I M Perfect lady

Tag: future

  • Everything as it is.

    There is this thing called ‘something’ that keeps you from being totally happy, at peace…something precedes your every step and lives out in front of you stealing your peace, and when you can dismantle the something making machine, you will find life a friendly place to be.

     

    It wasn’t until I lost ‘something’ that I found it had stood between life and me.

     

    Perhaps it was the absence of desiring, wanting, being disappointed or stressed that felt odd, or the lack of plans or having to reach a certain place, that I realized it was gone.

     

    This elusive something changes and ties strings to all your destinations and gatherings, it runs ahead and creates images for you to reach for and scurries off before you arrive, is always one step ahead of you.

     

    In my mind it wasn’t crystal clear, what the something was, but I searched for it like a hidden treasure in each place when I arrived.

     

    I had an image, a feeling or a desire to be fulfilled when I arrived.  I sought it and when it wasn’t found, I left disappointed.

     

    This future something rode ahead of my life planting little seeds of desire for me to harvest when I came behind it, sprinkling my world with what I thought were dreams, when in fact they were moment wreckers.

     

    These moment wreckers became larger than reality, like an overlay, I sought them more than I appreciated what was actually there.

     

    On my latest mini vacation, I was pleasantly surprised I had arrived ahead of something.

     

    I arrived minus a preplanned or arranged idea in my head.

     

    Usually, I had a something plan set in my head that a place had to match.

     

    Whether it was a mood or experience I had to find a certain thing to make me happy.   I didn’t arrive happy, but had to find something to make me so.

     

    I may be unable to articulate this, but to travel with zero expectations, and instead see how you feel when you arrive is totally the opposite of my old traveling/living days.

     

    Before a romantic getaway had to deliver a certain number of things to make it so, perhaps the right sunset, the perfect dinner, the right clothing, the awesome motel, the right weather, the right vehicle, the temperature…you get the picture.

     

    In fact I painted a picture in my mind and then IF reality didn’t match most of it, I wasn’t fully satisfied.

     

    And it can happen in the smallest of situations or on a weekend getaway or two week vacation.  Prior to going your mind sets in motion a something trail that you have to follow and depending upon how many things you match, your trip will be a success.

     

    Imagine the insanity of your trip having to measure up to a trip in your head, a desire or fantasy list?

     

    This last little getaway I forgot to pack the list of something.

     

    I had no preset emotions, feelings, desires and things to capture in order for it to be completed.

     

    In its place instead was arriving…like a free motion painting.

     

    Creating an artful vacation by being inspired in each moment, not knowing what you need until you see it, and bringing it in to your vacation instead of hunting for the right thing, the right thing came to you.

     

    Giving up something you can greet everything as it is.

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    We came around a corner and this guy caught my attention…he was standing in front of an Art Gallery…he beckoned me inside.

     

  • Bathed in the Light.

    “A chick pecks its way out of its eggshell and is born into the world when a toxic gas fills up the interior of the egg. At that point, it is literally dying to be born.
    Is there a toxic situation in your life that it’s time to break free of in order to born to the next level of your existence? Is there a symbolic eggshell surrounding you that is time to peck away at, freeing yourself to live more fully?”
    Marianne Williamson

    I love this question and I love the visual it portrays, how we can literally feel like we are suffocating in life and need to start pecking holes in what we are doing.

    And I love “dying to be born”.

    Most changes, at least life altering changes, require a dying in order for there to be a birth, a letting go in order to grab on to something new, a giving up one way before gaining something new.

    Change is a one two step.

    “You have to be willing to let go of who you are, to become who you want to be.” I can’t remember the author of that quote, but Wayne Dyer uses this often.

    The little chick can’t stay in the egg and be born, she has to be willing to get out of her toxic life in order to thrive.

    And the greatest news is that we will know intuitively when the time has come, when we can no longer remain in a relationship, when its toxic energies simply overwhelm and threaten to kill the essence of who we are IF we are to remain inside the shell of that old relationship.

    Like a very brave little chick, we have to go out into a very big and strange land…leaving behind a relationship we have outgrown.

    As the little chick, once we peck our way free of this toxicity, we are free to live a life we can’t even imagine it can be.

    From a small confined limiting space to the wide-open field of pure potential that Rumi speaks about.

    The visual is striking, a dark small space of an eggshell or the expanse that surrounds it.

    Held in the darkness or bathed in the Light.

  • Our Door in the Future…

    I believe the future is only the past again, entered through another gate. ~ Arthur Wing Pinero

    I read this quote a few times and now I believe I understand it, that our karma or our lessons continue until we change how we greet them, they enter back into our lives perhaps in another body or similar relationship.

    Is it possible that how we act today will bring to us this in another gate?

    That if we act in love and awareness, we will greet love and awareness in our future?

    What we sow we reap.

    When we allow others to mistreat us, we will get more folks who want to mistreat.

    It seems the wonderful Universe gives back to us that which we sow without fail.

    The old saying, “God helps those who help themselves…” He waits for us to help ourselves.

    Many will beseech God to help them, to fix them, to do this and that for them, while they are the ones who hold the power.

    I was waiting for people to learn how to treat me better when it was I who had to learn this lesson. And in another gate flowed volumes of folks to teach me how to treat me better.

    They were not different folks, but the same ones coming in as they usually did and it was up to me to stand up and put a stop to the way they were treating me.

    I had to stop using myself to please them.

    I had to start using myself to please me.

    Most of who entered into my gate of now were surprised at this new response, this new me, this new voice and most turned around and left no longer interested in playing this new game with me.

    The new game of fair trade, this equal partnership or freedom to be a sovereign nation co-existing with them, where the boundaries don’t overlap, where we are not holding each other up, but rather supporting each other to be one strong individual unit, was not a game for co-dependents.

    What we do, what we say, how we treat ourselves today will come a knocking on our door in the future.

  • Live in this Moment of Time.

    I think as parents we believe we are riding shotgun in our children’s lives, while in reality they are flying solo.

    Our children are separate individuals doing their lives and we are spectators not operators of their lives.

    New souls in a new body landing on earth and they get to learn how life flows down here.

    It is all new for them, and we as parents are wanting to spare them the pain and suffering, when in actuality it is by walking through different experiences that gives them character.

    My view is much broader and I am living out front of where they are, a trail guide hollering out what is up ahead.

    Yet how can I know for sure?

    It is my challenge to walk besides, not up ahead.

    Our lives unfold as they will, and it takes energy to be in the future while living in today.

    Today, what do I do today?

    What is going on right here right now?

    I will return to living on a short time frame.

    I also learned that if you take care of the people the people will take care of the rest.

    And if you do right today, the tomorrows will also take care of themselves.

    All we are asked is to live in this moment of time.

  • Future Us!

    Here is a great concept that I had never considered in a book called, “Stumbling on Happiness” by Daniel Gilbert.

     

    “We treat our future selves as though they were our children, spending most of the hours of most of our days constructing tomorrows that we hope will make them happy. Rather than indulging in whatever strikes our momentary fancy, we take responsibility for the welfare of our future selves, squirreling away portions of our paychecks each month so they can enjoy their retirements on a putting green, jogging and flossing with some regularity so they can avoid coronaries and gum grafts, enduring dirty diapers and mind-numbing repetitions of The Cat In The Hat so that someday they will have fat-cheeked grandchildren to bounce on their laps. Even plunking down a dollar at the convenience store is an act of charity intended to ensure that the person we are about to become will enjoy the Twinkie we are paying for now. In fact, just about any time we want something – a promotion, a marriage, an automobile, a cheeseburger, we are expecting that if we get it, then the person who has our fingerprints a second, a minute, or a decade from now will enjoy the world they inherit from us, honoring our sacrifices as they reap the harvest of our shrewd investment decisions and dietary forbearance.

     

    Yeah, Yeah.  Don’t hold your breath.  Like the fruits of our loins, our temporal progeny are often thankless. We toil and sweat to give them just what we think they will like, and they quit their jobs, grow their hair, move to or from San Francisco, and wonder how we could have been so stupid enough to think they’d like that. We fail to achieve the accolades and rewards that we consider crucial to their well-being, and they end up thanking God that things didn’t work out according to our shortsighted, misguided plan.  Even that person who takes a bite of the Twinkie we purchased a few minutes earlier may make a sour face and accuse us of having bought the wrong snack.  No one likes to be criticized, of course, but if the things we successfully strive for do not make our future selves happy, or if the things we unsuccessfully avoid do, then it seems reasonable (if somewhat ungracious) for them to cast a disparaging glance backward and wonder what the hell were we thinking.  They may recognize our good intentions and begrudgingly acknowledge that we did the best we could, but they will inevitably whine to their therapists about how our best just wasn’t good enough for them.

     

    How can this happen?  Shouldn’t we know that tastes, preferences, needs and desires of the people we will be next year – or at least later this afternoon?  Shouldn’t we understand our future selves well enough to shape their lives – to find careers and lovers whom they will cherish, to buy slip covers for the sofa that they will treasure for years to come?  So why do they end up with attics and lives that are full of stuff that we considered indispensable and that they consider painful, embarrassing or useless?  Why do they criticize our choice of romantic partners, second-guess our strategies for professional advancement, and pay good money to remove tattoos that we paid good money to get?  Why do they experience regret and relief when they think about us, rather than pride and appreciation?  We might understand all of this if we had neglected them, ignored them, mistreated them in some fundamental way – but damn it, we gave them the best years of our lives!  How can they be disappointed when we accomplished our coveted goals, and why are they so damned giddy when they end up in precisely the spot we worked so hard to steer them clear of?  Is something wrong with them? 

    Or is something wrong with us?”  Daniel Gilbert

     

    I love this concept that we are making choices today so that the US of our future will be happy, when we can’t possible know that the US in the future will be like, want, need or anything!  And we work harder to please the US we don’t know than we do on please the US of today!

     

    I say do today what you love.

    Do it each day for the rest of your life and give up on the future US. 

     

     

  • Present Training.

     

    As I sat in a room with four other people, one was leading the class and the rest of us were to follow along.  It seems an easy task, to sit and be led, to sit and absorb, to be one with the whole class.

     

    Yet I found myself not following along, but going against the other students. 

     

    One wanted to know what was up ahead, had to know, what would come next, and couldn’t relax in this chapter, worrying about the unknown.

     

    The other two wanted to either change the way things were being asked of us, or stepped into the past operation regaling us with stories that had nothing to do with where we were going.

     

    Their nonsensical behavior was like a loud horn blast coming in and interrupting the flow, their worries/concerns/thoughts of past and future events bleeding into the now.

     

    What a great thing to witness and a frustrating thing to be part of.

     

    I seen how their minds kept leading them away from the task at hand, like pre-school aged kids they needed to be rounded up and brought back to class.

     

    I just never thought that the hardest part of ‘teaching’ someone is to keep them present.

     

    Their attention span was limited and as the afternoon progressed it became worse, and the more they stole time from training, the longer training became.

     

    My patience of idling along in the present, while they played out in the past and future wore me out.

     

    To sit and observe this behavior is so intrusive and rude to the present.

     

    It is the ultimate battle in each situation, between what is now and what was or will be.

     

    As I sat on the sidelines frustrated, I too was battling with what is, for I expected us to all remain in the present training.

     

     

     

     

     

  • We Begin Again.

    "I exist in perpetual creative response to whatever is present."  Martha Beck

     

    In yoga today, I was watching how I felt in each posture, where my attention was or my attitude, was I accepting or enduring or somewhere in the future.

     

    Today I wasn’t fighting Bikram and the length of time he wanted me to stay with the posture, nor was I expecting me to do beyond what I did.

     

    If I went in very mindful and controlled and had a good breathing sequence going, I was amazed at how much more I could do.

     

    In fact I did so well on the Balancing Stick, I was eager to tell you all, but the next two were horrible, for I was ahead of the pose, expecting a perfect one before I even began, based on the prior one.

     

    Well, the prior one was gone, it was a whole new game, and I didn’t focus, breathe or concentrate.  I wasn’t in that pose, I fell out and had to chuckle at the difference between the two.

     

    I caught the feeling of how quickly moments go by, how we have to grab and drink of each one, and not worry about the flavor of the next, or indulge to long in a past one.  We have this moment, right here.  

     

    Right here, right now, we begin again.