The Presence of fear shows that you have raised body thoughts to the level of the mind.
-ACIM
I just sat here, thinking I would write about some great learning from ACIM but the following came out. I then discovered I was stuck on fear because body thoughts have risen to the level of the mind. I realized that I have a situation in my life where there is Real Evidence Appearing False and I am worried about it repeating itself in this recent health scare I have been experiencing. It is actually the possibility of Real Evidence Appearing False that is causing me fear right now.
Ongoing Evidence: Real or Unreal?
I am sometimes lost in body thoughts again. I am looking for evidence to rationalize my slips.
I am stressed. Stress makes my body sooo tired. It has this strange effect on my pulse and blood pressure...kind of the opposite effect it would have on most people. Instead of causing an increase in these two things, prolonged stress leads to a decrease. My systolic blood pressure will hover around 80 and 90 after extended periods dealing with a stressful situation (I don't think 90 is an issue but 80 with drops into the 70's...yeah, that's fatiguing...and I have recordings, witnessed by others, as low as 64 when I was still conscious . I don't know how low it gets before I faint?)
My pulse will go through days hovering around 45 with drops into the 30's, as it is doing now. If you ever experienced a pulse in the 40's and 30's for more than a few hours you would know what I mean by tired! There is also a connection obviously between the brady and hypotension with the chest pain I get.
A History with Real Evidence Appearing False.
I have "whined" and "complained" about this phenomena for over 20 years and I am not sure if people "out there' really believe me or understand the impact it has had on my life. Even with all the recorded evidence...both on my personal monitoring reports and those performed through physician orders...I lack a sense of external validation. My circumstances of the last ten years tend to hint at the fact that I am not only not validated but I am being punished for seeking help. (This part may very well be False Evidence Appearing Real).
More concern was always shown for the tachycardia. I also go to the opposite end of the spectrum ( not so much now because I am being treated for coronary vasospasm with a calcium channel blocker that incidentally keeps the tachy and palpitations at a minimum...and no ...anything that vsaodilates does not lower my BP like it would in most...it actually stabilizes it or increases it...so the medication I have been on for years is not responsible for my recent bradycardia and hypotension. ) There were many times, for no explicable reason, my pulse would shoot up past the 200 mark and man would those palpitation be wicked. (And yes I have lots of evidence of that as well).
What I thought was "real evidence", often just got passed off by too many specialists as, "probably only happening when you sleep...no big deal". ...or..."as long as there is no symptoms with the bradycardia, there is no need to worry. " (Ummm...I have been brought by ambulance to the emergency room more than once for doing nose plants and I have been complaining about overwhelming fatigue, palpitations, dizziness and chest pain for over 20 years...is this not enough symptoms???) or my favorite , "this bradycardia, atrial fib and flutter that is showing up on these medical recordings...is not bradycardia, atrial fib or flutter...there is nothing wrong with your heart."
Figure that one out!
I stopped trying to get validation for this very obvious heart thing a long time ago. My motivation, in the beginning, was not only to get relief for myself but to help out my family members. I always knew this was a familial thing...so I pushed to get a diagnosis in the beginning to prevent someone else from dying like my sister did. Once other siblings started having their MI's (heart attacks) in their fifties or were being diagnosed and treated for their atrial fib, flutter and V tach...I backed off. My getting a diagnosis did not seem that urgent anymore. The familial tendency was finally out in the open. My loved ones were being taken seriously.
What is my point?
We need to validate our own experience by living it!
The lesson I need to learn here is: Living on outer world evidence , be it real or unreal, leads to fear. Fear is a doorway into letting go of our need for outer world validation and accepting the truth of who we are.
My situation seemed to be one of Real Evidence Appearing False, rather than False Evidence Appearing Real. Not having what I thought was real evidence validated as such lead me to mistrust a system, mistrust myself and mistrust life. A lack of trust is a great cause of fear. I feared.
The Less than Brave Way to Live
My rational mind says...This is not False Evidence...it is very real ...It is Very Real...In order to survive with this under validated condition, however, because the evidence appeared false to so many...I began to believe it was too. It was easier to do it that way than to constantly push and struggle against other opinion and assumption about me.
As a result, I began to focus less and less on the evidence. I stopped collecting it and trying to prove to others and myself it was "real". Up until a few days ago, I seldom took my BP and Pulse...it was only because I was getting so symptomatic and I knew the stress was having an effect on me that I began to monitor it again. I don't talk about these symptoms or these findings with anyone but D. because he sees the obvious changes in me. (Other than blasting it publicly all over the page here lol I don't try to prove my situation is real)
For the most part, I deny the reality of my situation. I push past the symptoms. Even when I got a bad bout of chest pain during my yoga class yesterday, I kept going. I will take nitro...I am not stupid...I know I need to but I will do so almost shamefully...ducking down and holding the bottle behind my hand so no one sees me doing so.
The Lessons will Keep coming Until We Face Our FEAR
I don't recommend avoiding evidence this for anyone...if you have real evidence make sure it gets validated by others whom you may need support from. I only withdraw from evidence collection and sharing in my case because I am too shamed and traumatized by my experience to do otherwise (that has a lot to do with my pre-established beliefs about seeking health validation in the first place). And because of that I am often confused about what is real and unreal. I carry that mistrust into this new health issue I am dealing with. I do not trust and assume that others will view real evidence as false. Until I become the validated and validator of my own evidence I will continue to face similar health seeking experiences.
It is so funny how we keep generating these learning experiences again and again until we learn. New health seeking experiences have come into my life but it is the same lesson just in a different classroom with the same teachers wearing different pants.
I only bring this up because my fear based on body thoughts is in the way of my going forward as a teacher or as a learner, like I so want to do. Sigh...so I share my fear...in hope that I can move on past it.
The next time I write it will be from a better place...and I will be able to share my learning.
All is well.
Friday, January 17, 2020
Wednesday, January 15, 2020
F.E.A.R.
All aspects of fear are untrue because they do not exist at the creative level, and therefore do not exist at all.
-ACIM : Chapter 1:VI:5:1
FEAR: False Evidence Appearing Real
Hmmm! I really do not know who created this acronym for fear. I have heard Wayne Dyer use it so many times I cannot cite it here but it is a definition of fear that makes sense to me.
False Evidence Appearing Real: As much as that sounds like an oxymoron...it does make sense. It is just saying that what seems to be so real...as evidence to our minds' based on information provided by the five senses is false. It isn't real. What we think is real isn't. It is an illusion, a distorted perception.
In other words, what we seem to be afraid of is only an illusion.. We have somehow created this image of the world and it scares us because it seems so real and we have somehow come to believe it is. The fear becomes an overpowering entity.
You can never control the effects of fear yourself, because you made fear and you believe in what you made.
Chapter 1: VI: 4: 2
So let's look at the situation I am dealing with to better understand fear. A bodily change has showed up in my life. This body change is not false evidence...I feel the physical pain and the mass. Other people, who try to, can feel it too. It is there.
It in itself is just a bodily change, neither good or bad, right or wrong...it just is what it is.
The false evidence comes in when I think about this mass...I build story around it. I focus on what it could be. I selectively collect and cling to all pieces of information that supports my story. I gather socially and culturally enforced beliefs. I dig into history related to such changes. I soak up the story of "cancer" that is all around me. I begin to believe in this evidence even though the only real evidence is a change in the body. I build it all up so this "just a bodily change" becomes a potential life threatening disease. I created a scary story around the bodily change and I begin to worry. (Worry is just one of the many faces of fear). I have fear...F.E.A.R.
It is all just false evidence appearing real...it is just a story in my head.
So even if I were to have a diagnosis of cancer...it is still just a story I would use it to label, explain and narrate myself through an experience of having a bodily change. In reality it is nothing more than a few mutating and extra cells...that is all. The fear...comes from believing in that story I created...the false evidence...not from the bodily change itself.
Get that?
The presence of fear shows that you have raised body thoughts to the level of the mind.
ACIM: Chapter 2: VI:1:6
Fear is a belief in something that isn't true...a belief in a story that we created in our minds. It is false evidence that isn't real even though it appears to be.
There is a way to sort out the false evidence from the real:
-ACIM : Chapter 1:VI:5:1
FEAR: False Evidence Appearing Real
Hmmm! I really do not know who created this acronym for fear. I have heard Wayne Dyer use it so many times I cannot cite it here but it is a definition of fear that makes sense to me.
False Evidence Appearing Real: As much as that sounds like an oxymoron...it does make sense. It is just saying that what seems to be so real...as evidence to our minds' based on information provided by the five senses is false. It isn't real. What we think is real isn't. It is an illusion, a distorted perception.
In other words, what we seem to be afraid of is only an illusion.. We have somehow created this image of the world and it scares us because it seems so real and we have somehow come to believe it is. The fear becomes an overpowering entity.
You can never control the effects of fear yourself, because you made fear and you believe in what you made.
Chapter 1: VI: 4: 2
So let's look at the situation I am dealing with to better understand fear. A bodily change has showed up in my life. This body change is not false evidence...I feel the physical pain and the mass. Other people, who try to, can feel it too. It is there.
It in itself is just a bodily change, neither good or bad, right or wrong...it just is what it is.
The false evidence comes in when I think about this mass...I build story around it. I focus on what it could be. I selectively collect and cling to all pieces of information that supports my story. I gather socially and culturally enforced beliefs. I dig into history related to such changes. I soak up the story of "cancer" that is all around me. I begin to believe in this evidence even though the only real evidence is a change in the body. I build it all up so this "just a bodily change" becomes a potential life threatening disease. I created a scary story around the bodily change and I begin to worry. (Worry is just one of the many faces of fear). I have fear...F.E.A.R.
It is all just false evidence appearing real...it is just a story in my head.
So even if I were to have a diagnosis of cancer...it is still just a story I would use it to label, explain and narrate myself through an experience of having a bodily change. In reality it is nothing more than a few mutating and extra cells...that is all. The fear...comes from believing in that story I created...the false evidence...not from the bodily change itself.
Get that?
The presence of fear shows that you have raised body thoughts to the level of the mind.
ACIM: Chapter 2: VI:1:6
Fear is a belief in something that isn't true...a belief in a story that we created in our minds. It is false evidence that isn't real even though it appears to be.
There is a way to sort out the false evidence from the real:
Perfect love casts out fear.
If fear exists;
Then there is not perfect love.
But:
Only perfect love exists.
If there is fear,
It produces a state that does not exist.
ACIM: Chapter 1: VI: 5:3
All is well!
ACIM ( 2007) A Course in Miracles: Combined Volume. Foundations for Inner Peace.
Tuesday, January 14, 2020
Soaking it up for others
Suffering and joy are universal...
Pema Chodron
A Story About Suffering Pain
When I was a teenager I suffered a tremendous amount of pain every month from endometriosis. Since I was not diagnosed until I seemed unable to get pregnant in my very late twenties, I had no idea why I was experiencing the pain and what I was supposed to do with such random and punitive attacks . I couldn't understand it. I honestly thought that every women went through that much pain every month and there was just something wrong with me because I was too wimpy to handle it. So besides the pain, there was a lot of shame. I felt very much alone in my suffering.
During these bouts I would spend days and nights pacing up and down the halls of the house I grew up in. Every few minutes I would buckle over in pain, fall to my knees, curl up in a ball rocking back and forth until I had the strength to get up again. ( okay...I was a teenager...prone to a bit of dramatic expression lol). Truth was the pain was completely overwhelming. I wanted relief. I needed relief. I grasped at every mental and physical trick my young immature mind knew to get through it and would soak up the advice of others. Nothing seemed to work...
Getting Beyond the personalized Perception of Suffering
That is until one day during the center of that pain experience when I found myself curled up in a ball on the floor ...I for some reason imagined my mother, who had passed a few years previous, walking up and down that same hall with her cancer pain. I felt her suffering and had this tremendous retroactive wish to be able to remove some of that suffering from her. I then imagined my seven year old sister who suffered from severe abdominal pain from her recently diagnosed nephrotic syndrome walking up and down the hall as well. I pictured one older sister who was yellow with jaundice from the painful complications of spherocytosis (again at the time not diagnosed) walking hand and hand down the hall with my asthmatic sister who was suffering from the pain of trying to get a breath of air into her lungs almost everyday. The hallway was suddenly full of suffering beings.
I felt all that suffering so intensely and so acutely. I so wanted to be able to end it for everyone in my family. Then I began to think of all the other people out there in the world who were suffering from physical pain related to one thing or another and I began to cry like a baby. My tears and sense of suffering for the first time went beyond my own narcissistic perception of the pain experience to a universal one.
I pulled myself up from the floor and I began to pace up and down the hall again but this time I did it differently. With every step I took , I imagined I was soaking up the suffering of another. With every intense spasm of pain that shot through my body, I imagined I was taking away some of the pain from someone else who was suffering more than I was. My suffering , I convinced myself, was diminishing the suffering in the world. It gave my pain purpose . It gave my pain meaning. It did not take my pain away :) but it made it so much more bearable. That is how I learned to cope with this monthly pain. I wasn't always compassionate and successful in maintaining this accepting, empathetic response to pain. Oh man, there were times the pain was so bad I didn't give a s*&^ about anyone else but for the most part I was able to expand beyond my "little me" experience of suffering during my own suffering.
A Buddhist Practice
I, of course, had no idea I was rudimentarily participating in the practice of Bodhicitta when I did this. In fact anything remotely connected to Buddhism was so taboo in my religious upbringing I probably would have been voluntarily exorcised if I knew that what I was doing was actually a Buddhist practice. :)
Now I embrace the understanding of this practice...not on religious or even spiritual basis but on a foundation of humanity. It can be, I believe, a deeply healing human practice.
Bodhicitta? What the heck is that, crazy lady?
I am no expert and very limited in my understanding of Bodhicitta ( in fact, I am not even sure if I am spelling it right) but from my understanding of the teaching from Pema Chodron, it is a practice of connecting with the tender hearted soft spot within us and staying with it for as long as we can. It is about opening to the feelings and experiences we habitually tend to resist and close to as part of our human conditioning. It is about allowing vulnerability, fear, pain and suffering into our moment in a very empathetic and accepting way and it is about releasing the desire for freedom and joy out into the world.
Say what?
The Tonglen practice itself involves a four step breath meditation. We first open up to a space within us that is free of a need to judge, select, prefer, cling or push away. Secondly we focus on the texture of what we are going to breathe in and out. On the in-breath we imagine breathing in heavy, hot darkness into every cell of our bodies, when we breathe out (the same length as the in -breath) we breathe out fresh, cool light 360 degrees around us. Then, thirdly, we focus on a particular situation of suffering, possibly trying to envision the suffering experience of someone we love ( like I did with my sisters) and then fourthly expanding that to all others who are suffering in the same way. When we breathe in, we breathe in the wish that they be free of this suffering and when we breathe out we breathe out the wish for joy, peace and happiness in their lives.
Connect and stay with that as long as we can.
Breaking a human habit
This practice involves breaking a habit that is so established in most of our lives. Most of us only tend to open to what we deem as pleasurable. We push away what we judge as unpleasurable...like suffering or pain. We resist and close ourselves to it. We see suffering in the world around us and our habitual tendency is to close up to it...not deal with it. When it hits us personally we resist it and say "this shouldn't be..." We feel we are alone in it.
This practice asks that we do something totally different than what we have been doing...to open up to the unpleasant...open up to that vulnerable spot within us all...and see this softness as universal. It asks that we soak in the pain of the world and the root of it ( which is always in the mind) and transform it while it is within us. By allowing and accepting the suffering in our moments ( ours and the worlds) and wishing it to diminish the hold it has on another, we soften. With connection to this softness suffering is transformed to fresh, cooling, light that extends beyond our own little experience to everyone and everything.
It is so very beautiful and so very healing.
All is well.
Pema Chodron Lecture: Teaching for Love and Happiness. (June, 2017) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYR574v4F-A
Pema Chodron
A Story About Suffering Pain
When I was a teenager I suffered a tremendous amount of pain every month from endometriosis. Since I was not diagnosed until I seemed unable to get pregnant in my very late twenties, I had no idea why I was experiencing the pain and what I was supposed to do with such random and punitive attacks . I couldn't understand it. I honestly thought that every women went through that much pain every month and there was just something wrong with me because I was too wimpy to handle it. So besides the pain, there was a lot of shame. I felt very much alone in my suffering.
During these bouts I would spend days and nights pacing up and down the halls of the house I grew up in. Every few minutes I would buckle over in pain, fall to my knees, curl up in a ball rocking back and forth until I had the strength to get up again. ( okay...I was a teenager...prone to a bit of dramatic expression lol). Truth was the pain was completely overwhelming. I wanted relief. I needed relief. I grasped at every mental and physical trick my young immature mind knew to get through it and would soak up the advice of others. Nothing seemed to work...
Getting Beyond the personalized Perception of Suffering
That is until one day during the center of that pain experience when I found myself curled up in a ball on the floor ...I for some reason imagined my mother, who had passed a few years previous, walking up and down that same hall with her cancer pain. I felt her suffering and had this tremendous retroactive wish to be able to remove some of that suffering from her. I then imagined my seven year old sister who suffered from severe abdominal pain from her recently diagnosed nephrotic syndrome walking up and down the hall as well. I pictured one older sister who was yellow with jaundice from the painful complications of spherocytosis (again at the time not diagnosed) walking hand and hand down the hall with my asthmatic sister who was suffering from the pain of trying to get a breath of air into her lungs almost everyday. The hallway was suddenly full of suffering beings.
I felt all that suffering so intensely and so acutely. I so wanted to be able to end it for everyone in my family. Then I began to think of all the other people out there in the world who were suffering from physical pain related to one thing or another and I began to cry like a baby. My tears and sense of suffering for the first time went beyond my own narcissistic perception of the pain experience to a universal one.
I pulled myself up from the floor and I began to pace up and down the hall again but this time I did it differently. With every step I took , I imagined I was soaking up the suffering of another. With every intense spasm of pain that shot through my body, I imagined I was taking away some of the pain from someone else who was suffering more than I was. My suffering , I convinced myself, was diminishing the suffering in the world. It gave my pain purpose . It gave my pain meaning. It did not take my pain away :) but it made it so much more bearable. That is how I learned to cope with this monthly pain. I wasn't always compassionate and successful in maintaining this accepting, empathetic response to pain. Oh man, there were times the pain was so bad I didn't give a s*&^ about anyone else but for the most part I was able to expand beyond my "little me" experience of suffering during my own suffering.
A Buddhist Practice
I, of course, had no idea I was rudimentarily participating in the practice of Bodhicitta when I did this. In fact anything remotely connected to Buddhism was so taboo in my religious upbringing I probably would have been voluntarily exorcised if I knew that what I was doing was actually a Buddhist practice. :)
Now I embrace the understanding of this practice...not on religious or even spiritual basis but on a foundation of humanity. It can be, I believe, a deeply healing human practice.
Bodhicitta? What the heck is that, crazy lady?
I am no expert and very limited in my understanding of Bodhicitta ( in fact, I am not even sure if I am spelling it right) but from my understanding of the teaching from Pema Chodron, it is a practice of connecting with the tender hearted soft spot within us and staying with it for as long as we can. It is about opening to the feelings and experiences we habitually tend to resist and close to as part of our human conditioning. It is about allowing vulnerability, fear, pain and suffering into our moment in a very empathetic and accepting way and it is about releasing the desire for freedom and joy out into the world.
Say what?
The Tonglen practice itself involves a four step breath meditation. We first open up to a space within us that is free of a need to judge, select, prefer, cling or push away. Secondly we focus on the texture of what we are going to breathe in and out. On the in-breath we imagine breathing in heavy, hot darkness into every cell of our bodies, when we breathe out (the same length as the in -breath) we breathe out fresh, cool light 360 degrees around us. Then, thirdly, we focus on a particular situation of suffering, possibly trying to envision the suffering experience of someone we love ( like I did with my sisters) and then fourthly expanding that to all others who are suffering in the same way. When we breathe in, we breathe in the wish that they be free of this suffering and when we breathe out we breathe out the wish for joy, peace and happiness in their lives.
Connect and stay with that as long as we can.
Breaking a human habit
This practice involves breaking a habit that is so established in most of our lives. Most of us only tend to open to what we deem as pleasurable. We push away what we judge as unpleasurable...like suffering or pain. We resist and close ourselves to it. We see suffering in the world around us and our habitual tendency is to close up to it...not deal with it. When it hits us personally we resist it and say "this shouldn't be..." We feel we are alone in it.
This practice asks that we do something totally different than what we have been doing...to open up to the unpleasant...open up to that vulnerable spot within us all...and see this softness as universal. It asks that we soak in the pain of the world and the root of it ( which is always in the mind) and transform it while it is within us. By allowing and accepting the suffering in our moments ( ours and the worlds) and wishing it to diminish the hold it has on another, we soften. With connection to this softness suffering is transformed to fresh, cooling, light that extends beyond our own little experience to everyone and everything.
It is so very beautiful and so very healing.
All is well.
Pema Chodron Lecture: Teaching for Love and Happiness. (June, 2017) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYR574v4F-A
Monday, January 13, 2020
Karma?
Every word we speak, every action we perform effects our future....and it all starts in the mind.
Pema Chodron
Sunday, January 12, 2020
Even if the mind doesn't understand...
[The wise man] knows it is often impossible for the mind to understand what place or purpose a seemingly random event has in the tapestry of the whole...
Eckhart Tolle
Sigh!
In case you haven't noticed yet...I am pretty much choking on this physical event that has showed up in my life two months ago. It is like a big fat fur ball in my mind...I just want to cough it up and be done with it. It is the way of my writing, my sleeping and my living but I just cannot seem to be rid of it yet. Sigh!
Bad enough to have this thing on my body that my mind tells me "shouldn't be there" and to wake up every night with the pain that pulls me right back into a ruminating mind but on top of that there were so many bizarre circumstances around this ...it has become extra challenging for my mind to cough it up and be done with this life event. Sigh!
So I slip, too often these days, from a state of presence into a state of diminished consciousness where I find myself ruminating, stuck in the past, analyzing, seeking validation for my conclusions, focusing on the behaviours of others, not trusting, wishing I handled things differently, and worried about the future. I guess what Tolle calls the "pain body" is active and when it is active I am in a place I do not want to be. I am stuck in my head and my story and not experiencing Life now. Sigh!
My mind wants to understand what this is and why it has entered my life. It tells me it won't settle until I have more answers. It is not going to trust the very vague ones I have received to date from someone who appears to have a very different agenda than mine. It wants to push me into action and seeking using anger, fear and worry to move me forward. Sigh!
My guess, is that you find yourself in a similar spot form time to time. One where you find yourself slipping back into your diminished consciousness more often than you want to for one reason or another? One where the mind demands to understand why something has shown up in your Life and what you are supposed to do with it? One where you notice that pain body has crawled back up on the waiting bench with you? One where you find yourself sighing out loud again and again?
So what do we do to end all this sighing?
This is what I think we need to do to get rid of this unhealthy reaction to circumstance and to feel peaceful again.:
All is well in my world.
Eckhart Tolle
Sigh!
In case you haven't noticed yet...I am pretty much choking on this physical event that has showed up in my life two months ago. It is like a big fat fur ball in my mind...I just want to cough it up and be done with it. It is the way of my writing, my sleeping and my living but I just cannot seem to be rid of it yet. Sigh!
Bad enough to have this thing on my body that my mind tells me "shouldn't be there" and to wake up every night with the pain that pulls me right back into a ruminating mind but on top of that there were so many bizarre circumstances around this ...it has become extra challenging for my mind to cough it up and be done with this life event. Sigh!
So I slip, too often these days, from a state of presence into a state of diminished consciousness where I find myself ruminating, stuck in the past, analyzing, seeking validation for my conclusions, focusing on the behaviours of others, not trusting, wishing I handled things differently, and worried about the future. I guess what Tolle calls the "pain body" is active and when it is active I am in a place I do not want to be. I am stuck in my head and my story and not experiencing Life now. Sigh!
My mind wants to understand what this is and why it has entered my life. It tells me it won't settle until I have more answers. It is not going to trust the very vague ones I have received to date from someone who appears to have a very different agenda than mine. It wants to push me into action and seeking using anger, fear and worry to move me forward. Sigh!
My guess, is that you find yourself in a similar spot form time to time. One where you find yourself slipping back into your diminished consciousness more often than you want to for one reason or another? One where the mind demands to understand why something has shown up in your Life and what you are supposed to do with it? One where you notice that pain body has crawled back up on the waiting bench with you? One where you find yourself sighing out loud again and again?
So what do we do to end all this sighing?
This is what I think we need to do to get rid of this unhealthy reaction to circumstance and to feel peaceful again.:
- Tap into alert awareness: Don't try to stop the thinking....or to force yourself into alertness. Just gently slip into still spaciousness whenever you can. Focus on your surroundings, what your five senses are picking up: the sights, smells, sounds around you etc. Be aware of what the inner body feels like...the aliveness in you. Breathe...be aware that you are breathing and follow that breath. The moment you do that...you won't be lost in thought anymore. Proceed from there...
- Be aware of thoughts, feelings and behaviours: The most important thing we need to do is be aware of how we are reacting to the circumstance. "What am I doing, thinking, feeling and how conscious am I in all this?" This awareness will only occur once you have become still and present. Notice that you slipped away from presence without beating yourself up for doing so. I have slipped and am aware that I am slipping from presence more often than I want to. I am aware of my thinking , my emotions and my behaviours as a result of this reaction. As soon as we become aware that we have slipped we are conscious once again
- Allow the feelings and thoughts. When we resist feeling or thinking a certain way we create suffering on top of the pain. Just allow the feelings and the thinking. As I said yesterday, I became very aware of my egoic thinking in relation to the circumstances that surrounded this and my health seeking experiences. I allowed those thoughts to come. I allowed the feelings of anger, mistrust, fear and worry. I felt such a relief to just allow them. That doesn't mean I want to stay there but in order to go "through" them so I can relieve them...I have to allow them. Resisting, denying, pretending to think and feel in ways we don't won't help us.
- Filter the emotions from the story: I have learned this important step from Pema Chodron. We need to recognize our feelings and eventually filter them from the story that surrounds them. Without getting lost in thoughts about who did what and what something may or may not be...just feel the fear, the worry, the anger and frustration. Experience it.
- Continue to Observe yourself from a state of alertness: When we observe our minds, we are detached from our thinking and not lost in the story it is telling us.
- Accept and allow the life event into your moment when it enters: So what is happening in your life right now? Accept it. Allow it. I have pain. I accept and allow the pain. I have this abnormal tissue...it is what it is. I have no real diagnosis but some strange and vague ones that no longer make sense to me...that is okay. It is what it is right now...I have these thoughts and feelings...that is okay too. As long as I don't resist what is, struggle against it, attempt to deny it and suppress it...I will not suffer. Suffering only comes when we refuse to accept what is.
- Refuse to allow the event to fill your moment: So when we allow the life event to be what it is we find a place for it in that space that is us. It does not, however, need to cover that space so completely we see nothing else. For example....this fear of what this might be...is real and I will accept it but I won't allow it to consume me...it is just something floating over the surface of what is always detached and peaceful. If I look closely enough at it...I will see it is only water vapour, a cloud floating past a perfect blue sky.
- Respond when the time comes: Take part in inspired action when you are pulled to do so. Certainly make plans if the inspired thought comes to "do" something about it but there is a difference between reacting and responding, right? Reaction is usually based on egoic desperation and fear. It seldom serves us or others. Reaction is based on what Wayne Dyer often termed F.E.A.R...false -evidence -appearing- real. Responding is peaceful, purposeful action that serves and does no intentional harm. It is based on truth.
All is well in my world.
Saturday, January 11, 2020
Don't Need to Go There....or Do You?
I am conscious therefore I am...
-Eckhart Tolle
It was Rene Descartes who said " I think, therefore I am." But how true is that? Are we our thinking or are we the spacious consciousness beneath the thinking, as Tolle proposes above.
How many times a day to you catch yourself responding to a question from another or a question Life Itself seems to pose in the form of circumstances, with "I have to think about that ?"
I have spent my life responding in that way. Whenever an issue arose that seemed complicated or emotionally activating, I would pull myself away into a corner so I could "think about it". I felt the only way to deal with it was by thinking about it. And off I would go from one thought to another, from one story or mental drama to another...and I seldom came back out of the corner any more Self aware than I went in. In fact, I usually came out feeling worse.
Getting Pulled Back Into the Habitual Mind
Monday's events.... what my mind registered as the accumulation of six weeks of body related worry...was something I felt I needed to process. In other words, "I needed to think about that...". I spent the last few days processing, recording details, reviewing, analyzing and understanding them so ego could make sense of it.
That is not something I wanted to spend my limited energy doing (the whole experience exhausted me) ...I wanted to let it go. I wanted more space between my thoughts...more stillness. I do want to break the habit of "needing to think about " these types of things but ego keeps pulling me back into my habitual mind.
Moments in Alert Presence
I was conscious during the experience as I am in many high stress situations. The thinking I did during the experience was limited so therefore the way I responded to it was not the way "ego" wanted me to. I was so in the moment...so in the zone...so present and so alert...every cell of my body was waiting and then clinging to every explanation that came from the individual's mouth ...that I didn't think that much. Consciousness was so present ego was pushed aside.
Ego likes to think
My mind, as I mentioned before , is very, very active. Some might call it very perceptive...but I am starting to see it as crazy making. When I am conscious and alert, not necessarily thinking, my mind continues to pick up and store details and specifics of what is occurring around me.
Now my conscious Self, my present Self is okay with not dealing with the details and chooses to maintain attention only on what serves the moment but ego isn't quite so complacent. Though there may be little room for it in those "focused" moments, when the alertness diminishes ego sneaks back into my data gathering mind to study the history there. So though I may walk away from such an experience feeling like it is over...ego ensures it isn't!
My thinking addicted ego came flying back into my psyche after reviewing the tapes, and man did it let me have it.
A Reprimand From an Angry Ego
(I actually had five long paragraphs flow out here from my angry ego. After it reviewed the details of my experience on Monday it made some pretty valid conclusions. And it got angry again. It wanted me to relay all that information here but I realize that it will only serve ego to leave me once again stuck in a victim's tale. I have that information clearly documented and I am certainly not discounting it. I will, however, not get lost in it and follow it into another drama...
Don't have to go there.
So the ego wants to pull us in to habitual thinking again and again. It tells us what we have to think about is important....but the thing is we do not always have to follow it. We do not need to struggle against the thinking...or actively work to shut it down. We just need to strengthen our "muscle of attention choice" with a practice.
The Practice
We choose presence and we practice by slipping into stillness and alertness more often ...that's all. We practice mindfulness or mind-less-ness ( less mind). Spend time becoming aware of where your attention is. What are you paying attention to right now? Thoughts about the past or future, busy life going on around you? Okay gently bring yourself back to body sensation, your surroundings, your breath and the space between thoughts.
Prepare yourself. You may go off again... just like I did. I was so present during the appointments on Monday but slipped away shortly afterward. Now I am in the process of bringing myself back.
We practice by attempting to recognize when we are going off like I did above and we gently bring ourselves back. The thing is not to resist the thinking or to actively strive to bring yourself back to stillness. Do so gently and passively. No force and no resistance.
Ego Might Have Needed to Have a Little Say
I know this is going to contradict many things I have said before, but sometimes our attention might have to be on what ego has to say. I was actually having a harder time being mindful/mind-less when I was resisting my thoughts about Monday's experience and trying not to pay attention to what ego had to say. My resistance was causing me so much agitation I have not been able to come here to write. Once I just stopped and allowed ego without resisting it to say what it has to say...I felt better.
We definitely do not want to get lost in our thinking because regardless of what Rene Descartes proposed, it is not who we are. But we can, from a detached distance, let ego rip on a thought rampage from time to time. Don't spend a lot of time resisting it. Just allow it and observe it.
The New State of Consciousness
I think of this statement I heard from Eckhart Tolle today, "The new state of consciousness is a mixture of thoughts and spaciousness."
So though we want to be alert and still in our conscious spaciousness...sometimes thinking is an inescapable part of our human reality. We can gain awareness and clarity if we observe that thinking from a place of spaciousness. I now know what ego thinks of my experience ...it is all out in the open...but whether or not I go there to get lost in its version of reality, ..is my choice. I will not react to what ego has deemed as unacceptable professional behaviour in an other but I might respond in a healthy way that serves all.
I guess..."I will have to think about that..." :)
All is well.
Eckhart Tolle (August, 2019)Freedom from Thought and Excessive Thinking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPey7m4jNto
Eckhart Tolle ( July 24, 2019 [my birthday lol]) The Dream of Life and Success. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFnr6vrMZJE
-Eckhart Tolle
It was Rene Descartes who said " I think, therefore I am." But how true is that? Are we our thinking or are we the spacious consciousness beneath the thinking, as Tolle proposes above.
How many times a day to you catch yourself responding to a question from another or a question Life Itself seems to pose in the form of circumstances, with "I have to think about that ?"
I have spent my life responding in that way. Whenever an issue arose that seemed complicated or emotionally activating, I would pull myself away into a corner so I could "think about it". I felt the only way to deal with it was by thinking about it. And off I would go from one thought to another, from one story or mental drama to another...and I seldom came back out of the corner any more Self aware than I went in. In fact, I usually came out feeling worse.
Getting Pulled Back Into the Habitual Mind
Monday's events.... what my mind registered as the accumulation of six weeks of body related worry...was something I felt I needed to process. In other words, "I needed to think about that...". I spent the last few days processing, recording details, reviewing, analyzing and understanding them so ego could make sense of it.
That is not something I wanted to spend my limited energy doing (the whole experience exhausted me) ...I wanted to let it go. I wanted more space between my thoughts...more stillness. I do want to break the habit of "needing to think about " these types of things but ego keeps pulling me back into my habitual mind.
Moments in Alert Presence
I was conscious during the experience as I am in many high stress situations. The thinking I did during the experience was limited so therefore the way I responded to it was not the way "ego" wanted me to. I was so in the moment...so in the zone...so present and so alert...every cell of my body was waiting and then clinging to every explanation that came from the individual's mouth ...that I didn't think that much. Consciousness was so present ego was pushed aside.
Ego likes to think
My mind, as I mentioned before , is very, very active. Some might call it very perceptive...but I am starting to see it as crazy making. When I am conscious and alert, not necessarily thinking, my mind continues to pick up and store details and specifics of what is occurring around me.
Now my conscious Self, my present Self is okay with not dealing with the details and chooses to maintain attention only on what serves the moment but ego isn't quite so complacent. Though there may be little room for it in those "focused" moments, when the alertness diminishes ego sneaks back into my data gathering mind to study the history there. So though I may walk away from such an experience feeling like it is over...ego ensures it isn't!
My thinking addicted ego came flying back into my psyche after reviewing the tapes, and man did it let me have it.
A Reprimand From an Angry Ego
(I actually had five long paragraphs flow out here from my angry ego. After it reviewed the details of my experience on Monday it made some pretty valid conclusions. And it got angry again. It wanted me to relay all that information here but I realize that it will only serve ego to leave me once again stuck in a victim's tale. I have that information clearly documented and I am certainly not discounting it. I will, however, not get lost in it and follow it into another drama...
Don't have to go there.
So the ego wants to pull us in to habitual thinking again and again. It tells us what we have to think about is important....but the thing is we do not always have to follow it. We do not need to struggle against the thinking...or actively work to shut it down. We just need to strengthen our "muscle of attention choice" with a practice.
The Practice
We choose presence and we practice by slipping into stillness and alertness more often ...that's all. We practice mindfulness or mind-less-ness ( less mind). Spend time becoming aware of where your attention is. What are you paying attention to right now? Thoughts about the past or future, busy life going on around you? Okay gently bring yourself back to body sensation, your surroundings, your breath and the space between thoughts.
Prepare yourself. You may go off again... just like I did. I was so present during the appointments on Monday but slipped away shortly afterward. Now I am in the process of bringing myself back.
We practice by attempting to recognize when we are going off like I did above and we gently bring ourselves back. The thing is not to resist the thinking or to actively strive to bring yourself back to stillness. Do so gently and passively. No force and no resistance.
Ego Might Have Needed to Have a Little Say
I know this is going to contradict many things I have said before, but sometimes our attention might have to be on what ego has to say. I was actually having a harder time being mindful/mind-less when I was resisting my thoughts about Monday's experience and trying not to pay attention to what ego had to say. My resistance was causing me so much agitation I have not been able to come here to write. Once I just stopped and allowed ego without resisting it to say what it has to say...I felt better.
We definitely do not want to get lost in our thinking because regardless of what Rene Descartes proposed, it is not who we are. But we can, from a detached distance, let ego rip on a thought rampage from time to time. Don't spend a lot of time resisting it. Just allow it and observe it.
The New State of Consciousness
I think of this statement I heard from Eckhart Tolle today, "The new state of consciousness is a mixture of thoughts and spaciousness."
So though we want to be alert and still in our conscious spaciousness...sometimes thinking is an inescapable part of our human reality. We can gain awareness and clarity if we observe that thinking from a place of spaciousness. I now know what ego thinks of my experience ...it is all out in the open...but whether or not I go there to get lost in its version of reality, ..is my choice. I will not react to what ego has deemed as unacceptable professional behaviour in an other but I might respond in a healthy way that serves all.
I guess..."I will have to think about that..." :)
All is well.
Eckhart Tolle (August, 2019)Freedom from Thought and Excessive Thinking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPey7m4jNto
Eckhart Tolle ( July 24, 2019 [my birthday lol]) The Dream of Life and Success. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFnr6vrMZJE
Wednesday, January 8, 2020
Observing the Mind
The energy of the mind is the essence of life
-Aristotle
Observing the Human Mind
I get so amazed when I observe the human mind...mine in particular. I really cannot look clearly outside myself until I look clearly within. Or what is that bible passage? Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? (Matthew 7:3-5; NIV). So in my never ceasing interest in studying other human minds, I am willingly examining a big nasty piece of wood when I venture into my own head.
The "Waiting" Mind
On Monday, D. and I discussed the "waiting" experience. My 20-30 minutes of testing (total) involved a four and a half hour wait. That was a challenging four and a half hours, let me tell ya. It was challenging because number one...we were waiting on some pretty heavy news and number two...we both wondered if I was intentionally scheduled last by an irate professional who wanted to "teach me a lesson. " , getting my ego all rawled up. (Probably paranoia but ... I had that in the back of my mind.)
We noticed and then discussed with interest how we were handling the situation...reading a bit, going to our phones, looking around, talking, confirming the time, lapsing into silence, going back to reading, phones, talking...silence. It was as if the mind could not settle on one thing...in the present moment because it was waiting on (dreading) the moment ahead.
I unknowingly kept slipping into images of that future moment...imagining in detail what it would or could be like. How will it be to face this person? How will he react to me this time? What will they find? How will I be treated? How will I react or respond to what they find? I spent over 240 moments fixated on one single moment before I even got to it!
As I sat there in the waiting room, shaking my leg and playing with my fingers....I would catch myself going off. I would then gently try to bring myself back to breath focus and body sensation focus. I tried to become acutely aware of my surroundings. Read every sign and even took down a few numbers in case I needed them. (Anyone looking for the number of the Purell customer service?)
I spent fifteen minutes observing and running my fingers over the material of the Johnny shirt I was in. I was in complete awe that I never realized how nice that material was before then. It was like I was truly seeing it for the first time. I was so impressed by it that I told Don I was going to make a pair of pajamas out of it somehow to keep me cool during my hot flashes. If I had a needle, thread and a pair of scissors I probably could have made a pair for everyone in the waiting room before my numbers were called.
The time did pass...my number was eventually called three different times for three different tests.
The " Alert " and "Prepared" Mind
I also recall how my mind behaved during the testing and the discussions that followed after wards. Not at all like I imagined I would react. I did not get angry and confront like I so intended to do. I was passive, open, kind.
Neither the communications instructor in me, or the author of the book I am writing about putting care back in health care took over to begin lecturing on the proper use of empathy and therapeutic technique like I thought they would. In fact, I didn't even realize how many teaching opportunities for correction there were until yesterday.
I was so , so in the moment completely in tune ... waiting in alert stillness for only two things: signs of an active ego on his part...my sick of being shamed ego was hyper vigilant and prepared to fly into him. And to hear whether or not this was cancer? Hmmm...that was all my mind could handle...everything else got put on the back burner.
The Processing Mind
That doesn't mean I was as brain dead as I might have seemed to those I dealt with. My mind picked up absolutely everything in snippets and now those snippets are falling all around me so I can process and make sense of what happened Monday. My being so there in alertness gave me so much clarity I didn't know I had. Picking up everything in vivid detail. Slowly it is allowing the pieces of information to drop in some gentle pattern around me so I can reflect clearly on the whole experience and make sense of it.
That is what awareness does. It is just amazing how the mind works!
Another big long spiel and I am not sure why.
All good!!!
-Aristotle
Observing the Human Mind
I get so amazed when I observe the human mind...mine in particular. I really cannot look clearly outside myself until I look clearly within. Or what is that bible passage? Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? (Matthew 7:3-5; NIV). So in my never ceasing interest in studying other human minds, I am willingly examining a big nasty piece of wood when I venture into my own head.
The "Waiting" Mind
On Monday, D. and I discussed the "waiting" experience. My 20-30 minutes of testing (total) involved a four and a half hour wait. That was a challenging four and a half hours, let me tell ya. It was challenging because number one...we were waiting on some pretty heavy news and number two...we both wondered if I was intentionally scheduled last by an irate professional who wanted to "teach me a lesson. " , getting my ego all rawled up. (Probably paranoia but ... I had that in the back of my mind.)
We noticed and then discussed with interest how we were handling the situation...reading a bit, going to our phones, looking around, talking, confirming the time, lapsing into silence, going back to reading, phones, talking...silence. It was as if the mind could not settle on one thing...in the present moment because it was waiting on (dreading) the moment ahead.
I unknowingly kept slipping into images of that future moment...imagining in detail what it would or could be like. How will it be to face this person? How will he react to me this time? What will they find? How will I be treated? How will I react or respond to what they find? I spent over 240 moments fixated on one single moment before I even got to it!
As I sat there in the waiting room, shaking my leg and playing with my fingers....I would catch myself going off. I would then gently try to bring myself back to breath focus and body sensation focus. I tried to become acutely aware of my surroundings. Read every sign and even took down a few numbers in case I needed them. (Anyone looking for the number of the Purell customer service?)
I spent fifteen minutes observing and running my fingers over the material of the Johnny shirt I was in. I was in complete awe that I never realized how nice that material was before then. It was like I was truly seeing it for the first time. I was so impressed by it that I told Don I was going to make a pair of pajamas out of it somehow to keep me cool during my hot flashes. If I had a needle, thread and a pair of scissors I probably could have made a pair for everyone in the waiting room before my numbers were called.
The time did pass...my number was eventually called three different times for three different tests.
The " Alert " and "Prepared" Mind
I also recall how my mind behaved during the testing and the discussions that followed after wards. Not at all like I imagined I would react. I did not get angry and confront like I so intended to do. I was passive, open, kind.
Neither the communications instructor in me, or the author of the book I am writing about putting care back in health care took over to begin lecturing on the proper use of empathy and therapeutic technique like I thought they would. In fact, I didn't even realize how many teaching opportunities for correction there were until yesterday.
I was so , so in the moment completely in tune ... waiting in alert stillness for only two things: signs of an active ego on his part...my sick of being shamed ego was hyper vigilant and prepared to fly into him. And to hear whether or not this was cancer? Hmmm...that was all my mind could handle...everything else got put on the back burner.
The Processing Mind
That doesn't mean I was as brain dead as I might have seemed to those I dealt with. My mind picked up absolutely everything in snippets and now those snippets are falling all around me so I can process and make sense of what happened Monday. My being so there in alertness gave me so much clarity I didn't know I had. Picking up everything in vivid detail. Slowly it is allowing the pieces of information to drop in some gentle pattern around me so I can reflect clearly on the whole experience and make sense of it.
That is what awareness does. It is just amazing how the mind works!
Another big long spiel and I am not sure why.
All good!!!
Tuesday, January 7, 2020
A Little too Personal?
It is impossible to move, to live, to operate at any level without leaving traces, bits, seemingly meaningless fragments of personal information.
William Gibson
Sometimes we just dump it all out on the table. :)
I just realized how much personal information I have been sharing here over the course of a few months. Too much? Considering the fact I told no one about this scare other than D., my sister and a counsellor it probably was too much lol. I honestly felt compelled to share it here...it seemed safe. I am quite sure family and friends no longer tap into this blog...so I did not sense I would be exposing a truth to them I was not ready to reveal in person.
Regardless, it is a part of my experience right now and I do see such wonderful valuable learning in it. It would be selfish then for me not to share it, wouldn't you say?
All is well.
William Gibson
Sometimes we just dump it all out on the table. :)
I just realized how much personal information I have been sharing here over the course of a few months. Too much? Considering the fact I told no one about this scare other than D., my sister and a counsellor it probably was too much lol. I honestly felt compelled to share it here...it seemed safe. I am quite sure family and friends no longer tap into this blog...so I did not sense I would be exposing a truth to them I was not ready to reveal in person.
Regardless, it is a part of my experience right now and I do see such wonderful valuable learning in it. It would be selfish then for me not to share it, wouldn't you say?
All is well.
Priceless Diamond
Good news is rare these days, and every glittering ounce of it should be cherished and hoarded and worshipped and fondled like a priceless diamond.
Hunter S. Thompson
Good News
Whew! Some Good news.... No "real evidence"of cancer showed up on my tests....and I didn't attack anyone with an angry ego.
I should be delighted and flying to the moon...and I am very relieved...but I think I am still processing. I know if I still didn't have the pain ( which was made worse by all the squishing yesterday) , and the validation for it...(mammogram reveals some definite retraction that was not there before and another "solid" lump was found in the area where the pain is heading)...I would probably have hugged everyone in that room yesterday and run dancing home. I certainly felt relief with so much gratitude ...so much so I forgot my confrontation intention and was passive and empathetic, appreciating the attempts that were made at communicating in a therapeutic way rather than confrontational. I just grasped and clung to every bit of " not revealing obvious evidence of cancer" that was given me by a totally different bedside approach than the one I received in November...
But....
Relieved but not 100 % at Peace
I noticed even as I was giving D. the thumbs up sign, when I was leaving the room, that I wasn't completely at peace with what I was given. Just like I was not at complete peace after that first ultrasound as much as I was willing to let it go there. (Then... it was my physician, not me, that was not willing to stop there.) This time, I think it is me. Something won't let me let it go. I need to explore that.
As I reflect back,( my mind is remarkable about picking up and recalling vivid detail from the tone and inflection in a voice, whether or not there was eye contact, what was said ...what was shown to me...people's expressions and body language etc), there were several reasons for my lack of reassurance. I won't share them here and I will own my feelings completely. Closure will not occur, I suppose, until I see the surgeon who I am told I will be referred directly to.
Regardless of what the tests showed, the mass I am feeling is still there. I still have pain and I still don't know what is causing it. On top of that I have another lump that is "definitely not a cyst" showing up in the area where the pain appears to be moving to. I was told it was "likely just a fibroadenoma". This shows up where I am having pain and two months after this other mass was first found. That can't be coincidence. There is approximately 70 % density leading to an obscure view. (It surprises me that at 56, I still have such dense tissue?) The area I have been feeling is below that dense tissue. The retraction is obvious right above what I am feeling...so there is definitely something there...causing the retraction and the pain as well as the palpable mass. The question is: What the heck is it? Is it all just due to normal aging tissue change or is there just too much dense tissue for even the tests I had performed to pick up something? Wouldn't hyperplasia or ductal ectasia...at least show up?
All I get when I ask..."So what am I feeling? What is causing the retraction and the pain?" Is, "I don't know. These tests do not reveal any "obvious evidence of cancer". Could be normal tissue." Is normal tissue so palpable and symptom producing?
The scientific part of my brain that needs clearer validation...won't settle with "could be normal" and "I don't know." . Hopefully the surgeon will clear that up for me. I think I will pop in to see my GP this week too. Something just doesn't seem right.
No fretting, no drama, no worry...just a bit of inspired action. That inspired action definitely will not involve seeking to get more tests done there. I definitely do not intend to go anywhere near that radiology department for a very long time if at all! After the denials, long waits, and "teaching" I received about the improper use of MRI's and mammograms , I don't think getting another test done there would even be permitted no matter what the likelihood of having cancer is.
Anyway...I do feel a great deal of relief and appreciation...in comparison to what I felt a few weeks ago. I also feel appreciation for the machinery and the funding that allowed for it, as well as the hard working technologists who didn't even get a break that day. That is a very busy and hard working team that deals with women like me on a daily basis. My thanks to them.
All is well in my world.
Hunter S. Thompson
Good News
Whew! Some Good news.... No "real evidence"of cancer showed up on my tests....and I didn't attack anyone with an angry ego.
I should be delighted and flying to the moon...and I am very relieved...but I think I am still processing. I know if I still didn't have the pain ( which was made worse by all the squishing yesterday) , and the validation for it...(mammogram reveals some definite retraction that was not there before and another "solid" lump was found in the area where the pain is heading)...I would probably have hugged everyone in that room yesterday and run dancing home. I certainly felt relief with so much gratitude ...so much so I forgot my confrontation intention and was passive and empathetic, appreciating the attempts that were made at communicating in a therapeutic way rather than confrontational. I just grasped and clung to every bit of " not revealing obvious evidence of cancer" that was given me by a totally different bedside approach than the one I received in November...
But....
Relieved but not 100 % at Peace
I noticed even as I was giving D. the thumbs up sign, when I was leaving the room, that I wasn't completely at peace with what I was given. Just like I was not at complete peace after that first ultrasound as much as I was willing to let it go there. (Then... it was my physician, not me, that was not willing to stop there.) This time, I think it is me. Something won't let me let it go. I need to explore that.
As I reflect back,( my mind is remarkable about picking up and recalling vivid detail from the tone and inflection in a voice, whether or not there was eye contact, what was said ...what was shown to me...people's expressions and body language etc), there were several reasons for my lack of reassurance. I won't share them here and I will own my feelings completely. Closure will not occur, I suppose, until I see the surgeon who I am told I will be referred directly to.
Regardless of what the tests showed, the mass I am feeling is still there. I still have pain and I still don't know what is causing it. On top of that I have another lump that is "definitely not a cyst" showing up in the area where the pain appears to be moving to. I was told it was "likely just a fibroadenoma". This shows up where I am having pain and two months after this other mass was first found. That can't be coincidence. There is approximately 70 % density leading to an obscure view. (It surprises me that at 56, I still have such dense tissue?) The area I have been feeling is below that dense tissue. The retraction is obvious right above what I am feeling...so there is definitely something there...causing the retraction and the pain as well as the palpable mass. The question is: What the heck is it? Is it all just due to normal aging tissue change or is there just too much dense tissue for even the tests I had performed to pick up something? Wouldn't hyperplasia or ductal ectasia...at least show up?
All I get when I ask..."So what am I feeling? What is causing the retraction and the pain?" Is, "I don't know. These tests do not reveal any "obvious evidence of cancer". Could be normal tissue." Is normal tissue so palpable and symptom producing?
The scientific part of my brain that needs clearer validation...won't settle with "could be normal" and "I don't know." . Hopefully the surgeon will clear that up for me. I think I will pop in to see my GP this week too. Something just doesn't seem right.
No fretting, no drama, no worry...just a bit of inspired action. That inspired action definitely will not involve seeking to get more tests done there. I definitely do not intend to go anywhere near that radiology department for a very long time if at all! After the denials, long waits, and "teaching" I received about the improper use of MRI's and mammograms , I don't think getting another test done there would even be permitted no matter what the likelihood of having cancer is.
Anyway...I do feel a great deal of relief and appreciation...in comparison to what I felt a few weeks ago. I also feel appreciation for the machinery and the funding that allowed for it, as well as the hard working technologists who didn't even get a break that day. That is a very busy and hard working team that deals with women like me on a daily basis. My thanks to them.
All is well in my world.
Saturday, January 4, 2020
Learning from a Virus
Tis healthy to be sick sometimes
Henry David Thoreau
The Bug
Well an influenza bug has entered my body and my body is reacting and resisting big time! It is pumping the thermostat up to make my body a hot, inhospitable and unwelcoming place for the bug to settle in. It is sending WBC's and inflammatory markers to every joint of my body thus creating an experience of pain...even my skin hurts. It is marching out the royal army to fight and defend its trillions of cells from invasion. It is producing extra mucous and triggering a cough mechanism so I expel the intruders from my respiratory tract. It is making me so tired that I do nothing but rest. The body is resisting the invasion of a very virulent little virus with an incubation period, it seems, of less than four days.
The Body's Resistance
It is the resistance to the bug and not the bug that is giving me what we see as illness. This resistance is a natural mechanism...a life saving gesture...yet we often resist and react to this resistance instead of letting the body do what it is designed to do. We pop Advil or Tylenol for the fever and joint pain. We take medication that will reduce the mucous and the cough. We may push ourselves physically despite the fatigue and the body's cry for rest. We resist the body's resistance and therefore the illness and therefore the very moment we feel ill in. We are resisting the form the moment provides instead of accepting and allowing ...observing, learning and growing from thee experience.
What? You expect me to learn and grow from this nasty bug?
Yeah...I think we could learn a lot from our experience with viral infection and we could actually grow from it. It is like a practice lesson in surrendering and allowing.
Guess what...if you are like me right now...you got the bug and your body is fighting it...it is what it is. No matter how you resist, complain or struggle against it...the virus has landed and is having a party in the RNA of some of your cells....spitting out baby viruses faster than a rabbit in heat. Your body is triggered to get that virus out....thus your nasty symptoms.
You have three choices. You can remove yourself from every symptom and delay the body's defenses. You could resist it by complaining about it, adding drama to an already busy moment....denying that you are sick or looking at it as another "Why me?" thing to add to a victim's story . Or you could simply accept it and say "C'est la vie". I prefer the last option.
C'est la vie!
Viruses are random and not put on this planet to make each of our lives miserable. They do not have a personal vendetta against us...they just are moving forward in the biological evolution of things...they just are. And our bodies have, when we become infected, somehow walked right into their path. The virus sees a nice juicy apartment to raise a family in and it is just doing as viruses do. Our body, in turn, sees each virus as an intruder that snuck past our defense system so it becomes angry and aggressive in its impulse to get this extremely large and quickly growing family to leave!
It is actually quite cool when you look at it from a distance. Maybe I have spent too much time studying and teaching anatomy...but the whole process of viral infection fascinates me. The bodies response ( resistance) to such invasion fascinates me more.
I elect to allow the body to handle this on its own as much as possible. I won't take a fever reducing drug until my fever is over 38.5 which it was last night. I don't like to take cough suppressants either so the body can eliminate the intruders on its own. I don't make an enemy out of the virus with my mind even if my body is doing so. I try to see it for what it is...something that is evolving, mutating/ changing and surviving to make it in this world. It doesn't make me sick...my body's response to it does. So we really can't blame the virus.
Accepting Illness
Accepting illness as it occurs is a doorway into accepting the suchness of our living experience. We accept the form the moment is taking when we accept that we are ill. That doesn't mean we have to avoid doing anything that will make us feel better...oh no...it just means we can put down our mental struggle against the infection and allow it to pass as all things pass in due time.
In the meantime, be good to yourself: rest, drink your fluids and take part in any comfort measure you deem necessary to help you get through this. Do your best not to pass it along ...some people out there have weakened immune systems and may not be able to survive a simple virus. Wash your hands, avoid crowds and cough into your elbow. Most importantly, allow your body to do the resisting, not your mind.
Hmm! That makes sense?
All is well.
Henry David Thoreau
The Bug
Well an influenza bug has entered my body and my body is reacting and resisting big time! It is pumping the thermostat up to make my body a hot, inhospitable and unwelcoming place for the bug to settle in. It is sending WBC's and inflammatory markers to every joint of my body thus creating an experience of pain...even my skin hurts. It is marching out the royal army to fight and defend its trillions of cells from invasion. It is producing extra mucous and triggering a cough mechanism so I expel the intruders from my respiratory tract. It is making me so tired that I do nothing but rest. The body is resisting the invasion of a very virulent little virus with an incubation period, it seems, of less than four days.
The Body's Resistance
It is the resistance to the bug and not the bug that is giving me what we see as illness. This resistance is a natural mechanism...a life saving gesture...yet we often resist and react to this resistance instead of letting the body do what it is designed to do. We pop Advil or Tylenol for the fever and joint pain. We take medication that will reduce the mucous and the cough. We may push ourselves physically despite the fatigue and the body's cry for rest. We resist the body's resistance and therefore the illness and therefore the very moment we feel ill in. We are resisting the form the moment provides instead of accepting and allowing ...observing, learning and growing from thee experience.
What? You expect me to learn and grow from this nasty bug?
Yeah...I think we could learn a lot from our experience with viral infection and we could actually grow from it. It is like a practice lesson in surrendering and allowing.
Guess what...if you are like me right now...you got the bug and your body is fighting it...it is what it is. No matter how you resist, complain or struggle against it...the virus has landed and is having a party in the RNA of some of your cells....spitting out baby viruses faster than a rabbit in heat. Your body is triggered to get that virus out....thus your nasty symptoms.
You have three choices. You can remove yourself from every symptom and delay the body's defenses. You could resist it by complaining about it, adding drama to an already busy moment....denying that you are sick or looking at it as another "Why me?" thing to add to a victim's story . Or you could simply accept it and say "C'est la vie". I prefer the last option.
C'est la vie!
Viruses are random and not put on this planet to make each of our lives miserable. They do not have a personal vendetta against us...they just are moving forward in the biological evolution of things...they just are. And our bodies have, when we become infected, somehow walked right into their path. The virus sees a nice juicy apartment to raise a family in and it is just doing as viruses do. Our body, in turn, sees each virus as an intruder that snuck past our defense system so it becomes angry and aggressive in its impulse to get this extremely large and quickly growing family to leave!
It is actually quite cool when you look at it from a distance. Maybe I have spent too much time studying and teaching anatomy...but the whole process of viral infection fascinates me. The bodies response ( resistance) to such invasion fascinates me more.
I elect to allow the body to handle this on its own as much as possible. I won't take a fever reducing drug until my fever is over 38.5 which it was last night. I don't like to take cough suppressants either so the body can eliminate the intruders on its own. I don't make an enemy out of the virus with my mind even if my body is doing so. I try to see it for what it is...something that is evolving, mutating/ changing and surviving to make it in this world. It doesn't make me sick...my body's response to it does. So we really can't blame the virus.
Accepting Illness
Accepting illness as it occurs is a doorway into accepting the suchness of our living experience. We accept the form the moment is taking when we accept that we are ill. That doesn't mean we have to avoid doing anything that will make us feel better...oh no...it just means we can put down our mental struggle against the infection and allow it to pass as all things pass in due time.
In the meantime, be good to yourself: rest, drink your fluids and take part in any comfort measure you deem necessary to help you get through this. Do your best not to pass it along ...some people out there have weakened immune systems and may not be able to survive a simple virus. Wash your hands, avoid crowds and cough into your elbow. Most importantly, allow your body to do the resisting, not your mind.
Hmm! That makes sense?
All is well.
Friday, January 3, 2020
Making a Friend of the Moment
Become friendly with the present moment regardless of what form it takes.
-Eckhart Tolle
Big Request!
Wow! That is a big request isn't it? How many of us can make friends with the moment that takes someone or something we love away? With the moment we are consumed by overwhelming pain from a ruptured appendix? With the moment we are told we have three months to live?
Heck most of us have a hard time being remotely tolerant with the moment we are told that we have to a wait an extra few minutes in line to get service for a technical issue we are having with our phones. And now we are being encouraged to be friendly with every single moment regardless of what form it takes??? Get real, right?
Most of us react to the moments that are less than what we assume is needed to make us happy by calling out to the heavens, "No, this isn't fair! Why me? Why are you always doing this to me?" When things seemingly "go wrong" we are more likely to resist the moment and make enemies with it, are we not? We see the "hard times" as punishments and things thrown at us to hurt us...don't we? We feel the need to defend and attack. We do not tend to allow or accept most moments, let alone make friends with them.
Making An Enemy of The Moment.....
Yet...what happens in our life experience when we resist these moments...judge them, label them as problematic, and feel we have to fight or struggle our way through them? What happens to our experience of the moment...the only life we can live...when we react this way to the form that moment is taking? Our lives are greatly diminished with each moment we deny, struggle against or resist. We quickly become deflated, exhausted and depressed. And the moment doesn't change does it? No matter how much we resist it...it is still going to be as it is. We are exhausting ourselves for nothing.
Or Making a Friend Of It.
What would happen if we do as Tolle and many Buddhist teachers suggest...make friends with what is regardless of what it is? What would happen if we put away our resistance to "suchness" or "isness" and embraced each moment like a best friend regardless of how it looked when it showed up? If we accepted the moment unconditionally, allowing it to be what ever it was...would we not find more peace, joy and rest in our experience? We would be healthier, wouldn't we, if we didn't waste all our physical and mental energy trying to fruitlessly change what is when it is already what it is?
The moment is going to be what the moment is going to be. And we have two choices we can make. We can fight it, resist it, deny it, refuse it while it remains what it is. Or we can accept it, allow it, embrace it and even appreciate it despite the fact that it is what it is.
The second option, I am discovering, is the healthiest one. And it is something we can all do. If I can embrace the moment in my pre-evolved state...anyone can ...With a willingness to practice...it is certainly possible to find peace regardless of the circumstances the moment presents.
A Personal Example
Six weeks ago I was more or less told I could have a life threatening condition. Some particular tests would have to be performed to rule out that possibility but there was a likelihood that it was cancer. I did not believe it was at the time so I took the news with a grain of salt. I did not resist it. I did not deny it. I accepted the possibility. I can't say I made peace with the possibility of it because I couldn't...the reality of what I had to deal with was projected into the future after these tests. So I made peace with the fact that I wouldn't know what I was dealing with until after these tests were performed.
I would be lying if I said I was not at all worried because I was...but with practice, I have been able to keep bringing myself back to the present moment where there was no firm diagnosis either way. The form my moment was taking then was one of "a not knowing" ...a being in the middle between two external opinions...one that strongly believed it could be and another that said it likely wasn't.
In the past, living in a moment of "not knowing" would have been more traumatic for me than a knowing it was would have been. Part of me did resist the "not knowing" form my moments took. I actively sought to find out why there was a delay on these urgent requests for a diagnostic mammogram ( a biopsy would not be performed without) ...why the "urgent" requests from two different professionals were denied, not once, but three times. Sensing an ego interference while I was beginning to notice other alarming signs, I became angry and resistant to the form my moments were taking. I found myself crying out, "This is crazy! Why is this always happening to me? After everything I have been through!" Oh I was on my way to making a big drama of struggle out of this story.
When I realized that making an enemy out of the moment and the people "I assumed" were delaying my knowing (and it is all assumption) was going to get me nowhere but down over the holidays I decided to be friendly with it. I accepted that I would have to wait for the tests and therefore delay my knowing. I accepted the form my moment was taking, I allowed it, I embraced it and I began to find reasons to appreciate it. Oh I slipped from time to time back into the drama and a projection into the future...but I would quickly realize I was doing so and I would gently bring myself back. As a result I have found a certain amount of peace and even joy in most of my moments despite this crazy form they are taking.
I don't know what Monday holds for me. It doesn't matter. That is a moment up ahead in the future ...not the moment I am living right now. And this moment...here and now...is all there is. I can truly look at it and call it my friend.
How cool is that?
All is well in my world. . . .
-Eckhart Tolle
Big Request!
Wow! That is a big request isn't it? How many of us can make friends with the moment that takes someone or something we love away? With the moment we are consumed by overwhelming pain from a ruptured appendix? With the moment we are told we have three months to live?
Heck most of us have a hard time being remotely tolerant with the moment we are told that we have to a wait an extra few minutes in line to get service for a technical issue we are having with our phones. And now we are being encouraged to be friendly with every single moment regardless of what form it takes??? Get real, right?
Most of us react to the moments that are less than what we assume is needed to make us happy by calling out to the heavens, "No, this isn't fair! Why me? Why are you always doing this to me?" When things seemingly "go wrong" we are more likely to resist the moment and make enemies with it, are we not? We see the "hard times" as punishments and things thrown at us to hurt us...don't we? We feel the need to defend and attack. We do not tend to allow or accept most moments, let alone make friends with them.
Making An Enemy of The Moment.....
Yet...what happens in our life experience when we resist these moments...judge them, label them as problematic, and feel we have to fight or struggle our way through them? What happens to our experience of the moment...the only life we can live...when we react this way to the form that moment is taking? Our lives are greatly diminished with each moment we deny, struggle against or resist. We quickly become deflated, exhausted and depressed. And the moment doesn't change does it? No matter how much we resist it...it is still going to be as it is. We are exhausting ourselves for nothing.
Or Making a Friend Of It.
What would happen if we do as Tolle and many Buddhist teachers suggest...make friends with what is regardless of what it is? What would happen if we put away our resistance to "suchness" or "isness" and embraced each moment like a best friend regardless of how it looked when it showed up? If we accepted the moment unconditionally, allowing it to be what ever it was...would we not find more peace, joy and rest in our experience? We would be healthier, wouldn't we, if we didn't waste all our physical and mental energy trying to fruitlessly change what is when it is already what it is?
The moment is going to be what the moment is going to be. And we have two choices we can make. We can fight it, resist it, deny it, refuse it while it remains what it is. Or we can accept it, allow it, embrace it and even appreciate it despite the fact that it is what it is.
The second option, I am discovering, is the healthiest one. And it is something we can all do. If I can embrace the moment in my pre-evolved state...anyone can ...With a willingness to practice...it is certainly possible to find peace regardless of the circumstances the moment presents.
A Personal Example
Six weeks ago I was more or less told I could have a life threatening condition. Some particular tests would have to be performed to rule out that possibility but there was a likelihood that it was cancer. I did not believe it was at the time so I took the news with a grain of salt. I did not resist it. I did not deny it. I accepted the possibility. I can't say I made peace with the possibility of it because I couldn't...the reality of what I had to deal with was projected into the future after these tests. So I made peace with the fact that I wouldn't know what I was dealing with until after these tests were performed.
I would be lying if I said I was not at all worried because I was...but with practice, I have been able to keep bringing myself back to the present moment where there was no firm diagnosis either way. The form my moment was taking then was one of "a not knowing" ...a being in the middle between two external opinions...one that strongly believed it could be and another that said it likely wasn't.
In the past, living in a moment of "not knowing" would have been more traumatic for me than a knowing it was would have been. Part of me did resist the "not knowing" form my moments took. I actively sought to find out why there was a delay on these urgent requests for a diagnostic mammogram ( a biopsy would not be performed without) ...why the "urgent" requests from two different professionals were denied, not once, but three times. Sensing an ego interference while I was beginning to notice other alarming signs, I became angry and resistant to the form my moments were taking. I found myself crying out, "This is crazy! Why is this always happening to me? After everything I have been through!" Oh I was on my way to making a big drama of struggle out of this story.
When I realized that making an enemy out of the moment and the people "I assumed" were delaying my knowing (and it is all assumption) was going to get me nowhere but down over the holidays I decided to be friendly with it. I accepted that I would have to wait for the tests and therefore delay my knowing. I accepted the form my moment was taking, I allowed it, I embraced it and I began to find reasons to appreciate it. Oh I slipped from time to time back into the drama and a projection into the future...but I would quickly realize I was doing so and I would gently bring myself back. As a result I have found a certain amount of peace and even joy in most of my moments despite this crazy form they are taking.
I don't know what Monday holds for me. It doesn't matter. That is a moment up ahead in the future ...not the moment I am living right now. And this moment...here and now...is all there is. I can truly look at it and call it my friend.
How cool is that?
All is well in my world. . . .
Thursday, January 2, 2020
Readers?
In order to be heard, an author must have readers...
-Rachel Heffington
The second day of 2020 and the world is a beautiful snowy landscape outside my window. It is lovely (even lovelier because some one else did the shovelling and digging out :)
I am sitting here wondering what to write about. I was drawn to some old entries from March 2017 after checking what pages readers were tapping into. I do that when I come here...check my stats and reread what was read to make sure it reads well and that there is not too many grammatical errors . Oh I still have a writer's ego lol.
Checking The Stats for Readers
Truth is these entries shown as read on the stats page may have been opened and not read... hitch hiking sites or whatever they are that I am technically too slow to understand...often appear as my readers. I also think I get people who accidentally pop in and pop out just as fast. Today my stats show a "url-opener " as a reader. Now that sounds scary! Can this opener open up into my private business? Going to have to look into that.
I guess I still cannot get my head around the fact that someone out there might actually come here to read what I have written because they want to, because they are getting something from it. Even when I get wonderful and positive feedback that I am making a difference in some one's life by being here...I still don't believe it. I assume that the readership my stats record, be it 3 a day or over 100, is either accidental, incidental or with an ulterior motive. Shamer ego still lingers around in the background of my psyche.
Does It Matter?
That keeps bringing me back to the question: Does it matter? Would knowing that no one out there liked what I had to say enough to read it stop me from doing what I do? The answer is a resounding "No!" I am pulled here everyday, just the same and it doesn't matter if my ego gets fed or if it gets flattened like a pancake for being here...I will continue to write here almost every morning. This compulsion is truly bigger than little "me". I don't understand it but it is. Sigh!
Is Feedback Necessary?
I could use some feedback though. I think? Actually I don't know if it is ego or me that wants the feedback. Whatever part of me it is that seeks feedback and that checks my stats, wants to know if I am actually reaching anyone out there...if the people I see on my stats page are legit. I mean, I know some are because I have heard back from a few wonderful people in the past.
That part of me wants some form of external validation. Hmmm! I am certainly not requiring to be recognized or famous...ego might want that but I don't need it! In fact...it might get in the way if it was the case. I just need to know that this mission I am on (one I don't even fully understand yet) ...to learn-teach-learn ...has found the right medium for now. Maybe I have to take it elsewhere?
I am also so curious about how my message is being received. Does it make sense to others? How many other people actually get what I am writing about...are actually where I am at in this new understanding of things? There has to be so many like minded individuals out there, doesn't there? Wow! What could they teach me?
Don't worry about the details!
Another part of me...the bigger part of me...tells me to just trust Life and this pull I feel to come here; to just respond with a resounding "Yes!" when it asks me to listen to it every morning...to heed the call, plop my butt down here in front of this computer key board that is so wore out half the letters are gone...and write! That part of me tells me I do not have to concern myself with the details. I just have to write and it will take care of the rest. Hmmm!
This is indeed a very strange thing that is happening to me. Yet...it feels so very, very right. I cannot help but to come here...readers or not.
Anyway...such petty stuff to begin the New Year with. :)
All is well.
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
The Way to More
What stands in the way becomes the way.
- Marcus Aurelius
Goodbye 2019; Hello 2020
The last day of 2019. Tomorrow begins a new decade with quite a ring to it...2020. How often do we have this repeated two digit number? Once a century.... 1818, 1919...now 2020. And how often do we have that double O...once a millennium. That is pretty cool even if you are not into numbers like me. (I am number impaired lol).
Well I hope your 2020 is an amazing year!!! And that it begins an amazing decade for you....full of peace, joy, love and learning...lots and lots of learning :)
New challenges ahead
I anticipate ( and of course I don't know anything for certain about the future) that I will be meeting some new challenges in the New Year. Heck...well that is obvious lol...we will all have challenges to face, obstacles to overcome, barriers to get through . This is life after all.
I can almost see mine. And feel them :) I wake up in the middle of the night feeling the beginning of this challenge leading me to anticipate not only a physical journey ahead but a mental one. While I don't look forward to the physical part of this that may or may not arise, I am content knowing there will be so much learning and growing and healing in ways I have yet to heal regardless of what goes on in my body.
Suchness
This learning, growing and healing all begins with accepting the "suchness" ( as Buddha referred to it) of the moment . Surrendering to what is, I am convinced, opens the door to a greater learning we cannot even begin to comprehend. What appears to stand in the way of our wellness, happiness, and even life can actually become the way to so much more.
At first glance and to the ego....obstacles, closed doors, and other people's egoic behaviours may appear to hinder us and limit our potential for a full and happy life. If we look closer though we may see that on each of these things that apparently stand in our way is a golden door knob we just need to turn in order to walk into something far greater than we have ever imagined.
The wait as a gift
Having to wait two and a half weeks, on top of a month of waiting for a diagnostic test requested as urgent by physicians and surgeons just to get a diagnosis that would either put all worry aside, or launch me head on into this challenge...could by all means be seen as something unfairly standing in the way. We could build story around that ( as my mind still likes to do from time to time) or we could look at it as something that just may become the way for me, and possibly others, to what is truly needed.
It could be what is needed to help others to see how their egos are getting in the way so they can readjust their choices. It can help to create better communication and active support for others in the future.
As for me...it gives me time to deal with my ego that wants to overrun me with fear and resistance...giving me time to learn to accept what is as it is. I am learning to accept the situation for what it is. I am allowing myself to feel worry, anger, frustration and confusion and am realizing the more I allow these emotions, the less time they linger. Instead of fighting, resisting, struggling against I am surrendering to the choice that was made by another and I am growing because of that.
If this turns out to be something...this obstacle to knowing, these two and a half weeks have given me, will prove to be an open door to a healthier approach. It was like a practice period preparing to handle what may be up ahead.
I will not launch myself into a full blown fight, struggle, battle against what is. I will recognize it for what it truly is: Grace. I will allow it into my life, accept it, embrace it and even appreciate it. That is how I will handle this thing. As strange as that may seem. I am gong to cooperate with Life. I see true healing in that approach...I see the way to more. :)
All is well in my world.
- Marcus Aurelius
Goodbye 2019; Hello 2020
The last day of 2019. Tomorrow begins a new decade with quite a ring to it...2020. How often do we have this repeated two digit number? Once a century.... 1818, 1919...now 2020. And how often do we have that double O...once a millennium. That is pretty cool even if you are not into numbers like me. (I am number impaired lol).
Well I hope your 2020 is an amazing year!!! And that it begins an amazing decade for you....full of peace, joy, love and learning...lots and lots of learning :)
New challenges ahead
I anticipate ( and of course I don't know anything for certain about the future) that I will be meeting some new challenges in the New Year. Heck...well that is obvious lol...we will all have challenges to face, obstacles to overcome, barriers to get through . This is life after all.
I can almost see mine. And feel them :) I wake up in the middle of the night feeling the beginning of this challenge leading me to anticipate not only a physical journey ahead but a mental one. While I don't look forward to the physical part of this that may or may not arise, I am content knowing there will be so much learning and growing and healing in ways I have yet to heal regardless of what goes on in my body.
Suchness
This learning, growing and healing all begins with accepting the "suchness" ( as Buddha referred to it) of the moment . Surrendering to what is, I am convinced, opens the door to a greater learning we cannot even begin to comprehend. What appears to stand in the way of our wellness, happiness, and even life can actually become the way to so much more.
At first glance and to the ego....obstacles, closed doors, and other people's egoic behaviours may appear to hinder us and limit our potential for a full and happy life. If we look closer though we may see that on each of these things that apparently stand in our way is a golden door knob we just need to turn in order to walk into something far greater than we have ever imagined.
The wait as a gift
Having to wait two and a half weeks, on top of a month of waiting for a diagnostic test requested as urgent by physicians and surgeons just to get a diagnosis that would either put all worry aside, or launch me head on into this challenge...could by all means be seen as something unfairly standing in the way. We could build story around that ( as my mind still likes to do from time to time) or we could look at it as something that just may become the way for me, and possibly others, to what is truly needed.
It could be what is needed to help others to see how their egos are getting in the way so they can readjust their choices. It can help to create better communication and active support for others in the future.
As for me...it gives me time to deal with my ego that wants to overrun me with fear and resistance...giving me time to learn to accept what is as it is. I am learning to accept the situation for what it is. I am allowing myself to feel worry, anger, frustration and confusion and am realizing the more I allow these emotions, the less time they linger. Instead of fighting, resisting, struggling against I am surrendering to the choice that was made by another and I am growing because of that.
If this turns out to be something...this obstacle to knowing, these two and a half weeks have given me, will prove to be an open door to a healthier approach. It was like a practice period preparing to handle what may be up ahead.
I will not launch myself into a full blown fight, struggle, battle against what is. I will recognize it for what it truly is: Grace. I will allow it into my life, accept it, embrace it and even appreciate it. That is how I will handle this thing. As strange as that may seem. I am gong to cooperate with Life. I see true healing in that approach...I see the way to more. :)
All is well in my world.
Monday, December 30, 2019
The Butterfly of Joy and Contentment
From the core of our being, we simply desire joy and contentment. But so often these feelings are fleeting and hard to find, like a butterfly that lands on us and then flutters away.
Dalai Lama ( Andrews McMeel Desktop Calendar )
Sigh! Only two days left of this calendar that has offered me precious wisdom and inspiration throughout the last 12 months. So grateful for this thoughtful gift from my daughter. So grateful for the wisdom this holy man shares with all the people of the world regardless of religious preference.
So we all seek joy and contentment? Most of us would agree that is what motivates us more than anything else. Yet the Dalai Lama tells us these things are as fleeting and as elusive as having a butterfly land on us. That is pretty depressing, isn't it? :)
Depends on how you look at it. The type of superficial joy and contentment most of us seek under the label "happiness" is found outside of us and feeds the ego only. Anything the ego seeks will not last and it will keep us on an endless search for more.
True joy and contentment that I refer to as "peace" is not fleeting or elusive. It is in us always and if we turn our searching eyes inward rather than outward...we may just recognize it and tap into it.
Go inward to tame the unsettled mind and realize that the butterfly of who you are is and always will be there.
All is well
Dalai Lama ( Andrews McMeel Desktop Calendar )
Sigh! Only two days left of this calendar that has offered me precious wisdom and inspiration throughout the last 12 months. So grateful for this thoughtful gift from my daughter. So grateful for the wisdom this holy man shares with all the people of the world regardless of religious preference.
So we all seek joy and contentment? Most of us would agree that is what motivates us more than anything else. Yet the Dalai Lama tells us these things are as fleeting and as elusive as having a butterfly land on us. That is pretty depressing, isn't it? :)
Depends on how you look at it. The type of superficial joy and contentment most of us seek under the label "happiness" is found outside of us and feeds the ego only. Anything the ego seeks will not last and it will keep us on an endless search for more.
True joy and contentment that I refer to as "peace" is not fleeting or elusive. It is in us always and if we turn our searching eyes inward rather than outward...we may just recognize it and tap into it.
Go inward to tame the unsettled mind and realize that the butterfly of who you are is and always will be there.
All is well
Sunday, December 29, 2019
The Higher Self
Give up defining yourself-to yourself and others.
Eckhart Tolle
What the heck is this higher Self you are talking about crazy lady?
I know, I know...it gets confusing. Terminology often gets in the way of "knowing" and my use of the "higher Self" may be tripping a lot of people up. It would have tripped me up less than a decade or so ago.
Just words
The thing to remember before I begin any grand definition...is that it is just a term, words, that are so limited in their ability to accurately describe something to the point that you know that something. Words are also very much attached to memory and pre-established mental associations. So every term, every name, every label and every word will resonate differently in every person. Be mindful of that. I don't want you to cling to the words or the labels I use, nor do I want you to resist them. They are just harmless little symbols that point in a certain direction, okay?
Not the ego
Higher Self to me then is the opposite of what the ego is. By now, I am assuming you have an idea of what I mean by the ego. My use of the term "ego" is so far from Freud's definition it isn't funny.
Just to recap: ego is that part of us that isn't real...the part of us the mind creates to make sense of the world. The conditioned mind sees the world as a dangerous place where there is a very limited amount of the "good" stuff ( the mind is really big on making things into good or bad categories). And it tells us we are separate entities, separated by our bodily forms, personalities and belief systems, needing to defend and attack our way through life. It wraps us in "me, my, and mine"...understanding.
The ego is our identification then with the physical world: body, thought, stuff and circumstance. Therefore it is very "busy" and often stressed and intense...constantly battling against something or resisting what is. It exists on the surface layers of our so called "life". The ego is the "little self or the little me".
Get that?
Beyond the ego
On the other hand, the higher Self exists at the deeper level, below body identification, below our personalities, our thinking and our feeling. Unlike the ego...it is not lost or identified with the tings on the surface layers. It recognizes them, is aware of them but does not get lost in them. It is the part of us that is wise...seeing the truth of our existence. Because of that it is peaceful and calm.
It is also the part of us that is closer to God ( God is another thing ( no-thing) that really can not be expressed in words). It takes us away from little self's entrapment in "me, my, and mine" to "all", "One" and "Thine".
Some of us might prefer the term : Soul, spirit, essence, higher consciousness). I believe all of those are defining what I am defining when I say the higher Self .
We access It (whatever term you prefer to use to loosely point to this higher Self) through stillness and silence. We need to get beneath the noisy, busy chatter of the conditioned mind to realize It.
Okay, okay...so what is it...how do I recognize this higher Self, point to it, see it, feel it etc?
The part of you that is asking that question will never recognize the higher Self...will never be able to point to It directly, see It, feel It. See...what is happening is that the conceptual thinking mind which is a part of ego and dependent on the five senses and physicality is asking that question. The conceptual mind will never be able to know the higher Self...because it is beneath it. The conceptual mind is such a tiny, tiny part of who you are. The higher Self is everything you are and you just can't understand that when you attempt to see it through ego's eyes.
WTF(ront door)? So what is it if it is invisible?
Just because you cannot understand it or sense it with the five senses you have been given does not mean it isn't real. In fact that makes it even more real.
If you need to understand it with your conceptual mind...think of it as a layer of consciousness. You cannot see or touch consciousness but you have a sense of being conscious, right? Most of us operate on the superficial layer using only a small portion of our mind. We are content leaving it at that level and settle there. But beneath that layer is a whole new world to access...a greater, more vast consciousness that would expand and beautify our existence if we could tap into it. We will all definitely tap into it when we leave our bodies but we can do so before hand too.
Eckhart Tolle explains our ego experience in a New Earth. He says it is like a beggar sitting on a box of gold. We are begging just so we can survive, not realizing that beneath us...inside the box we have never looked in...is so much gold.
We do not have to just survive and fight our way to survival...we can realize our full potential ...and the abundance that is ours ( not necessarily material) if we look inside. So many of us do not even bother to go deeper. We do not realize that the higher Self is that gold we seek. While we are stuck in thinking that begging is the only choice we have, we don't see it. We need to get beneath that thinking. We need to go deeper.
So seeking the higher Self makes us selfish gold diggers?
No...the gold is not of a material nature. It is actually peace, joy and Love we seek. That Gold of the higher Self is meant for everybody...belongs to everybody...is everybody. .
Huh?
So we can think of it in terms of accessing a deeper level of consciousness that brings 'happiness to all' and that goes beyond what we have come to believe is real, simply because our ego and our five senses tell us so. We can all access this higher Self ( or whatever you wish to call it) by being willing to look beyond what ego deems as real. We will find peace there.
You get that?
I hope so...cuz I don't think I could explain it again. :)
All is well in my world.
Eckhart Tolle (2005 ) The New Earth. Penguin
Eckhart Tolle
What the heck is this higher Self you are talking about crazy lady?
I know, I know...it gets confusing. Terminology often gets in the way of "knowing" and my use of the "higher Self" may be tripping a lot of people up. It would have tripped me up less than a decade or so ago.
Just words
The thing to remember before I begin any grand definition...is that it is just a term, words, that are so limited in their ability to accurately describe something to the point that you know that something. Words are also very much attached to memory and pre-established mental associations. So every term, every name, every label and every word will resonate differently in every person. Be mindful of that. I don't want you to cling to the words or the labels I use, nor do I want you to resist them. They are just harmless little symbols that point in a certain direction, okay?
Not the ego
Higher Self to me then is the opposite of what the ego is. By now, I am assuming you have an idea of what I mean by the ego. My use of the term "ego" is so far from Freud's definition it isn't funny.
Just to recap: ego is that part of us that isn't real...the part of us the mind creates to make sense of the world. The conditioned mind sees the world as a dangerous place where there is a very limited amount of the "good" stuff ( the mind is really big on making things into good or bad categories). And it tells us we are separate entities, separated by our bodily forms, personalities and belief systems, needing to defend and attack our way through life. It wraps us in "me, my, and mine"...understanding.
The ego is our identification then with the physical world: body, thought, stuff and circumstance. Therefore it is very "busy" and often stressed and intense...constantly battling against something or resisting what is. It exists on the surface layers of our so called "life". The ego is the "little self or the little me".
Get that?
Beyond the ego
On the other hand, the higher Self exists at the deeper level, below body identification, below our personalities, our thinking and our feeling. Unlike the ego...it is not lost or identified with the tings on the surface layers. It recognizes them, is aware of them but does not get lost in them. It is the part of us that is wise...seeing the truth of our existence. Because of that it is peaceful and calm.
It is also the part of us that is closer to God ( God is another thing ( no-thing) that really can not be expressed in words). It takes us away from little self's entrapment in "me, my, and mine" to "all", "One" and "Thine".
Some of us might prefer the term : Soul, spirit, essence, higher consciousness). I believe all of those are defining what I am defining when I say the higher Self .
We access It (whatever term you prefer to use to loosely point to this higher Self) through stillness and silence. We need to get beneath the noisy, busy chatter of the conditioned mind to realize It.
Okay, okay...so what is it...how do I recognize this higher Self, point to it, see it, feel it etc?
The part of you that is asking that question will never recognize the higher Self...will never be able to point to It directly, see It, feel It. See...what is happening is that the conceptual thinking mind which is a part of ego and dependent on the five senses and physicality is asking that question. The conceptual mind will never be able to know the higher Self...because it is beneath it. The conceptual mind is such a tiny, tiny part of who you are. The higher Self is everything you are and you just can't understand that when you attempt to see it through ego's eyes.
WTF(ront door)? So what is it if it is invisible?
Just because you cannot understand it or sense it with the five senses you have been given does not mean it isn't real. In fact that makes it even more real.
If you need to understand it with your conceptual mind...think of it as a layer of consciousness. You cannot see or touch consciousness but you have a sense of being conscious, right? Most of us operate on the superficial layer using only a small portion of our mind. We are content leaving it at that level and settle there. But beneath that layer is a whole new world to access...a greater, more vast consciousness that would expand and beautify our existence if we could tap into it. We will all definitely tap into it when we leave our bodies but we can do so before hand too.
Eckhart Tolle explains our ego experience in a New Earth. He says it is like a beggar sitting on a box of gold. We are begging just so we can survive, not realizing that beneath us...inside the box we have never looked in...is so much gold.
We do not have to just survive and fight our way to survival...we can realize our full potential ...and the abundance that is ours ( not necessarily material) if we look inside. So many of us do not even bother to go deeper. We do not realize that the higher Self is that gold we seek. While we are stuck in thinking that begging is the only choice we have, we don't see it. We need to get beneath that thinking. We need to go deeper.
So seeking the higher Self makes us selfish gold diggers?
No...the gold is not of a material nature. It is actually peace, joy and Love we seek. That Gold of the higher Self is meant for everybody...belongs to everybody...is everybody. .
Huh?
So we can think of it in terms of accessing a deeper level of consciousness that brings 'happiness to all' and that goes beyond what we have come to believe is real, simply because our ego and our five senses tell us so. We can all access this higher Self ( or whatever you wish to call it) by being willing to look beyond what ego deems as real. We will find peace there.
You get that?
I hope so...cuz I don't think I could explain it again. :)
All is well in my world.
Eckhart Tolle (2005 ) The New Earth. Penguin
Friday, December 27, 2019
Empowered Doing
Every person above the ordinary has a certain mission they are called to fulfill.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/mission-quotes)
I often wonder about the things we "do". I wonder about whether they are inspired by ego or the deeper part of us. I want to be involved in inspired action rather than egoic reaction and meaningless doing.
What about you? What motivates the things you do?
Ego directed versus egoless doing
I know right off that the way I have approached Christmas over the years has been directed by ego rather than my need for peace and spiritual connection. I allowed myself each and every year to get pulled by the current of what was going on around me. Ego was very dominant! I listened! Sure that pull is getting less and less, and I always have some wonderful egoless moments each season but it is obvious ego is still there.
I also know that when I come here every morning...whether there is an ego intention sneaking around back stage or nor...these are primarily egoless moments. The doing I do here is motivated by something much greater than ego. It really is not so much about little me. Hmmm!
How Do We Tell the Difference?
This morning I tapped into a conversation between Tami Simon ( founder of Sounds True publishing) and Eckhart Tolle. (Dec, 2019) ) In the video the difference between the two modes of doing is discussed. According to Tolle, we can usually recognize ego in our actions by: our motivation, level of stress, the ease by which things are happening, how we react to obstacles, how present we are and how much we enjoy what we are doing. We can also determine what part of us in charge by who we perceive is doing the doing and for whom the doing is done.
What motivates you?
We may be able to recognize that ego is pushing us to act or accomplish something by our motivation. What is motivating you to do the thing you are doing? If you have a desire to fill in some major "gap" or sense of insufficiency in your life it is likely ego leading you forward. If you have a desire for "more" success, money, things, recognition or redemption...hmmm...probably ego. If on the other hand you approach what you are doing with this knowing that you are already enough...than that is likely your higher Self leading you to act.
Many of us, including me, are seeking to find happiness and to end the sense of suffering we feel. Too often enough we feel there is something missing in our lives, that we are less than and insufficient. We therefore have to "do" something to get there and that doing often involves seeking outside ourselves. This is always ego doing. The higher Self already knows we are enough, have enough and the only action we need to take part in is inspired action that makes the world a better place.
How Stressed are you?
So how stressed are you in your attempt to meet an action goal? Are you snappy and overcharged, over reacting to things that slow you down? Do you neglect other things of equal or greater importance than your mission? Are your muscles tense and is your body crying out with one form of dis-ease or another? If so...it may be ego leading your doing. Doing from the higher Self certainly involves a level of intense focus but there is a certain peace in it that cannot be denied. This level of intensity is enthusiastic rather than stressed.
I was very "stressed" over Christmas preparation...not enthusiastic. I am also quite stressed over certain things I write...only because I realize that ego is looking to gain a certain recognition for them. As soon as ego steps into my writing or any of my doing...there is stress.
How easy is it for you to accomplish what you are trying to accomplish?
Are you struggling to meet your goals? Do you find that there is just one thing going wrong after another? Is it a constant uphill battle? Hmmm. Though obstacles and challenges are always present in any type of seeking, when ego is in charge things never seem to go easy. We are not in the flow. When the higher Self is guiding us, there is a certain ease, a certain flow. The things in the external world that we need to help us achieve our goals just seem to show up and assist us.
Writing my books did not seem challenging. They just came out. One came out in less than four months. Getting them published, however, is a totally different matter. It seems like there is one obstacle after another. Why? The higher Self just wanted me to write the books. It is ego that wants recognition, success, and payment for them. I catch myself thinking sometimes, "Oh when they get published I will be more respected and understood then." I might be seeking more recognition than higher Self deems necessary.
I also find obstacles in "writer's block" ...especially when it comes to finishing my sister's story. Why? Ego...once again got in the way. This story was meant as an expression of her, for her... but somehow it became about me. Writer's block is just ego, I believe, stepping in front of the flow of what wants to pour out...it is like a dam wanting to control and redirect that flow. My sister's story is becoming more about what I can do to make "little me" look good than it is about creativity.
How do you react when you meet an obstacle?
So how do you respond when you hit a wall? How do you react to the things or people that seem to slow you down? If you find yourself reacting with frustration, anger, hostility or any form of active resistance, guess what? Ego is in charge of your doing. If on the other hand you find yourself responding to an added challenge with a certain level of acceptance and allowing than that is the higher you...inspiring your action. If you can take it a step farther to feel grateful for every obstacle and recognize it as grace providing a learning moment...than you are even more advanced than most.
I felt I had to do something about this thing I got going on in my body. That doing started out as inspired doing. Though ego was telling me not to mention the lump for fear of having to relive past experience...the greater part of me stepped up to make sure I did mention it. The same with the call to the clinic when I didn't hear back. Fear is of the ego and will never guide us to inspired action. I also noticed ego stepping in to my doing when I found myself angry, frustrated and blaming others for the fact that my test was not getting done soon enough. Ego...after not wanting me to do anything... wanted it done so it could put it all behind me and relieve the shame and fear that still comes with any health seeking I do. Spirit however...was allowing learning and opportunity for growth with the delay. It encouraged me to allow and see the grace in the delay. Accepting and allowing the obstacle brings more peace than resisting and struggling against it does.
How do you treat the present moment?
So how do you use the moment you are in? How do you treat the step you are taking right now, right here in the direction of your goal? Do you rush to get through it? Do you see it only as a stepping stone to the next moment, a means to an end? Are you more focused on outcome than what you are doing in this very instant? Do you resist the moments that add challenging circumstance to your mission? If so...you know who is in charge. If on the other hand you settle into this moment, embrace this step as if it were all that is...than spirit is leading the way.
How much do you enjoy what you are doing?
How much joy are you getting from the moment you are in right now? From the step of the journey you are on? Do you enjoy what you are doing right here and right now or is the destination the only thing you are focusing on? How present are you? The higher Self is always present, in the moment, focusing more on being here and now rather than outcome focused. In the higher level, doing it is all about the journey, not the destination.
When I come here every morning I lose track of time. I am completely absorbed in what I am doing, full of enthusiasm and I embrace every moment. I enjoy it. This I know is an egoless ( for the most part) doing. I have little recognition and my readership is anywhere between 100 readers a day to 3...and ultimately that is okay. It doesn't matter what ego may or may not get from this...I enjoy what I am doing. And if only three readers are getting something from this I have served. That feels good.
Who is doing the doing?
So who s doing what you are doing? Is it "little me'' that takes the credit or blame for your actions? Or do you feel sometimes that some Greater Force that you cannot even name or describe is flowing through you? If "little me" is taking credit or blame...than ego is in charge. If you feel you are being done rather than doing, it is the higher Self.
Poetry, I believe, is done through me rather than me doing anything. Ego is always in the background with its "Oh My God...you are not putting that up there! I am so embarrassed." I am learning not to take credit or blame for what I create. It has so little to do with me...it just comes through me. So even if t sucks I feel this intense compulsion to put it up. "Little me" has no say. :)
For whom is the doing being done?
Who are you doing what you are doing for? Are you doing it so "little me" will someday feel happy and fulfilled? If so you know what is going on. If you are doing what you are doing to serve the world in some way by all means the higher self is inspiring your actions. Sure "little me" may benefit but the motivation behind it is so much greater than ego need. A true egoless doing provides service to others and Self
Now these are just a few questions to ask yourself before you set out on your mission whatever it may be...to create a literary masterpiece or to find the answer to one of life's many issues...It doesn't matter what that mission is. Ensure that everything you do is inspired ( in -spirit) and as egoless as possible...and you as well as the whole world will benefit from your doing.
Otherwise be content to simply be.
All is well.
Eckhart Tolle & Tami Simon (December, 2019) Conscious Manifestation and The Present Moment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjX4IplPQuw
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/mission-quotes)
I often wonder about the things we "do". I wonder about whether they are inspired by ego or the deeper part of us. I want to be involved in inspired action rather than egoic reaction and meaningless doing.
What about you? What motivates the things you do?
Ego directed versus egoless doing
I know right off that the way I have approached Christmas over the years has been directed by ego rather than my need for peace and spiritual connection. I allowed myself each and every year to get pulled by the current of what was going on around me. Ego was very dominant! I listened! Sure that pull is getting less and less, and I always have some wonderful egoless moments each season but it is obvious ego is still there.
I also know that when I come here every morning...whether there is an ego intention sneaking around back stage or nor...these are primarily egoless moments. The doing I do here is motivated by something much greater than ego. It really is not so much about little me. Hmmm!
How Do We Tell the Difference?
This morning I tapped into a conversation between Tami Simon ( founder of Sounds True publishing) and Eckhart Tolle. (Dec, 2019) ) In the video the difference between the two modes of doing is discussed. According to Tolle, we can usually recognize ego in our actions by: our motivation, level of stress, the ease by which things are happening, how we react to obstacles, how present we are and how much we enjoy what we are doing. We can also determine what part of us in charge by who we perceive is doing the doing and for whom the doing is done.
What motivates you?
We may be able to recognize that ego is pushing us to act or accomplish something by our motivation. What is motivating you to do the thing you are doing? If you have a desire to fill in some major "gap" or sense of insufficiency in your life it is likely ego leading you forward. If you have a desire for "more" success, money, things, recognition or redemption...hmmm...probably ego. If on the other hand you approach what you are doing with this knowing that you are already enough...than that is likely your higher Self leading you to act.
Many of us, including me, are seeking to find happiness and to end the sense of suffering we feel. Too often enough we feel there is something missing in our lives, that we are less than and insufficient. We therefore have to "do" something to get there and that doing often involves seeking outside ourselves. This is always ego doing. The higher Self already knows we are enough, have enough and the only action we need to take part in is inspired action that makes the world a better place.
How Stressed are you?
So how stressed are you in your attempt to meet an action goal? Are you snappy and overcharged, over reacting to things that slow you down? Do you neglect other things of equal or greater importance than your mission? Are your muscles tense and is your body crying out with one form of dis-ease or another? If so...it may be ego leading your doing. Doing from the higher Self certainly involves a level of intense focus but there is a certain peace in it that cannot be denied. This level of intensity is enthusiastic rather than stressed.
I was very "stressed" over Christmas preparation...not enthusiastic. I am also quite stressed over certain things I write...only because I realize that ego is looking to gain a certain recognition for them. As soon as ego steps into my writing or any of my doing...there is stress.
How easy is it for you to accomplish what you are trying to accomplish?
Are you struggling to meet your goals? Do you find that there is just one thing going wrong after another? Is it a constant uphill battle? Hmmm. Though obstacles and challenges are always present in any type of seeking, when ego is in charge things never seem to go easy. We are not in the flow. When the higher Self is guiding us, there is a certain ease, a certain flow. The things in the external world that we need to help us achieve our goals just seem to show up and assist us.
Writing my books did not seem challenging. They just came out. One came out in less than four months. Getting them published, however, is a totally different matter. It seems like there is one obstacle after another. Why? The higher Self just wanted me to write the books. It is ego that wants recognition, success, and payment for them. I catch myself thinking sometimes, "Oh when they get published I will be more respected and understood then." I might be seeking more recognition than higher Self deems necessary.
I also find obstacles in "writer's block" ...especially when it comes to finishing my sister's story. Why? Ego...once again got in the way. This story was meant as an expression of her, for her... but somehow it became about me. Writer's block is just ego, I believe, stepping in front of the flow of what wants to pour out...it is like a dam wanting to control and redirect that flow. My sister's story is becoming more about what I can do to make "little me" look good than it is about creativity.
How do you react when you meet an obstacle?
So how do you respond when you hit a wall? How do you react to the things or people that seem to slow you down? If you find yourself reacting with frustration, anger, hostility or any form of active resistance, guess what? Ego is in charge of your doing. If on the other hand you find yourself responding to an added challenge with a certain level of acceptance and allowing than that is the higher you...inspiring your action. If you can take it a step farther to feel grateful for every obstacle and recognize it as grace providing a learning moment...than you are even more advanced than most.
I felt I had to do something about this thing I got going on in my body. That doing started out as inspired doing. Though ego was telling me not to mention the lump for fear of having to relive past experience...the greater part of me stepped up to make sure I did mention it. The same with the call to the clinic when I didn't hear back. Fear is of the ego and will never guide us to inspired action. I also noticed ego stepping in to my doing when I found myself angry, frustrated and blaming others for the fact that my test was not getting done soon enough. Ego...after not wanting me to do anything... wanted it done so it could put it all behind me and relieve the shame and fear that still comes with any health seeking I do. Spirit however...was allowing learning and opportunity for growth with the delay. It encouraged me to allow and see the grace in the delay. Accepting and allowing the obstacle brings more peace than resisting and struggling against it does.
How do you treat the present moment?
So how do you use the moment you are in? How do you treat the step you are taking right now, right here in the direction of your goal? Do you rush to get through it? Do you see it only as a stepping stone to the next moment, a means to an end? Are you more focused on outcome than what you are doing in this very instant? Do you resist the moments that add challenging circumstance to your mission? If so...you know who is in charge. If on the other hand you settle into this moment, embrace this step as if it were all that is...than spirit is leading the way.
How much do you enjoy what you are doing?
How much joy are you getting from the moment you are in right now? From the step of the journey you are on? Do you enjoy what you are doing right here and right now or is the destination the only thing you are focusing on? How present are you? The higher Self is always present, in the moment, focusing more on being here and now rather than outcome focused. In the higher level, doing it is all about the journey, not the destination.
When I come here every morning I lose track of time. I am completely absorbed in what I am doing, full of enthusiasm and I embrace every moment. I enjoy it. This I know is an egoless ( for the most part) doing. I have little recognition and my readership is anywhere between 100 readers a day to 3...and ultimately that is okay. It doesn't matter what ego may or may not get from this...I enjoy what I am doing. And if only three readers are getting something from this I have served. That feels good.
Who is doing the doing?
So who s doing what you are doing? Is it "little me'' that takes the credit or blame for your actions? Or do you feel sometimes that some Greater Force that you cannot even name or describe is flowing through you? If "little me" is taking credit or blame...than ego is in charge. If you feel you are being done rather than doing, it is the higher Self.
Poetry, I believe, is done through me rather than me doing anything. Ego is always in the background with its "Oh My God...you are not putting that up there! I am so embarrassed." I am learning not to take credit or blame for what I create. It has so little to do with me...it just comes through me. So even if t sucks I feel this intense compulsion to put it up. "Little me" has no say. :)
For whom is the doing being done?
Who are you doing what you are doing for? Are you doing it so "little me" will someday feel happy and fulfilled? If so you know what is going on. If you are doing what you are doing to serve the world in some way by all means the higher self is inspiring your actions. Sure "little me" may benefit but the motivation behind it is so much greater than ego need. A true egoless doing provides service to others and Self
Now these are just a few questions to ask yourself before you set out on your mission whatever it may be...to create a literary masterpiece or to find the answer to one of life's many issues...It doesn't matter what that mission is. Ensure that everything you do is inspired ( in -spirit) and as egoless as possible...and you as well as the whole world will benefit from your doing.
Otherwise be content to simply be.
All is well.
Eckhart Tolle & Tami Simon (December, 2019) Conscious Manifestation and The Present Moment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjX4IplPQuw
Thursday, December 26, 2019
Reflecting on Christmas
Christmas is a season not only of rejoicing but of reflection.
Winston Churchill
Survived it!
Imagine looking at a holiday that we traditionally revere to evaluate one's experience of it as survival.
On refection, I had some precious moments where I staid peaceful and in tune with what was happening around me. I also had some lovely joyful moments surrounded by family. And there were some sad and helpless moments where I was reminded how challenging this time is for some of my loved ones (for many people actually)...dangerously so.
There were some intoxicated moments too, followed by some hung over ones. I am not much of a drinker anymore and do well to put back one glass of wine every few weeks or even months but on Christmas Eve I had three and a half glasses...and that is way too much for me ( drops my systolic BP down into the 70's or lower) so I get more tipsy than the average duck and very, very weak the next day. I know better but I so just wanted to shut my mind off in a traditionally acceptable way. I wanted to have "fun" instead of having to constantly work my way through this heaviness. Ego told me it would be fun to slip below the heavy cloud cover I have been under for at least a few hours. I did enjoy myself but had to pay for it . I am so, so tired still :) I see again how substances are not the answer. I didn't wisely find my way through thinking...I simply plummeted below it and there is a difference.
More learning.
I am having my Christmas supper tonight and that will be nice. I do look forward to that. I also witnessed a moment or two of relief in a struggling loved one yesterday. Apparently the way I supported her through this without pushing her to take part in the expectations of the season...helped. I felt a little less helpless upon hearing that. :)
This thing on my body has not gone away in some Christmas miracle. The pain is definitely tolerable but getting a little louder everyday. I see the pain simply as a messenger. It wants to be heard. I will not forget that there is something there that needs attention any time soon.
Enough about "me". I hope you are enjoying (''en- JOY-ing") your holiday if you celebrate such and "en-JOY-ing" the preciousness of each moment if you don't.
All is well!
Winston Churchill
Survived it!
Imagine looking at a holiday that we traditionally revere to evaluate one's experience of it as survival.
On refection, I had some precious moments where I staid peaceful and in tune with what was happening around me. I also had some lovely joyful moments surrounded by family. And there were some sad and helpless moments where I was reminded how challenging this time is for some of my loved ones (for many people actually)...dangerously so.
There were some intoxicated moments too, followed by some hung over ones. I am not much of a drinker anymore and do well to put back one glass of wine every few weeks or even months but on Christmas Eve I had three and a half glasses...and that is way too much for me ( drops my systolic BP down into the 70's or lower) so I get more tipsy than the average duck and very, very weak the next day. I know better but I so just wanted to shut my mind off in a traditionally acceptable way. I wanted to have "fun" instead of having to constantly work my way through this heaviness. Ego told me it would be fun to slip below the heavy cloud cover I have been under for at least a few hours. I did enjoy myself but had to pay for it . I am so, so tired still :) I see again how substances are not the answer. I didn't wisely find my way through thinking...I simply plummeted below it and there is a difference.
More learning.
I am having my Christmas supper tonight and that will be nice. I do look forward to that. I also witnessed a moment or two of relief in a struggling loved one yesterday. Apparently the way I supported her through this without pushing her to take part in the expectations of the season...helped. I felt a little less helpless upon hearing that. :)
This thing on my body has not gone away in some Christmas miracle. The pain is definitely tolerable but getting a little louder everyday. I see the pain simply as a messenger. It wants to be heard. I will not forget that there is something there that needs attention any time soon.
Enough about "me". I hope you are enjoying (''en- JOY-ing") your holiday if you celebrate such and "en-JOY-ing" the preciousness of each moment if you don't.
All is well!
Monday, December 23, 2019
Wishing You Silence and Stillness This Christmas
The moment you pay attention to the dimension of silence there is a stillness in you.
-Eckhart Tolle
I believe the greatest gift this season offers is the reminder that it is all about peace. Yet it is so very easy to get pulled away from this peace by all the busy chatter in our minds on what there is to "do". Most of us get lost in constant busy activity...shopping, buying, wrapping, baking, decorating, preparing, meeting tradition and expectation...and spend so little of the season being.
One thing this little life circumstance gave me is a freedom from mental chatter related to this commercialized version of Christmas...I did very little, I thought very little of it...and was so surprised to realize that there are only two preparation days left. I have "stuff" for my children, and D. but nothing else. I still have to go back out there! Yuck. I don't even know if it is I or my ex doing the Christmas supper for the kids this year. (I will definitely cook a turkey for them but it may be on boxing day rather than Christmas). Unfortunately I didn't do my charity giving yet which is so important to me but even that doesn't matter because I don't believe that type of giving is nor should it be just seasonal. I am not invested in the date "December 25th", I guess. I will use it as a wonderful opportunity to bring family together, to make it a point to be charitable etc but other than that it does not have that great of a significance for me. (I sound like a scrooge, don't I?)
I have in the past found great peace in certain segments of it: on Christmas eve when the "rush" was over and there was no more opportunity to purchase another thing for anyone; when the kids were all in bed sleeping and I was out alone by the tree...after I did the Santa thing... I would just sit there reciting or sometimes even singing lol the words of silent night. Christmas Mass was very important to me too when I practiced as a Catholic...I chose the Christmas mass that followed the Christmas rush...when the church was not full and very peaceful. Christmas supper always brought me joy...preparing and sharing a big meal with all my children and loved ones around the table is very special. But yeah a certain relief comes when there is no more time or room for busy doing, rushing and commercialism. It just seems all wrong to me. Yet I get lost in it every year :)
Sigh...I want silence and stillness...I need more silence and stillness. That is what I am asking Santa for and what I wish for all of you.
Have a wonderful blessed and peaceful holiday.
All is well.
-Eckhart Tolle
I believe the greatest gift this season offers is the reminder that it is all about peace. Yet it is so very easy to get pulled away from this peace by all the busy chatter in our minds on what there is to "do". Most of us get lost in constant busy activity...shopping, buying, wrapping, baking, decorating, preparing, meeting tradition and expectation...and spend so little of the season being.
One thing this little life circumstance gave me is a freedom from mental chatter related to this commercialized version of Christmas...I did very little, I thought very little of it...and was so surprised to realize that there are only two preparation days left. I have "stuff" for my children, and D. but nothing else. I still have to go back out there! Yuck. I don't even know if it is I or my ex doing the Christmas supper for the kids this year. (I will definitely cook a turkey for them but it may be on boxing day rather than Christmas). Unfortunately I didn't do my charity giving yet which is so important to me but even that doesn't matter because I don't believe that type of giving is nor should it be just seasonal. I am not invested in the date "December 25th", I guess. I will use it as a wonderful opportunity to bring family together, to make it a point to be charitable etc but other than that it does not have that great of a significance for me. (I sound like a scrooge, don't I?)
I have in the past found great peace in certain segments of it: on Christmas eve when the "rush" was over and there was no more opportunity to purchase another thing for anyone; when the kids were all in bed sleeping and I was out alone by the tree...after I did the Santa thing... I would just sit there reciting or sometimes even singing lol the words of silent night. Christmas Mass was very important to me too when I practiced as a Catholic...I chose the Christmas mass that followed the Christmas rush...when the church was not full and very peaceful. Christmas supper always brought me joy...preparing and sharing a big meal with all my children and loved ones around the table is very special. But yeah a certain relief comes when there is no more time or room for busy doing, rushing and commercialism. It just seems all wrong to me. Yet I get lost in it every year :)
Sigh...I want silence and stillness...I need more silence and stillness. That is what I am asking Santa for and what I wish for all of you.
Have a wonderful blessed and peaceful holiday.
All is well.
(Yes I am giving you the same Christmas card almost every year with these pics...my bad. :))
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