Just Breathe and Receive…

“You’re such a good girl!” My landlady would tell me this the few times I delivered some homemade caramel rolls to her and her sister who lived across the hall from us. They were elderly, and so very kind to Kel and me.

Kel used to mimic her, taunting me about being so nice all the time—yes, it made me get flashy eyes. I was trying so hard to do the right thing all the time, and then I’d get teased about it and I’d question my sincerity and motive for doing and saying the things I did.

I’ve spent most of my life trying to be a good fellow being, to leave the world having done some good in it. I tried so hard to do it as perfectly as I could, but never quite succeeded—ever. At least not according to my ego’s expectations.

I’ve been writing quite a bit on Facebook, as well as here—and in the last week I’ve found myself worrying about my use of cuss words in both places. My mom and dad didn’t raise me to use them at all—and I have to admit, the urge has been very strong to go back through all my comments and posts and either delete them entirely or edit out the naughty words.

I reread through them, cringing, but I haven’t allowed myself to delete any of it. Authenticity is important to me.

And sometimes I admittedly can’t resist using a little bit of shock and awe in my writings and speech. I know the occasional cuss word is probably not likely to gain me any more followers, but I sure have fun whipping one out every now and then.

My eighty-plus-year-old great aunt told me that a friend of hers (the widow of a medical doctor) said that cussing was a good way to lower blood pressure. So I observed my aunt relishing with joy, the flinging of expletives to her heart’s delight—and the delight was simply in doing something she’d never allowed herself to even try before. She wouldn’t quite go as far as the “F” word, but “shit” and “damn” were a “hell” of a lot of fun!

So every time I allow myself to go there, it frees something up in me, and I shift out of taking myself so seriously and, instead, start laughing at the things in life that sometimes have me feeling baffled, stymied, paralyzed, powerless. Funny what a naughty word can do.

As a little kid, some of my favorite moments were when my older brothers let me join them and their high school friends in their bedroom as they shared stories—many of them funny. It was so much fun, that as we all gathered around the kitchen table for a meal with everyone afterwards, I decided to try my own hand at making everyone laugh.

I lean over my plate trying to smother my giggle at the hilarity of it all and say, “Aw-Ugh! I think I’m going to throw up!” I burst out laughing and look around the table expecting to see the works holding their sides, only to be met with unbearable silence and discomfort.

Then Dad gives me a stern, disgusted, disappointed-in-you look and says quietly, “Pen, we don’t talk like that at the table.”

So, my moment as a comedian was extremely short-lived. But that little girl with the questionable taste in humor still pops embarrassingly forth every now and again. I love her and she still makes me grin in the moment, but sometimes, afterwards, I just want to shrink and sink into the ground and pretend she didn’t say what she just said.

I’ve had many a way-less-than-stellar moment—more than I care to remember, much less record for the world to see here. I have a deep-seated fear that it’ll cause people to reject me, not want to be with me.

A few nights ago I had the best dream:

Basically, LOVE was here to be with me. Love was symbolized as a beloved man in my life who I found myself barking with laughter with because I was so over-joyed to finally be together.

But, in the dream, I had just awakened from a night’s sleep and I found myself wanting to get cleaned up before we spent the rest of the day together. So I leave to “take care of business” only to find that there are other people along the way who have issues that I decide I need to help out first—some are dealing with releasing old hurts, others are dealing with their perception of lack of abundance.

My beloved had given me a gift—a pair of earrings—but I didn’t take the time to put them on. I was saving them until I was dressed up enough for them.

Ultimately, I never get my own releasing or cleaning up done and return to find that my loved one is going away for a bit. But just as my heart sinks at the prospect of him not staying with me, he reaches across the table to grasp my wrist to let me know that he’s not leaving me again--that his intention is to stay with me, to be with me for the rest of time.

I keep remembering that conversation I had with God years ago when I’d pleaded for help with the whole judging my neighbor thing. That voice within had said, “Penny—love yourself unconditionally FIRST. And the rest will then be easy.”

As the dream showed, I’ve been spending all this time FIRST loving everyone and everything outside of me, trying to make myself worthy of unconditional love.

I wasn’t allowing myself to receive the gift of it—symbolized by my not putting the earrings on the moment I unwrapped them.

It seems like an oxy-moron kind of thing: by its very definition, I don’t have to do, or prove, or be, anything in order to be loved UN-CONDITIONALLY.

All that is necessary is that I ALLOW MYSELF TO RECEIVE it!

So, these last few days I’ve been reminded to “JUST BREATHE and RECEIVE…Yes! Yes!”

And breathing it and a-receiving it I have been, that goofy little girl with the weird humor absolutely relishing it…


P.S. The man in my dream was my soulmate--me, my DIVINE MASCULINE--the partner to my DIVINE FEMININE. I used to feel him kissing me on the lips, sometimes while I was awake, and often in my dreams. For years, in my dreams, he was on the sidelines, just out of my reach. I could never seem to connect with him. It was so frustrating, because I was working so hard to get him to notice me, but no matter what I did, it was never enough, and I'd wake up disappointed. People mistakenly believe their soulmate is another person outside of you, but it's not. 

Your soulmate is you! It is you...

Or you could think of the dream being the story of the all-alone-feeling Little Human finally REALIZING and INVITING HOME its DIVINITY/Soul/Spirit. 

The important thing is, I had to CONSCIOUSLY CHOOSE to invite my divinity into my life as a human in order for it to come home to me in my present consciousness. As long as I kept it out there somewhere outside of me, while trying to perfect my little human story, I never really truly ALLOWED myself to RECEIVE all the love, grace and ease it had to offer. 

In short--we're all perfect already in all our human imperfection. There's nothing we need to fix. It's just a matter of consciously breathing until we tingle with the knowingness presence of our DIVINITY--and ALLOWING ourselves to RECEIVE the love of oneself...

How Do I Quit That Judging Habit?

One of the most exasperating challenges in this walk of mine has been how to quit judging—period. Just when I think I’ve got it licked, I find evidence of my own self-righteousness bleeping at me all over the place—the postings on my blog are littered with it. And that brings on feelings of self-shame which then seduces me into further recycling dramas, which are frankly getting extremely boring.

My little human ego mind will cover and deny and slink around the fact that I’m judging, thus getting judged (victimhood).

I’ve posted about studying my belief systems—and one thing I’ve found is that my emotions will cause things to manifest very quickly, especially when they’re connected to judgments I have. I’ve found that when I’m emotionally bracing myself for some shoe to fall because of believing I’m either wrong or right, I’m conjuring up a shoe to fall.

Jesus was not accusing or blaming me for being human when he stated, “Judge not, lest you be judged.”

He was reminding me of how I was unconsciously bringing forth (manifesting) the challenges I was experiencing in my life simply because I was deciding this was wrong or that was right.

By labeling it a “right choice” or a “wrong choice” I actually charged it into being an experience based in judgment. They are simply choices—period.

I remember my dad once telling me I was being selfish—and that “that was no way to be.” So that phrase, that’s no way to be, has been circling around in my consciousness ever since, and I’ve been looking at it from as many different perspectives as I can.

Every way that humans have been and are throughout millennia, are all ways of being. Selfish IS a way to be. And so is selfless and self-loving and self-condemning. These are all ways to be, compliments of the MOST LOVING ONE who gave us life and free choice.

Some choices may be painful, miserable ones—and I may hate them, but they don’t have to be labeled as “wrong choices.” They were just a choice that led to an experience that didn’t feel very good so I probably won’t choose that one again.

Likewise (and this is the tricky one for me because of pride or shame), some of my choices may be truly joy-filled and fun and exciting, but I’ve discovered that labeling them as a “right choice” has placed judgment in my creation, and that is going to bring about judgmental-charged consequences.

Anyway, that’s my latest and greatest.

I’m liking the idea of feeling and breathing and living just plain and simple GRATITUDE for this amazing gift of being able to experience first-hand my own choices…A special thanks to all who walked with me through my self-righteous way of being…