youthful exuberance

I reconnected with an old friend at a wedding this weekend. We first met 16 years ago at La Leche League when our daughters were babies. Turns out her daughter has grown into an amazing musician. I just watched her perform an original composition, Change the World, on YouTube. Goose bump city! This girl WILL change the world, no doubt about it.

more about the wedding later.

a little father's day story for you

stumbled upon this article online today, and found myself getting all teary-eyed while reading it. A teenage brother and sister who are orphaned by their mother's sudden death are adopted by their mom's ex-boyfriend, and he steps up to unexpected fatherhood in every possible way. I just love happy endings.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/personal/06/19/rs.mom.died.boyfriend.adopts/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

riding the storm out

We've had unusually tempestuous weather here in Colorado this spring. Tornados have been touching down all over the place, sometimes almost daily, which is extremely rare for this area. In the twenty years I've lived here, I remember only one tornado before this.

My mind has been unusually stormy lately, too. I spose that's not unusual at my stage of life (perimenopause). Hormones can wreak all sorts of havoc -- mentally and emotionally as well as physically.

Whatever the reason, my head has been a very bizarre place to be lately. There's a friggin' three ring circus going on in there. Stories being made up constantly. Cases worthy of a court of law are being entirely fabricated, and then argued, won, and lost.

And for the first time, I am just a little bit outside of all this action, watching the show. I am aware that the stories are fiction, not fact. This awareness does not stop me from getting caught up in the drama at times, just like I get so wrapped up in a movie that I cry when something beautiful happens to that fictional character who is no more than a projection on a flat white screen.

So last weekend, when I noticed an increasingly nasty mental storm of negativity brewing, I tried to make it blow over fast. I used all my tricks, and nothing made a dent. Weird thoughts of anger, victimization, and disconnection twisted around like tornados, gathering momentum with each whirl as I watched, feeling helpless to stop the impending destruction.

Being an energetic and action-oriented gal, I naturally wanted to act on these thoughts. I wanted to tell people off! I wanted to stand up for myself! I wanted to argue and speak my mind and stuff like that!

Thankfully, 51% of me was witnessing this rather than swirling in it, and so it directed my actions. It told me to get myself out of town immediately - into the mountains where I could sit alone on a big rock and do no harm. It told me to bring my journal, but not my computer or cell phone. No communication with the external world would be allowed from this state of angry agitation, because no good could possibly come from it.

I spent hours and hours in isolation, furiously scribbling my accusations and listing the perceived injustices being inflicted on me by various people and situations, attempting to purge them. A deer came to visit, briefly interrupting my stream of venom, but I got right back to it as soon as she moved on. Then it started to thunder, and I headed back to my car, not wishing to get drenched, thinking all of this must certainly have helped.

I got back to my car just as the first drops started falling, and realized I was STILL pissed off. I sat there for two hours, watching the storm move over me, seeing a rainbow form, and still, that dark cloud in my mind would not go away. Reluctantly I returned home, crossing my fingers that I would not run into anyone I cared about. I came home and went to my room and stayed there until I fell asleep.

In the morning, I woke up feeling normal. Nothing had happened in the outside world to shift my mood. I didn't tell anyone off, I didn't change any situations, I didn't fix any problems. But I was in love with life exactly as it is once more. I was overwhelmed with gratitide for this inescabably visceral awareness that my experience is ALL about my perception.

I imagine there will be many more days like this as I ride this hormonal rollercoaster of feminine midlife. I might be spending a lot of time in the mountains in the next decade! But I am tremendously relieved to know that truly, if I can just wait it out, it will get better all by itself, even if I don't do anything about it.

cleaning the lens

this train of thought chugged through my morning shower today:

If I am perceiving anything other than an expression of love or a request for love from anyone, including my own self, then my inner lens needs to be cleaned.

When bugs get smashed on my car's windshield, I know that the remedy is to use my wipers, not to get out of the car and go try to clean the thing I am looking at through the dirty windshield.

the wipers I've been using lately come from the Hawaiian tradition of H'oponopono. There's an article I like that explains it here: http://www.consciousmindjournal.com/Articles/2008-02-01/Hoponopono.cfm

The short version is this:

I internally repeat four simple phrases in sequence until I feel an inner release of tension. I usually experience the release as a melting feeling in the area of my heart.

I love you.
I'm sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.

These phrases are directed at myself, not at the other person.

I usually start melting the instant I tell myself I love you. It puts me right in touch with my little innocent human self, and how hard I am on it sometimes.

I'm sorry is almost always followed by more when I hear it in my head, but it doesn't have to be. I'm sorry for treating myself this way. I'm sorry for forgetting my innocence. I'm sorry for talking to myself that way. I'm sorry for forgetting who I really am, and what I am doing here. I'm sorry for hurting myself with that thought.

Please forgive me and Thank you normally stand alone for me.

So here's how this might go in real life:

Let's say I'm at the store, and someone says Hurry up, you are in my way!

Through a clean windshield, I see someone in a big hurry, and I simply step aside.

Through a dirty windshield, I might see someone who is full of himself and thinks his pace is more important than mine.

so I activate my wipers:

I love you (and it's perfectly fine for me to walk at whatever pace I like right now).
I'm sorry (for the feeling inside me when I got angry at him).
Please forgive me.
Thank you.

If I don't feel better yet, I run it again.

I love you (and there is nothing wrong with me for feeling this way).
I'm sorry (for taking any of this personally).
Please forgive me.
Thank you.

Rarely do I need to run this through more than twice before my happiness is restored. But I will happily do it for as long as it takes to feel good again.

the article I linked to above goes into more detail.
gotta dash ... I have a daughter with a DVD waiting for me downstairs.

...

I'm back, with a stomach that hurts from laughing so hard at Little Miss Sunshine, to elaborate a bit on the expression/request for love concept. It's rooted in A Course in Miracles (ACIM), which I studied about a decade ago.

The idea, as I recall it, is that verbal and nonverbal communication falls into basically two categories -- affectionate words, compliments, and kindness are expressions of love, whereas insults, complaints, demands, whining, and attacks are simply indirect and unskillful requests for love. When we hear them that way, there's really only one response that feels appropriate -- compassion.

Compassion can show up in many guises. It might be a very loving and gentle NO. It could be that we simply reassure the whiner/complainer that we care about their feelings and their experience (like a well-trained customer service representative who lets you know that your feedback is important, she's sorry for your inconvenience, and she'll do whatever she can to make it right).

Compassion doesn't mean you just lay down and let people walk all over you. It does mean that you don't see them as terrible or evil, but rather as temporarily communicatively impaired. You may choose to remove yourself until they can be more clear, or you may be willing to translate and offer love in response to their request. It doesn't really matter either way. The point is that you don't stew yourself in your own juices while building a case to prove how bad or wrong they are.

I think this quote from http://www.clearmind.com/acim.cfm expresses it pretty well:

ACIM considers all behavior to be either a call for love, or an extension of love. When we can see the “call for love” under difficult behavior, forgiveness naturally occurs, and we are left in a state of compassion rather that locked into anger, fear, or guilt. It is our compassionate mind than can then make proactive decisions which result in a more positive life.

communication does not equal conversation

I think perhaps many of us have a little bit of a blind spot when it comes to communication these days. Communication is not actually the exact same thing as conversation. Instead, conversation is one of many possible ways to communicate.

Today I overheard a woman saying, "I shouldn't have to make assumptions. He should just tell me how he feels!"

I wanted to interject, but it was none of my business. I imagined handing her a copy of The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate
and saying, But maybe he IS telling you how he feels! What does he say with his eyes, his touch, and his actions? There's more than one way to let someone know you care!

I hear women declaring to each other with righteous conviction: If he doesn't say it, he doesn't care. And of course, sometimes, it's true! But before you release him back into the wild simply because he's not showering you with verbal affection, consider that words may not be his primary mode of expression. If you love him, a little experimentation may salvage the relationship.

I invite every woman who has been Scrabble scoring her man's verbal output (and finding it lacking) to figuratively plug her ears with cotton for a few days, and to rely upon her other senses to receive communication instead.

Smell those ribs cooking on the grill? He put that extra spicy sauce on half of them because you like them better that way.

See his muddy shoes at the door? When he lived alone he would have worn them into the house.

Feel his strong hands massaging your shoulders? He noticed you were tense and wanted to help you feel better.

Why does he do all this? Maybe it's because he cares about you.

I don't mean to diminish the value of words. If they are your primary love language, you'll probably prefer a mate who speaks affectionately to you often.

But some women find that when they open up their other senses, words are not as important as they previously thought. You may discover that there are plenty of other very satisfying ways to express love, affection, and appreciation. Sometimes, once these other channels have opened, words even become pale in comparison...

soul food from the web

gratitude to Rob Breszny for sharing these in this week's Free Will Astrology newsletter!

paul hawken's graduation speech. wonderful:
http://www.dailygood.org/more.php?n=3697

a magical medicine story. gave me goose bumps of recognition:
http://realitysandwich.com/gathering_tribe?page=1

a radical choice

I sat down a few days ago to write a post about my reaction to reports that Colleen and Daniel Hauser had gone on the run. They are the mother and son who preferred to use alternative modalities to treat the boy's cancer, and fled to avoid being ordered by the court to submit to traditional chemotherapy.

I must admit, this case strikes close to my heart. For the past twenty years or so my family has been using alternative modalities with great success, and therefore we have spent next to no time in the traditional medical system. I even gave birth at home.

I don't like the idea that the courts could have forced my children into conventional medical treatment. If Daniel were my son, I would likely support his desire to reject a deliberate injection of poison.

So I feel a lot of empathy for this family. In fact, I got pretty riled up about the whole thing. I could go on to list all my perceived injustices, but I won't, because that's not the point of this post.

The point is that somewhere along the line, as I was ruminating on this poor kid and his mom and feeling so bad for them, I heard Abraham's voice pop into my head saying, Nothing is more important than that you feel good. (If you are not familiar with Abraham-Hicks, this statement will probably sound self-serving, narcissistic, and even worse, because it's taken out of a much larger context. A visit to http://www.abraham-hicks.com/ might help to put it in perspective. )

And I realized then that the tape looping in my head about injustice and the cruel imposition of values and yadda yadda yadda did not feel good to me AT ALL. Nor was it helping Daniel and his family. So, for what might be the very first time in all my years of listening to good ol' Abe, I decided to take their advice and "reach for a thought that feels better."

And the instant I made this choice, I felt my awareness zoom out, like a camera panning back. I have no idea if the thought that felt better to me is true or not, but that's not really what's important. Here's the thought: perhaps this mother and child, at a soul level, signed up for the job of bringing this issue into the media spotlight, so that change can happen.

I know that's all woo woo and such, but it felt so much better to me than thinking that these kind and innocent and well-intended people were being victimized by The System.

When I panned out, and remembered that there is always more going on than meets the eye, my outrage just melted. I felt gratitude and compassion for the family, and for the courts and others involved as well. Each of them is playing an important role in a larger production.

It takes a lot of gumption for a soul to sign up to play the bad guy, because plenty of venom will be spewed in his direction. A lot of people will forget that at his core, he is light and love just like we all are.

Which reminds me of a book I really like: The Little Soul and the Sun by Neale Donald Walsch.





Anyway, let me back up and say a bit more about my statement that it is not important to me whether this 'bigger production' idea is true or not.

It seems to me that our lives are made up of a string of moments, like a strand of pearls. We can experience only one at a time, which makes this moment the most important moment of our existence.

There's no one passing judgment on how we choose to spend our moments, so there's nothing inherently wrong about letting myself stew in anger for a while if I want to.

But if I have a choice, and I finally perceive that I really do, I'll choose a more pleasant experience, thank you very much.

As an added bonus, any actions I choose to take from a stance of compassion will be far more efficient and effective than reactions that stem from anger, revenge, or outrage. Since I'm really not that interested in adding to the chain of pain, I like finding ways to call forth the best in others.

After the compassion was flowing again, I found myself simply feeling love and gratitude for everyone involved in this case. I saw no more good guys or bad guys ... just a bunch of people trying to do what they think is best.

And that was a relief.

postscript May 30,2009:
Colleen and Danny voluntarily returned home, and he has reluctantly resumed chemotherapy. The family has started a website and is posting updates on his conditon: www.dannyhauser.com.