Hi
First off, Merry Christmas. I hope it was lovely. Mine was weird, but when is it not? lol. Second. Thank you for being vulnerable and being willing to allow yourself the chance to look at and reflect on what is going on inside. It takes a lot of courage to want more for yourself when you can see patterns that are so ingrained they are almost impossible to see. Third. Thank you for your apology. It means a lot to me and validates me continually believing in you.
I'll be honest. What I can see is that you are at this place where in order to move forward you are going to have to give up some of your beliefs for something intangible. I am in the process and I have been here my whole life, and it's pretty excruciating. It is so easy to falter. It is so easy to convince yourself that your past way of being is the right way, because its what you have been taught, its what you have gotten to know. It's who you identify with. I know. I am going through it too. Ultimately it requires recognizing what behaviour is in alignment with love and what isn't and functioning from that place. even if it feels like the world is going to fall apart.... all the better, at least that's what OSHO advocates for. To allow the falseties of life, of worth.... to dissolve and to ultimately find your worth, your innate wisdom and let go of what you"think" it should be.
The arrogance and judgment simply come from a lack of really understanding the macro view of the whole of existence. If you look at all the shitty things in your life, you have to come to see that they had to happen for you to be where you are. If you allow yourself to be happy in this immediate moment then there is a place where you can be thankful and appreciate all the "shitty" things. In that space it is possible to make peace with your past and recognize that you, along with everyone is on the EXACT path they are supposed to be on... to be thankful in the present is to be thankful for ALL THE MOMENTS leading up to this one. It in an assbackwards kind of way is an immediate making peace with the past. Remember... suffering is only important until it is not.
Your judgement and arrogance, I believe come from a place of recognizing that your path is actually propelling you more to a place you have always longed to go.. but this time not financially, not physically, but cosmically, esoterically, recognizing that is important for you to find the truth that exists in your heart. You are coming to see how easy it is for us to convince ourselves of falseties, untruths. Your judgement of others is a reflection of your judgment of yourself.
Compassion is the only answer.
Expecting something from generosity is the most difficult thing I am finding to let go. Especially in a relationship. To watch how I expect men to behave, that I want certain things... that don't necessitate love, but that i have equated to love or lack of love for some weird reason. To recognize and discipline myself that I am not allowed to get frustrated or angry with JA for anything he doesn't do, and whenever I feel triggered, to look at what that is. When the house is a shambles, getting frustrated is stupid, because I too haven't done it all, and if it bothers me enough, I should clean it. That JA is allowed to be exactly who he is when he is single and its my choice whether I want to stay or not, that I can't want him to change, and I am certainly not allowed to make him feel bad or ashamed in anyway for not measuring some bullshit, in-the-moment random expectation I have, that really is just a reflection of my own frustrations with myself.
I guess in a way I have given myself permission to only criticize if he does something that hurts me, never for something he hasn't done. To encourage him and allow him to move forward at his own pace, to treat him the way I want to be treated and to look to see if my intentional reaction is something that if done to me I will be hurt. To always reflect on what I am ACTUALLY FEELING. Oddly enough... in 2 months... there hasn't been ONE thing he has done that has hurt my feelings. No rolling his eyes, no weird comments to the detriment of my feelings. He respects me... and loves me enough to never want to hurt my feelings..... so if they do get hurt, recognizing that it is not his intention...
After reading your email the other day and sharing it with JA I was thinking that it is sad that you have missed out on a lot of fun with R. . JA used to drink a lot... his whole family has been at one point to AA and he too has been, but has come to the realization he is allowed to drink, just to be aware of the frequency and the amount. To be honest he drinks almost every night.. and we drink together. We have tonnes of fun dancing in the kitchen and being silly. My only rule is don't get so drunk you are falling over or can't have a conversation. I am not a babysitter, other than that.. it is your own life.
I think when R. came into your life you were realizing that you drink to excess when you drink.. and he became an outlet for those feelings. With you it is always all or nothing.... it's incredible how self disciplined you can be.. but the truth of life is to have fun, take the path of least resistance and love. Don't put all experiences together... if he gets trashed and gets retarded, let him know how it makes you feel, but allow him the space to be himself. Always consider how nice it is when you have a friend who doesn't judge you and allows you the space to be yourself with all your faults, never criticizing and only supporting what you dreams and hopes are.... reinforcing positive behaviour and maybe even ignoring bad??? You love to get drunk. You love to party.... and now you have someone who parties like a rockstar and you cut yourself completely off from that part of you, blaming him. HAVE FUN JULES. Go get drunk and do a bunch of drugs with your boyfriend and don't apologize for it. James and I decided if either of us gets cancer the first thing we are going to do is heroin. The second is dealing with it. It is Really important to stop measuring your life on some rediculous idea of the way life "should" be. You know what you love, embrace it.. and stop feeling ashamed for the life you have lead, for the people you love... for the mistakes you have made. HAVE FUN!
YOu mention time frames. That is another of your hangups... and please don't feel bad, this is just human nature. We have been s taught to meet time frame expectations. But in the end , the time frame is whatever is the most comfortable for you. If it takes a day or 10 years... so long as the intention is there....
You have felt ashamed of not being married and having children yet. YOu have imposed on yourself some version of prison, of hell, where nothing you will do will remove your shame. You impose expectations on yourself blaming the rest of existence. It is you that you have to make peace with. Recognizing YOU made the choices you have. YOu are where your life has lead.... shame is like an addiction for you... and all of humanity.
I think this experience you are going through has the opportunity to deepen your level of compassion to see that after every layer there is another layer and that your experience can show you the path that it takes.. that its easy to fall back into old patterns and how easy it is to not even be aware of certain aspects of your own psyche.... in this you can have compassion for others. Recognize that you can only know what you know and that most of what you have learned, has been through experience. You can't RUSH EXPERIENCE. YOu can't rush life.
Your misinterpretation of other's behaviour comes from a lack of understanding/acceptance that people are where they are and they only treat you as well as they treat themselves... so instead of getting upset, to love them despite their inability to fulfill their 'promise/plan/role" I am going through this right now too, and it is quite confronting to balance keeping people, letting people go and having compassion for everyone. To not take things personally and to not be resentful for all the people in my life that have not met my expectations. To not have their worth, or their deserving of love be based on anything other than their existence. Because ultimately that's where we are trying to get right? to a place where we can recognize we are all one. We are not separate. And we ARE LOVE.
That's what I am trying to embrace, resonate with..... to recognize once and for all that my worth does not come from outside. It does not come from what people do/give/think about me. It is not based on my education or my salary. It is not based on my job, my friends, my living situation. It is not based on where I am from, the colour of my skin or my sexuality. That when I feel love, it is from within. Its gratitude.
at this point I am getting so good at the practice that I am trying to be grateful for EVERYTHING in the moment. I have concluded that everything happens for a reason and there is a lesson in everything.... I have had a cough consistently for a month and I have been thanking the universe for giving my lungs a fine work out so that I can be more effective. I thank my lungs for allowing me the space to continue to smoke, recognizing that quitting will come on it's own time and that they have the power to keep me safe and healthy if I appreciate all they do for me.
The other day I woke up and looked out the window to see if it had snowed and this 5lb amethyst that was iitting on the window sill fell on my foot. It cut it pretty bad and still hurts... but while I was crying I was telling myself it happened to remind me I had a foot, to send blood and love to it, and thank the universe for not having it be worse. To constantly be in a mantra of gratitude and to recognize the areas of my life that I find myself complaining about, or feeling ripped off.
I had a thought last night. We are sad when we feel ripped off from life. When we feel like things should be different than they are, we cut ourselves off from the experience and thus from life. It is only through gratitude that we are able to accept the flow of life, thus embracing its beauty, and being connected to it. We can only feel connected to life when we feel we are the painters. When we feel that there is purpose to the experience. When we love every moment. When we become YES men. (I read in a book I am reading currently on ancient wisdom that the word man has an etymology in the word mana in sanskrit - or mind.. that what makes humans different from our animal counterparts is our mind, our ability to think.. to become aware of ourselves... and thus man is actually gender neutral... and thus we can all become a yes man... in other words.. a yes thinker) Through love we reconnect with the divinity of all things, and all lessons, recognizing they each shift our frequency to a higher and higher existence... and accepting that through this others may not understand us. People may not support.... but love them for being scared.... and loving yourself for taking the road less travelled... that is in being brave to stand up for the child in ourselves... and being the change we wish to see in the world (as Gandhi said). That by living a life, less conventional we pave the way for others and make it easier on them to fall into their own greatness. It is only in recognizing our own greatness that we allow others to see their own.
The only thing to trust is life, your inner voice. But it is intangible. YOu can't see it, and most of what we learn in life with regards to relationships with others as well as ourselves are things that actually have to be UNLEARNED> which poses the problem, we attach our beliefs, our accomplishments/ our failures to our worth. We connect our personality with who we are.. and I think we have this default where we actually feel like we will disintegrate if we let go of all those things we hold so dear to our existence. And yet when we are born... that is all we have.
I feel this is where I am right now. To completely give up on celebrating my birthday, or Christmas this year... to accept their quietness... to accept the lack of pomp and circumstance. To recognize them both only from inside. Only from a personal space.... it is incredible how difficult it was for me to accept that nothing about yesterday was Christmas. No exchange of gifts. No turkey. No tradition of any sort. To see how I felt lost, how I felt uncomfortable... it was a great opportunity to see how attached I am to the guilt.
Recongizing that every year I feel guilty at Christmas. Usually for not having enough money to buy people things. Spending money on gas, when I don't have it... guilty for not going.. or even worse I feel resentful to the world for not giving me anything I need or want. I am in a space right now of recognizing that I live in the light of Christmas every day of my life... and that I do love the Christmas lights and am incredibly thankful for presents. But to allow myself the experience of a presentless birthday and Christmas. Not even going out for dinner. has created a space for me where I am more thankful for the basics. Thankful that I have a roof.Thankful that I have food. Thankful that I have love. and EVERYTHING else is just extra. and to be even more thankful in the future because I know what it is like to NOT have things.
Spending the past 2 months with JA, we have only gone out once. So the love I feel really comes from sharing space with him. To feel like I have everything I need right now and to not be attached to needing or wanting anything more... and allow the universe to create lessons i can't even see I need to learn.... so that I get to live the most beautiful life...unimaginable to my limited mind.
The truth is I have a truth in my heart that has such a hold on me that I will never again tell it 'no' because I know better, that my heart knows best, even if I don't see where it is going to lead me... but to continue breaking my rules, continue challenging my behaviour. and continue looking for love inside.
*****
Life has a weird way of doing the things to you that scare you the most. I think this is one of the most important lessons. I think many teachers refer to it as the law of attraction. That the universe does not account for the negative, so being scared of something and repeating the thought in our heads of fear like "I will never survive if ----- happens to me" OR.... a complaint.. actually creates the very thing we fear.. actually perpetuates the circumstances we are trying to avoid... its like life's little way of proving that our rules are actually pointless.. and that we will survive all those things we believe we won't. What you RESIST PERSISTS... sooooo it is only in shifting our perspective that allows for the dissolution of our fears to manifest themselves in our lives.
Two examples come to mind for me. The fear of a man leaving me for my weight I met J.(my ex)... who threatened to leave for my weight. If that wasn't a fear... then I probably wouldn't have been dating someone who would threaten that. But because it was, the universe needed me to confront that fear and say "I no longer believe this to be true, and if I am with a man who threatens this... then he is not the man for me.
What I am looking at now is my complaint that JA doesn't talk much. I saw myself starting to recite this thought in my head.... but being as aware as I am I could see that I was actually LYING to myself. That in fact he talks A LOT.. and YES, he is not very expressive about his emotions... but neither am I at times... that if I get upset with him about not sharing more... I will make him feel insecure which will actually encourage the lack of sharing.... AND if I am upset about that then I will constantly look for evidence to support that in my head. That if I just allow him the space to be himself.... and listen for when he does talk, that will be a more loving space to come from..... even being aware of this, I still find myself mentioning it here and there... and then I see that it may actually be my way of convincing myself that i am not loved. It's SOOO weird - like in my head I say 'if you don't know what he's feeling because he hasn;t said it then maybe he doesn't love you."
What's also weird is he is the most physically affectionate man I have ever been with. He holds me, he blows me kisses across the room, he dances with me. He winks at me... he caresses me and makes me feel comfortable in my own skin...... and yet his lack of vocalization about how he feels I resent..... So I am practicing FEELING loved. That love does not come from the intellectualization or experience... but the feeling you actually feel around them. And if there is a lack of love it is on my own part. That my worthiness of love does not reside in his behaviour, or even deeper, in his love.
On a deeper level I am playing with recognizing that when I feel a lack of love it is that I am actually holding back love from myself. That I have the ability to pull away from love... looking for attention that will make me feel loved..... but in a weird way it is some form of manipulation.... and really that puts the power of my worthiness of love outside myself... it's difficult to break, the need for attention. Its difficult to break the feeling of inadequacy. It's really weird to come to know myself so well that I have to stop hating myself... cause I really like myself. It's been so conditioned in me to not be happy.
****
About your judgments of me. You provide me with something I need. To be able to love you enough to forgive you for the constant judgment and rejection you have imposed on me throughout the past 4/5 years has freed me somewhat from the need to get the approval from ANYONE. You somehow cushion the blow, because deep down I know you will eventually believe in me, see me and support me. I suppose unconsciously it is something aligned with if you can make your biggest judge your ally, you have arrived..... You say what most people think. My lesson has been to not make choices regarding my own life based on what others think of me... and you have created the situation for me to confront those fears on a VERY personal level. I can only believe that we have been sisters in a past life because I somehow believe that no matter what you do you still love me. I just believe that..... I always tried to fix things in the past. Now I am trying to allow them to develop at their own pace..... instead of trying to fix relationships with people who have hurt me... I recognize I have an open door policy. That where the balance may be for me, is that my friends know that when they want back in my life, I will never hold a grudge, or push them away or not believe in their ability to evolve... that I will always be a cheerleader for the growth and love of all the people I have met in life... and everyone deserves the space to grow.
I think this is what they call being detached. Not pushing people away, but recognizing that everyone is where they are supposed to be, and in the end I needed everyone to push me away so that I could hear my own voice and not be embarrassed about who I am.... I needed to have to see myself, alone... to recognize I am simply LOVE. I have always lived like I want to be jesus. ONLY LOVE. no matter what your crime, no matter what your treatment of me, others or yourself. That even if no one else behaves from the same place I do... that I will persevere and never sell out on that part of me that loves forever and always.
Our biggest failure as a society is that we punish the people who suffer the most. We don't offer compassion for the children that grow up to be adults that are so disconnected from love that they have the ability to hurt their fellow man. We must continue to foster love for all humans, and be patient enough to teach the adults who never learned. AGE has nothing to do with awareness.... and everyone just got what they got.... everyone is having to unlearn things they have believed their whole lives... and that makes life very uncertain. Apparently that's where life becomes adventurous.. in the not knowing.... but man is it ever confronting.
I love you because I love myself. I love you because I see your spirit, your dreams/your hopes/ your promise. I love you because you allow me the opportunity to share what I know to be true. You let me share my wisdom. And that can only be heard by someone worthy of such wisdom. Most people are so scared to even look at themselves, my wisdom is lost on them.
If it is any consolation... I knew you would eventually have to look at what was going on inside you... and I believed you would have the strength and courage to shift your perspective. I believed in your capacity to grow.. and saw that you had to go through this... I couldn't force you to see what you were unwilling to see... and that it would happen in its perfect time... to not be sad about you leaving and to not be hurt... but to allow the relationship to evolve however it is meant to... and that I can't control your side. I can only control my own.... that standing up for myself was worth the loss of the relationship... but that I had hope that you loved yourself enough, that you loved me enough to eventually accept me for me and be thankful for the originality of my thoughts. For the kindness I offer, for the forgiveness I provide. For the blueprint of love I create. SO thank you for evolving enough to start seeing that... and for loving yourself enough to be willing to share yourself with me when I am sure it has been quite scary to not know if I will shun and resent you like so many people do after they are hurt.
The truth is, you did hurt me. You judged me during the scariest choice of my life. You left me to question my choice whether it was selfish or self loving. I have come to see and believe it is only out of self love that I have behaved and for that I will not apologize... I tried to help you to see how you were sabotaging the relationships you had with T. and M... and instead of hearing the observation, you attacked me... it was a quick and sure way of getting me to shut up, preventing you from getting off the train wreck that you were creating. Your ego gets rid of me at the exact time you NEED me. But somehow, through getting rid of me, by what ever means necessary, you are forced to see something that I am trying to show you. You thus become acutely aware of the behaviour I am trying to show you... and so whether it is through listening to my observations.. or pushing me away so you can see them for yourself... you will see them.. you will grow.... and that is my promise to you. That I will always love you enough to support your growth.
OK... that's what I have for right now. I think this may suffice in terms of bringing awareness to the behaviour you are trying to shift.... but if you need further insight into specifics about your life, if you want me to share further my observations of you and your habits... just ask. I will be happy to share what it has been like for me on this side of the friendship.
much love.
I believe in you.
Merry Christmas.
1 comment:
You are truly amazing. Thanks for believing in me when I didn't.
J
Post a Comment