I M Perfect lady

Tag: self

  • Working Self

    My Mail Jeep came to me with a broken starter, it could be a faulty wire, or just a bad starter, either way, each time I turn the key I am surprised. 

    It keeps me living on the edge, on the pinhead of unknown. 

    Getting upset really isn’t constructive for it literally can’t help but act the way it acts according to what is wrong with it. 

    I can relate to the jeep and find correlations in wanting something to be unbroken that is broken. 

    Inside of me are faulty wires, connections that lead to nowhere or wires long forgotten and for me to expect myself to act and respond normally is crazy.

     Malfunctioning is normal for me.

    Just as not starting every time is normal for my jeep. 

    How much easier it is to replace parts on a jeep in comparison to emotional reconnections inside of me. 

    Each disconnection is felt and grieved as the new ones are born and celebrated. 

    We don’t actually get new parts we transform the parts of ourselves that are broke.

    Little by little we rebuild ourselves into a full working self. 

    It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.  ~Author unknown

     

  • One Real Me

    “How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?  Four.  Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.”   

    ~Abraham Lincoln

     

    I love the simplicity of how this shows you can name anything you want, but that doesn’t make it so.

     

    I have been learning about my self, a part of me that I didn’t even know existed, it was like I was a tail, but was called a leg.

     

    I knew myself the best as a leg, and I created a life as a leg, learned how to live and be and love and enjoy life, as a leg and I was really a tail.

     

    It isn’t that neither is wrong or right, except that if you are one thing and think you are something else, then it is.

     

    That is where the psychological damage is done.

     

    Somehow it slipped my attention for 46 years that I was not who I knew myself to be.

     

    It is beyond what a thought can hold to not know that you didn’t know that you are not what you thought you were.

     

    Its like my only normal was to be two things, yet could only see one of them, I saw me as a leg, yet I acted like a tail.

     

    The two were never fully in my awareness at one time. 

     

    I am now working to merge the two selves inside so that I become one real me.

     

  • 254 days and counting….

    Today is day 260 on my yoga every day this year, and I missed 6 in the last two weeks. 

     

    Each of those days seemed impossible for me to either gather the mental strength or the physical stamina needed to do the 90 minutes of yoga.

     

    Yet if I look upon the other 254 days it seems like a huge achievement, a monumental success for me. 

     

    My body also is defined by the 254 days that I have done yoga, the muscles are stronger, the joints are looser and my mental clarity is way up, not to mention the unexpressed emotions that have been expressed in the 254 days.

     

    The days I missed, I was struggling with a twisted up emotional thread and it took all I had to untangle it, left zero energy to begin yoga.

     

    I am not sure how the final score will be at the end of this year, but so far the percentage is way in my favor.

     

    I may not be able to recoup my loses by doing doubles, I may end up with a few more days of no yoga, but what I know for sure, is already this year I have surpassed any of my previous years.

     

    As I look upon the last few weeks, they have given me huge amounts of relief and knowing, enlightening me on who I was and who I can be.

     

    254 days and counting….

     

     

     

  • What is true for me.

    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.

     

    Here is a bit more from the chapter on applying this agreement.

     

    “Humans are powerful creators. We are born with all the faith of the Universe, and everything we create is based on faith.  That faith is really our personal power, but what has happened with our faith? We invest all our faith in our beliefs and agreements, and we are left with little power to change our lives.

     

    Imagine that every agreement is just like a brick. Humans create an entire structure out of bricks, and we glue it together with our faith.  We believe without a doubt in all the knowledge inside the structure.  Our faith gets trapped inside that structure because we put our faith in each agreement.  It’s not important if it is or isn’t true; we believe it, and for us it is true.

     

    All of our power of creation is invested in our belief, and because we believe it, that’s the way it is.  If we believe our knowledge, whatever we perceive will be filtered to make it fit into that knowledge. We create a personal dream that justifies the knowledge, and the outside dream proves to us that what we believe is true.  The outside dream reflects our personal dream; it will justify every belief.

     

    During all the education we receive, which means all the knowledge that is programmed in our mind, we create the concept of the I am.  Everything we believe we are, everything we know about how to be a human is the I am.  The Toltec call this the human form.  We are not talking about the physical body, but about our own dream. When we say, “I am a man; I am a woman; I am a human, and this is my whole reality,” everything is judged by that knowledge, and of course, the dream becomes hell.  That is the drama of humanity.

     

    The dream of our life is so limited because we take all of the power of our creation and put it in a little box and with all of our power we seal the box.  And we live inside the box, trapped inside that little box. Well that little box is human form.  It is our creation, and all our will is invested in that I am.

     

    Your faith is so strong that when  you believe “I am never going to be this,” thy will be done, you are never going to be that.  If you believe “I cannot do it,” thy will be done, you cannot do it.  Whatever you believe, you put your faith in that belief, and your faith will make it true.

                        Don Miguel Ruiz

    What I found so intriguing in this book and so affirming is, that it isn’t so much your knowledge about life and about life’s situations, but your ‘belief’ about each thing.  And your belief becomes your will.

     

    Inside each of us is the power of universe and we all use it to put our faith into certain knowledge, and that is what I life reflects, perfectly.  There are no mistakes; you are what you believe your self to be.

     

    Looking upon my last five years, it has been a battle of wills inside of me to correct my long held beliefs about myself, and make them match realities truth.

     

    Even if intellectually I knew better, I had to wrestle with my beliefs about myself; the long established ones that were false and limiting.

     

    Yoga has given me the inner fortitude to break down old agreements that are not true for me and to re-create new ones that bring me happiness, peace and joy in being me.

     

    Bring faith back to me, instead into knowledge that was given to me.

     

    Faith in myself in what I feel, and what is true for me.

     

     

  • 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.

     

  • Associating with My Truth

    I have been fighting my body for so long, fighting with the feelings I have inside, tormenting myself as I struggle to not do, what it wants to do.

     

    I fought my body to be close to my parents.

    I fought my body to respond better to my parents.

    I fought my body to feel comfortable with my family.

     

    I was frustrated it couldn’t just relax, be normal, chill, and be a normal kid, a loving warm child.

     

    It was like there was an inbred system that didn’t respond correctly to the outside.

     

    It blew cold when it should have blown warm.

    It then blew warm when it should have blown cold.

     

    I felt best when I was far from my family. That is odd to know of yourself.  I could then relax and be myself.

     

    I am a freak of nature, for I don’t have the loving warm comfortable feelings I am supposed to have with family, mine are replaced with a cold standoffish chill. 

     

    So, I had to pretend what wasn’t within me ‘naturally’.

     

    The day that my father was exposed as a pedophile was the day I stopped pretending.  The cold fear within me was not unnatural, it was natural, and I was okay.

     

    I was okay within me. My feelings and my body were acting perfectly.

     

    I am perfectly okay and natural as an abused child can be.

     

    It is perfectly natural to fear those who harm you.

     

    There is annihilation between body/feelings and you when you are abused, and perhaps that is the real meaning of disassociation, we left our feelings behind.

     

    It was either annihilate the feelings or annihilate the parent.

     

    If you annihilate the parent you are out in the cold….

     

    To live in complete annihilation from your feelings and your body, is to live half alive.

     

    There came a fork in the road where I knew the cost that came with my self annihilation, the cost was me and many other little girls to follow. 

     

    When I didn’t speak up in fear of that man, he continued on.

     

    I was the imposter, I was the pretender, I was unnatural, and I went against my feelings to fit in.  I will not do that any more.  I will fit out and be shunned for associating with my truth.

     

     

     

  • Backwards to Find Myself.

    In Peter Levine’s book, “Waking the Tiger” he speaks of understanding abuse, as you had to be there, that in order to truly understand the full impact, you had to be there.

     

    We use that in humorous situations, that sometimes the humor is lost in translation, same goes for abuse.

     

    What is so insidious about the abuse is that the abuse mountain of emotions that are too big for a young child to handle is now you.

     

    And the little child of you is lost behind all the swirling rolling twisting contorting emotions, a river of terror, it is like standing behind a waterfall, unable to get out in front of those falling currents of emotions.

     

    It is like swimming in a stream up a waterfall for we are brought back to being a young child feeling what we failed to feel, we are being brought back to the scene of the crime to simply feel.

     

    Simply feel what was so horrendous that we left our self behind.

     

    You had to be there, means we have to walk through our abuse to be there, to own it and live it and know its impact, and then and only then can we be reunited with the child self we left behind.

     

    It is amazing how you can live a life and not be there, not be conscious of not being there, to be missing and not even know it. 

     

    The crime of abuse is that we grow up without a self, we leave behind in a secure place our wonderful beautiful self, and go forth without that.

     

    We don’t want to soil and put garbage on our self, we want to retain our perfection and we believe we can by simply not acknowledging abuse.  Yet we don’t live beautiful and wonderful, we live as abuse.

     

    And somehow we feel that we made ourselves dirty, soiled and feeling like garbage.  Yet it is not our self we feel, we feel the contents of abuse.

     

    To make the separation between what is abuse and what is the child is to see abuse as the painful waterfall that came down on the child. 

     

    The waterfall of abuse is not the child.  It is what happened to the child. 

     

    It is my experience that once you understand that the abuse is not you, but something that happened to you, that you are not responsible for the waterfall of abuse, you can then retrieve the child back.

     

    Seeing the innocent child waiting behind the waterfall allows you to let go of the shame and the blame and the guilt.  It allows you to see clearly the separation between the abuse and the child.

     

    The child didn’t create the waterfall of abuse, but instead intuitively retreated to get out of the pain.

     

    In my case, no adult ever came along to rescue the child.

     

    I walked backwards to find myself.

     

  • How can you lead your life if you follow?

    When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. 

     ~Victor Frankl

     

    The more dramatic of a change you make, it shows just how far off base you were to begin with, and how far apart you were living from your own truth.

     

    I remember writing, “I was so lost, and that I was going to go find myself, I didn’t know who I was or even that I was missing.”

     

    That is how far off base I was, I literally had no idea who I was or even where to start looking for me, nor how to recognize me in my life.

     

    I had so many ideals and beliefs that I followed that had nothing to do with my own experiences. 

     

    I marvel now at how I lived so lost onto myself, but so found in other’s lives, how I disappeared without another.

     

    When you find yourself unable to move unless it is in tandem with another, there is a great possibility you have lost yourself and you don’t even know you are missing!

     

    What is even scarier is to find the persons you have ridden tandem with are frauds, then what?

     

    I was terrified standing there naked without a life of my own.

     

    Dumped off due to the truth that came crashing in, I was left to reconstruct myself at 46.

     

    It was freeing and terrifying at the same time.

     

    I was finally able to make my own choice, and each and every new one I formed, was a layer of the new me.

     

    Little by little, situation by situation, day by day a new me began to emerge. 

     

    I marvel now at the width and breath of life I lived without being aware that I wasn’t there.

     

    No voice, no feelings, no emotions, no awareness of me.

     

    Incredible to live a life without a self!

     

    You literally can live blind and deaf, for you just simply follow.

     

    How can you lead your life if you follow?

  • Steering Our Own Canoes!

    One definition of codependency; Adult children of alcoholics; people in relationships with emotionally or mentally disturbed; people in relationships with chronically ill peoples; parents of children with behavior problems; people in relationships with irresponsible people; professionals – nurses, social workers and others in ‘helping’ occupations.  Even recovering alcoholics noticed they were codependent and perhaps had been long before becoming chemically dependent.

     

    Melody Beatte goes on to write.

     

    “One fairly common denominator was having a relationship personally or professionally, with troubled, needy, or dependent people.  But a second more common denominator seemed to be the unwritten, silent rules that usually develop in the immediate family and set the pace for relationships. These rules prohibit discussion about problems; open expression of feelings; direct, honest communication; realistic expectations, such as being human, vulnerable or imperfect; selfishness; trust in other people and one’s self; playing and having fun; and rocking the delicately balanced family canoe through growth or change – however healthy and beneficial that movement might be.  These rules are common to alcoholic family systems but can emerge in other families too.

     

    Melody’s personal definition is; A codependent person is one who has let another person’s behavior affect him or her, and who is obsessed with controlling that person’s behavior.

                    Melody Beatte

     

    As I sit here 5 ½ years later, I realize that I rocked the family canoe by getting out, I tipped the balance and was seen as crazier than the folks who began steering that canoe long before I was born.

     

    I heard on the radio today, that a family boat is heading down a certain river before a child is born, and our legacy is to pick up an oar and row.

     

    We are taught how to row and in what direction by our parents.  And we don’t start rowing at 18, but at about 1 year old or younger. 

     

    We are taught how to row and where.

     

    It is my opinion that two mentally and emotionally disturbed people were rowing my family’s canoe, and that the only way to save my self was to get out of the boat, and not to just stop rowing.

     

    I was no longer trusting in the elders who steered our family canoe, nor was I going to ride along with the rest, just because we were born in the same boat.

     

    While I couldn’t change the course of the family boat, I could change mine, but in order to do so, I had to jump out.

     

    It is seen as rejection of all who stayed in the boat.

     

    It isn’t seen as healthy or wise, but rather that I have set boundaries to keep them out.

     

    And I guess I have.

     

    I don’t want people in my canoe trying to steer me in a direction I don’t want to go in. 

     

    It has been a long and arduous journey to find the strength and confidence to row myself, to strike out on my own, learning how to row in a direction that is much more healthy than what I was taught.

     

    While the rest may see me as rejecting them, I am only embracing me. 

     

    Embracing my independence, my freedom of choice, my boundaries, and learning what is healthy for me and what causes me pain, what I need to live in peace, love and joy.  Learning how to stay in my canoe and in my business, allowing and honoring each person to ride the river of life as they chose.

    I heartily and cheerfully encourage the rest to jump ship, letting the family’s legacy canoe to finally become empty of dysfunctional codependent folks.  It can happen when one by one each of us begin steering our own canoes!

     

     

     

  • Take Care Of You!

    “If you had to take care of yourself, as you take care of others, what would you do for yourself?”  This question was asked on Oprah’s Soul Series on Sirius Radio as she spoke with Geneen Roth.

     

    The woman they were talking to had no idea what she could do to spoil herself, what would make her feel good, what one thing would make her happy, it had been so long since she took the time for self.

     

    Time for self doesn’t have to be long or expensive, but it has to be something that excites your insides, makes your belly smile, bring a tickle to your being.

     

    After 50 years of taking care of others, while my inner tank ran dry, I am learning that in order to give to others, I have to give to myself first.

     

    Doing yoga each day is a way to serve my body and soul, reconnecting me to the Universe and to my breath.  It feels so good to do this for myself, for no one benefits more than I in yoga.

     

    Taking the time and spending more on whole foods, real food, and learning how to eat better, again…no one benefits more than I when I eat better.

     

    The more conscious I am in how I treat myself, the more ways I find treat me!

     

    What I love the most is that deep within me I feel deserving of serving myself, of treating myself, of loving myself of taking the time to love myself enough!

     

    There was a small book, called “When I love myself enough”…and in it had ways in which you can do this.

     

    I would love to hear how you love yourself enough?

     

    What is so sad is that the many who don’t take the time, need it the most, it is a cycle that needs to be broken by you. 

     

    Do one thing each day to take care of you!