What about mental health???

If a person received a substantial physical injury, it would be understood that the process of healing would require time, loving support and patience.  There would be moments of frustration as the perceived time line does not meet the expectations of growth.  There would be no shame in asking for help or in using crutches to allow for protection from further injury.  It would be understood that dedicated time for appointments, for professionals, for tools to support healing and decrease pain, all would be needed.  We would not be afraid to ask for help when needed.

But what of emotional/spiritual wounds……….?

I am working on a project for one of my classes in school and for my own personal interest, on emotional health.  I noticed a few things, terribly high expectations for completion of the process, (“ of getting better”), an inability to ask for and find help(shame), a lack of understanding as to how these problems manifest themselves, and therefore how to and who to ask for help from, and a difficulty in stopping and allowing themselves to take the needed time and space for their needs, to heal rather than just band-aid the problem.

In my studies it has become remarkably clear that the implications of emotional or mental pain and injury has direct correlations to the physical.  When we look at the emotions we can see the body and when we look at the body we can see the emotions, so though we may try, we are never really hiding from our pain, just hiding behind something.  In order to start the process of healing, you must hear and see all of you.  You must acknowledge and see how you are holding each piece inside you. 

The process of healing, holds all of you.  Uncovering the language is a process and takes time.  Be as gentle and understanding with yourself as though it were your leg that is broken rather than your heart or mind.  They will heal, today is the first step, today is the only day that you must be present with on this journey.

Josh Groban - Falling Slowly [Live]

HOPE

I love reading some people's blogs because they can just say what they want to say and then get on

with it. I have trouble doing that. I always feel like I have to see everything there is to see about it and

 explain everything that I know so that it will make perfect sense. I know there is a place for that,

maybe if you are a researcher, but I am not. Sometimes I am just scared to just say what I think and feel

without having any real reason, just because my heart felt something.

Today I was feeling physically tired and kind of weak, but I have been running and couldn't stop. Not

because there wasn't a space to, but because I couldn't let myself, for fear of failing, not doing enough,

not being enough. I have worn myself out for the last few months, partly out of delight and desire to be

doing what I am doing, but partly just because I am afraid. The fear and the sadness run with me every

day. So to escape I escape into study, creating, sometimes loving and being with people. It isn't all

unhealthy, but today was.

I was not feeling well at all and when I finally stopped and asked the question why I realized I had not

eaten anything solid for twenty four hours. I can list a ton of reason why, midterms, smoothies are my

fall back, but it really comes down to be afraid to be totally connected to my own feelings. It is

terrifying to admit that I am afraid of speaking my own truth. I am afraid to say I am sad, there has been

so much loss that I haven't even begun to figure out to process. And I am afraid that if I hear and speak

I become vulnerable; I ache to NOT hold it all by myself, but the walls have been built and are tall and

strong and breaking them down is no small feat. Each step is tiny, going to school, speaking up for

what I see and putting myself out to contribute in the ways that I love and connecting with people

whose resonance I just love to take in, but it is all terrifying in its own right. Some

days I can hold it up to the light and say I am afraid, but I know why and I am ok. Here and now I am

ok, so I will take this step.

Today I realized I had moved past being able to hold it up and look and moved directly into disconnect.

The fear too much, the sadness too deep and so I stand here now, needing to stop and hold it up. 

Somethings I cannot fix and the pain will always be so deeply in my heart, others weave in and out

bringing hope insight and joy as they weave in and out of the sadness. I am not my fear today, it is with

me. My sadness is a gift, when it rises to be heard and I can't eat and move I know I have to stop and

listen. I have to be gentle, like I am with all the beautiful people that I cherish and I have to remember I

am one of them.

The feelings so hard to feel, are the gift. I fight the battle every day of what it feels like to belong in my

own skin with my own heart. It has begun to be a beautiful journey and I am really beginning to like

myself and find such delight and meaning in the process of becoming. Some days I hit my threshold

and it impacts how I treat myself and how I love myself. But today I remember, and I know this…..I

am not the sum total of the mark I got on my midterm, the approval of others because of where I may or

may not sit on Sunday, what I eat, what I drink, what I

wear, but only how I love. How love lives in me.

So, today, letting go, stopping, listening, perhaps to the tears, the inability to put food in my mouth, or

some other symptoms that is calling for my heart to listen. Today I am listening. And tomorrow will 

will have hope for a different story because today I listened.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTQZ_5Ar_Vo&list=RDGMEMQ1dJ7wXfLlqCjwV0xfSNbAVMmkxZsKDeIss&index=5

DREAMS…………..

Dreams locked away and looking from the outside in. The place you wish for is unattainable. The price is simply too great. The ability to perform to receive the stipend of acceptance and belonging, they simply come from a place without understanding. But I look and I know it is in my mind. I ask how did the idea get there. The feeling that you are taking up too much space in the world, if you speak and hope for an answer, if you want something and it escapes your lips.

The ideas, the feelings, the hurt , you want to just throw them away,and leap into a reality that you can see and feel, as though it were a dream. There is this sense that something bigger than life itself is speaking , but when you take the step and begin to walk into the dream, all the fear comes flying at you, the attack, the forces that want you to stop, then laugh at the idea that your feelings are a voice, that has a gentle place in the world. The idea that you can see your self as more than waiting in the wings. The idea that people will want you, for nothing more than who you are, not some bejeweled offering of greatness, not a piece of paper, not the works that someone else chooses for you to be great…………. but for your soul; its light, standing there, hoping to shine bringing its intensity and love to the world.

If only the fear were not so great, so great that you could not step, leave, move, in the very direction of the dream that holds your heart. Can you hear the world, not the people, but the power, forces energies and love calling you out? Can you hear? They are not calling for "greatness", but simply for your life, your love, and your existence to join the forces of love. To grow the integrity of love and the freedom that we are all yearning for.

You can choose to allow your heart to feel, the love, the sadness, the grief, the injustice, and then be moved………… calling the rest of you, giving your mind the direction to go. Hear and take heed, then allow that mind direct you to unlock the doors. Be wise with your heart and allow it to take its proper place, feel deeply, whether for happiness or sadness, they are friends, speaking of your needs. Their purpose is to call out the rest of your strengths, to create your life.

Emotions are invitations, not a moment of panic or pleasure, but something that needs tending, planning and directing. Every day there needs to be hope, hope for the freedom from the oppression of fear and disbelief. Every day their needs to be hope, that you will be heard. Some days you are tired, but do not mistake depression for fatigue and the need to rest, carefully hear the sadness and find the place it is moving you towards, the place behind the fear. Believe the message it is speaking. You can talk yourself out of the message, but it will come back louder and louder. So just listen to it without fear or judgment When you listen, you find the love you have been yearning for, not in another person, in yourself. Love yourself, no matter what shape or size, no matter how accomplished you wish to be, no matter how afraid, just start with love today, there is lots to love. The universe is filled with love and it filled you with its love.

Now go, open that package and find out what is inside.

I Choose Love………..

I hate those moments when I feel the block to something important to understand, but I cannot find it on a conscious level, can't find the words. It is lost and locked somewhere inside. I can't get past the fear. I want to look like someone who my mother will love, or the person that others will look up to. Smetimes I want it so much, I try to create it by drawing the picture in my mind of what it should look like. The person will be brave and strong and always supportive of others, never tire and always love. She will have endless perspective and insight into all of he difficulties she might find and they will never stop her from completing what tasks those outside, those in the periphery would deem as faithful, making her worthy. The picture is beautiful, except achingly empty. The reality, forced behind the curtains of tears, wiped up before they have spilled from her eyes. The longing, replaced with a forced desire for what is prescribed. The dreams, locked away in favor of what should be, the ache of what might be is kept tightly out of reach of her heart, lest it crumble after all of the years of loss.
The problem with this design, is that it cannot be done without cost. The cost: the heart. The cost: dreams of the future , belonging to your own heart. The cost is all of that,not just the word heart, not just the word dream or future, no the cost is the real thing. This is not about the painted version that fits into someone else's timeline and version of your life. IT is the one, if given up leaves you broken in grief, bent and weeping in agony of the loss. This time it is real, not just one you can sweep under the rug of excuses, of intellectual reasons that your create to try and justify the belief that says you cannot really live, your life is a placeholder for everyone else. And you believe it, happily. But when something comes along that you can no longer sweep under the rug, That loss, the one you cannot choose whether you will feel or not, because it is exploding out of every pore of your being. So many things you have never let yourself feel, this one sets them all free, a torrent, a bursting of a dam. Past are the moments of trying to create the reason and the meaning so as to be able to continue to suppress the realness of your being, the woman that aches to be held and known and seen. The mother that wants her child to come home, even though his headstone has been laid. The woman facing rejection again in love. The woman, has doesn't face rejection, because she goes unseen.

How do we get past the words, the words hold us hostage. The words cannot tell the story of not belonging in an empty world, a world of walking dead a world of pretense, pasted smiles amidst, burgeoning symptomology crying out for release. There is more, those beliefs stops us from seeing ourselves. We get out our box and nicely put all the pieces together to fit inside it, when our emotions, our feelings our desires and our vision do not fit in the box, we rearrange them and hide them and fit them into the box in pieces, the heart now in pieces fits in the box. But it can never be held, nor can it feel, not in pieces, it continues to bleed, covering all that we believe is good in our blood, leaving us to wonder how all of this became covered in so much wreckage.
The realization is: walls must come down. You alone have the answer, you with God. NOt you with the man made God of someone else, no the God that speaks only to you, the one that is the creator of love and holds yours deeply, no hostage is exchange for a few trite words and phrases, no not that God. This is the God of life, your life. He made you. You are his, he knows you and, you know him, not through someone or something else, but through your own soul, emotions desires feelings and life. The answer lies inside your heart and its desires, they came from him. That is the long way, not quick fix, no pat answer to fix everything that is breaking your heart, and try to make the destroyed heart, that has been created seem as though it is a good thing. No, no more of that. The good thing about that damaged heart is that where it is leading you. Then on that path you can finally start to listen. No more excuses about how the heart is not really broken, that it is supposed to be this way. IT is really broken, really damaged and won't heal until you finally see it for what it is.

So, You start to walk, you walk away from those things that hold no life and no love. You walk faster and faster until you gain strength and desire is pushing you forward into what you have always wanted to be, always were, but never believed. The beautiful thing is that all the things that are real, they come too. Your love, for the people dear to you. It comes to. It does not become lost because you become found. It becomes more powerful and poignant and more fresh and beautiful in the perspective of a living heart and soul instead of the heart in pieces packed in a box. So, I chose love, the heart made whole. I chose love.

There is a moment, over and over again to chose love. Christ made everything hang on love. IT seems to be backwards everywhere I look. He did not ask us to do everything and then try and include love. That is why we can sit in places that are supposed to be inviting healing and they do not heal, they simply are not based on love. When it is there, there is no question. Love is the force that created life, it designed the universe, makes the oceans ebb and flow. Love has paved the way for everything that matters. Love speaks the message. Love needs no words. Love created us. When we love, there is energy and power. No one can tell you if it is not there, it is undeniable. WIth love there is perspective, without fear.The space holds itself without my help. That is how powerful love is No, nothing comes before love. And nothing comes after. IT is everything in between. IF you watch you can see it. If you listen you can hear it. If you stop and be still you can feel it. So, I choose love and I choose life. I am letting go, for only in letting go of what is not love can I fully embrace what is.
Now I know, why sometimes I get stuck and can't find the words, I have simply fallen out of love. I chose love again and again. When I forget and stumble, I know what it feels like, and I know my way back there. So today I chose love………………

If there were no love, there would be no grief………………………...

I have seen number of posts, and articles by parents that have lost a child, so really articles on grief. All of them written shortly after the loss. The feelings are deep and so poignant, and at that time, the compassion flowing in is abounding and the whole world is revolving around the loss, every breathe, every thought, everything that you see and that you do is surrounded by it, And it feels like the world should stop. it weaves itself into every heartbeat on a very conscious level.

The weaving, that is where it starts to get difficult. It is in every moment that used to be "normal" changing the perception, and the response to those moments. A wedding, can be wrapped in both deep sorrow and sweet joy as you put the pictures of the newly married couple on the wall, next to the picture of your child that is now timeless. Children growing up, taking normal risks, needing to leap, those can hold undercurrents of the final leap and breath you watched your child take. The essence of life is now permanently changed. While your loving friends and family wonder when you will " move on" or be your old self again………….. It is important to note that the old self is now gone. The innocence is lost. You can never have it back again, never live in the place without the loss. Others can only dream about what it might feel like and how it would affect their life, but at the end of the dream they get to wake up to their child's laughter, their innocence intact. But for those of us carrying this loss, we never get to wake up.

Yes, we still laugh and we still love and we still find meaning in small things, but behind it all lies a curtain of sorrow, that for the most part stays closed to the rest of the world. IT is understood and expected after the loss for tears to fall, for you to not be okay, while, but there comes a time in this unknown, uncharted, unmapped journey that you feel as though you really should be okay and you try to be and people may even think that you are, but underneath it all is the pictures and the feelings of watching one of the people that you have loved most in this world suffer, sometimes it feels like endlessly, over and over again and then become still. There is no idea, thought of rational understanding about this that can remove what you have seen. Suppressing it in favor other things to help you forget and feel blessed are at best a diversion, at most terribly hurtful.

And, when you feel the same kind of love in other parts of your life you become protective, kind of instinctively. You want to hold those people and never let them go. You want to freeze time and you want to remember and stay in the laughter and the magical moments that you remember, not just for the child that you have lost, but for all of them. And when life starts hurting the rest of those that you love, sometimes it becomes more than you can hold. The problem is that when time has passed and maybe now it has been years, you don't always know why….. Why when you sit with the others and talk and laugh and listen honestly to their heartaches, to the ups and downs of life, why when you leave you want to cry, why the pain sometimes feels unbearable. The memory of the source has dimmed, but the pain itself is still weaving itself through everything.

So sometimes unravelling the emotion has to be there first order of the day or nothing else can find a place past the first check mark on the list. The day can slip away as though in a fog and you can see nothing clearly. Stopping for the conscious recognition of the the fact that you are still breathing and still loving and no matter how far we get from the moment of the good-bye, it is still woven through every breath you have taken since then. It has created a picture that must be respected and honored. It must be heard, if you are going to live. When the day is swirling and you can't see where to start on the endless list of chores, work, study, even beautiful things, it is calling for you to stop and give it a moment maybe just gaze deeply at the picture that has woven itself and is creating your new life. It is okay even if time has passed to be okay and not okay, still, maybe even forever. You never stop loving and you will never forget. I think it is okay for life to never be able to look like it did before. It is okay to navigate new and complex ways of loving after the loss. It is okay to redefine yourself in a new way holding who you used to be wrapped securely in the knowing that love and loss has changed you forever.

So today wherever you are in the loss. Know, that it is not going anywhere. It will walk with you from room to room and color your world like a pair of rose colored glasses, only not always feeling rosy. In all of this, knowing that the tapestry woven through this story is unique and personal and is creating you.
Don't worry about being who you were ever again. That is an impossibility. You will and are becoming braver, brighter, more beautiful. That is the story that love always tells. You see, if there was no love, there would be no grief.

To my Dad, since you are not here for me talk to today………...

The other day I was watching a show. In the show the father of one of the characters was dying of cancer. Now that is not an unfamiliar scenario for me, or for many people losing loved ones. It becomes more personal when the story is yours. It feels like the whole world should stop and weep with you, when the story includes your father, mother, brother , son or daughter. I remember wondering how the rest of the world could just go on, when my heart was broken when the hole was so deep, it felt like there was nothing that could ever make the world right, right enough to go on. What would it look like to not hear his laughter, or have the deep conversations about anthropology, psychology, fishing, music, chain mail………etc. How would it look to know that he would never again walk through the door, when the pictures on the wall would change with time, marriages, birth, graduations……….? How could those pictures change if his never would? What would I do when there were questions bigger than anything that I understood and I needed someone who I know wasn't afraid to hear the sadness, the brokenness, the anger or whatever unsavory feelings came out of the pain of life? He wouldn't be there. He, my dad, didn't have to say anything about how he felt about me. I always knew that he adored me, that he thought I was special and that he wished he could make all the growing things, all the sadness go away, but not now………. Him leaving left a big hole. He held my belonging in a world that was fraught with confusion and difficulty to navigate That is what Dads are for. And sons, they bring a sense of protection as we grow old and they grow strong, but now they are both gone. When the son of the father who had just died in my movie was grieving with a friend he says I don't know how to live in world without my dad. I sat there and suddenly started to cry and I knew that I didn't know that either. It suddenly left me knowing that all the time of being brave, putting the loss in "perspective" just wouldn't do anymore. It wasn't my head that didn't know it was my heart. He held a piece that no one in the world did. So did my son. We laughed together, cried together, studied together, created together and dissected many of the important things of life and love. It doesn't just go away. There is a time that we talk, hoping that we will feel better, but then the time passes that it seems "appropriate" to be still grieving, that is when is actually starts to get hard. At first you can convince yourself that he is gone somewhere, will be home later, even though every part of you is aching and knowing that it is not true, there is a kind of shock that doesn't pass for a while. The hardest part was that there was a way that I felt like I could never really talk about what happened. That I couldn't talk about him, people were uncomfortable, they don't know what to do with the ever present elephant in the room, death, sadness, regret, fear. They want to fix it, say the right thing that will make you feel better. But the reality is nothing makes you feel better. No one can you give you a silver bullet to leaving grief behind. Grieving so that others will feel comfortable, prolongs the inevitable. People always want other people who are grieving to be strong, it is a cultural expectation borne of lack of understanding, and discomfort with the emotion . I never wondered what that meant, being strong, until my son died, and then I knew that it meant suppress the inconsolability of the loss to avoid discomfort . I know that I am generalizing, and there are people and places that understand grief, but its not taught really well and it isn't understood very well.. Our comfort level is ok at first and and then we just don't know what to do with it. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what people expect or offer during, before and after, it is about what you expect of yourself, what you allow of yourself. Personally, I didn't grieve very well, right after my son passed away from leukemia, my Dad's cancer ran out of control and I felt the responsibility to be there, help and support and my story, had to be packed away for another day, another time. After Dad died,and I had had the chance, during his illness to walk the same hospital halls, talk with some of the same doctors and nurses, watch the same pain and suffering that I had so recently seen, I stopped being able to process any of it. I cried briefly and felt the hole of not wanting him to be gone, but quickly packed it with the other story and put it away. There was too much there. I got sick. My grief just made me sick. I curled up on the couch and couldn't open the door to anything for about two years. I went throughout he motions of doing things, pretended that I was all right and had landed this thing with great grace beauty, strength and perspective, but I hadn't. I couldn't look at it. I couldn't express anything that came near the real thing, I built strong walls and kept everything out. One day, they started to crumble. There were a number of things that caused cracks, mostly relating to my other kids. Then there was a straw and it broke the camel's back and it all came pouring out, it was directed at nothing and everything, no one and everyone. I had no idea what was happening. There was no consciousness about the experience, it was just pure raw emotion, totally unfiltered. People thought many things, many just went away, they didn't know what was wrong either, after all, the "time" had passed, I should be fine. In fact most people went away, not sure I blame them,but some stayed and waited while I raged and cried and tried to make sense of why a child should die, how to talk when no one is listening. There was a point where it started making more sense. The day I finally said " Why wasn't I there at that appointment, maybe if I just had of been there, maybe I could have made this happen differently. Why did his death have to look like that? We didn't even get to say good-bye. Why didn't they tell us when they knew they could do nothing? Why did they just kill him faster? Things that are totally irrational and they make no sense except for when you are grieving , somehow there is this ridiculous lack of common sense in any of the questions or lack of it in any of the answers. Today three years later I miss my Dad. I have pushed my family away because I don't know how to be in it without him. IT has nothing to do with them, it is just I don't know how to live in a world without him, maybe they remind me of that. I don't know, there are still some things that don't make sense with grief, but the only way through it is to take one step at a time. I wish he was here to say Happy FAther's Day to. I wish we could talk about my garden, his fishing, all the herbs he is taking, what I am learning. I wish he was here because I miss him. I miss watching my son become a father, make his own life, and be there as I grow old, someone to lean on. Each day there is a little more light and I find that I can see parts of myself that I had lost. For today I miss my dad. So I hope that he knows wherever he is that I miss him and am glad that he is my dad.

Intuition vs intellection

Today I was working at the market and a mom with her young boy came to pick up a blend I had made for him. The boy was having trouble sleeping and was waking up with nightmares often, also having trouble concentrating, during the day. One of the things that I have learned thus far in my studies and work with essential oils and people is the individuality of our needs. People seem to have an innate sense of what would be healing for them. Even if they are suffering from the same problem as another person, the scents of the oils that they feel resonant are different. It has amazed me time and time again watching this. But,today was very interesting. The mother brought her young son, so that he could tell us which of the blends that I made felt right to him. We went through all of them watching his face and body and narrowed it down to two. I had him smell them each one more time and asked him, where he felt it when he smelled them. After smelling the first oil, he points to his head and says " I feel it here." After smelling the second oil, he finds his heart and puts his hand on it and says " I feel it here." I didn't think too deeply about that, except that he seemed to have noticed what he needed, until I was labeling the bottles and noticed what I had put into each blend. The first blend had been specifically designed to calm the mind. I had chosen oils that would be supportive to calm and ground the thoughts and mental processes. The second blend had a deep component of the heart, designed to create a sense of calm, and openness As I saw that ,I was suddenly struck with the look on this child's face, and his innate sense of which of the oils he needed and where he needed them. The interesting thing about this was he seemed to be tentative in telling us that it was not good, but both I and his mother could read in his body language his response and encouraged him to find words. I think about how we source out, externalize our own intuitive process of learning, feeling, becoming and healing. We read books that tell us which remedy will work for the malady we suffer, whether that be physical, spiritual, emotional………….. I have had so many people come looking fro lavender, as though it is the flavor of the day, because their sad or heard from a friend that it would do such and such a thing. Don't get me wrong, lavender is a lovely oil, but there are hundreds of lovely oils that have amazing healing properties, similar and different, just as powerful as lavender. So we want it because someone else identified some great properties int he oil, so we don't us our powers of thought to look any further. There e is further to look, and I could write a whole article on essential pools, with properties similar to lavender that are beautiful, healing and amazing. ONe woman today came up with the same line "I heard that lavender does………." I asked her if she liked lavender. She didn't know, but wanted to do the thing she had heard it did. This is a good start to learning, we hear something that draws us in and makes us curious. We experiment with it, but we must hold the final call on the idea , the opinion, or feeling about what is right for us. We must not delegate our right to learn and find healing in our lives to another person. People are great resources, just as I was a resource to create some blends for a little boy, he had the final say. His intuition, read what he needed. I am just saying, the story of our lives is written by us, thinking for ourselves, taking baby steps to start, but finding out what we need, opening the doors to our own healing, by catching the rays of light that we see peeking under the door, telling us which door to open.

Let it Go

The song "Let it Go" from Frozen has had a resonant voice within many of us. We all yearn to free ourselves from the constraints of our own thinking and ideas that create a sense of loss of our self and the feeling of living inside a straight jacket. We feel bogged down by messages that swirl all around us and through us until we cannot even discern between them and what is truly coming from our own internal knowing and participation in life. I have lived for a long time in my mind, deciding from moment to moment the action needed because of something external to me. I could hold it up reason it out, and thinking it sounded like a good plan, could even bring it into my internal sense of knowing and begin acting from that place. The problem with this- dissonance, as opposed to resonance, dissonance divides, creates a feeling of directive in one sphere of our being and a feeling of sadness and loss in the other. Because of the directive coming from our intellectual mind, and sometimes even our emotional mind, when we bring the things we want to believe down into the place of our living, we feel the very reason, through our belief that this, directive, is the "right" thing. Here is where the challenge lies. The directive, must be coupled with a resonant participation in life in order to be of value and as Christ said to bring forth the "fruits". Sometimes we can convince ourselves, as Else did in the movie "Frozen" that what we are doing is for the best good, but while we feel the high on the outside, we can see the conflict inside. Sometimes it takes a long time of living this way before it becomes apparent, especially if we separate our directive from the resultant response in our bodies. We feel fear, a constant source of anxiety, sadness, depression, anger and the list could go on and on, but we tuck them neatly inside, separating them from what we perceive as our real life. We have learned to disconnect from that part of ourself and take our body apart from our actions , we seek help by medicating away the separation we have created. We refuse to acknowledge the energy that is created in our lives, by our choices and wonder what happens to it when we do not act upon the power within us, kind of like Elsa in "Frozen". A latent power, that fills her with fear of herself, at every breath trying to control and bring into it submission of the mind's directive. But is not the power we hold a great gift of God in our life? Is it not meant to be understood shared and used? We know that too, but we reason that the directive controlling everything in our life has to control the power as though God in his infinite wisdom would put the power to direct this in our ego center, our rational, thinking centre, instead of the centre of our heart, our ability to love. Does not love control all that is of value in this world? It seems to me that love is the only real power. That power if used under the mandate of truth and God's love really can go awry. But, that power, that love is within us, not without. God is within us, not without. Everything without is just an interpretation of God's ideas in someone else's life. The only way we truly know him and how to love is when there is nothing that gets in the way of sitting with him. Our ego, gets in the way, other people's ideas get in the way. Why is it that when we are making a life changing decision we look without, as much as we look within, as though we can never fully trust the love within? The challenge we face is trying to truly understand what it looks like to look within. There are beliefs about ourselves and the world that swirl around and cause us to misuse the very gifts that make us alive, so we become afraid of them, never wanting to use them again. Suppression brings more fear of their use, and with every misstep, the fear of the gift becomes greater and greater, until total suppression is the only option. But Christ came to bring us life. Suppression is death. Life comes from Christ. Life comes from opening to all the energy, all the power, all the truth. We will be clumsy as we begin to use this power. We will make mistakes, as with anything we will learn. In fact the only way to learn is to make the mistake. The mistakes are the greatest catalyst to who will seek to become. So, we yearn to let it go. And we must, we must learn truth around letting go. We must gain understanding around the power of who we are and the energy and life we carry inside of us, but the very best way we learn, is the total participation of our energy of life with the experiences of life. Then we understand the beauty, power and potential of letting go. With that comes joy, health, beauty, life and recognition of truth that would otherwise never be experienced. So, today, use your love and find yourself in letting go. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moSFlvxnbgk

Let me tell you a story……………...

http://new.livestream.com/…/5…/DanielleAbelGraduationRecital

Everyone loves a story. We look for stories all the time. Our social media is filled with stories. Day after day story after story, but we look for the stories we want the ones that tell us what we want to hear. We look for the stories that meet and fit nicely with our idea about what life should look like in it's neat and tidy package. When the stories don't fit this idea, we judge the people in the stories and then we don't retell them, that is for sure. So, I was thinking about how I used to think about stories, before some of the ones in my life had such sad and tragic endings, leaving me wondering about just about everything. That is when I started to notice how we respond to the emotions in stories. Did you know that there are some culturally appropriate emotions and some that just don't sell when it comes to books and movies and pass along social media stories or even a face to face conversation. My daughter pictured in the above link shared her story. Now this is her story, but if one of my other children, or someone else had shared their story it would be just as relevant. You see it is not the details of the story that make it important. It is the story, the struggle, the sadness, anger, regret, fear…… If you listen to the musical story, maybe you know some of the things that happened and maybe you do not, but here is what I found interesting in listening to her story. There were parts of her story that I knew would be uncomfortable, not for her, but for others. The story starts with a sadness that will take your breathe away, relatable. We have all felt that sadness and sometimes when we hear the sadness in someone else's story we resonant so deeply with it because of our own. It is one of the emotions of life that we know we must experience. IT is part of grieving, part of losing, part of letting go, but did you ever notice there is kind of a shelf life on sadness. We stop and do the math. How long ago was the event causing the sadness? Do they still have cause for this? For the first while of the allotted time, people are kind and want to offer support, but that gradually fades to a space of discomfort with a person's sadness. I am not advocating that we hope to stay in sadness, or that you need other people to do something so you can sort your sadness, but I learned an interesting lesson in my own process of grief. That is when you start grieving the event and the loss you experienced, it is like opening the flood gates and once it starts coming, there is no stopping it, so perhaps if you have stored many moments of sadness away without properly honoring them you might have a lot that you have to pick up and hold and cry about, meaning the idea of a time line cannot be processed. Now the real problem with this whole experience isn't what other people do or don't do to those that are grieving, it is how we hold our own grief on a day to day basis. If I am comfortable with a moment of sadness take the time to hold it and myself gently when it happens, it will not phase me to sit with someone doing just that. When I am not afraid of my own sadness I do not need to rush or "fix" another person through theirs. Sadness is the easy emotion. The one we just can't really get an honest grasp on, either for ourselves or others is anger. When we have been angry, how often have we been told/taught about "controlling our anger" I know I was. So, anger is uncomfortable because we are trying to control it. The funny thing about the things we try hardest to control, they become the most out of control. They are the most uncomfortable to bear. So when a person grieving goes through the anger portion of their grief. We tell them to "Forgive and Forget" We post wonderful inspiring stories of people who have forgiven and changed someone's life and how wonderful they feel. We then hold this up as the "ideal" that we should strive for. The problem with idealism is that it removes the individual from it. When the individual is the focus, then we move into realism. Nobody wants to hear the story about the guy who was mad. That isn't a good story, and there is tons of judgement around anger. Ever notice that? I have experienced that and learned quite quickly not to share my anger. It wasn't pretty and the amount of people in our culture uncomfortable with their anger is let's just say , it is high. How do I know? I watch people, I watch what they say and I watch for incongruence, because it helps me understand what people are really saying. If I say one thing and do another, it has a clear message. The funny thing is when it is us doing the incongruence, we can never see it. We say we believe in freedom of speech and then we criticize someone who says something that is different than what we believe,when at the same time we speak out on issues that perhaps the same person may disagree with, but somehow it is ok for us to say it, but not for the guy that is making me uncomfortable with his opinion. I think we call that the emotional plague reaction, just post something controversial in your circles and watch the reaction. Anger has many faces, all dying to be controlled. All as destructive as the last. And not because anger is destructive. IT is not, it is a message to us to create a shift or change , but if we try to control the shift or change instead of just listening and hearing our needs. We do a terrible disservice to ourselves and to others. Road rage, it is not about something out of control, although it is that. It is actually about something that is being controlled far to well and is simply rising up in a place that a person cannot ignore. I had a moment the other day when I started to feel angry about an external circumstance and I stopped realizing these truths and asked myself what was I really angry about. Turns out,it wasn't anger, it was some sadness, some disappointment, and some experiences that were just about the process of coming to know something and recognize it. Nothing special, but still kind of scary. The funny thing about not trying to control the anger around the would be offender, there was no need, when I stopped to hear where it was really coming from, the realization hit me. I was afraid and after moving to a place of comfort to calm my fear. I wasn't really even angry, but I sure felt it initially. So back to anger, if we find a sense of understanding and comfort in our own anger a really cool thing happens: someone else's isn't scary anymore. There aren't demons in my closet to uncover with another person's anger because I already exorcised them, or perhaps there are and I feel relieved that something has shed the light so that I can let them go. Criticism becomes an effort to bring up anger to bring light to a person's process and it is kind of a cool thing to observe. I am happy when I watch the anger arise because I know the healing is really moving. The only thing we really lose is our ability to see that if we put our feet down on the ground, we are on solid ground. But we try to control it, like a drowning victim fighting for air, we fight and hurt others when we won't look where we need to. We have been drowning ourselves. But again, this is not simple, it is process. We ebb, we flow, we get angry, we blame others, we stomp and get ourselves all worked up, until finally we realize we aren't the victim, we are only making ourselves one. We stand up hold it, honor it and then we let it go. But those fighting the battle of their own anger will be terrified and more angry that you may be illuminating their journey as well as your own. So, I hope you listen to your ow story, because when you are uncomfortable with someone else's, there is a message in your own. May you enjoy the music, the sadness, the anger, the regret, the fear and the triumph of this story and of your own.

The conundrums of choices

There are so many things in life that there are expectations for. In our work, we get asked to do extra things, take on more to help others. In our families, we expect people to believe the same, want the same things. And when we say no, we can often be faced with feelings of guilt, decreased sense of worth from ourselves. And from others, maybe comments that are ignorant, lack compassion or real interest or concern about why we have made the choices we have. Often others want to create solutions for us, so that we can align with what is comfortable to them,. These can all be challenging to navigate, especially if our reasons for taking the stand we have has to do with grief, exhaustion, burnout, or something else along the lines of a person being close to emotionally lacking the ability to continue clinging to the present circumstances as they currently are. I was speaking to a colleague at work today about this. She has recently lost her mother and best friend in her life. She has just finished doing some grief counseling, which she admitted was terribly challenging and emotional, especially in trying to maintain her current load at work. She pointed out to me that as they talked in her group about the need to set boundaries as you are going through these things, others may not understand and that rather than saying "I can't", saying " I choose not to". I thought about that briefly, but still found that hard to say and then I realized I needed a conscious reason if I am saying no. I have to understand it, so that I can in good conscience know that I really am choosing what is best for me. I realize at times in the past I have made decisions to walk way from things, usually nothing very significant, but I think I always felt bad. I have an intuitive sense as to why I made those choices, but nothing I could really fully explain or feel deeply about. Mostly my intuition has been ahead of reasoning in terms of being able to recognize why something is not good for me. But I need to know, not just feel it, although that to is important. For without the feeling, it is just an intellectual argument. I have found myself struggling to understand why in my current job I am periodically feeling good and then burned out. Wanting to leave, and wanting to stay. I recognize that something wasn't working, but I didn't know what. I tend to be too loyal, and too concerned about if I will let someone else down, so I stay usually until something becomes so destructive to me that the intuition gets so strong that I cannot ignore it, even if I don't really know why. But today I realized something new, something I had not understood before. In saying that "I can't", there is more that needs to be added. "I can't" is only the intuition speaking without the concrete reason for the choice, sometimes it is ok, but in matters of significant importance, there needs to be more. The more, I finally heard and could add. "I can't choose that if I want …….whatever particular need/desire is there. My job has some great parts, but the essence of what I am doing is burning me out. So, I now know that IF I want to remain emotionally and physically healthy, have some desire in my life, I can't stay extendedly. I can limp along and finish what I have started, but in creating life in the long term, my time has to be spent in a way that better lifts and fills my heart and soul. So, this sounds so simple and obvious, but getting to the conscious knowledge of the why has been challenging. I have grown so accustomed to muffling any cries or sounds of my own voice with the expectations and/or needs of others, I had become completely unable to look at a circumstance and have any recollection as to whether it was something I could do and remain in good emotions health. Usually I just said,"Yes" and picked up the pieces later. The lesson I had been taught about life was one of racing to make sure obligations are met and then some. NEver stopping because there was a perception that we were running a race with a prize therefore we cannot stop, set a boundary or recognize a desire. No, it is always about the race, the voice that starts rearing its head always is about never stopping, as that is defined as quitting. The blinders are on. We do not look to the right or to the left, but only at the task at hand and it doesn't matter how badly it is going for your, you never stop. Those are the messages that I have heard through my life. Suddenly I realized that those were false beliefs. There is no race, just a beautiful opportunity to experience many wonderful things, that get missed when we are driving at prizes and result, comparison and statistics. When those things define a person's worth….. well, it is just plain exhausting until that point when there is nothing left. That is when the words "I can't if I want to live", "I can't if I am going to have some delight in my life", "I can't if I am going to find my reason for living", yes, that is when those words spoken, loud and clear.. It doesn't matter what those on the sidelines say, or how they judge your performance, I don't belong to the race any more. I have decided just to be a person, one who lives with her heart and soul in the present moment, seeing perceiving and understanding consciously what is here, instead of closing my eyes and pretending that what is there is something else and if I try hard enough I can believe the consequence I know is happening away, but only for a while. Lying to ourselves can soothe us for a moment, but it always catches up to us at some point. When we choose not to listen, the toll it takes upon our souls grows incrementally each time we deny what we know about our hearts, needs and desires. So, today, I say I cannot do the things that you want me to if I want to stay healthy, if I want to enjoy a fulfilling relationship of joy with my self, my family and my dreams. So, it becomes obvious if I choose what you want for me, I am choosing your dream and your hopes and your experience and not my own. That would be perhaps the saddest thing that we as people could ever do. There is only one you. Only one person who has your unique insights, experience, abilities, love, desires, passions and so forth. What would the world look like if you set those aside to be what someone else expected, walked the path someone else decided for you, someone who had no idea of your heart. In essence you would be lost and with that there would be a void left in the world where you and your delight, your life, your love and your dreams were once alive. That would be a sad day…….

The Parable of the Sower

When I was reading this parable, I had questions about how I have always interpreted it. The idea of if you are not faithful enough you fall prey to the places that cause a seed not to grow. Simple explanation, all within the realm of my control based on the choices I make. If I do the things that supposedly keep me within this realm, then there is nothing to fear and I can be assured of my place. But something about this didn't seem right. Being a gardener, I know that if a seed falls in a place that it cannot grow, it is my responsibility as the gardener, not the seeds'. So what does this mean. I looked at the explanations later in the chapter of the story and it seemed pretty straight forward. Then I started wondering about the Hebrew words as opposed to the English ones that I was basing the meaning on. So I started looking up words and comparing them to the Hebrew word that the passage was derived from. A new theme began to emerge for me. So,first the idea of kingdom. (Matthew 13:19) Kingdom, the idea that struck me from my reading is that this is not a realm, or physical area and group of people under the rule of a monarch, but the idea is more subtle, implying dominion, or influence, thus removing the idea of specificity of declared allegiance, place and ideas, but instead more like a blanket of love being thrown out and we can bask in the warmth and comfort that is offered, but the implication about influence has less rigid patterning in order to be a part of this "kingdom". Secondly, same verse, the wicked one, based on my upbringing the image is very clear, but again something about that needed clarification for me. So I started searching and saw in reference to the Hebrew word connected to that, hostile to God. My mind went around and around trying not to superimpose an idea that wasn't actually there because someone else had said it before and left my feelings to dance freely in a space of openness. I started to think what is God? What would be hostile to God? The thought came that if we removed the physical,material idea of God and reduced him down to his most fundamental quality, we have love. Anything that leads us to love and its influence is of God, but anything that leads us from the influence of love is hostile to God. Anything! For my own purposes and experience, those things have been fear, anger, regret, sadness, sometimes physical things places and people have triggered those things in my life and although they can leave me hostile to God, they can also lead me to God, depending on how I hold them. So my state of mind in holding all things is what determines whether I am under that influence of either hostility to God or his dominion. The more I studied this the more I realized that the real message was that we move in and out of all of these places, meaning, the stony place, the wayside, the thorny spots, regularly in life. It is part of the process of finding God and experiencing his influence. We move from stony place, to thorny place, to falling by the wayside and back again, purposefully and individually designed. God knew we would. These teachings are about seeing the places we are in and recognizing that perhaps at this moment we are wilting and withering and knowing that the miracle of his love is the ability that it has to bring fresh life and nourishment when we are withering or feeling close to death. These are not meant to be permanent places, places that we see others in and point a finger recognizing their demise is forthcoming. These are meant to be illustrations of how God invites us back into his influence and his blessing??? Blessing….. Another word I had a great need to look up. Blessed, it has come to mean a state where if you do the right things you get a good result that is what is promised right? But doesn't that leave the possibility for this to oft times see things from a very comparative and prideful perspective? Like, if you are not where I am you are……… fill in the blank. BAck to Blessed, this is what I needed to understand about that word, it is about self contained happiness. It is holding with contentedness, our journey, based on the ability to see what is beyond the material,physical perspective and meaning and in (Vs 11) again, the ability to see is not because of something we have done, our works,or all the perceived service or devotion externally. That does not give us the ability to see. As Jesus points out, there were many prophets and righteous men that wanted to see and could not. So clearly the ability to see is based on something outside of our material, physical action. Jesus came to bring life and to bring it more abundantly. He didn't come to bring a longer to do list. That doesn't give us vision. In fact he gives but two simple commandments. They are about love, not an external, physically defined by action love, but a love defined by an inner content, not an outer representation. We can have outer representation with no inner content. That is perhaps the thing we should be most watchful of in our lives. As Thomas Barrfield in his book "Saving Appearances" defines: An idol is something that has an outer representation with no inner content. The inner content is love, desire, our soul's on definition of meaning. That is what Jesus came to bring. And to break down he came to break down things in antithesis of that, the rules, the externals, holding so dearly to those instead of love. He fought every tradition to bring everything back to love,the inner content. In my own life, the only reason I could not and sometimes till cannot, let go of the outer is that I wasn't and am not always fully convinced that holding on only to love would actually net the same things as all of the outer rules and ideas. I guess what I am saying is that I realized that I didn't really believe him when he said that all things hang on love. I thought that I had to put all of the other things first. Personally that is when I started to wilt in the sun, my root wasn't in his love it was in some outer form, lacking the inner content of love. After studying and trying deeply to let his love influence my ideas and thinking, Today I am just beginning to see that the most important thing ever is the influence of his love. And love, it does not know religion, it does not discriminate against sex, or race or beliefs. Sometimes I really want to discriminate and hold onto the things that put me in a light that I perceive will make me "loved", But really his love invites us in when we are wilting and when we want to know, not what someone else's idea about that are, but his he will tell us. Every day I am trying or let someone else provide them, of what I am trying to understand. Because really when Christ defines them who knows what may grow from the perceived wayside? It may be far greater than our minds and hearts could ever imagine. And who knows the heart of the master and his plan for us? Hearing his heart requires different eyes to see and different ears to hear. He said it himself that many righteous men and prophets could not. The question is Do we want to see his way, or ours????

I am not the sum total of my Facebook posts

I have noticed this interesting phenomenon about social media. We define ourselves, and others, by what we see and post online. We think hard about whether we should "like" something on Facebook or whether or not to post something we thought interesting, not sure what people will think. I remember a few years ago a friend of ours was gong through a change in his life and posted some things on line that out of context looked like he was angry, critical and trying to tear down other people. I remember one of my sons, "unfriending" him, because he didn't want to "get caught up in his negative emotions". At the time I didn't really see what was being said, but thought "yah, for sure" and "that must be the space he was living in, in the rest of his life as well". I mean, he posted it on Facebook, so we can for sure take inference and decide what he meant and how he is living his life? Or can we? So, later I sat with this friend and he told me what had been happening in his life and how the people in his world, not the Facebook world, but the real one had responded to him. He cried and told me how sad and betrayed he had felt by the people that had hurt him and the trust that had been lost. He told me that he didn't know how to find a "new normal" without the things he had lost. What appeared so straight forward, had been the polar opposite of what I had thought. As I had made assumptions, so had many others, who shared their assumptions and judgement of his situation without ever picking up the phone, knocking on his door, inviting him out for "tea". I felt a little embarrassed when I thought of the things I had thought. How I thought looking at his pictures and posts that I had some sense of who he was, but I was dead wrong and not even close in my ability to see him. In the world of social media, we are starving and dying for friendship, for touch, for being seen, being heard, being held and being known. I am not my Facebook posts. You do not know me by what I put up on my wall. You might have an idea of some things that have crossed my mind, but how they play with light with darkness, with love and hate, you will never know if you do not look into my eyes, or listen to my voice. When I get up in the morning, I hate to turn on the lights, so when I shower I have a little seashell "night light" in my bathroom that I turn on, just enough light to see and feel the beauty of the morning. I love scents, so between the nightlight and the soft scent it is a wonderful way to start the day. I have studied to become an aromatherapist. My play smells delightful and calming. It includes mixing and brewing all sorts of concoctions, that calms my emotions, soothes pain and make a person feel loved, those are the most important things in life to me to share with the people around me. I have discovered there are many different ways to share those things. My family knows when I start creating I have entered an alternate universe and it could be a while before I return and when I do, it will look like a whirl wind has run through the kitchen and it will smell wonderful. Sometimes it tastes wonderful too, since I am always experimenting with food, as well. The joke at our house is that whatever I make will have no name and I will likely never be able to recreate it. The other one, is "What is growing on the counter, Mom?" Between bread, sourdough, kefir, kombuchu, sauerkraut, or some other fermented dish, they think I am crazy and sometimes just downright strange. I teach children's preschool programs. When I got that job, I wasn't sure if I wanted it or not. I just wanted something, but now I love watching their eyes when they see you and you know their name and what is important to them. I love that you can pick them up and hold them when they are crying and you can change their whole world for that moment, And waving to Mommy from the window will turn the tears to a smile of delight I love that you can fix what is going wrong for them and watch them smile and send them back to face the game or the other kids. It reminds me of when life still was innocent and I had not watched my own children being broken by things I could never fix and will never be ok. But for the moment, I remember their childhood, the dreams and smiles. Now the world is punctuated with hard words, like rejection, divorce, death, and fear. Fear of things that are not fixed by a hug, a drink and a night light, things that have taken those they loved, and parts of themselves that can and never will be the same, a loss of innocence, with a depth I could never have imagined. But with all of that, we still laugh, go shopping, make music, share dreams and hold onto faith and love. We still pray and try to make sense of the senseless. I study all the time. I am studying Heilkunst, which is homeopathy and the sequential treatment of trauma. Right now most of my study comes from philosophers and doctors from the 1800's. It is challenging to read. It has made me realize how dumbed down we have become. How little time we actually take to see, hear or feel the world. It is like a black and white still shot we live in, with sterile emotions and conforming actions. That is how we are living. The more I study, the more I want to touch the world, sit with you and listen to your voice. I want to laugh with you, hold your hand, hug you and hear your stories too. I don't want to read your Facebook posts. I want to read your eyes. I want to see what is real, not the facade. I don't want to be known from this place, I want this place to invite you to call me and invite me for tea. I want to laugh with you because I miss you. Right now I assume that you are happy in your world and that you don't miss me because all you do is "post" this, "like" my status "comment" on my link, but where are you? Are you ok being alone too?……………………………….