Every time I make a judgment
--good or bad--
I make my world LESS SAFE for ME to be in.
I've realized I don't need to try to justify the awful things humans do to themselves and others anymore. My simple acceptance changes my world.
I don't need to get into the details of why some commit the inhumane things they do. I KNOW they're just pretending to play a character role, and they've forgotten that they are more than that singular human being act they have going. They've forgotten that they're a sovereign consciousness having an experience of themselves.
And when I see those human atrocities and tragedies from this perspective, I know that this, my friends, is the place of pure acceptance--unconditional love and compassion. There is nothing for me to try to fix.
When I look at myself and anyone else around me as more than the roles they play as a human being--when I acknowledge this to myself and/or to them--then, for me, what we do, or don't do, doesn't matter anymore.
My acceptance releases them from being stuck in that role--but only for me. This is why any generally applied political policy or law will not work. You, alone, and the people with whom you're interacting with in the moment at hand are the only ones aware of the nuances of your interaction. Your personal energies are arranging themselves to manifest a reality that matches what your consciousness is radiating out as your truth in that specific moment.
Acceptance is simply acknowledging, "That IS a way to be. Thank you for the gift of wisdom I gained from that experience...period. (No judging about our being right or wrong, no expecting some god out there to justify our judgments of ourselves, or any other, as righteous)."
Acceptance does not judge. Acceptance neither condones nor condemns. Acceptance opens and flows....
I've long wrestled with trying to figure out the difference between discernment and judgment. I've heard so many people quoting their "Word of God Bible," using literal words in blatantly judgmental manners...and they call that discernment. They say they're leaving the judgment up to God--but, would an All-Loving god be judgmental at all? In Jesus's parable of the Prodigal Son, the character of the Father embraced his son and threw a feast at his return. There were no recriminations, no judgments--just a celebration at their being reunited.
Judgment says, "That's no way to be."....and....it manifests a prison--stops the energy flow and builds a construct, a barrier.
Discernment says, "That is a way to be...AND...I know there are other ways--other possibilities--and I'm open to allowing MYSELF to experience and perceive those as well." ....and....it allows the energies to continue flowing on through and by without creating a construct--aka, a reality to experience--until its master (you) chooses to play out a concept appealing to you....
I don't believe discernment forces itself upon anyone else, it doesn't play the power game--instead, it honors sovereignty, it honors freedom--for everyone.
I've read that sacred book of stories, and it says NOT to study the literal words, but to weigh things in with your own heart--and utilize and apply only that which resonates SOLELY--or SOULY--with YOU! In other words, trust yourself first and above all others outside of yourself. You're the only one living that life of yours, and you're the only one who knows what is the easiest and most graceful way of being for yourself. You're the one who actually lives with yourself.
And once you trust yourself, it's then easy to trust everyone outside of you--to allow them their own sovereignty over their own reality creations, their own life.
For me, acceptance is simply another word for unconditional, undistorted, pure LOVE! And that resonates with me!
Thursday, March 24, 2016
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Accepting All Aspects of Oneself
Integration means eventually accepting everything about yourself--all the roles the life expressions of your soul have played and all the thoughts and feelings you've ever had.
For me, that means getting to the place of realizing it didn't really ever matter what I did, or didn't do, or what I thought or felt. The gift of wisdom was gained from it all.
It was just an experience, and no one was really harmed in it. You know, like that disclaimer they attach to movies where animals are hurt or abused in the storyline--"No animals were actually harmed in the making of this film." I look at all the stories and dramas and traumas playing out around and within me, and that line now pops in quite frequently; and it helps me breathe and flow more easily and gracefully through the experience. I'm not stuck in situations for quite as long as I was in the past.
I think I always had a very human-based idea about how it would be to live the life of a master like Yeshua (aka Jesus) or Saint Germain. I thought it meant I would be a much more perfect human, and that, just with the snap of my fingers, life would go the way I wanted, or chose, it to.
But no, it doesn't. I'm still far from being a perfect specimen of a human being--and I realize I never will be. That perfection doesn't matter and is no longer a goal for me. I have really enjoyable moments and days, and I have some tough days, too. Sometimes my creations work out as I hoped, and most times, not--after all, I'm quite new to learning to live the life of embodied enlightenment.
No one can really teach me or increase my awareness--and I feel a tremendous joy in realizing that. I'm doing it, living it out my own way, and with my own time and space. I'm not in comparison or competition with anyone or anything else. This is my life.
I have multitudes of different lifetimes and aspects of my soul to integrate, patterns to release myself from. Many of those patterns and routines--traditions, even--are so automatic for me that I often don't realize I'm thinking it or doing it, until my little cyclical routine encounters a blip, big or small.
It helped to hear Adamus Saint-Germain (of crimsoncircle.com) tell us that he still had a life expression from thousands of years ago that he still needed to allow to integrate--and he's been an ascended master for many, many years. These aspects come in when they decide to come home, and no amount of cajoling and pressure by my human self is making them return any quicker--because they're free, you see, to be however as long as they choose. The master allows all of his/her creations absolute freedom of being.
These dreams...
For awhile, I knew I was dreaming at night and during my naps, but upon awakening I had no recollection of them. That's changed quite drastically the last few months. I'm having the recurring dreams of my past and the violent, ugly ones that I scream myself--and my husband--awake with. I'm also having the really bizarre ones that go on and on without making much sense to my limited human mind and perception. And then I have the occasional one where I feel so dirty, so ashamed of myself.
The Prostitute Dream:
Last week I awoke in the morning feeling both relieved that that nightmare I was just in was not my reality here, and feeling revolted by my actions and rationaliztions while in that dream world reality.
I was a prostitute in that dream. For the measly amount of $16 total, I was serving a line-up of guys according to what they wanted me to do. I was absolutely repulsed by their demands and by my giving into them...and at the same time, it was a matter of honor for me to keep my agreement with them. I had to see it through...
The disgust I felt with myself stayed with me long after awakening, and the only way it--and the replaying of the awful scenes in my mind--dissipated was when I acknowledged what I was feeling and thinking while in the dream...and when I did that, then I remembered that I was integrating all these past life expressions and aspects into my soul. What better way to have that happen than during the night while in my "sleep state" in this reality?
It's much easier to let a dream go, to accept it as an illusion, thus, release myself from it. It's the stuff that I actually remember playing out in my past of this human lifetime that feels more sticky. Though, our past is simply illusion, too, unless we bring it into our NOW, which guilt and unresolved feelings around it have a tendency of doing. Acceptance truly allows resolution of anything.
All that I had to do, whether in dream state or what I think of as my "real" life, was accept that some part of me played a role that wasn't exactly noble or on the light side, and that ultimately it didn't really matter. It was just an experience--there was nothing wrong or right about it...period.
While my Judgmental, Limited Human Mind yelled, "That's NO WAY to be!", my I am self acceptingly said, "That IS a way to be. Thank you for playing that out for me. Thank you for the wisdom WE gained from our experience."
As the days have passed, I've realized more about the dream. The amount of $16 dollars is representative to me of the master number 44 (4 x 4 = 16). I also read a book several years back about the handful of common archetypal roles every human incarnates in with. One of those is the Victim, which I've found myself drawn to extensively write about in this blog. Another one is the Prostitute.
When I shared the gist of the dream with my brother, even he could relate to it, especially when applying it to how we humans conduct our personal lives and our business lives. The Prostitute is an influential role in pretty much every facet of a human's life, and will continue to affect humans as long as they're unaware of its existence.
We've been programmed to willingly prostitute ourselves in a form of slavery called a "job." Lately, I'm hearing the unawakened, highly generalized, refrain about "kids these days just don't want to work." It's stated generally by a workhorse personality whose identity (conditional acceptance of themselves) revolves around her/his job and how hard they work and how often their work ethic is taken for granted.
Have they considered that maybe these so-called kids have played the part of the conscientious worker in some other lifetime? That these young people of today are aware somewhere deep inside that life can be, and is, so much more than doing a job for someone else, than enslaving themselves to another being? Have they considered that maybe these young people aren't being lazy? That they're just aware of and open to new potentials of experience? This type of scenario would come about due to a rise in overall human consciousness...so maybe it should be celebrated?
Maybe many of these people have chosen to NOT BE A SLAVE to old mass consciousness expectations--and to do differently than the traditions of society is a COURAGEOUS endeavor. It's not for the faint of heart to decide to be and do differently. You get judged for being different. There is nothing wrong about the old or the new consciousness...and there is nothing right about either of them. They are all just various PATHS of EXPERIENCE.
The things we do to "earn a living"--the things we feel commited to do in order to honorably fulfill our part of an agreement with another party--well, let's just say they don't always feel so heroic--as graphically illustrated by my prostitute dream.
If you're willing to step back and look at it honestly, even the traditional marriage reflects the prostitute archetype. Even though I'm in a traditional marriage recognized by church and state, I would not get married that way ever again. Somedays I just want to burn the old paperwork because of its limitations that the two of us accepted. We don't need any other being refereeing or interfering in something that only the two of us are creating.
I trust the issue will resolve itself without me having to figure it all out or mess with any paperwork to undo something that was truly unwittingly done by the two of us in an old and limited consciousness. We got married because that's how we were raised, and we were afraid to rock the boat. We prostituted our own sovereignty in order to get the benefits of being recognized as a married couple.
I like and choose to be with my husband, and he with me, day by day and moment by moment... and still, I can feel into how it could be so much easier and more FREE to be able to be together or separate, to honor our individual paths without the paperwork and legal hassles of government and religious organizations being involved in an agreement between us two sovereign and awake people. Our relationship is our co-creation.
We don't have children. But marriage doesn't make a person a good parent. For me, a great parent is one who recognizes the child in their life as an equal being, with a life and passion all their own. Loving beings playing the role of parents set boundaries as needed in the moment and don't treat others as being better or lesser than themselves. So if children come from the union of two people, well, the sooner the two adults involved realize that the child they helped bring into incarnation is simply a sovereign being of their own right and not a piece of property for the parents to indoctrinate into their own way of thinking and to fight about and over, the better.
I digress. That last part popped in and raced off on another tangent. Obviously, I'm a bit passionate about it. Our relationships, intimate and otherwise, have the potential to be so much more enjoyable all the way around for everyone when we take a step back and open up our viewpoint to look at things in new, more FREEDOM HONORING ways. Just because something's been done a certain way for millenia doesn't mean it's fitting or even sane to continue doing now in this new consciousness. I'm ready for a change.
...and I'm receiving change. It's happening all around me and within me.
So my idea of mastery now is nothing compared to the expectations I had about what it would be like. Mastery simply means I'm aware that I'm the Creator of my experiences. I'm consciously living my own life now.
As a babe in the newness of the Master perspective, I'm sure to still have moments of finding myself seduced into playing some old situations out a few, even numerous more times, and...because of my expanded awareness, and with that, my ability to step back from the dramatic scene and see things more clearly, I'm able to flow it through my reality more easily and gracefully.
Even on days when I feel stuck in a situation, I KNOW I won't stay stuck for long anymore. I realize things just circle around to me over and over again until I've played it out and suddenly realize it doesn't really matter to me anymore...and with that realization--resolution!
In short, I'm finding I'm really not that hard to accept--not even my icky bits!
For me, that means getting to the place of realizing it didn't really ever matter what I did, or didn't do, or what I thought or felt. The gift of wisdom was gained from it all.
It was just an experience, and no one was really harmed in it. You know, like that disclaimer they attach to movies where animals are hurt or abused in the storyline--"No animals were actually harmed in the making of this film." I look at all the stories and dramas and traumas playing out around and within me, and that line now pops in quite frequently; and it helps me breathe and flow more easily and gracefully through the experience. I'm not stuck in situations for quite as long as I was in the past.
I think I always had a very human-based idea about how it would be to live the life of a master like Yeshua (aka Jesus) or Saint Germain. I thought it meant I would be a much more perfect human, and that, just with the snap of my fingers, life would go the way I wanted, or chose, it to.
But no, it doesn't. I'm still far from being a perfect specimen of a human being--and I realize I never will be. That perfection doesn't matter and is no longer a goal for me. I have really enjoyable moments and days, and I have some tough days, too. Sometimes my creations work out as I hoped, and most times, not--after all, I'm quite new to learning to live the life of embodied enlightenment.
No one can really teach me or increase my awareness--and I feel a tremendous joy in realizing that. I'm doing it, living it out my own way, and with my own time and space. I'm not in comparison or competition with anyone or anything else. This is my life.
I have multitudes of different lifetimes and aspects of my soul to integrate, patterns to release myself from. Many of those patterns and routines--traditions, even--are so automatic for me that I often don't realize I'm thinking it or doing it, until my little cyclical routine encounters a blip, big or small.
It helped to hear Adamus Saint-Germain (of crimsoncircle.com) tell us that he still had a life expression from thousands of years ago that he still needed to allow to integrate--and he's been an ascended master for many, many years. These aspects come in when they decide to come home, and no amount of cajoling and pressure by my human self is making them return any quicker--because they're free, you see, to be however as long as they choose. The master allows all of his/her creations absolute freedom of being.
These dreams...
For awhile, I knew I was dreaming at night and during my naps, but upon awakening I had no recollection of them. That's changed quite drastically the last few months. I'm having the recurring dreams of my past and the violent, ugly ones that I scream myself--and my husband--awake with. I'm also having the really bizarre ones that go on and on without making much sense to my limited human mind and perception. And then I have the occasional one where I feel so dirty, so ashamed of myself.
The Prostitute Dream:
Last week I awoke in the morning feeling both relieved that that nightmare I was just in was not my reality here, and feeling revolted by my actions and rationaliztions while in that dream world reality.
I was a prostitute in that dream. For the measly amount of $16 total, I was serving a line-up of guys according to what they wanted me to do. I was absolutely repulsed by their demands and by my giving into them...and at the same time, it was a matter of honor for me to keep my agreement with them. I had to see it through...
The disgust I felt with myself stayed with me long after awakening, and the only way it--and the replaying of the awful scenes in my mind--dissipated was when I acknowledged what I was feeling and thinking while in the dream...and when I did that, then I remembered that I was integrating all these past life expressions and aspects into my soul. What better way to have that happen than during the night while in my "sleep state" in this reality?
It's much easier to let a dream go, to accept it as an illusion, thus, release myself from it. It's the stuff that I actually remember playing out in my past of this human lifetime that feels more sticky. Though, our past is simply illusion, too, unless we bring it into our NOW, which guilt and unresolved feelings around it have a tendency of doing. Acceptance truly allows resolution of anything.
All that I had to do, whether in dream state or what I think of as my "real" life, was accept that some part of me played a role that wasn't exactly noble or on the light side, and that ultimately it didn't really matter. It was just an experience--there was nothing wrong or right about it...period.
While my Judgmental, Limited Human Mind yelled, "That's NO WAY to be!", my I am self acceptingly said, "That IS a way to be. Thank you for playing that out for me. Thank you for the wisdom WE gained from our experience."
As the days have passed, I've realized more about the dream. The amount of $16 dollars is representative to me of the master number 44 (4 x 4 = 16). I also read a book several years back about the handful of common archetypal roles every human incarnates in with. One of those is the Victim, which I've found myself drawn to extensively write about in this blog. Another one is the Prostitute.
When I shared the gist of the dream with my brother, even he could relate to it, especially when applying it to how we humans conduct our personal lives and our business lives. The Prostitute is an influential role in pretty much every facet of a human's life, and will continue to affect humans as long as they're unaware of its existence.
We've been programmed to willingly prostitute ourselves in a form of slavery called a "job." Lately, I'm hearing the unawakened, highly generalized, refrain about "kids these days just don't want to work." It's stated generally by a workhorse personality whose identity (conditional acceptance of themselves) revolves around her/his job and how hard they work and how often their work ethic is taken for granted.
Have they considered that maybe these so-called kids have played the part of the conscientious worker in some other lifetime? That these young people of today are aware somewhere deep inside that life can be, and is, so much more than doing a job for someone else, than enslaving themselves to another being? Have they considered that maybe these young people aren't being lazy? That they're just aware of and open to new potentials of experience? This type of scenario would come about due to a rise in overall human consciousness...so maybe it should be celebrated?
Maybe many of these people have chosen to NOT BE A SLAVE to old mass consciousness expectations--and to do differently than the traditions of society is a COURAGEOUS endeavor. It's not for the faint of heart to decide to be and do differently. You get judged for being different. There is nothing wrong about the old or the new consciousness...and there is nothing right about either of them. They are all just various PATHS of EXPERIENCE.
The things we do to "earn a living"--the things we feel commited to do in order to honorably fulfill our part of an agreement with another party--well, let's just say they don't always feel so heroic--as graphically illustrated by my prostitute dream.
If you're willing to step back and look at it honestly, even the traditional marriage reflects the prostitute archetype. Even though I'm in a traditional marriage recognized by church and state, I would not get married that way ever again. Somedays I just want to burn the old paperwork because of its limitations that the two of us accepted. We don't need any other being refereeing or interfering in something that only the two of us are creating.
I trust the issue will resolve itself without me having to figure it all out or mess with any paperwork to undo something that was truly unwittingly done by the two of us in an old and limited consciousness. We got married because that's how we were raised, and we were afraid to rock the boat. We prostituted our own sovereignty in order to get the benefits of being recognized as a married couple.
I like and choose to be with my husband, and he with me, day by day and moment by moment... and still, I can feel into how it could be so much easier and more FREE to be able to be together or separate, to honor our individual paths without the paperwork and legal hassles of government and religious organizations being involved in an agreement between us two sovereign and awake people. Our relationship is our co-creation.
We don't have children. But marriage doesn't make a person a good parent. For me, a great parent is one who recognizes the child in their life as an equal being, with a life and passion all their own. Loving beings playing the role of parents set boundaries as needed in the moment and don't treat others as being better or lesser than themselves. So if children come from the union of two people, well, the sooner the two adults involved realize that the child they helped bring into incarnation is simply a sovereign being of their own right and not a piece of property for the parents to indoctrinate into their own way of thinking and to fight about and over, the better.
I digress. That last part popped in and raced off on another tangent. Obviously, I'm a bit passionate about it. Our relationships, intimate and otherwise, have the potential to be so much more enjoyable all the way around for everyone when we take a step back and open up our viewpoint to look at things in new, more FREEDOM HONORING ways. Just because something's been done a certain way for millenia doesn't mean it's fitting or even sane to continue doing now in this new consciousness. I'm ready for a change.
...and I'm receiving change. It's happening all around me and within me.
So my idea of mastery now is nothing compared to the expectations I had about what it would be like. Mastery simply means I'm aware that I'm the Creator of my experiences. I'm consciously living my own life now.
As a babe in the newness of the Master perspective, I'm sure to still have moments of finding myself seduced into playing some old situations out a few, even numerous more times, and...because of my expanded awareness, and with that, my ability to step back from the dramatic scene and see things more clearly, I'm able to flow it through my reality more easily and gracefully.
Even on days when I feel stuck in a situation, I KNOW I won't stay stuck for long anymore. I realize things just circle around to me over and over again until I've played it out and suddenly realize it doesn't really matter to me anymore...and with that realization--resolution!
In short, I'm finding I'm really not that hard to accept--not even my icky bits!
Tuesday, March 8, 2016
Pain Is an Illusion
"Pain is just an illusion,
though it does really hurt like hell."
(Paraphrasing Adamus Saint-Germain)
According to Adamus, pain is a memory of a trauma stored in the cells of our body of consciousness. It's an illusion. It's the memory of a pattern in the way that space and time flows to and through us.
The wonder and miracle of the human avatar.
Our consciousness, our bodies never actually move. Our feet never actually touch the ground in a push-force movement when we walk. Yet, our body's intelligence and our five senses tell us that we have body parts--bone, tissue, organs, nerves and muscle that feel and interact with the world around us. It's so convincing that we really feel like we have bodies that need to breathe and pump blood, and that we can die if certain parts of us are traumatized to a certain extent that they can no longer function properly. We believe we exert effort and we are the ones who trudge through time and space. That is the beauty of the gift of this human body avatar. It FEELS so REAL!
As I wrote the above paragraph, I kept seeing clips from the actual movie, Avatar. It keeps popping into my mind as I'm experiencing myself going for walks. I notice more and I take less for granted--I'm more aware--when I imagine myself as being a human avatar. My body is the vehicle--or robot--that I use to experience this--my--reality world.
But we never move, and objects and other beings never actually move in our reality. Our own limbs don't move. Time and space flows through and around us in different patterns creating the objects and movements we perceive as our reality. We exert no effort, we just believe and feel like we do.
And we've been re-creating our world--pretty much the same type of situations over and over again--because of this foundational belief that we are little humans moving through a huge world. Time and space is stuck in a pattern of flow in service to our belief. It only becomes unstuck when we start choosing to shift our perspective around.
I've been out walking and enjoying this new perspective of time and space flowing to and through and around me, rather than me lugging and hauling a tired and sometimes run-down feeling body over hard terrain. Then I get home and the bottoms of my feet are sore, bordering on feeling blistered, and I experience sudden jolts of pain through my hip and legs. What was once an enjoyable excursion delighting in the pain-free length of my stride and a feeling of limitless energy shifted into a night of sleeplessness filled with hip pain followed by a morning of the same thing.
But it was another beautiful sunny day in March, so I couldn't resist taking another walk, even though the jolts were still there, though not quite as bad. When a hitch in my shortened stride hit, I chose to take a conscious breath with it and to remind myself it was just a cellular memory--an illusion--and I assured myself that there was nothing wrong with me. That there was nothing to fix.
There was nothing I needed to adjust--it was just a memory of a pattern of the flow of time and space based on a past experience that I had once judged as something that was wrong with me.
With that BREATH of remembrance that truly all is well with me and all of creation, the pain left--and I was able to enjoy my time pretending I was walking outside in nature without issue.
Emotional pain is an illusion, too.
A few posts back, I told about the fear I feel inside every time my husband leaves me, especially when he takes his motorcycle out for a ride. We had a 70 degree day in March this past Sunday, and he couldn't resist taking it out for a spin. I took myself out for a walk before he left in order to help myself look at the whole situation differently. It helped me to get out of the house--away from stewing and listening and waiting for him in the old manner.
I lost my first boyfriend in a motorcycle accident--that's a pretty traumatic cellular memory. It's a painful illusion that I've BEEN CHOOSING to haul around for decades. It was a living hell for me coming home to see my parents and siblings waiting out on the steps for me to get home from my night out with my cousin.
Yet, even as I screamed, a part of me observed myself acting the part. I knew I was acting. I drama-queened it. I was behaving "appropriately" for the circumstances.
It wasn't that I didn't care that he was gone, because that loss did hurt...and yet...a part of me still watched the whole thing play out like the movies. I felt a bit guilty about that sense of detachment, and I spent years punishing myself for simply authentically feeling that way about such a traumatic experience.
As I walked it through, seeing and feeling it from the perspective of it simply being a memory and an illusion that I could actually CHOOSE to let go of, the whole situation shifted for me. I was no longer "poor Penny."
I've always acknowledged that not everyone dies riding motorcyles or any of those other toys and vehicles people seem to love. This was something I've known all along, yet I kept inserting myself into that story the same way. I was literally choosing to continue the act I had going, so it stayed the same. When I look back, in a warped way, I was mentally trying to protect myself from feeling that pain again. My thoughts angrily jumped to having to deal with a ripped up body to bury and all the details of a life without him--always, I was questioning how I would handle it the next time around, heaven forbid.
Yet, all I had to do was to CHOOSE in one moment, to decide that I didn't have to make that my story anymore. I could choose to be FREE of it, and so I was! It was as simple as that. I let the story and my identifying with it go.
It's rather hard to find the words to convey this in a way you might be able to feel. It was just so simple and effortless--it only took that one moment of clarity to decide to let it go. My human mind was surprised. It almost couldn't believe it was so easy, and yet it was okay with me just quitting the issue. We'd had enough playtime with that story.
It was just an illusion--it was the memory of a past experience that I used as a tool to help shake myself awake from the hypnosis of believing I was an insignificant human puppet with someone else pulling my strings.
No one's pulling my strings anymore. I know I am the creator effortlessly creating my own reality--and I'm also aware that I'm the only one who can perceive it the way I do.
I'm the only one who can choose to change my perception of an experience.
Pain is just a cellular memory.
"Whenever you are able to accept
whatever state you are in
without seeing it as wrong,
then you really have breakthroughs." (Lee Harris)
And so I did, and so it is...
though it does really hurt like hell."
(Paraphrasing Adamus Saint-Germain)
According to Adamus, pain is a memory of a trauma stored in the cells of our body of consciousness. It's an illusion. It's the memory of a pattern in the way that space and time flows to and through us.
The wonder and miracle of the human avatar.
Our consciousness, our bodies never actually move. Our feet never actually touch the ground in a push-force movement when we walk. Yet, our body's intelligence and our five senses tell us that we have body parts--bone, tissue, organs, nerves and muscle that feel and interact with the world around us. It's so convincing that we really feel like we have bodies that need to breathe and pump blood, and that we can die if certain parts of us are traumatized to a certain extent that they can no longer function properly. We believe we exert effort and we are the ones who trudge through time and space. That is the beauty of the gift of this human body avatar. It FEELS so REAL!
As I wrote the above paragraph, I kept seeing clips from the actual movie, Avatar. It keeps popping into my mind as I'm experiencing myself going for walks. I notice more and I take less for granted--I'm more aware--when I imagine myself as being a human avatar. My body is the vehicle--or robot--that I use to experience this--my--reality world.
But we never move, and objects and other beings never actually move in our reality. Our own limbs don't move. Time and space flows through and around us in different patterns creating the objects and movements we perceive as our reality. We exert no effort, we just believe and feel like we do.
And we've been re-creating our world--pretty much the same type of situations over and over again--because of this foundational belief that we are little humans moving through a huge world. Time and space is stuck in a pattern of flow in service to our belief. It only becomes unstuck when we start choosing to shift our perspective around.
I've been out walking and enjoying this new perspective of time and space flowing to and through and around me, rather than me lugging and hauling a tired and sometimes run-down feeling body over hard terrain. Then I get home and the bottoms of my feet are sore, bordering on feeling blistered, and I experience sudden jolts of pain through my hip and legs. What was once an enjoyable excursion delighting in the pain-free length of my stride and a feeling of limitless energy shifted into a night of sleeplessness filled with hip pain followed by a morning of the same thing.
But it was another beautiful sunny day in March, so I couldn't resist taking another walk, even though the jolts were still there, though not quite as bad. When a hitch in my shortened stride hit, I chose to take a conscious breath with it and to remind myself it was just a cellular memory--an illusion--and I assured myself that there was nothing wrong with me. That there was nothing to fix.
There was nothing I needed to adjust--it was just a memory of a pattern of the flow of time and space based on a past experience that I had once judged as something that was wrong with me.
With that BREATH of remembrance that truly all is well with me and all of creation, the pain left--and I was able to enjoy my time pretending I was walking outside in nature without issue.
Emotional pain is an illusion, too.
A few posts back, I told about the fear I feel inside every time my husband leaves me, especially when he takes his motorcycle out for a ride. We had a 70 degree day in March this past Sunday, and he couldn't resist taking it out for a spin. I took myself out for a walk before he left in order to help myself look at the whole situation differently. It helped me to get out of the house--away from stewing and listening and waiting for him in the old manner.
I lost my first boyfriend in a motorcycle accident--that's a pretty traumatic cellular memory. It's a painful illusion that I've BEEN CHOOSING to haul around for decades. It was a living hell for me coming home to see my parents and siblings waiting out on the steps for me to get home from my night out with my cousin.
Yet, even as I screamed, a part of me observed myself acting the part. I knew I was acting. I drama-queened it. I was behaving "appropriately" for the circumstances.
It wasn't that I didn't care that he was gone, because that loss did hurt...and yet...a part of me still watched the whole thing play out like the movies. I felt a bit guilty about that sense of detachment, and I spent years punishing myself for simply authentically feeling that way about such a traumatic experience.
As I walked it through, seeing and feeling it from the perspective of it simply being a memory and an illusion that I could actually CHOOSE to let go of, the whole situation shifted for me. I was no longer "poor Penny."
I've always acknowledged that not everyone dies riding motorcyles or any of those other toys and vehicles people seem to love. This was something I've known all along, yet I kept inserting myself into that story the same way. I was literally choosing to continue the act I had going, so it stayed the same. When I look back, in a warped way, I was mentally trying to protect myself from feeling that pain again. My thoughts angrily jumped to having to deal with a ripped up body to bury and all the details of a life without him--always, I was questioning how I would handle it the next time around, heaven forbid.
Yet, all I had to do was to CHOOSE in one moment, to decide that I didn't have to make that my story anymore. I could choose to be FREE of it, and so I was! It was as simple as that. I let the story and my identifying with it go.
It's rather hard to find the words to convey this in a way you might be able to feel. It was just so simple and effortless--it only took that one moment of clarity to decide to let it go. My human mind was surprised. It almost couldn't believe it was so easy, and yet it was okay with me just quitting the issue. We'd had enough playtime with that story.
It was just an illusion--it was the memory of a past experience that I used as a tool to help shake myself awake from the hypnosis of believing I was an insignificant human puppet with someone else pulling my strings.
No one's pulling my strings anymore. I know I am the creator effortlessly creating my own reality--and I'm also aware that I'm the only one who can perceive it the way I do.
I'm the only one who can choose to change my perception of an experience.
Pain is just a cellular memory.
"Whenever you are able to accept
whatever state you are in
without seeing it as wrong,
then you really have breakthroughs." (Lee Harris)
And so I did, and so it is...
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
The Ultimate Virtual Reality Game: Who Needs a Helmet or Avatar?
Who needs the helmet or avatar? We're already playing the Ultimate Virtual Reality Game. Only, humans are so immersed in the game--and these other games within the game--that most of us have forgotten we are each an eternal point of consciousness playing in vehicles and costumes we call the human body. Even our bodies aren't moving--they're just Bon, aka Time/Space, flowing in a particular pattern around us. We've forgotten that the world that surrounds us is our own energies arranging themselves in service to us by matching our radiation of conscious awareness.
If our awareness is limited, the energies in service to our consciousness tailor or weave themselves to match that, and so we then have a limited reality to play in. A limited reality is not bad--it's just a narrow slice of what's possible to experience.
This is an incredible and amazing gift we've each given ourselves, and the more I focus on perceiving it all as flowing to me and through or past me, the more I feel myself smiling and laughing and overjoyed at the wonder of it all.
I've been walking and eating and bathing, and being amazed that the Universe is flowing to me and past me, instead of me trudging and struggling through it. I am the constant, the stillness. In service to me, time and space are moving to me. The stairs ascend to and past me instead of my walking down them.
I'm amazed at how real the illusion of walking is for me--the horizon jiggles with the bounce in my step. The winds flow across my eardrums in a low and hollow whumping. My body muscles and nerves and tissue register sensations that say I'm exerting effort, that I'm taking steps that are jarring to my body, sometimes even tripping--and it's so real, it's almost unbelievable that I'm not actually moving.
All of this is happening without the use of computers or technology of any kind. See how remarkable we are?
I've been savoring the experience of eating homemade multigrain toast with lots of butter--the crisp and chewy, toasted, buttery nuttiness of it. The pleasure of it in my mouth, crunched between my teeth, rolled across my taste buds and tongue; the flavors and textures and sounds pulsing through me as I seemingly swallow. I quit worrying about whether or not it will have a good or bad effect on me, and simply enjoy the moment of it.
And when I do that, I see how it is possible for me to enjoy the human experience of eating without needing to eat specific nutrients or to exercise in order to have a resilient body. Suddenly I understand that it will flow through me as long as I don't worry and feel ashamed or guilty about it--as long as I don't analyze the right or wrongness of it--as long as I don't judge it. As long as I lovingly and gracefully ALLOW myself the simple experience of it...period.
Awareness of Bon in my dreams
"(It's) funny how in dreams your feet never touch the Earth..." These Dreams, as sung by Nancy Wilson, of Heart.
Our dreams are real dimensions or realities. They just aren't as gritty, dense, or as sensual as this Earth reality. And our human minds try to interpret these other realities based on our past limited Earthly human experiences. That's why they often don't make sense to us. Many of my dreams don't just border on it--they are bizarre and unsettling sometimes. And sometimes they are so freeing and awesome!
In my dreams, I am more aware of the flow of Time-Space (Bon) to and through or past me. My feet never contact the ground like in this TRULY SENSUAL Earth reality. In my dreams there is no Push-Force contact with the ground or any other surface I might touch. I feel no jarring, no friction, no pain in my feet, limbs or body as Time-Space moves through me.
It's much easier in my dreams to recognize that I never actually move--that Bon moves to me and through me, flowing in patterns that make objects appear to come closer to me and then move past me.
When I jump in my dreams, there is no launching from off the solid ground. I simply spring into the air effortlessly, suspended for lengths of time and distance inconceivable here in the Earth reality. I drive vehicles on roads that narrow until they disappear and I'm suddenly zooming along just a ridgeline too narrow for my wheel-base, and yet I don't tip over or crash. I float on the wind currents like a leaf and the landscape contours flow below me, making it appear as though I am the one flying--as though I am the one moving through the air.
But I am the constant. I never move. I never have.
In my dreams, I float with ease to the peaks of high mountains and tops of buildings and cliffs, and then my Earthly human mind kicks in and suddenly I feel trapped up there with no way of safely getting down the sheer walls and faces without falling to my death, or so I BELIEVE...
I don't get dirty, my clothes don't get soiled--not really. They have the potential of staying clean and unaffected should I walk through a deep mud puddle--if I allow that potential in. My mind and body intelligence has been so programmed to FEELINGLY/ SENSUALLY BELIEVE that I am dirty after a certain amount of TIME and my supposed movement through SPACE (like getting sweaty from the efforting) that I've not been radiating cleanliness from my conscious awareness, thus the energies in service to me, continually flow to manifest the patterns of dirty-ness and the need to wash and clean-up after myself.
In my dreams, I seldom actually feel the sensation of clothing against my skin. I remember a dream of reaching out to grasp another human's hand and being amazed at actually feeling its warmth--that's not something I normally experience in dreams that I remember. The five senses are for this Earthly reality experience, so it's kind of fun when there is a bleed-through of different realities.
So, how do I get beyond that old reality here? How do I realize the Bon here? I allow...
I KNOW this now. I'm aware of it now. So I simply keep my guards lowered and I allow...
No trying to figure out how to do it. No judgment of anything or anyone. I just breathe with ease and gratitude for this truly incredible, amazing and sensual ability of experience in my human costume and my limited human ways...and I allow...
...and when it happens, I won't panic, because now I have enough realization ahead of the actual experience. I know to just let it flow freely, to let myself just--be.
If our awareness is limited, the energies in service to our consciousness tailor or weave themselves to match that, and so we then have a limited reality to play in. A limited reality is not bad--it's just a narrow slice of what's possible to experience.
This is an incredible and amazing gift we've each given ourselves, and the more I focus on perceiving it all as flowing to me and through or past me, the more I feel myself smiling and laughing and overjoyed at the wonder of it all.
I've been walking and eating and bathing, and being amazed that the Universe is flowing to me and past me, instead of me trudging and struggling through it. I am the constant, the stillness. In service to me, time and space are moving to me. The stairs ascend to and past me instead of my walking down them.
I'm amazed at how real the illusion of walking is for me--the horizon jiggles with the bounce in my step. The winds flow across my eardrums in a low and hollow whumping. My body muscles and nerves and tissue register sensations that say I'm exerting effort, that I'm taking steps that are jarring to my body, sometimes even tripping--and it's so real, it's almost unbelievable that I'm not actually moving.
All of this is happening without the use of computers or technology of any kind. See how remarkable we are?
I've been savoring the experience of eating homemade multigrain toast with lots of butter--the crisp and chewy, toasted, buttery nuttiness of it. The pleasure of it in my mouth, crunched between my teeth, rolled across my taste buds and tongue; the flavors and textures and sounds pulsing through me as I seemingly swallow. I quit worrying about whether or not it will have a good or bad effect on me, and simply enjoy the moment of it.
And when I do that, I see how it is possible for me to enjoy the human experience of eating without needing to eat specific nutrients or to exercise in order to have a resilient body. Suddenly I understand that it will flow through me as long as I don't worry and feel ashamed or guilty about it--as long as I don't analyze the right or wrongness of it--as long as I don't judge it. As long as I lovingly and gracefully ALLOW myself the simple experience of it...period.
Awareness of Bon in my dreams
"(It's) funny how in dreams your feet never touch the Earth..." These Dreams, as sung by Nancy Wilson, of Heart.
Our dreams are real dimensions or realities. They just aren't as gritty, dense, or as sensual as this Earth reality. And our human minds try to interpret these other realities based on our past limited Earthly human experiences. That's why they often don't make sense to us. Many of my dreams don't just border on it--they are bizarre and unsettling sometimes. And sometimes they are so freeing and awesome!
In my dreams, I am more aware of the flow of Time-Space (Bon) to and through or past me. My feet never contact the ground like in this TRULY SENSUAL Earth reality. In my dreams there is no Push-Force contact with the ground or any other surface I might touch. I feel no jarring, no friction, no pain in my feet, limbs or body as Time-Space moves through me.
It's much easier in my dreams to recognize that I never actually move--that Bon moves to me and through me, flowing in patterns that make objects appear to come closer to me and then move past me.
When I jump in my dreams, there is no launching from off the solid ground. I simply spring into the air effortlessly, suspended for lengths of time and distance inconceivable here in the Earth reality. I drive vehicles on roads that narrow until they disappear and I'm suddenly zooming along just a ridgeline too narrow for my wheel-base, and yet I don't tip over or crash. I float on the wind currents like a leaf and the landscape contours flow below me, making it appear as though I am the one flying--as though I am the one moving through the air.
But I am the constant. I never move. I never have.
In my dreams, I float with ease to the peaks of high mountains and tops of buildings and cliffs, and then my Earthly human mind kicks in and suddenly I feel trapped up there with no way of safely getting down the sheer walls and faces without falling to my death, or so I BELIEVE...
I don't get dirty, my clothes don't get soiled--not really. They have the potential of staying clean and unaffected should I walk through a deep mud puddle--if I allow that potential in. My mind and body intelligence has been so programmed to FEELINGLY/ SENSUALLY BELIEVE that I am dirty after a certain amount of TIME and my supposed movement through SPACE (like getting sweaty from the efforting) that I've not been radiating cleanliness from my conscious awareness, thus the energies in service to me, continually flow to manifest the patterns of dirty-ness and the need to wash and clean-up after myself.
In my dreams, I seldom actually feel the sensation of clothing against my skin. I remember a dream of reaching out to grasp another human's hand and being amazed at actually feeling its warmth--that's not something I normally experience in dreams that I remember. The five senses are for this Earthly reality experience, so it's kind of fun when there is a bleed-through of different realities.
So, how do I get beyond that old reality here? How do I realize the Bon here? I allow...
I KNOW this now. I'm aware of it now. So I simply keep my guards lowered and I allow...
No trying to figure out how to do it. No judgment of anything or anyone. I just breathe with ease and gratitude for this truly incredible, amazing and sensual ability of experience in my human costume and my limited human ways...and I allow...
...and when it happens, I won't panic, because now I have enough realization ahead of the actual experience. I know to just let it flow freely, to let myself just--be.
Thursday, January 21, 2016
Thank you for your betrayal...
"Giving thanks for all parts played, whether right or seeming wrong."
Thank you for your service, for loving me so much you were willing to play my transgressor for a moment.
Thank you to my husband, my family, my teachers, my neighbors, my pets, my friends.
Thank you to my communities, my governments, my religions, my businesses, and employment jams.
Thank you to my healthcare givers, politicians, bankers, lawyers, and insurance plans:
This is my thank you for all the times you seemingly betrayed me or failed me--
Because every time you let me down, you gave me the opportunity to turn back to myself, to my own knowingness within.
Every time you fell off the pedestal I had placed you on, you reminded me to quit giving my sovereignty away to anyone or anything outside of me.
In doing so, you helped me to look to me and trust in me, first and foremost. And that, my loves, is the grandest and greatest gift of all!
Friday, November 27, 2015
Where did my joy in simply being alive go?
A few days ago I realized it was time for me to give myself a proper holiday...a holiday from trying to just get through another gathering pretty much like the last one. Gatherings where I didn't really enjoy myself because I was focused on not offending anyone or smoothing over the rough spots for others, whether they were angry or sad or judgmental. It's a heavy, and not so satisfying, juggling act trying to make everyone else feel at least okay, if not happy. I chose to give myself a holiday where I didn't feel obligated to plan for and cook for others--even if it was just one dish for a type of potluck affair. I didn't have to leave my home and my beloved pets to make trips in weather and traveling conditions I had no control over. I let my husband do his own thing--I let him leave me for his family--and that part wasn't quite so easy...
I realized I hadn't truly enjoyed a holiday since my first boyfriend died back in 1984. The feeling of magic and joy in them had been seeping away even before then because my family was stuck in our own limited consciousness situation of lack of abundance--both financially and status-wise in our community. I was old enough to worry about what others thought of me and I lost myself in that story. I lost myself in the programming that taught me that I should worry about and plan the future, and that I should recognize, and not make, the mistakes of the past.
Once upon a time I thought I made a really, really bad and wrong choice.
...and that belief that I was wrong has been haunting me ever since.
Because, you see, that choice involved my having asked to do something I enjoyed doing instead of just going along with someone elses desires and program. It involved me feeling hurt when my request was turned down. It involved me feeling angry with him because he chose his family and their work instead of being with me. And so I did something out of town on my own without him that night...and he died.
So then I felt guilty because I believed my anger and my "that's no way to be" selfishness killed him.
I left him for a moment--we went our separate ways just for an evening...and he died.
All I did was ask if he wanted to go to a simple teenage romantic comedy showing at the movie theater in town that night. A chick flick called "Sixteen Candles." Considering the fact that I continued going out with him after our first date was watching the movie, "Cheech and Chong: Up in Smoke" shows that I was pretty flexible in my own expectations of others. Ha! I really wasn't used to giving voice to my own wants or desires, to making choices, so I was venturing out on an uncertain limb to began with.
And then he died...and there I was stuck in a futureless void that I didn't know how to fill.
I couldn't imagine a Penny without him. His life actually ended, but mine did, too, only I was still waking up to the same reality, but it was without him in it. In looking back, I remember how I was literally grasping anything and anyone to help me stay here. Holding hands, simply being held--I grappled for all of it to keep me tethered to this world.
I wanted to die, too, but I was afraid of it for fear I wasn't good enough for a happy hereafter. After all, he was taken away as punishment for my selfishness--yes, that's what I believed at the time. I believed I'd killed my brother's best friend. I felt responsible for everyone else's pain in losing him because I'd made a simple request for my own enjoyment.
I didn't trust myself to ask for something after that. I didn't trust myself to make any kind of choice--especially not the big ones.
Isn't that THE MOST WARPED AND INSANE THING a person could do to themselves??? A simple little, really inconsequential choice that I MADE into an overwhelming, unclimbable monstrosity of a mountain. I built myself a jail cell, and I slammed the door and threw away the key.
So I set out to try to fill that futureless-feeling void with all kinds of good deeds. I set out to be of selfless service to others. Isn't that what truly good people do--concern themselves with making life better and easier and more enjoyable for everyone else out there? And the especially good ones do so by generously sacrificing their own joy in being--others joy is our reward. Yep--we do-gooders do so with a smile on our face--we take up the gauntlet of joyful martyrdom, and when that whiny voice inside starts to rear its ugly, unsaintly head, we just tell ourselves to hush up and get over ourselves. We slap that "selfish little icky thing" upside the head because that's no way to feel (even though we honestly do feel taken for granted). Believe me, those crabs out there can be a real challenge to lighten up--so that whiny voice yells more frequently than I'd like to admit. Life really sucks here, but damn, that hereafter life is going to be worth it!!!
I hope you're laughing at this by now--I am! What a hilarious act! If I were watching all of this on a movie screen, I'd be laughing at this character and her bizarre insanity!
And there's more!
I'm quite conscious now that I've been (we've all been) just play-acting all this time, and it's been getting easier and easier to step back out of the drama on my stage and just observe it all as playing "Let's Pretend." And frankly, that's a tremendous gift to have right now in the midst of the inhumane acts taking place in this reality. There's a lot of unnecessary pain and suffering going on around the world due to a limited human consciousness that's gone psychotic. There are a lot of humans feeling like cornered beasts out there--beasts who lash out at anyone and anything in order to survive, to feel a bit more powerful and in control of their lives by trying to control others...or kill them off.
With that said, you don't get more conscious by trying to mentally figure it all out. I tried that route. You can't fill up that void of a future by mentally analyzing and pressuring yourself to come up with, and implement a plan A, or B through Z, that involves making all the right choices.
I feel that depressed "failed before I even started" feeling enveloping me just in writing that previous statement. How many times have I wanted to change my life, but the mental human details of what I had to do overwhelmed me so much that I felt myself close up and thus, changed nothing? I gave up even allowing myself to dream of something more, and I plugged away, dispassionately in the same old looking day, after day, after day...after day.
When my husband left me to spend Thanksgiving with his family, that fear-laced voice assaulted me again. It's a voice that tells me this moment could be your last one with him, Pen, so you'd better make it count. Don't ask him to pick you over anyone or anything else--and don't be angry with him if he chooses someone other than you.
It's been a tough voice to deal with. You see, I KNOW it's based in fear and I KNOW better than to give it any credence anymore, but the bastard keeps whispering in my ear, nonetheless.
After my boyfriend died while riding a motorcycle across the highway on his way home from swathing that awful evening, I really don't care for bikes anymore. Actually, I really didn't like motorized recreational toys even before that--they were gratingly noisy to me. I know people don't die just because they like riding cycles. I have a really great memory of him taking me for a ride on that very bike. I know people don't get killed just because some "careless and unfeeling" person in a vehicle doesn't see them. I know motorcyclists don't die just because they didn't wear a helmet, etc. etc.
And I have a husband who rides a Harley Davidson. Every time he heads out to ride it though, that voice taunts and I work to breathe through it, to not let myself worry, to not imagine the worst-case scenario outcome. I CHOOSE to not create that awful story for myself again, but I have to do some conscious breathing to keep myself open and the self-protective guards down. He picked up a motorcycle for my brother-in-law back when we lived in the Twin Cities. It was after I had been the first person on the scene of yet another tragically fatal motorcycle accident--a horror of a nightmare for me--and I had to follow him in our car as he navigated that vulnerable-looking piece of equipment through all that traffic. I was a shaky piece of white-knuckled, bawling wreck of humanity that finally walked in our door afterwards, but I did it, and he made it home without incident. All these years, he's made it home to me without incident, yet every time he leaves me--no matter what he drives--that voice haunts me. And I have to shush it...but it never really disappears completely.
Those potentials are always a possibility...but they're just one of multitudes of potentials. It's just that my worrying about them and bracing myself for their possibility of happening is more likely to bring them into my experience because of my focus on them, than if I let go and open myself up to something more. Yes, that involves lowering my guards and expectations--and I feel extremely vulnerable.
But living in that fear and that worry is no life. That's misery. And I honestly know now that if he should die by that route or any other, that we would both be okay. I wouldn't feel the need to try to fill up the void anymore.
I still don't know how to plan a more joyful future experience without getting overwhelmed, but I no longer feel the need to worry over it.
At this moment, my future doesn't even exist!
I'm in the Void of nothingness--Again!
And I realize that even when in this void, I still EXIST!--I am!
And I feel so free here, unencumbered by stories!
Oh, that sweet deep breath of freedom of being...whatever and without judgment.
And this time I'm not worried about surviving. I don't need to be reaching out to serve others in a manner they expect me to in order to stay alive, to stay grounded. In truth, I realized that's what I'd been doing. I was just trying to stay embodied here on Earth--and my tool to do that at the time, in my very limited consciousness, was in TRYING to SERVE OTHERS, instead of making choices for myself. It served me well when I needed it most, but it's obsolete now, and it's actually getting in the way.
If I were to die right now, I'd actually be okay with that, but I'm here to experience embodied enlightenment--to see and feel, firsthand, that something more that I've known has been here all my life. I've never made a RIGHT or a WRONG choice--ever!!! It was my feelings and beliefs about myself and those choices that drew to myself every particular experience I went through.
That futureless void I once sought to fill in any way possible actually feels really freeing right NOW. I don't have to have a plan! I don't have to figure out details surrounding financing or relationships!
It's a relief to know I'm so much more than that character that I played and have been playing up to now. I really like and appreciate this human that I've identified with all these years, but it's been tough going playing the Little That's all I am Human. There hasn't been much joy in it, not really, because I've kept myself so limited. When you feel so unworthy of living, that's what you get--a pretty boring, often frustrating and tough life.
Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Penny, and she didn't worry about creating and filling up a future. She didn't worry about saving a world or anyone else. She wasn't trying to make somebody happy or trying to prove herself worthy of being. She was just visiting a world filled with wondrous experiences, a world that was so sensuous and seductive, so REAL FEELING, that she immersed so deeply into it that she forgot she was just a visitor playing a fun game.
I remember that little "I'm here for a visit" girl. It's the girl that was before she adopted other's ideas about how life on earth worked. In the first 7-8 years of my life, I realized that my family probaby enjoyed the most abundance ever in our history as a family, until now. I understand what all the ascended masters have been saying now--when I radiate joy and ease and graceful allowance in my own conscious awareness--all my loved ones around me benefit from my radiance without my having to say a word, or convince them to do it my way. They benefit because they are a part of MY created reality--they're no longer playing tough parts for me because I've lowered my protective guards.
And before that little girl that I was got caught up in all the stories and play-acts that said "life is tough and harsh and sometimes cruel"--that world of hers was A-MAZING! That world was awesome and full of possibilities to CHOOSE without self doubt or second-guessing herself. That world was magical and she didn't have to figure out how to go out and get it--it came to her, freely, easily, without a goal or plan. Wha-La! It was just there!
That world was a gift of experience she ALLOWED herself to receive OPENLY. It was a world undistorted by the judgments made by insignificant-feeling Little Humans who didn't remember they were so much more...
The magic is back, Penny! Doesn't it feel liberating? I feel so open, so excited about experiencing something more! Get out of the way, my beloved and scared Little Human play-act, and ALLOW it to flow to you...
It comes to you, kid. It comes to you--just open up and allow yourself to receive it with ease and grace.
It's time to really enjoy your life as the gift of experience that it truly is...
My shields are down...I am open...wide open...
It's amazing, this experience of having ALLOWED MYSELF a HOLIDAY with just myself.
I realized I hadn't truly enjoyed a holiday since my first boyfriend died back in 1984. The feeling of magic and joy in them had been seeping away even before then because my family was stuck in our own limited consciousness situation of lack of abundance--both financially and status-wise in our community. I was old enough to worry about what others thought of me and I lost myself in that story. I lost myself in the programming that taught me that I should worry about and plan the future, and that I should recognize, and not make, the mistakes of the past.
Once upon a time I thought I made a really, really bad and wrong choice.
...and that belief that I was wrong has been haunting me ever since.
Because, you see, that choice involved my having asked to do something I enjoyed doing instead of just going along with someone elses desires and program. It involved me feeling hurt when my request was turned down. It involved me feeling angry with him because he chose his family and their work instead of being with me. And so I did something out of town on my own without him that night...and he died.
So then I felt guilty because I believed my anger and my "that's no way to be" selfishness killed him.
I left him for a moment--we went our separate ways just for an evening...and he died.
All I did was ask if he wanted to go to a simple teenage romantic comedy showing at the movie theater in town that night. A chick flick called "Sixteen Candles." Considering the fact that I continued going out with him after our first date was watching the movie, "Cheech and Chong: Up in Smoke" shows that I was pretty flexible in my own expectations of others. Ha! I really wasn't used to giving voice to my own wants or desires, to making choices, so I was venturing out on an uncertain limb to began with.
And then he died...and there I was stuck in a futureless void that I didn't know how to fill.
I couldn't imagine a Penny without him. His life actually ended, but mine did, too, only I was still waking up to the same reality, but it was without him in it. In looking back, I remember how I was literally grasping anything and anyone to help me stay here. Holding hands, simply being held--I grappled for all of it to keep me tethered to this world.
I wanted to die, too, but I was afraid of it for fear I wasn't good enough for a happy hereafter. After all, he was taken away as punishment for my selfishness--yes, that's what I believed at the time. I believed I'd killed my brother's best friend. I felt responsible for everyone else's pain in losing him because I'd made a simple request for my own enjoyment.
I didn't trust myself to ask for something after that. I didn't trust myself to make any kind of choice--especially not the big ones.
Isn't that THE MOST WARPED AND INSANE THING a person could do to themselves??? A simple little, really inconsequential choice that I MADE into an overwhelming, unclimbable monstrosity of a mountain. I built myself a jail cell, and I slammed the door and threw away the key.
So I set out to try to fill that futureless-feeling void with all kinds of good deeds. I set out to be of selfless service to others. Isn't that what truly good people do--concern themselves with making life better and easier and more enjoyable for everyone else out there? And the especially good ones do so by generously sacrificing their own joy in being--others joy is our reward. Yep--we do-gooders do so with a smile on our face--we take up the gauntlet of joyful martyrdom, and when that whiny voice inside starts to rear its ugly, unsaintly head, we just tell ourselves to hush up and get over ourselves. We slap that "selfish little icky thing" upside the head because that's no way to feel (even though we honestly do feel taken for granted). Believe me, those crabs out there can be a real challenge to lighten up--so that whiny voice yells more frequently than I'd like to admit. Life really sucks here, but damn, that hereafter life is going to be worth it!!!
I hope you're laughing at this by now--I am! What a hilarious act! If I were watching all of this on a movie screen, I'd be laughing at this character and her bizarre insanity!
And there's more!
I'm quite conscious now that I've been (we've all been) just play-acting all this time, and it's been getting easier and easier to step back out of the drama on my stage and just observe it all as playing "Let's Pretend." And frankly, that's a tremendous gift to have right now in the midst of the inhumane acts taking place in this reality. There's a lot of unnecessary pain and suffering going on around the world due to a limited human consciousness that's gone psychotic. There are a lot of humans feeling like cornered beasts out there--beasts who lash out at anyone and anything in order to survive, to feel a bit more powerful and in control of their lives by trying to control others...or kill them off.
With that said, you don't get more conscious by trying to mentally figure it all out. I tried that route. You can't fill up that void of a future by mentally analyzing and pressuring yourself to come up with, and implement a plan A, or B through Z, that involves making all the right choices.
I feel that depressed "failed before I even started" feeling enveloping me just in writing that previous statement. How many times have I wanted to change my life, but the mental human details of what I had to do overwhelmed me so much that I felt myself close up and thus, changed nothing? I gave up even allowing myself to dream of something more, and I plugged away, dispassionately in the same old looking day, after day, after day...after day.
When my husband left me to spend Thanksgiving with his family, that fear-laced voice assaulted me again. It's a voice that tells me this moment could be your last one with him, Pen, so you'd better make it count. Don't ask him to pick you over anyone or anything else--and don't be angry with him if he chooses someone other than you.
It's been a tough voice to deal with. You see, I KNOW it's based in fear and I KNOW better than to give it any credence anymore, but the bastard keeps whispering in my ear, nonetheless.
After my boyfriend died while riding a motorcycle across the highway on his way home from swathing that awful evening, I really don't care for bikes anymore. Actually, I really didn't like motorized recreational toys even before that--they were gratingly noisy to me. I know people don't die just because they like riding cycles. I have a really great memory of him taking me for a ride on that very bike. I know people don't get killed just because some "careless and unfeeling" person in a vehicle doesn't see them. I know motorcyclists don't die just because they didn't wear a helmet, etc. etc.
And I have a husband who rides a Harley Davidson. Every time he heads out to ride it though, that voice taunts and I work to breathe through it, to not let myself worry, to not imagine the worst-case scenario outcome. I CHOOSE to not create that awful story for myself again, but I have to do some conscious breathing to keep myself open and the self-protective guards down. He picked up a motorcycle for my brother-in-law back when we lived in the Twin Cities. It was after I had been the first person on the scene of yet another tragically fatal motorcycle accident--a horror of a nightmare for me--and I had to follow him in our car as he navigated that vulnerable-looking piece of equipment through all that traffic. I was a shaky piece of white-knuckled, bawling wreck of humanity that finally walked in our door afterwards, but I did it, and he made it home without incident. All these years, he's made it home to me without incident, yet every time he leaves me--no matter what he drives--that voice haunts me. And I have to shush it...but it never really disappears completely.
Those potentials are always a possibility...but they're just one of multitudes of potentials. It's just that my worrying about them and bracing myself for their possibility of happening is more likely to bring them into my experience because of my focus on them, than if I let go and open myself up to something more. Yes, that involves lowering my guards and expectations--and I feel extremely vulnerable.
But living in that fear and that worry is no life. That's misery. And I honestly know now that if he should die by that route or any other, that we would both be okay. I wouldn't feel the need to try to fill up the void anymore.
I still don't know how to plan a more joyful future experience without getting overwhelmed, but I no longer feel the need to worry over it.
At this moment, my future doesn't even exist!
I'm in the Void of nothingness--Again!
And I realize that even when in this void, I still EXIST!--I am!
And I feel so free here, unencumbered by stories!
Oh, that sweet deep breath of freedom of being...whatever and without judgment.
And this time I'm not worried about surviving. I don't need to be reaching out to serve others in a manner they expect me to in order to stay alive, to stay grounded. In truth, I realized that's what I'd been doing. I was just trying to stay embodied here on Earth--and my tool to do that at the time, in my very limited consciousness, was in TRYING to SERVE OTHERS, instead of making choices for myself. It served me well when I needed it most, but it's obsolete now, and it's actually getting in the way.
If I were to die right now, I'd actually be okay with that, but I'm here to experience embodied enlightenment--to see and feel, firsthand, that something more that I've known has been here all my life. I've never made a RIGHT or a WRONG choice--ever!!! It was my feelings and beliefs about myself and those choices that drew to myself every particular experience I went through.
That futureless void I once sought to fill in any way possible actually feels really freeing right NOW. I don't have to have a plan! I don't have to figure out details surrounding financing or relationships!
It's a relief to know I'm so much more than that character that I played and have been playing up to now. I really like and appreciate this human that I've identified with all these years, but it's been tough going playing the Little That's all I am Human. There hasn't been much joy in it, not really, because I've kept myself so limited. When you feel so unworthy of living, that's what you get--a pretty boring, often frustrating and tough life.
Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Penny, and she didn't worry about creating and filling up a future. She didn't worry about saving a world or anyone else. She wasn't trying to make somebody happy or trying to prove herself worthy of being. She was just visiting a world filled with wondrous experiences, a world that was so sensuous and seductive, so REAL FEELING, that she immersed so deeply into it that she forgot she was just a visitor playing a fun game.
I remember that little "I'm here for a visit" girl. It's the girl that was before she adopted other's ideas about how life on earth worked. In the first 7-8 years of my life, I realized that my family probaby enjoyed the most abundance ever in our history as a family, until now. I understand what all the ascended masters have been saying now--when I radiate joy and ease and graceful allowance in my own conscious awareness--all my loved ones around me benefit from my radiance without my having to say a word, or convince them to do it my way. They benefit because they are a part of MY created reality--they're no longer playing tough parts for me because I've lowered my protective guards.
And before that little girl that I was got caught up in all the stories and play-acts that said "life is tough and harsh and sometimes cruel"--that world of hers was A-MAZING! That world was awesome and full of possibilities to CHOOSE without self doubt or second-guessing herself. That world was magical and she didn't have to figure out how to go out and get it--it came to her, freely, easily, without a goal or plan. Wha-La! It was just there!
That world was a gift of experience she ALLOWED herself to receive OPENLY. It was a world undistorted by the judgments made by insignificant-feeling Little Humans who didn't remember they were so much more...
The magic is back, Penny! Doesn't it feel liberating? I feel so open, so excited about experiencing something more! Get out of the way, my beloved and scared Little Human play-act, and ALLOW it to flow to you...
It comes to you, kid. It comes to you--just open up and allow yourself to receive it with ease and grace.
It's time to really enjoy your life as the gift of experience that it truly is...
My shields are down...I am open...wide open...
It's amazing, this experience of having ALLOWED MYSELF a HOLIDAY with just myself.
Thursday, September 10, 2015
German Chocolate Cake
This is a favorite recipe from the Bowman Lutheran 75th Anniversary 1908 - 1983 Cookbook. Klara Strand contributed this recipe and entitled it "Zit City Choco Delite." Back in the 70s and 80s the food myth was that chocolate was bad for you and that it promoted acne outbreaks. My family was so large that when Mom baked a cake it was eaten hot out of the oven. This is my absolute favorite chocolate cake--heavy, chocolatey and moist. I often pair it with Vivian Hall's "German Chocolate Cake Frosting" which I like to make with cream.
Zit City Choco Delite (Chocolate Cake)
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease and flour 9 x 13 cake pan.
1 c. Butter, melted (can substitute 1 c. vegetable oil)
2 tsp. Baking Soda
1 c. Hot Water (boiling)
3/4 c. Cocoa
1 c. Evaporated Milk or Cream
1 c. Sugar
3 Egg Yolks, slightly beaten
1/2 c. Butter
1 tsp. Pure Vanilla
1 c. Walnuts or Pecans, chopped and *toasted
1 1/3 c. Flaked Coconut *Sweetened, or Soaked Unsweetened Unsulfured
Mix evaporated milk, sugar, yolks, and butter in saucepan and cook until thickened and bubbly on MEDIUM LOW heat. Boil about 12 minutes, stirring constantly with a whisk to keep from burning to the bottom of the saucepan. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla, toasted walnuts and coconut. Cool and stir until thick enough to spread.
1 c. Hot Water (boiling)
3/4 c. Cocoa
2 c. Flour
2 c. Sugar
2 c. Sugar
1/2 tsp. Salt
2 Eggs
1 c. Buttermilk (or 1 Tbsp. Vinegar and enough Milk to make 1 cup)
2 tsp. Pure Vanilla
Melt butter and set aside.
Dissolve the baking soda in the hot water and let cool a bit.
1 c. Buttermilk (or 1 Tbsp. Vinegar and enough Milk to make 1 cup)
2 tsp. Pure Vanilla
Melt butter and set aside.
Dissolve the baking soda in the hot water and let cool a bit.
With a wire whisk sift the flour, sugar, salt and cocoa together in a large mixing bowl.
Add the rest of the wet ingredients, making sure the hot water and melted butter has cooled enough not to cook the eggs.
Put all the ingredients at once into a large bowl. Mix on LOW speed with mixer for 2 minutes, only until well-blended. Pour into greased and floured 9x13-inch pan. Bake at 375 degrees for 35 - 40 minutes, until toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
German Chocolate Cake Frosting
German Chocolate Cake Frosting
1 c. Evaporated Milk or Cream
1 c. Sugar
3 Egg Yolks, slightly beaten
1/2 c. Butter
1 tsp. Pure Vanilla
1 c. Walnuts or Pecans, chopped and *toasted
1 1/3 c. Flaked Coconut *Sweetened, or Soaked Unsweetened Unsulfured
Mix evaporated milk, sugar, yolks, and butter in saucepan and cook until thickened and bubbly on MEDIUM LOW heat. Boil about 12 minutes, stirring constantly with a whisk to keep from burning to the bottom of the saucepan. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla, toasted walnuts and coconut. Cool and stir until thick enough to spread.
*Toast walnuts or pecans in 325 degree oven for 4-8 minutes and allow to cool. The toasting makes them pop when you chew, as well as adding a roasted nut flavor.
*Lately, I use Unsweetened and Unsulfured flaked (large or small) coconut which has to be soaked in 3 c. water for 1 hour and then the water drained off through a strainer before adding to the frosting. It's less sweet. Otherwise, I used the bags of sweetened coconut found in the baking aisle.
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