posted November 20, 2010 03:52 PM            

Speaking as someone who made the Great Wall of China look like a speed bump, I have to tell you, my walls did me more harm than good. They hurt me. It took me a very long time to figure out that my walls were keeping me lonely, isolated and scared. The walls kept out the bad guys, sure. They also kept out good guys, good friends and kept me from being my warm-hearted, genuine, authentic self. And…it’s COLD inside those walls. My own warm heart started growing icicles. It felt icky, yucky, blah.

I feel so much better about myself and about people in general since I’ve started letting my walls down. Plus, I trust myself more. I feel like a tiny little crb that ventured out of her shell and figured out I’m not nearly so helpless or vulnerable as I thought I was.

posted November 20, 2010 03:55 PM            

quote:

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The Language of Emotions: What Your Feelings Are Trying to Tell You

by Karla McLaren

quote:"Suicidal urges come forward when the difference between who you are in your deepest self and who youve become in this world of distractions and trauma is so extreme that it can no longer be tolerated. Suicidal urges are an emergencey message from lost parts of your psyche - parts that are in real danger of soul death in your current situation. If you can understand that the primal intelligence inside of you is and always will be dedicated to your survival and your wholeness, you'll be able to view your urge to suicide in a mythological and sacred way instead of treating it as a literal wish for physical death.

Suicidal urges arent literal death-wishes, they are actually the last resort of a soul lin torment. Suicidal urges arise ofter your fears have thoroughly destabilized you and become overwhelmed, and youve fallen into one endangering situation after another; after your angers have been crushed and your boundaries have been trampled, aftger youve been sepereated from your sadness and your grief and have fallen into unrelenting despair. Suicidal urgers arise after sever traumas have thrown you back and forth between the first two stages if traumatic initiaton so many times that youve become exhaused by loss after years of dissasociation, distraction, avoidance and addiction, and after shocks so profound that you can barely remember what normal life feelis like.

Your suicidal urges arise when you need enough energy to wrench yourself bodily, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually out of a situation that is killing you already.

Suicidal urges are your last defense, which is why they carry such intensity.

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posted November 20, 2010 04:00 PM            

I’m recognizing that breakthroughs happen like this:
crack crack crack
..
chip chip…
..
crack chip

...
.. Crumble!

and then you realize, oh, it’s just a tiny hole in the wall. Nevertheless, it’s encouraging.

Chip

chip

BOOM!

Another chunk.

This year – my “year of creating a breakthrough.” It’s 3/4 through and suddenly I’m thinking, I gotta get on top of this! My energy has started to swell up because I feel like I’m at the end of the race and I HAVE to run to make up for dragging all year.

Actually what’s happened is that all year there’s been a lot of this: chip chip.
crack.

Now I’ve got this CRUMBLE feeling where I can see a hole and a lot of light, and it seems like, why couldn’t I have had this energy and dedication all year!? Why was I mucking around all these months when I was supposed to be hammering away?

But this is how creating a breakthrough works. This feeling of energy and focus now is the culmination of a lot of tiny efforts each day to figure out what the hell to do.

In all the confusion and blind knocking around, I was doing what was possible. For about the first half of the year I was just sitting in the dark with my little pick axe, lazily hammering around in fits and starts. That is a HARD place to be. Why did I idle in that place for so long? Why wasn’t I hammering like I meant it?

In hindsight I can see that’s just how it goes and that’s how it had to be, because that’s the nature of creating a breakthrough.

Toward the end, when you see the light, and the big chunks of wall come down in hunks, that’s the physics of the universe. It’s the law of how things happen. Momentum gathers at the end (gaining momentum), it’s not there at the beginning.

I didn’t know at the beginning of this year what kind of a breakthrough to create or how to do it. I knew I wanted out of that black confusion. So I was trying anything I could try. Maybe going back to school would change me? Maybe dating? A boyfriend would surely help. A trip? Maybe I need to go to the gym. If I could just get my butt to the gym! THAT would be the answer.

When you don’t know what to do, you have to do any damn thing. And that’s difficult. So you have to give yourself credit and give yourself encouragement and take courage from your friends who say COURAGE! When you feel like you’re flailing around making zero progress. That’s really the time you need to give yourself the BIGGEST pat on the back. Because flailing around blindly in the dark is heroic, really. You’ve got nothing but the sparks of hope you can generate in your own heart to keep you going.

Anyone can tackle big achievements when they already know which way is up and the rocks are already coming down. Anyone can be remarkable when they already know they are going to be just fine.

The depressed and hopeless losers who keep trying to sort it out, those are the real heroes. That’s why everyone cheers an underdog. Because an underdog has no one betting on her to keep her spirits up, so we know that if she keeps trying, that’s really something.

Anyhow, this is my way of saying COURAGE! to all my friends here who are tapping away at their own breakthroughs, and to my future self who will inevitably forget this and be in a brand new cave at some point.

All that sadness and confusion and rooting around – just bear it and keep going. You’re doing the hardest part. It will be worth it.

and:

It may be that you are very lonely. And feel, rightly so, ill-equipped for life. And long for comfort. And worry that you are too broken and that it is too late and that you will always feel this way. Things may be bad. Legitimately. Hard and painful and lonely. And unfair. But, you are still alive. It costs you nothing to try again, and continue to try, to care for yourself and others in the way you wish to be cared for. You can accept that this is how it is, and try to keep going anyway.

It’s just an experiment at overcoming. You can continue to fail, and try again. The experiment isn’t over. It’s an experiment at discovering what you love. What will bring you joy. Where you can find ease. How you can learn, at any point, to become the sort of person who likes being alive.

posted November 22, 2010 04:13 AM            

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quote:

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"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies with in us."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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posted November 22, 2010 10:12 AM            

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quote:

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"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies with in us."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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posted February 24, 2011 09:07 PM            

I shared this idea with a client of mine named Patty, a few years ago. She was the only child of a tough, withholding single mother. She grew up in perpetual fear of her mom's disapproval and constant criticism. All of her life she was told, and felt, that she wasn't worth much. Seeking approval, nevertheless, and fighting off the plague of self-loathing that was projected on her at a young age, she was an exemplary person in every way: She was at the head of her class, a straight-A student, the neighbourhood's best babysitter, the most consistent volunteer and fund-raiser at her church, anda reliable neighbour and good friend to all. Yet she didn't love herself. She didn't even like herself. She couldn't even imagine doing so.

To protect herself from the psychic assaults on her Spirit from her ego, she gained weight slowly over time. By the time she was 50, she was 100 pounds overweight and climbing - both in self-loathing and despair as well as in pounds.

That's when we met. She attended a workshop I was giving in Chicago (where I live), in which I suggested that she treat her Spirit like a sacred and beloved guest in her heart. That idea captured her imagination.

"Coming from the South," she said with a giggle, "I always prided myself on being the world's best hostess. But when I came to hosting my Spirit, I was abominable and knew it. It was time to change, if for no other reason than that it was bad manners!"

She accepted the challenge on the spot and embraced her Spirit and began to honour it. She started to create a calm, peaceful atmosphere in her home. She monitored what she said about herself to other so as not to insult her Spirit. She prepared healthful, beautiful, fresh meals and took her time eating them so that her Spirit could enjoy them. She spoke to her Spirit with respect and affection and repeatedly thanked it for being in her heart, asking what she could do to make it feel more at home.

She stopped internally listening to the past negative feedback that had haunted her all her life and began to respect and honour her Spirit's voice instead.

Slowly things changed. The first thing she noticed was that she was sleep better; and as she slept better, she ate better - most notably, consuming less sugar just to get through the day. As she ate better, she felt better, so she started to be more active. As she did so, she made new friends and dropped some weight. She also stopped smoking (another unloving act) and got a new Job. A year and a half later, she met a new guy and got married - her first marriage at 53.

She's certain that she married because of her shift in identity. When she lived life beholden to her ego, she'd felt too unlovable to be close to anyone or let anyone get too close to her. As soon as she started attending to her Spirit with respect and care, she opened up.

On her third date with the man who's now her husband, he said, "I just love your Spirit."

"So do I," she replied. "Finally, so do I."

posted February 24, 2011 09:33 PM            

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What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world is immortal"~

posted March 16, 2011 01:36 PM            

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these—to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.”

&

“If you have attempted to fit whatever mold and failed to do so, you are probably lucky. You may be an exile of some sort, but you have sheltered your soul. There is an odd phonomenon that occurs when one keeps trying to fit and fails. Even though the outcast is driven away, she is at the same time driven right into the arms of her psychic and true kin, whether these be a course of study, and art form, or a group of people. It is worse to stay where one does not belong at all than to wander about lost for awhile and looking for the psychic and soulful kinship one requires. It is never a mistake to search for one one requires. Never.

While exile is not a thing to desire for the fun of it, there is an unexpected gain from it; the gifts of the exile are many. It takes out weakness by pounding. It removes whininess, enables acute insight, heightens intuition, grants the power of keen observation and perspective that the ‘insider’ can never acheive…. The wild psyche can endure exile. It makes us yearn that much more to free our own true nature and causes us to long for a culture to match. Even this yearning, this longing makes a person go on. It makes a woman go on looking, and if she cannot find the culture that encourages her, then she usually decides to construct it herself. And that is good, for if she builds it, others who have been looking for a long time will mysteriously arrive one day enthusiastically proclaiming that they have been looking for this all along.

A woman cannot make the culture more aware by saying ‘change.’ But she can change her own attitude toward herself, thereby causing devaluing projections to glance off. She does this by taking back her body. By not forsaking the joy of her natural body, by not purchasing the popular illusion that happiness is only bestowed on those of a certain configuration or age, by not waiting or holding back to do anything, and by taking back her real life, and living it full bore, all stops out. This dynamic self-acceptance and self-esteem are what begin to change attitudes in culture.”

posted March 16, 2011 01:44 PM            

"Baby steps are better than no steps at all"

posted March 16, 2011 01:55 PM            

K.C. and The Sunshine Band - Boogie Shoes

Toploader - Dancing in The Moonlight

posted March 16, 2011 02:10 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by teasel:
Just enjoying two days in a row of mostly feeling good (being up during the day helps a lot right now).

K.C. and The Sunshine Band - Boogie Shoes

Toploader - Dancing in The Moonlight

*dances* (The Rhodiola helps, too.)

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posted March 16, 2011 05:31 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by teasel:
“Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these—to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.”

&

“If you have attempted to fit whatever mold and failed to do so, you are probably lucky. You may be an exile of some sort, but you have sheltered your soul. There is an odd phonomenon that occurs when one keeps trying to fit and fails. Even though the outcast is driven away, she is at the same time driven right into the arms of her psychic and true kin, whether these be a course of study, and art form, or a group of people. It is worse to stay where one does not belong at all than to wander about lost for awhile and looking for the psychic and soulful kinship one requires. It is never a mistake to search for one one requires. Never.

While exile is not a thing to desire for the fun of it, there is an unexpected gain from it; the gifts of the exile are many. It takes out weakness by pounding. It removes whininess, enables acute insight, heightens intuition, grants the power of keen observation and perspective that the ‘insider’ can never acheive…. The wild psyche can endure exile. It makes us yearn that much more to free our own true nature and causes us to long for a culture to match. Even this yearning, this longing makes a person go on. It makes a woman go on looking, and if she cannot find the culture that encourages her, then she usually decides to construct it herself. And that is good, for if she builds it, others who have been looking for a long time will mysteriously arrive one day enthusiastically proclaiming that they have been looking for this all along.

A woman cannot make the culture more aware by saying ‘change.’ But she can change her own attitude toward herself, thereby causing devaluing projections to glance off. She does this by taking back her body. By not forsaking the joy of her natural body, by not purchasing the popular illusion that happiness is only bestowed on those of a certain configuration or age, by not waiting or holding back to do anything, and by taking back her real life, and living it full bore, all stops out. This dynamic self-acceptance and self-esteem are what begin to change attitudes in culture.”

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

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I LOVE Clarissa Pinkola Estes.
You wonder how these wonderful woman like she and Eleanor Roosevelt get their wisdom.
My guess is suffering