IMPERFECT Lady

In Charge Of Me!

What a great realization that their mess is their mess, their enlightenment is their enlightenment, their life is theirs, to put into prospective what is rightfully my own.

 

Imagine living with a bunch of lives within you, to be so connected that their poor choice feels like your poor choice!

 

Last night I read again from The Presence Process and the following paragraphs caught my attention.

 

“We can discover the identity of the negative emotion beneath the charge that we are carrying by stopping habits and/or addictions.  The emotions that consequently erupt will reveal the nature and the intensity of the negative emotional charge that unconsciously drives our self-medicating behavior.  All addictions are self-medication, and all are passed on through vibrational, emotional, mental and physical imprinting.  Effectively decreasing our negative emotional charge is the only causative treatment for addiction that has any real and lasting effect.  The outer physical self-medicating habit is an effect of an inner emotional condition, so quitting our self-medicating behaviors without releasing the attached charge accomplishes nothing real.  It is ineffectual.  All that will occur is that our self-medication will be transferred from one behavior pattern to another.

 

The extent of the negative emotional charge is what separates a person who is “in charge” of his or her life from a person who is “carrying a charge” through his or her life.  When a person enters our sphere of awareness, it is not immediately apparent whether they are in charge or carrying a charge.  However, observing their behaviors over a period of time will tell all.  Everyone who is carrying a substantial negative emotional charge will exhibit physical, mental and emotional drama sooner or later.  It will manifest automatically in their outer life experiences.  They will also have to lace their life with self-medication behaviors; they will have to establish their means of sedation and control through habits and addictions.  Society’s acceptance of alcohol and cigarettes enables us to self-medicate openly without feeling awkward about our inability to integrate our uncomfortable inner emotional condition.”

                Michael Brown

 

I way love how we either are In Charge or Carrying a Charge.

 

It is my experience that I felt that it was me that ignited the charge, that I was able to send fireworks flying upon a word or deed I did.

 

Instead it is my understanding that we walk around fully loaded, or fully in charge.

 

It is amazing that self-medications are to keep the charge from exploding and going off, and what we need most is to get to the bottom of the charge.

 

To explore the stockpile of explosives we are carrying around, to see what unexpressed or unfelt emotions are riding shotgun in our lives.

 

This is so freeing to me that the explosive charge is not mine to explore in others, the only place I can have lasting peace is to express and feel all that I stored within me.

 

I love how the more in charge you are, the less of a charge you carry.

 

You know how it is when you feel that someone has buttons to push everywhere, that it seems you are in front of a live wire, or an explosive device but are not sure what will send it flying, now I know that it isn’t so much what I say, but what kind of inner charge they are ignoring.

 

He gave examples of this inner fire.

“In the heat of the moment.”

“Hot under the collar”

“Going to blow my top”

“Letting off steam”

“Losing my cool”

“I’m in hot water now.”

 

Isn’t it amazing how we say such wise things, but really don’t understand the totality of what we are saying!

 

To be in charge, to face our lives without the past voltage of negative energies is a huge accomplishment, and I feel it takes going into the fire of past hurts, pains and discomforts to take the charge out of them.

 

To express our feelings which we were unable to do back then, we get to go back and drag them up, and be with them awhile, to finally lay them to rest.

 

Until all that is left is an empty bullet shell, an incident we fully expressed.

 

If we don’t, we are like hidden land mines and others pay the price, our shrapnel flies everywhere injuring everyone in its wake, when they happen to say or do the wrong thing that sets us off.

 

This gives me such comfort to know I am not in charge of your charge; I am only in charge of me!

 

Happy Birthday To Me!

Michael Brown writes about joy;  “In ‘time’ we confuse joy with the outer changing experience of happiness, and we confuse creativity with the outer busy-ness of making or accumulating ‘stuff’.  Yet joy is not about feeling good; it’s about feeling everything.  Creativity is not about rearranging the content of the physical world to make life easier or more convenient for us; it is about embracing it all as the raw materials intended to assist us to realize our highest potential.”

 

As I sit at the end of this day, on the eve of my 51^st Birthday, I am feeling the sharp edge, the brutally clear view of never.

 

My family will never be the family I strived to have, my love for them changes nothing, nor does taking it away.

 

It seems love should have some power, some magic to transform ugliness to pretty images.

 

The marbles in my hand turn to stone.

 

Like backwards magic changing my inner desires into shattered dreams.

 

In my throat I feel the thirst to save, turn to tears of knowing, it is not up to me.

 

I guess I had grand pictures of us all being transformed into beautiful innocent children dancing in the field of pure potential, greater and more courageous for having walked through the ring of fire, tempered into courageous works of Art. 

 

A family of misfits who had the courage to embrace and own their darkness until they shown with enlightened awareness, bright.

 

No part of my body will hold on to hope, there is not a place to hold it. 

 

I feel the ending in every part of my being, my stomach feels relief and opens softly in a sigh, and rest is at hand, finally. 

 

The clench of responsibility seems to be dissolving and the restlessness of doing ‘something’ quiets.

 

Even my arms are quiet, still and without tension.

 

My mind and head feel less hard and intense no more searching for the right words to say, my head can be my own.

 

It is like a huge parasite has left me alone, or the strings of the puppet fell free.

 

One part of me feels the hollow container where a family should reside and the other side feels the breeze of freedom.

 

My weary body is in repose, at last.

My heart beats in sorrow and in relief, letting go and reaching to life being free.

 

The separation feels complete….

I feel like someone I have never met.

My insides are new to me.

 

How synchronistic that tomorrow is my birthday.

 

Happy Birthday To Me!

 

You Can Walk Alone.

I saw a glimpse of myself yesterday, a reluctant woman standing there, unable or even having the desire to walk away.

 

The game is over, the race is completed, the field is empty, it is all over and I am still standing there like there is more to come. 

 

Looking for more, unwilling to see the end of the parade or the final fireworks, hoping for something, waiting unfulfilled.

 

Unfulfilled with reality and waiting upon its completion to serve me my expectations, I sit and I wait.

 

Inside I am left with the feeling of being letdown, again, disappointed and sad and the feelings of profound loneliness and grief arise and the finality of never.

 

If never arises then all hope has to die, if all hope dies then I have to own never.

 

Never is such a barren place it reaches far beyond the stars, its hollow silent sounds echo inside of me.

 

Never means the game is over.

 

What happens if the game is over, finished, complete?

 

It seems like in order to move on, I have to own that I did what I could and now it is fruitless to continue to sit waiting.

 

At some point you have to know when to say when.

 

This all goes back to my being responsible, for me being the one in charge, in control of saving or helping or doing something for my siblings. 

 

Something, anything, but to get up and walk away!

 

Even if I haven’t been in their presence for many years, it was my hope that they would read my words, and use them as a guide,

that I was writing many signposts along this journey, for them.

 

I wrote for myself sure, but one eye was always on how they too could use what I said as guide.

 

I guess it gave me a sense I was still helping and being responsible, somehow I still needed that.

 

Below is what I read last night in The Presence Process, and it seems to explain to me, me.

 

“Many of us in this world appear to be 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 have learned how to truly nurture and unconditionally love ourselves do we develop the propensity for authentic service. Unless we consciously step into present moment and own our life, our ability to be truly of assistance in this world will remain shallow and ineffectual.”

 

How sad that I was trying to nurture and care for them, while sacrificing myself.

 

How sad that I was given the task at such a small age to take care of and nurture so many lost children, while being a lost child myself.

One lost child taking care of so many other hurting lost children.

 

It seems that I am forever falling short of the mark, and that all my nurturing and caring is for naught.

 

Suffering children everywhere.

 

Unless and until I can nurture myself, guide myself and find my innocence, I will be unable to nurture another.

 

Mostly what I tried to do was both.  I was unable to let the hurting children hurt while I walked away to heal my own wounds.

 

And sadly, not one of the hurting children are asking for me to help them, or to nurture them, lead, guide, teach, talk, speak, or be with any one of them.

 

I had taken it upon myself to view them as hurting as I am hurting, view them as suffering as I am suffering, see them through my pain.

Perhaps even take on their pain as mine.

 

To stop the pain, the discomfort and the knowing that there is no mother coming, no father taking care, I will stand in front of and protect them from knowing and feeling.

 

Feeling so alone, hopeless, helpless and uncared for.

 

Yet this whole blog has been about the failure of our parents to parent, the affects of being abused, the pain and confusion of growing up in a home so twisted.

 

Maybe the guilt comes from letting down that façade I tried to build for them, by now revealing what is.

 

Somehow inside of me, I felt like I was the buffer of it all, that I could hold some of the pain back, and take on the burden by lessening their load, while my own load wobbled carelessly in the balance.

 

I somehow feel like a failure not being able to present them with a family.  Like somehow I failed to give them what they needed the most, and in the end I let us all down.

 

I had built up an inside expectation perhaps, that if I could save but one child, it would all be worth it, I just never knew I was only saving myself.

 

It seems so selfish and so wrong to simply save yourself.

 

To make moves to take your self away from abuse, while leaving the rest behind.

 

My mind has a hard time seeing the difference between the cold mother and me.

 

Yet inside I feel that my little girl is in a better place today, and that I have nurtured her and have guided her as a parent who

loves unconditionally.

 

I have loved her broken and twisted state, and have been with her as she stumbled forward without a map to follow, unsteady and unsure.

 

I have watched her walk on and away from the only love and family she ever knew, to rebuild and grow.

 

She did not walk alone.  One brother set out on the same path, together leaning upon each other, they moved forward, leaving behind many, two broken souls on a journey to becoming whole.

 

I had said this Blog is the longest good-bye, and perhaps it is.  I couldn’t just walk away uncaring, I had to leave words, even if they are just for me.  The book I wished I had.

 

Good-Bye is final, I could not carry you then and now, I leave you where I first picked you up, broken and twisted.  I am sorry, I have to put you down so you can walk alone. 

 

To What End?

Between going back in my blog and reading Martha Beck’s book, “Leaving the Saints,” I see how it always falls into just two sides.

 

It seems very cut and dried, just two people and their view of the same exact event, failing to agree. 

 

What if the event is between father and daughter in abuse?

 

Martha Beck met with her 90-year-old father after a ten-year estrangement and shares this.

 

“Well, see, Dad,” I say carefully, “I find your reaction to the scar thing kind of strange.”  I notice his eyes widening a little, perhaps because I’m openly disagreeing with him, perhaps because I called him dad.  This suddenly feels right.  It feels like rebellion.  It’s the harshest, most disrespectful word I’ve ever deliberately said to him.

 

“If one of my daughter’s turned up with a lot of weird scars,” I go on, enjoying the giddy reckless feeling of saying what I actually think, “I wouldn’t just blame the Evil One, and drop the subject.  I would want to know what happened to her.”

 

“Nothing happened.” My father’s voice carries a ring of absolute assurance, absolute finality, that has made him a safe haven for so many Mormons whose faith is getting a little wobbly. The debate is resolved, the balcony is closed, the fat lady has sung, the last dog is hung, that is all she wrote.

 

This dead-certain tone is characteristic of many deeply religious folk, but Mormons are trained to use it about as thoroughly as any group of people I’ve ever known.  As soon as they can talk, Mormon toddlers are held up to microphones in church meetings, lisping to hundreds of onlookers the words their parents whisper in their ears; “I know the Church is true.  I know that Joseph Smith was a true prophet.  I know our president is God’s prophet on the earth.  I know these things without a shadow of doubt.”

 

Mormons tend to know a whopping lot of stuff beyond a shadow of doubt.  I envy them.  My whole life is shadowed by doubt.  The only conviction I embrace is this; whatever I believe, I may be wrong.

 

For a moment, looking at the stern pioneer conviction on my father’s handsome face, I’m so disoriented that I feel my brain twirling even faster – not in agreement but in familiar hopelessness, in the sickening conviction that no one will ever take my word over his.  Everything seems to slither right off the hard drive in my head.  “He’s right:” People underestimate the capacity for things to disappear.  At the moment, I can’t even remember the chain of events that took me out of Mormonism, that have made me “a hiss and a byword” not only to my father, not only to my family, but to an entire religion.

 

Then I remember Miranda and Diane, just a few feet away and my vision seems to clear.  The whole thing comes back to me, the journey that has taken me out of religion and into faith.  I recall its horror and beauty, the enormity of things I have lost and the incalculable preciousness of the things I’ve 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.  If Santayana is right, this means I must be willing to remember the whole story.  I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and force myself to go back to the beginning.

             Martha Beck

Her and I share a common story, being abused by our fathers and having to deal with religious overtones, is like attacking two sacred cows at once.

 

The Dead-Certain Tone is how my mother speaks and her certainty is beyond the shadow of doubt and leaves no opening for another’s view. 

 

My father said more than once, “I don’t remember” or “whatever they said I did.”  He never once brought forth remorsefully his own personal responsibility in the ‘event’ of child abuse.

 

Yet as adult children of this ‘event’, what we want most is for there to be an agreement towards the ‘event’, not even so much as who is to blame, but that the actual ‘event’ really happened.

 

She had scars, literally physical scars to her bottom from her ‘event’ and he still, at 90 years old says, “Nothing happened.”

 

Neither side is willing to recant.

To retreat, to surrender, you stand at an impasse.

 

Can a relationship be found on the island of impasse?

Is this where you are supposed to agree to disagree?

To each respectfully bow to the others point of view?

 

I feel huge amounts of angst in the frustration to face such a figure, to bare your wounds in a show and tell, and have them dismissed in a dead certain tone.

 

A lone voice against loud chatter of canned responses, where it seems we are not even granted access to the man behind the tone, the woman behind the religious front, we stand outside and alone, shunned and our words falling on deaf ears, two sides so horribly off balanced.

 

We finally have the courage and the words and we shakily stand, heart and soul in hand, pleading for them to see us.

 

Our family stands Dead tone certain against us, like a cold front bringing in bone chilling truths.

 

To feel the cold, to experience the dead certain tones spoken without compassion or empathy, freezes something within you, covers with ice, the coldness of their lack of response.

 

Death to a relationship, dead it now stands.

 

It wasn’t the ‘event’ that killed the relationship, but the cold dead tone after it.

 

What I feel most from them is cold, bone chilling cold, remorseless, dead certain tones, that I am wrong.

 

I feel the tiredness and hopelessness.

I feel the artic blast towards me freezing me out of that family while they will state in dead certain tones I left!

 

I left?! 

 

I left and am now writing in a blog about it, but to what end?

 

 

 

A Pretend Story In Front of It.

"One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest."     Maya Angelou

 

While rereading many of my old posts, I can see where I had built up a story outside of reality for 46 years and how I was un-telling that story and then retelling the story with actual facts.

 

It is like there were two separated stories going on at the same time, but only one has actual actions.

 

In one post I talked about either tending reality or pretending reality wasn’t there.  I would now say, that we can either tend this moment and what is, or pre tend another moment yet to arrive, or past tend a moment in the past.

 

Pretend. (V)

1.    act as if something were true: to make believe that something is the case or that you are doing something by using your imagination or acting skills

2.    make insincere claim about something: to claim untruthfully or exaggeratedly to be or to have a particular thing, or imply something in this way

3.    make something seem to be true: to act in a way intended to make somebody believe something untrue or misleading.

 

I am first of all shocked that the word pretend is a verb, and secondly it speaks of ‘acting’ like it is an action, not just a mind game, but that it actually has actions.

 

I know that this may really show my stupidity, but I am in awe that pretending something requires an action. “To act in a way intending to make somebody believe something untrue and misleading.”  Shocking.

 

While I have been comfortable with my mother’s blindness, this somehow makes it more assaulting.  It actually shows that a person has to know the truth and then work on misleading. 

 

She was attacking the truth with actions of pretend!

 

It just proves that she knew and that she tried to act her way into a different reality, to mislead her children down a road that led to nowhere.

 

I am blown away that pretend is actually doing something.

 

“To hold before, or put forward, as a cloak or disguise for something else; to exhibit as a veil for something hidden,” is another meaning of pretend.

 

It just floors me that in order to pretend, you have to know the truth and then put on an Act to cover, mislead, to throw on a veil and hide something.

 

She led the long line of pretenders, steering us always away from the truth, we marched along like willing soldiers, creating a veil for which my father was able to hide behind.

 

This unties the tangle that I had inside of me, the twisted up thoughts of her having to know, and yet her actions of not knowing, I couldn’t seem to justify or find clarity there. 

 

I had her lost in her mind, blind to His actions. Instead this puts her as a full fledged participant.

 

Pretending has nothing to do with staying in this moment tending to what is, it actually is to act out in front of this moment as a shield and a disguise, a magic act.

 

I guess I felt better knowing my mother somehow was incapable of digesting the truth, this shows that the truth was there all along, and in front of it she acted like it was not there.

 

I must now look at my pretend actions.  My pretending I did not fear him.  I acted like I wasn’t,  I acted fearless, I was acting in front of the truth of being in terror.  Trying to pull off no fear.

 

Somehow this makes life seem more complicated, yet more simple, which is why if you are willing to know the truth, it will appear, for it was there all along.

 

When I stated that I simply couldn’t pretend to pretend to pretend anymore, I literally had no idea that I was unable to act anymore!

 

I even recall stating that my scripts and lines were all wrong, that I left the stage of their madness.

 

I was horrified to know what my scripts and lines supported, I was one of the many actors acting out normal in a very dysfunctional family.

 

Somehow knowing that they all have the truth within them, and that they are pretending out in front of it, brings me peace. 

 

It is not up to me to deliver the truth to them, to be the one to show them the truth that is already there, what I guess happens instead is that they get tired of acting

 

Acting out in a play where all they can ever be is a supporting actor, to the main characters of mom and dad.

 

How sad to spend all your time and efforts on a pretend family.  How sad to have a family lost in pretend.

 

I really didn’t fully understand how this all was orchestrated.  Somehow I missed the whole picture, I did not see them out in front of truth, I saw them without the truth.

 

I saw them not knowing the truth. 

 

They know, but are working hard to pretend in front of it.

 

The truth goes nowhere while the pretend dance goes on in front. 

I can see clearly now both the truth and the veil in front of it.

 

Not only are there two separated stories, but one is clearly designed for the purpose of shielding the truth, and that is what I find so shocking.

 

If you didn’t know the truth, there would be no need to build a pretend story in front of it.

 

Gratitude of You.

(I wanted to re-post this one too.....)

 

Imagine if you will, two people with Posttraumatic Relationship Disorder, meeting the opposite person they were usually drawn to, yet forming a bond.

 

If you understand the disorder, we are drawn to people who are not good to us, and can’t seem to be with people who are.

 

My brother and I, even though we were raised in the same house, he and I didn’t share much common ground.  He went his way at eighteen and I went mine.

 

Both victims of childhood abuse, we left home with our Disorder firmly in place and set out into the world fully packed for more abuse.

 

While he left home and got as far away from our family, its religion, the rules and beliefs of our parents, I settled in and set up a home life much similar to my parents, minus the pedophile.

 

We didn’t interact much with each other over the years, there wasn’t animosity, but nor was there a deep friendship either.  We were two grown kids doing the best we could, coming from whence we came.

 

Somehow about 7 years ago, we began talking on the phone.  It was sporadic in the beginning yet an odd but interesting exchange always happened.  We began to explore and to seek a new and better God.  We met again for the first time.

 

Shortly there after, he introduced me to yoga a well as new and exciting authors, and so began this most unusual relationship for us, the opposite of what our ‘disorder’ usually sought. 

 

I now believe it was that fact alone that helped us the most.  I wasn’t his normal cup of tea if you will, nor was he mine, yet by our seeing the ‘other-side’ we were able to see where we stood.

 

This may be hard to follow, but in my mind it is a clear as day.

 

Up and until the time we re-connected we had no one to show us where we were wrong due to our Posttraumatic Relationship disorder!

 

If you have a relationship disorder, you never really get to experience a ‘healthy’ relationship because the disorder won’t allow you to get there!

 

It is simply amazing to me that we stuck it out, well it wasn’t always easy, we did go for months of silence, and had moments of major disagreements, but one thing always remained in the midst of us in the past 4 ½, Reality.

 

Here we were two grown adult with this disorder or the affects of the disorder, learning to create or do a real relationship, the blind leading the blind.

 

Except that I could see what he couldn’t see and he could see what I couldn’t see, so we were the perfect pair!

 

I could see where his mind was confused and he understood perfectly where I had missed the mark.  We both needed the other to make sense of where we were, and even to where we stood today.

Because of our similar childhoods with sexual abuse we were able to understand the unthinkable, to acknowledge the inner trauma and how it affects the body and mind.

 

Where my mind was closed, my body was wide open and held the fear, his body was closed but his mind wide open to remember. 

 

I was continually amazed at our sameness, but the differences we carried.  He remembered all, but his body was numb, my mind forgot all, but my body seemed to hold the memory alive.

 

As far back as I can remember my mind and body were at odds, I would not be alone with my father, yet I couldn’t tell you why. 

 

On December 4^th 2004, I had the answer to a puzzle of 46 years, I made sense, the full disclosure of my life came tumbling out, and with it the aftershocks that left me standing in a pile of rubbish that was my life.

 

The after affects were the knowing that I was with people who hurt me and couldn’t be with people who didn’t, that my whole system seemed to working backwards and upside down.

 

The disorder had made such a mess of my world, I had a lot of relationships to rework or let go of, and in the midst of that my brother and I were both affected personally as well as a unit. 

 

Our new relationship was going to be tried over and over and each time we were forging new boundaries and learning how to be with someone in a new way.

 

He taught me and I taught him, together we stood true to ourselves and our inner truths, we challenged our minds and sought to reclaim a new reality, we shared books and new authors, to the millions of insights that would startle us and have us sitting back in our chairs, the volumes of ways we had it so wrong.

 

It wasn’t a teacher and a student relationship although it was, we just kept changing chairs, sometimes I was being taught and others I was the teacher, it never seemed to matter which, if it was our time to be the student we welcomed the others great wisdom, and when it was our time to lead, we did so with the greatest respect.

 

He thanks me in his blog, “Sister of Kindness” and I was beginning this blog at the same time.  Yet in it’s place came the blog about the Posttraumatic Relationship Disorder.

 

I began a blog and was trying to share how we were the same but the opposites, how we connected in the most unlikely way, and how it was that we carried each other to the finish line while running the same race, and it seemed nearly impossible to write, but now I can see that I had to first read about the Disorder in Dr. Mona Lisa’s book, who we were and why.

 

I didn’t have such a fancy name for our dysfunction, but I knew intuitively that we were the perfect opposites to make our way through.

 

We have literally shared millions of hours on the phone, each in our own personal hell, sorting and labeling, tossing out and lamenting at each new loss, elated with each new freedom and fragment of self we discovered.

 

If you can picture two lost souls buried under a mountain of rubbish, weakened and in total confusion, working in starts and stops to become free to stand tall and walk alone towards brighter future, that is who we are!

 

The mountain of stuff we had to sort out whether it be in the reality of now or in the messed up past or in the vaults buried deep and out of sight in our minds, we have traveled great distances to get where we are today, and greatest feat is to figure out the messes of the mind.

 

How do you do that?  How do you even begin to begin to begin sorting when you don’t even know that what is in your head is wrong?

 

Our messes were created or began by little children, left alone in our minds without adult supervision, so we created and labeled and sorted out things as a child would, but then called it our truth.

 

That inner truth was a beacon that led us down roads most would fear to go, in places and with people that were as messed up as ourselves.

 

It is indeed amazing that you become color blind to the fact that you are both a mess. There is no one healthy person to compare your self too, no bright light of normal.

 

Normal too is a fallacy for what is normal?  I have always said I went in search of normal but way overshot the mark.

 

I am not normal in the general definition, but I am way normal for me.

 

I am normal to me and my brother is normal to me, coming from the road we have been on, we are perfectly normal.

 

We are the perfect example of two souls caught up in the disorder and the perfect pair to tag team and to work ourselves free.

 

What a journey my brother and I have been on, one that required the fearless, a seeker of the truth no matter how shocking it was.

 

We stood bravely and with courage without any idea what we stood against.  We were walking into a mad mad mind!

 

A journey with my brother, wow what a road we have been on.  Thank you brother for being there, for being you and for walking the path you had to walk, because of it I can see.

 

When you think that all your pain and suffering was for naught, it wasn’t, it was all for me.

 

There is no word big enough, just Gratitude of you.

 

A Hoarder of Pain and Discomfort!

“When we accept all of life’s contradictions, when we can comfortably flow between the banks of pleasure and pain, experiencing them both while getting stuck in neither, then we are free.”   Deepak Chopra

 

Below is from “The Presence Process” by Michael Brown.

 

From the moment we enter this world, we are taught by example of others to fear and therefore resist pain and discomfort by controlling it, sedating it, distracting ourselves from it, numbing it, drugging it, and even going so far as cutting it out.  By the examples of others, we are led to believe that pain and discomfort are our enemies and that when they manifest in our experience, we must escape or conquer them at all costs.  We are led to assume that pain and discomfort are always indicators that something is wrong.  In this world, it is very rare that we are invited or encouraged to respond to our experience of pain and discomfort by listening to them instead of running from them.

 

During The Presence Process we are being asked to consider the possibility that the experience of pain and discomfort is deliberate and therefore on purpose.  In other words, when these experiences occur to us, it is because they are supposed to happen.  We are asked to open our mind to the idea that pain and discomfort are essential forms of communication that have necessary and valuable function in our life experience.  We are being invited to change our perception of what pain and discomfort are and what the nature of our relationship is with them.

 

We are being invited to consider that pain and discomfort are our friends, not our enemies, and that they have come to assist us, not hurt us.

 

Consider what the experience of pain and discomfort automatically accomplishes. It always obediently brings the focus of our attention to a specific place in our physical, mental or emotional experience. Why? 

 

Consider how we impulsively react to this experience.  Metaphorically we run in the opposite direction by pulling our attention away from area that is experiencing pain and discomfort.  We do our best to annihilate our awareness of this experience with tablets, alcohol, or various medical procedures.  In other words, we automatically attempt to resist and suppress the experience through control and sedation.  What are we assuming?

 

Our reactive behavior never resolves the pain and discomfort; it merely suppresses and postpones it for a time.  Inevitably, the pain or discomfort will reappear at a later date and continue its attempt to gain attention or show up in another form elsewhere.  Consider this possibility:

 

The most painful thing about pain and discomfort may well be our resistance to it.

 

During The Presence Process, our suppressed memories are going to be surfacing deliberately so that they can be integrated by our compassionate attention.  Pain and discomfort in the body, mind, and heart are our physical, mental or emotional bodies calling for our attention so that we will attend to them.  Yet our impulse is always to run away from these experiences or find someone else to attend to them.  What we are now being asked to consider is this:  maybe our lack of success in resolving our pain and discomfort in the past is because it is not possible for someone else’s attention to integrate our experience on our behalf.  What we are being invited to consider is that because it is our physical, mental or emotional body that is in a state of imbalance, that it is therefore our attention and only our attention that can really restore balance to our experience.

 

All of our prophets, spiritual masters, and sacred texts tell us that the omnipresence that we have named God resides within all of us.  If we can on some level begin to accept this, even initially only as a concept, then we can also begin to accept another possibility – that in our life experience, our direct link to the intimate presence and unlimited healing power of what God is to us is to be found in the presence of our consciously wielded attention.  However, the possibilities contained in this realization remain mental gymnastics until we begin exploring them experientially. The only way we can know if this is true is to consciously and compassionately wield our attention with the intention of resolving our own states of physical, mental, and emotional imbalance.  In other words, our experience must become our own laboratory, our own testing ground.

 

During The Presence Process, we are deliberately using the breath as a tool to bring our attention back into our physical, mental, and emotional bodies to temporarily anchor it there.  One of these consequences of this practice is that we become aware of pains and discomforts that have been with us since we were children, but that we have successfully suppressed from our awareness. 

          Michael Brown

 

What I find so affirming to my experience is that all the pain and discomfort in my body and mind, as well as the volume of emotional pain were here to bring me messages. 

 

Not just a simple message, but books of messages that I had discounted for 46 years, they all came running forth once they understood that I was willing to hear them.  It seemed they lined up for miles and months eagerly spilling forth what I failed to notice for so many years.

 

Here to show me just how out of balance my life was. The further from reality you are, the greater the discomfort and pain and a longer line of unfelt and unexpressed emotions!

 

Isn’t it amazing that they waited so long, crammed into my body, one discomfort piled upon another, heaped to the brim and overflowing, pain leaking out into various body parts screaming to me, I was busting at the seams! 

 

A hoarder of pain and discomfort!

 

 

I am a Perfect Guru of Me!

I am in the 9th month of blogging, and am looking for my top ten posts, it seems an impossible task, to put favor one over another. So, here is another one that I wanted to repost.

 

Without the understanding of ordinary perfection, spirituality can put us at odds with our life.  The images we have been taught about perfection can be destructive to us.  It is like the Eskimo hunter who asked the missionary, “If I did not know about God and sin, would I still go to Hell?”  “No,” said the priest, “not if you did not know.”  “Then why,” asked the Eskimo earnestly, “did you tell me?”

 

When I read that in Jack Kornfield’s book “After the Ecstasy, the Laundry,” I was taken aback.

 

First to see the application of Knowing and Unknowing, second to see the innocence gone, and third, the questioning of why.

 

I can visualize the child skipping along in the ‘adult’ world happy in their innocence, and we are the Missionary Priests that come along and offer a place called Hell.

 

There was another part that caught my attention….

 

We cannot know death.  Death remains a mystery.  When one Zen master was asked what happens when you die, he answered, “I don’t know.” “But aren’t you a Zen master?” continued the questioner.  “Yes,” he responded, “but not a dead one.”

 

I love how honest that answer is, for how can any living person ever know for sure for sure, just what death is all about.

 

Eccentricity means uniqueness, finding the freedom to be utterly one’s own person.  Even if outwardly we do not appear different, inwardly there is the fearless ability to be wholly the embodiment of yourself.

 

When the emotions are free and the heart can express itself without concern for the opinions of others, that freedom extends to every aspect of our character.

 

I was amazed to read that and to discover being eccentric isn’t odd at all, but rather being ones self.

 

The true task of spiritual life is not found in faraway places or unusual states of consciousness: It is here in the present.  It asks of us a welcoming spirit to greet all that life presents us with a wise, respectful and kindly heart.  We can bow to both beauty and suffering, to our entanglements and confusion, to our fears and to the injustices of the world.  Honoring the truth in this way is the path to freedom.  To bow to what is rather than to some ideal is not necessary easy, but however difficult, it is the most useful and honorable practices.

 

To bow to the fact of our life’s sorrows and betrayals is to accept them; and from this deep gesture we discover that all life is workable.  As we learn how to bow, we discover that the heart holds more freedom and compassion than we could imagine.

 

Those two paragraphs were in the introduction of this book.  I love how we only have to bow to what is, to accept all that comes our way.  And in doing so live a spiritual life and one with our hearts wide open, to accept the joys and the sorrows.

 

This book set out to show that even the Guru lives a life that is not stress free if they were to leave their ashrams and come and join us in mainstream life.

 

Pir Vilayat Khan, the seventy-five year old head of the Sufi Order in the West, confides his own belief:

 

 

Of so many great teachers I’ve met in India and Asia, if you were to bring them to America, get them a house, two cars, a spouse, three kids, a job, insurance, and taxes…..they too would all have a hard time.

 

All in all it was a book that showed the humanness of the great masters, teachers and gurus.

 

In the end, we are all gurus in our own lives.

I am a perfect guru of me.

What is your Attitude?

While reading my past blog posts, I came upon this one.  I want to re-post it.

In the past few days I have had the opportunity to bump into many of my past girlfriends, some as far back as 40 years ago, and some as recent as only one year. 

 

To be part of the sisterhood of ladies from my way distant past, to old church members, to schoolmates, to ladies who share the same spiritual ideals, to those playing in Art with me, connects me. 

 

All these ladies come with a story, with a walk in life, a journey filled with choices and ideals, dreams broken and shattered, to ones not yet dreamt. 

 

I recall the youth of many, the lightness of heart and spirit and to see today the cost it has taken to stroll along in their worlds.

 

Life is hard on some or some are hard on Life, not sure which way that goes.

 

It seemed that so much of my past was in my present and in my present I was seeing how I changed.

 

My journey has led me down some darkened corridors, with pit falls of huge proportions, into bends of sheer madness, over hills of anxious moments that take your breath away, and then into places of pure delight, giggles and play, inspiration and wisdom of knowing.

 

I am so blessed that I was kept moving along, it would have been hell to get stuck along the way, in say misery and anger, rage and resentment, denial and hiding, to have sat down in the midst of any stage of grief would have stopped me living.

 

So many of the ladies I have known, the past and the present carry the torch of courage, of walking forward no matter what, to being strong, stronger than even they know, not letting life’s bumps define who they are.  Not allowing another’s bad behavior be the cloak they wear.

 

I am in the sisterhood of women who are walking strong and carrying with them their inner resolve to be themselves in the midst of troubles and turmoil, to see the other as the other, and not themselves.

 

How awesome for me to be surrounded with ladies who can triumph over life’s rolling waves of disappointment, the crusher of dreams, and destroyer of little girl ideals!  And to have the stamina to dream yet again!

 

The character of ladies that I know, have the fortitude to keep seeking to learn, in daring to try new things, and the guts it takes to just be in their lives, amazes me.

 

What has happened to me is that the more I share my story, the more they share theirs, and in doing so neither of us are alone.

 

It is the nature of the sisterhood to be connected just for being born female.  We connect in our pain and our celebrations or the moments that we are victorious over life’s challenges, to the times we learn huge lessons about ourselves.

 

The shoes I walked in are many, from poverty abuse and neglect, locked in a religious cult, to the unraveling of much of my life, to now being in a state of rebirth, growth and learning, to simply being a woman, all have added to the nature of me.

 

I am who I am, not because of my choices, but because of life’s choices for me.  It seems I am being carved out and whittled down and smoothed out, and formed into this lady, an artful display called me.

 

Each of us seems to get a pair of shoes, a road to walk, the inner fortitude to traverse the terrain ahead, we each are on our own separate journeys called life, and are blessed with those who dare to walk with us!

 

All of my past brought me here today, to be this person, to be me, to know what I know, do what I do, and live like I live. It is truly amazing to look at life’s journey, midway up the hill!

 

What lies ahead or behind is not what matters, but why lies within.  I have found peace with me all of me along with acceptance and the knowing nothing will come my way that isn’t in the designing of who I need to be.

 

I give thanks for the sisters of my past, the fallen and the triumphant.  I am grateful for the ones who I have recently found, to the ones I am yet to meet!  They all shared a part of my walk with me.

 

It is in the greatest of grief that I see my own sisters, my little friends who suffered like I, it is with understanding I see those left behind, compassion fills me as I pass sisters along life’s way.

 

Walk on knowing that the shoes you wear to day or the road you walk will change, for nothing stays the same and it is all part of being you.

 

Now I know for sure we are not our shoes!

We are the ones who walks with an attitude while wearing them!

 

What’s your attitude?

No One Can Do It For You.

I first heard about the five stages of grief in Forgiveness from Connie Domino and her book “The Law of Forgiveness,” which I have not read, yet.

 

I heard her in a conversation about how feelings and thoughts have to be in harmony, when she spoke on Sirius Radio.

 

She is saying that you can’t forgive just by saying the words, or using words alone, you have to feel it.

 

And this is where I think people get it wrong, you can’t fake feeling okay or fake feeling peace, or fake feeling anything, and try to believe the words have more power over what you are feeling.

 

She is saying to be in harmony with your words and feelings. 

 

And I would say use your words to describe your feelings, feel it and give them words.

 

If you are angry, give it words!

 

Bring in the five stages of grief into whatever situation you are dealing with and trying to find forgiveness in, the five stages of accepting what is you have to accept.

 

First you have to accept it, and in order to get to acceptance, there are four steps in front of that.

 

Denial

Anger

Bargaining

Depression

Acceptance

I looked this up and here is what I found.

The Kübler-Ross model, commonly known as the five stages of grief, was first introduced by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book, On Death and Dying.

It describes, in five discrete stages, a process by which people deal with grief and tragedy, especially when diagnosed with a terminal illness or catastrophic loss. In addition to this, her book brought mainstream awareness to the sensitivity required for better treatment of individuals who are dealing with a fatal disease.^[1]

 

1. Denial — "I feel fine."; "This can't be happening, not to me."
   Denial is usually only a temporary defense for the individual. This feeling is generally replaced with heightened awareness of situations and individuals that will be left behind after death.^[1]
2. Anger — "Why me? It's not fair!"; "How can this happen to me?"; "Who is to blame?"
   Once in the second stage, the individual recognizes that denial cannot continue. Because of anger, the person is very difficult to care for due to misplaced feelings of rage and envy. Any individual that symbolizes life or energy is subject to projected resentment and jealousy.^[1]
3. Bargaining — "Just let me live to see my children graduate."; "I'll do anything for a few more years."; "I will give my life savings if..."
   The third stage involves the hope that the individual can somehow postpone or delay death. Usually, the negotiation for an extended life is made with a higher power in exchange for a reformed lifestyle. Psychologically, the hi is saying, "I understand I will die, but if I could just have more time..."^[1]
4. Depression — "I'm so sad, why bother with anything?"; "I'm going to die . . . What's the point?"; "I miss my loved one, why go on?"
   During the fourth stage, the dying person begins to understand the certainty of death. Because of this, the individual may become silent, refuse visitors and spend much of the time crying and grieving. This process allows the dying person to disconnect oneself from things of love and affection. It is not recommended to attempt to cheer up an individual who is in this stage. It is an important time for grieving that must be processed.^[1]
5. Acceptance — "It's going to be okay."; "I can't fight it, I may as well prepare for it."
   This final stage comes with peace and understanding of the death that is approaching. Generally, the person in the fifth stage will want to be left alone. Additionally, feelings and physical pain may be non-existent. This stage has also been described as the end of the dying struggle.^[1]

Kübler-Ross originally applied these stages to people suffering from terminal illness, and later to any form of catastrophic personal loss (job, income, freedom).^[1] This may also include significant life events such as the death of a loved one divorce, drug addiction, an infertility diagnosis. Kübler-Ross claimed these steps do not necessarily come in the order noted above, nor are all steps experienced by all patients, though she stated a person will always experience at least two. Often, people will experience several stages in a "roller coaster" effect - switching between two or more stages, returning to one or more several times before working through it.^[1]

Significantly, people experiencing the stages should not force the process. The grief process is highly personal and should not be rushed, nor lengthened, on the basis of an individual's imposed time frame or opinion. One should merely be aware that the stages will be worked through and the ultimate stage of "Acceptance" will be reached.

However, there are individuals that struggle with death until the end. Some psychologists believe that the harder a person fights death, the more likely they are to stay in the denial stage. If this is the case, it is possible the ill person will have more difficulty dying in a dignified way. Other psychologists state that not confronting death until the end is adaptive for some people.^[1] Those who experience problems working through the stages should consider professional grief counseling or support groups.

 

 

I thought of these stages in death, but to use them in all tragedies or when facing forgiveness allows us to be ‘normal’ in abnormal situations. 

 

I am wondering about the action of forgivenes if we have to do all five stages?

 

If you can skip a few and still get to the end result of feeling total acceptance and finding peace there?

 

I am sure most never contemplated the thought that forgiveness is a death process. 

 

What I felt was a huge loss, but what I didn’t know was forgiveness was a loss.

 

I never considered this a grieving process, yet I felt that I had lost my whole family in one tragic event.

 

I grieved the event and the family seemed like colateral damage, but maybe it was reverse.

 

There are seem to be many levels of acceptance and owning the finality of it all.

 

The final stage of letting even the teeniest of hopes go, the slightest desires of hope, all hope must die.

 

Hope becomes a bargaining or denial tool that can keep you in a stage without final and complete acceptance.

 

It keeps you in a land between, in a place of noncommitment. 

 

The fight that seems to carry on inside.

 

The fight inside of me was always between, me alone with acceptance, or me with them and not accepting.

 

I could not have it both ways. 

In order to forgive I had to walk alone. 

Forgiveness is like dying no one can do it for you.