This is the second chapter in my novel about The Eight Temptations, which evolved into what we now call The Seven Deadly Sins. But this is so much more than these powerful characters, in fact, they are not even the major players!
I began a new eating habit while at my ten day meditation retreat BUT it has become so much more! I am learning what it means to be calm, content, whole, full, enough! I am experiencing fullness, abundance, enjoyment, and satisfaction while eating, but also in other daily activities. This practice is changing my experience of and relationship with calm, content, whole, full, satisfied, enough, enjoyment -- and joy!
Over the last six months I've used colored paper and simple phrases to help build a daily life where my habits are healthy and balanced. You can do it to! All you need are crayons and patience! I'll show you how to create a weekly calendar that is filled with the things you want to do in life, and it's interactive. An interactive calendar so you can see your progress. Places where you're doing well, places where you've got some resistance. And you start new every week. Every day, really! Let'...
I just finished another 10 day silent Vipassana meditation course. I share three main takeaways from it. First, my strong reaction to any change! Second, my habitual reaction to make things more intense than they already are. Third, the synchronous combining of harmonious or relational vibrations.
I share my latest understanding of allowing loss or failure to refine me in the present moment, but not define me, nor my future. My heart also wishes me to learn this so it can have the space to participate in my life, in my refinement, in my future. I am never defined by a moment, I am refined by it.
It’s time to build a structure that is capable of being you, and of doing what you feel called to do. As you build this structure, you reclaim parts of yourself, parts that have been serving as boundaries, in order to protect you. But once you integrate that part of yourself that was a boundary, the function of that boundary is also integrated so you don’t need the boundary. It is inside you, integrated into the structure you’ve built, are building, for and of yourself. Build a structure that...
There is only one thing you need to make the most amazing altar ever and that is your awareness. The second thing that’s helpful to remember is that your altar is alive. It is a living growing changing being. It needs to be cleaned, it needs to be pruned, it needs to be you. Your relationships, your struggles, your blessings. Your altar is a physical representation of your energetic and spiritual self, and journey. So give your altar your awareness and watch it grow!
I share two different experiences of doing parts work, one was brilliant! The other less so. But both taught me the importance of recognizing the part that is iron-fisted, inflexible, because they need immediate attention. I also surprised myself by hearing other parts that are so grateful! But their voice wasn’t heard until I calmed and addressed the one(s) with great need. All parts are not equal 😆💛
I realized I have an absurd relationship and understanding of things NOT happening in my life. I think they are loss or failure. But how can something NOT happening be a loss, how can it be taken away, or, how can it be a failure, if I never did it? And how does this thinking keep me from 'making the asks' in my life that lead to connection, creativity, growth, love!
The morning after I found out my rape trial is 'cancelled'... What now? How do I live again? Love again? Relax my nervous system? Think beyond all that I've known for three years? And put down the burden?
Had a call today with the prosecuting attorney. (I didn’t see this coming… even though I have felt for the last few weeks that I just need to live and not worry about the trial.) After 3.5 years, the State of Utah has decided to withdraw the case. They now feel there isn't enough evidence to convince a jury. So. It’s all over…. I’m not sure how I feel. Disappointed. Relieved. Surprised. Weird…
Dying is a process. I takes more than saying words, or feeling emotions, or even enduring the chaos of the mind as its old structures die. It takes a process, day to day to day, the messy, mucky, even miserable. I'm in that process and I want to remember what it's like, so I can be humble when I 'm not. And I want to acknowledge it so anyone else out there in a similar space doesn't feel alone, or weird, or ....anything but perfectly normal!
Well, here goes shame! I am admitting there has been more than one me in here, and possibly more than two, but let's stick with two for today, namely, Jekyll & Hyde. Those two lovables have been here for a bit but I haven't wanted to acknowledge them. So, someone else did it for me. How lucky am I?!
My left hip spoke to me recently, told me that it locked-down 15 years ago because of a misunderstanding, my misunderstanding; I did not understand the situation, my self, others, and healthy responsibility. Today, my left hip is cautiously unlocking. We are talking. I am understanding, and learning. ALWAYS LEARNING!
I have worked my whole life to have healthy, healing, strengthening conversations, the ones which require each person to dwell in the discomfort of their vulnerability, their authenticity. I’m finally doing that. And not just doing it, I’m understanding a few of the keystones which lead up to those moments when hard conversations become something magical, transformational; Like a rainbow becoming raindrops of color, our nervous systems become a dazzling array of possibilities, of new understa...
I am resilient. But not all the time. It happens best when I find the golden thread of my journey, and follow. I don’t just find this thread lying around, I align with it, resonate with it, listen and feel for it. And then, when I find it, I see that I’ve given up all the other possible journeys for this one, for mine, for me in this moment.
After 15 years of having a very active nervous system, and so faithful, like Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park, I’m done. This is my love letter of farewell to this habitual triggering, and also an invitation to harness all that energy into a symbiotic relationship, a meaningful and productive life. I’m dying to live my purpose again. So, as my mother said, “Take my hand. We go soon.”
I know 'fighting to live' very well. What is new to me is 'dying to live'. I thought it would be a less active process but it requires much of the same, namely, awareness, acceptance, allowance, but with less outward physical, and even mental, actions. I don't think either is better, there is a time to fight and a time to die, and both can lead to new life, they are like mini-deaths along our journey. FYI: I hope you don't solve the puzzle I'm doing before I do!
My grandmother is one bookend. I am the other, or one of them. And it wasn't until I spoke my grandmother's words about my mother, at my mother's memorial service, that I began to understand just how deep the ties are between generations, not simply with parents. And it's beautiful for me to see this continue from my mother to my son. I hope they find the same strength, solace, wisdom and grace that I've found (cultivated!) with my grandmother.
We have many sources of grief and they flow like streams into one pool. When a great loss comes, that pool is given an opening and the waters flow for ALL the streams of grief. We are given the gift of grieving, for not just the current loss, but all the losses, from all the sources of our griefs.