IMPERFECT Lady

More Peace in 2012

"Power vs Force" by David Hawkins.  

He writes explaining the difference between Power and Force.

"On examination, we'll see that power arises from meaning. It has to do with motive, and it has to do with principle.  Power is always associated with that which supports the significance of life itself.  It appeals to that part of human nature that we call noble - in contrast to force, which appeals to that which we call crass.  Power appeals to what uplifts, dignifies, and ennobles.  Force mus always be justified, whereas power requires no justification. Force is associated with the partial, power with the whole."

"If we analyze the nature of force, it becomes readily apparent why it must succumb to power; this is in accordance with one of the basic laws of physics. Because force automatically creates counter-force, its effect is limited by definition.  We could say that force is a movement - It goes from here to there (or tries to) against opposition.  Power, on the other hand, is still.  It's like a standing field that doesn't move. Gravity itself, for instance, doesn't move against anything. Its power moves all objects within its field, but the gravity field itself does not move."

 "Force always moves against something, whereas power doesn't move against anything at all.  Force is incomplete and therefore has to be fed energy constantly.  Power is total and complete in itself and requires nothing from outside."

"It makes no demands; it has no needs.  Because force has an insatiable appetite, it constantly consumes.  Power, in contrast, energizes, gives forth, supplies, and supports."

"Power gives life and energy - force takes these away. We notice that power is associated with compassion and makes us feel positively about ourselves.  Force is associated with judgment and makes us feel poorly about ourselves."

"Force always creates counterforce; its effect is to polarize rather than unify.  Polarization always implies conflict; its cost, therefore, is always high. Because force incites polarization, it inevitably produces a win/lose dichotomy; and because somebody always loses, enemies are created.  Constantly faced with enemies, force requires constant defense. Defensiveness is invariably costly, whether in the marketplace, politics, or international affairs."

"In looking for the source of power, we've noted that it's associated with meaning, and this meaning has to do with the significance of life itself.  Force is concrete, literal, and arguable.  It requires proof and support. The sources of power, however, are inarguable and aren't subject to proof. The self-evident isn't arguable.  That health is more important than disease, that life is more important than death, that honor is preferable to dishonor, that faith and trust are preferable to doubt and cynicism, that the constructive is preferable to the destructive - all are self-evident statements not subject to proof. Ultimately, the only thing we can say about a source of power is that it just "is."

"Every civilization is characterized by native principles.  if the priciples of a civilization are noble, it succeeds; if they're selfish it fails. As a term, principles may sound abstract, but the consequences of principle are quite concrete.  If we examine principles, we'll see that they reside in an invisible realm within consciousness itself.  Although we can point out examples of honesty in the world, honesty itself as an organizing principle central to civilization does not independently exist anywhere in the external world.  True power, hen emanates from consciousness itself; what we see is a visible manifestation of the invisible."

"Pride, nobility of purpose, sacrifice for quality of life - all such things are considered inspirational, giving life significance. But what actually inspires us in the physical world are things that symbolize concepts with powerful meanings for us. Such symbols realign our motives wiht abstract principle.  A symbol can marshall great power because of the principle that already resides within our consciousness."

Meaning is so important that when life losses meaning, suicide commonly ensues. When life loses meaning, we first go into depression; when life becomes sufficiently meaningless, we leave it altogether.  Force has transient goals; when those goals are reached, the emptiness of meaninglessness remains.  Power, on the other hand, motivates us endlessly.  If our lives are dedicated, for instance, to enhancing the welfare of everyone we contact, our lives can never lose meaning. If the purpose of our life, on the other hand, is financial success, what happens after it's been attained? This is one of the primary causes of depression in middleaged men and women."

"The disillusionment of emptiness comes from failing to align one's life with the principles from which power originates. A useful illustration of this phenomenon can be seen in the lives of great musicians, composers, and conductors of our own times.  How frequently they continue productive careers into their 80's and 90's, often having children and living vigorously until a ripe old age! Their lives have been dedicated to the creation and embodiement of beauty, which incorporates and expresses enormous power.  We know clinically that alignment with beauty is associated with longevity and vigor -because beauty is a function of creativity, such longevity is common in all creative occupations."  David Hawkins.

"Force always moves against something," is the line that really caught my eye. For I can tell immediately when I bump into force energy, they are always prepared for battle...seeing first the potential enemy before friend, they react in fear.

When I meet someone who operates in power, they are open minded, trusting, vulnerable, honest, safe...and there is nothing I can do to rattle their cage.

The complete opposite of folks who operate on Force.  There is nothing you can do to prove trustworthiness, for they don't even entertain the idea, for they can't relax and let anyone in.

Dysfunctional families operate purely on force.

What I find is that there is nothing you as an individual can do to prove your own worthiness, for they see the world from their own front porch, and inside is unworthiness.

The view of the world is that of force...nothing is gained unless it is forced.  They are afraid of no force living, of allowing and giving freedom, of entertaining the idea of self empowerment.

Power like gravity doesn't move against anything...it simply just is.

I am no longer against anyone, I am with me.

I walk not to prove anything, I walk with me.

There is a huge and slight difference between power and force and by chosing one or the other; the whole world changes.

Each person that switches their lives from force to power, creates a ripple affect, and there is one less person who has an enemy to fight...

Peace on Earth happens one person at a time...May there be more peace in 2012.

 

 

 

Fear into Love

In a Card from a Sister Friend, she quoted Constantine Peter Cavafy

"As you set out in search of Ithaka pray that your journey be long, full of adventures, full of awakenings.  Do not fear the monsters of old...you will not meet them in your travels if your thoughts are exhalted and remain high, if authentic passions stir your  mind, body, and spirit. You will not encounter fearful monsters if you do not carry them within your soul, if your soul doesn't see them up in front of you."  

I love that we will not meet the monsters of old...the old lessons we learned are not recycled.  

Lessons not learned grow bigger trying desperately to gain our attention, to bring into our awareness the things we are doing to hurt ourselves and others; to raise us from fear into Love.

 The center of this quilt was from a wall hanging I had made my parents in the very early stages of my quilting.  It hung in their porch, and one winter while they were in Texas, the mice chewed the quilt fabric surrounding this saying.  I took it back and a few summers ago turned it back into a wallhanging for me. (our estrangement didn't bode for gift exchanges anymore)  

What is so foretelling is the saying on this quilt.

"May those who love us, Love us. And those that don't love us, May God turn their hearts. And if he doesn't turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles, so we will know them by their limping."   

My mother had used a walking cane to hang this on the wall.  

I am getting better at discerning love.

Transformed by awareness.

This is my third reading of the book, "Power vs Force" by David Hawkins. And this time I am understanding the broader picture of the levels of energy/consciousness we all are traveling in.

He rates the levels from 20 to 1,000.

"Energy Level 30: Guilt"

"Guilt, so commonly used in our society to manipulate and punish, manifests itself in a variety of expressions, such as remorse, self-recrimination, and the whole gamut of symptoms of victim-hood.  Unconscious Guilt results in psychosomatic disease, accident-proneness, and suicidal behaviors.  Many people who struggle with Guilt their entire lives, while other desperately attempt escape by amorally denying it altogether."

"Guilt domination results in a preoccupation with "sin," an unforgiving emotional attitude frequently exploited by religious demagogues, who use it for coercion and control. Such "sin-and-salvation" merchants, obsessed with punishment, are likely either acting out their own guilt, or projecting it on to others."

"Subcultures displaying the aberration of self-flagellation often manifest other regional forms of cruelty, such as the public, ritual killing of animals.  Guilt provokes rage, and killing frequently is its expression. Capital punishment is an example of how killing gratifies a Guilt-ridden populace.  Our unforgiving American society, for instance, scorns its victims in the press and metes out punishments that have never been demonstrated to have any deterrent or corrective value."  David Hawkins.

What is so shocking is the "Sin-Salvation" equation is the impetus for the FALC.  It is at the level of 30.  Jesus is at 1,000.  Wow.

Energy Level 100 is Fear.

"At the Level of 100, a lot more life energy is available - Fear of danger is healthy. Fear runs much of the world, spurring on endless activity. Fear of old enemies, of old age, or death, of rejection, and a multitude of social fears are basic motivators in most people's lives."

"From the viewpoint of this level, the world looks hazardous, full of traps and threats. Fear is the favored official tool for control by oppressive totalitarian agencies, and insecurity is the stock-in-trade of manipulators of the marketplace..."  David

Fear is the favored official tool FOR CONTROL.  It seems such backwards way of living to me.  However, I used to live by these standards...

Rising from Fear is, Desire 125, then Anger at 150...to Pride at 175.

"In contrast to the lower energy fields, people feel positive as they reach this level.  This rise in self-esteem is a balm to all the pain experienced at lower levels of consciousness.  Pride looks good and knows it; it struts its stuff in the parade of life."

"Pride is far enough removed from Shame (20) Guilt, or Fear that to rise, for instance, out of the despair of the ghetto to the self respect of being a Marine is an enormous jump."

"Pride generally has a good reputation and is socially encouraged, yet as we see from the levels of consciousness, it's sufficiently negative to remain below the critical level of 200.  This is why Pride feels good only in contrast to the lower levels."

"The problem, as we all know, is that "Pride goeth before a fall." Pride is defensive and vulnerable because it's dependent upon external conditions, without which it can suddenly revert to a lower level.  The inflated ego is vulnerable to attack.  Pride remains weak because it can be knocked off its pedestal back to Shame, which is the threat that fires fear of Loss and Pride."

"Pride is divisive and gives rise to factionalism: the consequences are costly.  Man has habitually died for Pride - armies still regularly slaughter each other for that aspect of it called nationalism. Religious wars, political terrorism and zealotry, the ghastly history of the Middle East and Central Europe - these are all the price of Pride, which all of society pays."

"The downside of Pride is arrogance and denial. These characteristics block growth; in Pride, recovery from addictions is impossible because emotional problems or character defects are denied. The whole problem of denial is one of Pride.  Thus Pride is a sizable block to the acquisition of real power, which displaces Pride with true stature and prestige."  David

Imagine, that Pride is the last step before courage or truth.  It is the last level in the lower levels, below 200.  And denial holds you there.

The lower level operates on force, fear and denial....and in order to get to the upper level, you have to admit your character defects.

And in the FALC, to see your character defects, would mean dragging up your sins from the past...  

Reading this for the third time, I am understanding it at a different level, and realizing the energies of people truly account for their behavior.  You really can't expect them to act above their level.

And looking at life from above 200 looks completely different from beneath.  One is based on fear of the truth an the other is based on loving the truth.

Isn't there a song that says...."I've looked at life from bothsides now..."

What an incredible journey up through the levels of consciousness and to see life completely transformed by awareness.

Never Lied.

In "Power vs Force" by David Hawkins, he writes,

"In the experiments to be described in this book, the reactions of the human body provide such a signal of change in conditions.  As will be seen, the body can discern, to the finest degree, the difference between that which is supportive of life and that which is not." 

"This isn't surprising: After all, living things react positively to what is life-supportive and negatively to what is not; this is a fundamental mechanism of survival.  Inherent in all life forms is the capacity to detect change and react collectively - thus, trees become smaller at higher elevations as the oxygen in the atmosphere becomes scarer. Human protoplasm is far more sensitive than that of a tree." DH

There is so much going on in the Universe that we are not aware of; all the little choices that are made due to a detection of change in conditions.

I see the home environment as a small universe within the universe. And its occupants with highly sensitive bodies, that detect change of conditions.  

Children come in with bodies of high intelligence, that far exceeds what their minds know.  And they too learn to grow or not grow depending upon the climate within the home.

No matter what they are told, they can feel the lay of the land, and adapt in order to survive.  When love turns abusive...their bodies detect the change of conditions...they become alert, wary, anxious, etc...and grow accordingly.

They will require less if less is given. 

Or flourish and expand according to the safety and love given.

You don't have to know the intimate details of a family home, just look at its children.  How are they doing in society?  Are they flourishing or floundering?

We step forth with the markers of how we were raised.

You can see those of us who lived in home environments where the child wasn't seen; we have a hard time finding ourselves, our voices, our worth.  We grew low...we adjusted our selves and didn't rise higher than the treatment.

Our stunted growth shows.  

The lack of emotional growth or balanced lives.

What is so remarkable, is that we forget we are not permanently planted, like a tree. We can transplant ourselves...and Move to a more Life Supporting environment.

What is hard for folks to imagine is that parents will naturally keep their children at the same level they are.  They can only raise a child as high as they are, no higher.  

My life clearly showed how I only grew as high as my mother. 

And it would have been stunted there, had I not gotten out.

My body had always felt the negative vibes, but I had overrode them.  I believed that my body was working incorrectly, for it was sending signals Against family.  

I believed that I had to work harder to be/feel more loving toward my parents.  I had feeling issues.

It was a horrifying relief to know my body was right on.

Except now I had to reverse all that I knew and follow this highly sensitive brilliant body...and celebrate each feeling.

For each feeling was a signal to me of the condition and changes around me.  It didn't care what I believed, what dogma I followed, what history I had with people, it was literally moving around beeping and binging messages to me, constantly.

It is like having the best instrument in all the Universe...and you live in it.  

Once you are aware that the body talks to you constantly, you can't be unaware.  

To stand by your feelings is to stand hand in hand with the Ultimate power; God/Universe.

What I see in abusive homes, is we are taught to worship a lesser god, one that disregards our feelings.  Our parents. 

When you honor and love your parents in an abusive home, going against the feelings of your body, you are being turned away from your Higher Power.  

What is so amazing to me is that God created our bodies and yet we don't see the connection or feel the vast Divinity of them...nor trust that God made them to work perfectly. 

Doubting the body, to me is, doubting God. 

When someone abuses our bodies, they are actually wrecking the gift that God created.  

When others treat our bodies violently, we are taught to not feel like the gift we are.

It takes lots of effort to restore our selves to our natural state.

My life changed completely when I stopped honoring my parents and began to honor my body...it truly has never lied.

 

 

 

 

 

God's Peace

 I was asked, "Do you love your mother?"  And this is how I feel.  I wrote this almost 3 years ago...

“You are the mother you have been waiting for.  When you focus on the mother, you become motherless.”

            Byron Katie

 

Happy Birthday Mom, I want to thank you for all you taught me.  All the pain you suffered so I could get it right.  I want to thank you for staying true to form, for staying the course, so I could see by your example where it would lead me.  I had you to show me the awful way it would turn out, if I was not strong, if I had no courage, if I had only fear.  

It is your birthday, and I wish you well, I hold no resentments or anger.  I have lived as you and wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.  Your walk is hard it is not an easy one.  I know the trials on the way, the blindness, the unknowing, no memory, no path, the lost hopes, the dreams that never arrive, the pit of desperation, of false hopes, of others changing, endless roads to no where.  

I know how it is to hurt unintentionally, to see but not see, to hear but not hear, to have children you can’t protect, to lose more than your heart can hold.

Some how, by some miracle, I have been spared of lifetime of that.  I have been allowed to spring free, allowed to know a new me.  I was able to walk free of the prison that holds you so tight. 

We don’t know why I was set free, why I walked away, why I could see what you never could, why I could hear reality.  All we know is that the two of us are the same, but different, for some reason you had to be left behind in a hole of a million sorrows. 

I stand here outside in the brightness of day, with truth and honesty, reality and kindness. I know why you did what you did, for you didn’t have another way.

If I had to wish a wish for you, it would be this, “I wish you love, peace and joy, a Heaven of bliss”.

It is because of you, I am who I am. 

Ironically we were both motherless yours died when you were two.

You had no one to show you the way. 

 As a mother I know it would bring me great peace to know that my life was for naught.

Yours was not, for you gave birth to me.

If only I could return the favor and lead you out free, but it doesn’t seem to be the way of it for now.

I leave you knowing where you are, and I wish you peace.

God’s Peace.

 

 

 

Love responds in truth always

In my mother's latest note I found a new viewpoint, another place where we don't match, the two drastically differing ways to deal in life.

While she keeps coming back to how she feels and how she sees me, I too keep coming back to my viewpoint of her and they don't match.

My experience of her, isn't her experience of me.

I did bring her joy and help.  I did try my best to alleviate the overwhelming situations of being in a family of 14, what I failed to understand that behind me, she and her husband were making things even more difficult to manage.  A backdoor was opening and closing allowing in abuse, that was eroding the family atmosphere I worked so hard to keep afloat.

She keeps talking about what I was doing and NEVER mentions what she was doing behind my back.  My aching tired and overstressed back.  I was seeing chiropractors in middle school...ya think???

Trying to keep her family together...when abuse was ripping it apart. There wasn't enough I could do to mend what they broke.  And yet she speaks of it not.

Tell me mother what do you think it was like being a child of yours?

Tell me mother...how do you think it feels to be me. 

My abuse went unnoticed, uncared for, unreported...with no response from you...except that you appreciate my help and joy.  Imagine an abused child now has to bring help and joy...while no one tends to their wounds.  We try harder to please for somehow in this upside downstate, when you fail to take responsibility, we do.  

You say you love me.  How I ask?  How?

What does love look like to you?  Does love turn its back on the hurting?  Does love not see the abuse?  

You keep repeating words about love, but can't take a step that is loving.  

Love walks right into abuse and takes full responsibility.

Love protects the child at all costs.

Love doesn't forgive and forget, it remembers and acts accordingly.

Love is being in your truth and my truth.

Love is not just a four letter word...

Love is fearlessly seeing what you don't want to see and doing things you can't imagine doing, to protect the innocent and to stand strong against those who hurt.

Love...doesn't only see what is kind.

Love sees it all...and love responds in truth always.

 

 

 

When She Writes It.

I am at work, with a racking cough, aching bones and going through piles of mail, and come across my name and my mother's handwriting.  

I put it in my slot. 

What now, I wonder, what now...?  The added weight of the letter works on me as I continue to toss the mail.

As I am bundling the mail to take on the route, I put mine in my purse, in case I decide I need to know what she has to say somewhere along my route.  I don't.  I feel the weight without even reading the words.

I listen to a novel, moving along box to box, road to road, package to package....time passes, and she comes and goes along the route and I don't read it until I turn on my road.

These words are spread out on stationary sheet, blue snowflakes around the border...plain white middle.

Birthday/Christmas 2011

Dearest Beth,

You have been a great help and joy for many years.  You are my daughter and I have always loved you from Day 1.

May God bless us all and give peace in 2012.

A Mother's Love,

Always and Forever,

Mom

I wonder what she is trying to accomplish by this letter.  What prompts her to send out these words?

Stating a mother's love? Trying again to make me believe...

 A mother's love???  A mother who blessed her husband when he raped me.  Really, you loved me since day one.  I would beg to differ.  No matter how many times you write it, it still sounds hollow to me.  I don't feel the love.  Too many little girls lives were changed by how you loved me.

She says I have been a great help and joy....And I certainly had been to abuse. She mentions nothing about my actions today, the present Beth, just the Beth of old.  She sees only her....refusing to acknowledge my changes, the new me.

"May God Bless us all and give peace in 2012."  

What is peace to her?  Would peace return to her life, If I would turn back into being a help and a joy for abuse?  Would peace then return, is that the Blessing she wants from her God?  

Peace in dysfunction...an oxymoron for sure.

Taken at a glance and just reading the words, it sounds like a lovely letter from a mother to her daughter; but the background experiences taint the words.

Even the little girl in me feels the absence of her understanding as to where I am at.  I don't know if she can even fathom my path...our differences are so vast.

While these notes may be comforting or helpful to her, they are not to me.  They come in blindly seeing only how she feels and what I brought....they fail to see how I felt or what I got back then.

I asked myself, "what did I get from her...?"

What is my response to her.  

As a daughter of hers what can I possibly say?

"Mommy Dearest..."  

It seems when the hurt gets toughened up and put aside, she comes back in to peck at the cut.  I told her the kindest thing I have to offer her is silence.  No words.  Nothing.  Empty of retorts.

As soon as I ponder what I would respond, it gets my blood pressure pumping.  I feel all the rage and wounds and resentment, hurt and pain.  Not only for me, but so many little girls, I get swallowed in the dark...I have no kind words to send back to her.

I stop mentally writing a response...

I just want her to remain silent.  To let it be.  To stop writing how much she loves me and how she will be my mother forever and always.

Don't I know it.  Haven't I felt her brand of Love?  Was I not given another dose even today?  How can a mother who allowed such atrocities go on, write this letter to a Me?

All she sees is how she loved me, not HOW she loved me.

She misses all the places she wasn't aware...and I was abused.

She misses all the things she overlooked that caused me pain.

She misses all the mothering things she failed to accomplish when abuse walked through her door into her life, into her marriage and into her daughter.  She misses that.

She only wants to see the joy and help.  She doesn't want to see the gaping wound of dysfunction.

The wound that steered my life into flowing backwards and crooked.

Seeing my Helping her and Joy for many years IS NOT what I need her to see. She doesn't need to see me that way.

She needs to see me, a little child being hurt by her father. She needs to see that and then write letter about how she loved me so.

Without mentioning my pain, her love stays golden.

And without mentioning my pain... I would dissolve back into a land of dysfunction again.

She keeps sending me letters expounding on her love...when a letter explaining how she couldn't have loved me would be more true to the nature of my experience.

I don't want a love letter... I want a letter telling me how she abused me.  Isn't that odd.  We don't want our abusive parents to tell us how much they loved us for we carry scars of abuse...we want them to acknowledge what they did to us was not love.

I could puke on the words of love she writes.

Trying to give me her love...in words, when she failed in deeds.

Once again, she didn't write the letter that will break my silence...

She continues to hide behind a loving mother...when reality has shown me the opposite.  

 It is good for me to know what letter I am waiting for.  I always felt no need to respond, and now I know what words I am seeking...my truth, I will recognize it when she writes it.

 ‎"Truth can be Unrecognized, but it can't be changed." 

David Hawkins  

 

 

The Art of Avoiding Stress.

"I am not going to look for stress this year...I am going to Avoid it"  Ann Sandberg

It isn't so much that we don't know what stresses us, but we may not know how to avoid it or feel that we can.

I go back to what Eckart Tolle said about life, that there are only three ways to be in life. In Enjoyment, Enthusiasm or Acceptance.

And in life, there are things we have to do, that we would prefer avoiding, but due to being out voted, you have to do it...so acceptance may be all you can do. 

The word Consciousness means, "The state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings."  I would also state, being aware of your energy levels as well as seeing your surroundings and knowing what needs to be done and knowing what is reasonable for you.

I believe that learning how to avoid stress is the answer to all peace. 

Learning that if you can't be in enjoyment or with enthusisam, you have to be accepting. 

What I failed to accept this Christmas was my cold or  that my body would be too tired to pull off a big Christmas dinner for 11.

I failed to ask for more help.

I failed to slip away and take a much deserved rest.

I failed to do and ask for what my body needed.

And in doing so felt stress.

Avoiding the feelings of stress means being proactive...and not waiting until you are up to your neck in stress, but to never even get to the overwhelming mark. 

Women especially are used to just piling on more and more.  And I did okay with the mail.  I did okay with the mail and cold, and even to enjoy Christmas Eve, and Christmas Morning.  It all fell apart after that, my level of giving had gone...and I didn't speak up.  I let the doingness overlap the amount of energy I had...and I failed to call for help, so I drowned in doing too much.

I lost the peace of Christmas...within me.

I had no energy to do, but I didn't stop...that has to be the meaning of stress.

To do when you have no desire or energy to do so.

Avoiding stress is to speak up or stop doing.

I am betting it was seen as weak or less valuable to ask for help in my childhood.  I somehow have these markers within me...to be viewed as a woman who can do it all.

When clearly we all have energy levels that max out.

Knowing when to say when...stopping before you are too extended and frazzled is to gracefully remain in peace.

I lost my peace because I didn't speak up...and say "I can't".

I neglected my inner feelings and energy levels, I let them silently become overwhelmed.  This is an old routine with me.  One that I will learn to finesse this year...the art of avoiding stress.

Photograph By Hannah Jukuri

I Let Myself Go

In "Codependent No More," by Melody Beatte, she writes about boundaries.

""Set boundaries, but make sure they're our boundaries. The things we are sick of, can't stand, and make threats about, may be clues to some boundaries that we need set. They may also be clues to changes we need to make within ourselves. Mean what we say and say what we mean. People get angry at us for setting boundaries; They CAN'T use us anymore. They may try to help us feel guilty so we will remove our boundary and return to the old system of letting them use or abuse us. Don't feel guilty and don't back down. We can stick to our boundaries and enforce them. Be consistent. We will probably be tested more than once on every boundary we set. People do that to see if we are serious, especially if we haven't meant what we said in the past. As Codependents we have made very empty threats. We lose our credibility then wonder why people don't take us serious. Tell people what our boundaries are once, quietly, in peace. What our level of tolerance, so the pendulum doesn't swing too far to either extreme." Melody

When we take our boundaries serious, others will as well.  And if you have never said no, no will seem shocking and unloving toward them, for in the past they could depend on your yes or that you would back up and lower your boundary.

Lowering boundaries, lowers your sense of self. You are pushing your self into being someone you soon will not even recognize.

Another thing Melody said was,

"Most of us don't have boundaries. Boundaries are limits that say: "This is how far I shall go. This is what I will or won't do for you. This is what I won't tolerate from you." 

"Most of us begin relationships with boundaries. We had certain expectations and we entertained certain ideas about what we would or wouldn't' tolerate from those people. Alcoholism and other compulsive disorders laugh in the face of limits. The disease not only push on our boundaries, they boldly step across them. Each time the disease pushes or steps across our limits we give in. We move our boundaries back, giving our disease more room to work. As the disease pushes more, we give more until we are tolerating and doing things we said we would never do. Later, this process of "increased tolerance" of inappropriate behaviors may reverse. We may become totally intolerant of even the most human behaviors. In the beginning we make excuses for the person's inappropriate behavior; toward the end, there is no excuse."

"Not only do many of us begin tolerating abnormal unhealthy and inappropriate behaviors, we take it one step further; we convince ourselves these behaviors are normal and what we deserve We may become so familiar with verbal abuse and disrespectful treatment that we don't even recognize when these things are happening. But deep inside, an important part of us knows. Our selves know and will tell us if we will listen." MB

"...compulsive disorders laugh in the face of limits. The disease not only push on our boundaries, they boldly step across them. Each time the disease pushes or steps across our limits we give in. We move our boundaries back, giving our disease more room to work..."

Who truly knew that our lack of pushing back when they push us is the exact key or in fact makes More room for the abuse to be.  

While I didn't know it at the time, I can see it plain as day now. 

It is up to us to set firm boundaries and each time you wobble and get pushed into doing something you don't want to do, you have expanded the area for abuse to play and move and freely be.

This is the dance of abuse; it pushes and we give up our ground.

Each time we stay silent, we give up ground.

Each time we fail to follow through with our threats, "this is the last time..." it wins.

We are not only playing with abuse; WE are Letting it win.  

"If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything."

Usually, we fall for we love that person, we have a long history, a past and a future we want, so we overlook and blink as they cross another boundary, as we lose ground one more time, as we are pushed back into a place where we are without restraint.

I guess we do this until...  Until we either go so far back that we lose a sense of life and ourself, or we come bounding back fearlessly taking back our lives.

And when we do, the pusher of our boundaries are in for a shock...where once we were soft, we are now as hard as a rock.  

My husband said of me, "You didn't draw your line in the sand, but in cement..."

I am firm now with boundaries and no amount of guilt on their part will back me up.  I am finally standing up strong...

What is so hard is that you have to begin however far back you have been pushed, in the low spot of no boundaries...and climb up one step at a time.

Each time you say what you mean and follow through, you gain a boundary...and with each boundary comes self esteem, or a sense of knowing and loving of self.

I would cheer me on as they would holler and rail against me.  And I knew, they were testing my waters, to see if I was serious...it was even shocking to me to see just how serious I was.

I began so far back that I was almost gone, and it was a struggle to undo all the years of relationships without borders, where I flowed into their worlds losing me. I reversed the cycle...I came alive in places where in the past I let myself go.

 

 

 

Bring to Christmas

Just being me on Christmas is a huge peaceful relief...no stress is lurking, (now that the mail volume will begin to decrease) and I didn't string up any expectations or false ideals of anyone.

In the past, I would plunge down deep after Christmas, but it was due to all the expectations and hopes I put into Christmas...and their failure would leave me empty hollow and down.

It is insane how the mind can expect the undeliverable and believe it.  How I would believe that the Christmas season could change people, and like magic they would realize or see things that hadn't before...

When in fact, it seems that what is off is really off on Christmas...instead of healing things, it magnifies them.

And the opposite is true too.  When you are filled with love and peace about yourself and your life, Christmas arrives and there is nothing to want.  For you already want what you have.

I feel such great emptiness of hopes...I am not standing on a mountain, that I will have to fall from tomorrow and for weeks afterward.  Instead I come to Christmas needing nothing from anyone...it was never about the gifts, but rather the Feelings I wanted from them.

I wanted them to feel this or that way towards me....

I wanted to feel this or that way towards them.  No matter who they or them was.  I always arrived with false expectations and in the state of need.

When I arrive at Christmas empty of expectations and hope, I can sit in peace and let it all be.  

Loving me and accepting me is the greatest thing I can bring to Christmas; if I am Merry with me, Christmas doesn't have to make me Merry.

Just as Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor says, "each of us are responsible for the energy we bring into the room," it is up to us to bring Merry to Christmas.

I love that I have a Merry me to bring to Christmas....