Tag: loving what is

  • The Only Place I Can Be.

    I am wondering about the Bug called Worry and how it can bite at anytime, how it can sneak up and take you out of any enjoyment you may be experiencing or perhaps not even let you go to enjoyment, instead you dance and waltz with Worry.

    My brother spoke of a Panic Attack, would this be an attack from the Worry Bug?

    That out of nowhere this bug sneaks in and steals your peace, attacking this moment of time?

    When I found myself right side up in what felt like my upside down world, it was a world that opposed what the bug dreamed up.

    It seemed like there were two worlds, the Mind Bug and Reality.

    This Mind/Worry Bug was relentless, and what I did was to take that bug and slam it with Reality over and over again, showing it what is.

    I literally had to put pen to paper to see what this Damn Bug wanted me to do.

    Mostly it pulled me away from my life and into lives I had no control over, it ripped me away from my peaceful home doing what I loved to do, to go into someone’s life I had no business being in. It painted people in colors that were so off color from what they were actually like and then had me worrying about letting them go.

    Maybe its nickname could also be Meddling or Hell.

    Even today I may take a quick trip with it and see a future fear or horrid life, a sad and lonely existence, but it feels so bad, I yank myself back and hold on to something in my nowadays world.

    If you had to pick this Worry Bug out of a lineup what would it look like, where does it live, how does it operate and who invented this???

    I am sure some religions call this Bug the Devil.

    What I think it is an untrained mind. A mind that is totally out of your control and one that hates reality.

    This bug lives anywhere but in the here and now.

    In the past six years I have been treating this mind like an unruly child, and find that I can oppose many of its thoughts and when it comes in and tromps into a moment of enjoyment, I can listen for a moment, but can make the choice as to what to believe.

    As a woman who lived for many years in the land of pretend, I find great comfort and peace in the land called reality.

    It is here that the Bug has a hard time beating; it usually falls down when faced with what is.

    Byron Katie says, “Reality wins only but 100% of the time!”

    I welcome this bug into my reality, but I usually have a dialogue with it before I head out into the land of unknown.

    When I find myself powerless, stressed and out of sorts, you can be damn sure that the Mind/Worry Bug has led me astray from reality.

    What I do to bring me back is grab on to anything that I can hold onto and be with my breath. For where my breath is the bug can’t be.

    Where am I breathing, who is here now, what is going on, feeling my reality as a blind person uses Braille; I settle back into Now.

    For Now…is the only place I can be.

  • Free to be you.

    At the end of Dr. Jill Bolte’s book, “My Stroke of Insight”, she writes what she needed the most to heal, and I too would like to share what was most beneficial to me as I made my way out of the legacy of dysfunction.

    When you wake up and find that you lived in denial for 46 years, you are smack dab in the middle of a pretend life and you need to begin finding truths everywhere and living truth.

    Here are some things in no particular order…

    The book, “Loving What is” by Byron Katie helped me embrace the idea of acceptance and how it is much easier to walk with reality and to separate whose business is whose. My lines of responsibility blurred and I was lost in other people’s lives and absent from my own.

    “Be Here Now” by Eckhart Tolle helped me live in this moment while unraveling the past. Showed me how to not deny but to embrace the moment right here and all that it delivered.

    Martha Beck’s book “Leaving the Saints” showed me the way abuse blinds you and how the family situation and religion has a great impact on how you then go forward, abused and confused.

    My brother’s ears listened, his eyes sought the truth like I, and his hand reached forward in healing always. Together we bravely walked deeply into what we had experienced to find where we lost ourselves, felt the pain or discovered the things we missed, clues that led us to our self. It greatly helps to have one family member in a dysfunctional family that wants to get out as bad as you, that wants to end the legacy in their life. His understanding of dysfunction as well as his desire to be free was the perfect companion on my journey. His willingness to bravely let go of family in dysfunction to be whole gave me strength.

    My husband bravely walking with me in the unknown, of me and the future, of allowing me space to figure it out, of hearing the truth and not fighting it. He made no demands for me to Not change, nor did he make demands on how I should be, he simply stood by and let me find me. We both had no idea if when I healed if there would be a we. Love is letting go and being free. We found a love that has no strings, you be you and I be me kinda love. His freedom was key.

    Friends. Well, I lost some old friends and old family members who were unable to bear the new me and my new found truths, and I am way okay in letting them go, for I don’t want to make them believe that which they don’t.

    New friends arrived, deeper, wiser, more understanding and caring, they match my new me.

    Playing in Art was my saving grace, a place where I still could play with colors designs in fabric, creating and letting go of the heaviness of dysfunction, there I felt free to be. My Art carried messages to me, like letters from the Universe, showing me I was on the right path and that I would be okay.

    I M Perfect Lady blog, is a key component as well, it has be a sacred space for me to bring my truths, to lay them on the white sheet and to dissect each morsel and to find answers. While I often hoped it would help another person, I have selfishly gained the most. It has beautifully displayed all aspects of me, the broken wounded little girl, the mental survival woman, and the sprouts of the real me. I grew to love this imperfect me and know that each part is perfectly me! There is no part you could take out, for each part hold up a section of my life, each part has a hand in making me me!

    What we need the most is freedom and for others to hold the space of our innocence until we can find our way back.

    We need to use reality like Braille watching all actions as they brilliantly say what words can try to cover; we need to have narrow vision staying with the evidence of actions.

    As we tear down our life of denial, we need to build a life in reality, we need to build up our strength, add wholeness to support what we want to become, while saying good bye to the things that kept us down.

    We need to find the stamina to go against old beliefs and life patterns.

    We need the courage to face all we turned away from.

    We need to reconnect to our bodies and yoga is a spectacular way to join, the mind, body and soul.

    Mostly we need the space to be free.

    Abuse steals our power; we need to become powerful again from the inside out.

    Abuse steals our love; we need to become loving of self.

    Abuse steals our faith; we need to become faithful to self.

    Abuse steals our trust; we need to learn how to trust our judgment, our value, our morals again.

    Denial or dysfunction or abuse has us living from the outside in, where we will please other before self.
    We have to turn ourselves inside out and begin living from inside. Listening to our quiet inner voice, and following our feelings inside.

    Mostly become one. Separated from the leagues and groups and piles of folks that wanted us to be something for them. We need to become a sovereign nation of one. One wave in the Ocean of the Universe.

    What is great about victims is that they bring love, trust and faith and give it to another. In order to heal, they now need to use all those great gifts to heal themselves, to now treat thy self, turn inward.

    All my strengths I had for helping others, I used to help me. I became my biggest cheerleader, my strongest friend; I learned to love my self.

    It is like having the wounded heal the wounded.
    The ultimate healing, I who was broken healed myself.

    The blind learning to see.
    The deaf learning to hear.
    The dumb wanting to know.

    The desire begins with you.

    “Ask and yea shall receive.”

    Seeks the answers of who you are and you will move into being you.

    It all begins in wanting to know the truth.

    The truth shall set you free.

    Free to be you.

  • The Land of Pretend.

    “Notice When Your Thoughts Argue With Reality”

                Byron Katie

     

    I know as I approach working full time, my head has to be on board; my thoughts have to agree with where I am.

     

    If I am riding around in the mail car, ‘wishing’ I were at home, it will be hellish working. My attitude at work will be affected by how I am thinking, and my demeanor will reflect my thoughts.

     

    Tossing mail will not make me suffer, but the thought that I should not be tossing mail while I am tossing mail, will.

     

    It is amazing it is never where you are that makes you suffer, but ‘thinking’ you shouldn’t be there that does.

     

    Accepting where you are at all times seems like a no brainer, but Notice When Your Thoughts Argue With Reality.

     

    Notice how many times a day you say, ‘I should be…, this shouldn’t be, I wish it didn’t, I don’t want….

     

    Those little phrases are the doorway to hell or illusion.

     

    Each time something happens and your first thought is, ‘it shouldn’t be, you are attaching to a thought that is arguing with reality.

     

    It shouldn’t be is a thought…it is a ticket out of what is.  It is hailing you to come on board, to leave the scene of what is, to walk away, to escape into the land of pretend.

     

  • I can.


    ”We would if we could.”  This phrase my brother picked up from Bryon Katie.  Her books are about accepting what is, or loving what is.  So that phrase must be in reference in being unable to accept what is.

     

    It can’t be about changing reality or changing other people, it has to be about changing ourselves, for she isn’t an advocate of trying to change someone else or even reality.

     

    I have been starting and stopping pages about ‘I would if I could’ in trying out to see the application of that.

     

    When does the phrase, “I would if I could” apply?

    When do you say those words and to whom?

    Do you say it to yourself or just to others?

     

    I would if I could.

     

    In my own world, I don’t say that very much, but I bet I act it out a lot and feel it plenty.

     

    I also bet my sisters, brothers and parents are the ones who feel the ramifications of the “I would if I could.”

     

    In my first writings of this it seemed like a victim mode, a stance you take or a refusal to do something, that maybe if you just changed your thoughts or beliefs or minds, you could.

     

    If I use this phrase in my current life with my current or nonexistent relationships with my brothers/sisters and parents, I can now see how it works.

     

    They see me refusing, and I am.

    They see how I could, but I don’t.

    I see how I could as well, but at what cost.

     

    I am thinking the choice is there, but that there is always a cost, always a consequence and always an affect.

     

    This information may only be a feeling, an intuitive knowing, but nonetheless it is there.

     

    There is something we are unwilling to give up in order to do what it is we are being asked to do.

     

    Mostly it seems we have to give up an idea in our minds.

     

    “I would if I could.”

     

    I know that feeling, but it is the opposite of how my brother is using it as.

     

    He uses it when his mind controls him.  When he feels victimized by his anxious roaming mind.  He would if could, but he is unable to get ahead of it.  It is like his mind is making the choice for him, not him.  That he believes his mind, or is incapable of not believing his mind.

     

    And I am standing on the opposite side of his example.

    I am challenging the mind, questioning it to see what is true for me.  I have more space to question my mind thoughts.  I see them come in and I engage them, but then get to decide If I tag along.

     

    Maybe my phrase is I could but I won’t.

    I can but I will not.

    It is feasible, but I am choosing not to.

     

    I have to believe that there is much more empowerment on this side of “I would if I could.”

     

    I would be a sister if I could….

    I would be a daughter if I could….

     

    I guess what we are saying really is I would but with conditions.

    Is it a bargaining of sorts?

     

    I would if I could, but I am unwilling to let go in order to grab on!

     

    In my world the cost is way too high to be back in relationships with folks who are incapable of seeing me with empathy and understanding.  And maybe this is an issue for me, that I am not seeing them with empathy or understanding.

     

    Is that true?

     

    It seems that in understanding me, I was unraveling them as well. 

     

    I do have empathy for them, I do know that they will when they can and until then they can’t. 

     

    To go back to my old way of thinking, believing, and being is impossible for me, “I would if I could?!”

     

    But it is like a bell that has been rung.  Byron Katie says, once you no longer believe something to be true, you can’t then believe it to be true ever again.  It is impossible to flip back and forth.

     

    I love that.

     

    I would if I could.  But my mind refuses to believe that my father is just a father, that my mother is not in denial, that my brothers and sisters are healthy whole functional beings.

     

    I can’t get that false belief back.  Thank God.

    I would if I could…..nope that isn’t even true.  I am happy that I can’t unlearn or forget that information.

     

    My life is so much more enriched knowing what I know.

     

    My brother hasn’t discovered all the truths and he is still seeking and investigating thoughts and beliefs that are not true.

     

    They call it seeking the truth; I am thinking it should be seeking the untruths that we believe in.

     

    That would be easier to discover.

     

    Is it true, can we absolutely know that it is true?

    How do you react when you believe that thought?

    Who would you be without that thought?

    Turn around, (find three examples of how each turnaround is true in your life.)

     

    Those are the questions Byron Katie uses to get you to see if your stressful thoughts are true.

     

    I love that I now know about “I would if I could” and I love how that isn’t even true for me.

     

    This has to be the meaning of a quality no….knowing you could but that you won’t.

     

    I can.