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…

Moments I Fall in Love All Over Again

I know it seems like I’ve been writing about “my angst” an awful lot lately, but truthfully, I’m realizing more with each passing day how beautifully the Universe and God/My Divine Source has supported me in every moment of my being. I’ve been, and am, abundantly gifted with whatever I desire in every single moment—without any efforting on my part—unless, of course, I’m wanting to experience that.

I picture it as all sorts of wavy energies coming together to burst into beingness all these amazing, and sometimes perplexing, things in my life. The energies take the forms of everything touchable--from a tiny grain of sand sparkling on my shoe to our beloved Max and Molly cats to this house that I call home. It flows outward to become the community that I play with. And that expands even further out to become the planet on which I live.

A whole world is created magically just for me to experience—and I’m the source and center of this amazing bubble of reality that is mine. I’m feeling more at Home here than I ever have before. The Kingdom of Heaven truly feels right at hand—right here on Earth where I am.

One thing I’ve recognized more and more fully as I go along is how truly we love one another unconditionally. All of us—every single human that was and is, has loved, and loves, unconditionally. Even when we were acting out love dramas loaded with conditions—the real thing was there right in the middle of it all.

Here are some of the moments when I fall in love with my world and those in it, all over again and again and again:

I woke up this morning with Kelly’s arm around me snuggling me close. I headed to the bathroom to turn the faucet on for Molly to get a drink, and Kel went downstairs to put together our morning cappuccinos. As I joined him in the kitchen, Max and Molly were sitting right behind him on the floor, waiting patiently for the food he had assembled to put in dishes for them after he finished frothing the creamer and milk for our coffee.

I was putting dishes away that I’d left in the sink to dry overnight when I heard him cuss. He’d accidentally dumped his freshly frothed milk all over the counter. My instinct was to intervene and grab the dishcloth and start wiping it up before it got to the edge and spilled over onto the floor. But something had me hesitate and watch instead—and I’m SO glad I did!

Kel stepped across the kitchen to grab a pancake spatula and a big serving spoon out of the utensil drawer. He used these to scrape up and save his precious froth off the counter and return it to our coffee cups. It looked and sounded like he was back working at his old fast-food job at Max’s Drive-in, wielding his utensils at the grill.

I burst out laughing. If I’d allowed my old tendencies to interfere and started cleaning up after him, I’d have missed out on one of the most prized and entertaining moments of my life.

As it was, I watched a new day come to life as a sparkling frost-covered morning outside while I sipped my delicious, frothy cappuccino (counter scraped) in my warm home. I had a contented Molly stretched out on the table beside me, along with Max gazing out the patio door from his place on the rug next to my feet. And I listened to Kel sipping his coffee and singing along with some song he was working on in the room below us. All was truly well in my world.

About a month ago, Kel came to find me the moment he got home from work to show me what he’d been perfecting with his co-workers all day. He bent his knees in something of a lunge, and rocked back and forth on his feet as he pumped his arms in rhythm and sang, “Bow-chicka-wow-wow.” We’d just watched the movie, Dear Frankie (one of my all-time favorites), where a little nine-year-old boy was doing a similar dance in the hallway outside his friend’s apartment as he waited for the door to be answered. God--my husband was adorable!

A few days later I was passing through the rec room where Kel was practicing guitar when he said to me, in reference to himself, “I suck. I should just give up and quit.”

My usual, exasperatingly useless response was to chew him out for being so cruel to himself. But this time I decided to hold my tongue and leave the room. I returned to the room a minute or so later and asked him what he wanted from me when he said things like that about himself in my presence, specifically for my ears.

He replied, “Tell me I suck and that I should give it up.”

So I obliged him and said, “You suck. You should give it up.”

And I walked out of the room grinning to myself as one of the great loves of my life continued playing his guitar.

“The World is My Oyster,” said the Pearl…

A Painful Lump, An Answering Dream, Love of Angry Me

The last week or so, I’ve had a lump in my lower left-side back near the waistline that’s been painful again. The pain comes and goes, and I have probably had the lump all my life—just lately in the last decade I’ve pinpointed it to a more specific area. Normal activities like snow shoveling or vacuuming, sometimes even walking, don’t feel so good when it hits—so I lay low for a bit and listen to what the pain has to tell me.

Pain, for me, is a way of my body supporting me in helping me to realize:
1. That I’m running away from myself.
2.That I need to stop and listen so I can become aware of my feelings and thoughts at that time.
3. I need to lovingly care for myself.

As I readied for sleep last night, I rubbed the painful spot and chose to ask my dreams to show me the underlying core energy struggle/wound that was resulting in the pain I felt.

The answering dream was a night terror:

In the dream, I was in a recently vacated room with two other guys who felt like friends of mine. I reached down to pick up a pile of blown-up photos left on a table. The photos were of murder victims and of people’s hands that had fingers severed off through torture. The murderer’s appearance in the room felt imminent, so I grabbed the pictures knowing he was coming for them, and I left with one of the guys. As I crawled across the driver’s seat of my friend’s vehicle to get into the passenger seat, I noticed that my side of the vehicle seemed frozen over with a thick layer of ice in the interior (like in a frosted deep freezer). Occasionally water from the ice would drip on me.

The dream shifted and I found myself in a café with mobster-like men. One of them grabbed me and slammed my head repeatedly on the table with a metal napkin dispenser. I seemed to be in and out of my body—one moment it was me being beat-up, the next I was watching him do it to my sister. I was trying so hard to scream but something kept interfering with my ability to make a sound. I was terrified for the two of us.

Somehow I slipped free of the two men at the table. One of them was grappling to hold onto my sister with the intent to kill her, and in a blaze of pure rage I plunged a spoon into his neck to stop him.

Thankfully, I woke up then--though, I awoke terrified, drenched in sweat and with a sore throat. And even after getting up to use the bathroom and taking some breaths to center myself, I was still shaken up enough from it to make it difficult to return to sleep right away.

In yesterday’s posting to my blog, I’d written about recently becoming aware of how I emotionally protected people from experiencing the consequence of my anger with them when they judged or tried to control me, or someone I love.

My temper scares the crap out of me—and I’m really quite harmless. But my feelings of anger frighten me so much so, that I look back often at what I write, whether on this site or in personal emails, to see how harsh I’ve been in response to my feeling of being attacked in some manner.

I have to say, my writing shows how I mentally try to handle the anger I actually feel because I’m terrified of losing control like in that nightmare and actually murdering someone. The anger I actually feel is more like a raging blast of energy that’s pretty much yelling, “Back off NOW!!!”

Back in 1998, a dog mauled our one-year-old Molly cat right outside the door in front of me. I watched him drop his mouth over her entire front end and pick her up and shake her. My mother instinct kicked in and I slammed open that door screaming and beating on that dog until he dropped Molly and ran off. He was a big dog, too, either a mastiff or a boxer. Rationally, I know not to interfere in dog and cat fights—but, my well-being wasn’t even a thought for me in that moment. All I knew was, “Make him stop!”

If I’d had anything handier than my two bare hands, I’m afraid I would have killed that dog. And I love dogs, too.

In a nutshell—as I’ve written many times over here—anger is one of those HUMAN emotions that has been a real challenge for me. I’ve tried to keep such tight control of my expression of it that it’s actually physically painful for me. My body has just been alerting me to what I’ve been doing with it—reminding me that I’m better off expressing it the moment anger hits, rather than stuffing it until it’s got nowhere to go except to explode in order to release the energy. I choose to HONOR MYSELF and whoever is playing my button-pusher by releasing it before it gets to that point.

There are certain things in this world that are taking place that do anger me. I don't like gossip and back-biting—and I’ve quietly suppressed myself while in the presence of someone engaging in that. I hurt from being in the presence of such malevolence. I get angry at people forcing their beliefs on someone else—whether it’s forcing them on me, on their own child, or on some distant person in a third world country. I dislike wars and finger-pointing. These are to name a few.

Guess I’m really just tired of all the unnecessary fighting, period. I see us—humanity--as capable of having so much more enjoyable lives together. I envision a world where we’re celebrating our diversity and uniqueness along with all those things we have in common with every living thing on this beloved Earth. I guess I’d rather we looked for ways to connect with each other rather than setting our sights on getting the others to conform to our expectations.

Maybe making that vision a reality first involves allowing myself to get upset and angry with the old ways…

And I don’t believe I have to kill anyone off either…just be aware of how I feel and honor that in my expression of all that I am…

I Already Found All My Answers

Yesterday I got an email from a concerned Christian who told me, “I will pray for you, Penny. God loves you and He sent His only Son to die for you. I hope you will immerse yourself in His Word so you can find what you’re looking for. God Bless…”

I love the Harry Potter series, and she’d forwarded to me the day before, a message of someone’s interpretation on the “wickedness” of it--to which I requested her to not send me anymore such filth.

To yesterday’s message, I simply replied back, “I’ve already found ALL of my answers.”

I realized something in the last several days that I hadn’t been aware of before. Because I am so sensitive to the emotions all around me—an attribute of all humans that I have just a bit more of than most, called empathy—I have had a tendency all this time to emotionally protect everyone around me from pain of any kind.

And often, I’ve done it by unconsciously sacrificing my authentic self—I’ll literally take the hits emotionally for someone else’s choices. And often, I’ve been protecting them from my own expression of anger towards them simply because they’ve chosen to judge me or someone else. And that’s not honoring myself, nor does it allow the choice-maker to fully immerse in their created experience.

For instance, a phone solicitor calls me on my private line or a government employee solicits me for information and I think to myself, “Well they’re desperate. They need the money to live on. I’ll make it easy for them and not make waves.” And then they yammer and waste my time and suck my energy. And I’ve allowed it all because I felt sorry them.

Never mind that I consciously chose not to take on jobs such as theirs back when I was feeling desperately insecure in the financial area. I couldn’t personally stomach forcing someone to buy something or using intimidation tactics to coerce another just in order for me to get a paycheck. Yet, here I thought I had to take it easy on those who evidently didn’t contemplate those things.

Same with those pushy self-proclaimed Christians (not all Christians—just the ones who have tried to force their beliefs on me). I’ve been again taking the hits of my own anger for them because I recognized the misery and suffering that that individual was in, and I didn’t want to pile more pain on them.

People are driven to find comfort in God when they are feeling at their worst about themselves—I did that myself. But, if they are going to continue poking me, well, I’m done allowing it. They can reap what they’re choosing to sow with my blessing—even if it means they’re probably going to get poked back.

By admonishing me to “immerse myself in God’s Word,” my concerned Christian was telling me to study the Bible. But had she really cared to connect with me, she would have known that I read her precious scriptures years ago—pretty much the whole book.

And I followed what was stated in there for me—the gist of which simply said, “Don’t study the literal word. The Word—the Expression of God--lies within you, is you—study that, study you, Penny.”

As far as I’m concerned the Real Word of God is alive in each of us and in every single thing in the Universe.

The Song of Solomon, for me, very eloquently tells the story of every human that ever was and is. Like the bridegroom, each of our human halves goes searching for our other half, the bride/God/Our True Love thinking she’s “out there” separate from us. And after wandering all over the place, outside of us, for awhile, we realize in the end that the bride/God has been with us the entire time—an actual essential part of ourselves, within us, from the very beginning all through to the end. We just couldn’t seem to perceive her—like we forgot she was there until one day we flipped some switch in ourselves that revealed her to us in all her glory.

I love reading good, inspiring, up-lifting books—and the Bible is filled with many inspiring stories. But to analyze any book, for me, is to diminish my enjoyment of it. I sometimes read a favorite novel several times, and discover layers of insight that I missed previously—and I’ll celebrate those when I realize them.

I loved reading the books assigned us for English classes—but I hated being required to answer questions someone made up surrounding the story. I call it being led intellectually (a literal word study) instead of just exposing someone to a story and letting that individual decide if they find anything of value in it. I love when people share with me the parts they liked about a story—and I like to share those myself. But I find no joy in using it as a standard of judgment or measurement to use on myself or on another.

I have no answers for anyone else—and I’m not going to pretend I do, and force my ideas upon another. I know WE ARE ALL CONNECTED, and I’ll do no harm to anyone, myself included, because I know that to intentionally hurt another is to intentionally hurt myself.

I will also no longer take the painful hits for another’s choice to strike out at me or try to control me…if I’m angry with you for judging me, so be it…FEEL THAT! Ha!

My Idea of A Dark Night of the Soul

When I was confronted with questioning a belief system that I’d so firmly accepted as my truth for a good portion of my life it caused a highly traumatic commotion in me for a period of time--emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually. I’ve deemed to call such an event A Dark Night of the Soul.

It felt as though the whole foundation beneath me had been terrifyingly removed and that any step in a new direction could be a wrong one. I was paralyzed for a time until I just reminded myself to breathe—just breathe. Deep breaths down into my belly, down into my toes. And I literally held myself, cried as I often needed to, yelled if I needed to—all in my safe and sacred space while I searched my own soul.

And somehow in that, I managed to move enough old stuff out in order to crack open a new door to explore. In looking back, something deep inside me intrinsically believed that life on earth—my life, all life—was a tremendously unconditionally loving gift from God/Source of All That Is. And I’m certain it was that belief that pulled me through my darkest nights.

Through the years I’ve had well-meaning Christians trying to warn me off reading certain materials, believing certain things or doing certain things a particular way. They were afraid that I was destined to an eternal hell unless I followed their rules.

How many of those particular people, I wonder, have asked themselves the question of WHY my supposed “hell destination” bothers them?

Could it be, on some level, that that particular person is disagreeing with the condemning, judgmental god they’ve believed in and worshipped all those years?

Could it be that it would be hell for that “faithful Christian” to watch me roasting, toasting and burning eternally? I guess I’d like to think that was so.

Talk about a Dark Night of the Soul…

“So—What do you do?”

“So—what do you do?” That’s probably been the single most difficult and challenging question for me to answer. When someone asks my husband about me he segues over to how great a cook I am—but I’m really not that great, and I’m not being modest.

I study belief systems—pretty much starting, and ending, with my own. And, as one can imagine, that area of passion has taken me on many different tangents.

How did I get into this?

I guess I woke up too many mornings feeling like that victim I detested so much, thinking to myself, “Damn! I woke up again—here goes one more day to get through.”

And then I’d literally feel myself physically and emotionally bracing to plow through whatever painful something or other that I felt certain was headed my way. Even moments of pure pleasure and happiness were overshadowed by the next thing bound to trip me up and take me somewhere painful I didn’t want to go.

Truthfully, I have lived a blessed life—I was born a member of a wonderful family and I had parents who were the savory salt of the earth. Yes, I lost some people and friends very dear to me fairly early on in life as well as in more recent years, the passing of my mom and dad. But, frankly, my stories are no more tragic or beautiful than another human’s—just uniquely my own.

I know, and appreciate, my story like no other person can—and I’ve discovered that that is a responsibility I take both seriously and humorously. God blessed me with this gift of being alive in a human body that gets to experience TOUCH in all its many forms. So I decided that I wasn’t enjoying life enough and I began to work on adjusting my own attitude about it.

I have Dad to thank for making me so aware of the power of a belief system. I observed him in those final weeks choosing physical discomfort over relief, simply because he believed that petroleum-based lotions were poisonous to him. The oxygen tubes in his nose were drying out his nasal passages and a lotion was recommended to address it, but he was unwilling to even try it. For him, I could see clearly, that that petroleum-based lotion was going to be toxic if we tried to force it on him—he was so adamant about not going there.

There were many instances that summer with Dad and others that mirrored this power of belief for me—most of the beliefs were based in fear. And the thing that made me so aware of it was because many of the beliefs were the same as my own, or had been at some point in my life. This got me looking more closely at my own stuff and questioning whether it was true, or if I’d somehow made it true simply by accepting that it was so.

It got me looking at the concepts of research and facts—and I began to question whether an actual scientific blind study could be completely unbiased—or if the researcher wasn’t somehow unconsciously skewing the study to match his belief systems.

Some part deep down inside of me keeps feeling like this reality I’m living is actually a very grand illusion/playground—and that God gave me the ability to be the front and center creator of my own life, with His/Her unconditional blessing. I’ve just been UNCONSCIOUSLY creating this whole time, based on the acceptance as truth, by me, of suggestions about the way life is by others around me.