I asked myself that question this morning. The sense of a tiger in a packing box came over me again. Another day of gray, the feeble light mimic of sun stopping just inside the windows. The fact that the intentions in my life are moving forward so cold molasses slowly into action states, builds a closed circle of
despair.

so many doors to other realities, other futures

Waiting for the bright light of knowing

My day is punctuation by the sound of the clock ticking and by the appearance of Dick, the mail carrier. He is a round man who frequently wears his coat like a cape. The diamond earring glistens in his left ear and he chats about his wife and daughter at times. But he is dependable and committed to making his crisscross path from side to side on our street in a timely manner. He flys off again his cape glistening with raindrops bouyant behind him.

Getting a grip on the day always feels like a struggle; however, the years I have spent reading, listening to Hay House and watching You Tube videos inform me that it is not about the day, or how I choose to live it. The struggle is something I order from the limiting menu of perfection. No matter how “well” I have done in a particular yesterday, each new day begins with regrets: I didn’t floss twice, I missed the third glass of water, I didn’t write in my Gratitude Journal.

The habit of critical mind has become much more quiet about the performance judging of people. Instead of measuring them up to cut them down, I now hear the voice in my head say, “Isn’t it wonderful that I get to know this person.” There is so much I am learning about and from others in our shared stories. How many tragedies people have undergone in their lives… the childhood disease that left her deaf on one side, being sent to boarding school at seven, being betrayed by two husbands, multiple bouts with cancer, etc. From the outside, we assume we know another and an impulse is to be competitive with her or with him. Most people are valiant survivors of multiple woundings. The very fact that others around them are not aware of their strength is in and of itself a testimony to their resilency.

Competitiveness with the gifts and successes is my de-facto setting. “She got a book deal. What is wrong with me?”

I am a master of this type of dualistic, poverty of opportunity thinking. Then the really grotesque competitiveness comes out. We all laugh at comedy sketches of two old geezers comparing gun shot wounds in the battle of life. One has had a cold, the other six bouts of pneumonia. I understand that we, sometimes, celebrate how badly victimized that we were as a means of displaying our merit badges.

Nonetheless, we hold courage in our hearts each day as we set intention and carry out actions. For me this fragile edge is the gripping place. If within twenty minutes of awaking, I sit meditation for heading out into the day with compassion and love, I feel like I have my ship’s bow lined up to cut across the waves. I won’t go under no matter what happens.

The aching restlessness that inhabits me at this time is like a large, lurching, drooling dog. It wants to run, jump up, sniff different object-tasks, pick things up in its mouth. “Patience,” I tell myself. “Patience.” I hold the choke chain firmly in my hands.

I have debts to pay down, I have a task of turning this blog into a book. The late illness still leaves me coughing with a sore throat and ear aches. So my body is saying it isn’t ready for one of my manic sweeps of accomplishment. (Oh how my monkey mind loves these workaholic binges.)

My sprained knee did not magically heal with mind control. So I have started acupuncture. It says quite a bit about the condition of my chi when both knees, my shoulder blades and my hands began to ache like fresh injuries. My entire body became hot and sweat covered blanketed. When I came home, I crawled into bed for hours.

So looking at the circle of dysfunction: surgery after surgery; broken relationship; no sense of being needed in my work arena; weak financial condition; deep loneliness. Each item in the circle feeds into the next until I have established a closed system of victim hood and powerlessness.

The other issue is to look for a school that goes on the far aspect personal financial levitra online order reach. A child’s spine recovers buy brand levitra and responds faster to spinal adjustment. So, it is very easy to get the coveted medicine in cheap and get cured of your impotence with http://donssite.com/Coconut-Palm-tree-sunrise-Indian-River-Grant-Florida.htm online pharmacies viagra. It is a pure form of love that is day by day becoming adulterated. http://www.donssite.com/viagra-5907 viagra rx online Using the book The Happiness Project and making a chart, I have begun to work more on my body. Doing crunches and weights is starting to give me good definition. Going to the acupuncturist, I believe will help resolve the issues with my knees. But I know full well that much of that issue is a lack of flexibility and a lack of knowing where to go. I have just manifested in my body, that which I hold in my mind.

I am making new friends and I no longer try to hide anything about my life. I don’t offer up the bitter, hard lessons I have learned like over-dried fig turds on a plate. But if someone asks me, I will be very open about the events in my life. I refuse to carry the shame which was not my shame either from my parents or from my ex-husband.

Moving my life to a higher level, I now am saying my affirmations and intentions out loud. Yesterday, I wrote them on index cards and placed them around the house. They become the voice in the background much as successful people who have had parents who hypnotically repeated, “You can do it”.

So I am learning to parent myself, to act as my own cheer-leading team.

Strangely enough, what I have come to realize is that being filled with shame as a child, feeling like a lesser being really stopped me from loving. I would feel rushes of love or affection to those around me but I wouldn’t feel good enough, important enough to act on those urges. I would want to pick up George’s dropped book, help Jim with his homework, hold a sleeve up for easier access when Susie was putting on her jacket. But when we fell lesser or damaged, we become invisible.

And I think the worst of the situation is that we become so self absorbed that we can’t see that our heart’s urge is power. It helps to heal ourselves when we understand that others really seek affection. It is ultimately a selfish act to send love out.

Passivity is what I struggle with at this time. How much sitting meditation, journalling, waiting, making myself stronger physically is necessary? When will the universe part these heavy mists and give me some stars to navigate by? Am I missing the messages?

When I had acupuncture the bright note was my report card for Chi. Over the decades when I have gone to Chinese medicine doctors I have always been told that my masculine side was outrageously dominant and my feminine side almost wraith like. Yesterday, after 24 months of a life of quiet and contemplation, the male and female energies were almost equal. The workaholic pathways of action over accomplishment are re-patterned.

I am giving birth to a new self and sitting by the death-bed of those delusions which had me dancing mindlessly to their tune. But it is difficult, the patience, the reformation and internal struggle. I want my old toys to play with.

Currently, I am “using” entertainment to dull the pain of not knowing and it is eating up hours of my day.

each of us is unique and similar

Driving home instead of driving to Choices to get a big slab of carrot cake last night was a major victory. The sugar fix is on its way to being extinguished. I win some and I continue on with some delusional behaviors. But how exciting it is to watch the dynamics of learning how to be in a life.

Now. What would I do today if I weren’t afraid?

The recent civic election in Kelowna left me sickened. I have watched Sharon Shepherd grow as a person and maintain her political presence through the most difficult of circumstances. She is a woman in a town that is controlled by the old boys’ club. She is small in stature and has a voice which is not meant for theatrical exclamations. Yet whenever she has been met by challenges, she has chosen to stay true to her vision of a sustainable city. Her concern for the environment, for maintaining neighbourhoods, for giving people time to understand a new development proposal before just driving it through has been consistent and non-wavering.

Kelowna's access to waterfront is the power struggle

During her campaign, she returned funds from the fire fighters because her stance has always been to be a free agent who does not have to “pay back” those who give her funds for her campaign. Her ethics and her stalwart refusal to cast aspersions on others have made this short woman cast a long shadow.

My belief is that when this town wakes up and realizes that the natural beauty, the environment and the social diversity issues are the most valuable assets the town holds, she will be seen as the large spirit that she is. She has left a legacy of humility, rigorously ethical behavior and consistent concern for the citizens who live in Kelowna.

All citizens have had her attention: the gay, the bohemian, the financially fragile, the young families, those who live in small houses in older neighbourhood. She has demonstrated her commitment to those attributes which city and urban studies programs say are the guarantees that a city will stay attractive. The rich, these studies tell us, are fickle. They will come and buy in until the environment goes. They will purchase a seasonal condo in the sky until there are no arts events to attend. The IT community can move anywhere to work. If there is no social diversity, bohemian culture, they will move on.
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What we are seeing in so many cities in North America is a desertion of cities that do not provide an environment that will attract a lively, vivacious culture. If we have not learned that the 80’s and 90’s mentality leads to the decline of a city’s culture from observation, I guess we will have to learn it through reliving that trajectory.

Will tall building keep citizens from waterfront?

I feel very discouraged by what I saw happen in this election. Do the young, the environmental warriors and the intellectuals want to stay here and fight for a collective vision or is the direction of the newly, elected council and mayor just over whelming?

One thing I know for sure, we get the kind of future we voted for.

Watching The Nature of Things special on Jungle Medicine which featured Gabor Mate’s journey was such a reminder of my own journey. One of the participants in the Shamanic healing circle was a woman alcoholic who had lost custody of her children. Her moment of clarity was when she touched the pain of being a four year old who was following her mother down the street. Her mother’s absence was a choice between staying home and protecting her child from being raped by a family member or going to a bar.

bed scape: bed escape

I noticed that the woman had a tattoo on her arm that read “rape”. Her desire to tell the world about her life was manifested in this tattoo. Her truth was blazed on her skin.

Gabor’s deep listening skill and his compassionate presence were evident even in this cold format of a television screen. The truth of Ayahuasca, that it heals the brain synapses for people who have been traumatized, is an important truth. However, health Canada has shut Gabor down by sending him a cease and desist letter. Anti-depressants have caused people to take their own lives. Ayahauasca has changed addicts and alcoholics into clean and sober people 60% of the time without further medication or follow up counseling. Never in the hundreds of years of use has one person died. But Health Canada will not let him continue.

One wonders if the pharmaceutical companies are behind this move. A single depressed person, or bi-polar person will expend thousands of dollars on medication over a life time. Will the use of ayahuasca by a medical special and two shaman’s who have spent a lifetime apprenticeship in the use of the jungle plant cause the companies to lose revenue? It is a certainty.

My art show comes down from the Streaming Cafe on Wednesday next. I have no further art shows or events lined up until March.

However, I am working in a fairly concentrated mannner on turning this blog site into a published book. I have edited the myriad spelling errors and faulty parallelisms into something more presentable.

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Physics tells us that all times are simultaneous and the multiple scenarios for our own lives live in layers parallel to our own like pages in a book. We, however, can only perceive one linear plot line. The physics of choices are such that we can move that plot line into another field by taking differing actions. There is so much we cannot perceive from our very physically limited point of view. What we do see… a solid table, a solid rock is a myth. The particles are a field. Our personalities, our existence is a field of energy not a limited, constrained object.

When I think of that, it opens up for me more peace and more gentle confidence that change is not in a moment but a constant. Combined with my Buddhist practice of meditation, it helps me with my naturally depressant mind habits.

The last three days I have cycled down again. Christmas alone after sixteen years of marriage is desolate at times. Reaching for cookies, staying in bed under the covers and isolating myself from others is the “bottom” for me now.

My years at Elizabeth Fry; my spiritual practice; having a week with Gabor in intense therapy has made a huge difference. I no longer believe my mind. It is a tree full of black crows singing songs of despair.

My life has been an arduous and challenging path but the amazing lessons that have come to me are the result. To live without authenticity, to live trying to “be” something, to set out the door carrying my ego-monkey on my shoulder are just choices that I no longer make.

What I know is that we must set intention every day. We recreate ourselves constantly. Because we are not a “thing”, we are a field. And the lesson of life is to be a field of love. May we all make the choice to stay in love.