IMPERFECT Lady

Cultivate the Art of Play

In reading chapter 5 in The Artist’s Way, Recovering A Sense of Possibility, she speaks of being self-destructive, and yet she isn’t talking about what we usually think of self-destructive behavior.

 

We usually think of drugs, alcohol, abusive type behaviors, but never just being nice or being good.

 

That is the self-destructive behavior that I struggle against. 

 

Julia Cameron writes.

 

“A young father with a serious interest in photography, years for a place in the home to pursue his interest. The installation of a modest darkroom would require dipping into savings and deferring the purchase of a new couch. The darkroom doesn’t get set up but the new couch does.”

 

“Many recovering creatives sabotage themselves most frequently by being nice. There is a tremendous cost to such ersatz virtue.”

 

“Many of us have made a virtue out of deprivation. We have embraced a long-suffering artistic anorexia as a martyr’s cross.  We have used it to feed a false sense of spirituality grounded in being good, meaning superior.”

 

“ I call this seductive, faux spirituality the Virtue Trap. Spirituality has often been misused as a route to an unloving solitude, a stance where we proclaim ourselves above our human nature.  This spiritual superiority is really only one more form of denial. For an artist, virtue can be deadly. The urge toward respectability and maturity can be stultifying, even fatal.”

 

“ We strive to be good, to be nice, to be helpful, to be unselfish. We want to be generous, of service, of the world. But what we really want is to be left alone.  When we can’t get others to leave us alone, we eventually abandon ourselves. To others, we may look like we’re here. We may act like we’re there. But our true self has gone to ground.”

 

“What’s left is the shell of our whole self. It stays because it is caught.  Like a listless circus animal prodded into performing, it does tricks. It goes through the routine.  It earns its applause.  But all of the hoopla falls on deaf ears. We are dead to it. Our artist is not merely out of sorts.  Our artist has checked out. Our life is now an out of body experience. We’ve gone. A clinician might call it disassociating. I call it leaving the scene of the crime.”

 

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” we wheedle, but our creative self no longer trusts us. Why should it?  We sold it out.”

 

“Afraid to appear selfish, we lose our self. We become self-destructive.  Because this self-murder is something we seek passively rather than consciously act out, we are often blind to its poisonous grip on us.”

 

“The question “are you self-destructive?” is asked so frequently that we seldom hear it accurately.  What it means is Are you destructive of your self? And what that really ask us is Are you destructive of your true nature?”     Julia

 

What I had known was that I left myself behind to take care of and be responsible for others, leaving my needs alone on an island far far from my awareness and I called this being a good girl.

 

I would not have called this behavior as being self destructive, but I had the experience of waking up at 46 shocked that I was no where to be found.

 

Now, 6 years later I am much more conscious of a self, my self, and in the past few years begun taking care of her in ways that I had never done before.

 

I am learning to let go of the responsibility and care for others or at least balance it out between self care and other care.

 

I am not completely there, but now have an eye on me.

 

The Artist’s Way is to bring more attention to this self, to bring her right up in front and out in the open, to display her and showcase her in your life and be the main Feature and not the sideshow.

 

It is wildly exciting and intimidating and it feels strange to dive into thoughts, ideas, dreams and experiences that have been long forgotten…and a part of me wonders and doubts, while another part feels the forbidden fruits I am reaching for.

 

Dare I reach and grab onto things that only I want?

Dare I consider only my self?

 

I can feel the long forgotten parts of me ready to awaken, but unsure if they should trust? 

 

Like a see saw between coming alive and staying comfortably dead…my spirit hangs in the balance.

 

What seems to be shocking even to me is that I was able to stand by my self through out the revelation of my father’s abuse and the aftermath, that I was able to find a strong voice and a steady stance… but doing frivolously artful living seems like a luxury.

 

Finding a self in the sea of abuse and taking care of my self as I unraveled seems like an honorable thing, but to just do fun things, artful things, things that make me come alive and tickle me, seems so careless or playful.

 

And sadly being care less or play full is not what I know how to do.

 

I don’t know how to play.

 

I don’t know how to do frivolous things.

 

Imagine I need to learn how to play.

 

My self doesn’t know play.

 

My self isn’t a natural player.

 

I will have to cultivate the Art of Play.

 

Our Private Campground.

 

 
Our favorite site.  I put the tent up yesterday due the 90 degree Temps.  My husband and I slept for half the night.  Yep, our air mattress needed more air....easier to go back to the house.

 
These are the prime location spots with electricity and river view and direct access.  As I was setting up the tent, Michigan Tech's summer youth program paddled by, a dozen or more canoes.

 
Looking left from our Tent site.  River on the rightside of picture. Lots of mowing to keep our

campground open.  There is a firepit near the picnic table....but the bugs are way to vicious to enjoy this time of year.

 
Looking towards the house....(across the road from the barn).  When this was an open Campground, the barn was where the showers and campground store was.  My husband's sister ran this in the summers while going to Michigan Tech in the mid seventies. So it hasn't been open in roughly 30 years.

 
The short distance from our home to the campgrounds!  Which we don't think of it being a campgrounds unless we pitch the tent. 

It would be an awesome rustic campgrounds for kayakers and those who love to canoe....someday it may open to the public again, but for now it is our home. 

Half Dead

There are two ways to look at relationships and what is defined as kind or unconditional will depend on which side you are standing upon.

 

Most of my old relationships had the relationship as the ruler and I as its servant. 

 

Now I arrive in each relationship as the ruler and the relationship serves me or doesn’t.

 

In the past, I was a martyr in relationships.

 

I looked up the meaning of Martyr.

 

1.                   somebody put to death: somebody who chooses to die rather than deny a strongly held belief, especially a religious belief

2.                     somebody who makes sacrifices: somebody who makes sacrifices or suffers greatly in order to advance a cause or principle. 

 

 Wow, is that right on or what.  I definitely was a martyr in my relationships…I made sacrifices of my self, my feelings and my truth to remain in relationships.  I suffered greatly to advance the cause…the family.

I may not be adequately framing this, but in my old relationships it required me to be dead in order for me to be there.

 

An aware, alive and responding me shattered the relationship.  I no longer suffered for the cause.

It was kind to the relationship for me to remain dead and unresponsive, yet very unkind to me.  I have now reversed that order.

I also feel that a thriving whole relationship requires two alive people…

Otherwise it is half dead.

 

 

 

 

The Responsibility lies within you.

In the past week, I have heard two different ladies tell me that God wants them to be kind to people who are not kind to them…that being kind to unkind people is pleasing to God.

 

Both say, it isn’t what they would do, but they truly feel this is what God wants them to do.  So to please God they act differently than how they feel.

 

They put on a God Smilely Face, when inside they are feeling quite the opposite and believe this is what God wants them to do.  God likes them to be fake.

 

I find this very interesting and quite unsettling that they, when they find themselves in a spot of where their real feelings would have them move away, that they instead put on a smile and blame it on God.  He wants me to do this...

 

What kind of God is that, I asked?  I am sorry, but the God I know, would not want me to be fake nor have me be with folks who are unkind… For Him.

 

To which I am met with silence.

 

Oddly enough by blaming God and ‘acting’ in a manner you assume he appreciates, leaves you without having to make a tough choice.

 

It leaves you not having to move, nor speaking up or presenting your inner truths.

 

In fact Martha Beck in this months O Magazine, wrote about the problem with asking “What would Love do”…for many of us have the wrong definition of love.

 

I would say the same of God.  What would God do, usually is what you feel is your highest option.

 

And if your highest option is to be fake, I am uncertain who you are.

 

Again, it leaves me wordless and shaking my head…to hear these adult women having to be false, to be unable to walk their own truths, to present their own feelings and move away.

 

They stay to please God. 

 

In fact one lady told me this was the meaning of ‘unconditional love’ to remain kind no matter what.

 

I told her I have found that this is the meaning of abuse.

 

That if you are unable to make a choice, to turn around, to leave, to speak your truths …you remain a victim.

 

And the God I know would not want me to be without free will.

 

It is easier to blame God and plaster on fake kindness than it is for them to face them and say what they truly feel.

 

Instead of holding God responsible for your acting inauthentic, the responsibility lies within you.

 

 

My own formation.

In the past six years I have been learning new software, my body functions the same, it just responds differently.

 

My arms move, my mouth speaks, my brain thinks yet they are doing things completely in a new way.

 

It is like waking up one day and your body refuses to do what it used to do; the inner driving force has switched gears completely, it is all backwards.

 

This new software has me moving in the opposite direction of my old flying formation, I go right and others move left, I go up and the others go down, I feel totally out of zinc.

 

I am the lady in a country line dancing row… three steps off.

 

It seems I didn’t have a slow software exchange, but one day a whole complete system was inside of me.

 

Like a new me hopped inside and began living my life while still in my old life.

 

I have to give credit to my husband and children for being able to bring this new me into their old lives, to welcome and get used to her new ways.

 

As we go forth there will still be more steps I will take that will be out of rhythm with theirs, and we falter and then get used to this unique dance of ours.  Me going one way and them going another in harmony.

 

We are dancing to the same song but moving with our own rhythm.

I often feel like the odd duck, but oddly a very free duck.  I fly in my own formation. 

 

Many years of pain.

Yoga is the opposite of junk food for the soul and when done, I get left with a wonderful feeling, a relaxed stretched out calmness…a great way to begin my day.

 

What I marvel at is that I drag my body to the mat, I slowly exit the bed, and begrudgingly tossing the quilt aside, I almost angrily put the heater going, like preparing for my death or torture. 

 

And it is torture to take this neglected body and bring it back to life, to make the muscles strong, as they should be, or the joints as flexible and mobile as is their nature.

 

I have noticed in the past few months, when I have been doing just a few yoga sessions a week, that I have fallen backwards in how my body moves.

 

I can see how we become stiff and weak.  It is by far easier to stay beneath the covers and not make the effort.  But we will have pain either way… as Bikram says, “90 minutes or 90 years.”

 

By making the difficult choice of getting out of bed, I struggle or suffer for 90 minutes and that will save me many years of pain. 

 

The soul that lies beneath.

Julia Cameron writes in The Artist’s Way…

 

”Conditioned as we are to accept other people’s definition of us, this emerging individuality can seem to us like a self-will run riot.  It is not. The snowflake pattern of your soul is emerging. Each of us is a unique, creative individual. But we often blur that uniqueness with sugar, alcohol, drugs, overwork, underplay, bad relations, toxic sex, underexercise, over-TV, undersleep – many and varied forms of junk food for the soul…”

 

I have never thought of overeating or any of the above as being junk food for the soul. That most of the things that are bad for the body is also bad for our souls.

 

They blur our uniqueness, keep us living in with a fuzzy image of who we are, what we want, what we feel and where we heading, and above all, make it hard for the soul to shine through.

 

In fact all the bad habits keep the soul from shining through and yet we believe we need these habits, we literally crave them, and what they are is a black out curtain for the soul.

 

It is odd to me that we crave what keeps us from being our whole soulful self, and that we want the stuff that darkens who we are.

 

Perhaps we want to darken our reality.

 

We want to shut the shades on what is in order to survive…instead of taking actions to remove ourselves from situations in real life, we drape a curtain so we don’t have to see.

 

It is amazing to me that we become so accustomed to living a life with a darkened drape, that we have no idea how to live a life without them.

 

Julia Cameron is gently telling us what stands in the way from being you. What items we do to not be alive, aware and unique.

 

By removing the junk food from our lives we can see what they were covering up.  The more we crave and hold on to things that are not good for our souls, the more chances there is big stuff we are not wanting to see, feel or respond to.

 

For me, my big mess was revealed first.  I saw a whole life that I had no clue was going on underneath my dark curtain of denial, of self-numbing or fuzzy blurring of reality, and I then had to start eliminating things that contributed to the blanket of dysfunction.

 

This blanket of dysfunction lived my life for 46 years, a thick layer of stuff that my soul was unable to shine forth through.

 

It is surprising the difference between living as the dark curtain or the soul that lies beneath. 

 
This is one of my first quilts after the revealation of my big mess....and you can see the sliver of gold, which is the soul trying to emerge.  I called this the Soul Lost.  I now have a better understanding of this quilt 6 years or more later!

When I am 80.

My writing assignment was to write a letter from my eight-year-old self to my adult self, and I sat there blank.  I could not figure out what the little girl needed to tell me.

 

So, I went and did my morning yoga session. And it came to me that if I look at her sitting within a family of dysfunction and her seeing her older self having escaped, that perhaps then there would be lots to say.

 

My little self would look upon this adult woman and admire the strength it took for her to walk the walk needed to walk the walk to get her out of the situation of her childhood and to now be working on becoming more artful self.

 

She at 8 could look upon me where I stand today and be so grateful that I was able to circle back and regain the ownership and awareness of her soul. 

 

That I was able to traverse the wild churning waters of abuse and arrive seemingly unscathed and actually prospering as an adult woman, she would be amazed at my ability to withstand the truth and then to make new choices based upon it.

 

She would be so grateful that I am no longer in abusive relationships or that I am still being victimized, that I have learned how to do self care, to speak for my self and have the strength to follow through.

 

She would breath a sigh of relief to know that we survived and are now heading into an even brighter future, where I am honing my self-awareness with yoga and The Artist’s Way, that we are on the pathway of self-loving.

At times I too find it hard to see the distance I traveled and the depth and breath of change that my life has withstood…I stand with my little girl in awe of where we have been and sit in gratitude we not only survived but also are thriving.

 

What brings me the most peace is that I can look straight into my little girl’s eyes and feel proud and wise and strong, and not have to look away in shame and guilt.

 

I feel so strongly confident that we are on the right path, and that when I am 80; I will look upon this 52-year-old self the same way.

 

And in fact there is a writing assignment to write a letter from your 80-year-old self to your 50-year-old self.

 

I found that much easier, for I was telling me what the Artist’s Way is teaching me, to be more artful, more daring, more wild in learning new things and experimenting, to go out and grasp all the delights the world has to offer, to change your routine, to add some spice and thrill, to toss in colorful experiences…

 

I want to be at 80, what I am today, but more of it. 

 

I want to look backwards at the next 30 years and be breathless at what I did!

 

Each Artist’s date is adding to the list of things that will blow my mind as I look back when I am 80.

 

 

 

 

Who we want to talk to.

I have watched myself in various conversations whether online, in person or on the phone, and I marvel at myself and its ability to respond or the lack thereof.

 

I find that I mostly enjoy dialogue in the present, and the first person. Stories of stories have me fade away or zone out.  I can’t seem to be present with a non-present story.

It is almost like having a front row seat to their minds, and them replaying what happened.

 

I guess I am much better in a happening place to have it going on in real time.

 

Real speak, real dialogue, not dialogue about dialogue.

 

And I was friend for a day with one lady, whose walk was similar to mine, but we viewed our healing totally opposite.  After a few exchanges, she de-friended me.

 

There can be fear when someone doesn’t see what you see, and it may be threatening to your pathway.  However, unless it gets personally draining or toxic raining, I can stay in and actually enjoy the exchange of different views.

 

I am more alive in a conversation where I am dancing around the same issue with someone who sees differently than if I am listening to a conversation about a conversation.

 

People are so revealing in conversations, about what they talk about, don’t talk about, or talk around, sometimes you can have a full conversation without ever seeing the person you are talking to…for they give you info about things, but not themselves.

 

I used to be interested in things, now I wait for the person to arrive, to step forth and to talk to me, to leave the ‘things’ behind and just show me their self.

 

It is almost like the mind talking and rambling along…and the real self is seldom revealed.

 

I can see that I challenge the mind and seek to go around it to find the real self.  Both in conversation with others but more importantly with me.

 

We can talk to our selves about things, or about what really matters, our truths, our fears, our dreams, our inner desires…we have to decide who we want to talk to.

 

 

 

Pain Free

"A huge part of our task becomes noticing unskillful reactions and learning to let them go. This is not a denial of some part of our self. It is simply the abandoning of actions that cause harm and suffering (mostly to ourselves). When we pick up a hot utensil on the stove, we don’t have to think about who we are before we drop it, or who we might become if we dropped it, or become afraid that we would not be authentic to ourselves if we drop it—it’s painful and we drop it!Most of us only make such a mistake once. It’s the same in the heart, except that the hot utensil has been in our hand so long, maybe most of our life, that we’ve forgotten what not buring feels like or don’t know who we would be without the burning, we are afraid to put it down. This may sound absurd, but when you think how hard it is to stop being defensive in the face of criticism, or to let go of self-judgment, it makes sense.  But that doesn’t mean easy.”                       Sean Felt

 

I saw this posted on Facebook, and find that it is the perfect paragraph I was seeking to explain how it is easier to hang on and continuing doing the same hurtful thing instead of letting go and changing. 

It seems incredibly insane to want to hold near and dear to you things that cause you pain, but if the only ‘normal’ you have ever known feels this way, it isn’t painful it is love.

Which is why it is so very difficult to get people to drop the burning utensils, for they have become calloused and acclimated and have forgotten what not burning feels like.

Not burning feels like an enemy when it is actually your friend.

This flipped upside down reactionary response to clutch hurtful things and steer away from cool non-hurtful ones, creates a journey filled with self inflicted pain for we don’t know how to let go.

As incredible as it seems it is ‘easier’ to hang on than let go.

It is the only self we know, this painful hurting self, we fear being a pain free self.  

I have found that it is incredibly hard to let go and drop that which hurts you, when you had labeled hurt love.

I wasn’t dropping abuse… I was dropping love.

It seems so silly that you will not release yourself from hurt, but we don’t call it hurt we call it love.

And in this flipped out state, our reactions are the opposite of what is normal.  Clutching hurt we push away from real love.

We live as this anomaly, upside down and inside out.

It’s not easy to change this, it will take Herculean efforts to return your self to normal responses, to reset your reactions to what hurts and what doesn’t, to feel normal while pain free.