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?……………………………….

Living for yourself….. or others????

I have a read a couple of different posts, or articles on this subject. One about a young person who had pondered ending their life and felt inspired by the lyrics to a song that brought presence and ability to enter back into life. BEautiful story. I love how music does that. It is like it reaches right through the barriers of space time and words and speaks directly to our soul. I want to stop before the interpretation of the story, which was to live your life for others. That struck me with great force and left me discouraged and feeling a weigh that in the words of one of my friends illustrates what happens over time when we live for others. "For years I have just collected my emotions and stored them in my proverbial shelf. I sort the feelings and emotions and place them in neat and tidy little boxes and store them on this emotional shelf. Continuing the illusion that I have my shit together. These imaginary boxes stay on this pretend shelf with the real food I eat." When we live for others our feelings have little merit except to guide us to be better at doing things for others. I know that I am simplifying this and that those who argue that we should live to do good for others have all sorts of arguments about how wrong I am, but…… I have done it both ways. There is a terrible assumption that if we live for ourselves, from our desires, from our hearts and hopes and needs that selfishness is the base. Sad and terribly wrong assumption. So we could live for ourselves in a way that is devoid of love or concern for another, but that is no more authentic to the soul of the person living than to live for others, either way, we are trapped by fear, and illusions that stop us from truly understanding who we are. The thing of it is life is messy. We have feelings of sadness, anger, regret, frustration and they are a part of our process and learning and when we shelve them, there is hell to pay. My friend shares how hers ended up as extra weight, mine physical illness because I didn't even know what it felt like to hear my own heart. How in God's name, which is the name we do things can we help anyone without our own heart and voice guiding us. I can hear the arguments again, but speaking from experience and from a place where I told myself that what I was doing was what I wanted, well taught words to my mind, but with no basis, regurgitating what I had been told about losing yourself. What happens when you lose yourself? You get lost. Your kids grow up, your husband my leave, or die, a job may change or no longer be there, even friends can come and go. So what do I have without my feelings, my heart, my desires, my passion, my dreams? I can tell you, a lot of fear and emptiness, always trying to see what someone else wants or needs you to do. Shutting off your real dreams, assuming there is no possibility of life for your heart, for you, only a life of losing yourself, which is supposed to make you feel amazing, but like an over dose of chocolate it really feels good until the emptiness kicks in later, leaving you feeling broken and lost, so you need more. So, then what do we want the basis of life to be, if not just giving ourselves away? The fallacy being bred and going strong is about basing your life on something tangible and controllable , like I am living to do good for someone else. I can define that, picture it, give myself kudos for my success. It is definable, your success is definable. Did someone else feel good? Yes, you won. If not, you lose. Did it fit the parameter that I have defined as success and love? If yes, then I win. Sounds very simple and incredibly codependent and dysfunctional. You need someone else, something external to get this right. I want to propose a drastic and different basis for how we live. Love. Very simple. But not the do-gooding, dependent kind of love, but an authentic self love. It emanates from our souls, from our desires, from the relationships that we have, but unlike doing for others this can't be measured for success by what others may think, doesn't necessarily, fit into an idea that is held in society somewhere. In fact in showing real self love you may have to do some things that are hard and others are unhappy, and frightened of, but we as beings know when we are connected to ourself and to the love that makes the universe go round. Lest we think that like giving yourself away that feels really good, this kind is frought with uphill personal growth. There is spaces in time where feelings stop us from what we really want, the kind of love we want to live in and we must STOP and pull them out, maybe yell and scream a little, look good and hard at those feelings turn them around hold them close so we get them, then we can let them go. IT is not neat. We are constantly bumping up against ourselves with no externals to give us the answer, only love and the source of love within us can find our way through those feelings and experiences. But, it is beautiful and amazing. I remember the first time in this process where someone asked me a very deep question about what I wanted and I knew that in the past I would have had no idea , but it was clear that neither option they presented was anywhere close to my heart. I was delighted that I had heard myself for the first time in so many years. My heart has been buried for a long time under the expectations of others, systems of thought, family and societal expectations that I believed would be the guide through the difficulties, but came to understand the real truth was that my heart unburied would be my only real guide through the swamp. I am being connected and inspired by love and if I listen that is where I will live. that is my goal. That is my choice to live from love. You cannot know if I am succeeding, only I and powers that be, the source of all love know the path I am walking and the story being written. Thanks God for our hearts, and for our feelings, for with love as the source material. There is always healing, life and light. This world is busy trying to externalize and define this love in a neat package that gives you the ability to pat yourself on the back and say "well done" and to be able to see that and know it in others, but the real source of "well done" is in our hearts, with the love source we draw from. That source asks nothing but being alive for you to experience that love. There are moments where we get close enough to our own heart to hear it. Those are usually the moments when we have lost everything on the outside that was defining us, leaving us in a state where our heart begins its journey of being unburied from the beliefs that bind it and keep it from expressing its truth. The beginning is usually the hardest place, the deepest grief, the most loss, that we finally shed enough to hear what our heart has know all along, but it may be packed in some extra weight, do-gooding, illness etc etc……………the list can go on and on and when you are doing the list, you are mostly unaware. I spent a long time unaware until the loss was greater than my ability to pretend and hold up the facade of pretense any more. Now, it is a journey of my heart and love. It is a good place to be, messy but good.

A Quest of love ……...

I think all of my life there has been an imbalanced focus or lack of understanding about the parts that make up a person, and of course since my only experience, hands on in this is mine, that is what I need to talk about. It has created a dilemma that has left me swirling at times. The parts of me that I gave a voice and importance are crowding out the voice of those I refused to hear. So, as people who are we, what makes us alive and unique and what gives our life meaning? Speaking for myself, relationships have and are important to me. My life as a wife, as a mother, daughter, sister particularly of importance is family relationships. Those have held an upmost priority in my life. But for as long as I can remember there has been place that I felt was crying, when I was busy in those other roles, especially in times of great demand or need the tears were not heard or seen, but when the need slows down, the demand quiets there is place inside that is always crying. For a long time I didn't know what it was, just thought I needed to work harder in the other roles, but at night when no one was there to need anything, the knot felt so tight, sometimes it was grief, sometimes fear, sometimes hopelessness, always just under the surface. When I had epiphanies that left me feeling like there was more to me than these roles, I felt powerful and excited about life, but it could never last as the belief pounded me that made those roles define everything, but not from my perspective, but from an external source of "knowledge", faulty knowledge. Another person had looked at roles, based on relationships and gender and decided what my life needed to be driven by. How does that happen, well the culture, family, society, church,education the all contribute and we take and create our own sense of what they are saying, maybe not always a healthy perception of what they are saying. And so that was the place that I lived, day in and day out, until slowly, and little by little I felt something inside of me dying. The emptiness of being nothing more than defined by my roles, by what I perceived someone else wanted me to be, began to overtake my heart that was crying out for a purpose that was influenced, but not defined by my roles. I ached to learn and move and talk and listen to people. I yearned to speak and be heard and needed only as a person with passion and life to share and participate with others in their sharing. I longed to have my story heard, not the story of being a mother of my children, not the story of another relationship, but the story of my heart,with a wholeness that falls in love with people and plants and love and places and more people I want a relationship with life and love, in and out of this world, meeting others on their own journey of heart. So my heart, I have been having trouble defining it without relationships. You see so long have those dictated how I saw myself and through those beliefs I chose to put all things relationship ahead of all things that I might need, or things that would bring life to my soul through my own personal journey. Now, I sit here and wonder about how to hear my heart again. How to choose without automatically discounting myself, for that is what I have done and I don't know if I know how to do something different than that anymore. I feel the tear in my heart as I yearn to be able to let go of the ideas that I, my needs, my desires and my heart, can not factor into my choices, Those are an afterthought because it is my role to take care of everyone else's fears and needs, as though there is nothing I would or could need other than to lose myself in this process. Now, I am fortunate in that my husband, though at times in our life he has been a part of the demand that exceeded the ability I had, has come to a place of seeing that without being seen as a whole person, without my needs being factored in to the equations along with everyone else that I am in relationship with, that I will die. But the interesting thing about his is that although he is encouraging me and hoping for a future with a greater wholeness for me, I am still struggling with making the choice, so despite being given permission from outside of myself, from this relationship, I realize that the person that really needs to give me permission to live and have a space in the world is me. Without that I will continue to re-create the same story over and over again. Never letting go in my mind means re-creation in my outer world. There are times that I have thought I would like to walk away from all of the relationships and go to where no one knows me and I could be alone to take care of my needs. There have been times that was an appealing thought, it felt like maybe then I could finally rest, but I realized that although that seemed appealing, without the change in my own value system regarding myself, I would choose myself right back into the same situation where I again have lost myself and my hope for the growth of my own soul, in favor of the pattern of self deprivation, that I glorify and that initially gives me a sense of purpose, although this is not sustainable. In looking at my needs, and my strengths, what I know is that I need to be solving problems, I need people, but I need alone time, I need to create, I need to talk and I need to listen, I need to learn and I need to teach. I need to be strong and I need to be vulnerable. I need flexibility, but I also need structure. What I realize is that I am complicated, no one else could look at this and tell me what I should do and how I should meet those needs. The real story here is the story of me, opening my heart to myself, having and forging a relationship with my own soul. I think about how in working with children with attachment challenges, how delicate and understanding a person must be, knowing that they will open up and run away, knowing they will be afraid, and also brave. That there is a pile of opposites that because of their fears of not being seen or heard for so long that they will struggle up against and then run from. Here I sit with the same kind of struggle as I have watched in some of the children I have worked with and I recognize that I have been the instrument of my own pain and that I must also become the instrument of my own healing. I must search out the beliefs that have caused me to treat myself this way and see the effect that I am having on myself as I walk through each day. Nobody else can do this for me. I have to uncover the pieces of my heart that I buried long ago and bring them out and cherish them again. There is no quick fix to a problem that has been created through so many years, so like I could with a child, I must start, start small and continue to know what to hold onto to keep stepping into the fear that grips me,and I must be gentle. The definition of failure has to redefined in my mind. The story is mine and only I hold the key, the relationships I have can be a support, but the real quest and vision of this journey I must hold. I know that I must come up square against the belief that I cannot know without an external source telling me how this should look. There is a value system inside of me. I am driven by love and the desire for congruency between the things of importance in my life and the things of action. Perhaps the reason why I recognize the sadness and despair as incongruence between my needs and my actions, but I must create the congruence. There is no other source that has the power or ability to delve right into the heart of the matter with God and I. God and I cannot source this one out, for we are the only ones that truly knows my story, and you, you are the only one that knows your story and so you and I must be the authors, finishers and developers of the truth in our own lives. So, ask the questions, hold the fear and sadness up to the light and begin the quest of love with God for your soul.