I M Perfect lady

Tag: The

  • Freedom

    Martha Beck writes in Leaving the Saints,

    "My defection from Mormonism changed me in the same way Adam's disability did: it became an open-ended tragedy that I wouldn't give up for anything in the universe. (not even my own planet) because it helps me let go of beliefs that had damaged my soul.  An erswhile friend of mine in the Oak Hills Forth Ward once said he thought the only prayer we offer spontaneously is "Why am I in pain?"  Knowing that I am considered wicked and perhaps insane by people that I love is so painful that it continually drives me to this prayer, drives me to seek sustenance even more stable and powerful than human acceptance and company.  Please, Please, Please, Please…"

    "When I persist in this prayer, sooner or later (the more I practice the more it becomes "sooner") something wonderful happens.  My status as an untouchable feels so terrible that something deep inside me finally lets go of it, of all identity, of all attempts to prove or please or control anyone.  At that moment, I rediscover the stillness in my own heart of hearts.  Then I feel its connection to the Stillness all around me, the gorgeous, blissful Stillness that holds every heart, every mind, every tree and rock in its infinitely loving embrace."

    "I am here. Always.  I am always right here."

    "And it is, it is, right here, nearer than near: connection, comfort, safety, belonging.  Home.  Lao-Tzu said, "The master can travel all day without ever leaving home," and while I'm no master, I have returned home frequently enough to know he was right.  I'm starting to believe that my homing instincts will guide me back anytime I consult it, from anywhere in creation.  I think that may be the reason for this whole terrifying excruciating mortal existence, to wander away from home, then find your way back, so many times we learn from our toes up that no matter how far afield we may stray, we can always, always, always get there from here."

    Martha and I both found that outside of the family and church community there lies a new home.  One that resides inside of us…without that I know I would have certainly died.

    She writes about her new path…"I was teaching career development, helping students create successful lives. But to me, that didn't neccessarily mean huge salaries and a Donald Trump social profile.  It meant learning to go home and stay there, in that place where joy is not dependent on wealth or image, and even the deepest sorrow is a guide toward healing and happiness.  During my years in Utah, through all those days of spiritual trial and effort, all those nights of psychological struggle, I'd developed a repertoire of techniques that helped me do this.  In Phoenix, I began teaching these techniques to my students."

    "You'll know when you're in the wrong job interview," I'd say during a lecture, "because the pit of your stomach will tell you to get out. Your first priority should be stillness, attention to what you really know and what your really feel.  Don't 'network' into meaningless relationshiops with colleagues who bore you; find the people who can make you laugh all night, turn on the lights of your heart and mind. Do whatever work feeds your true self, even if it's not a safe bet, even if it looks like a crazy risk, even if everyone in your life tells you you're wrong or bad or crazy."

    "What I was really tellng them was how to be a Leaf in the Stream, though of course I never  called it that.  Nor did I quote Jesus' question, "What profiteth it a man if he should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"  I rarely used Buddhist terms like awakening or right action. But all these concepts, all the things I'd learned in my search for God, drove every piece of advice I gave my students."

    "I also started writing books and articles, on many topics but with only one theme, Dante's theme: the journey through the inferno as the road to heaven.  Paradise lost and found."

    "In my case, the inferno-road led through Provo, Utah, the well-meaning bureaucracy of Mormonism, the community of Saints.  Yours probably passes through some other territory, but we all make the same trip.  We believe without question almost everything we learn as children, stumble into the many potholes and pitfalls that mar any human endeavor, stagger around blindly in pain and outrage, then slowly remember to pay attention, to listen for the Silence, look for the Light, feel for the tenderness that brings both vulnerability to wounds and communion with the force that heals them.  Don't worry about losing your way, I tell my clients.  If you do, pain will remind you to find your path again.  Joy will let you know when you are back on it."

    "I still make the journey every day, which is why I wrote this book. Many people, especially I myself, have asked me repeatedly why I'd do such a thing.  I hate conflict, have an enormous fear of being disbelieved, and remember just enough of the old-fashioned Morman temple ceremony to be paranoid about lethal reprisal from the lunatic fringe of my father's fan base ("and whether they will slay me, I know not…"). But much as I dread the consequences of openness, I know the consequences of secrecy are worse.  I've read research that indicates that people who hide a history of traumatic experience live shorter lives, less healthy, less happy lives than those who tell their stories. I know, at a much deeper level, what keeping secrets did to me, and even more to my father. He did more than die for is religion; he gave it his life.  He almost gave it mine.  The memory of that is awful it leads me down Dante's road many times every day and each time, the awfulness makes me keep going, all the way through hell and back to paradise."

    "Once I am home again, I know that my father's true self is not the same man who lied and covered up and sacrificed his children's happiness for his religion…"

    "Even if I never know the explanation behind what happened to me as a child, I do know this for sure; Whether my father had the freedom to choose his thoughts and actions, I do.  I am free, and always have been; free to accept my own reality, free to trust my perceptions,free to believe what makes me feel sane even if others call me crazy, free to disagree even if it means great loss,free to seek the way home until I find it."

    "All the great religions I have studied, including Mormonism, hold that this irrevocable soul-deep liberty is the key to the end of suffering and the beginning of joy.  The Buddha said that just as you can recognize seawater because it will always taste of salt, you can recognize enlightenment because it always tastes of freedom.  About a year after I discovered I'd become a life coach, I stumbled across a Buddhist prayer that felt so true to me it almost stopped my heart.  The last section goes like this:

    "As long as space endures,

    And as long as sentient

    beings exist,

    May I also abide,

    That I may heal my heart

    The miseries of the world."

    "Of course I am not saying I can fulfill the promise of the prayer, only that I want to die trying.  Maybe I already have died trying, once or twice."   Martha

     

    What I recognize most in the similarities between Martha and I, was the cost of speaking out and finding our own inner peace…and how we will repeatedly go back to the fire if we feel we can stop the misery in another, by speaking the truth.  We are willing to die again and again…in order to have freedom.

  • The Majority Vote.

    Martha Beck writes in "Leaving the Saints"….. After a family therapy session where Martha  remained the one lone family member willing to see abuse.." I could see that my siblings' truth, as well as that of all other Latter-Day Saints, would always be based on group consensus.  I read psychology tests about the effects of socialization on perception, pondered the famous experiments by Solomon Asch that demonstrated how subjects who didn't know they were being tested changed their perceptions in order to agree with other people. Shown two lines, one long, one short, in the company of people who all claimed that the lines were of equal length, the naive subjects almost always agreed with the majority, rather than the evidence of their own senses.  They not only said that the lines were equal; they often came to actually SEE them as being equal."
    What is alarming and comforting at the same time, is that my family isn't any different from the test folks, who automatically side with the majority. That very few will use the evidence of their senses and stand alone.
    She also wrote about losing her family, " It would have been less painful to lose my family to war or natural disaster; less shame, less confusion, less personalized energy.   I did lose them you see.  I've never really been back. Though there isn't an official "no contact" rule between us, my siblings and I stopped most communication after that bloody battle.  I hear from other relatives that I am the black sheep now, the traitor to our family's code, the enemy of every thing we once stood for together…."
    And the last few lines that caught my attention…"Sometimes I think there is not enough room in the Universe for the sorrow of that exile."
    Being exiled from your family for going against the majority vote.

  • What we endured.

    From Martha Beck's book, Leaving the Saints
    "All my life, I'd read and reread a thousand religious epigraphs to the effect that "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."  I'd always been told this had to do with joining the true religion, learning the true description of the Holy Trinity, memorizing the true Commandments.  Now, with that gong like tone thrumming through me, it all seemed so much simpler.  The truth I needed to be free was simply the reality of my own life: This is what I feel.  This is what happened to me. To know these small truths was to know myself; to speak them was to connect with my real self, other human beings, and God."
    Martha was told by many people she was not allowed to tell her story of abuse, that the church's reputation was on the line, that her father needed to be held up as a pillar of its community, that many mormon spiritual lives depended upon her silence… except one woman came to her.
    "Martha…I don't believe God would ever ask anyone to endure that sort of thing without talking about it.  No one. No matter what."  Her voice when through me like an arrow, through all the pain and confusion and fear to something at my very center. My body filled up with a kind of resonance, like one of the huge gongs I'd seen in Shinto shrines that make the air throb when they ring.  It shattered my reserve, and as usual, I started crying.  Rosemary just sat there, not a shred of tension or resistance in her presence.  "Was it your father?" she asked, quietly.  I covered my face with my hands to keep myself from falling apart, but it was like trying to protect a sand castle from high tide. "I didn't tell you!" I gasped, when I could speak.  "Where did you hear that?"  She shrugged and tapped her chest. I felt that sense of resonance again, crumbling all the barriers of my mind.
     "You can't tell anyone!" I whispered.  "And I can't tell anyone! Ever! I can't!"  
    "Martha, listen to me."  Rosemary's voice was no louder, but it had taken on a peculiar intensity.  I remember thinking that I should pay close attention. I was right. The next three words Rosemary Douglas spoke changed my life forever.  The moment she said them, I knew that this was the stable patch of earth in the landslide, the single great spiritual truth upon which I could build my life now that all other foundations had proven frail and uncertain. The words weren't God loves you, or Jesus is Lord, or Keep the faith.
    Rosemary put her hand on mine, looked right in my soggy eyes and said, "You are Free."
    We are not free until we can speak our story, to tell of our experiences…and sadly we wait for the permission of those who hurt us.  What a great gift this woman gave her, to say, "I don't believe God would ever ask anyone to endure that sort of thing without talking about it.  No one. No matter what."
    At times this blog feels as if I don't have the right.  But I agree with Rosemary, we must talk about what we endured.

  • Coming From Whence We Came…

    Our book club is reading the book, "leaving the Saints" by Martha Beck…this section was particularly affirming to me when I first read her book about five years ago.
    She recounts how her life began to make sense after getting the first waves of memories…
    Her memory " I am five years old, my hands are tied, and my father is doing something that feels as though it's ripping me in two.  I am stretched on my back, legs spread like a frog on a dissecting table, unable to see or understand what is happening, focusing as hard as I can on the cord around my hands, because it distracts me from what is happening elsewhere….The first horrific flashback was like a nuclear detonation.  It felt nearly real as if I were actually experiencing the original event, as though the nerve impulses for perceiving it had frozen into the tissues of my body, never reaching the level of conscious awareness, and were now finally completing their long-delayed journey…"
    She also writes about an extremely painful doctors visit that now made sense.
    "I am twenty-six, lying in another damned emergency room.  The Doctor has just told me that I waited so long to seek treatment for an abscess in the tissues of my perineum (look it up) that he's afraid infection might enter my bloodstream any minute. There is no time to put me under general anesthesia, so he gives me a shot of novocain in a very private place, then hands me a washcloth and tells me to bite down on it.  "please don't hate me," he says, and starts operating."
    "Numbed by the local, I don't even feel the first incision. But then he sticks a pair of scissors into it, and the pain is just absolutely incredible.  I've never felt anything this bad, not in childbirth, not when a dentist accidentally drilled right into a nerve.  I am positive that nothing could possibly hurt more than this. Then the Doctor opens up the scissors inside the incision, and I realize I was wrong.  And then, oh Lordy.  Then he starts to cut."
    "Out of all my medical misadventures, this memory stood out most in my mind the day of my first flashback – not just because the injury was related to those badly healed scars, but because the pain during that surgery was the only thing I could compare to the pain my mind and heart felt when the flashbacks started.  It wasn't simply the agony and degradation of being raped but, more, the absolute horror of a five year old who has just learned that the universe is ruled by an evil god and that this god seems to have commanded the most beloved and powerful figure in her life to destroy her in a manner much more devastating than death.  "We all have our little sorrows," said my Allusion Manager, quoting screenwriter Ronald Harwood even at this awful pass, "and the littler you are, the larger the sorrow."   Martha
    What I find so remarkable is that the physical pain is of a lesser degree in devastation compared to knowing that your father is capable of doing such awful things.
    That knowing is by far worse than any bodily discomfort. The body will heal and the pain goes away….but the knowing who your father is and what he is capable of doing does not go away.  
    No scar will form over this knowing…it stays an open wound.
    What is also comforting in a very horrific way is how she too experienced the time travelers that brought forth the exact feelings from her childhood.
    When my niece spoke up stating that my father abused her, my body responded before my mind could comprehend.  It shook and was filled with terror in every cell.  I knew without a shadow of doubt that she spoke the truth.  I too could not stop the mental tumblers from clicking into place and my life began making sense in a horrifying way.
    Her husband too was seeing her in a new light, she began to make sense to him…"That is why you space out when I touch you," he said.   "That is why you scream in your sleep. That's why you can never really relax."
    And while her direct honesty and openness about her abuse may be very disturbing, it is very comforting for an abused child of abuse.  It Makes us make sense.
    We make sense coming from whence we came…

  • Feeling the Unbounded Heart.

    In Martha Beck's book, "Leaving the Saints" she writes,

    " I recall its horror and beauty, the enormity of 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."

    My journey from not knowing to knowing has equal parts horror and beauty, for it seemed with each new glimpse into the vestiges of evil sprang a new wondrous insight and freedom…

    The dichotomy of the polar opposites and how you are plunged into the horrors that you failed to see and or acknowledge to your self, and then the beautiful release from them into the wide-open space of freedom leaves me breathless.

    We somehow believe if we sit smack dab in the middle of the horrors of our lives, we will get left there, that you will sink as if in quick sand, but that isn’t so.

    If you don’t go into what frightens and scares you, you will live in the space between.

    No terror and then no beauty.

    You are in the middle land, the purgatory space, neither heaven nor hell…

    When you leave the comfortable space of no feelings and dare to walk fearlessly into the emotions and truths you were too frightened to see as a child, it feels alive, electric and the enormity of it all leaves you overwhelmed.

    Fear keeps us out of those dark corridors where our unexpressed, unexamined life lives. And by leaving that door closed you live a life that isn’t alive…in its truest sense.

    You are forced to live without feelings and free expressions.

    Martha is so right…for I too recall the horror and the beauty, the enormity of the things I have lost and the incalculable preciousness of the things I have gained.

    You truly lose the world as you have known it, but you gain a self you have never met.

    I lived in this the middle ground for 46 years, where fear kept me motionless, frozen and lifeless. I followed life, but I did not live it freely.

    I never wavered from the path of least resistance, I had no individual thoughts and I was not connected to my body and its feelings.

    The middle ground certainly will not allow you to see the horrors, but it also keeps from you the intimate beauty of love and freedom.

    Stretched into the zone of nothingness…but keeping the static going so you never dip into the terror that lurk at the sidelines of your life… your life’s goal is to remain numb.

    You are frozen in place and have no conditions.

    No rules of your own, in fact I see this as being a lump, where the dark murky waters can wash over you and you feel not its affect, nor do you try and get out of the way…and sun is shining just above the surface, but you make no move to reach toward it.

    It is living and letting all manner of things happen and you don’t move…and the delights of life await and you are unable to reach.

    Waking up in this state left me horrified of what I had allowed and how I had not been aware…and as Martha writes about the Lion stage of awakening.

    “When we have discovered the hearts capacity to face any situation, the joys and sorrows of existence as they are, we awaken to freedom. Then the Golden Lion speaks with a roar. Out of the mouth of the lion comes the undaunted voice of truth, the liberation of the unbounded heart.”

    It is the liberation of the unbounded heart…whereas before it was wrapped up like a mummy unfeeling anything.

    And she goes on to say about the third stage of awakening, “In the last stage the lion gives way to the child, to an original innocence. This is the child of the Spirit for who all things are new. For this Divine child there is wonder, ease and a playful heart. The child is at home in reality of the present, able to enjoy, to respond, to forgive, and to share the blessings of being alive.”

    (I best give you the first stage as well…”In the camel stage of awakening, we make ourselves available to the Spirit through humility, prayer, repetition, and manual labor)

    The first stage was where I spent most of my life, ‘repetition and manual labor…not so much humility or prayer.

    The tumultuous unwrapping of going from living life bound up in the beliefs and thoughts and affects of abuse etc, to undoing it all is extremely horrifying and beautiful in equal parts.

    Isn’t there a saying from the bible, about ‘what is bound on earth is bound in heaven…? I believe that it is talking about the heart.

    There is truly an incalculable preciousness of feeling the unbounded heart.

  • Unconditionally loving the Abuser.

    As human beings we are used to riding along and adjusting to change, but we are not used to being “the change you want to see in your world” as Gandhi put it.

    We want change and we want it now, but we don’t want the change to start with us.

    Most of us change only when forced, when death or tragedy impacts our lives, but rarely do we actively make changes.

    Besides the lack of being a self-starter, we find it impossible to see the enemies that walk among us, for we have called them friends and family.  (This of course is only for those of us who suffered abuse within our family homes, in our friendly neighborhoods, and churches.)

    Since 90% of the abuse happens with someone we know, and 50% with family members, that leaves only 10% to be strangers.

    The changes that need to happen are folks need to start treating family and friends like strangers.

    I know this seems backwards, but so is abuse.

    The legacy of abuse will continue to flow in your family unless and until you start treating folks who abuse like enemies of family and love, for they are.

    They are not there to instill a safe secure environment, nor sowing love and kindness, they are inside infesting the core values of what family means.

    Abusers can’t be treated the same as members of the family who mean no harm.

    In order to stop abuse, you all have to stop treating abusers like constructive members of your family, but rather the destructive people they are.

    They need to get help, be taken out of the family, isolated…in order to preserve the family’s integrity.

     However, in my experience, the child (grown adult child) must leave in order to feel safe, for the perpetrator was not made to go. 

    He was cared for and protected within the family unit.

    This is the sole reason that abuse continues.  The family refuses to treat him like a stranger who came in and abused the girls.

    And as it stands today, I am treated like a stranger and he like a family member.

    This backwards treatment alone keeps abuse going.

    Most don’t want to speak up and act like I did, for they know the outcome.  So instead of being alone, they will be part of keeping the legacy of abuse going.

    What happens is you become a stranger to your family as you fight against abuse…and for most that is too big a price to pay, so they will settle back into the comfortable routine of being a family…unconditionally loving the abuser.

     

  • They speak in Lies.

    Don Miguel Ruiz said “There are two kinds of Angels, the angel of lies and the angel of truth.”

    Isn’t it odd to look at the two different kinds of angels?

    I know that my family does not like to see me as an Angel of Truth; they would love me much better as the Angel of Lies, and the way I used to be. 

    Oh was I a good angel of lies.  I was the best, I would tell you anything you wanted to hear, but never, not ever the truth…for I wouldn’t want to hurt you.

    I was a good angel of lies and my self suffered greatly. 

    For in order to be a wonderful angel of lies, you lose your self.  You turn away from your own feelings, and choose not to see others in their true colors.

    The Angel of Truth speaks with impeccable words, her actions match and she says what she has to say, no matter how they land upon your world.  

    I have lived both ways and as the Angel of Lies, I seen the world through glasses that lied to me.  I lied and it lied back.

    I pretended many things, overlooked much, and didn’t see life as it was in its naked rawness and beauty.

     While my journey has been horrific in many places, where the truth is exposed like a monster, I have also seen great beauty, love, peace and joy, that my lying angel refused to see.

    When I first began to see without my lying eyes, I saw things that brought me to my knees, okay flat in bed. But those same eyes bathed my body in nature’s beauty.

    I seen the sunrise and felt God looking upon me.  The night sky was filled with loving angels, the moon another loving presence.

    I watched the flow of the river and knew that same energy flowed through me.

    My truthful eyes saw God everywhere.

    So, while it was hard to get used to my truthful eyes, especially seeing that which prior I covered with lies, it was also the biggest blessing in my world.

    I love that I can see now as God sees.

    I love that there are angels of lies and angels of truth.

    I love that I have been able to be both in this lifetime.

    What I know is that many in my family are loving their roles as Angels of Lies, and they are being rewarded by staying close to their mother, their siblings, a family of lying Angels, all resuming life after a bit of truth blew in, they quickly got back to life as it was before.

    And it is very different when you begin to see truth; you are set aside from the liars. Our words and actions don’t match; our wings clash.

    I flew alone for a while and slowly I am finding Angels of Truth to hang with.  We are a rare bunch, seen as mental by some, cold and bitter by others…(hey, isn’t it said that truth is often times a bitter pill to swallow.)  We are often depicted as home wreckers, spoil sports, insane, crazy, mad…

    What I know to be true for me is that life as an Angel of Truth is magnificent, easy, peaceful, wise, perfect, and it walks hand and hand with God.

    I do recognize that when I speak as the Angel of Truth, I will get feedback that isn’t kind or supportive or loving from the Angels of Lies.  They are first to spread lies about me, that is their role.  They are only doing what Angels of Lies do…they speak in lies. 

    Don Miguel says there is only one conflict in the human experience; the conflict between truth and lies.

  • Voice of my truth.

    Today I listened to the CD of The Voice of Knowledge, by Don Miguel Ruiz and Janet Mills.

    Here is how the book is described.

    "In this audio version of the fourth book in the popular series, don Miguel Ruiz reminds readers of a profound yet simple truth: The only way to end emotional suffering and restore joy in living is to stop believing in lies – mainly about ourselves."

    "Ruiz refers to the forbidden tree of knowledge, likening the abandonment of the true self to the fall from heaven. This fall, he says, occurred because of the loss of "the impeccability of the word," that simple yet potent prescription for countering the judgmental inner "Voice of Knowledge." Adhering to "the word" – saying only what one means, refusing to speak against one's self – allows anyone to quiet those inner tyrannical thoughts so that we can become aware of our Voice of Integrity. Knowledge then becomes an ally, and life becomes an expression of the authentic self."

    As I listened to him, I could see how my own life was based upon lies and how I had great faith in those lies and had little or no faith in my own truth and integrity.

    What this blog has been mostly about is re-discovering my truth and letting go of lies.

    I have tried my level best to rid myself of inauthentic parts of me, the beliefs that kept me from my own love, peace and joy…and in doing so I oftentimes uncovered lies that many don’t want displayed openly. My truth-seeking mission has upset many an apple cart for me, but it seems it has little affect on others unless they are ready to receive the truth…if they are not ready, the truth will slip on by…and their cart of lies will remain steady.

    I am not here to upset your cart of apples, but rather to find the rotten parts of myself, my lies.  Sometimes my lies and your lies match and at others you will not agree…that is okay, I am here only to seek my own truth.  Each of  you will find yours in your own time. This is my journey towards truth in my life.

    It was just great to listen to him speak about the conflict of lies and truth we all have within, and how in some the truth voice is louder than the lies.

    If you have never questioned your mind, or explored how you came to believe this or that, your lies remain unchallenged…or your truth unearthed.  Your lie voice may be louder for it has had free reign.

    I had buried so many truths, so much hurt I piled into a hole not to be touched, emotions shoved aside, etc…all to be more comfortable I lived lies.  My lie voice liked it that way.

    We think lies are bold and in your face, but they are not.

    Mostly what I think is truth comes in and we push it away, not wanting to deal, to see or feel.

    So we lie.  We lie to ourselves and say everything is okay.

    I only stopped lying to myself when all my lies came home to roost at one time.  There was an avalanche that I couldn’t stop…all my lies lay at my feet exposed for the traitors they were.  Their powerful deceit was bigger than any lie I could conjure up.. to cover them all up again. It had grown too huge.  My lie voice died and my weak truthful voice started to speak.

    It gained power with each truth I told. 

    I am wondering if there is a room where lies go and will it explode on everyone at one time or another? 

    When my life of lies exploded I was left with my soul eyes.  My body seemed to have eyes in feelings; intuitively I sorted out my life…I began speaking from deep inside, paying little heed to the outside disputes.

    While it seemed like the worst day of my life, it was actually the first day of the rest of my voice of integrity life.  A life without lies.  

    No more lies. 

    Not to me and not to you.

    Not to make you feel better or more at peace for your comfort or for your ease.

    No more lies to my self.

    For I lost myself behind a sea of lies…and it took me years to unhook myself from the beliefs and faith I had in these lies. 

    My voice is the voice of my truth. 

     

  • Living on the Blocks.

    Week 9, The Artist Way…Julia Cameron writes,

    “We’re more comfortable being a victim of artist’s block than risking having to consistently be productive and healthy.

    “An artistic U-Turn arrives on a sudden wave of indifference. We greet our newly minted product or our delightful process with “Aw, what does it matter anyhow?  It’s just a start.  Everybody else is so much further ahead…”

    “Yes, and they will stay that way if we stop working. The point is we have traveled light-years from where we were when we were blocked. We are now on the road, and the road is scary.  We begin to be distracted by roadside attractions or detoured by the bumps.”

    And here are a few sentences from the exercises at the end of the chapter.

    “Your choice to block is a creative U-Turn – we turn back on ourselves.  Like water forced to stand still, we turn stagnant.”   Julia

    These blocks are in Life and in Art. And we use them as an excuse as to why we can’t live a better life or create art. 

    And it is only ourselves that turn us around and heads us back to our old vices and excuses or fears.  We keep turning our backs on our truths, our desires, what we love, what brings us peace, our joy…in the good energy flow. 

    I see my life as a river where others lives are rocks cropping up or interests that are not crucial to my pathway, and instead of floating on by, I stop.  I stop my own flow in life.

    We each have specific rocks that stop us and then there are bends in the river, opportunities that float by, but we are too afraid to slip into the flow…or we are so busy doing things that are not important and they go by unnoticed. 

    It is just so interesting that Artist Blocks or Blocks of Addictions keep us from creativity…and they are all our choices.

    It is up to us to stop clinging to things that don’t serve us, that keeps us from living. 

    One big boulder in my life is ‘Responsibility’ and getting my work done first. 

    I focus on cleaning up my space instead of using that time to create.  I put so many rocks ahead of my flow, that my life seems heavy and hard. 

    I never looked at it this way…even though I lived it more often than not.  In fact slipping into the flow of life and playing in the currents and relaxing and letting the river take me, without saying no…is not very common in my life. 

    Most of my life has been spent on heavy rocks and in other people’s responsibility.  Getting used to flowing in my life will take some effort and will mean turning my back on ‘work’.  Who knew that work is a blockage in your life.

    Today, my one day off, and again I am working on cleaning up our house, the sewing machine sits…however, I did make a date with my husband for later on.

    In time, I will be able to discern how much free flowing time I have had and how much I have spent on the rocks, for I will feel its heaviness and know I got lost again living on the blocks.

    "Saying No can be the ultimate self-care."  Claudia Black

     

     

  • 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.)