IMPERFECT Lady

Posing as me.

“The Toltec compare the Judge, the Victim and the belief system to a Parasite that invades the human mind. The parasite is a living being made of psychic or emotional energy.  It can also be compared to a program that dreams through our mind and lives through our body. From the Toltec point of view, all humans who are domesticated are sick because we have a Parasite that thrives on the emotions that come from fear and suffering.”

               Don Miguel Ruiz

 

Unless and until you have noticed that your mind has control over you and not you over it, you will not believe that a parasite is living your life for you.

 

Or if you can’t stop your suffering, a parasite is using your body to be alive.

 

If you are in fear or suffering, you know that a parasite is living your life, it has taken over the motherboard.

 

When you are unable to sit in the now moment and find peace with all that is around you, no matter what it is, you know that the parasite has gotten a hold of a thought in your mind and is replaying it over and over.

 

Like a bad DJ, it doesn’t offer up a new peaceful reason to drop that worrisome thought that keeps you out of the now moment.

 

Or it has gotten a hold of your emotions and playing tunes on them that have nothing to do with reality, but perhaps an echo from the long long ago past.

 

Emotions, thought, thoughts emotion, around and around they go… false events appearing real, stealing away your life from you.

 

The dance of the parasite in your mind.

 

If you are not in the now moment hearing what is playing in reality, you are listening to the parasite strumming a mournful tune.

 

I called my parasite “My Mental Lady”.

 

I could literally tell when she overtook me, my whole body reverberated with tension and stress, and I was fighting with reality, going against it and what would bring me peace.

 

It truly does seem that she enjoyed my suffering, like it was dessert for her, while hell for me. 

 

A dance of opposites, she owned my body until I was aware I wasn’t here.

 

Imagine aware I wasn’t here.

 

Unaware I was lost.

 

I was living my life but not aware.

Not even aware I wasn’t aware that I should be more aware.

 

It was quite embarrassing to note that I wasn’t aware of my life.

Like I didn’t even know I was allowed to be part of my life.

My life was running without me.

 

I recall when I woke up to the fact that I was unaware of being aware, and I looked around my house, there was no part of me there.

 

Nothing I loved, no reflection on me, it was like my life, minus me everywhere. 

 

I woke up in my life but didn’t know who I was, and as I took my life back, I found me.

 

I wouldn’t have believed this book five years ago, for at the time I was a parasite without awareness, it was all I knew of me.

 

Me as a mental lady without awareness, a parasite posing as me.

 

 

254 days and counting....

Today is day 260 on my yoga every day this year, and I missed 6 in the last two weeks. 

 

Each of those days seemed impossible for me to either gather the mental strength or the physical stamina needed to do the 90 minutes of yoga.

 

Yet if I look upon the other 254 days it seems like a huge achievement, a monumental success for me. 

 

My body also is defined by the 254 days that I have done yoga, the muscles are stronger, the joints are looser and my mental clarity is way up, not to mention the unexpressed emotions that have been expressed in the 254 days.

 

The days I missed, I was struggling with a twisted up emotional thread and it took all I had to untangle it, left zero energy to begin yoga.

 

I am not sure how the final score will be at the end of this year, but so far the percentage is way in my favor.

 

I may not be able to recoup my loses by doing doubles, I may end up with a few more days of no yoga, but what I know for sure, is already this year I have surpassed any of my previous years.

 

As I look upon the last few weeks, they have given me huge amounts of relief and knowing, enlightening me on who I was and who I can be.

 

254 days and counting….

 

 

 

Family is Relating.

In the past weeks I have had sister relationships with ladies not related to me, yet we related. 

 

And when I tried to relate to those related to me, we failed.

 

What I failed to focus on were the ladies who related to me, and instead part of my head was with those who I could no longer relate to, struggling to find the words or phrases to make us match.

 

I failed. 

 

We don’t match.

 

It isn’t them or it isn’t me. 

 

They are fine alone and I am fine alone, but put us together and negativity pops out of them and out of me.

 

We are not what some would call each other’s better half.

 

Last night I was with two women who are not related to me, and we related beautifully. 

 

We tossed conversation back and forth and held each other’s truths easily, we matched, I fit in their worlds, there wasn’t a struggle to find a little glimmer of commonality, and we flowed with each other effortlessly.

 

It was as one said, ‘family that is not family’.

 

I believe that we match or we don’t match and there isn’t anything we can do to force a relationship against reality, any more than we can stop one that grows organically.

 

As I sit here today and look backward upon all the wonderful spirited wise individual ladies I have had the privilege to share my journey with, I am in wonder of these relationships.

 

Some are just forming, others were formed a while back and are growing deeper and more meaningful to me, some seem to have gone ahead and were waiting for me to arrive with open arms and hearts.

 

How grateful am I for their journeys that coincided with mine, yet years apart.

 

Ladies of strength and willingness to participate in life fully not shying away when their truths lead them from their comfort zones. 

 

Ladies of integrity, who use their voices to speak for themselves always, these are my sisters, the ones I relate to, the ladies whose footsteps I am following, who give me energy and hope.

 

These sisters are bold and follow their north star no matter where it leads and who they have to leave behind; they are willing to let go to hold on to what they know is their truth.

 

How lucky am I to have them sprinkled along my journey to share this experience, to enhance my life, to lighten my load, to brighten my day, to inspire me and cheer me on as I continue to build a stronger me.

 

Thanks to each of my soul sisters for the relationship we have, the braveness you show in sharing yourself with me, and the inspiration your story lends is hope to me.

 

Family is relating.

 

My chosen families are those that relate to me.

 

 

 

 

 

Living without Me.

Sitting on the ‘passenger’ side of the car but driving gives you a whole new driving experience and a great metaphor for seeing life from another angle.

 

What was natural and instinctual is now taking thought; old driving habits are now null and void.

 

My left hand is now the controller and my right rests on the armrest, it all seems awkward and clumsy, my brain is much more aware of the steps it takes to find a radio station, to shift, adjust the heat, etc where before it was done thoughtlessly.

 

The driving view from the passenger seat is much different as well; it feels like you are off center.

 

The left turns seem like you are taking them too wide and the right turns feel like I am turning on a dime, and backing up I look ‘naturally’ over my right shoulder to just encounter the door.

 

After all the years that I have driven from the middle of the seat, using my left foot on break and gas and my left hand to steer, this still seems way odd, odder than being half way there!

 

This shows me how instinctual we live and operate, and how we train ourselves to be that way!

 

It takes time to feel comfortable with change, until we move naturally instinctually and even without thought, until it becomes a new normal.

 

In my life, I am still acclimating myself to all the different things I now do and many that I no longer take part in, how each new change requires thought and I see the cause and affects inside of me.

 

Learning to drive myself inside out, thoughtfully and in awareness.

 

Before I drove my body recklessly to avoid feeling what I felt inside.

I swerved away from confrontation, avoided questions and thoughtful inquiries, dodged oncoming unhappiness, passed up opportunities, followed passively in religion, parked my own desires and passions, bumped along unknowing myself, a body clearly out of control with a reckless driver.

 

Isn’t there a traffic violation for reckless endangerment?

 

I was in danger living without me.

 

 

 

 

 

Building me on Reality

What has stayed with me from reading “The Four Agreements” the companion book, by Don Miguel Ruiz, is that our faith in something means more than the ‘something’.

 

Simply holding tightly to faith at all costs.

 

I had to look up the meaning of Faith.

 

A belief in, devotion to, or trust in somebody or something, especially without logical proof

 

“Trust in somebody or something without LOGICAL proof.”

 

It isn’t even logical, but we hold on to our faith and many times it is a fog that stands separated from reality, that when you dissect it, you find nothing.

 

My strong sense of faith that I had for 46 years melted away when I discovered that what I had been faithful to, was a figment of my imagination and it didn't hold up in reality.

 

In reality, in the cold glare of truth, my faith in them didn’t change them; it actually shielded reality from me.

 

Faith stood in the way of me seeing what I needed to see.

 

In my experience, my faith stood between reality and me.  I built a wall that I could not see beyond, it kept me blind to what I needed to see.

 

Blind Faith.

 

My faith in my parents overshadowed who my parents were, in fact my faith in them didn’t allow me to investigate or question, I simply focused on my faith. 

 

I had faith in my mother. 

I had faith in my father.

I had faith in my family. 

I had a deep unquestioning faith.

 

What came crashing down that winter day in 2004 was my faith.

 

I lost my faith.

 

I lost what I trusted.

 

I lost what I had built up around me.

 

When my faith evaporated, all that I was left with was stark reality.

 

It is like taking off the rosy glasses, eliminating the fluffy white cotton that surrounds your feelings, and to be stripped to the bear raw nerves of what is real, without sugar coating to see where you placed your faith in.

 

I was irresponsible with my faith.

 

The only place for my faith now, is in reality.

 

I have faith with reality, I trust reality, I want to sit square with it, to feel its beauty no matter what it is.

 

Aligning my faith with reality seems like such a no-brainer.  But it wasn’t until my faith was shattered that I discovered how false I was, and then I had to begin the task of rebuilding me.

 

This time I am building me on reality.

 

 

What is true for me.

BE IMPECCABLE WITH YOUR WORD

Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean.  Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others.  Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

 

Here is a bit more from the chapter on applying this agreement.

 

“Humans are powerful creators. We are born with all the faith of the Universe, and everything we create is based on faith.  That faith is really our personal power, but what has happened with our faith? We invest all our faith in our beliefs and agreements, and we are left with little power to change our lives.

 

Imagine that every agreement is just like a brick. Humans create an entire structure out of bricks, and we glue it together with our faith.  We believe without a doubt in all the knowledge inside the structure.  Our faith gets trapped inside that structure because we put our faith in each agreement.  It’s not important if it is or isn’t true; we believe it, and for us it is true.

 

All of our power of creation is invested in our belief, and because we believe it, that’s the way it is.  If we believe our knowledge, whatever we perceive will be filtered to make it fit into that knowledge. We create a personal dream that justifies the knowledge, and the outside dream proves to us that what we believe is true.  The outside dream reflects our personal dream; it will justify every belief.

 

During all the education we receive, which means all the knowledge that is programmed in our mind, we create the concept of the I am.  Everything we believe we are, everything we know about how to be a human is the I am.  The Toltec call this the human form.  We are not talking about the physical body, but about our own dream. When we say, “I am a man; I am a woman; I am a human, and this is my whole reality,” everything is judged by that knowledge, and of course, the dream becomes hell.  That is the drama of humanity.

 

The dream of our life is so limited because we take all of the power of our creation and put it in a little box and with all of our power we seal the box.  And we live inside the box, trapped inside that little box. Well that little box is human form.  It is our creation, and all our will is invested in that I am.

 

Your faith is so strong that when  you believe “I am never going to be this,” thy will be done, you are never going to be that.  If you believe “I cannot do it,” thy will be done, you cannot do it.  Whatever you believe, you put your faith in that belief, and your faith will make it true.

                    Don Miguel Ruiz

What I found so intriguing in this book and so affirming is, that it isn’t so much your knowledge about life and about life’s situations, but your ‘belief’ about each thing.  And your belief becomes your will.

 

Inside each of us is the power of universe and we all use it to put our faith into certain knowledge, and that is what I life reflects, perfectly.  There are no mistakes; you are what you believe your self to be.

 

Looking upon my last five years, it has been a battle of wills inside of me to correct my long held beliefs about myself, and make them match realities truth.

 

Even if intellectually I knew better, I had to wrestle with my beliefs about myself; the long established ones that were false and limiting.

 

Yoga has given me the inner fortitude to break down old agreements that are not true for me and to re-create new ones that bring me happiness, peace and joy in being me.

 

Bring faith back to me, instead into knowledge that was given to me.

 

Faith in myself in what I feel, and what is true for me.

 

 

The Four Agreements

On the inside cover of the book, “The Four Agreements” Companion Book by Don Miguel Ruiz with Janet Mills reads…

 

BE IMPECCABLE WITH YOUR WORD

Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean.  Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others.  Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

 

DON’T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY

Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream.  When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

 

DON’T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS

Find the courage to ask questions and do express what you really want.  Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama.  With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

 

ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST

Your best is going to change moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to when you are sick.  Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.

                Don Miguel Ruiz

 

 

I can see that I am a new student of these, sometimes I am able to successfully maneuver myself into a new way, other times I fail and resort to the old reactive way.

 

What fills me with hope and inspiration is that there is indeed another way to live, to be yourself, and it’s your right to do so.

 

Shamelessly Me

“Yoga Makes you you” is what Bikram says near the end of the 90 minutes of yoga, and until today I had always envisioned a new me.

 

Today I realized that I get to be me minus the shame.

 

Shame was my inner state of being.

 

Shame colored the lenses with which I seen myself in the world, or felt myself in the world, I didn’t leave home shameless; I was filled to the brim with feelings of shame, in shame of being me.

 

In shame of being me, yet I didn’t fully know the cause or when the seed was planted, it seemed I came this way.

 

Now, I know better, the seed was planted by my father and fertilized by my mother in her reaction to me.

 

It wasn’t until I read the book “Hannah’s Gift”  by Maria Housden that it affirmed my belief, that depending upon the way my mother handled the facts it would directly affect me.

 

The tragedy of abuse, of incest, of being raped by your father, is it is bad enough his treatment of you, but then to have a mother do nothing compounds the shame.

 

Her lack of doing anything to move away from that man locked me in my closet of shame.

 

I lived there for 51 years.

 

Today in yoga I finally felt free from the shame I carried about being an abused me.

 

“Fake it ‘til you Make it” quote came to mind as I looked back upon my last 5 years, I literally forced myself to stand tall, when inside I was shrinking in shame.

 

To walk a walk of one with no shame hasn’t been easy. To stand and believe in myself against all enemies both foreign (strangers) and domestic (family), to put myself out there all bruised and beaten claiming my rights to be me.

 

I didn’t know if I was writing my death sentence, if I would survive, but I knew for sure if I stayed in the closet of shame I would have.

 

I have been out of the closet for 5 ½ years and today was the first time I felt it is my right.

 

It is my right to live shamelessly me!

 

A Mother who Walks in Reality.

Last night I read, “Hannah’s Gift” by Maria Housden, Lessons from a Life Fully Lived. 

 

What a great gift they gave each other as they bravely faced life as it unfolded for each of them, in truth.

 

For a mother to be truthful in the face of death allowed her daughter to fully accept with grace who she was, for her son to walk step by step, hand to hand, eye to eye sharing her journey full on.

 

‘Sparing’ the truth may seem kinder at times; I am once again affirmed that truth is the only way to be.

 

There is grace and peace in an odd way when you are able to set your fears and selfish wishes aside, when you can disregard your dreams, and instead stand bravely in what is.

 

Even when the what is, is the death of your child. 

 

It allowed this little girl to live her life honorably, for her mother honored her just as she was, in each moment, fully embracing what she had, now.

 

Her intuition in giving her daughter a voice, allowing her to be who she needed to be to live a life that was hers, no matter its length is remarkable to me.

 

The courage to let go of the pretend reins we all believe we have in controlling our worlds, our children’s world and gracefully succumbing to reality’s power, to ride the ride no mother wants to take, but do so with her eyes on the child’s desires, is what I believe makes a truly remarkable mother.

 

Thanks so much for showing me the walk of truth.

 

Coming from a child whose mother couldn’t face the truth, I know that it was you who gave your child the greatest gift on earth, seeing her truth!

 

Allowing her to be okay and be fully her self, even while life seemed to stealing her away, she was able to live completely as herself until her very last day.

 

She never, not once had to pretend to pretend to be anything other than herself in your eyes. 

 

What a gift you gave her, she was allowed to Live as her self.

 

Your journey shows me that a mother can literally change a child by their reaction to the child’s truths, if you can’t see it, they will pretend not to see it either, but if you can, you both will be enriched.

 

Truth sets you free to be you in reality.

 

Thanks Maria for sharing the wonderful journey being a mother who walks in truth.

 

 

 

Annihilated in a Balloon!

I could envision my self as a little girl and how she sits holding out her hands in shame again, for in them should be love and all she sees is fear.

 

Fear and terror are in her hands.

 

It feels like it is her responsibility to change that over to love, and no matter what she does or how hard she tries, what she tells her self, all that lay in her hands is fear.

 

She is not good enough; she is unworthy, something is wrong with her, for she can’t get it right.

 

Shame on you!

 

I was totally confused and lost in the thoughts that fear and shame were tightly woven within me. 

 

I was ashamed and in fear.

 

When I pictured a young girl sitting there with fear in her hands and so shameful that she couldn’t change the feelings, it occurred to me, that ‘my little girl’ didn’t even have pictures in her head to know where the fear came from.

 

She had feelings but no road map on how they got there.

 

As thoughts came and went during the day yesterday, it came to me that my father changed my feelings I did not!

 

A line in a song, “A little girl was waiting for her daddy one day…” came into my mind. 

 

I was waiting for a daddy and who came was a man who hurt me. 

 

He changed from being my daddy and so did my daddy feelings.

 

In its place are bad man feelings and I can’t change them back.

 

The tragedy is that I had love, trust and faith in my hands, and they quickly disappeared and terror took its place, a sleight of hand, a bad card trick, and I got left holding the terror card.

 

I left the scene of the crime while the crime was taking place, but my body recorded the changes with feelings.

 

Now as a little girl when she sees her ‘daddy’ and feels terror and she doesn’t understand why?

 

Certainly something is so very wrong with her. 

Shame on you!

 

My whole body felt such utter relief to know that it wasn’t me who changed my feelings about my father, and it isn’t me that can change them back.

 

It is up to him.

 

My feelings will be stuck in fear unless and until he presents to me a man who acts like a dad.

 

I am not responsible I didn’t do nothing wrong. 

 

I was just a little girl who was waiting for her daddy that is all.  That is all…

 

A little girl holding Love in her hands…that is all.

 

There is no shame in that.

 

I somehow felt I had to hide my fear; I was ashamed of my feelings.

 

The near miss encounter with my mother, lunged me back into the feelings I had as a little girl, it brought me back to the feelings I had and still have today.  Nothing has changed within my body.  It is incredible that it registers the same.

 

It is puzzling, how the feelings are similarly intense for her as with him.

 

Somehow I felt shamed by her for my feelings I had for him.

 

Disappointing her, her disproval reigned supreme as my number one thing I didn’t want to do. 

 

Keeping her dream alive, “a longed for family” a father for her kids, I was guilty of not feeling the dream, yet I tried.

 

Looking back at my life in this awkward review, I feel my life instead of see it; it was like I lived in a balloon that I carried.

 

Up in the balloon I could pretend to feel what I didn’t feel.

 

In the balloon, I lived annihilated from my true feelings.

 

A life of pretend in a balloon, which never touched my body, for the string that held it away from me was called shame and fear.

 

In order to get back to my body, I had to travel backwards and feel what I could bear to feel.

 

That day in that dinner, without a balloon to protect me, I felt the electrical charge of fear wrapped around in a colorful ribbon of shame.

 

With my big girl awareness and reality’s support, along with a friend named Ann, I felt what I needed to feel, the awkwardness of a child in fear sitting in shame.

 

Shame is exposing your feelings of fear!

 

  

I had this quilt at the Gallery for sale and I took it back. For as I look at it, you can see  how she has to now live.  In the presence of her family she was made to live removed from her feelings....and if you see it from her view, she had to keep her real feelings away from her self, annihilated in a balloon!