I M Perfect lady

Tag: life

  • Body, Mind and Soul

    It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways. ~Buddha

    What I find so interesting about eating, is we don’t eat what the body needs, we put items into it that do not work with the body, but actually against it.

    My backward eating habits reflect my old thoughts and beliefs and now I have to find new eating habits that match my new mindset.

    It is interesting that I use sweet treats as something that makes me feel good, yet the outcome has very little goodness IF any. I feel tired, dragged out, lethargic and my body is oversized from the useless calories I consume.

    There is a separation between how my tongue tastes the food and how it affects my body, like the two parts of me that don’t intersect.

    My head says its good and my mouth likes the taste, but once I swallow all hell breaks loose, my sweet treats wreak havoc once beyond my taste buds.

    The sweets are really saboteurs in disguise and I have programmed myself to discount the affects while enjoying the snack.

    The separation is critical in not linking the culprit and the feelings together, it is keeping the mind and body separated.

    Isn’t it incredible that the mind and body are not aware of each other, and instead of working together; they are fighting with each other, a civil war inside?

    Bikram speaks of bringing the mind back to the body for 20 seconds during each yoga pose. What yoga is teaching me is to pay attention to my body.

    When I eat I am not paying attention to my body, it is like my head is eating alone…until I swallow and then after my head has had its fun, my body then pays the price.

    It is so odd that we can ‘believe’ we are enjoying food that literally isn’t good for us. How is it possible to enjoy something that will cause us harm?

    What will it take to flip this around?

    I can’t seem to care while eating and enjoying the flavors that the affects after are not enjoyable.

    It seems like I am more addicted to the feelings afterward, that my natural state is to be sedative and unfeeling instead of feeling alive and alert and in touch with my feelings.

    We don’t even seem to have the feelings of being full or near full or tasting and appreciating the scents, the taste, the texture, let alone the incredible journey some food has taken to get from plant to table or even seed to plant.

    This is a new frontier for me to become more aware of what I eat, how I eat, when I eat and how I feel during and after eating and how it all impacts my body.

    It is time to stop eating as a head alone and eat with my body, mind and soul.

  • My expectation.

    There are two ways to live, one with your expectations packed and ready for each day and each encounter… leaving very little room for surprises or impromptu circumstances, a very rigid needy control expecting life to follow your lead.

    You have plans and life works much better when life falls into step behind you. You are the mover and the shaker and all need to bow to your expectations.

    Expectations are very selfish little things that steal freedom from others, one little need at a time. Especially if you throw a tantrum when they are not met, or spunk or sulk in silence.

    The odds of our expectations being met are slim to none, unless we have become a tyrant and have stolen the lives out of those we love making them march along with our expectations.

    The other way is to follow life without expecting a certain flow, without scripts written and people’s parts picked out, instead it is all improvised as you go.

    When I found my freedom within to say no to others expectations of me, I also have freed others to be free of mine.

    It wasn’t an easy won battle within me, but I simply became overjoyed with my newfound word…NO and the freedom it brought to me.

    I loved not having to meet expectations of others and in disappointing them I grew to like me more and more.

    Each time I find myself unhappy, I look and see where I am stuck, what am I saying or doing that is stealing my freedom and whose expectations am I catering to?

    You would be surprised how much of life is lived with an expectations floating out ahead of us, a little thought that becomes a giant storm.

    Mostly the landscape ahead of me is blank. I have no expectations planted out ahead of me.

    I can’t plan the weather so that is out.
    I don’t own others actions so I am free there.
    I can’t even know for sure if I will do what I plan for what I know for sure is that there are a million things that can waylay me along the way.

    Greeting each day and each moment without expectations allows you to have your hands free to carry what comes in.

    If you are standing there with an armload of expectations…how open are you to receive?

    I didn’t on my own get rid of expectations, but rather all my expectations were unmet and unrealized, so it was either suffer or drop them.

    I thought confusion and mayhem would erupt if I had no expectations and instead peace, love and joy grew inside of me.

    When I let go…I was free.

    I was free to receive what is.

    What is is enough for me, no matter what it is.

    My new expectation is to be a peace with what is.

    To have no more expectations above what is or beneath what is.

    What is, is my expectation.

  • Valley of Evil

    Reporting – is to tell about what happened: to give information about something that has happened, an account or statement describing in detail an event, situation, or the like, usually as the result of observation, inquiry, etc

    How well do you report your life? What is your observation deck, is it the mind or can you step back and witness the whole scene and see your part in the mix of the whole?
    Can you report from your inner view and share all the details, or do you gloss over the rough spots and expand on the lighter moments.

    Are you an in depth reporter and can you speak your own truths, do you even know your own details? Do you dare become an investigating reporter in your own life?

    It seems we are more comfortable in the valley between both truths, yours and mine.
    A place where life is lived on the thin surface, where feelings are not shown and reported, where no hard questions are asked or expected, where details are of weather, dress and food…the space where life isn’t happening.

    What I find so interesting is that the truths from both sides fly over this valley are heard but not believed, are seen but overlooked, are felt but quickly numbed, it is the place where truths are not held and they quickly are ignored.

    No one expects you to hold on to reality in the valley, it will ruin many a pretend relationship if you do so.

    The perceptions from here are very distorted and absent of truthful facts, a report that leaves out the most pertinent information for the goal of the valley is to be kind and loving…at all costs, even if means leaving reality behind.

    At times it seems that I am living in a dual world, where people speak a totally different language than I and that I can see and hear what others blatantly overlook, it is like I am a reporter of reality and they are reporters from the valley’s floor where they don’t hold on to facts as being real.

    My mother had said we have two perceptions and she was totally right, in her world truths were known but not held, they were looked at quickly but not dwelled upon, so life could return as quickly as possible back to ‘normal’.

    My perception is much different, I report differently, I see things and hear things that I do not disregard.

    The meaning of the word Perception.

    Perceptions -perceiving: the process of using the senses to acquire information about the surrounding environment or situation result of perceiving: the result of the process of perception impression: an attitude or understanding based on what is observed or thought.

    Interesting to know that perception comes from the process of using the senses.

    Using your senses…but what happens if you are detached and disconnected from your feelings, then what? What will you then use to guide your peceptions or how right on can they be?

    It is interesting to know that we all percieve the world based upon our connection to our own inner sense of self.

    The further from your self you are, the further off base is your perception. And to me, the more you disregard your truths, the further from self you go and the more off base are your perceptions and more you out of line with reality you go and deeper into the valley of pretend.

    I was a residence of this valley for 46 years while living in reality, I had no clue that my perceptions at that time were distorted, that they did not match reality, but instead fit perfectly with the image in my head.

    When the image in my head exploded it left me standing in the valley of pretend but aware…aware of how off my perceptions had been.

    I was aware of all the distortions, all the false images, it was like waking up in a nightmare, where all the good became evil and the evil good…where truths became my friends instead of my enemies.

    All the things that were kept hidden were revealed, to see the old sins resurface unharmed, truth flooded into the valley in my mind, there was no place to hide.
    I was flooded with awareness of how unaware I was.

    The view of the valley of looks very different standing on mountains of truth, it looked like the valley of evil.

  • Live in life.

    When I sort mail, I stand in a U shaped area (Case) with six rows of little slots, one slot for each mailbox all in order of my route.

    An apartment complex of 10 was added to the beginning of my route and I had to make room for it by moving every slot about 10 or so inches to the right, starting with the last one.

    It is surprising how small of a shift there was and how it threw my whole memorizing off, all my instincts of knowing are no more, I have to relearn it all again.

    I wonder how long it will take for my mind to become comfortable with this new routine? What an incredible mind that it can relearn and toss out the old obsolete info that it will follow if you are determined.

    My head actually hurt again from having to concentrate and do the hunt and search routine, and by the end of two and half hours it was already catching on.

    The name would appear and I would know which way to turn, it remembered to remember there was a new place to go to.

    The flexibility of the mind is similar to the body, it will follow your lead, and it is much more your desire to learn than its ability.

    You can become comfortable in a new routine, all it take is time and the willingness to try.

    In a week or so, I will be able to almost mindlessly toss mail, and it leads me to wonder, if you are not putting new things into your life, are you almost on Autopilot?

    What keeps you repeating the same things, being comfortable in the rote like life? How is it that we feel most at ease when we are mindlessly following our normal routine?

    It seems so counterintuitive to living to be on remote, just repeating and repeating, it is like we are stuck in a grove in an old Record Album, ‘same life, same life, same life.’

    Isn’t it odd that we call this living feeling the most comfortable with ‘No Change’.

    And can you actually call it living if there is no growth or change?

    Just as my mind was brought to the present with the slight changes in my case, I am sure that by doing new things in other areas of my life, my mind will awaken in the present and engage in a new way.

    Just as I do yoga for my body, I will have to bring my mind to new places to give it exercise too…I am open to the new possibilities.

    I guess it is up to us whether we coast along or look for new ways to live in life.

  • A field with no rules.

    Rewrite, Rewrite, Rewrite were the last words spoken in our final writing class for the year, they echoed and bounced around in my head, unsure if this was encouragement or a reprimand.

    We had just sat though an hour and a half of listening to the words the students had written. Words of emotion, of defeat, of growing up, of unique perspectives, of finding their way, and to me there was no need to rewrite a thing.

    They had given me pieces of their lives told with feelings and said out loud in fear or with great bravado, with pride and with youthful expression, to me it seemed they were perfectly perfect fitting into their life experience.

    Where they were in life fit perfectly in how they wrote. I am not sure rewriting is the answer, it seems that if you say, rewrite you are rejecting what they wrote.

    Rewrite, redo, and reword it…

    The juxtaposition between the enthusiastic teacher, her encouraging voice, and her caring eyes, and the words, Rewrite struck me with contradiction…like a smile with a slap.

    I then wondered how often I had done this, ‘rejecting the project’ while trying to teach technique.

    I began an Art Quilt group, and my intentions were to be with ladies who enjoy creating quilts without patterns, to let go of the ‘rules’ of quilting and just play with the fabrics and even mix metaphors and jumble up what those who came before us defined as perfect quilting.

    Rebels, daring to not follow the well-trodden path.

    When I began quilting, my Aunt told me that I could do anything I wanted, that I didn’t have to follow or adhere to any quilt rule or pattern, that quilting was making a sandwich, putting fabric batting fabric, and I was the creator.

    She taught me without teaching me rules.

    I wonder if you can do the same with writing, if you could just use the same writing instruments; words, paper, pencil and then allow writing to come what may.

    Let the writer go free, allow the writer to follow what feels right for him, to not make him bend and twist into a forgone conclusion of what writing needs to be.

    Whether it be writing, quilting or living life, we seem to neglect the person for the skill, toss out the personality, the Spirit, the essence in trying so hard to get to perfect.

    Maybe it isn’t the writing or the quilt or life but it’s getting to Perfect.

    Is there a way to teach without spoiling it with perfect?

    I guess what we all fear in life is not being able to measure up to perfect.

    I say, once again, kill perfect, declare it a swear word…

    Imperfect has to replace it; it will free so many from the fear of failing. Whether you are writing or creating art, if you let go of perfect you will set free in wide-open fields with unlimited possibilities.

    Lets all play in the field of pure potential as the wise masters say…a field with no rules.

  • New old natural way…

    I am strong enough to become weak and vulnerable.

    I am now open to receive instead of standing in defense, to look at life with an open chest instead of hunched over in protection.

    As I did yoga today, in the postures that required me to have my arms wide open and breathing deeply opening my chest, I visualized me receiving.

    Opening up like a flower bloom to welcome in the Sun.

    Receiving is something that I have forgotten to do for me, yet inside I feel the urge to receive.

    I am not sure what, for it is different than wanting or desiring, it is much easier… just being open and soft and welcoming.

    My hardness was for self-protection and as I discovered my voice, spoke my feelings and set up boundaries, my hardness began to soften and become supple.

    I was growing stronger and softer, exchanging old tired overworked defense muscles for the unused scrunched up receiving ones.

    In yoga I notice you have to relax one muscle and tense up the other, it is letting go and pulling, that in order to go deeper you relax one set and flex the other.

    Inside I feel strong enough to relax and grow soft, to weaken my hyper alertness for trouble and to heighten my awareness for joy and beauty, to be open to trust and love life in a new old natural way.

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  • Will not change the Art.

    Surely nothing has to listen to so many stupid remarks as a painting in a museum. ~Edmond & Jules de Goncourt

    How interesting to look at Art museums from the point of view of the works of Art and how it is to stand around listening to various remarks…

    Immediately I felt that we are all moving works of Art and the planet is the museum, and we all have our own commentary and perceptions of each other’s Art.

    How interesting that the Art can be defined by the viewer and how it changes as new viewers arrive.

    I also believe that we change as quickly each time we bump into new people and a new perspective.

    I love that I now have this metaphor and I will see myself as a work of Art moving around the planet. But what I love even more is the understanding of how different we see Art and what some find brilliantly incredible, others will pass right by.

    How cool that Art changes by the viewer… yet not at all.

    The Art stands unchanged yet changed depending upon the perception.

    I love that I am like Art, that some will understand and appreciate my contrasts and design, while others will make a cursory glance and walk on by.

    But what I love the most, my integrity lies within and remains unchanged by those who view me.

    Remarks, even stupid ones will not change the Art.

    (Is Art imitating life or life imitating Art?)

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  • I see me

    “Tolerance is another word for indifference.” William Somerset Maugham

    I am not sure you can have tolerance unless you are indifferent.

    Indifferent – without care or interest: showing no care or concern for or interest in somebody or something.

    I am looking at abuse and addictions from the point of the person who is on the receiving end.

    Usually abuse is looked at from the point of the abuser or addictions from the point of the substance.

    We forget to look closely at the person who is getting abused and why they have the tolerance or seem indifferent to the blows and words that are hitting them; it is because they are without care or interest for their self.

    They are indifferent to their own life.

    They show no care or concern for or interest in their own life.

    My question is when did they become so careless?
    When did they let them selves go?
    What happened that they no longer care?

    What I can know in my life is that I don’t even recall a self; I was too little to know I had a self to hang on to, to care about and to care for, and it was gone.

    My self was gone before I even had a chance to know it and know that there was something to protect.

    When a child is raised in an environment where the adults are indifferent to the child’s needs, we then become indifferent to them ourselves.

    Imagine, parents who are indifferent, without care or interest: showing no care or concern for or interest in somebody or something…and that somebody is you.

    We learn indifference.

    How they treat us is how we treat ourselves.

    We learn how to not care or show interest in our selves.

    In fact in order to survive, it is best to not have a self.

    For a self would feel their indifference and we don’t want to feel their indifference.

    It is easier to be without a self, to live in a pretend space, making believe that they care and the only way you can believe that story is to be separated from your self.

    To deny your body, deny your feelings, to not be connected to the self.

    A self who is not there will not feel their indifference…but lke the old saying goes, “If a tree falls and no one is in the forest to hear it, does it still make a noise?”

    In the same manner, if a child isn’t there to feel the indifference, does the indifference still happen?

    If a self is unaware does the indifference still affect them?

    When you are indifferent how can you know indifference?

    I don’t know what was more shocking their indifferences or me not caring for me, for me to see the lack of interest in my own life and wellbeing.

    I was indifferent to my whole life…and had to bring me back to my world, to undo the indifferences and learn how to care.

    In caring I found me.

    I am no longer indifferent… I see me.

  • Living Alive

    The word comfortable is a word that will not always speak the truth, it will not say as much about the surrounding reality, but rather your state of being.

    How do I explain being comfortable in a dysfunctional home, to be surrounded by stress and pain and be at ease and pain free?

    As I dug around in my past, in my feelings and in my head, I discovered that the only way was to deny myself.

    I looked up the word denial, but this time I seen it from my point of view, from the self.

    Denial… A refusal to comply with or satisfy a request.

    I never denied the other person or request, but I denied myself.

    I was comfortable denying myself, not looking at myself and instead used myself to make others happy. I knew that girl.

    I was comfortable in my role and in knowing what she had to do, I looked at the other and what they needed and complied.

    I never looked at me as me, or me alone. I was a very comfortable not looking at me. I could only see me as what I was for other people, there was no me alone.

    In a dysfunctional, incestual home, in a place where you are hurt, it is best to not look at yourself, it is best to become absent of self.

    Imagine I was comfortable without a self in the midst of being surrounded by pain, stress, and anxiety. I had to deny my feelings in order to stay there, and I did.

    Being self less is denying any request of the self. I was shut down to hearing or feeling my self.

    I had no connection to me, the lines were severed, I was pain free, for I was so disconnected.

    Comfortably unattached.

    When I became attached to the truths of my life, then discomfort met me, and my comfortable detachment disappeared.

    My security blanket was to keep me separated from my life and the truth that lay beneath.

    Denial kept me comfortable.

    Isn’t it amazing that denial is comfortable? Denial of self allows you to stand among uncomfortable people and places… you simply don’t bring your feelings or knowing there, you leave your self to be there.

    As I sat there in wistfulness of missing the old me, the part I missed was their reception of me, how they received me, not how I wasn’t there.

    What I know now is that they don’t like it when I bring me, when I have requests and when I don’t comply, they only want the me that doesn’t have a me there.

    They want me to be without a self.

    A self less me, to leave my self behind, to come without her…

    I don’t leave home without her…now.

    The differences in the way I live now compared to the way I lived before is with me or without me.

    Before I wasn’t there, did not exist, was living a few feet behind my life, numb shut down unaware.

    The new me is alive and aware and right here, feeling and dealing in this now moment, no longer denying her inner requests.

    The striking differences between living a life with a self inside, to hear her voice, to make her choice, compared to living a life without her, is an ocean of difference, it is like living dead or living alive.

  • Discovered the real me.

    I listened once again to Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor speaking to Oprah about her stroke and how she lost all contact to the person she was before the stroke and was left as an infant in a woman’s body, unknowing who she was.

    What struck me were the differences between the two Jills and how I can relate having lived as two of me.

    We both like our second self much better than the first and it took her eight years to grow her second self, and then parts of her old self memories filtered in, but by then a whole new her was in its place.

    My experience wasn’t quite so dramatic physically, I didn’t have to re-learn how to walk, talk, read and write, but my self -identity was equally destroyed, my past all a fraud.

    The me I thought I was wasn’t real and the real me was nowhere and I had to get myself away from the false relationships and places that abused me.

    My healing relied on me walking away from family.

    Her mother came and mothered her a second time and fully embraced her where she was, an infant who needed to be taught all over again. They mourned the loss of her first self, but never expected the second one to be like the first, but a new Jill.

    While they had a second mother and daughter relationship…my mother and I went our separate ways.

    In fact my new self and wellness depended upon whether I could separate myself from my family of origin, the family who created the false files.

    My old self drew its energy and life from being in the old relationships and in doing all the old behaviors and my new healthy self emerged from walking away.

    The tricky spot I was left standing in, was that I knew the old self, and yet the old self was built upon lies, and I had no clue of the new self, but the new self depended upon me walking away from all that I knew.

    I had to learn how I grew wrong to then grow correctly the second time.

    My whole world crashed around me, and my left hemisphere (the storyteller of who you are) was all wrong and it led me to cling to the right hemisphere where intuition, nature, being, now, artistic, and pictures lived.

    While she didn’t understand words, I didn’t trust them.

    Dr. Jill spent 8 years connecting back to the Left side and I have spent 6 years disconnecting from files that were all wrong and then filling them with new contents or meanings.

    I find it interesting what I have learned from her stroke experience, how the brain works and where the self lives.

    What I feel makes a great self is when you occupy the right side most of the time and use the left to communicate.
    We both learned that we couldn’t live unattached to the left side, even though the left side was so damaged, we had to bring it back in order to live whole.

    Somehow hearing Dr. Jill speak of never expecting the second self to appear like the first, took away an unconscious fighting that had been going on within me that it was almost adultery to accept the new me, like I was cheating on the old self.

    My love of my old self and my love of the new self were at odds…it has taken me time to get used to loving the new me, while unloving the old me, if that makes sense?

    There is a wistfulness at times when I struggle to do what my new self needs, a wanting the comfort of being used to this new self.

    While I see my husband in new eyes, it isn’t him, but the eyes looking upon him.

    It is strange to have a new me in an old life and to feel the new self being rejected in places the old self was accepted and it is harder to find confidence in the new self’s love.

    This self loves differently, this self sees differently, this self believes differently.

    This self was grown from the wisdom that my first self experienced.

    I would not be the woman I am today, if I hadn’t lived as the first self first.

    As I learned how she grew to be that way, I discovered the real me.