Belief

Yes!  

This is true.

What you believe, you will become.

I have always lived with fear.

Fear in every thought.

And every thought was so small.

Learning to live with HEART and LOVE now.

Slow painstaking process.

Makes all the difference in the world though.

Namaste.

Letting Go Of What's Broken, Part 1

I have read this sentiment before, probably several times over the last few years.  I'm learning that growth is learning the same lessons again and again over time and each time it seeps in just a little deeper into my soul.  I look at it as a spiral and going deeper into the spiral.

When it first happens that a truth of life (an aha) that I had previously experienced comes my way again, I think to myself, "Seriously, this point again?!  I've been here, done this!"  But now it's a little easier, the second, third, fourth, fifth time around…

There are important people in my life that I just need to let go. Let go of who I want them to be.




I have been trying very hard to push for something that doesn't exist in reality.  It's my idea of what a relationship should look like.  It does exist for others that I see around me but that is why there should be no comparing my life with another's life.   There's a saying about doing the same thing over and over and getting the same result.  Yes, that's where I am.  And it can be very painful.

Some people are hard to let go.

Or rather it's the idea of some people.

So what keeps me from letting go.  Is it FEAR?   It's not that I haven't had these same thoughts about certain people multiple times over the years.  When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. (Maya Angelou) It's taken years to embrace the fear of letting it be.  Fear of the unknown.  If I let go of this person or situation, what will my life look like?  Will it be empty and have a void?

(And I've been concentrating so much on that void off and on for years anyway, what would happen if I put that energy towards someone who was open and responsive?)

The path I see clearly now, is that I have to continue grieving and let it go.  But who wants to grieve?   Who wants to volunteer for pain?  Our western culture has so many ways, and compulsions to avoid the uncomfortable emotions.   I just don't believe in that anymore and I don't want to do that anymore.  And I'm learning to feel everything that comes my way.  The joy, the despair, the anxiety, the peace, the calm, the fear, anger, etc. etc.  I'm learning to think differently about those feelings when they come up and allow them to flow through.

Yet the amazing thing in my experience is that letting go, then gets me to the very thing I wanted and needed in the first place but from unexpected sources.  I wake up and think, this person is providing me with exactly what I needed.  It was here all along. Wow!

Dorothy, you had it in you all along.

I had to let go of the old (thoughts) and embrace the new.

And it's so magical. Love abounds where you had no idea it's possible.  It's shows up in unexpected faces and places.  It is rich and sweet.

Letting go of what's broken, is making me whole.

NAMASTE.

Contemplation as Divine Therapy!

From Richard Rohr's daily Meditation today:
I have heard it said that the gaze of delight between a mother and the baby at her breast is the beginning of the capacity for intimate relationship. We spend the rest of our lives hoping for that moment again: that kind of safety; that kind of security; that kind of feeding; that kind of living inside of one world, where we are delighted in and loved. That is the True Self. Perhaps the most perfect image of this we can find is the Madonna with the Baby Jesus. This is the most common painting in Western art museums, I am told, probably because there is absolute wholeness mirrored in the gaze of love between mother and child. As Jung said, we paint the images our soul needs to see.

We also become the God we connect with. That’s why it’s so important to know the true God, and not some little, punitive, toxic god, because then you don’t grow up, but live in fear and pretense. Contemplation, as Thomas Keating says, is the divine therapy. We know God and we know ourselves by inner prayer journeys and not by merely believing in doctrines or living inside of church structures. God’s way of dealing with us becomes our way of dealing with life and others. We eventually love others, quite simply, as we have allowed God to love us, which should create quite a loving world.

From Carolyn:
Wowza, the last paragraph speaks, actually sings to me, so very much!

"Contemplation is the DIVINE THERAPY.  We know God and ourselves by our inner prayer journey and not by doctrines…"  

I am learning to live into this and these words are so powerful and true for me.  God was so far away and judgmental for so many years even though I was in the church all of my life but now I'm experiencing love in a whole new way.  Therapy actually led me to God.

 "God's way of dealing with us becomes our way of dealing with life and others."  And until we fully believe how much God (or Higher Power) loves us and we open ourselves to seeing that, we then are able to give it away.  It's not even hard to give it away, it just comes bursting out as something that you have to do.  It's a way of life.

Namaste.

And The Truth Is...

Everything is going to be alright, even when it's not.

This is the bomb!  The Cat's Meow.   The God' honest truth.

If you tell your self it will be okay, it WILL be okay.

Namaste!

Seven Pounds and a Palpable Shift

Monday morning I went to my primary care doctor for a regular wellness check.  I was weighed and I looked.  Some experts in intuitive eating advise not to look at the number, not to weigh every day.  I knew I had gained some weight because I could feel it in my clothes, but I found out in a hard number.  I went home, I was tired from our wonderful trip to New Orleans over the weekend.  I picked Annie up at the vet where she was boarded and took her for a walk.  I rested.  By late afternoon, the feelings of devastation gripped me.  I had gained seven pounds since my last doctors visit at the end of 2011.   This put me into a massive tailspin.

It's all I could think about for the next hours.   And the next day,  all I could think was, I don't know how to overcome this.  It is the opposite outcome of what I have been diligently trying to do.  I have been doing very hard internal work.  I have learned to feel my feelings which has not been easy whatsoever.  I have learned to have boundaries with people.  I am learning to accept myself for who I am.  I am learning to accept other people for who they are.  And this goes on and on.  The ahas have been coming for several years now in so many profound ways.

I went to therapy.  I sat down and told her we had fertile ground to work with.  And then as the hour progressed, questions were asked, tears flowed and the message was received, my self worth does not depend on my weight.

Self worth does not depend on my weight.

I cried and let out the disappointment of the situation.  I cried about the shame.  I cried about the sadness.

After the so called "negative" feelings flowed through.  (And that is another topic - all feelings are okay, we determine them to be negative.)

As the tears dried...

A palpable shift occurred.


(Palpable: so intense so as to be almost touched or felt.)


Devastation magically turned into relief and tiredness.  Fighting the feelings takes more energy than allowing them to flow through.  I went about the rest of the day lightened.  My mood, my outlook and then energy returned to my body.  It was a freaking miracle.

All of the inner work I have done over the last four + years culminated in me believing that my feelings were acceptable but the facts in my head were not true.  I had to have some massive groundwork done to be able to walk away and have that much of a shift in perception and for it to stick.

My self worth as a person does not depend on how thin I am. This is not the message that I receive over and over again on a daily basis in our Western Culture but I can choose to change my thoughts and know that I am more than my dress size, house, car, jewelry, or any other external fact about me.

The feelings of inadequacy will come again, when my clothes feel tight, when I can't find something to wear or I just have a bad day.  I will again remind myself to let the feelings flow and redirect my thoughts.   I have been in therapy for a while, and I think there is something wrong with me because it's taking so long.  I have begun to let up on those thoughts because that is my ego talking.  I do know how incredibly beneficial it has been for me to be in therapy and this particular experience is the ultimate proof.

I believe that this weight gain will have positive ramifications.  This feels like a turning point.

(Thank you to one of my friends for using the words palpable shift when I described what happened!!)

Walking the Dog: Simple but Profound

Day in, day out I walk the dog in the morning.    We got a dog because Mallory wanted one badly and we thought it would be a good family thing to do.  Yet, Annie is ALWAYS ready to go for a walk!  She is ready to put her head down and smell the smells and make her mark.  The one exception is when it is pouring down raining.

At first, I looked at this dog walk as an annoyance.  In the beginning weeks of June when we got her, I worried about the walks.  Do I have to walk her in the rain and how?  I did not want any more messes in the carpet which were abundantly occurring at the time so I worried every step of the way.  Was she going to pee and was she going to poop?  Do I need to walk longer to make sure?  Blah, blah, blah, but this was the way I thought.

I have evolved and I barely pay attention to her pee and poop except that I have to pick up the poop.  It just took time and practice.

First, it was the heat of the summer, and I used an umbrella to help shield the burning heat and to avoid more sun exposure.  Then, when it is raining, I used an umbrella.  What a novel idea, it's raining so I used an umbrella!  And recently,  the temperature was in the high 30's and I prepared accordingly.

This routine of walking Annie despite the weather has taught me that I can do things that I didn't think I could.  It's a simple act but it carries symbolic meaning.  No matter what, she wants to walk, her desire translates to forcing me into the activity that at first, overwhelmed me with indecision and FEAR.  Here is another example of "You don't know you are there until you are there."  When I realized that the basic format to walk the dog, was to put the proper attire on and go, it became so much easier and even enjoyable.  The routine of it, helped me realize that despite what is going on, rain or shine, I can persevere.  Very, very simple, but very profound for me.

And it doesn't hurt that she is always happy to see me.