I M Perfect lady

Tag: soul

  • My Body and Mind are with Me.

    I have been working on a book that has photographs of my quilts along with some writings and it feels like it is a completion to my Art Therapy. Sitting with each quilt and writing about what wisdom it imparted to me; a journey in fabric.

    I now can see why folks write books, for it takes all the loose ends and ties them together, completing a section of your journey.  I am seriously thinking now, of doing a reading book…one that will encapsulate how it feels to wake up in abuse and walk with truth in order to be free.

    It finally feels like I have picked apart and investigated many aspects of abuse and that I can leave it behind with full understanding…knowing it, will allow me to sidestep the same potholes in my future.

    The greatest part of my journey wasn't the act of abuse, but how I developed and grew from there.  How my mind was completely changed to make me believe in an alternate reality, one where I lived for 40 years.

    In my experience, healing from abuse is to work your way back to reality…where the truth fits in.

    It feels like I am entering into a new phase, one that isn't so littered with fragments of an unexplored life.  The mountain of abuse has to be climbed, it isn't good enough to just glance its way and walk on.  I had to become intimate with abuse in order to rescue my self from it.

    Abuse had infested each aspect of my life, for I was the common denominator and my mind was present in each of my life experiences, even when the truth was kept out. A confused mind recorded my history, "weaving the most plausible story"…as Dr. Jill Bolte writes.

    Wrestling my life back from my mind and correcting its errors has been a thrilling terrifying ride.  

    Martha Beck describes it this way. "I recall its horror and beauty, the enormity of all the things I have lost and the incalculable preciousness of the things I have gained.  I wouldn't give up the journey – not a moment of it.  On the other hand I have no desire to live it again."  

    I agree with her 100%.  I have no desire to restart this process of rewiring my mind connecting it to reality…nor would I want to again go through the disconnection of so many relationships.

    It truly is like killing one life and birthing another. Harder than death, for in death, you are just gone.  Now, I am gone from their lives, but alive.

    I felt the death of my old life. I grieved for me…while resurrecting a me.

    All that really died were lies….and what was born was truth.

    But, the lies I had come to love.

    And now I had to learn to love the truth…it took awhile for me to love the truth, for the first tastes of truth were seasoned with abuse.

    Now, I am comfortable here.  

    I love truth, and feel uncomfortable with lies and skirting around issues and pretend…or silence about the things that matter.

    I even believe that my mind is happier, more at peace, relaxed and content…for it no longer has to manufacture an overlay to hide what I didn't want to know.

    My body and mind are at ease, they agree.

    My Spirit feels safe to be me…for it no longer has a conflicted perception of the world in front of it.

    Where I am, my body and mind are with Me.

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  • Fit into their Framework

     "The Seat of the Soul," by Gary Zukav

    "When a question is asked that cannot be answered within the common frame of reference, it can be classified as nonsensical, or it can be dismissed as a question that is not appropriate, or the person asking the question can expand his or her consciousness to encompass a frame of reference from which the question can be answered.  The first two options are the easy way out of a confrontation with a question that appears to be nonsensical or inappropriate, but the seeker, the true scientist, will allow himself or herself to expand into a frame of reference from which the answers that he or she is seeking can be understood."

    "We, as a species, have been asking the questions, "Is there a God?", "Is there a Divine Intelligence?", and "Is there a purpose to life?", for as long as we have been able to articulate questions.  The time has now come for us to expand into a frame of reference that allows these questions to be answered."

    "The larger the frame of reference of the multisensory human allows an understanding of the experientially meaningful distinction between the personality and the soul.  Your personality is that part of you that was born into, lives within, and will die within time.  To be a human and to have a personality are the same thing.  Your personality, like your body, is the vehicle of your evolution."

    "The decisions that you make and the actions that you take upon the Earth are the means by which you evolve.  At each moment you choose the intention that will shape your experiences and those things upon which you will focus your attention.  These choices affect your evolutionary process.  This is so for each person.  If you choose unconsciously, you evolve unconsciously.  If you choose consciously, you evolve consciously."

    "The fearful and violent emotions that have come to characterize the human existence can be experienced only by the personality.  Only the personality can feel anger, fear, hatred, vengeance, sorrow, shame, regret, indifference, frustration, cynicism and loneliness.  Only the personality can judge, manipulate and exploit.  Only the personality can pursue external power.  The personality can also be loving, compassionate, and wise in its relations with others, but love, compassion and wisdom do not come from the personality. They are the experience of the soul."

    "Your soul is that part of you that is immortal.  Every person has a soul, but a personality that is limited in its perception to the five senses is not aware of its soul, and, therefore, cannot recognize the influences of its soul."

    "As a personality becomes multisensory, its intuitions – it hunches and subtle feelings – become important to it.  It senses things about things about itself, other people, and the situations in which it finds itself that it cannot justify on the basis of the information that its five senses can provide."

    "It comes to recognize intentions, and to respond to them rather than to the actions and words that it encounters.  It can recognize, for example, a warm heart beneath a harsh and angry manner, and a cold heart beneath polished and pleasing words."  Gary Zukav

    In reading about the two different actual types of human beings -those who live secluded in a frame of reference of the five senses, and others with a much broader frame of reference makes all the difference in the world in how you live your life.

    My first 46 years I lived pretty much in a five sense body, and in the framework of the FALC.  All questions asked were brought to this network and answered there or dismissed.  Mostly, in my experience anything that would mar the shiny surface of the FALC, were labeled inappropriate.

    Stepping out of that tiny framework, a whole big world opened up.  It was like leaving a boxed in life…to live free.

    Now, when questions arose, there was nothing stopping me from exploring deeper or being fearless of the answers 'wrecking' or damaging the belief within the small frame.

    Living within in a small frame of reference, allows very limited responses.  And tossing out questions and ideas is much easier than pondering why they can't be answered within your framework.

    The 'simple faith' is to remain in a very small framework.

    The saying to believe like a child doesn't ring true. For children are born frame-less and we build a framework for them to live inside.  I believe that children are naturally curious and inquisitive and are fearless as they seek answers, not caring what side of the framework threatens to collapse based upon what it finds.

    A secondary framework is the family, like a box in a box…where there too are questions we don't ask or label 'inappropriate' in order to keep the framework from collapsing.

    Seeing your life as being framed by family and religion, will allow you to see the setting upon which you stand.  

    I didn't know how blocked in I was, until it all collapsed around me.

    As the framework lay on the ground, I was left standing…the part of me that wasn't tied into the framework, my soul.

    The soul me didn't fear any questions or the truthful answer.  It was a part of me that had been covered up and repressed for years….and blocked out by the framework.

    I know that those who can't explore deeply the questions or follow a gut feeling to its end, have way too much of themselves invested in the framework.

    Their point of reference lies within its walls.

    The answers to the questions depend more upon where you are asking them from, than where the answers are coming from.  In fact, some are not even allowed to ask the questions…or ponder their existence.

    Most strict religions work diligently to put their children in the churches framework, and to keep the child separated from their natural curiosity, frankness and Truth, to separate the child from their Soul.

    A free soul does not fit into their framework.

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    Photograph by Hannah Jukuri

  • Unplugged

    In the confusion between vulnerability and how it felt equal to abuse, I had to look up the definition of abuse.

    "to use wrongly, mistreatment, ill-use, to hurt or injure, improper use, abuse a privilege…"

    And vulnerability was  "exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed either physically or emotionally, susceptible to attack.

    So, it is two sides of the same coin.

    As a child we are innately vulnerable and 'accepted' ill-use and mistreatment due to the lack of alternatives…and even grew to accept this as normal.  Especially when we are treated this way from the folks who 'love' us.  Love then equals mistreatment…we mix love and ill-use of our selves and call it normal.

    We are stuck in the sate of vulnerability with those we 'love'…and those we love feel betrayed when we assert power, for being 'loving' is to be open to attack and ill-treatment.  How dare you shut them out.

    It is a muddled up mess when you believe love hurts and attacks…and in order to gain your power back you must shut the door against those you love.

    The powerless state of vulnerability and being ill-used in this state is that we never know self power.  We are taught to seek power from the powerless. 

    My children had the power to make me mad, etc…and I had to be stronger than them to keep my power…is what I thought.

    However, when I took my power back from my family of origin, I realized that I had been raising children with no power source within themselves.

    What a huge gift it was to give my children their power back and what a relief it was to be free of that power struggle; continual fight and fear of losing power.

    In abusive homes the children are left powerless, taught that love means allowing, acquiescing their rights, their feelings etc, they are always left helpless waiting for the 'powerful' to decide.

    They are lost to their own power source…and learn that power is 'out there' somewhere.  And happiness comes when you find a power source that doesn't hurt you.

    A kind power source…that you can plug into.

    Which is co-dependent.  You are not a self contained power source.

    I literally had a moment in time, where I unplugged everyone from me and me from everyone.  I stood powerless.  I had to find a way to live unplugged.

    It was the beginning of finding my authentic power…which Gary Zukav writes about…read below!

     

  • The Seat of the Soul, By Gary Zukav

    Here is the difference between the two kinds of power…

    "When power is seen as an external, the hierarchies of our social, economic and political structures, as well as the hierarchies of the Universe, appear as indicators of who has power and who does not.  Those at the top appear to have the most power and therefore, to be the most valuable and the least vulnerable.  Those at the bottom appear to be the least powerful, and, therefore, to be the least valuable and the most vulnerable.  From this perception, the general is more valuable than the private, the executive is more valuable than the chauffeur, the doctor is move valuable than the receptionist, the parent is more valuable than the child, the Divine, is more valuable than the worshiper. We fear to transgress our parents, our bosses, and our God. All perceptions of lesser and greater personal value result from the perception of power as external."

    "Competition for external power lies at the heart of all violence.  The secondary gain behind ideological conflicts, such as capitalism versus communism and religious conflicts,  such as Irish Catholic versus Irish Protestant, and geographical conflicts, such as Jew versus Arab, and familial and marital conflicts, is external power."

    "The perception of power as external splinters the psyche whether it is the psyche of the individual, the community, the nation or the world.  There is no difference between acute schizophrenia and a world at war.  There is no difference between the agony of a splintered soul and the agony of a splintered nation.  When a husband and wife compete for power, they engage the same dynamics that humans of one race do when they fear humans of another race."

    "From these dynamics, we have formed our present understanding of evolution as a process of ever-increasing ability to dominate the environment and each other.  This definition reflects the limitations of perceiving the physical world with only five senses. It reflects the competition for external power that is generated by fear."

    "After a millennia of brutality to one another, individual to individual and group to group, it is now clear that the insecurity which underlies the perception of power as external cannot be healed by the accumulation of external power. It is evident for all to see, not only with each newscast and evening paper, but also through each of our countless sufferings as individuals and as a species, that the perception of power as external brings only pain, violence and destruction. This is how we have evolved until now, and this is what we are leaving behind."

    "Our deeper understanding leads us to another kind of power, a power that loves life in every form that it appears,  a power that does not judge what it encounters, a power that perceives meaningfulness and purpose in the smallest details upon the Earth. This is authentic power.  When we align our thoughts, emotions, and actions with the highest part of ourselves, we are filled with enthusiasm, purpose and meaning.  Life is rich and full.  We have no thoughts of bitterness. We have no memory of fear. We ar joyously and intimately engaged with our world. This is the experience of authentic power."

    "Authentic power has its roots in the deepest source of our being.  Authentic power cannot be bought, inherited, or hoarded. An authentically empowered person is incapable of making anyone or anything a victim.  An authentically empowered person is one who is so strong so empowered, that the idea of using force against another is not part of his or her consciousness."

    "No understanding of evolution is adequate that does not have at its core that we are on a journey toward authentic empowerment, and that authentic empowerment is the goal of our evolutionary process and the purpose of our being. We are evolving from species that pursues external power into a species that pursues authentic power. We are leaving behind exploration of the physical world as our sole means of evolution. This means of evolution, and the consciousness that results from an awareness that is limited to the five sensory modality, are no longer adequate to what we must become."

    "We are evolving from five-sensory humans into multi-sensory humans…"  Gary Zukav

     

     

  • I fear being closed up.

    "Anything we fear to lose – a home, a car, an attractive body, an agile mind, a deep belief – is a symbol of external power.  What we fear is an increase in our vulnerability.  This results in seeing power as external."  Gary Zukav, Seat of the Soul.

    The sentence about fearing an increase in our vulnerability really struck me.  Somehow I believe all choices boil down to this sentence.

    It isn't the actual change we fear, but the way it will open ourselves up to being vulnerable once again.  And the more you explore and peel back layers of your self, the more wide open you will feel.

    I had to go and look up the definition of Vulnerable. 

    "Susceptible to physical or emotional injury."  I was shocked to read that.  Are you not more susceptible to physical and emotional injury IN an Absive relationship, then if we were out?

    Yet, we fight or resist being vulnerable and in doing so you are more vulnerable while in those relationships, than working your way out.

    Another meaning was, "Open to attack, damage, assailable, vulnerable to critism, exposed."

    Again, it strikes me as not the meaning of vulnerable.  I thought vulnerable was to be wide open and soft.  Yet this meaning seems to be about opening yourself up for attack.

    No wonder no one wants to be vulnerable.

    I can see the two sides of vulnerablitiy.  However, just because you are wide open and exposed, it doesn't mean you will be attacked. To me, exploring the depths of abuse have made me wise to knowing what is abusive and what is not.

    The definitions of vulnerability also seem to come into play as you are trying to leave dysfunction; attacking and critism of your new ways.

    Very interesting to feel the wide scope of being Vulnerable.

    I feel more vulnerable; open, free and exposed and feel that is my greatest strength.  I no longer fear being vulnerable.  I fear being closed up.

  • Outside of Time.

    While listening to Mark Nepo (Author of The Book of Awakening) talking to Oprah on Sirius Radio, he shared a moment in his life where he had lost his job, had an unknown illness and was going to confront his father he had been estranged from.  He was afraid, in fear or in the unknown in the past, present and future, so he went deeper and sat with his soul. 

    I understood completely, for when my life turned upside down and my past seemed to horrifying to look at,  the future a vast landscape of empty and unknown and the present was littered with my father’s rubbish…I too went deeper and found my soul. 

    I didn’t call it my soul, but now I know that is where I went.

    A place that was untouched by time and events, but it was calm and knowing, a Self I had never met.

    I remember feeling this very deep calm knowing and strength, although I had no idea where it came from in the midst of such a churning moment in my life.

    Everything was falling down around me and I was deep beneath it all learning incredible lessons and seeing things that no one else could see. 

    I get this; I had connected with my soul when my life fell apart.  What I now know is that when your past, present and future fall down, you get left standing in the unchanging part of you, the place that survives all life experiences. 

    I went from living in time, to being timeless.  Time was too fearful to be in.

    What I also know is that once you take your self out of time, or are shocked and flung out of your life, you can see things from a deeper and wider view, prior to that I was tangled up in time and had no deeper perspective.

    I dwelled in the land of time without a connection to the deep well of wisdom, my soul.

    I love that I have this explanation.  

    One other thing he mentioned that really connected with me was that “Surrender doesn’t mean giving up, it means going with the Flow.”

    He explained that you have to flow all the way through whatever experience you are in in order to get the full lesson.  That giving up isn’t the answer, but being in it fully… going in all the way.  Accepting what is.

    Mostly I have heard that surrender is giving up or just letting it be, but I hadn’t heard that it means heading in fully.

    That is exactly how I faced my life situations after my father’s arrest.  I didn’t duck, I didn’t hide and I didn’t deny.

    Instead I walked fully into each moment of time, but I had this wonderful deep intimate connection with my soul, I never walked alone; I was connected to a place outside of time. 

    (What a great hour listening to him talk.  I bought his book, but gave it to a friend; I am thinking I need one for me.)

     

  • Who we want to talk to.

    I have watched myself in various conversations whether online, in person or on the phone, and I marvel at myself and its ability to respond or the lack thereof.

     

    I find that I mostly enjoy dialogue in the present, and the first person. Stories of stories have me fade away or zone out.  I can’t seem to be present with a non-present story.

    It is almost like having a front row seat to their minds, and them replaying what happened.

     

    I guess I am much better in a happening place to have it going on in real time.

     

    Real speak, real dialogue, not dialogue about dialogue.

     

    And I was friend for a day with one lady, whose walk was similar to mine, but we viewed our healing totally opposite.  After a few exchanges, she de-friended me.

     

    There can be fear when someone doesn’t see what you see, and it may be threatening to your pathway.  However, unless it gets personally draining or toxic raining, I can stay in and actually enjoy the exchange of different views.

     

    I am more alive in a conversation where I am dancing around the same issue with someone who sees differently than if I am listening to a conversation about a conversation.

     

    People are so revealing in conversations, about what they talk about, don’t talk about, or talk around, sometimes you can have a full conversation without ever seeing the person you are talking to…for they give you info about things, but not themselves.

     

    I used to be interested in things, now I wait for the person to arrive, to step forth and to talk to me, to leave the ‘things’ behind and just show me their self.

     

    It is almost like the mind talking and rambling along…and the real self is seldom revealed.

     

    I can see that I challenge the mind and seek to go around it to find the real self.  Both in conversation with others but more importantly with me.

     

    We can talk to our selves about things, or about what really matters, our truths, our fears, our dreams, our inner desires…we have to decide who we want to talk to.

     

     

     

  • Colored windows lose their beauty.

    “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still,” is a phrase that stops me from entering into a closed mind.

    What I find so enthralling is that religion isn’t a thing it is a thought.

    A thought, a wispy flighty jumble of words and it has the power to control a body and a family and a whole community a group and a bunch…just a few words.

    You can open up a church door and not find ‘religion’ and you can open up a mind and not find it there either, it is nowhere to be found, yet people build their whole lives based upon it.

    This illusive imaginative faith is as controlling as a dictator and yet there is no dictator to be found.

    When someone dies where does their religion go?

    Deepak Chopra says that you can dissect a brain and not find one single thought. And we know it isn’t held in our arms or legs, but yet we move like we are puppets on a string when we commit ourselves to a certain religion.

    Our words are tempered, our voices rising in unison using the same phrases and following the same rules, our minds are synchronized to match.

    Yet, when you take us apart no evidence will lay there.

    In fact the only evidence of your religion is how you lived your life, your life’s trail is a clue.

    What does your life’s trail look like?

    Just as there are footprints I believe there are religion prints that showed how you traversed this life.

    It shows what you leaped over or what you dodged, where you stopped and for how long, who you traveled with and why, your life history is your religious history.

    My first 46 years of my life were led by this religion, it told me who to be with and who to shy away from, what to overlook and what to look towards, who to befriend and to unfriend, who to care for and who to be indifferent to, when to shun and when to embrace, when to talk and when to sing…it controlled my everything.

    My body wasn’t mine it was a vehicle that I had to use to get to heaven and I had to do or not do certain things to it in order to arrive at Heaven’s gate.

    Heaven’s gate was the total focus and life and my body were out to see that I wouldn’t make it, they worked against me at every turn.

    It is my new understanding that what was working against my old religion was me. Me the individual, a me that wasn’t happy without a say.

    It may be hard for folks to realize the ramifications of following a religion and how it leaves out the individual freedom, where your own intuition is squelched.

    I was taught to not listen to my body and not to pay attention to the subtle and not so subtle messages it sent, to instead pull my attention away from the body and focus on the church.

    The church knew the way for me…yet many times I went against it, in shame and guilt, doing what felt right to me.

    It seems that the only way religion works is if they can control you mind body and soul. If the soul is alive if it has a whisper of breath, you will deviate off the path and be less controllable.

    What is so maddening to me is that they take the lives of people but they don’t care about the people.

    They are after the control, but not what they control. There is power when you control.

    Just as Hitler wanted power, he was able to control people to kill people…imagine???

    Perhaps religion has a kinder tone a more gentle approach a church it is housed in, with pretty glass windows, but it’s the overly sweetness that scares me.

    The charismatic chairman whose actions of indifference trail behind him. To the preacher whose trail of raped boys lie in his wake…the pretty colored windows lose their beauty.

  • Echo each other.

    I was in a discussion about Art and its healing qualities, and it came to me why Art is so crucial, Art or any creative activity is done in this moment of time.

    It requires you to be here focused on what is at hand, bringing your attention to this second of your life, it wipes away the past for a while, and blocks the future, it becomes an island of safety in an otherwise troubled time.

    An island that isn’t asking questions or requiring you to make hard choices, it is an oasis of freedom to let your life’s troubles go and you come to play.

    Like recess.

    It is a playground where you can leave your worries or stresses behind.

    While playing with colors and designs, you are reconnecting to what you love.

    Art has to be an exercise for the soul…

    It isn’t an intelligent process at all; it doesn’t require the mind to show up, what happens is that instinct leads the way.

    In my darkest moments, I played with the brightest fabrics, and was drawn to creating feelings and emotions that I didn’t have access to in my life.

    Art held for me these emotions, until slowly they seeped back into my own life.

    Art was a place to put my love, peace and joy, until it was safe to return it to the world around me. It was a place I could trust, when all else seemed unfaithful.

    Perhaps we learn to trust our selves by doing Art, or find what we love, what we want, and the freedom to be ourselves.

    I had little fear in Art when there was so much to fear in life, I became fearless in trying new things for I had nothing left to lose.

    I think we all hide or escape to playgrounds when life becomes unmanageable, but the key isn’t to stay there, but to take what you learn from Art and create an Artful life.

    I have learned that by letting go and not trying to force things to happen, answers arrive. To just move things around until they click or to walk away for a while an come back, to ask the Universe for answers and then pay attention, you will be surprised who brings you the perfect technique that you need.

    To not expect that you should know where to go, what it will eventually look like, but to live in the space of surprise and unknowing.

    Try new things, go new places, or go back to old places but look for new things…life is an interactive play, and you hop and interact.

    Art can heal a life that isn’t Artful or one that is missing your spirit.

    Art is expressing your soul. If you can’t do it in your life, begin by allowing it to express itself in an art form.

    It matters not what kind of Art you do, what matters is that you listen to the voice inside of you, to feel its passion, to feel its excitement…to feel life.

    Art and life echo each other.

  • Selfishly I Respectfully Do Not Care!

    “I respectfully do not care!” is a new quote I heard from Martha Beck as she spoke today on the Lisa Oz radio show.

    People have told her (Martha) that in order to promote and sell books and to keep her selling herself she needs to be on facebook, twitter and the like, but doing so has made her sick, physically sick with shingles.

    She found that she can talk with her daughter, and if her daughter feels her mom says something profound, her daughter will post it online.

    Martha has total trust in her body and she was getting physically sick doing what others wanted her to do, but what wasn’t natural or feeling right for her.

    When she says, “I respectfully do not care,” it means I respect what you are saying, it’s not for me.

    I love that.

    She is following and listening to her body.

    This may be my second favorite quote from her and it validates that you heard the request, but don’t care.

    Don’t care if all are doing this, me and my body are not okay with it,

    “I respectfully do not care” almost sounds like what I tell my children. I respectfully do not care if all the kids are doing it you are not. (when the other kids parents didn’t care and we had different rules.)

    This phrase actually gives you the freedom to be an individual, to follow the signals of your body, to listen to the inner knowing, to care more about yourself than others.

    Selfishly I respectfully do not care!