IMPERFECT Lady

See Who You Really Are!

In a book called The Presence Process, by Michael Brown, he speaks about bringing your attention back to the present moment.

 

This book actually is a process, and a friend of mine is in her second week, and asked me to read along. 

 

In a note before the first week, Michael offers this.

 

Dear Friend,

 

I commend you for coming this far, and I encourage you to go all the way.  I have walked this pathway myself – many times.  This pathway was uncovered by walking it, not by talking it, or reading it, or thinking it.  By walking it myself I have ensured that if you follow the simple instructions your journey will be safe, gentle, and full of profound insights and confirmation.  I have paved this journey with my integrity.  Many others have contributed to the efficiency of this experience by successfully walking it themselves.  Many more are walking it right now with you.  All who have succeeded have done so by completing it.  As you enter and commence The Presence Process, please therefore intend to do whatever it takes to complete it.

 

Please accept that you do not have to resolve everything that is causing imbalance in the quality of your life experience in the short time it takes for you to complete this journey.  You can walk it several times to gain a sure footing upon the pathway that is your life.  In The Presence Process “completion” does not mean “being finished”; it means arriving at a point in your journey where you are ready and equipped to take full responsibility for the quality of your unfolding life experience.

 

Everything you could possibly require to bring the quality of present moment awareness into every step that you take is between the covers of this book.  Read, apply, and practice it well, and you will deliver yourself to where you really choose to be.

 

Remember that your life is your divine destiny unfolding deliberately according to a sacred blueprint that in each moment invites you to show up and fulfill your highest potential.  Your life experience is a beautiful gift revealed by your conscious unwrapping of it.  Your point of freedom in it all is accessed by your attitude towards it.  Choose to be aware.  Choose to be present in each moment of it.  Choose to walk with grace and gratitude through every experience.

 

From the center of my heart to the center of yours I bid you well.  The Presence within me is the same Presence within you.  As such we depart together, we journey together, and we reach completion together.  Thank you for having faith in what we share.  Thank you for your company along this most beautiful way.

 

Kindest regards,

Michael

 

This is a very powerful process of awakening the Presence within you; of bringing you back to the present moment, of placing you in your life.

 

Lots of self help books claim to change your life, this one doesn’t change your life, it changes how you interact with life.

 

The focus is on present moments, feelings and learning about past beliefs and their impacts on your responses today.

 

In Week Two he writes about the difference between responding and reacting.

 

“A reaction is unconscious behavior in which our energy is directed outwards into the world in an attempt to defend ourselves or to attack another.  A reaction is a drama that is played out in an effort to sedate or control the nature of our experiences.  The theme of all reactive behavior is blame or revenge.

 

A response is a conscious choice to contain and constructively internalize our energy with the intention of using it to integrate and liberate our unconsciousness.  The theme of all responsive behaviors is responsibility.”

 

He then goes on to say, From this point onward, as we go about our daily experiences, certain circumstances will unfold that will magnetically attract our attention.  These are the circumstances that we want to pay attention to so that we can work with them internally.  This magnetic pull on our attention occurs because these particular circumstances are energetically connected with our suppressed past.  These specific circumstances will isolate themselves from others that we are experiencing in that we will have a powerful emotional reaction towards them.  Often we will perceive this emotional reaction to be uncomfortable or unpleasant.  Initially, we are going to react unconsciously to these setups until we gain the present moment awareness to behave consciously and responsibly.  Therefore, it is important for us to keep the understanding of how deeply suppressed memories surface in the forefront of our awareness: not as images in our head but as unfolding circumstances and as the way people behave in our outer world experiences.

 

Our task for this Session is to identify the ‘messengers’ as they appear in our life experience. By being able to accomplish this task, we will be awakening a quality of ‘seeing’ that enables us to begin perceiving what is really happening beneath the surface of the physical circumstances of the world.  Developing this skill of discernment teaches us how to use our mental capabilities to see beneath the surface of our physical experiences and into the emotional currents of our predicament.  This skill is essential because it enables us to differentiate what is really happening from what is reflective memory.  Only when we are able to accomplish the task of efficiently identifying the messengers in our life experience will we be ready and able to exorcise the ghost of our past.  Being able to identify the messengers will enable us to become our own ghost-busters. We can then begin navigating our awareness out of the illusions created by the dream called “time”.

 

This is a book that I would highly recommend if you find you are more reactive then responding to life’s circumstances.

 

I wish you well my friend as you once again walk the pathway, this journey to see who you really are!

 

 

You Can Look Away.

“I Want To Know What Love Is” is the name of my brother’s post ( www.messyguru.typepad.com ) how do you recognize what love is?

 

Love to me is like the word gratitude, it is a feeling inside an overwhelming emotion, not a word.

 

The word love can be thrown around and tossed into some pretty dark and twisted places, manipulating a body and mind.

 

People use the word love to cover-up many actions that are hurtful, laying it on top like a Halloween mask.

 

The word love can be used and abused like a body and mind. 

 

Just as most wars are fought in the name of God, most abuse is done in the name of Love.

 

When abuse is done in the name of Love, we are left with a backwards feeling of love.  “Love hurts” is a line in a song, and we believe this to be true.

 

It isn’t a knowing or thoughtful response; it is a subtle knowing that even when hurting us they really love us.

 

I know this may seem insane to most, yet when those we love hurt us, we can’t separate where love ended and abuse took over, we didn’t see love die.

 

Love changed into abuse like an actor changing costumes, in a reverse way, all appeared to look the same, but inside the damage lay.

 

Our definition of love changed, replaced by this unnatural event.

 

What we failed to notice was love slipped away, totally.  It did not stay.  Love cannot be with abuse.

 

The magic trick our mind had to do to continue allowing us to be with folks who hurt us, was to erase the old meaning of love and add a new one.

 

Taking the natural whole meaning of love and adding abuse, degrading, manipulating, painful, hurtful, emptiness piled high until all we are left with was self- loathing.

 

Instead of hating the abuser, we began hating ourselves.

 

Self -hate instead of self -love, the switch was made, the costumes exchanged, but perhaps it was done on the wrong one.

 

We needed to change who they were, instead we changed who we were.

 

We walk away feeling guilty for an act we did not do, but an act that was done to us. 

 

We mustered up the strength to walk along damaged inside, silently hating and hurting, putting on a ‘normal’ face.

 

The normal face we tried to keep was on them.

 

What an insidious game we played, what work it was to ‘pretend’ they were normal, what work to pretend that we were too.

 

For when we couldn’t speak of who they were, we couldn’t speak of our inner wounds, we couldn’t tell anyone that love slipped away, that abuse took its place, that the normal inside of us was replaced.

 

So what is normal natural love?  What was there before abuse slipped in and pushed love out?  Who were we before this happened?  Can we remember?

 

How does it feel to not be abused?

 

While we try and sort out love from abuse, the abusers seem to walk away free.

 

Instead of looking inside of us, the clues are outside.

 

Reality needs the adjustment in our minds.

 

In our minds the costume changed, not in reality.

 

In our minds we exchanged love for abuse and called it even.

 

In our minds we exchanged dad for pedophile and called it even.

 

In our minds we exchanged mom for pedophile lover and called it even.

 

In our minds we exchanged reality for a pretend land and called it even.

 

As long as we lived in our minds only, we were normal, they were normal, and all was normal.

 

In our minds that love was normal, but what is out of our minds Love?

 

What is Love that stands alone, Love that water cannot wet, fire cannot burn, what is that Love?

 

Is that a Love that can be sold, bought or destroyed? 

 

When abuse comes in does Love change or is it just simply waiting for us to discover it didn’t go anywhere, we did!

 

Love doesn’t fall out of someone, you can’t lose Love, but we can fail to notice Love, you can look away.

 

 

  

A Powerful Story.

 

I am reading a book by Donald Miller called “A Million Miles and A Thousand Years.”

 

He speaks of being a writer.

 

“If I wanted my character to advance the plot by confronting another character, the character wouldn’t necessarily obey me.  I’d put my fingers on the keyboard, but my character, who was supposed to go to Kansas, would end up in Mexico, sitting on a beach drinking a margarita.  I’d delete whatever dumb thing the character did and start over, only to have him grab the pen again and start talking nonsense to some girl in a bikini.  He’d do this, remember, in a story about a performance artist-turned-ecoterrorist.

 

And as I worked on the novel, as my character did what he wanted and ruined my story, it reminded me of life in certain ways.  I mean as I sat there in my office feeling like God making my worlds, and as my characters fought to have their own way, their senseless, selfish way of nonstory, I could identify with them.  I fought with my ecoterrorist who wanted a boring life of self indulgence, and yet I was also that character, fighting God and I could see God sitting at his computer, staring blankly at his screen as I asked him to write in some money and some sex and some comfort.

 

I like the part of the Bible that talks about God speaking the world into existence, as though everything we see and feel were sentences from his mouth, all the wet of the world his spit.

 

I feel written.  My skin feels written, and my desires feel written.  My sexuality was a word spoken by God, that I would be male, and I would have brown hair and brown eyes and come from a womb.  It feels literary, doesn’t it, as if we are characters in books.

 

You can call it God or a conscience, or you can dismiss it as intuitive knowing we all have as human beings, as living storytellers; but there is a knowing I feel that guides me toward better stories, toward being a better character.  I believe there is a writer outside ourselves, plotting a better story for us, interacting with us, even, whispering a better story into our consciousness.

 

As a kid, the only sense I got from God was guilt, something I dismissed as a hypersensitive conscience I got from being raised in a church with a controlling pastor.  But that isn’t the voice I am talking about.  That voice really was the leftover hypersensitive conscience I got from being raised in a church with a controlling pastor.

 

The real Voice is stiller and smaller and seems to know, without confusion, the difference between right or wrong and the subtle delineation between the beautiful and the profane.  It’s not an agitated Voice, but ever patient as though it approves a million false starts.  The Voice I am talking about is deep water of calming wisdom that says, Hold your tongue: don’t talk about that person that way; forgive the friend you haven’t talked to; don’t look at that woman as a possession; I want to show you a sunset; look and see how short life is and how your troubles are not worth worrying about…..

 

So as I was writing my novel, and as my characters did what he wanted, I became more and more aware that somebody was writing me.  So I started listening to the Voice, or rather I started calling it the Voice and admitting there was a Writer.  I admitted something other than me was showing a better way. And when I did this, I realized the Voice, the Writer who was not me, was trying to make a better story, a more meaningful series of experiences I could live through. 

 

At first, even though I could feel God writing something different, I’d play the scene the way I wanted.  This never worked.  It would always have been better to obey the Writer, the one who knows the better story.  I’d talk poorly about somebody and immediately know I’d done it because I was insecure, and I’d know I was a weak character who was jealous and undisciplined.

 

So I started obeying a little.  I’d feel God wanting me to hold my tongue, and I would.  It didn’t feel natural at first; it felt fake, like I was being a character somebody else wanted me to be and not who I actually was; but if I held my tongue, the scene would play better, and I always felt better when it was done.  I started feeling like a better character, and when you are a better character, your story gets better too.

Don Miller

 

I way understand what he is saying, that if we give up our direction we think the character called Me is heading and instead just be written into each moment, you will be surprised how much better the story called ‘your life’ will turn out.

 

What I also got from his book thus far was that the writer doesn’t know where you are going, but he does know your character and what would make you a better character, and like he said, and a better story called you.

 

When I am in doubt about what I should do, I do nothing right away, instead of projecting myself in to somewhere I am unsure of the outcome, I step back and see if a better idea comes.

 

I just didn’t know that as a character, I was waiting on the Writer.

 

Also, if you allow the ‘Writer/God’ to direct you, you will be asked to face conflict, overcome weakness, face challenges, live real and feel, to learn more about the character called self.

 

Learning about yourself in moments that require your character to participate and not head to the nearest beach for it is much easier.

 

Your character is an artistic rendition of allowing the Universe to write upon the slate of who you will become.

 

Be a submissive character to a powerful Writer, and you will become a powerful character and your life a powerful story!

 

 

 

I Am Most Grateful For Grace.

Its Happy Thanksgiving Day, a day to be thankful, a day to be with family, at least that is the tradition.  I will be with my husband and children and our dog, we will travel to meet my husband’s family two hours away.

 

What does being thankful mean to you?  Are you thankful for what you have or thankful for what you don’t have?

 

I don’t think you can get ahead of the feelings of gratitude or thankfulness; it is a feeling, an overwhelming overflowing all encompassing knowing of heart, soul and mind.

 

Saying the proper words, being polite or mindlessly repeating the phrase, “thank you” doesn’t bring on gratitude.

 

I heard somewhere that gratitude is an attitude.

 

It also seems we are taught to only be grateful or thankful for the nice things, the good things that happen to us, but we are not shown how to look at the difficult things.

 

In my experience, discovering the lesson or gift in times of great difficulty, are the things I am most grateful for. 

 

When you can look at stressful times as potential gift- bringing- times, you will become grateful all the time.

 

I am grateful for all the wonderful loving, joyful, peaceful times, I am also grateful that I can dip down into the very deep stressful situations and come out with a part of me that lay buried.

 

I am grateful that something within me is allowing me to experience the darkness and then the awakening into Light.

 

My journey seems to have two distinct shades and I have been able to witness and experience both sides.  I love that what I thought were the worst of times, was actually the awakening of a whole new me.

 

So, as I sit here on Thanks Giving Day my plate is heaped with things I am grateful for.

 

There are certain folks who seem to stand out as I look back, ones I feel most grateful for.

 

I am most grateful for my husband, for his uncanny ability to allow me to be myself, always.  He patiently allows me to become who I need to be, not who he needs me to be.  His support of me emotionally, physically and spiritually has allowed me to grow up with him.  He gives the same to his children, so he blesses us all in simply allowing us to be ourselves.  Free to be me!  He loved the old me and then was brave enough to let a new me come forth.  He was strong enough to withstand my darkest hours.  It is easy to be with someone in the good times, but in the dark times, it really requires a whole new set of skills.  I am grateful he walked by me.  I love that most; he loved me when I didn’t know who I was.  I love you.

 

I am grateful for my brother who has listened to me endlessly.  He challenged me by being truthful in his dysfunction as well as challenging me in mine.  His courage and honesty are far beyond most.  I am grateful he shares his life with me, we have taught each other how real relationships work, empty of all pretenses, a brother and a friend.  He of all knows my past story and the walk it takes to walk free, I am grateful I had a partner on this journey well I had two, he and my husband each held a hand.  I love you.

 

I am grateful for my children and how patient they have been.  How they tried hard to love me when I was so hard on them.  I am beyond grateful to be given the opportunity to develop new relationships with each of them.  I am grateful for the love I feel towards them, the freedom I can allow as they learn about themselves.  I love each and feel that they felt the worst of my dysfunction.  We are on the road of healing and learning a new way to be with each other.  I love you for being patient with me.  I have always loved you, but didn’t know how to express it right.  I am so grateful I can learn to do it right.

 

Words seem inadequate to describe all the mountains of gratitude I have.

 

I will be forever grateful for old friends and new.  How they are willing to hear me and see me and will be with me anyway.  As I learn what real friendship means and how each have a season a reason or a lifetime.  I am grateful for friends who shared each part of my journey.

 

I am grateful for the honesty of my childhood family who can’t accept my changes, how they didn’t pretend to be someone they couldn’t be.

 

They showed me a thousand examples of dysfunction so clear, I knew which way I had to go. 

 

I am grateful beyond words that I was one to see the truth in reality, in its harsh landscape I found me.

 

I am forever grateful for Nature and its brightness how simple it seemed, brilliantly being itself, it showed me how to be me!

 

There is no part of me that I am not grateful for, no part of my walk I could have not had, all of it, the darkness expressed brilliantly how bad life can be, and the Light, just how bright.

 

Imagine there are some who only see one side.  I am wealthy beyond measure for I saw both.

 

I am grateful to have experienced the entire journey called life, the darkness, fear/terror, wretchedness, blindness, pain, suffering, to the Lightness of peace, love and joy. 

 

The feelings of immense gratitude of not being locked in the darkness forever leave me very humble. 

 

“There but for the Grace of God go I”

 

I am most grateful for Grace.

 

 

 

All Eyes On The Child's Wound

"It is a relationship with the self that is flawed. Parts of the self get literally walled off from them. They can't love them," he says. "They can't even access them." Dr. Drew says speaking of Sex Addictions.

 

Sex addiction isn't as simple as promiscuity. Dr. Drew defines the disease as an intimacy disorder. People who are addicted to sex may be afraid or unfamiliar with intimacy, so they substitute sex for real human closeness.

"Sexuality is something that should make you feel good about yourself," Dr. Drew says. "[When you're a sex addict], you've lost control of your sexuality."

Many sex addicts do have one thing in common. Dr. Drew says 80 to 90 percent suffered trauma as children. "If you have a history of trauma, particularly sexual trauma, in childhood, you want to look very carefully at this behavior," he says.

In fact, Dr. Drew says these terrorizing experiences can influence who you're drawn to as an adult. "The people and places that cause terror in childhood cause attraction in adulthood," he says. "We end up being repetitively attracted to the same kind of person that obliges us by acting out the same behavior over again."

This was on the Oprah show yesterday, and I missed seeing it, but read about it on her website, www.oprah.com

 

And just a few days ago, my junior high math teacher was arrested for child porn. http://www.jsonline.com/news/crime/70303702.html

 

 

Unless we start to treat the children who are molested correctly, healing the wound in childhood, they will become the addicts of the future.

 

It is so incredible to me.  We have to stop the cycle at the child, or not be surprised with the outcome of adult children of abuse.

 

The first question most ask me about my parents, “were they abused?”

 

Most realize that this is a cycle, that it began in childhood, but we fail to see the child today who is the victim, and that the child needs huge amounts of treatment to undo the abuse.

 

Sure we must put away the abuser, the one whose life has run amuck since his abuse, but we must stop the problem with the injured child today.

 

We spend lots of money on the abuser, and nothing on the child.

 

It seemed backwards then, how the defense team comes in and rescues my father from jail, how the focus is on him.  Yet no one came into rescue the wounded girls.

 

Most were too old and seen ‘useless’ for the trial, yet we were the most wounded, for we have added to that wound unknowingly.

 

We are left with a wrecked view of self, unable to access the part of us that lived prior to the abuse.

 

The outrage we feel towards the molester, may be society’s guilt at not dealing with the child years ago.

 

Our guilt and shame at ourselves for not facing and healing this wounded one.

 

As I sit here I know what wasn’t done for me.

 

How we are left alone flipped upside down and backwards, while most want to pretend we are normal.

 

There is no normal after that.

 

It is insanity to think so.

 

Yet we are fooled and surprised when an adult child of abuse abuses, for that is the only love/attention they have ever known.

 

Each time we neglect an abused child another abuser is born.

 

Hurt people, hurt people.

 

An abused person either lives as a victim or a perp.

Those are the only two choices.

 

The third choice must come in, a new way of dealing, healing and owning what is really going on.

 

It is time we focus all eyes on the child’s wound.

 

Nothing Left to Lose!

”I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.”

          Antoine de Saint-Exupery

 

I bumped into a friend yesterday, and we jumped into an hour-long discussion about how our parent’s behaviors, beliefs and ‘rightness’ sculpted us into a person of their ideals.

 

The pain of being who they wanted/needed us to be didn’t allow us to explore who we alone would want to be.

 

Our inner natural abilities, our imaginations, our hopes and dreams were silenced to fulfill theirs.  The deadness inside or the absence of knowing ourselves, keeps us blind of self.  We have no clue what life is without their dialogue narrating it.

 

Their narration of right and wrong steer us for years, and if we dare deviate, the guilt pushes us away from glancing at a separate self.

 

As the child grows up silent, the silence turns to resentfulness, and the tied up Spirit grows restless, until we dare to speak our feelings of forever falling short of the mark, theirs and ours, we are stuck.

 

The pain of not seeing yourself with your own two eyes, to be able to have the freedom to express your self leaves you in a huge hole of despair, and in order to spring free, you have to stop acting in your parents dreams of you, and find your own.

 

Usually the parent does not accept the ‘rebellion’, we are seen as traitors to their beliefs, that some how we have the power to diminish their beliefs by finding our own.

 

When your whole life has consisted of seeing the world through their eyes, your own eyes lose their power to discern reality.

 

Your eyes can only see you from another’s point of view.  We have been trained to act a certain way to escape fearful outcomes.

 

Either being shunned, to an afterlife of hell, to the rage of God, to the disapproval of our elders, their wrath and scorn, we toe the mark, letting our personal feelings, dreams and hopes detach from out world.

 

My first and foremost role for 46 years was to not step off the narrow road of approval.

 

The absence of self goes unnoticed until the folks you have been trying to please shine in their emptiness.

 

When our mentors or heroes stumble and fall and not even attempt to get up, when we see the truthfulness laid naked, our own self arises.

 

There seems to be a sliver of a moment, when the truth grows large in its details, which our parents are exposed and their dreams were to fill a lack within themselves.

 

Our task was to build a façade that they hid behind.

 

When all you have ever been is a façade builder, you find that you too had a façade that you are giving of your body to make another’s empty container feel full for a moment.

 

And then, you become the parent, empty and needing of others to fill you up.

 

To break this cycle takes extreme effort to stand alone and empty without a free and separate thought.

 

All my thoughts, ALL my thoughts were handed down to me from my parents, and lived within me for 46 years, my eyes were unable to see me, for there was no me to see.  I became the appendage of my parent’s worlds, I had no me! 

 

You set out in search of yourself, you have no idea who you are, or where to find you.

 

A missing you is so hard to find, when the only you was connected to others.

When my world came crashing down, or the façade that I was a builder on, when I seen what I was covering up, I looked around and didn’t see a sign of me anywhere.

 

It is shocking in its magnitude and the freedom unlimited.

 

After 46 years of following their construction details, I was able to put down their tools, and walk away.

 

I was a free Spirit.

 

Freedoms just another word for nothing left to lose!

 

“He who does not enjoy solitude will not love freedom.”

           Arthur Schopenhauer

 

 

Do you know abnormal?

Thanksgiving is right around the corner and what comes to mind are all the families gathering, and what seems to happen to those of us who are estranged, we feel somewhat stranger than normal.

 

While most seem to put aside their petty differences, those of us who have major differences are left without an option.

 

Family squabbles can be hushed for this special day, a joining of hands and hearts, all gathering to give thanks, “for all that we have and that we are all here together”.

 

Raising us up to a false sense of okay, allowing us to focus on what was working and letting our differences sit on the sides.

 

As my mother prayed for us to be together and her thanks in gratitude for what she had, she painted a nice picture, and we all helped her paint with our silence and not challenging her ways.

 

I heard Elizabeth Lesser speak today about normal families, and how she heard that “normal means someone you don’t know well”.

 

Normal is the picture of the surface; normal is the front that is shown to those we don’t know that well.

 

So if you like I seem to feel left out of ‘normal’ there is no normal out there!

 

Each family has its own squabbles, things that can’t be discussed or mentioned.

 

Now that I have spoken up in my family and mentioned the unmentionables, I see more "not" normal families.

 

It gives the matriarch of the family peace as she prays to keep her family together, for her children to get along, that there be peace and love, if only from her dreamlike view.

 

I have spoken to a few children who are unwilling to break their mothers hearts/dreams by mentioning the unmentionable.

 

Does silence make a family normal? 

 

Or is it more normal to be not normal!

 

Silence allows the unmentionables to go unspoken, unacknowledged, but silence doesn’t make them disappear.

 

In fact their crimes seem to multiply over the years, the pile growing larger spreading beneath the prayers.

 

What is normal?  

 

    usual: conforming to the usual standard, type, or custom

- healthy: physically, mentally, and emotionally health

- occurring naturally: maintained or occurring in a natural state

 

How many natural state families are there?  What is the standard we are to adhere to?

 

I am thinking ‘normal’ is like perfection, it is a pipe dream, a heaven to aspire to, but impossible to attain, and it mostly leaves you feeling left out and inept at being able to pull it off.

 

I had to look at the opposite of normal, abnormal.

 

-not normal, average, typical, or usual; deviating from a standard.

 

I am not sure I have met one family yet that occurred in a natural state.

 

I have admired the mamma duck waddle with her fuzzy yellow baby ducks wiggling behind her, quickly leading them away from me (danger).  I marveled at the way she intuitively did this.

 

What happens in human families? 

 

How do we get so far off course, where danger lives within our homes, where millions of little girls fall victim to abuse by the hands of their fathers, while their mother prays, “Let’s thank God, for all that we have and that we are all together.”

 

Abnormal to me are families where silence allows unmentionables to be, where we are taught not to mention the unmentionables, to live in a false place called normal.

 

Abnormal erodes away the normal children, until they too become abnormal.

 

How confusing this all gets, to strive to reach a natural state of occurring when abuse seemed more natural than real natural? 

 

What if we didn’t have a normal spot to stand on, or an island of peace, a section of comfort, and a zone where we could sort out the natural from the natural abnormal?

 

It seems I was given natural unnatural love. 

 

My unnatural attention hurt, yet I had to tell myself it was for my own good, that I deserved the hollering for mentioning the unmentionables, for not keeping the family balanced in an unbalanced way.

 

The cross-eyed way we had to look, while trying to pull off natural!

 

Normal is abnormal or so it seems to me.

 

Look around and listen to the undercurrents in families, the pretense and ‘don’t go there’ sentences attached to buttons that will implode and expose the ‘normal’ in the abnormal.

 

Unless you have been raised in a normal abnormal home, in a state where abnormal occurred always, you will not get this whole post.

 

My normal was abnormal and even trying to get back to normal would be abnormal, for how can someone who was raised abnormal ever be normal again.

 

Is there a rebirth? 

Is there a moment where you get to be a virgin to normal?

Can you tell your natural state when it occurs?

 

Maybe more important, do you know abnormal?

 

My Spirit Experiencing Life Itself!

Robert Bly also writes, Some old traditions say that no man is adult until he has become opened to the soul and spirit world, and they say that such an opening is done by a wound in the right place, at the right time, in the right company.  A wound allows the spirit or soul to enter.  James Hillman, referring to Hans Castorp in “The Magic Mountain,” and the spot of tuberculosis on Castrop’s lung says, “Through the little hole of his wound, the immense realm of the spirit enters.”

 

I know this to be true.  It is when you feel so wounded, so forlorn, that you see life from a new angle.

 

It is was in my darkest moments that I would walk outside, for my grief was more than this house could hold, and I would be overwhelmed by the Spirit of the Universe.

 

Its immenseness overpowered the weight of the grief.

In the battle of dark and Light, Light won.

 

It wasn’t that the grief just magically disappeared, but I had a place to go to feel immense joy, to know my life and its purpose was much larger than I.

 

It was in the darkest of dark nights, when emotions and feelings overwhelmed me, the feelings of worthlessness, of not mattering, of being so utterly neglected and used, that I found the Spirit in me.

 

The mightiness of the Spirit and the weight of the wound left me breathless most of the time.  From great heights of joy, love and peace, to the deepness of anxiety and shame/blame and pain, I rode the roller coaster ride of emotions.

 

To go from unfeeling to feeling so much, it overwhelmed my body, like a tsunami they flowed taking with it all the mind chatter and worry, and all I could do was be with this one moment in time.

 

Feel this.  Each high wave brought tears either of joy or grief.  Inside of my chest came alive.  I can’t even describe that feeling there. 

 

It still happens today, a word, a scene in nature, an apple tree bare of all leaves, with just gold apples on display, make me gulp and feel its display, its pureness of being and doing itself.

 

Reality takes my breath away and feeling feelings and emotions whether they are slight or immense, is my Spirit experiencing life itself!

 

 

 

We see and say, "I M Perfect!"

This is from the end of “Iron John” by Robert Bly;

 

A dear friend told me a story.  This man’s father fled the family in shame when the son was five, and the son felt for years shamed himself through this abandonment.  In his twenties the son went to Japan and spent ten years studying the martial arts with a strong mentor.  It was only after learning the art that he was able to return to his own family and take his rightful place there.  To be without a supportive father is for a man an alternative phrase for “to be in shame.”  His support, as the boy’s in our story, came from a substitute father – in his story, a martial mentor, in our story Iron John.  Only when a man’s interior warriors are strong enough can he go into the joy of display.

 

With this strength he can also enter into the delight of form.  Shapeless clothing, verse that is sloppy, chaotic furnishings; all are linked in secret ways to shame.  The Universe is not ashamed, and delights in form.  The sun rising over the ocean and setting in the ocean, the moon’s lonely shining and hidings, the leaves unfolding and falling are its displays.

 

Poetry is a form of display.  The poet bird repeats vowels and consonants in order to widen its tail.  Meter and counted syllables make up a peacock tail.  The poem is a dance fro some being in another world. 

 

The delight of form, then, moves one away from the old duality of hero and enemy, right and wrong, male adversary and female adversary.  When a man or a woman enters ritual space, each takes actions meant to be seen, and the joy of display helps pull energy away that would otherwise be invested in conflict.

 

This section of the book explained how a boy that didn’t get the support from his father, needs a strong mentor in order for him to ‘display’ himself. 

 

I take that he is unable to stand tall in his own power.  And that all his energy is then invested in conflict, a struggle to make himself right, he has to make another wrong.

 

It has to be the same for women.  In picking up a relationship that is broken between my sister and I, I can feel the conflict arising. 

 

How our energy gets invested in conflict, instead of being invested in self- power.

 

What I want most is for her to test the truth of my words in her reality.

 

What I want least is a battle between right and wrong, but somehow that is what seems to happen. I see two wounded girls she may only see one.

 

What I want most is for us to be able to display ourselves with all our wounds, to stand up and say our truths, for the truth will set you free.

 

It is the courage to accept, that you find the courage to heal.

 

We truly need to display our wounded ness in order to display our joy.

 

Hiding in the darkness we are lost, it is only when we take our darkness into the light, do we find our wholeness there.

 

As we stand in the Light, displaying our brokenness, we see that our imperfections are perfectly perfect.

 

We see and say, “I M Perfect.”

 

I refuse to call it love when I feel fear.

Don't pretend to be what you are not, don't refuse to be what you are. Nisagradatta Maharaj

 

This seems so easy, like a very honorable and authentic way to be, and why would you want to do you differently?

 

“Don’t pretend to be what you are not”.  What does that mean?

 

To me it means to be what you feel, but what happens if you feel frightened of family, then what.

 

It is an odd place to be in, where others feel comfortable and at home with family, I am uneasy, and feel shaky inside.

 

And I have the key to stop the fear, to tame the beast called family.  I lie.

 

I pretend to be what I am not, and then they will not holler at me, say mean things, and pretend to be happy with me.

 

Does this make sense to you?

 

If I pretend to go along with the flow of abuse and abusers, if I just quietly get back in line, they will all recede and go back to a false normal.

 

I become a false me which allows them to be a false them.

They can then pretend to be interested in me and I can pretend that I agree with them.

 

We will be a pretend family, pretending to be comfortable with each other.

 

How often in the past I pretended to go along, while inside I was in total disagreement?  How often did I toss aside who I was and pretended to agree?  Endlessly.

 

My mother demanded her way or she would scorn her disproval, and we would get left feeling less than.

 

I didn’t realize how much her way has influenced me in being a people pleaser and how hard it is to face the scorn and the withdrawal of love.

 

Perhaps the withdrawal of love hurts more.

 

I have heard rumors that I have two brothers in town, who came up for hunting, and it feels me with dread to happen upon them.

 

It seems that life requires me to dip back into the waters of that family time and time again.

 

“Time heals all wounds” is a downright lie.  The wounds in our relationship between sister and brother or sister and sister don’t heal with time.

 

They are not healed magically after almost 5 years of absence, and my body and soul don’t forget their last words or their actions, it trembles when we face them yet again.

 

I wonder about that?  I wonder what that means about me?

Mostly I wonder if I will always respond to them that way?

 

Wouldn’t it be worse to not tremble?

 

Shouldn’t my body respond in kind when facing them?  Is it the correct response to someone bringing bad energy?

It makes me feel better knowing that my body, reality and my knowing are all in agreement.  These folks are not coming to me bringing kindness and love.

 

Even though it hurts to know that they want to harm me, it makes me feel better to stand firm with the sensations of my body.

 

Byron Katie in her book “Loving What Is,” speaks of ‘something in me tends to move away from you’.   It is like we are being steered away and we move in agreement.

 

This is how I feel, but another part of me is apologetic for being repelled by them.

 

My body and its warning system haven’t failed me yet.

I have failed it.

 

I failed to notice its warning lights.

I failed to move away, to steer clear of bad energy and I caused my body disease.

 

Now that I have corrected the readings and adjusted or I am attuned to its perfection, I refuse to be what I am not.

 

I refuse to call it love when I feel fear.