I M Perfect lady

Tag: suffering

  • Not in Harmony

    Within me there is a frustrating dilemma, speaking out in a society that is uncomfortable about suicide or remaining silent.

     

    Silent seems dishonorable or maybe rude to not hear such an inhumane scream of suffering…indifference even.

     

    How is it possible to turn away from such a blatant act of desperation?  Surely we want to learn from this.

     

    Do we dare listen to the message?

     

    What is the message? 

     

    How is it possible to be so out of alternatives, to be so backed into a corner where living is ruled out?

     

    Where there isn’t a sliver of hope left.

     

    What is there to learn? 

    What can she teach us?  

    What are the signs? 

     

    There are papers in two different states reporting this death.  The out-of-State paper writes, “Evidence collected by the patrol indicates that she meant to step into the path of the truck.”  And the local paper writes how wonderful she was, an honor student, caring and wise beyond her years, etc.

     

    The pictures of don’t match. 

     

    What was she trying to tell us in her last breath?

     

    What is the contrast of her life and death here to show us?

     

    Due to the drastic nature of her death it seems her life had to equal it somehow, yet her life doesn’t seem to match.

     

    What lies beneath?

     

    I have heard that suicide is a selfish act, but perhaps this is way wrong.  You wonder if she is using her death to say something, loud, clear and unmistakable.

     

    Where it is impossible to call it an accident or natural cause, where it is putting her whole life out there for the world to see.

     

    What is it that she wants us to see?

     

    How can we learn from her life, to see her pathway and find the signs that were leading her to this end, so that we can put in alternative roads for others?

     

    How can her death be used for another’s life?

     

    While we pay close attention to mysterious deaths of the body and perform autopsies, we don’t look equally into suicides to see the path that leads there.

     

    What put her on this road?

     

    What I know is people who are loved, nurtured and who feel safe on this planet; they don’t kill themselves in order to leave.

     

    While it may be controversy to speak of suicide, I am thinking by not speaking of it we are screaming louder that we don’t want to hear about your suffering.

     

    If perhaps as a society we could talk openly and freely about pain and suffering, if it was okay to talk about not wanting to live, to be open and honest, perhaps we then could stop people who feel that those who suffer too much have to leave, that there is no room here for those who suffer.

     

    How we as adults talk about her death, shows the youth how much we embrace reality and truth, how much we are willing to be with those who suffer.

     

    It just seems to me, how wonderful it would be if she could spare another soul her journey.  And if we can change our consciousness about suicide, her death will not be in vain.

     

    She was here to teach us how to become more deeply aware of the signs of covering up suffering, for her social life and her death are not in harmony.

     

     

  • Perfectly you!

    The reason I began this blog or writing for that matter, was that I found myself upside down in an upright world, my insides didn’t match reality, my dysfunction led me around the world not me.

    This me, I called the mental woman and she resided in me, in my thoughts and in my beliefs, she had ownership of this vessel and steered my actions from a fear based setting.

    I lived governed by fear and did most things to ward off the impending doom, for if and when the doom arrived, I would die.

    You see, once upon a time, a little girl was in a delightful safe world and out of nowhere, in the midst of her caring kindness an ugly monster appeared, plunging her into a state of terror.

    Once this terror is felt and no one releases you from it, you then set forth with the Fight or Flight Switch always on ON.

    My past six years has been to re-set that switch, to not respond in terror, but in love.

    When my daughter’s psyche hung in the balance, when I could see the abuse’s affects, my Mental Lady, my Wounded child, and My Loving Awareness all arose.

    It was the epic battle within me.

    One moment I was writhing in terror, frozen, feet ice cold dripping in sweat, a child without a way out.

    The next I was a mental woman taking control with needs that overshadow my daughter, fear that I had somehow allowed this to happen, it was my fault.

    And the most wonderful delightful experience I have ever felt was to be present with my child, to sit with her and her pain and see nothing but innocence, feel nothing but love.

    The contrast of these three individuals that I vacillated between had me swing to the highest of highs to the lowest of lows.

    It was like my past ghosts and my present awareness engaged in many battles, taking me on a wild life review.

    My views of her, my views of self, my extraordinary view of my husband, was like an epic play and I played each role.

    I feel utterly blessed and filled with gratitude that the most predominate woman within me is Loving Awareness.

    To live the rest of my life in this mode, riding behind
    Big as a house Heart, means to me that the Universal love, the essence of nature, the God Spirit, is leading me forward, that the clutches of evil and fear have been released.

    I am a woman who has been to the depths of hell and have emerged brighter, more loving and kind to my self.

    I know if I can travel this road, than my daughter and all girls and women who find them selves like I did, can do it.

    You do it by loving your Imperfections until they become perfectly you!

  • Activating Inner Compassion.

    “The Presence Process” by Michael Brown

    Activating Inner Compassion

    The Intent to re-establish a loving relationship with our child self activates the procedure of learning how to become our own parent. Connecting with our child self calls us to step onto the pathway of self-nurturing, a pathway that is paved with compassion. This pathway invites us to overcome issues we unconsciously have with our own parents by reaching into a place where only forgiveness can take us. Every effort that we make to re-establish a loving relationship with our child self is rewarded with an every-increasing sense of present moment awareness.

    Many of us in this world appear to be very helpful, but when it comes to the necessary ability of knowing how to nurture ourselves, we discover that we are at a loss. We also realize that we tend to feel a deep sense of guilt whenever we attempt to do anything real and loving for ourselves. This is because it is only our unconscious sense of helplessness and neediness that drives us to sacrifice ourselves in the name of helping others. The behavior of running around and trying to help everyone to our own detriment is always fueled by the reflection we see of our own helpless plight mirrored in the world around us. We cannot give away what we do not have, so only when we learned how to truly nurture and unconditionally love ourselves do we develop the propensity for authentic service. Unless we consciously step into the present moment and own our life, our ability to be truly of assistance in this world will remain shallow and ineffectual. The first step in learning how to nurture and unconditionally love ourselves is to understand which aspect of our being is really suffering and needing our attention.”

    As adults, we experience myriad physical, mental and emotional states of imbalance, and when we do, we usually do everything in our power to numb, or distract ourselves from our plight. Or else we run to someone for attention. When we live in a time-based paradigm, what we are unable to see is that none of our physical, mental, and emotional difficulties stem from what is happening to us right now, even though they are clearly reflected in and by what is happening to us right now.

    During Session Four, we were encouraged to allow ourselves to feel all our pains and discomforts without fear or judgment. By allowing ourselves to have this experience, the realization to which we are opening ourselves is that all our pain and discomforts carry and emotional signature. The identity of this emotional signature will be one of the many emotions that arise from the trinity of fear, anger and grief.”

    Throughout The Presence Process, we call this emotional signature “the emotional charge”. We may identify this emotional charge by a variety of names ranging from fear to rage to grief. This emotional charge is an unpleasant feeling that we will literally do anything not to feel. As we progress through The Presence Process, it will become clearer to us that it is the emotional charge crouched behind our pains and discomforts that fuels our compulsion to metaphorically run from the present moment and into distraction. By reacting to this emotional charge, we lunge free Presence to pretence. We sidestep from authenticity to drama.

    We also know by now where this emotional charge is really anchored. We have already been shown how to track it back in time. To recap: if we look back over our life, and instead of viewing our past experiences as physical circumstances we choose instead to see them as a re-occurrence of emotional signatures, we will see a clear pathway of similar emotional signatures extending all the way back into our childhood. This pathway reveals to us that the imbalances that we feel today, be they physical, mental or emotional, have nothing to do with our present adult life. They are merely reflected in it. This pathway shows us that all our experiences of imbalance were initiated by encounters that we had before we turned seven. And so one of the biggest revelations we can have at this point is:

    It is not our adult experience that requires healing: it is our childhood.

    From the moment we turned our backs on our childhood so that we might become acceptable in the adult world, our child self has been using physical, mental, and emotional states of imbalance to attempt to attract our attention. Our child self has been attempting to attract our attention so that we can consciously and compassionately attend to the unintegrated emotional state in which we left it. Until we consciously attend to the unintegrated experiences of our childhood, our adult experiences will continue to be an unconscious unfolding “effect” of our unintegrated childhood.

    In “time”, our adult experience is an echo of our childhood.

    Until we integrate our childhood, our adult life will continue to be an seemingly chaotic and disconnected experience sewn together with what appears to be randomly occurring physical, mental and emotional imbalance. It is crucial at this point in The Presence Process that we understand that an unbalanced adult experience is “an effect”, not a cause of anything. It is crucial that we understand this because it is futile tampering with an effect of anything, as it is only at the point of cause that any real change can be initiated. The only value our adult symptoms of imbalance is that we can use them as clues to successfully navigate our awareness to their childhood causes. Unless we embark on such a journey, we remain ineffectual.

    The pursuit of happiness, in other words, the drive to control and sedate external circumstances so that we can feel at ease within ourselves, is nothing more that a behavior that stems form attempting to fiddle with an effect to adjust the cause. This is impossible. Such behavior leads us further and further away from our inherent joy that is already available and waiting for us within our child self. The child self is our harbor of innocence, joy and creativity. When we ignore its state of imbalance, we trade our inherent innocence, joy and creativity, and instead invest our energy in attempting to be happy by “making something of ourselves”. And so we are faced with another major revelation:

    Unless we are prepared to reach back through time and space and rescue our child self by bringing it into the safety of the present moment, where we can give it unconditional love and attention it is calling for, we as adults will never experience authentic peace.

    The intention to metaphorically reach back and rescue our own child self can be thought of as a form of time travel. However, this form of time travel is not science fiction. It does not take place “out there”, and its purpose is not to visit other far-off places. It takes place within us, and its Soul purpose is for us to compassionately reconnect with a particular attribute of our own Being from which we have become separated and alienated. This is an inside job that consciously connects our present moment with our past. It invites unconscious behaviors triggered by our past experiences to the surface of our present life so that we can consciously attend to them right now. If approached with commitment, consistency, and sincerity, this inner work releases our child self of its pain and discomfort. The unfolding consequences of rescuing our child self is that our present adult self will gradually be released from the emotional charge that is the source of all our distraction and imbalance. In other words, it is our child self that is the caretaker of our emotional charge. Emotionally it is in charge.
    Michael Brown.

    One more paragraph….

    If we have not done work with our child self prior to this moment, then it is important to realize that our relationship with our child self right now will be similar to that of a parent who has for many years abandoned their own child. At about the age of seven, most urbanized humans begin preparing to enter the adult world. This requires a willingness to turn around and walk away from our childhood. As the years unfold, it is very unlikely that we choose to look back or even consider the state of the child we once were. In most cases, we lay a blanket of forgetfulness over that aspect of our Being and openly admit that we cannot remember much of what happened when we were children. We can no longer see our child self, yet it sees everything. We seemingly no longer feel its pain, yet all our adult pain is a mirror of its unresolved feelings. We may ask, “Why must we now go back and deal with the past? Can we not just leave it alone and carry on with life?”

    Our unfortunate predicament is that the pain and suffering of our unresolved childhood issues follow us as an emotional trail of imbalance that pollutes our adult experiences in an ongoing patter that is as regular and punctual as a time piece. And this timepiece is not neutral, as the mechanical watches we wear on our wrists. The ticking of this childhood timepiece and the effects it has on our present life is what maybe thought of as “emotional time”. Wearing a watch and using it as an instrument to navigate the present moment of our life is different. It is a conscious experience. We can choose to remove the watch at any moment and no longer be exposed to its influence. However, the debris of “emotional time” is constantly invading our present moment and distracting our attention. For years, we can sedate and control the effects of the childhood debris which leak out into our adult experiences, but sooner or later it will rear up like an angry snake and challenge the very fiber of our Being. It is not necessary to get to a crisis point in our life before we begin paying attention to it, but sometimes a crisis is exactly what it takes for our desperate abandoned child self to harness our attention.

    Yet the moment we turn inward and start sincerely attending to our child self with the unconditional love, compassion, and the devotion it deserves, our physical, mental and emotional states of imbalance gradually begin subsiding. This is the real work, and it realizes very real consequences. Once our child self comes to peace, so do we. It is that simple and that powerful. If we are not at peace, it is our child self that is in conflict. There is nowhere else to look, and there is no other solution but to compassionately reach inward and lovingly attend to this precious part of our Being. Only when we begin to accomplish this task, we will be able to truly understand what it is meant by the words:

    “Only when we become as children again, can we enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Matthew 18:2-4)

  • A safe place for Me.

    The sentiments, feelings, expressions, emotions of this blog may appear childlike and perhaps unbecoming of a big lady like me, but what I have just realized, is that the healing I am doing isn’t about a big lady, rather that of a little girl.

    The wounds that happened to me, happened as a young child, and what happens then the body grows big, but inside of me I am stunted and remain emotionally immature.

    Expressing my feelings now, about events long ago, sound like I am lost in my past, but what is really going on is that I am healing me in my past and allowing my emotional body to catch up with my big lady body.

    What is also very incredible is that an event today is orchestrated perfectly to heal a part of me that was hurt a long time ago.

    The gifts that I received by my mother leaving a message on my daughter’s phone, is multifaceted.

    Empowering, grieving, to seeing things I failed to notice, nothing happens by mistake.

    Each event that stirs up emotions is here to teach, to bring a part of me back to me.
    Just so you all know the little girl voice is a voice of little girl who had no voice growing up, and I am thrilled beyond words, that I have the opportunity and the vessel for her to heard.

    Whether another soul reads this or not, I am reading it as I write.

    It is an incredible experience to speak as me and to hear me, to feel the sorrow and be the one to comfort, to allow tears to fall that have been repressed for years, to feel after so many years of being afraid to, I am talking to or as the little girl in each post.

    What sacred space this is.

    A safe place for me.

  • Wants to see.

    My mother leaves a message on my daughter’s cell phone, wanting a recent picture of me, asking her for 4 or 5 of them. What??? Saying on the message, “she is still my daughter and I love her,” like that gives her all rights.

    What about mine, my daughters? And further more, why is she involving her granddaughter in this estrangement, making her feel like she has to pick which one to please, meaning she has to disappoint the other?

    She is okay dragging my daughter into the middle of our broken relationship, asking for a piece of me…asking an innocent bystander.

    I do not have access to her directly nor do I want to open up a line. Instead I want to close the line of communication that she feels she now has, my children.

    I will have to contact a sister whose house she is living in…and pass on that this is simply not acceptable, not now or ever.

    My home line has not changed in 15 years, she is aware of the number and can call. If she truly wants a slice of me, she will have to ask me to my face.

    The overall audacity and ignorance should not surprise me anymore, yet it does.

    Thank god she loves me… Not.

    If she truly loved and seen me, she would honor our silence, leave me alone to heal and be, letting my distance be as it is, and not try to come in through the back door stealing a ‘recent picture’.

    There is no recent me in her life.

    There is no recent her in mine.

    There is no us.

    She just refuses to let me die, to let me go, it feels like abuse all over again, this time with my daughter passing on the message and getting dirty in the middle.

    Oh the picture I would send…It is not a pretty picture.

    Will my picture capture the agony and pain, does it show the torn up insides where the wound is healing nicely, now.

    What is it she wants a picture of?

    The absence of any recent pictures slams this home.

    It shatters the idyllic fantasy she carries of us.

    A picture is worth 1000 words and so is the absence of one in this case…

    I do not feel she has earned the right to own a recent picture of me.

    She doesn’t see the whole picture of me, just what she wants to see.

  • Thank you.

    As I sit here on Thanksgiving morning, I look back at this year and find so many moments of gratitude, it seems I had a year full.

    My moments of gratitude are interrupted with moments of sheer pain, frustration, sorrow, confusion and tangled thoughts; it is only when I truly see the whole picture that I am overwhelmed with gratitude, knowing I was spared.

    Spared a lifetime stuck in that thought pattern, or held prisoner by that belief, to be forever at the mercy of another, while never seeing me.

    It isn’t so much that they didn’t see me, but I didn’t see me.

    Seeing and feeling me, learning how to respond that is respectful of me, what honors my soul, bringing forth a new version of me, one that is authentic and uniquely me, one that brings me to life.

    Gratitude of such magnitude, there isn’t a word that adequately expresses this freedom; it is like breathing or not breathing, love or fear, living or being dead in your life.

    To not be dead in my life is beyond what words can hold, to be alive in each moment, aware that I am connected to the Universe, that there are no mistakes, just opportunities to expand further and further, that even the darkest of the darkest moments are bringing me back to myself.

    The Universe only wants the grandest version of me; it doesn’t want a replica of someone else’s dreams.

    This past year I have been shown all the places I was still stuck, lost in the dark, and each time I become aware, I bring peace in to me.

    In peace I am overwhelmed in gratitude.

    I am thankful on this Thanksgiving Day for all the moments of pain, the untangled thoughts, the dark stuck places, and sorrow of what isn’t, for they all came bearing gifts.

    They all delivered a part of me that wasn’t free.

    Hell doesn’t seem like hell when it comes bearing gifts.

    I am grateful for my pain and for my suffering, for it was grieving the loss of me.

    It was telling me where I wasn’t present.

    In the darkness I mourned the loss of me.

    It was in the dark that I found me.

    On this Thanksgiving day, I thank you.

  • A Willing Witness

    “…grateful for your willingness to witness our loss” is part of a sentence I read on Facebook tonight, which struck me as odd that there are two kinds of witnesses.

     

    I never thought that there could be willing witnesses and non-willing witnesses.

     

    Yet the two drastically different witnesses are exactly what I have experienced. 

     

    One is so courageous and brave, will stand by and allow you to express the darkest of fears, the emptiest of sorrows, will listen endlessly as the truth flows and the madness is wrung from your soul and not shudder and turn away.

     

    A willing witness treads into the deepest trauma’s the most anxious anxieties, and wades through sorrows crushing blows, and still is able to remain connected, eyes, ears and soul.

     

    A willing witness never turns away. 

     

    It is this courageous witness that allows us to stand taller, dig deeper and find a small thread to continue on.  They remind us we are not alone.  That our mental state is ‘normal’ coming from whence we came.

     

    I am blessed and forever grateful for my brother who has been my most willing of willing witnesses.

     

    I also have had willing witnesses that are friends, strangers, writers, renewed old friends and new friends. Ladies whose walk equals mine or are even much worse. I am filled with great warmth and loving energy knowing that I have so many wonderfully willing witnesses.

     

    The greatest gift we can give another is to be a willing witness.

  • Loving What Is…

    We would rather be ruined than changed;
    We would rather die in our dread
    Than climb the cross of the moment
    And let our illusions die.
    ~W.H. Auden

     

    What is so unreal is that we believe we can stop change that it is up to us to keep things the same, and it is viewed worthy if we remain unchanged.

     

    Not only unchanged, but that if you change it is somehow seen as bad, wrong or that you succumbed to a new circumstance, instead of standing hard against change.

     

    I have come to see that change happens often and mostly for my benefit, and the more I get used to letting go of rigid beliefs about my life and how it is supposed to flow, I am much more relaxed and willing to bend with the next thing that changes.

     

    Our bodies change, the days change, the seasons change, our roles change, our attitudes change, our energies change, our feelings change, our world simply doesn’t stop changing.

     

    I think we can accept change as long as it goes according to our vision of our futures, but as soon as it changes and creates a kink in our plans, we then stand strong against that change.

     

    Standing against change feels stronger, yet it is actually a weakened state.  The strongest is to surrender and accept with grace whatever is happening, for it is happening.

     

    Accepting what is, as Byron Katie says…is really loving what is, and if you are not accepting it, you are fighting with reality and you only lose, but 100% of the time.

     

    I think we think we are good at navigating the changes in our lives, until the unthinkable happens, when we are forced to look upon something that certainly goes against our dreams, or our plans, and then see how you accept change?

     

    I have found that it is in accepting the most difficult things that we truly see ourselves; see where we truly are, how we are and how we are really living.

     

    Are we living in reality or in a dream about reality?

    Are we flowing with the Universe and living in a love hate relationship with it?

     

    Loving the Universe when our plans are going according to plan, and despising that same God, when things fall through?

     

    It has taken lots of disappointments, lots of changes, and lots of moments of utter disbelief to finally see the gifts in all the changes that have happened in my life.

     

    I was forced to look for gifts among the piles of changes and in doing so always found the thread that lead me to understanding the change.

     

    In seeing a bigger picture or seeing that which I failed to acknowledge, it was my perspective of change that was needed.

     

    Instead of sitting in the land of ‘expecting no change’, I now live knowing all life changes…I am comfortable with change, and if not, I know that it is my mind that has to be changed, not reality.

     

    Reality changes whether we agree or disagree…it is up to you how long it takes.

     

    I have found the quicker I change my mind, the more peaceful I am.

     

    Byron Katie says there are three little words that cause suffering…should, could and would.

     

    And there are three words that bring peace, Loving what is…

     

  • The Sunny Side of Life!

    “Nothing we can do can change the past, but everything we do changes the future.”

              Ashleigh Brilliant

     

    Living life forward is all we can do, and the power that lies in each action sets in motion the whole Universe.

     

    Once you start to focus on actions today or in this moment, by simply making one change today, you will begin a momentum that changes the course of your life.

     

    Doing yoga each day has changed my body’s future, the aches and pains are receding, and instead of discovering new things I can no longer do, I am undoing damage of old wounds.

     

    My leg, hip and back have been the area of focus, it seems that there lies years of misuse. 

     

    By continuing through the pain I come out on the sunny side of life!

     

    (Day 140 of doing bikram yoga in a row)

     

  • “Learning To Play Well With Others!”

    “Thanks for not yelling at me too much this past year and hopefully it will be even less in the year to come”, is written in one of my Mother’s Day cards.

     

    I felt great pleasure in knowing that my child acknowledges my improvements and believes that I can improve more again next year.

     

    As a mother who wasn’t able to control my rage this is a huge sign of healing, for my targets are feeling less hits, and the volatile pressure has lessened according to them.

     

    The legacy has begun to weaken, the link of dysfunction is unraveling, the image of normal is arising, while the destruction has dropped.

     

    I felt much sadness both for the child and the parent as I absorbed this information. 

     

    I wept for the helplessness of both, for I had been on both sides, neither is a winner.

     

    It is a rare event for a broken mother to heal, for a broken mother to see her brokenness and to bare witness to the cost of her wound upon her child.

     

    The broken mother’s suffering lands upon the life of the child, and it seems the more we hurt the more we hurt!

     

    The cycle goes around and around until someone gets out of the way.

     

    In my case I had to walk away.  And in walking away, I was able to see my own brokenness.

     

    Now I am able to see where the cracks are mending, where I am becoming a better mother, with the potential of becoming an even better one up ahead. 

     

    What a great Mother’s Day for a broken mom, to be shown examples of healing, like getting a report card with improvement noted; “Learning to play well with others!”