Messy Guru

A Successful Year

  

I had a recent epiphany with the meaning of the word success.

It seemed strange that I had not really understood its meaning and how it was defined and applied to my lot in life.  The word in the past was applied to my current status and seemed to be "about" things I acquired rather than a change of perception, pathway or reaching a signpost thats signals I am headed in the right direction.  

My partner's definition of success is the "overcoming of obstacles" .... while walking a path from one position to achieve the wisdom needed to continue the journey with experience in a way that strengthens your mind, body and soul.

What surprised me is he did not include material objects, money, fame, etc in his definition.  My definition seemed to be a mixed bag of tricks that could be moved or taken from you at any moment based on current events in your life or the way your obituary was written.  

Odd.

When I glance backwards for a minute I see a lot of "successes" along my pathway and where I am currently residing in with his definition and sprinkle of achievements in mine.  One of the dictionary's definition of success is "favorable outcome".

What confused me is at what point can my old definition be applied to my obituary of sorts.  It came from others perception of me.  I had no say in the matter and from someone in a moment of time to a sudden explosion of embolden emotions from others.  Like a flash of truth from a camera light flung carelessly about a room.

I sometimes complain to my partner and to my work companions that we never celebrate the current success we have had or the "favorable outcomes" we had when the last big project was accomplished.  An endless list of things to do and a tight rope of walking a fine line between success and failure.

I have had the biggest breakthroughs while working with acrylic paints when I push myself to the very edge of failure.  The paint brush seemed to know when  a stopping point of now was more effective than pushing for an easy definition or stroke of success.  

I believe joy and success also resides there in that space between freedom in the present moment and the unknown expectation of what is there waiting in the next breath.  

One of my favorite spiritual teachers Byron Katie, would define success, as any state or position you are currently residing in, even if you are just sitting there quietly in a chair breathing.  She would be thrilled even how successful you were while doing just that without a story of the past, future or the agonizing task of tightly "holding" people accountable for their actions now or in the past.  

While lying in my bed yesterday after my surgery,  I looked up the definition of current and past ailments and afflictions as defined by Louise Hay, "...causes of illness however mild or severe is an indicator of your current emotional state, caused by your thoughts and focus."

Appendicitis causes:  "Fear, fear of life, and blocking the flow of good".

Hernia causes: "Ruptured relationships. Strain, burdens, incorrect creative expression".

What I realized is while that is true for me, it also meant that I have been successful simultaneously with my new definition of success:

Success is the current moment of whatever is happening in my life without my story and your beliefs about it, or a label of judgement, guilt or blame placed upon top of it.

It is what it is.

And life cannot get better than that.

 

 

Love Changes Everything

I recently sat with my partner before and after his recent surgery.  It seemed like a kind thing to do.  He was nervous before the procedure and I wanted to assure him that it would be ok.  I myself, having had the same procedure, knew what to expect afterwards.

After his procedure was finished I was allowed to sit with him while he recovered from the anesthesia and the invasive procedure.  He was still sleeping when I sat down next to him and I watched him breathe slowly in and out.  

In the stillness of the room I watched my hand slowly move and caress his cold hands and held it warmly.  While I was doing this I was observing my emotions slowly changing.  The concern I had been holding was replaced with tears in my eyes.  I felt a blanket of love fall out of me and unto his body and Being.  It seemed so natural and yet it was so fresh and new.   The love was coming out of me and into the room and around him.  

I watched spellbound.

Love.

Pure and joyful like gently falling snow.

When he awoke he slowly reached his hands out to me and tried to touch my face.  Gentle tears fell down from his eyes.

"I love you" he whispered.

"I love you too" I responded.

The doubt I had about being capable of truly loving another human slowly left me.  On a certain level I knew people "liked" me and that seemed and felt like love, but this was far different.  

Love Is not a choice like I had imagined it would be, rather it's a state of being. Complete and whole.  It moves accordingly and without an agenda.  Dr. David Hawkins defines it this way:

"Love is misunderstood to be an emotion; actually, it is a state of awareness, a way of being in the world, a way of seeing oneself and others.” 

I agree.

 

 

The Drama of Trauma

In Annie Roger's second book, "The Unsayable:  The Hidden Language of Trauma" she writes:

via messyguru.typepad.com

I wrote this 4 years ago and I've spent the last 5 days still allowing the trauma to to slowly leave my body. The only way out is through.

Shame on Love

I sometimes believe from time to time that I am healed.  I'm not sure if and when I will be healed but it feels like it always right about now or I just haven't recognized it just yet.  It's not really out of arrogance, but an erroneous assumption I make.

My therapist and our partners show us otherwise. 

Recently my therapist pointed out to us in couples therapy, that the dysfunctional family that I grew up with was influencing my current behavior.  I felt the sudden rush of shame and immediately I began to doubt that I had anything to offer another human being.  

I sat there stunned in silence and anxiety.

I was stunned that these old, uninvited ghosts were arriving to stake claim yet again on my sense of Being.  A repeated record that had been indelibly scratched on my psyche.  A fatal flaw of sorts.  

How can this still be there?

When will I ever be free to express and receive love open and joyously?

My therapist and I completed an EMDR session on this and I was surprised to find that I had a hidden belief that I am not worthy of love and a adult relationship.  It seemed to match the shame I felt.

We dug deeper and I was asked to close my eyes and find a memory of when this felt like this in the past.  My mind immediately drifted back into our old house and into the sauna with my Uncle.  This twisted scene that I thought I had dealt with and processed.

But.

There was more to be unraveled and the hidden belief sat there like I did as a boy.  What I had discovered was correct.  The belief stood in tact.  I was unworthy of love an adult relationship in my mind.  We worked it loose and I then I went looking for proof in my current life.  

My behaviors of receiving and giving love was directly influenced by this belief.  I felt a sudden sense of relief as my body and chakra's relaxed. I finally had an answer why I could not just relax into a relationship.

I was holding myself and my inner child to a belief that was no longer true.

What I've come to realize and feel is that life brings to us these moments to set us free.  I used to see them as an act of war and the other person the enemy.  That war is over.

Now I will focus on the present moment and bring my new understanding to my partner and feel the love wash over me.  

I am worth it.  

Damit.

  

River Ganga

I recently traveled over 8,000 miles to the country of India.  It had been a lifetime dream of mine to visit this land that I found oddly familiar and life affirming.  I visited many places while in the country and the place I found to be the most spiritual and remarkable is the city of Rishikesh in India's northern state of Uttarakhand in the Himalayan foothills by the Ganges River.  The river is considered holy, and the city is renowned as a center for studying yoga and meditation.  Walking around the foothills and near the river is this raw spiritual energy that I found healing and tangible.

Electric even.

Chanting from a temple across the river Ganga was ringing with familiar music I've been listening to for years.  All the years of reading books about it are true.  One must be there to experience it.  Perhaps only a earnest spiritual student comes in contact with it.  

"Hindus consider the waters of the Ganga to be both pure and purifying.  Nothing reclaims order from disorder more than the waters of the Ganga.  Moving water, as in a river, is considered purifying in the Hindu culture because it is thought to both absorb impurities and take them away.  What the Ganga removes, however is not necessarily physical dirt, but symbolic dirt; it wipes away the sins of the bather, not just of the present, but of a lifetime."

I had the wonderful opportunity to get into the Ganga via a raft.  Halfway down we jumped into the river.  This part is really hard to explain in simple words of what happened when my body was full immersed in it.  

Joy.

Freedom.

Love.

The water caressed my body and I could feel like I was flying/floating in the air.  It was cold and comfortable.  Cloudy yet clear and tasted wonderful.  

Home.

A seventeenth century poet Jagannatha came to the Ganga in despair and wrote:

"I come as an orphan to you, moist with love.

 I come without refuge to you, giver of sacred rest.

 I come a fallen man to you, uplifter of all.

 I come undone by disease to you, the perfect physician.

 I come, my heart dry with thirst, to you, ocean of sweet wine.

 Do with me whatever you will."

I remember standing up after getting out of the raft and I could feel this strong energy lifting me up and centering my chakras.  

Yes, "A river moist with love."

I am grateful and filled with Grace.

 

Paint it Black

A childhood friend of mine recently reached out to me after many years of righteous silence.  The kind of silence that adds a deeper shade of shame and it penetrates deeply into my sordid world.

His words backed by biblical proof and the seemingly indifference of the laughter, joy and memories we shared together for so many years.  It seemed impossible the years of experiences and memories had added up to this. 

I often wondered how he explained away my existence so easily.

He seemed to hold the proof of my poor choices of a wicked sinner that will be sentenced to a life of eternal damnation.  A stupid choice from such a simple menu of ideas and beliefs, mixed with his sense of assuredness that only the chosen few have the right to express so arrogantly. 

A long slow burn of a jaded soul painted black.

Black like the night or a fire pit on a cold, frigid morning.

His voice on the phone however, seemed different this time.  

A familiar voice brought back to life by a change of heart.

I immediately felt at ease.  We quickly moved from the talk of our daily jobs and moved backwards and forwards towards our life of our memories and laughter.  It moved effortlessly from picture to picture.  Almost as though a brilliant film director decided to do a short documentary film on the story of us:  How a man can change his mind about the past and heal the present by witnessing another man's pain and torment.  An atonement of sorts of an afflicted man.

We talked for hours.  Our minds flooded with hilarious scenarios and outrageous laughter.  I could barely keep up with his quick wit and photographic memory.  I slowly brought him up to speed on my own life experiences.  He seemed surprised I had traveled into so many dark holes and stepped upon so many land mines.   

It felt good to be heard and validated.

I didn't seem to mind what he had said to and about me in the past.

I also didn't forget it.

It seemed to place a marker on just how far we can go when we stop trying to be "right" and truly listen to another human being.  I could feel my right to exist in his memory and slowly coming back to life in mine.  The painful memories came out of the darkness and into the light of day.  A healing balm slowly covered up the empty years.

It's easy to forgive the truth.

Even if your right.

  

 

No Room

I had the opportunity to watch the movie, "The Room" last night.  I found myself surprisingly having feelings of panic, fear and anxiety.  I was determined to watch it to the end no matter how I responded to the scenes of each moment.

A synopsis of this film in short would be:

"A young woman who has been held in captivity in a small shed for seven years tries to make as normal a life as she can for her five-year-old son, Jack, who knows her only as "Ma." When Ma and Jack escape their captor, Old Nick, they must cope with the outside world and forge relationships with Ma's conflicted family."

It sounds almost to trivial to describe it in this way.  

I was consistently in awe and terror of how this boy who turned six, came to see his in world by living solely in a one room shed for his entire life of captivity.  His profound questions of his "reality" and view of a world of a room with only a skylight to the outside world. 

His mother told him a false narrative of his world from the beginning of how the world was and is from the perspective of the room.  A television would bring in a 3 dimensional slice of this pretend world and it complicated her story to his bright mind.  

When he turned six, she decided to tell him the truth of where he was and tore down all the barriers to her story and felt he was "ready" to hear the truth of their current situation.

His struggle to make sense of her words and the pretend story of his life felt familiar to my path of reconciliation of the truth of my family of origin. The words not matching reality and the long struggle to differentiate between fact and fiction.  

At times he would want to go back to his room and to the only life he had  known.  His family's inability to help him navigate his new world left me frustrated and I could see now how powerful these adults had on him whether to allow him to be free with his own experience of his life or follow the models of their own perceptions of reality.

My own struggle with this movie was puzzling and it took about a day (and a session with my therapist with EMDR) to work my way out of the "room" in my mind and the realization that a thin facade had still left its mark on my freedom.  

Looking back I can see how I was taught to see the "world" in a certain way.  Punished for not going along with the family narrative.  Shunned for not keeping it going within the family.    

It appears that we hard wired to see the world through the adults around us.  I am surprised how much I underestimated the effects this had on my perceptions of this world.

The proof was in my adult behaviors and the view I had once believed to be true.

I am still untangling some wires and beliefs.

It has been a long and arduous process.

The Room is empty except for a belief or two I have not yet discovered.

 

Being Without You

I had a profound insight during my yoga class yesterday.  I love it when that happens.  Ironically it was when I could barely keep my breath and posture in any sort of alignment with the pose.  The tortured feeling of staying in it for the intrinsic benefits and the relief when you finally do change positions.

Perhaps this is one of the "secrets" of yoga.  To bring forth in us the unfelt and unexpressed emotions we could not process or feel as a child or in Reality.  The benefit of staying on your mat and in the posture stimulates the subconscious to release the limited beliefs we have about ourselves.

I struggled over the weekend with the smoldering feelings of being "responsible but not in control" of a situation that brought up shades of shame, guilt and self worth.  This particle moment involved a long time friend and their words and actions said about me to another.

Odd and peculiar because it had nothing to do with me and my actions.

Yet.

I somehow owned them as if I had done and said it.  A strange paradox of sorts.  I was owning it because they used my name to their advantage  despite of its repercussions for me.  

But wait.

I still had nothing to do with it.

The epiphany was that I am not responsible for anyone's actions or words.  I am not in control of your feelings, thoughts, beliefs, or your perceptions of me. 

You are.

This realization quickly spread from this person and to others, families, groups of people, religions, and it soon encompassed the entire world.  Long held beliefs and histories of old relationships fell away.  This "my fault" mentality gave way to my new found freedom.  A crack of light quickly turned into a blaze of glory.

I could plainly see how this started in my dysfunctional childhood and carried forward by my mind to keep me in check without an escape and the other party free of their own actions and responsibilities.

Now.  

You are on your own.

 

Holding Back the Years

I recently celebrated my 53rd birthday.  I cannot ever remember a birthday that had so much to celebrate about.  It was filled with an endless list of gifts of kindness, love, and joy.  To be seen and heard is the highest compliment l can receive.   I have been seeking a balanced state of equanimity.

A few weeks prior to my birthday I had the sudden realization of my "right to exist" as a human being.  To claim it without any apologies.  It seemed like an odd realization fraught with delusion and denial.  An energy within seemed to fill in the empty spaces of my mind that claimed I could not exist.

The day after my birthday I remembered a dream where I was in my hometown in a play where I could not remember my lines and my mother and family of origin saying nothing and watching me struggle to find my lines and my way.  I woke up in state of grief.  

Immense grief.

I kept feeling this feeling and wondered out loud what this was tied to or if it had any implications on my current behavior.  With the help of my therapist and utilizing EMDR we found the belief that held the immense grief.  

The hidden, subconscious belief was that I had no right to "exist" outside the family of origin and the shame I felt as a child to be amongst them was part of my DNA.  A large family headed by a pedophile and his wife of an extreme form of religion.  A complex maze of behaviors based on sin and authority.  

What we discovered is the shame that I felt as a child was a "correct" feeling and that I no longer as an adult needed to feel to take "part" in their idea of "family" or feel the shame of not being part it.

Bewildering in its simplicity. 

I discovered that by extracting myself from them has led me to the state of Being I had on my birthday.  The right to exist without shame from my family of origin.  

My birth mother sent me a postcard a few days later prior to my therapy session.  She now sends postcards so I cannot send them back or I can plainly see what she has written.  It reminded me of the shame of my younger years.  As if to say, "You are part of this shame no matter how long and far you travel away from us".

You could safely argue it's a Happy Birthday card from a well intentioned mother.  I don't see it that way anymore.  I asked for space and she repeatedly keeps walking over boundaries I have put firmly in place. A thinly veiled expression of, "How dare you" as she would often say.

Now it's a gentle reminder of my choice to leave and exist without shame had been a correct choice and my journey to sanity.  To forge a path of existence away from the cycle of abuse and define and live in a space of freedom.

To this I say.

Happy Birthday Carl

  

Awake My Soul

One of the hidden benefits of dating another being is that they show you all the unhealed and hidden places that lie within waiting to be exposed to the light.   Its safe place silently tucked away from your awareness and only a sudden prick of its tissue will cause a minor earthquake or a tsunami capable of tearing down the walls of your invisible shield or visible mask.

I am reading a book by Harville Hendricks called, "Getting The Love You Want".  In it he digs into this a bit deeper:

"You realize that your love relationship has a hidden purpose--the healing of the childhood wounds.  Instead of focusing entirely on surface needs and desires, you learn to recognize the unresolved childhood issues that underlie them.  When you look at relationships with this X-ray vision, your daily interactions take on more meaning.  Puzzling aspects of your relationship begin to make sense to you, and you have a greater sense of control."

What seems perfectly obvious is that when this innocent prick of heat infiltrates your inner being, the other person is the perfect culprit.  If he would just stop using his tongue to formulate words our lives and dinner would be simply beautiful.

Except.

It's not his words that are the problem.  It's the reaction from within that turns up the heat.  A slow burn.  A sudden burst of sunshine on bloodshot eyes.  A shout of snow on warm skin.

A holy war.

In my case, it was a casual question of my mother and her seemingly innocent parenting skills that are often defended, and excused away by every well intentioned person I have ever met.

It surprised me that a small burning ember still was smoldering underneath.  This age old story of me and her.  So sickening to my family of origin and surprising to the people who have just met me.  

And I carrying the flag of victimhood like a true martyr.

What I needed was clarity and space. 

And the courage to face it once and for all.

Damn it.

So, with the encouragement of my boyfriend, we enlisted the help of a trained therapist I had worked extensively with in the past.   He utilizes EMDR to look at the hidden beliefs about myself that arise from traumatic moments in my past to resolve the anxiety and fear and to look at it again from an adult perspective.  

What I discovered with this therapy is that my "mother" had never been an adult.  She was incapable of protecting me from the people around me.  The expectation and insistence of her of being a "mother" was causing me a lot of suffering.  I now see her as a sick and young molested girl.  

Untreated psychologically, and all of her "sins" forgiven by a misguided religion. Free of the responsibility of facing any of her mothering shortfalls and associations with her pedophile husband.

Fair?

No.

She saw me as a bearer of "sin" and the truth of her past life as "filth" and now she has been given the title of "white as snow" with the blessings of her religion.

I once accepted this absurd notion of her and myself.

I am no longer responsible for her lack of mothering skills.

I brought to her only the truth and the Light.

She hid it beneath me.

I gave it back to her this weekend.

And that set me free.

Awake my Soul.