I M Perfect lady

Tag: life

  • Happy Returning To Life.

    On Easter we all are thinking of Resurrection; how it means to rise from the dead or return to life. 

     

    As I returned to my life, it has taken me on a wild and exhilarating ride, one that has taken me from the depths of hell up to the heights of Heaven, while tearing down false idols, correcting misconceptions, up righting upside down ideals, and bringing my self back to my life, a resurrection.

     

    Returning to awareness in my life has also been a day of reckoning, owning up to all the places where I had not been in my life; I now was facing the sins of the past in the present.

     

    I had been taught to believe that I could have my sins forgiven and forgotten, by merely saying a few words, and all would be well with thee, and that they had been transferred to someone else, like to Jesus.  And I would then be whiter than snow, clean, perfect a new slate. 

     

    No action was expected, just had to mumble a few words, admit that I had sinned. And like magic another could wash me clean and I didn’t have to do a damn thing.

     

    In my head perhaps this worked, but in real life it was a train wreck.  Inside of my head I was clean and perfect, in the reality of my life all the affects of blinking away my sins lay in their ugliness unchanged.

     

    I am not a historian nor was I ever deeply religious, but try and explain the applications of this sin and forgiveness thing to a child of say two.

     

    How does this work?  Can a little child pass off his bad deeds to another?  Where does stealing go when you confess?  Will a bad word evaporate and become unspoken, a hurt rendered hurt less etc? 

     

    As I sit on this Easter morning, I see the sheer volume of how religion has life so wrong, and in fact how it finds way to escape life instead of returning to life.

     

    Easter to me means returning to your life, being 100% responsible for all things you do, not schlepping off your negative traits, wrong actions, and weaknesses onto another person, but instead learning and exploring your whole self, being present in all aspects of life.

     

    Happy returning to Life!

     

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  • A U-Turn In Your Life!

    “A bend in the road is not the end of the road… unless you fail to make the turn.”    

      ~Author Unknown

     

    Each morning a bend appears, as I contemplate doing yoga another day.  I really only face this one day at a time.  So early each morning upon awakening, I take inventory to see if I have all I need to begin.

     

    I think there is a part of me that is exhausted by this yoga every day, one that wants me to revert back to the ‘good’ ole days.  It wants to slip back in to unconsciousness of being lazy, to go back to sleep in comfortable do nothing.

     

    Challenging that idea is another part of me, the one who enjoys being awake, aware and alive.

     

    At this point I am faced with two roads, one leading back a comfortable bed of lazy, or the one who is forging a new me.

     

    When life is at its busiest, when my time seems so limited, it would be so easy to find an excuse, for they lay scattered all about.

     

    Each excuse can be a sign that says, “Turn back.”

     

    Who knew that excuses were directional signs?

     

    I do now.  So each time an excuse pops up it is telling you to turn back into the old person you used to be.

     

    A U-Turn in your life!

     

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  • Middle of your life.

    “Where are you looking for your life?  What makes you feel most alive?  What is life to you? Ponder these questions.

     

    Now today, moment by moment, realize that each person and event that happens is life for you.  Life is not somewhere else.  See how fully you can accept the life that presents itself to you now.”  Brenda Shoshanna

     

    “People often say, “Life is passing me by.”  How is this possible with life always unfolding in this precise instant?”  Josh Baran

     

    “Where are you looking for your life?”  I love this question?  When presented this way it seems preposterous to have lost a life while living a life.

     

    It is like looking for your breath while breathing!

     

    Where can your life be found if not right here with you today, this minute?

     

    Your life can simply not be anywhere without you, where you go your life follows!  Watch for your life displaying itself to you, dancing for your attention, and singing for your joy, creating wonderful experiences to learn from, people co-creating with you, all is your life.

     

    “What is life to you,” is another great question.

     

    Maybe a greater question is what are you without your Life?

     

    It seems to me your life and you go hand and hand…in grace.  It is not a race or chase.

     

    My life is where I am; I am where my life is.

     

    When my life moves I move.

    When I move my life moves.

     

    I can’t make a wrong step in my life, for it follows. It is my life and that wrong step is part of it, it is all part of the process to make me me!

     

    My perfect life and I are inseparable.

     

    My past follows, my future yet unknown, my present as it is, alive and filled with potentials…bursting with reality.

     

    What will I do, where will I go, what will appear, what will disappear, what will my life present for me today…

     

    It is an odd place to stand in the middle of your life.

     

  • I Have A Life!

    “To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves — there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.” Joan Didion

     

    Today was the 78th day in a row of doing Bikram yoga, and I am still stretching into places I have never been before, with my body, mind and inner knowing.

     

    It is crazy to have ridden around in this body and not really used it to its fullest potential; I have lived backwards in so many areas or upside down and sideways.

     

    I am feeling freedom and innocence that I have never felt before 

     

    My previous relationship with self was for others, and had little do with me. Imagine I was not living for me!

     

    I was living for your good approval, your wellness, happiness, comfort and the whole while neglecting my self!

     

    Abandoning it while using it.  Which seem really pathetic.

     

    How can I save you while I am dying?  How can I teach you to take better care, while I am a wreck?

     

    Doing this yoga each day for the last 2-½ months, has brought my attention, focus and care back to me.  I am for the first time ever spending time each day for my body.

     

    A few days ago, I realized “I have my own life!”  I said it out loud and more than once, “I have a life!”   

     

    Feeling that I have my own separated life is like being cut free from a bossy Siamese twin!  I am free!

     

    Yoga turns you right side up and sets you free.

     

    I have a life!

     

  • Challenge called Daily Yoga.

    I went to the basement today with Carl and Karen’s words of praise and correction front and center, eager to reach the postures to either stand in pride or settle into the pose differently.

     

    The Balancing Stick does make a difference if you look ahead and down, instead of down, and to stretch with your arms and torso forward.

     

    When I came to cobra, I tried hard to do what Carl told me this morning is a reverse push-up. Keeping in mind the compression of the lower back, that that is what our goal is, I even tried to feel the nerves after the release, that Karen talked about.

     

    It way helps to have eyes in our studio, especially eyes of experience yogis.  It is amazing, just show them a picture and they can see where I needed help.

     

    Bikram says in his book, “Look up at the ceiling, raise your head, and, using the strength of your back, lift your torso off the floor. Arch the head and torso back as much as possible; at the same time, press the belly button into the floor.  The belly button and everything below it stays in contact with the floor.”

     

    It is exciting to bring new hints and corrections to the poses, to help you reach your ultimate goal.

     

    Speaking of ultimate goal, it came to me that I completed one goal, 60-day challenge, only to be still in a much larger challenge.

     

    The challenge to continue on, without a short term prize, without a real numbers game to be competing in, instead just doing this in the morning, as part of my day.

     

    Making it become as Carl said, “like taking a shower.”

     

    As I walked Finn outside along the frozen river, as the crystals coated the trees, it occurred to me, we are always looking for the next challenge, the next quick fix, the next thing to complete or compete in, instead of being in the midst of the river of life, we want it to freeze or finish up.

     

    What is wrong with playing in the flow of yoga, to watch your self change daily or sometimes from pose to pose. 

     

    Does there have to be an ending in sight?

    What happens if we are instead in an endless yoga challenge?

     

    An endless challenge called daily yoga.

  • It Appears And Then Goes

    This 60-day Bikram Yoga Challenge is just one of many challenges we are doing each day, little ones, difficult ones, and ones that bring us more in alignment of who we truly are and ones separating us from who we are not.

     

    Being a Mom challenge started roughly 22 years ago and will continue on now until I die, an endless challenge.  It is a combined experience with both sides leaning on the other or challenging the other to become their best. I have seen how I can affect this challenge; how I am the change I want to see in them. 

     

    A marriage challenge has been going on now for 23 years, during which time I have grown up and then fell apart.  What we learned most is that who we are and how we feel directly affects the relationship of us.  Our truths and our selves highly influence the way this flows.   We have rode the rough waters and sailed the smooth seas, learning along the way, our willingness to try repeatedly is amazing. 

     

    The individual challenge of just being me has been going on for 51 years, and in that time I have witnessed myself in many different roles and tasks, some more challenging than others.

     

    And all we can do in each of these challenges is to do what is being asked of us right now.

     

    As a day moves along, I am in the yoga challenge, then I flip into the mom challenge, then a mail lady challenge, then back to a wife for a while, then a mom, maybe an Artist, and on it goes.

     

    How cool is that we have a multitude of things going on at one time.  The challenge is to do each challenge fully and with presence, and not to get ahead of the challenges, or sit in one challenge dreaming of another, but to concentrate right here right now. 

    We add little pieces, fun color or dimension to all these challenges each day, building on them a little at a time.

     

    We become like a juggler juggling the many aspects of ourselves, catching and releasing each challenge as it appears and then goes.

     

    “Do little, but right, that is how you change your personality, your life.”  Bikram

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  • What is your Attitude?

    While reading my past blog posts, I came upon this one.  I want to re-post it.

    In the past few days I have had the opportunity to bump into many of my past girlfriends, some as far back as 40 years ago, and some as recent as only one year. 

     

    To be part of the sisterhood of ladies from my way distant past, to old church members, to schoolmates, to ladies who share the same spiritual ideals, to those playing in Art with me, connects me. 

     

    All these ladies come with a story, with a walk in life, a journey filled with choices and ideals, dreams broken and shattered, to ones not yet dreamt. 

     

    I recall the youth of many, the lightness of heart and spirit and to see today the cost it has taken to stroll along in their worlds.

     

    Life is hard on some or some are hard on Life, not sure which way that goes.

     

    It seemed that so much of my past was in my present and in my present I was seeing how I changed.

     

    My journey has led me down some darkened corridors, with pit falls of huge proportions, into bends of sheer madness, over hills of anxious moments that take your breath away, and then into places of pure delight, giggles and play, inspiration and wisdom of knowing.

     

    I am so blessed that I was kept moving along, it would have been hell to get stuck along the way, in say misery and anger, rage and resentment, denial and hiding, to have sat down in the midst of any stage of grief would have stopped me living.

     

    So many of the ladies I have known, the past and the present carry the torch of courage, of walking forward no matter what, to being strong, stronger than even they know, not letting life’s bumps define who they are.  Not allowing another’s bad behavior be the cloak they wear.

     

    I am in the sisterhood of women who are walking strong and carrying with them their inner resolve to be themselves in the midst of troubles and turmoil, to see the other as the other, and not themselves.

     

    How awesome for me to be surrounded with ladies who can triumph over life’s rolling waves of disappointment, the crusher of dreams, and destroyer of little girl ideals!  And to have the stamina to dream yet again!

     

    The character of ladies that I know, have the fortitude to keep seeking to learn, in daring to try new things, and the guts it takes to just be in their lives, amazes me.

     

    What has happened to me is that the more I share my story, the more they share theirs, and in doing so neither of us are alone.

     

    It is the nature of the sisterhood to be connected just for being born female.  We connect in our pain and our celebrations or the moments that we are victorious over life’s challenges, to the times we learn huge lessons about ourselves.

     

    The shoes I walked in are many, from poverty abuse and neglect, locked in a religious cult, to the unraveling of much of my life, to now being in a state of rebirth, growth and learning, to simply being a woman, all have added to the nature of me.

     

    I am who I am, not because of my choices, but because of life’s choices for me.  It seems I am being carved out and whittled down and smoothed out, and formed into this lady, an artful display called me.

     

    Each of us seems to get a pair of shoes, a road to walk, the inner fortitude to traverse the terrain ahead, we each are on our own separate journeys called life, and are blessed with those who dare to walk with us!

     

    All of my past brought me here today, to be this person, to be me, to know what I know, do what I do, and live like I live. It is truly amazing to look at life’s journey, midway up the hill!

     

    What lies ahead or behind is not what matters, but why lies within.  I have found peace with me all of me along with acceptance and the knowing nothing will come my way that isn’t in the designing of who I need to be.

     

    I give thanks for the sisters of my past, the fallen and the triumphant.  I am grateful for the ones who I have recently found, to the ones I am yet to meet!  They all shared a part of my walk with me.

     

    It is in the greatest of grief that I see my own sisters, my little friends who suffered like I, it is with understanding I see those left behind, compassion fills me as I pass sisters along life’s way.

     

    Walk on knowing that the shoes you wear to day or the road you walk will change, for nothing stays the same and it is all part of being you.

     

    Now I know for sure we are not our shoes!

    We are the ones who walks with an attitude while wearing them!

     

    What’s your attitude?

  • Soul Trail

    I was in her home today, way in and able to see so much.  All the insides to the many many packages I had delivered over the years.   

    I am not sure what I expected, but how fun to see there was very little practical stuff.  Instead there were things that made you smile.  There was bright glass in wonderful odd shapes and in many colors.  Dishes that would add such character to dinner parties and quiet evenings. There were oodles of stuff, birds of all size and shapes and designs.  A flower that was a huge bowl that made me laugh out loud. I was able to run my hands over expensive warm glass that was signed by the Artist, and it felt alive. There were counters filled with jewelry that would add interest to each outfit, just that special touch. 

    As I walked about it all made me happy, intrigued, and interested, wondering and present. 

    She purchased with love, not need or guilt.  She purchased to enhance her experience of life. She purchased just because she liked it.

    In the expensive things you felt her self worth.

    In the whimsical you felt her young years.

    In each piece you understood what she meant to herself.

    In her house you felt the remains of a happy soul.

    I brought home a bowl, small and purple, odd shaped one, to sit on my mantel as a reminder; if I were to die today, what would I leave behind, what clues to how I lived, how I loved and what made me smile. 

    Would people walk around picking up my stuff and understand me?

    In life we hear of a paper trail, but what of a soul trail?

    What part of you do you leave behind?

    What trails behind you as you leave a room, a job, or relationship?

    What feelings do you leave behind?  What lingers after you are long gone.

    This woman lived to be 100 years old, and there are 100 years worth of delightful treasures which will be passed on like good memories.  Another eye to enjoy, another hand to caress, another woman to feel worthy.

    She inspired me to live without looking at the end, but instead believing that there is no end. 

    Her trail leaves you wanting more.

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