My Universe/Kingdom

The relativity of our reality is not at first revealed. When we were children we each explored the world and discovered what we needed to know. Some of us were attracted to bugs, others to flowers. Some of us see a hillside and charge it or roll down the incline screaming with joy. Others will look for the flowers, or the dandelion heads. The experiences that we seek out are driven by what we are learning.

It is only later, as we sit in lined up desk that we are presented with an identical curriculum. It becomes a hierarchy. Those at the top know what we must of necessity learn, experience and understand.

Inevitably we have revealed to us that our concept of what is real, of what is normative, of what the laws are in our daily experience is highly individual. How we move through an event has everything to do with the way we view our own particular reality. One person emphasizes the experience of massage as an exchange of healing love. Another sees it as a crossing of boundaries and an intrusion. Neither interpretation is universal nor is it correct.

The place of greatest strength is when we come to see that we do not see. We do not see what it is the other person is experiencing. We do not see that in our urge to be right, correct, to have the only answer we are steam rolling others and crossing the boundary into their universe/kingdom. We have become invaders.
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Not every toddler wanted to smell flowers, some wanted to pet snails. Each was on the path of learning what would serve the developing self the most successfully.

We are no better than the Priests that destroyed people’s culture in order to save their souls when we refuse to respect that others inhabit a different set of experiences and have lived a differing narrative line than we have.

And when we react to others who say childbirth was easy or they love to have a puppy or sky diving is thrilling when we almost died in childbirth, don’t like dogs no matter what size they are and think it is clearly insanity to risk skydiving we come up against that wall. Their kingdom is simply different than ours is. It is their truth. Reside peacefully with other worlds.

So what the flip does stuck mean?

I open my eyes and my body comes back to me. First I feel those parts of my physical parameters that are under one of my hands. My chest is moving with air. Or I feel my thigh expand to the two surfaces of hand and leg touching. I arrive gradually piece by piece until I leave behind the dream of a man offering me a stick he bought for $100,000.

In the summer, about this time of rebirth I will hear birds or feel the breeze from my window. But now in the grumpy November the call is to throw back the covers and look at a groggy day.

And it is after my meditation time, after I offer a prayer, or a hope, or a ritual of gratitude that I get up. Absolutely inevitable is the scanning of my mind. It moves like a drone over the landscape of time.

Yesterday, did I do well? Yesterday, did I keep my promises to myself? The mind drone flies over all of yesterday’s activities to assess the failures, the bad choices, the old landscapes of disappointment and disillusion.

“There you go again,” I dialogue with myself. “You walked 17 thousand steps, spread joy to at least four people who thanked you for help, finished painting your hallway, worked out with weights.”

But I inevitably return to the docking station of stuck. My mind has a habit of seeing me as stuck. How lightingly quick I am to list off all of the ways I am less than I thought I would be, or I could have been, or what others have expected from me.

My weight is always an issue. It comes from my mother’s competition with me in the circus ring of being THE female. She thought of me as her competition. Only she could walk the fashion runway and collect admiring compliments whereever she appeared in a social setting. I had to be repressed.

And food. Oh yes. Food. She kept pushing pie and cake and pop at me. She wanted to fatten me up so no one would ever for a moment have their eyes leave her size 2 body and her apricot hair to glance at me.

So each day I weigh myself and automatically criticize myself.

You can viagra super store also safeguard your privacy through online purchase. This pill is supposed to be eaten up only after consulting your medical practitioner. generico cialis on line Both psychological and physiological causes can lessen the quality of performance in young males leading humiliating moments. pharma-bi.com cheap generic viagra Serotonin is part of psychological states of rest, confidence and relieve, while norepinephrine receptors are theorized in order to reuptake dopamine, hindering norepinephrine receptors is able to keep dopamine within the viagra pharmacies blood stream longer, as well as dopamine is part of anticipatory desire as well as buoyant feelings.It really works as an antidepressant, and inhibitors have been shown have a considerable effect on premature ejaculation. “You are stuck,” I say.

If I am wearing a size 4 I whisper jackal like into my own ear that I could lose 4 more pounds.

When my weight goes up 3 pounds I need to choke off the flood of self hating thoughts.

“Why are you putting on weight? You are out of control? You ate too much, or exercised too little. You failed yourself and you are stuck.”

There are so many ways in which my mind is stuck in seeing me as stuck that it is almost impossible to separate them out. The mind habit of needing some sudden academy award trophy handed to me from a panel of judges in order to see that I am in fact making progress is pretty well entrenched.

What I do know is that every thought, every action comes from habits. I have a habit of not seeing myself as dynamic and capable of taking big steps successfully. And because I know that sense of paralysis is destructive  I am in the process of learning to trust more. I trust that each small action will lead to something. I trust that being focused on decisions will shift my sense of self imprisonment.

I know I will never be a snow boarder dropped off by a helicopter cutting edges in fresh snow down a mountain side. There is no dare devil within me in this life time. But I also know that I can reassure myself in my mental two hander play… just me and me on a long table with a single light over head. The scene is dimly lit but the sound is remarkable.

Knowing that growth is not always spectacular helps. I am fairly sure that I am not stuck. That sense of entrapment is simply a habit. It isn’t a monkey on my back… it is a gorilla. But I am moving and building muscle in all possible approaches to life. I can carry the weight.

Returning to my cheerleader self, I yell out, “You got this, chicky. You got this.”

Mirror Person… Arggg

Okay, I know. I know theoretically that the people who trigger me the most are exhibiting exactly what my darkest hearted, shadow, vain, nasty self is deep in the bottom of the unseen pit of me. I know.

But I guess it is time… or so the universe seems to think…. for me to do some sustained mirror work. Recently, I left a group feeling like my aura had been MMA attacked. I was confused. My heart rate had increased. My breathing had become shallow as I watched a person take over the space in a meeting.

Learning

My story came up. The little girl that could not attract attention; the teenager standing in the darkness edged gym during a school dance; the quick minded graduate student who carried the burden of daring to be female… oh they were all in the chair with me. We crowded in on one another.

Then I remember what Sandon a Buddhist Monk told me once. He said coming into a space and filling it with your energy is sheer ego. One must be aware of every single person in a room. And as I was driving away with his advice in my head, I thought of a pizza. I though of each person radiating presence in a section of the room and to insist that all of those pieces was mine would be the same as if I ate their pizza slices in my hunger for recognition.

I was ravenous for all of the attention I could get.

trusting my guides

I can be pretty simple minded at times. And turning to metaphors helps me incorporate a lesson.

So as I thought about the feelings that arose in me, I began to deconstruct the narrative from my past. I always go to the question, “What are you supposed to learn from this.”

What I did know was I was seeing my shadow self. What I was seeing was my way of dismissing others’ experiences because I think I have a higher IQ, or because I am constantly studying and have access to medical studies, or because I have a channel that can show me things that others don’t understand. And that is all just platinum plated bull shit.

What I know for sure is the greatest damage we do to one another is when we try to be right. To dismiss another’s feelings; to denigrate other’s point of view; to deny other people their right to feel a certain way is bull dozing. It is clear cutting. It is dropping agent orange all over the landscape. And it is the biggest problem in today’s world.

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That is what the Buddhist nuns in the Yitang temple in Kelowna taught me as we wound snake like between the seats under the gigantic golden Buddha. You touch the earth. You take a step. And then you stop. You stand in one place so that you can realize your self. You become still so you can feel the earth and your foot connect. You remain quiet so you can feel the still and loving presence of other people around you.

It isn’t about the marching forward. The purpose is not to be right, to be correct, to force others to recognize your superiority. The purpose is to truly experience your own emotions;  the way you love in the world; the ultimate purpose is to not be afraid. There is no scarcity.

And sometimes in my darkest days I think of my scarcity collection as being a hobby for me. I keep gathering thoughts of not enough. Time is running out. Money is never enough. Friendships are scarce. Everything. Everything. Everything. It is all in a safe locked down from me in some gated community.

It is in that Shadow place that the urge to be correct comes from. My arrogance is simply a failure to believe in myself.

Finding a way to move in the world means constantly trying to understand who I am and what I ultimately want for other people. It is not without hazard.

I pushed away the urge to find someone to verify my experience. Why do I need that? I can validate that by just checking my body. I pushed away the urge to blame the another person for being unaware. I know damn well that being unaware comes with being a human. But the biggest lesson was how the experience triggered competitiveness within me.

And so as I drove away, I said to myself, “You have your work cut out for you, Chicky.”  Man, I need to love this me no matter how confusing she is.

The last piece of the lesson is always to thank the lesson and the teacher. But it is like thanking the dentist for a root canal. Muscle up buttercup.

“You have plenty of time,” I remind myself.

 

Christmas Choices

We are told in books such as Switch: How to Change when Change is Hard that self discipline is a muscle. At the happy holiday season, the expectations are like vultures circling overhead. I saw people at Home Depot the other day entranced by the display.

This year new lights are shelved. New delights are displayed. Whatever you have done previously, is not enough. This year the lights are all white, or have 10 possible selections for sequencing. It is a brilliant, sparkling display of exactly what drives the population.

The fear of being out of step stems from ancient DNA encoding. If we were shunned; if we were denied food, shelter, companionship the only possible future awaiting us was to walk deep into the forest and await the inevitable manifestation of our particular death. The houses of the medieval village were no longer sanctuaries. The forgiveness of the church was no longer available. At the best, all we could hope for would be a quick death. At the worst, our souls would be damned to eternal hell fire and a very physical torture.

And so we are desperate to “fit in” to the rhythm of our society. People discard the old round Christmas lights and get the newly designed ones that signal importance and status. Shining out into the cold darkness of winter, is the message that this household is important. This household knows how to fit into the village. We have status.

As I was walking between the people with their carts filled with the newly designed badges of belonging, my rebellious in dwelling imp got out of control. I stopped and said,” Do you know Canadians have the highest credit card debt of any society on earth. We are #1.”

We are the love we seek

Some husbands turned and looked at their wide eyed, pupil dilated wives who had been pointing out what “new” items to put in the cart. There were looks exchanged.

And then I laughed. “It always feels good to be #1.”

What we learn from behaviour studies is that when we put too much pressure on ourselves to please others; when we require of ourselves that we go out to ten events in two weeks; when we take on heavy duty responsiblities that are out side our normative behaviour we become like a weight lifter that has lifted to fail.
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It is when it becomes too much that we turn to sugar, alcohol, screen addition, the quick fix of the credit card. Christmas is specifically designed like a no exit room to keep us in thrall to choices that do not serve us.

We become too exhausted to do anything more than make choices that are already made for us.

A woman at Michaels’ was buying a giant wooden sign that said Ho, Ho, Ho with glittery letters. And once again my pugnacious persona started laughing. It was a long line of people grasping at happiness with their baskets full of decoration.

I said, “What a good sign. After Christmas you can turn it around and it will read, “Oh, Oh, Oh to reflect your feeling when you read your credit card bill.”

Surprisingly enough all ten people in line laughed,  Maybe there is hope for us. Maybe we are always understanding even in the throws of addiction that we are in the throws of addiction.

And I am just glad, I don’t get sent to the principal’s office when my imp shows up.

My best practice now is to think, “If I were totally adult and sane right now… what would I choose?” It is something to consider. Merry Mindful Christmas.

 

Black Dog and Christmas Lights.

Christmas for me is a way to check my default setting for mind control. How are my gauges?

The black and white picture my father took of me standing next to my mother after he had broken furniture and attacked both she and I was his trophy prize.  We were captured in the 1950’s living room with the over sized white flower painting behind us. The single blossom perched on two green leaves floating in a vast white space. In father’s photograph, the camera lens was focused on a fabric covered chair sitting up right with my rigid mother held in place between the wooden arms.. A single small lamp shed its funnelled light over my seven year old body still shocked, petrified next to my mother without comfort.

I remember his voice screaming at us to, “Smile. Look happy. It’s Christmas.”

The small tree sat within the boundaries of the photograph. As I look back at it now, I am seeing that he could control the harm. Both my mother and I were bruised, battered but not where it would show. And the tree was there to celebrate what a perfection our shared holiday was to the inevitable visitors that would arrive during the holiday.

Each Year as Christmas approaches, I think, “You are doing so well.”

But it is a gradual growth. If I am arrogant enough to think I am beyond it, I soon see what a bill of goods that I am trying to sell myself.

I no longer awake crying at night during the “festival season” with the feeling that something is terribly wrong. The traditional promises of the season were not just broken but were never available to us. Putting an insane man high on drugs or alcohol with his family for days on end would never turn out to be peace on earth.

But as the years imitate one another, spring with always flying tulips, the summer heat massaging exposed flesh and then the shutting down darkness approach of the long winter, inevitably the black dog of depression would appear running beside me as Christmas approached.

With so many decades of mindfulness practice, I stand back and take a picture of how I stand now, this year. The aching feeling of being a ghost, a person without substance just floating through the days comes at times. The sense of being unseen so completely that if I stood in front of a mirror no human shape, nor indeed any shape would appear returns but with less frequency .
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The constant making of peace with the not being at peace is a skill I have developed. I ask myself, “How are you doing?”

Some days I don’t dress and just vacate my own narrative to parasite onto lives enacted on Netflix. Some days I disappoint myself by breaking the taunt rules I have in place to make my life a predictable and safe place.

But in the last few years I will intervene and forgive myself, “It is okay. This is a tough time for you.”

I rarely put up any decorations at all. It is as if enacting Christmas rituals will only deepen the depression. I enjoy my neighbours fun house lit up yard and go to hear a dear friend sing in her choir. And there are break throughs. I had my son’s family over for Christmas dinner Chinese take out last year.

The sense of awaiting the black dog to tear me apart is gone. I know it will appear. And I am not trying to run from it. I simply jog along beside it in a strangely companionable manner. I am cognizant of the small victories, the deeper sense of trusting myself, the long stretches of tranquility.

And I am so in love with people. At Christmas when I go out the door and see the miracle of kindness that passes between family members, the gesture of someone helping the person next to them take off a coat, two friends leaning into one another at a coffee table and breaking into laughter, I understand the stunning beauty of the uncelebrated moments. They are not seasonal. They cannot be purchased. But they are everywhere, even in the midst of demands of manufactured rituals. The blossoming of joy is not relegated to December.

I know I am getting better, because I see the way that people share themselves now… even at Christmas. And it makes me happy.

 

We are only Human after all

The stint of long distance stamina cross country marathon working pumping my limbs toward my goal of paying down my $110,000 reverse dowry (paying for my freedom from marriage) has been a great success. I have buckled down, buckled in, sucked it up, muscled up, stayed the course and bent my back into my airbnb business. As one of the top ten airbnb places in Kelowna, I have been so very grateful for the guests who have stayed with me. Their reviews, their company, their sweet thank yous have filled my life with light.

almost done

I have in a six year period gone from $110,000 in debt from the single check that I had to write in order to buy myself free down to a paltry $6,000 currently. However, the seven days a week of work for 8 months straight , of cleaning, of laundry, of restricting my movements so that I could be available to my guests, of living abstemiously ; of putting as much back into the business and the debt as my adolescent screaming on the inside could manage, has been demanding. There were openings of respite. I have gone on trips; purchased the odd new to me pieces of clothing and allowed frivolous expenditures like flowers for my garden that were not absolutely “necessary.” The unrelenting focus on paying down the debt and keeping my reviews at the Super Host status level has been a success.

Since October 20th I worked seven days a week from February 1st without a day off. And then I remembered  last year in October when I was shaky all over from the daily effort to bend my will, to put on the harness of discipline daily when I said out loud, “I need a break.” And then I fell down the stairs and fractured my wrist.

This year, I said to myself, this year you will stop before you are on your last torn shred of nerve. And so I blocked out all of November. I felt rebellious. I felt naughty. I felt outrageously irresponsible. How could I do that when I had debt left? How could I just ruthlessly cross off the chance to make thousands of dollars before my debt was disappeared.

I see a counsellor once a month and use her as my life coach. I check in with her to articulate what behaviours I am instilling in myself and what areas of wounding still drive my life. She worked with me for three continuous months gently suggestion that I could “let up on myself” before I saw a row of zeros on the debt counter.  I finally said, “I will be free at $10,000 stilll owing.”

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Today, I sit with $6,000 left on my debt in the month of November. I created this space of time off when I wildly crossed out all the days on  November’s calendar. And with a few days impetuously blanked out in October,  now I am living into 6 continuous days off. It comes home to me exactly how used up I am. I have no urge to travel, to start a new project, to explore the world, or myself.

The focus has been on meditation, sleep, teaching myself how to be a social being in the outside world again. I work out 5 days a week building muscle mass and I wait. I wait for the feeling that some magical glowing pathway will shine up into the gray befogged landscape of the present. I wait for the sense of joy and curiosity to return. I am no longer an indentured slave. I am no longer straining to put down the burden I have incurred by making an unenlightened choice of a mate. I have been buying off my own freedom. But I am tired.

What I find strange is that I had no idea exactly how pervasively exhausting and engaging this last six years has been. Having a purpose and a carefully defined struggle is a wonderful anesthetic. There are few decisions to be made. There are fewer possibilities  of going wrong. The harness is restrictive and comforting.

restrictions

And now, I cool my heels while my body recovers. I abide while I gain confidence that I am ready to deal with the outside world and finally walk toward my bigger dreams. My focus is on opening myself up to possibilities. So many of my delusions around deserving, around the heart hardening concept of toil, the crazily distorted mirrors which have reflected back who I think I am  are about to shift into the sheer joy of taking chances. It is right there in front of me and I am patient with not being quite able to see quite yet.