Disclosure

I always want to see myself as an open, friendly, available person. In fact, I keep my self closed away behind as many different facades as are people I know.

A chameleon is the often used label. It is common for many to adjust and change according to circumstance. I believe it helps grease the wheels of relationship. BUt as with any kind of grease, it can get slippery.

So, sometimes I disclose too much and sometimes I don't disclosure enough. Such is life.

My last few posts on this blog felt to me like I was disclosing too much. However, I am not apoligizing for this. I believe disclosure is healthy and I also know it can be overdone. So, I'm feeling my way through this life like anyone else. Blind leading the blind!

I'm expecting to bring as much light into the world as possible and I know that cannot be done if I am hiding my light. It is in fact, counter productive to hide and when that need to hide shows up over and over again in one's life, one knows it is time to address it. For me, shining my light has always been one of my gifts. I hold it back in many different ways. Thank you all for bearing with me as I practice my balance!

Blessings

Sandy

The Need to Control (others)

This has been one of the biggies for me all my life. I can't say I never do it anymore, but I do have a history of confronting the behavior and happily at times being able to just confront the desire. But it never seems to go away.

Is it in fact a part of the human condition to control and we just choose to apply it irresponsibly? As with some other things, I have attempted to use my need for control in positive ways. That seems to diminish the incident of negative or harmful ways I have tried to control others or myself.

Another quick note. The last lines of this discussion brought out the connection between trusting others and the need to control others. So if control is a lack of trust, then exercising allowing is another way of releasing self from the need to control others. (note I'm not advocating releasing self from the need to control. I firmly believe this is a human need that can be used in positive ways).

I attempt to open myself to allowing from time to time and it always feels right, but I can't say I have fully integrated this ability yet. Key word here is YET!

Seeing is believing

Darn. For years I've heard that saying "seeing is believing" as "show it to me". My mother used to say it when she thought I was lieing. Or if I promised I'd do something she didn't think I could do.

It was right up there with "I'm from Missouri, you gotta show me!"

Tonight, an angel of compassion visited me and I heard "seeing is believing" in a whole new light. The light of love. When we see something it comes into reality. I don't know if we have the choice to see whatever we want, when ever we want it, but I'm checking that out too. I think we do.

I have held the belief that what I "see" in the future is a real view of the future. But, I'm beginning to understand that what I "see" is what I'm creating. It then becomes a matter of shifting one's perspective to see differently if that is needed. At the same time, shifting one's behavior stops the thing in it's tracks. Then all you have to do is behave differently and see differently and change occurs in the new direction. It's simple goal setting really. Everyone was always so surprised when goal setting worked. There was even a management approach named after it. Like it was big news.

Sometimes shifting my perspective or my behavior feels like moving one of those great big telescopes just one degree differently. Slow, but sure.

Life Goes On

I see in our future, a nation that becomes poorer and poorer in both monetary means and spirit. "Doing poorly," they used to say about someone who had been ill and wasn't quite recovering. Yes, doing poorly.

I would always envision a chakey face, trembling body and dour nature. Not a pretty sight to a young fresh child. Later as I became older I learned what holding a hand can do and I learned to give in ways I'd never known. I saw death in new ways too.

I was always able to imagine something better. I knew change could happen, because I'd been through adolescent and I knew it was possible. Change really does happen as you get older. In fact, it is sometimes the salvation of a stagnent lifestyle. Change for change's sake is something that must be addressed later. This is not that.

I believe we can breathe the life back into our world but simply being who we are. Being "real" and being. It's a tough asignment as I look all around at the death and decay and fear and anger and all that is happening in our external world. Sometimes, I think. I don't have to do this much longer, because 'I'm pretty old already and it's the ones who come after me that will really have to knuckle down and survive'. Or, 'I can kick back and let some of the younger people do it, I've worked hard enough all my life'.

But, then I remember that we are all one and so in a way, it will be me doing it as well. Guess we really are all in the together. Another old saying, I remember for nude or naked was "He was in his altogether" and everyone knew that meant naked. So we are in the altogether, together, I guess.

And as I think on that, it comforts me to know we are just learning and learning is as difficult as we want to make it. Bring on the lessons!!! I'll kick back when I need a break, but always glad to get back in the frey! It's my way of being me. Inquistive,energetic, respectful, and quick. Like a squirrel. Not sure how they are respectful, but I bet they are. Ever see two squirrels meet on a telephone wire, each one going in the opposite direction? It is quite the acrobat show, but somehow they work it out. I think we as individuals are like that at times when we meet others of our own kind. A sort of acrobatic manueering of positions occurs until cooperation leads itself to beauty. Like a dance we sort things out and allow for each to win. We pass by and we continue on our journey.

So if our economy is doing poorly, and the employment rate is low, the banks are failing and there is nothing anyone seems to be able to do about it. Perhaps we are going to be poor for quite a while. At least some of us will be. We will slip into a lower and lower class until we are finally able to face our real selves instead of defining ourselves by what we have. Not a bad place to be. Whatever it takes will be provided. And the struggle against the truth will continue as long as necessary. Truth will out, but has infinite patience. We can take however long we want or need, it doesn't matter. We will still be here because the truth is what matters and we don't matter unless we are true. So, being my true self is a matter (no pun intended, really) of being myself at all times and in all circumstances. Hello!! Why does that seem so scandeosly difficult. Aha, as if I didn't know I was a phoney most of my life. My "true" self has barely enough time to sleep, much less be!!

Yet she is patient. And I continue to seek her solace and advice. This journal is one of the ways I can do that. She tells me over and over to sit silent and attend. I do, but I slip and get bored and my ADD takes over and suddenly I'm in the other room organizing a drawer! Still, the weather is better now, my garden nearly ready for it's Fall splendor and I am itching to get out and do some real work on creating a space to enjoy while I sit on my porch. It helps to have a comfortable and refreshing space in which to sit. Not always though. A walk, a movie, food, these things tend to bring comfort too, yet I know the comfort they bring is not only temporary, but a pale version of the "real" thing. Being real can get you a shit load of comfort. It's designed that way. Nice, huh? So, as in Groundhog Day, one pursues the drug of reality! And nothing seems to work when one tries to create it. It is only by being it that reality occurs and then it is like walking on clouds. We are so fortunate to be alive and to be who we are. It is a gift beyond price. I never was gracious about accepting gifts, greedy would be a better description. But, this gift has often been rejected, abandoned, held down, redirected and eventually disillusioned. Must be one tough truth if I'm so attached to trying to destroy it. If I have a gift, and I do because we all do (logic) and I don't use it, the world won't end. It may do more poorly, but it won't end. Just limp along sick and poor and unable to do for itself. Well, not quite. But it would be greatly enhanced by the gifts I have to contribute. Being able to esteem them would mean being "real" and I have been false so many times, I'm not sure I want to stop. And somehow, I know and remember that it all doesn't matter one way or the other, it all is unfolding as it should. And my fear arises. What if I get caught in the downdraft of the fall of our nation and our world. And I know I will do what needs to be done when it needs to be done and that's no different than now, so what do I have to be afraid of? A little work? I'm already doing that! I think I've seen too many holocaust movies and news casts of families torn apart by ware and subjegation. I want it to end. Naturally. We all do. It is not a matter of time, it is a matter of when. It will end, it will change, it will become something else some where else. And it may take many, many, many years to do that as it has in the past. Or it may happen in an instant. That's the exciting thing. personally, I like the idea of it happening in an instant, but then, I always tore the bandaid off with one quick jerk!!! So, in the meantime, I do what I can when I can do it. Over and over an over. Knowing I will contibute and I take away. It's a dog eat dog world. And we've been here a long time and I don't see us leaving anytime soon unless something better comes along. i think this is it. It's up to us to raise our consciousness in order to partake of that which we call God. My higher self knows the taste, but I don't always agree. I still try sugar and alcohol and other substances to change my consciousness. I am afraid to mediate. I am afraid to stop my stories and my phony presence. I want to bring myself to these events with ease and grace. I do not want to live seperate from most of society, no matter how different or disgusting they may seem. I will attend to being who I am in every setting and if I limit myself to my house, and yard and local haunts, I am not becoming an easy participant in life. There is life everywhere, though it may appear asleep. It exists. You can feel it as you get out of your car and see the family going to the movies. You can see it in a sunset around a city, never does nature seem to bow down to monopolis', but rather they are diminish by it's grandeur. If only for a second.

Life goes on.

S

It's never a good time

It’s never a good time to do any thing. If we waited for a good time to do something we’d never do it.
We’d never have babies if we really knew what was involved.
But, by the time we have the baby, it’s too late
And our lives can never imagine what it would have been like had we not had this miracle, this piece of us.

So, I figure it’s just as good a time as any to do what I want to do when ever I want to do it.
And afterwards, I can never imagine what it would have been like had I not done it at that particular time.

Perhaps there is no time either.
Wow, imagine THAT!!!
NO TIME
Like time doesn’t exist.

Hmmm now where have I heard that before? Time doesn’t exist. Does that mean I don’t exist too?? Probably. In fact, It think I remember something about that too. What is it? Oh yeah, I do not exist.

Boring!

I might as well exist even though I probably don’t. I figure, I can just pretend that I exist and then go about doing what ever I want when ever I want to.

That sounds familiar too. Oh yes, the advice from the 100 year old woman. Her secret to a long life was that she always did what ever she wanted when ever she wanted to. (I have it on good counsel though, that she only could do that the last 40 years of her life. That means it started around 60!) hmmmmm

Playing Big and Showing Up

I've heard these terms many times. Usually, I heard them yelled at me in a staff meeting or during a therapy group. "PLAY BIG!!" "SHOW UP!". Like a challenge or a demand.

Recently, I eperienced playing big and showing up from a more gentle perspective. I found when "I "do my nearest duty" as Goethe recommends, I am showing up and I am playing big. Because I stretch myself. Like in the prayer of Jabez, I "expand my territory". 

When this happens, I have more space to receive and isn't that what abundance is all about?? So Play Big, Show Up for you!!! Do Your nearest duty for you!!! Life is about being not doing. Be You! You will receive as you give. 

Ways I "showed up" this week. Helped someone find her car in a parking lot

complimented a grocery store checker

Asked for what I wanted in a restaurant

Sent that email I'd been putting off

Said yes to adventure when it arrived on my doorstep

and the list goes on. Small looking and sounding things, but they all stretch me and in stretching bigger, expanding my territory. I am able to receive the abundance around me. No one can fit more apples in a bushel that is already full. Eat a few apples. Let more come in.

Sandy