have to go and try it out in relationships on the outside.  

    It is one thing to change your beliefs, it is another to then use them in real living color, to set forth and be that which you just discovered.

    My old clock was energized by falsehood and this new one runs on truth.

    As much as this boggles the mind, I have also experienced the same confusion with my emotions and feelings. 

    It is incredible to have great gulps of sorrow for losing an old piece, to enormous clouds of peace settle in its place as the new arrives.

    It seems I have been forever within a moving and changing landscape, and it then occurred to me this is living life. 

     

     

  • Hand and Hand.

    All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. ~Anatole France

    Somehow I missed the melancholy of change, the loss, the death of one life, in order to be in a new life.

    And felt that I was doing change wrong, for I was sad as I changed.

    Leaving behind myself I had known for 46 years, I grieved losing that part of me, as I embraced a change that would become the new me.

    In the case of divorcing my parents, I had to the let the daughter in me die. There now stands a hole where daughter use to be.

    My daughter role is no more.

    You forget to remember the old you is gone, like a phantom limb it takes awhile to feel the new normal, and there is a grieving period, where sorrow can arise in odd places, unannounced sadness pours out.

    That view of self is unrecognizable for a while, you feel strange to yourself inside, and your movements are awkward for you don’t really know what it is the new you will do.

    Even when change is for the better, for a healthier you, you still have to let go and let die the old you.
    For some reason I kept forcing my thoughts to look towards the good things, and felt like I was a failure when I looked back and grieved.

    Now I know that grieving is a natural part of change.

    And with the overwhelming amount of change I have experienced in the last 5, well almost 6 years, it is no wonder that there has been lots to grieve.

    Who knew change and grieving go hand and hand…

  • Mismatched Lives

    I will not presume what grief of losing a love one in death is, but I feel like I can articulate the grief felt when leaving a family.

    It is an odd sense of grief, almost self-inflicted, where you purposefully leave and walk into a field of sorrow and lonesome.

    You continue to keep yourself there each time you choose to not participate, you segregate yourself to solitary confinement, yet knowing others gather and go on, you become a ghost in their lives and they in yours, living walking talking ghosts.

    Your lives no longer intercede, nor are there new memories made, unless you count the new grief ones.

    The relationship has died but the body lives on.

    You become a silent witness, a ghost with a body.

    We may all appear the same, unchanged, and many have kept up their same old routine, it is only I that have left the path, one that keeps us separated.

    The separation is as complete as death.

    And even colder, I feel, for there isn’t loving feelings flowing back and forth, instead stark obvious disagreement, irreconcilable differences.

    The differences are what separate us, not death.

    Death is final the ultimate trump card, there is nothing to wish, hope or try to change. Both sides agree.

    In irreconcilable differences, sides continue to be haunted by trying.

    Trying to reconnect and trying to move on, failing to articulate and stop even trying, there never seems to be a Game Over sign.

    And you can be going along seemingly healing from the ‘divorce of family’ and a phone call comes in, a name is mentioned, a party gathers, a reminder once again of where you are literally standing, alone outside.

    Where in death people want to keep the old memories alive, I feel that when the past comes knocking it sets me back.

    Back to me having to decide again, is this a relationship I want, is this healthy for me, what has changed in their worlds, a ghost coming back to me…asking again,
    divorce or not, dead or alive, with me or not, friends or enemies, sisters or strangers, mother or abuser, a choice to once again be made.

    Nothings over, no final exit, just flowing in and out, shouting our glaring difference, daring me once again to not see, to turn away from the truth and get along. See not our mismatched selves and be a family.

    A family of mismatched lives.

  • When Death Comes, by Mary Oliver

    When death comes
    like the hungry bear in autumn;
    when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

    to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
    when death comes
    like the measles-pox

    when death comes
    like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
    I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
    what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

    And therefore I look upon everything
    as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
    and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
    and I consider eternity as another possibility,

    and I think of each life as a flower, as common
    as a field daisy, and as singular,

    and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
    tending, as all music does, toward silence,

    and each body a lion of courage, and something
    precious to the earth.

    When it’s over, I want to say all my life
    I was a bride married to amazement.
    I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

    When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
    if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

    I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
    or full of argument.

    I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

  • A Mother who Walks in Reality.

    Last night I read, “Hannah’s Gift” by Maria Housden, Lessons from a Life Fully Lived. 

     

    What a great gift they gave each other as they bravely faced life as it unfolded for each of them, in truth.

     

    For a mother to be truthful in the face of death allowed her daughter to fully accept with grace who she was, for her son to walk step by step, hand to hand, eye to eye sharing her journey full on.

     

    ‘Sparing’ the truth may seem kinder at times; I am once again affirmed that truth is the only way to be.

     

    There is grace and peace in an odd way when you are able to set your fears and selfish wishes aside, when you can disregard your dreams, and instead stand bravely in what is.

     

    Even when the what is, is the death of your child. 

     

    It allowed this little girl to live her life honorably, for her mother honored her just as she was, in each moment, fully embracing what she had, now.

     

    Her intuition in giving her daughter a voice, allowing her to be who she needed to be to live a life that was hers, no matter its length is remarkable to me.

     

    The courage to let go of the pretend reins we all believe we have in controlling our worlds, our children’s world and gracefully succumbing to reality’s power, to ride the ride no mother wants to take, but do so with her eyes on the child’s desires, is what I believe makes a truly remarkable mother.

     

    Thanks so much for showing me the walk of truth.

     

    Coming from a child whose mother couldn’t face the truth, I know that it was you who gave your child the greatest gift on earth, seeing her truth!

     

    Allowing her to be okay and be fully her self, even while life seemed to stealing her away, she was able to live completely as herself until her very last day.

     

    She never, not once had to pretend to pretend to be anything other than herself in your eyes. 

     

    What a gift you gave her, she was allowed to Live as her self.

     

    Your journey shows me that a mother can literally change a child by their reaction to the child’s truths, if you can’t see it, they will pretend not to see it either, but if you can, you both will be enriched.

     

    Truth sets you free to be you in reality.

     

    Thanks Maria for sharing the wonderful journey being a mother who walks in truth.

     

     

     

  • Bridge of Understanding.

    “Do you think his death will bring the other’s closer” was a comment I heard to today.

     

    I know that this sentiment is common and that many believe that time will erase all wounds and death is a reminder that we ‘must’ get along for time is fleeting.

     

    It is a fallacy that we must all get along, that we are somehow flawed if we don’t agree and want to spend time with everyone.  And God forbid it be a family member. 

     

    What happened to the simple fact that lives don’t match, that we don’t get along, that we don’t agree on the way each lives their lives, how they deal or not deal, be or not be. 

     

    Isn’t it okay to not get along? 

     

    Isn’t it more honorable to agree that ‘nope we don’t match’?

     

    Why are we so afraid to stand up and face the facts that we don’t get along and find more peace being apart? 

     

    That when death arrives we will see someone pass that we didn’t get along with, that neither of us were the cause, but perhaps our pasts just didn’t lend themselves to gel a future.

     

    A looming death will not make us match and get along, no matter if death is a day or two away or a lifetime, the simple fact is that the distance between our beliefs are too wide for the bridge of understanding.

     

      

     

     

  • No One Can Do It For You.

    I first heard about the five stages of grief in Forgiveness from Connie Domino and her book “The Law of Forgiveness,” which I have not read, yet.

     

    I heard her in a conversation about how feelings and thoughts have to be in harmony, when she spoke on Sirius Radio.

     

    She is saying that you can’t forgive just by saying the words, or using words alone, you have to feel it.

     

    And this is where I think people get it wrong, you can’t fake feeling okay or fake feeling peace, or fake feeling anything, and try to believe the words have more power over what you are feeling.

     

    She is saying to be in harmony with your words and feelings. 

     

    And I would say use your words to describe your feelings, feel it and give them words.

     

    If you are angry, give it words!

     

    Bring in the five stages of grief into whatever situation you are dealing with and trying to find forgiveness in, the five stages of accepting what is you have to accept.

     

    First you have to accept it, and in order to get to acceptance, there are four steps in front of that.

     

    Denial

    Anger

    Bargaining

    Depression

    Acceptance

    I looked this up and here is what I found.

    The Kübler-Ross model, commonly known as the five stages of grief, was first introduced by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying.

    It describes, in five discrete stages, a process by which people deal with grief and tragedy, especially when diagnosed with a terminal illness or catastrophic loss. In addition to this, her book brought mainstream awareness to the sensitivity required for better treatment of individuals who are dealing with a fatal disease.[1]

     

    1. Denial — "I feel fine."; "This can't be happening, not to me."
      Denial is usually only a temporary defense for the individual. This feeling is generally replaced with heightened awareness of situations and individuals that will be left behind after death.[1]
    2. Anger — "Why me? It's not fair!"; "How can this happen to me?"; "Who is to blame?"
      Once in the second stage, the individual recognizes that denial cannot continue. Because of anger, the person is very difficult to care for due to misplaced feelings of rage and envy. Any individual that symbolizes life or energy is subject to projected resentment and jealousy.[1]
    3. Bargaining — "Just let me live to see my children graduate."; "I'll do anything for a few more years."; "I will give my life savings if…"
      The third stage involves the hope that the individual can somehow postpone or delay death. Usually, the negotiation for an extended life is made with a higher power in exchange for a reformed lifestyle. Psychologically, the hi is saying, "I understand I will die, but if I could just have more time…"[1]
    4. Depression — "I'm so sad, why bother with anything?"; "I'm going to die . . . What's the point?"; "I miss my loved one, why go on?"
      During the fourth stage, the dying person begins to understand the certainty of death. Because of this, the individual may become silent, refuse visitors and spend much of the time crying and grieving. This process allows the dying person to disconnect oneself from things of love and affection. It is not recommended to attempt to cheer up an individual who is in this stage. It is an important time for grieving that must be processed.[1]
    5. Acceptance — "It's going to be okay."; "I can't fight it, I may as well prepare for it."
      This final stage comes with peace and understanding of the death that is approaching. Generally, the person in the fifth stage will want to be left alone. Additionally, feelings and physical pain may be non-existent. This stage has also been described as the end of the dying struggle.[1]

    Kübler-Ross originally applied these stages to people suffering from terminal illness, and later to any form of catastrophic personal loss (job, income, freedom).[1] This may also include significant life events such as the death of a loved one divorce, drug addiction, an infertility diagnosis. Kübler-Ross claimed these steps do not necessarily come in the order noted above, nor are all steps experienced by all patients, though she stated a person will always experience at least two. Often, people will experience several stages in a "roller coaster" effect – switching between two or more stages, returning to one or more several times before working through it.[1]

    Significantly, people experiencing the stages should not force the process. The grief process is highly personal and should not be rushed, nor lengthened, on the basis of an individual's imposed time frame or opinion. One should merely be aware that the stages will be worked through and the ultimate stage of "Acceptance" will be reached.

    However, there are individuals that struggle with death until the end. Some psychologists believe that the harder a person fights death, the more likely they are to stay in the denial stage. If this is the case, it is possible the ill person will have more difficulty dying in a dignified way. Other psychologists state that not confronting death until the end is adaptive for some people.[1] Those who experience problems working through the stages should consider professional grief counseling or support groups.

     

     

    I thought of these stages in death, but to use them in all tragedies or when facing forgiveness allows us to be ‘normal’ in abnormal situations. 

     

    I am wondering about the action of forgivenes if we have to do all five stages?

     

    If you can skip a few and still get to the end result of feeling total acceptance and finding peace there?

     

    I am sure most never contemplated the thought that forgiveness is a death process. 

     

    What I felt was a huge loss, but what I didn’t know was forgiveness was a loss.

     

    I never considered this a grieving process, yet I felt that I had lost my whole family in one tragic event.

     

    I grieved the event and the family seemed like colateral damage, but maybe it was reverse.

     

    There are seem to be many levels of acceptance and owning the finality of it all.

     

    The final stage of letting even the teeniest of hopes go, the slightest desires of hope, all hope must die.

     

    Hope becomes a bargaining or denial tool that can keep you in a stage without final and complete acceptance.

     

    It keeps you in a land between, in a place of noncommitment. 

     

    The fight that seems to carry on inside.

     

    The fight inside of me was always between, me alone with acceptance, or me with them and not accepting.

     

    I could not have it both ways. 

    In order to forgive I had to walk alone. 

    Forgiveness is like dying no one can do it for you.