Tag: integrity

  • Meet your Truth.

    Remember playing with magnets as a child, and how they would either click together or be repelled apart?

    I was reminded of magnets as my friend talked about situations we get into in relationships, where we are going along with mutual attraction and then somehow we get flipped around and now are being repelled apart.

    I recalled the magnet’s inner wisdom was much smarter than our strength, no matter what we did; they knew when they matched or when one of them was turned the wrong way, in order to click together they had to be facing the right way.

    And it was fun to feel the push away from these seemingly innate objects, like they had a mind of their own.

    The image of my friend’s hands and how they moved to resemble magnets stayed with me as I looked at my husband and myself and how we seemed at odds, and how we trying to realign ourselves.

    It seemed his truth and my truth didn’t match, and our bodies knew, repelling replaced our old attraction.

    My body has a magnet of its own and the flesh is just a covering on top and beneath my skin is this energy field that knows things my wandering mind misses.

    And my mind has learned that by faking it or pretending to be okay when the body is not, is fruitless for what I seek most is for the body to teach my mind.

    I listen and receive signals of distress or of peace.

    In the past I was the opposite; I turned away from the signals and bull headedly marched on, heedless to the discomfort my body screamed.

    My mind that had been taught what to believe, what was right and what was wrong and it neglected to seek counsel of my body. In fact the body, I was taught, was full of sin and it had the devils magnetic field that would pull us asunder.

    You would go to Hell if you followed your body; Heaven was to be gained by following your mind.

    Your body was your greatest enemy.

    As I write this, I know that my childhood religion was threatened by the wise wisdom of this knowing body.

    Imagine the wonderful creation of God, this highly functioning self-healing living breathing body being the devils property?

    What the religion was teaching was to go against the magnetic pull of my own body.

    With this being my background I as accustomed of turning away from my body, of shunning its desires and passions and neglecting the wise inner gut feelings and focusing instead of following the masses, the church leader and listening to what he and they felt was best for me.

    Stepping away from my body I lived disconnected and out of touch…I worked religiously against my own magnetic pull.

    Imaging going against your own truth!

    It is incredible to me that we all have these wonderful magnets that are infused into all our cells, and they know what is true.

    If you use your body like this big lie detector or treat it like a magnet for truth that it is, your life will be less complicated.

    I watched my daughter and how she appeared physically in our world while she lived a lie. Like a diseased plant she began to fail.

    What I notice about my body is it likes it when I speak the truth, even if the truth sounds bad, it cheers.

    When I was on our local school board and the president of the board lived in another city, but was on our board, it made sense to my body to say, “You have a pretend house in Chassell, so you can be legitimately on our board.” I told him, a man who pretended to live here and who had a fake home in our town were directing me on the board.

    My body felt better being there with the truth hanging out. And I knew better than putting trust or faith in a pretending man.

    So, even if you can’t make moves to get out from beneath the lies don’t lie about your situation; give your body the full report.

    It is not the actual reality that distresses the body, but us telling the body it isn’t really there. It likes to have a well-balanced reality accounting sheet.

    I love that I am aware of my body’s magnet and how its preset to the truth, how I can rely on it subtle and not so subtle readings, how it vibrates at a certain note to gain my attention, letting me know when I am not seeing or being in truth.

    My Universe and this magnet are connected and both dance perfectly in harmony with reality.

    My body thrives best in the reality of truth and I speak reality’s harshest truths with great courage for I now what happens when I don’t. I get repelled away from peace, love and joy.

    My magnet is set uniquely for me and I get anxious and scared when lies pile up and truth seems far away…

    Namaste, means the Spirit in me recognizes the Spirit within you…what I believe maybe more beneficial is my truth wants to meet your truth.

  • A Liar too.

    There seems to come a time in each relationship where the titles and names do not matter, where instead lies the meat of the relationship, the giving and the taking, the feelings we feel in the wake of their actions, the way we are treated or the lack thereof, it is like we can finally see what it is we are tasting.

    I asked myself if lies was an ingredient in love and could not find one recipe of Love that included lies.

    Not the love of parents, friends, lovers or self. Lies and Love don’t match.

    I also know that all relationships no matter what kind are subject to renegotiations if and when the ingredients change of one party.

    There isn’t a relationship out there, as far as I can see, that holds this sacred space of no negotiation.

    To me, all relationships are fluid and are living breathing exchanges between two people, that will change as the individuals in them change, and in fact the relationship is only as good as the weakest one.

    The weaker one is the sum total of the relationship, for if the stronger one settles, so goes the relationship down to the lowest denominator.

    My experiences with dysfunction is the strong lower themselves to be okay with dropping down to the low level, it is seen as kind and loving and accepting, and to forgive all actions, and call it unconditional love.

    Unconditional love to some is allowing all types of negative behaviors to messy up a relationship and you are to love no matter what.

    The ingredients of dysfunctional love is that anything goes and all must be forgiven, and relationships are made of steel there is no renegotiation, and you and I are locked behind the wall of our relationship.

    The relationship between sister and sister in some is non negotiable.

    Between parent and child…

    That what started out has to remain, we are locked in forever, like a steel cage within there is no way out, we must forever and a day be held together, withstanding bad behavior for the cause of Relationship.

    Two victims behind the relationship cage.

    I say, that if one in the cage changes, the other gets to leave if the changes can’t be reversed.

    When one changes, the whole relationship changes. It isn’t a cage, but rather the dance within the cage.

    Some put high regard on the titles, Mom, sister, daughter, father, and I see the individual behind the title, and I believe that the sister is only as good as her actions in the cage.

    Lies are lies no matter whose mouth utters them.
    Abuse is abuse no matter whose bodies are delivering it. It is convenient only for the one who is doing the bad behavior to use the trump card sister, to put that out in front of the poor behavior.

    Well, in my world I have taken down the cages that held me in and I am free.

    I no longer will be victimized or blinded by a title.

    Actions are actions, lies are lies, and deceit is deceit.

    Setting aside the relationship and seeing you as you, lies are not becoming.

    No good can be grown from a lie.
    No self worth can be gained from a lie.
    No love can be sown from a lie.

    In my childhood family they live among the lies and are not even aware that who they are playing with isn’t so, raised in the darkness full of lies, it is their normal. They don’t even know they live a lie for they never lived outside of it. Lies is all they ever knew. They have said and do say, that my parents did the best they could, and they did. But their best is to present one thing to the front while doing something else behind the scenes.

    A lie I call it.

    Most will not deal with the ‘thing’ behind the scenes; they would rather just play with what is in front, the pretend relationship label. Father, Mother instead of really looking at the actions within the cage.

    What happens in the cage is what you have a relationship with.

    Action to action is how we dance and relate to each other.
    If one says a lie and the other does not see it, the lie still happens, one is just denying it.

    It changes the dance from love to love and trust to trust… to lie to love and what they want is for us to continue to trust them while they lie.

    How?

    What is the point?

    Who trusts someone who lies?

    I can trust that I will not trust you when you lie.

    I trust that I will tell you I don’t believe you.

    I will say love doesn’t lie.

    I wonder why you lie?

    I wonder if you know that our relationship can’t hold what you do?

    It almost seems that if you have to lie, you know that if you spoke the truth, that it would change what we have.

    Yet sadly the lie does the same thing.

    Whether you do something that would jeopardize our relationship or you lie about doing it, it matters not.

    You have breeched its integrity, you have changed its value.

    As a child, my relationship with both my parents changed at a very young age, the seed of mistrust, conditional love was planted. In order to remain in the relationship, I had to keep their lies.

    Keeping lies changes who you are.
    Keeping lies of another doesn’t make them better, brighter, loving, happy, kind and compassionate.

    Holding a bag full of lies makes you a liar too.

  • Show and Tell

    The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be. ~Socrates

    I looked up the meaning of the word Integrity and one of its meanings is to be in a state of completeness, undivided.

    My girlfriend said the definition that they are teaching children in elementary school, is that what you say, what you think and what you do all match.

    I had to let go of many relationships of people who were unable to walk the talk they talked.

    I am much more in awe of folks who have integrity and make no excuses even if what they are doing is unkind. At least they are not putting on a friendly face while acting poorly.

    If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, it’s a duck.

    We get lulled by words and swayed in fancy sentences when actions are way off base.

    My husband knows a man called Snake, and he asked him how he got that handle? The man said he earned it. I like that. My husband went on to tell me this man spent time in jail for having a relationship with a young girl…

    If only we called folks by their behaviors it would make life a much easier way to navigate.

    “People show us who they are, Believe them,” is Maya Angelou’s quote.

    The key words are Show and Believe… it is as if the world is one big place of Show and Tell, but instead of bring something to show, we bring ourselves.

    We are all showing people who we are and they are showing us.

    It is not a game of pretending to be something different.

    Watch actions, how they display themselves and how they take care of their lives, they are on this stage called life being who they are, it is our job to believe what it is we see.

    How often do you give them the benefit of doubt? Whose doubt? Who doesn’t want to believe and why? What will happen if you believe? What will you lose?

    It is incredible to me now to not believe them. It is like they are screaming their truths and we are blocking our ears and shutting our eyes.

    “People Show you who they are, BELIEVE them.”

    We don’t want to believe who they are, for it will wreck our dream.

    The pain we are afraid of is the sorrow of our broken dreams.
    It isn’t so much that we lose them; we lose our dreams and our future.

    Yet what is the karma we are actually tending to?

    A lifetime of dancing with people who are disappointing, for they can’t measure up to what we hold in our minds, for we refuse to believe who they really are.

    It gets you so confused, that you then lose who you are.

    You are a believer of what is not.

    While extremely painful, it was very liberating to finally be able to believe in what people showed me. I love what is. I stay in step and in tune with the show and tell!

  • I answer…

    The faint lines between your business and mine oftentimes blur when it contains the life of you my child, when you bring into my life energies that affect me.

    It is crucial to separate and to focus on what is my business and at the same time hand back to you yours.

    While I can’t change your behaviors and don’t want them to change for me, I do want to maintain the integrity of our relationship.

    There has been a breach and I feel it is only right for me to state how it makes me feel.

    It isn’t up to me to change you, but I feel it is only right to state how it will affect the you and me.

    The relationship we had previous didn’t have lies, it didn’t have secrets, it had integrity and character, and I am unsure what this will mean to us in the long run to have this vein running through us, it seems to weaken the us.

    Inside of our relationship you have brought changes that will define our future, changes that I accept or decline.

    What happens if I accept that lying is an okay part of our relationship?

    What happens if secrets are okay?

    Who then do we become?

    Are we not just playacting a good relationship?
    Not only is the relationship with self in jeopardy but each relationship you have, for in every relationship you bring you.

    If you treat your self less, we all feel the less of who you are in our relationship.

    The light goes out, the feelings are dim, and we feel that.

    To me the second part of any relationship is to say what you need to say, to speak how the actions are affecting you, letting the other know how you feel.

    The relationship dance is twofold; no one gets to have more power.

    Each of us owns a set of feelings and a voice, it is up to us to express and share.

    My business is to share my feelings or hide them, to speak up or sit silently, to show her how my feelings are changing.

    She changes and I change.

    We are separated but move in the dance of life together as long as we have a relationship.

    We relate to each other.

    When you do lie I feel lied to.
    When you do something loving, I feel love.

    We are readers of each other, what you give to me I take in its full integrity, I no longer change it, but accept it as it is given.

    Your actions come across to me clearly, I read you like a book, there is no mistaking their meanings, what you are doing is speaking to me loud and clear, I am just echoing back how it feels to be on the receiving end.

    That is my business.

    I tell you how I feel.

    Your lies to me are lies about your self.
    You are trying not to show me who you are.
    I see behind the lies, I watch the actions; the wordy lies fall empty at my feet.

    Our relationship is only as good as the two people in it.

    You bring you and I bring me.

    We dance as one from there.
    You step and I counter step, you speak and I answer…

  • Celebrate your differences!

    What would be good advice to offer a new couple who just got married, what pitfalls or blind corners do you have to warn them of, when does reality overtake love, and what then is the best thing to do?

    In my experience of 23 years I would have to say, is to be truthful with your self first and then with him/her.

    That if you give away parts of your self in little lies, soon the you they fell in love with will be gone.

    And it is in the most scariest of situations where there is the most at stake, it is then you need to be honestly truthful.

    By honoring your self first, the other person will always be with your most authentic self.

    While it may seem kind to bow down to the comfort or spare a feeling of hurt, what you are really doing is lining your relationship with lies.

    I had heard Dr. Phil say yesterday to different couples who were either too comfortable (no spice) or those in a power struggle of control, etc…that you are either contaminating the relationship or adding to its strength (I forgot what word he used, but meaning adding to its integrity).

    In each situation, all you are responsible is for your self.

    The union of two people will be only as strong as the weakest individual.

    A marriage made in heaven is where one is strong the other is weak and visa versa.

    If we were exactly alike, there would be no need for the other.

    Celebrate your differences!

  • The Four Agreements

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

     

    BE IMPECCABLE WITH YOUR WORD

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

     

    DON’T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY

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

     

    DON’T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS

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

     

    ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST

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

                    Don Miguel Ruiz

     

     

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

     

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