Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Gratitude~Pain




Gratitude: The quality of being thankful.  It arises from the heart.  It is a condition of the mind and heart.  It makes one appreciate people, places and things.  Simple things - hot water.  Good food.  Roofs over our heads.  It is very basic for me, it is the manner in which I choose to live.  It is an attitude.  A mindset.

My first thought upon waking is usually about pain.  This is because I live in pain.  I deal with it everyday, 24 hours a day.  Except when I'm sleeping.  The first thing, most generally, I do is get my medicine - unless I turn on the coffee pot on the way.  Do I like living in such a manner?  No.  Alas, this is the hand that I've been dealt.  So one much assimilate.  The medicine only works to a point - and I must deal with the rest.  I must deal with it whether I'm cooking, driving, sitting, standing, working, or resting - because it is always there.  Someone once told me to befriend it - and I guess I have.

We have choices in life, many we do not even realize.  Our minds become so focused upon our circumstances that we miss alternatives.  The proverbial forest for the trees adage.  My pain has taught me lessons.  The physical pain has taught me and the emotional pain has taught me.  It's taught me that there are realms beyond what we experience that can be experienced by the mind.  I can get so immersed in what I'm doing that I forget the pain.  I'm extremely thankful for those times.  I've learned the less I focus upon it, the less it focuses upon me.  This is true of everything in life.  When we put all of our energies into something, it grows to tremendous proportions.  The same is true of gratitude.

We can live our lives in "thankfulness".  We can see beauty when there was none, if we but choose.  We can see wonder in our daily lives all around us - if we have an open heart.  An open heart to experience, to forgiveness, to learning and to love life.  In the midst of what our televisions sets tells us is a negative, angry world - we can have peace.  If I can do it, and experience pain levels that I do - and have the history that I have, so can anyone else.  If I can have hit bottom, started over with nothing but clothes and shoes in my car - so can anyone else.  Richness comes from inside.  It is a heart-speak. It is a conditioning of the mind, a mental attitude.  

Think of the things that matter in your life.  Focus on life's goodness. Pull from your heart what makes your heart sing.  Let that be the fuel in which you live your life.  One cannot but be filled with joy - when our priorities take precedence over our negative tendencies.  The 'so called' little things that we take for granted - would stop us in our tracks if they were not there for one day.  Why not find pleasure in them?  Why not give glory where glory is due for the things that keep us going - day in and day out? It is a very simple principle to live by.  I think you will find it will grow on you - as you begin to have a thankful disposition.  

Gratitude, even in the state of pain - cannot but expand the mind.  It cannot but expand the heart.  A heart-fullness that leads to an expectant and open life.  A life that is rich, and full of hope.  Hope for today, hope for tomorrow and the ability to see miracles when they happen.  They do happen - we live in an infinitely wondrous universe.  We have a God that can do all things.  He sprinkled the stars - and set the universe into being.  He wants us to be thankful and at peace.  At rest.  To trust.  Expect great things, because they do happen, despite what the world will tell you.  He answers prayer.  

Gratitude is a wonderful feeling.  Pain is a part of my life.  I choose to be thankful, despite the fact that I don't have everything that I wish I did.  I believe  in time, as it is to be, my prayers well be answered.  That is what trust is about.  I have enough peace to wait, and be thankful along the way.  It makes for a much more abundant life.  I thank God for my abundance.  Even when there is lack.  True riches come from the heart.  It is a bounty that cannot be measured in monetary scales.  There is no price I would place upon it.  

Find yourself being thankful for the things that are a constant in your life.  Things that you don't normally think about.  See if your heart does not become full.  See if you outlook upon life does not change.  Let that feeling build from that place.  Open your heart to the things that matter in you life.  See them for what they are - blessings. 

Friday, January 25, 2013

Faith/Freedom

I'm heading into a direction in my life that I never thought I'd venture into again.  It's a miracle, actually.  After everything that I've been through, the course that my life is taking, is nothing short of a personal miracle. 

They happen, miracles.  If we but look.  Sometimes small, sometimes large - but they are out there.  I think a person has to be open to them, and ready to receive.  I think it takes an open heart.  An expectant heart.  Not the kind of "expectations", where we are demanding of God - not like this - but more in a humble manner.  One filled with give and take.  One who's life is like that of the tree - who bends and arks with the winds of life.  The subtle changes of it's vibrancy.  

I've been through a great deal of changes.  Even crisis's one would say.  Personal hell.  More than once, I've had to start from bottom up.  I still say, if we have noting to loose, we have everything to gain.  This is where the real lessons come from.  When the rubber meets the road of life.  I've spent my time in the fetal position, grieving with God.  Asking my savior to extinguish my pain - but He did not - not until I was done.  The wounds must heal.  Oh, I've tried every band-aide.  But, none of them work - except the healing work.  The gut level, "oh my God, I'm going to die if I have to feel this another second," kind of pain.  The pure unadulterated, unable to breathe, pain.  The only way out.  You can't buy it, sleep with it, eat your way out of it, nor win enough money to forget it, sleep through it, it will still be there waiting on you.  Waiting on you in your new clothes, with your new boyfriend, your winnings, and with your gained weight.  It does not sleep.  Pain waits lifetimes.  You might as well just deal with it and get it over.  There is freedom on the other side.  Beautiful freedom.  This is where the faith comes in.  The faith that once you start this journey - that it will, in fact --- end.  That it is worth it's price.  

Freedom has it's privileges.  It's called peace.  I think few people have peace of mind.  Little alone, do people have peace in their hearts.  This is the true keeper of peace - the soul.  I believe our minds process the matters of the heart.  We've given our minds a gargantuan job.  What if we were to let our hearts speak our minds?  What if we lived from our hearts?  It would be an interestingly different world.  Because we guard our hearts with our minds.  We guard our hearts at all cost.  We become offended at the simplest of matters.  We personalize everything - because we're so wounded.  My question is, who's fault is this?  Who is responsible that we're so wounded?  If personal pain is our personal responsibility - why do we throw it upon the universe?  Why do we have the tendency to blame everyone and every thing outside ourselves for what is wrong with the insides of us?  

I think it is because we have no faith.  We have no place in which we feel we can turn.  We have lost hope.  The world had rather focus upon negative things, murder and mayhem than things of beauty and wonder.  We'd rather take the easy way-out than take responsibility for ourselves.  No one wants to do the work it takes to forge towards wholeness.  Many people don't even think it possible.  Yet look at the vastness of the world we live in.  The riches we partake in each and everyday.  We can be such an ungrateful lot. 

I am living proof that pain will not kill you.  Not physical pain, not emotional pain.  It has a beginning and an end.  Is it a journey?  Yes.  Will people, circumstances, angels even - present themselves along the way?  A resounding "yes!"  We do not have to be walking wounded.  We can heal.  Faith is a real thing.  We all have it, we just sometimes don't know that we do.  We have faith that our cars will start - we have faith that the sun will rise - we look for the rainbow after the storm.  These things we take for granted.  These are the substances of the elements of faith.  Why would it be so hard for us to believe that there is a creator that has our best interest (and more if you know my blog) at heart?  Something much greater than we are that will guide us towards healing and wholeness.  Just think about it -- what keeps the candle flame lit when there's air everywhere?  How is it that our cells just know to completely recycle everyday?  All of these things are miracles.  If we but LOOK.  

I'm on a path back to my career after everything I've been through.  God has made a way when there was none.  All of this has transpired out of my helping someone.  Now someone is going to help me.  It has been 12 years since I've been able to work in my field.  I took care of my Father for eight of those years, went back to college two of them, went through numerous surgeries, and did a lot of healing.  Grief is mixed all in there.  Body grief, mind grief and soul grief.  The cathartic period was when my Father passed.  It was the pivotal  point.  I thought it would break me.  It is true what they say, 'that which does not kill you, makes you stronger.'  I'm superwoman.  I have faith and I'm free.  



Friday, January 11, 2013

Unblocking the Heart.



I'm learning how to feel the pain as I go.  Instead of closing my heart in constant fear, I'm learning how to process things in the order in which they happen.  It's a burning sensation, and it does not kill me.  For this is what I feared - that the emotion would be my end.  So I barricaded myself up - like fort Knocks, in anticipation of emotion.  The only problem is, I lived in a constant state of fear.  Fear is not the way I want to live.  Fear of every encounter - fear - even in my own living environment.  

Shallow breath.  Tightened shoulders.  A magnified mind.  Watching my own thoughts.  That crushing feeling in my chest - so tight at times, I felt as if I'd have a heart attack.  Anxiety.  These are the things of fear.  Fear of what?  Fear of whom?  I did not even know.  Problems of the day - to the point of feeling ill inside.  Panic.  Feelings of severe distress.  All inside my mind.  A mind that I'd somehow told to safeguard my heart - from life.  How can this be?  How can the mind be given such a task?  It cannot.  It simply cannot protect us from matters of the heart.  It is a death sentence.

Some how intrinsically I knew it had to stop.  I knew by listening to my own self that something had to give - I was either going to  have a stroke or a heart attack.  Awe, there's the meds - but isn't that just a bandaid over a gunshot wound?  Somehow I had to get to the heart-matter.  For this was a heart problem ...  Not a matter for the mind to solve.

 I'm not a creature that dislikes change, I've prayed to my God.  I've prayed countless times for release of pain, and answers to various emotional problems that I have.  Here as of late, however, I've had several challenges.  Challenges with depression, identity issues, work, and life.  I'm trying to start my life over after difficult losses, and trauma.  A vat of emotional pain.  I've basically lost everything that meant anything to me, including the one person that I truly depended upon in this universe.  My sole connector - my Dad.  This has altered my life, beyond words.  The events that ensued, were devastating.  It has been earth shattering.  Now I am in process of rebuilding my life from the ground up.  The possessions did not mean that much - but the events and the trauma altered my life drastically.  Yet, it has taught me more than I can articulate - and strengthened me farther than I thought possible.  I've came farther that I once thought capable - having to start with really tiny baby steps - after a long period of being frozen in pain.  I've been through the gamut.  

I'm now functioning, or at least attempting to put my life back together, after the collapse.  The difficulty being, I keep running into fear.  I am more than tired of it.  It exhausts me.  I'm learning that although I thought I'd done exceptional grief work - fear abounds.  Fear feeds upon itself.  The more fear you have, the more you WILL have.  One thing tells you to be frightened of something else -- and so on.  

The answer?  Realize that fear is running your life, ruining your life.  I'm reading an exceptional book - "The Untethered Soul," by Michael A. Singer.  Warning!  It is not for the faint of heart.  It is a very difficult endeavor - this voyage to the bottoms of the psyche - the center of the soul...  This book offers what I love, love, love, HOPE.  I am a hope junkie.  I dispensed it when I worked, and I guess one would say I still do now.  We do not have to live life in 'fight or flight' mode.  There is an answer - and it is in these pages.  One can live with their heart open to life, love, beauty, and wonder.  It is what I've been searching for, for a long - long time.  

This book really came to me via the Divine.  I have been on this quest - and have been trying to monitor my own thoughts.  This book begins with paying attention to your own thoughts - and it was as if I'd been given the copy from God.  

I know that I'm not the only person that's been ruled by fear.  Ruled by fear of loneliness, acceptance, fear of rejection, abandonment, etc...  It affects everything that we do.  It affects what we wear, what we drive, how we wear our hair, what houses we buy, every last thing we do.  It imprisons us.   Except the walls are self made.  We are the jailer and we hold the keys.  

I am so enormously grateful to learn a heart language.  To have been given this piece of work.  I believe that my life has the potential to be lived, and not struggled through.  I can have total awareness, and quiet my mind.  I will have my heart energy - feel the feelings as they come, and not build a fortress around my heart to protect it.  I will evolve.  I will be a different person, and stop trying to be who I once was.  As an elderly gentleman once told me a few months ago - "you've yet to reach your potential," I believe he was right.  I claim it - I acknowledge it.  I will unblock my heart.        

Monday, January 7, 2013

Living life ~ Open Perspective.

Fear is more than just an emotion.  As I have been observing in life, it blocks our thought life - and perception.  It can, and does change everything once we become aware of it.  At it's inception, it alters our lives.  From how we view and interact with people, to how we perceive life.  It feeds upon itself, and it protects itself.  We lose a lot of valuable energy, because of fear.  

I'm discovering that I have much more trepidation in life that I'd once thought.  I've become enlighten by a book that I'm now reading - and I'm trying to live with my heart open.  To experience life from the entire process without getting sucked into the fear vacuum.  

It's very odd, this "fight or flight" response that we all have, that we don't actually need any longer - but our bodies still regularly use it.  It becomes habitual.  It's as if our systems thinks we're animals, that need to flee.  So we freak out on potholes, broken nails, or people that drive too slow.  We are a sad lot.  We protect ourselves from things we aren't even aware of.  Or at least that is what I've found upon enlightenment of it.  It is this inner core, that stays hammered down, at all times.  It's the 'safety-valve' of life.  I know it alters the way I experience life.  It protects me, but it also keeps me from experiencing joy as well.  

My quest is to find out how to open back up.  Now that I've discovered that I'm a closed system - how does one begin to unharness this safety device?  

I want to experience life the way it is supposed to be experienced.  Not from a fear state.  It seems total eradication of it isn't possible, so it is going to have to be a process.  It is the heart center, the seat of awareness.  It seems that things make me loose focus. It's like there's a big picture, but because of fear, the forest becomes the little tree.  All I've been seeing as of late, are little trees - and I'm not proud of this.  I ponder too, what it is I really think the enemy is?  What it is that is going to harm me?  Are they childhood demons, or modern day dilemmas?  Yet and still, none of which can really harm me to the extent that I have to wear the fear harness - but yet intellect does not illuminate nor eliminate.  It's not a brain matter...  It is at the seat of consciousness. It is the spirit of the psyche.  Do I ever wish good old Freud was around, or Jung, and pick their brains.  However, this isn't a brain deal.  It's a heart thing.  

2 Corinthians 5:7 We walk by faith, not by sight.  
I think this is the hardest part.  Faith.  I have it, but obviously, I need more.  Heart surgery.  I suppose this is what I'll be doing - on some level.  I'm on this path to living life more open - open to the universe.  Open to people, and open to experience.  I want the energy.  I want to live life like it is to be lived.  I want to give of myself to the things that serve me, so I can be of service.  I desire to experience it to the fullest - without being a 'closed system.' I want to experience the whole movie and not just the popcorn - and I know it is going to take hard work.  To breathe, and allow that self-serving fear to be released.  To have experiences where I don't feel like the world is going to end if I cannot control the outcome of events. The fact of the matter is we cannot control anything.  This is life, and it is full of change.  Somewhere, somehow, someone gave us the idea we could - and it has so messed up our psyche that we life in fear that things have to stay the same.  Our earth is rotating for goodness sake, how can we control anything, it's amazing that gravity works.  How we get the insane idea that we're in control, I'll never know.  Our bodies recycle themselves every 24 hours.  The only thing that stays the same, IS change.  

I look to my creator.  All of my hope is in Him.  It always is.  AS much as I've been through in my life, He is the only solution.  His word, and prayer are the tools of my life.  I don't do religion - I do relationship.  I've had many miracles in my life.  It is in many ways a miracle that I'm still alive with the things that I've been through.  Of course there would be scoffers, there always are, but they did not have my experience.  


I'm going to keep working on this heart journey.  I'm going to learn how to breathe.  I know that with most life quests, the universe will get behind me.  I think I'm going to find beauty in my life again.  I'm going to learn how to not feel fear.  I'm going to learn how to have experiences and not let the 'fight or flight' response be a knee-jerk reaction to every little bump in the road. I might just learn how to feel like a kid again.  I'm going to learn how to live open to experience all that life has to offer me, without having to feel like I've got to control it before it hurts me.  I'm going to somehow realize that it can't hurt me, unless I let it.  I know know there is a difference.  Enlightenment is half the battle.  I want the heart energy.  I deserve it and so do you.   

Friday, January 4, 2013

Fighting Battles, Living Life

Life,  It seems at times, is a series of battles.  I suppose it is a matter of perception - one could call it challenges, but either way, the climb is uphill.  An enlightened soul tries to do these things with an open heart.  Energy only flows through an open heart.  Once we loose focus, and our thinking becomes static - our wealth of energy is cut off.  Our thoughts race, and our whole lives seem to stop.  We have a block in the flow of our lives.  We no longer see beauty - our consciousness is no longer in tune with nature, moon light, and flowers.  It struggles for a solution and thus we become the problem.  It chains, dare I say, even our breath.  

My dispute with this is, I want to go on living despite my provocation.  If an individual is aware of the closing of the heart - that which shuts itself off during difficulties- then it can reopen.  I am not the sum total of the bumps in the road...  I want to keep seeing the trees in the forest.  

I have a few things going on.  All of which require legal counsel.  I am a tranquil human.  I love peace. For some odd reason - people in my life love to try and disquiet my spirit.  Unless I am merely processing it wrongly.  This could be too.  At any rate - I have things that can cause disharmony, and I am a creature of peace.  My quandary is: How do I remain open to life when life seems to throw me curve balls?  

I want to experience all that I can.  We only have one shot at this life deal.  I've told many, "this isn't a dressed rehearsal."  Energy flows in and through us.  The more open our systems, the more alive we feel.  Just like falling in love.  Remember how it felt?  You felt alive and invigorated - you could almost feel your blood pumping.  Everything felt new, bright and full of wonder.  This is living life the way I believe we can live.  We can live life, and be in love with life itself.  It is all a matter of perception, energy flow - and the attention we give out thoughts.  It is being an open system verses a closed one.  Our bodies are a system, why not challenge yourself to be free from the things that bind you, mainly your thought life?  It mostly stems from our fear of what "might" happen if we remain open to experience the world.  

What if we had a center that could not be hurt?  What if we decided, here and now that no one, or nothing was ever going to hurt us again.  That our cores were 'hurt-proof'.  That we had a special place inside of ourselves that nothing could penetrate?  Such a special place we only we can dwell.  Energy can flow in and out - but others have no access to hurt or harm.  It is only for us to access.  Our feeling center, where we experience life but that it is protected automatically.  Thoughts do not affect it - it just is.  It has it's on protective mechanisms.  The place where God dwells.  That ever so special place where we call all find center - and know we are always safe.  No matter what, nothing but positivity and goodness can penetrate it.  

Don't you think we'd be better humans?  We'd have more energy- we'd be kinder?  There would be less strife in the world at large.  More compassion.  We could direct our own thoughts.  We would do for our neighbor as we would do for ourselves.  We would love God with our whole hearts.  We would live like there is no tomorrow - and have no regrets.  We'd eat our favorite foods, call our most beloved people and tell them what they mean to us.  We would be able to live without fear.  We would only feel - love.  

This is what I think God had originally designed.  I believe this was the Garden of Eden.  The eating of the apple of knowledge of Good and Evil - thus made them aware.  Thus, began the burden.  

I believe it possible to rise above our truths - to a higher plane.  A place inside ourselves where life is precious.  Where our experiences mean what there supposed to mean - and we don't just 'struggle' through.  Where we can shut the computer (brain) down and experience life via the heart.  It takes work, and it takes great courage.  One must nearly be ferocious.  However, I believe it's worth every ounce of energy.  Every flow of energy - every opening of the heart.  To live life, present.  To view it as more than a series of battles.  To observe it as a wild movie that you can't wait to see what happens next.  

There is beauty in life, everywhere.  In the star sprinkled sky - the wispy clouds, the purplish oranges of the sunset.  The trees that reach far below ground and reach for the stars.  We are a blessed people.  If only we choose to see.  If we choose to see with our hearts and our eyes.  Even in our battles in life, we can find truth and beauty.  We are alive and breathing - fight for what is yours - but do it in kindness.  Do it with a sense of wonder and adventure.  Believe that anything is possible - and it will be.  

Chemicals no longer needed.

  I agree with this wholeheartedly.   I'm going on day three... of little sleep, I'm in a transition with my depression medications....