“A no changes nothing but a yes can change everything; No is only two letters, Yes is three–why are we afraid of hearing the smaller word? Here’s the thing, when someone says no, we have nothing to lose.  I’d be in the same exact position and situation and it’s even better because I have less stress from no longer thinking about it, I’ve removed that stress.  But if they say yes and become a director that can change your life.  We have nothing to lose with no except maybe pride or ego,” Marc Bernacchi.  I was listening to a conference the other day and this perspective on “no” came up.  When we put it in perspective, it is kind of ridiculous how we allow fear of hearing that word dictate our actions.  If we never take the chance then we will never have the opportunity whereas if we go for it and hear no, at least we opened a door or a potential door to something else.  I love the idea that “no” changes nothing.  In that regard it solidifies the idea that there’s no reason to NOT go for something, to not take the chance, to not give it a shot.  Worst case scenario, we end up where we are and in the best case, we end up where we’ve always wanted to be—or on that path.

Words are powerful and will form a pathway in our minds.  The words we repeat create the ideas and beliefs and systems and values we follow.  It’s important to keep perspective on our words and to remember that we are in control of the thoughts that go through our head.  The reasons we wouldn’t go for something are based on our beliefs in or abilities or what those around us think just as much as the things we’d take a chance on.  The perspective is always are.  Sure, there are scenarios we need to weigh to determine the best odds.  We have to know when there is risk involved and if the reward is worth it.  We also need to remember that there is no point in suffering over something that we have every bit of control over and if we continually build the anticipation, eventually that pressure will be too much.  So instead of thinking we need to know all the answers or that we need to know the outcome 20 steps from now, just ask ourselves what’s the worst that can happen from taking a chance right now.  Even if we don’t get exactly what we were hoping for, there is still a reward because we gain confidence to go for things that matter to us.  We learn to trust ourselves and our abilities and our beliefs and we learn to see possibilities others may not.

The point is this: it’s always up to us.  The actions we take are either bringing us closer to our goals or further from them.  The more we say no, the more doors we close to the potential paths that would lead to a desired outcome—or something even better.  There is a time and a place to say no, but if the goal is to create change or to spark some inspiration, then no isn’t going to get us there.  We have to say yes to the experiences we want and start saying no to what we don’t want.  And the truth is we so often put more pressure on ourselves because we think we have to have all the answers when sometimes the only way we find the answer is to go through it.  We deny ourselves that chance every time we say no.  So learn to take the chance on what we want in life.  It really does come down to this: we are often one decision away from changing our lives.  We are either staying the same or evolving and it’s always right at our fingertips.  You never know when inspiration will strike or when things will align just right and all the pieces come together exactly as we need.  So be clear on what we want and decide to go for it, decide to welcome it.  “No” may be what we know—but “yes” can be the beginning we’re looking for.   

Note, this isn’t mine but I don’t have an author to attribute it to.

REMEMBER:

What you do in private is seen in public

What you read is seen in how you speak

Who you spend time with is seen in your personality

What you eat is seen in your energy

You turn into who you are when no one is watching

When your habits change your whole life changes with them

“Silence isn’t empty.  It’s where your real clarity waits,” Uriel Maksumov. Silence scares me.  The brain is designed to protect and it is designed to take in input, process it, create understanding, elicit an action or response of some kind.  The brain is designed to move and is constantly trying to solve problems so to find answers in silence seems a bit counterintuitive.  Also, with the elevated frustrations over the last few days, asking for help into what feels like nothingness felt particularly futile. I could see where people feel the emptiness of it.  I mean, I hate having one sided conversations and I’m nervous in silence with others so I will always find something else to talk about.  I hate the awkwardness between topics where you’re trying to figure out what to say—I prefer to keep it going and learn now things.  I’m also an excited talker so when I have an idea I tend to just spit it out—it truly isn’t meant to be rude, I just love sharing ideas. At the same time I’m a proponent of listening to find the answers within and I’ve talked about that many times—but when you start to not hear the answers you’re looking for it can feel like there’s nothing there and the panic sets in so that makes it difficult to find quiet again.

I’ve had those moments of clarity where it felt like lightning striking and everything kind of just fell together as it should.  I’ve had the moments when I felt the tension leave my body because flow took over and I KNEW there was nothing to worry about, all was on track and exactly as it should be.  But I’ve had days when it felt like even opening the door was challenging, where the problems from yesterday were solved but now led to something else that I didn’t see coming.  I heard nothing in those moments.  I felt alone and confused in those moments.  And the truth is there were some of those moments that I never got the answers I was looking for.  Some days the noise is loud and we’re inundated with too much information and advice and talk we don’t need and others, even when we’re asking for help there’s just nothing.  The silence seems louder than anything as we wait to hear something back.  I’ve had to consider in those moments that there just might be something telling us to hold on, to dig deeper, to look at a different side of ourselves to find the answers we seek. Possibly cliché, I know.

We all experience times when we feel we fell short of something.  As suggested, introspection is an important part of finding the truth.  A few things—we are often far harsher on ourselves than anyone else and we think of ourselves far more often than anyone else.  So our opinion and mindset matter most because we spend the most time with ourselves.  We’re used to noise internally and externally and it can become addictive to the point where we can’t handle being quiet or slowing down.  Silence doesn’t have to be a scary thing.  We may not like what we hear but we will always find the truth, especially when we filter out all the noise and unnecessary crap.  We know far more than we give ourselves credit for and need to trust that what we intuit and understand is real.  Silence can lead to the realization that we are with the wrong group of people or that we are exactly where we need to be.  It can show us where we need to grow.  It brings out the things we didn’t want to talk about because it has a chance to surface when nothing else is around.  Face it and embrace it and block out everything else.  To learn more, to get more, to understand more, we need less.     

“The greatest breakthroughs whether in science, art, or personal growth often come in moments of stillness.  When the mind is quiet,” Uriel Maksumov. Along with the theme of quieting the mind and the benefits of slowing down is the idea of pressure.  Perhaps I’m sensitive to this topic because my mind is naturally loud and busy.  Throw in the daily responsibilities and daily distractions and my mind is never really settled.  I work on a schedule with tasks and demands, checking things off the list, and when anxiety sets in, I find other things to do.  As I’ve been working on transitioning to a more creative lifestyle, I’ve learned that I can’t checklist creativity, it doesn’t work like that.  Creativity doesn’t flow/turn on simply because it’s scheduled on the calendar.  Operating in both worlds is challenging because they conflict with each other and the timing of either doesn’t align.  I’ve noticed that in itself (the idea of putting restrictions on creativity) creates a lot of noise. 

How do we get new ideas if we demand them?  Creativity has curves and edges and doesn’t travel in a straight line—it’s rare that we would learn something new forcing that creative urge down the path we expect it to be on.  We have to let it guide us.  Creativity is a living thing and, like all living things, it doesn’t do well when it’s weighed down.  There’s a time for pressure as it develops strength and refines the idea but it can crack or break under constant or increased strain.  It’s like water through a hose—if we squeeze it the water will come out harder and faster.  If we squeeze it too hard, it will cut of the flow entirely, the idea being that when we release some pressure, things can flow better instead of constricting.  Pressure is noise and it prevents the spontaneous ideas and answers that may come when we are in flow. 

If we’re in need of a new idea, a revelation of sorts, a good method to encourage it is to work on something else.  Respect the boundary our creativity sets when it says we need to focus on something else.  This is different than distraction which are those things that stop us from doing the work we need to do.  Whether it’s guiding or quieting the mind, it requires discipline.  The point isn’t to focus on a specific new idea, rather to allow it happen naturally.  It’s often said you never know when inspiration may strike.  It’s in those moments when we aren’t desperately searching for an answer where the pieces can fall together and it all makes sense. We are the result of millennia of breakthroughs.  We’ve created new understanding and each new person is a chance to expand that even further.  We have to hear our purpose and what we are called to do in order to create—mindset is everything. Quiet the noise and let lightning strike. 

Today I am grateful for understanding the breakdown.  Much of my life has felt like trying to hold sand in my hands, trying to keep it all together while all the pieces fall from between my fingers, slipping away.  I tried to do so many things all at once, all over the place, totally unrelated but with the same goal in mind.  Essentially trying to ride both sides of the rail where it splits.  Truth be told I thought I was doing really well.  I thought I had it under control and thought as long as I took small steps through each process I wasn’t going to break, as if I could ease myself into stretching the miles between the goals.  I never learned my lesson and I certainly didn’t practice what I preached.  I continually said yes to everything, piling on and on to the load, and no one offered to help.  I mean, that’s fine in degree because I was the one who said yes, so I get it.  No one should have to commit to something they didn’t agree to.  But there was another weight that came with that pressure (self-induced or not) and that was loneliness.  The more I took on and the more people were involved, I had hoped that we’d be able to tackle somethings together but what ended up happening is people found a way to simply add their “things” to my pile and walk away without even looking back.  It wasn’t sustainable and the inevitable happened—I broke.  I broke over and over again, so stubborn where I would rebuild myself only to fall into the same habit.  But now there are some pieces that won’t go back together.  There are some pieces I don’t WANT to put back together.  And I’m still putting them together on my own.  Relationships aren’t about one person carrying the burden while the other gets whatever they want with no cares in the world.  Our job is to ease the pressure by approaching things together and it wasn’t until total breakdown that I looked at the relationships around me to discover the punching bag I allowed myself to be.  So for that particular breakdown I am grateful.  I was lonely with people and struggling to keep my head above water.  I’d rather be lonely and be able to save myself rather than stay in water where I will surely drown.  At least on my own I have a chance at survival and a chance to find the right people to reciprocate what I’m giving.     

Today I am grateful for persistence.  Look, I’m the first one to admit that I haven’t gotten as far as I want to when it comes to achieving my goals and I am 100% aware of my responsibility in that.  There is no reason or way to be a victim of circumstances we put ourselves in.  The point of this particular piece of gratitude is that no matter what has or hasn’t panned out in my life, no matter how many directions I’ve been pulled in, no matter how many times I’ve been turned around, there has always been a singular flame that still pushes me forward.  There is that constant ember that won’t die.  I have moments where I legitimately think that letting it go out would be the easiest thing to do—perhaps even the smartest.  I never do it.  There is some force within all of us that keeps us going.  It keeps us moving in those moments when we want to throw in the flag.  The beauty in persistence is that if we keep going, we keep possibility going and eventually we will find where we are headed and the directions all make sense even if we had to take a few detours.  So as they say, rest if you need, but don’t quit.  Persist.  Keep going.

Today I am grateful for growth.  Growth looks different for all of us and the ingredients necessary for growth are different for all of us. What motivates one may paralyze another.  What’s needed for one may not be needed by another.  We spend a lot of time avoiding certain things—the human brain is wired to protect itself and to take the path of least resistance so given the option to do what we know versus learn something that seems more challenging, we will choose to go with what we know every time.  Sometimes those things we avoid in life keep showing up until we have no choice BUT to face it and it’s interesting the impact that happens when we face those things we don’t want to.  Sometimes the biggest change is spurred by simply accepting reality.  That doesn’t mean we can‘t have an eye on the future—we need to have an eye on the future—but to get on the right path to where we need to go and sometimes to even find the path, we need to face what’s there.  Once I understood the differences in my experience versus other’s, it made me realize that even if we were at the same event, people can walk away with an entirely different lesson or outlook.  That’s their outlook and it isn’t up to us to make their lesson ours or make them see the experience through our lens.  Sometimes growth is a slow evolution and sometimes it happens in an instant.  Either way it changes everything.  We just need to open our eyes and see the light.     

Today I am grateful for coming into a beautiful season.  Even if this season means something different to those I love, it still means what it means to me. It’s still an important part of my life and holds a huge part of my heart. The memories I have from both sides of my family, the traditions as had in our own home growing up, the traditions I’ve started in my home with my son, it all means something very special to me.  It doesn’t have to mean the same thing to everyone else because it means so much to me.  My heart is full and I love sharing the love I have for this time of year with those I love.  It isn’t about how I feel necessarily—it’s about how it feels to share that with them.  This year looks different than it has before and it will continue to change as time moves on.  I have to accept that.  But I can still find my meaning and my joy in it and that isn’t contingent on anyone around me.  That’s on me and what matters to me.  I may have to change a few things moving forward and reprioritize but I don’t have to give up how I feel.

Today I am grateful for finding happy.  This has been one of those off putting roller coaster years in respect to what I planned and how I thought things would be turned out completely opposite.  It’s been disorienting on so many levels because what I had in mind didn’t come to pass and the effort I put in seemed to fall flat.  Plus I spent a majority of the year in mental chaos with all the work we’ve done around the house and the changes I’ve made in my 9-5.  I don’t regret any of it, it was all necessary and timely and it has proven to be what I needed on so many levels.  But it was the shedding of what I knew and we are in a very different place than we were before.  This coming year I want to focus on making sure those I love are secure and taken care of and that we have a set goal in mind for what we want to accomplish.  I want to make sure we know what we are doing and what we want moving forward—we need clarity.  We had a lot of hard lessons this year about those we can trust and who we should let into our lives moving forward and that isn’t something we are taking lightly.  There’s a lot we’ve had to recover from and we will need to keep that in mind.  Things change quickly and unpredictably at times and we will no longer build our plans on what others say we should be doing.  We tried to be accommodating and we ended up losing sight of who WE were and what we wanted for OUR family.  We almost let them convince us that we were wrong for protecting our family.  We will find our place and we will keep our goals prioritized with our vision on mind. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

“The more you slow down, the more life starts to make sense,” Uriel Maksumov.  The ability to slow down is predicated on trust.  We slow down when we feel secure and safe enough to halt the rushing whether it is physically or mentally and that feeling of security comes when we trust our surroundings or our ability to navigate through whatever comes our way.  The more I dive into various aspects of my 9-5 as well as my personal work, I realize how crowded the mind becomes even when we have the best of intentions.  As we are in holiday mode from now until the New Year, there’s an additional layer of pressure and busy-ness on top of all the usual clutter and movement.  The truth is we can’t make sound decisions if we are navigating at top speed 24/7.  Cars aren’t designed to make a 90 degree turn at 80 miles an hour nor are they meant to do 30 miles an hour on the highway and we certainly can’t drive multiple cars at the same time—in any scenario someone is likely to end up very hurt.  We need to know how to maneuver each situation safely and we need to find the pace that either keeps up with traffic or that we can sustain and we certainly need to focus on the conditions in front of us.  It’s the same for our minds.

We are behind the wheel at all times when it comes to our minds and, like driving a car, we need determine the route we take and the speed and what we pay attention to.  We know we’re supposed to drive with hands-free devices and pay attention to the road yet people are behind the wheel with a phone in their hands responding to text messages while on a call and trying to hear the navigation while the radio is playing a crappy song so we’re trying to change the station/channel.  Just reading that back it sounds ridiculous yet this is how we operate EVERY DAY.  Driving 80 miles an hour (or more, be honest) while doing all these things at once.  We can praise our ability to muti-task all we want but at some point that isn’t sustainable and it is NEVER safe—PSA: STOP DOING THAT CRAP ON THE ROAD.  Just as we can make the choice to pay attention to the road, we can navigate our thoughts as well.  Our minds operating at top speed seem pretty good but unrestrained thoughts will simply fly through familiar neural pathways and the same old junk will repeat and continue to bring us to the same places with the same results over and over again.  In that regard it isn’t just feeling safe to slow down, sometimes we have to slow down TO be safe.

We’ve made busy-ness and distraction our safety net.  If we’re in constant motion we aren’t addressing anything beneath the need for activity—that root of pain or sadness is always there and will continue to fuel the need for distraction.  We keep up with the distraction for so long we either forget the root or why the root even bothered us and the speed becomes the new norm and we forget how to slow down.  Until we hit a wall and we either start burning the tires out or we simply are so exhausted we can’t start again.  When we’re young, we think we can handle it all—and the truth is we can process a greater variety of things at once when we’re younger.  But the more we push through life and take on new roles and responsibilities, we start to feel the sludge build up, the load is heavier and the transitions aren’t as smooth as they used to be.  We need to slow down so we can see the finer details and fully understand what we’re seeing and what we need to do.  It’s at that point we realize that the security and safety we feel comes from knowing what to do rather than how much we do.  Sure we can equate this to stopping and smelling the roses to see the richness of life—but it’s also about recognizing we brought ourselves to those flowers for a purpose in the first place.  We brought ourselves to a place where we could find peace and safety.  We learned that life comes at us at the pace we make it and we need to slow down to take in the richness it has to offer.

“Sit alone, you will hear every answer you’ve been looking for,” Uriel Maksumov.  How many of us are willing to sit with those alone feelings?  I know I hate them.  I constantly need something—in this moment I have 5 screens in front of me and music going while I type and monitor my 9-5.  I’m desperate for answers but I’m so anxious I can’t sit still long enough to hear them.  The answers are within but so often we don’t talk about the impact of the unexpected on the answers we expect.  What do we do when we’ve followed our intuition and somehow still end up falling flat on our face?  I’m one of the first to say get up and keep going to anyone else but when it comes to myself, my instinct gets rattled to the core.  Every mistake seems to be a crack in the foundation and the last thing I want to do is sit where I can hear everything breaking.  Or at least that’s my fear.  I’m also afraid I won’t hear anything.  I’m not sure which is worse to be honest—seeing the breakdown of what you know or finding out there is nothing to guide us anyway, not even ourselves.  The point is I know I’m not alone when I share that fear. 

With that being said, however, I will also admit the validity in sitting alone.  There are times we need to eliminate bits of what’s around us because we can’t process everything at once.  The more we simplify the easier it is to get a true read on the situation and to hear/feel/understand/intuit what needs to be done.  There comes a time when activity is just that: activity.  It isn’t serving any purpose other than creating movement and movement without purpose can cause destruction and chaos.  Think bull in a China shop.  To that end, learning to tame the beast is necessary. The skill of sitting and reacclimating to our own senses takes time especially when we’ve already trained ourselves to be so desensitized to the reality around us along with our own knowing.  Maksumov is right—the more we sit in silence we find the keys to what we’re looking for.  It doesn’t matter what it is.  And truthfully there may not be a huge breakthrough or any type of revelation needed—we may simply need some time for our minds to reset from all the chaos we put in there every day.

Sitting in silence is scary—as I said there may be a point when we aren’t sure if we hear everything we’ve done wrong and our being seems to be coming undone or if we hear nothing.  I guess if we hear nothing that may mean there’s nothing to be done in that moment, but that fear is that there isn’t anything to guide us.  If we can’t do it ourselves, then what?  The thing is I would never suggest this to anyone, so the question is why do I allow that thought to enter my own mind? That’s something I’d need to be willing to sit in silence with.  These have been a rough few months and I know I’m feeling the edge of some burnout so I’m not entirely in my normal mindset—that should be one of the greatest reasons to stop and sit in the quiet.  There are certain walls that will only break when we are willing to let them crumble instead of beating our heads against it.  Often times the answer is subtle and it’s only in the quiet with focused attention we’ll hear it.  So breathe, shut down the screens, learn to let go and just take in what needs to be heard. 

In the world of behind the times entertainment (IE myself and my husband), we are now catching up on Lucifer.  This show carries lots of hidden and not so hidden gems in terms of our relationship to ourselves.  A topic that hit home for me and set me thinking was the concept of forgiveness-self-forgiveness in particular.  Throughout the show there have been references to how Hell isn’t fire and brimstone, rather it’s the repeated actualization of the reasons we’ve told ourselves we need to be punished.  It’s our guilt manifest over and over again. It’s the idea that we relive the worst parts of ourselves non-stop.  Along with that particular concept of the experience of Hell is the idea that no higher being decides where we go when we die.  A significant majority of us were raised to believe that we go to Heaven or Hell based on our actions and character, the weight of good and bad determining where we go.  In this series, we are the ones who determine where we go based on our beliefs about ourselves.  We can make our soul’s experience Heaven or Hell based on what we feel of our existence.    The other secret Lucifer shares with us is that we can leave at any time.  When we are ready to stop cycling through those awful moments, we can leave.  He doesn’t specify what happens then (or I missed it) so I’m not sure if that means once we’re done with Hell we go to Heaven, but it’s interesting that we are the door and the lock and we can open it at any time.

This last episode expands further on the idea on what makes us believe we deserve to go to Hell.  The character of Lucifer has difficulty hiding his true Devil nature as it seeps through his human cover.  He can’t seem to control it and doesn’t understand why it’s happening.  He even calls for help and says that he doesn’t want to be a monster as even his wings change form.  At the end he shares that he hates himself and he doesn’t know how to forgive himself.  He doesn’t feel he is worthy of forgiveness.  His partner helps him understand he’s personified all the horrible things that people have said about him—he’s believing what people say and because he believes those things about himself, that’s why his true Devil nature comes through.  Once he gets this and starts to forgive himself, once he remembers his worth, his human form comes back and his wings have returned to true angel wings.  So if we believe we are bad enough to go to Hell we will—and if we believe all the things people say about us, we become some version of that.  That sounds a lot like manifestation to me.  It also emphasizes the power of the mind.  We create these cages, we create our own problems, we make ourselves victims, we create the rules we live by—and we rarely choose to change anything because of how we feel about ourselves and what we’ve done.  But the forgiveness part really got me thinking.  How we feel about ourselves literally changes how we look and behave. 

If I’m fully honest, I’ve been in my own type of loop recently.  A combination of timing, heightened emotions, physical changes, changes around me, and frankly, new understanding of the shared history I have with specific people.  I continually buy into what people say about me and what I THINK they say about me.  I also have a negative biased mind for many other reasons, but I’ve internalized so much of what I’ve felt from people that I’ve turned into this bitter, withered, rough, angry, and sad version of myself, riddled with guilt.  That part in itself made me realize that being stuck in a negative loop really is its own type of Hell.  But thinking about how I feel about me based on how I feel about me is weird…I’m either super angry and tough on myself or I fall flat where it’s almost like I’m non-existent.  Seeing this played out on the show in that manner made me realize how much truth there really is to how powerful the mind is and that it can even change what we see in ourselves.  The thoughts lie and if we start making ourselves match that, of course we will see it.  So take some time to break your own Hell loop and forgive whatever it is you’re holding onto.  Let the real you break through.  If the Devil can find redemption and forgiveness, any of us certainly can.              

I’ve been dealing with some health issues lately of a recurring respiratory nature.  It’s something I’ve dealt with my whole life for various reasons—perhaps a combination of environmental elements and some signs.  Lately with some of the overwhelming emotions that surrounded me coupled with this illness has made me really start to consider some things.  I wrote in my last gratitude that I wasn’t feeling particularly grateful in that moment.  I wasn’t.  I’d found myself in a situation at work that I’d told myself I wasn’t going to do that ever again yet here I was faced with a situation where I had to do the work and every fiber of my being was against it.  It was too much for the week—Thanksgiving, the work load, the things I wanted to do like setting up my home for Christmas and working on my personal projects, cleaning the house, etc.  I had some emotional issues while spending Thanksgiving with my family.  Not all of us were together due to living far apart, travel, death and it was the pressing realization how much change is upon us and we can do nothing about it.  That’s fine—we can deal with change.  But there was also the incredible weight of all the change that’s still to come—the loss that will come no matter what I do whether it’s additional family moving away or the inevitable loss of family that will also happen.

So with all of this I simply wasn’t feeling myself.  This has been a fantastic year for change but also incredibly challenging and heavy.  The latter feeling really came from the fact that it was so much at once, not that any of it was unasked for, there was no real time to get my legs under me so to speak.  Part of that was my choice because there were so many needed changes and they just happened to come all at once.  But facing the reality of loss I can do nothing about hit hard.  Facing the reality that my priorities are different than my family, my memories and feelings about what we’ve shared are different.  While not unexpected, it still hurt.  I’ve always known that my views were different and I’ve always prided myself on seeing things from others’ perspective but this was just too much.  This was as if the entirety of my reality was stripped away.  Even the things I’m trying to teach my son seem lost on him because his focus is elsewhere at the moment—again not unexpected, but it makes me feel like a failure to a degree-the things I always wanted to teach him and have him experience aren’t landing.  Logically I know that’s fine, he’s having his own experience. But it’s a reminder that, even though I’m working on creating my own reality, my choice/reality doesn’t really work.  Seeing how lost my father now looks, realizing that we never know how much time we are guaranteed with people, knowing my whole family wasn’t there and these could be the last moments we have together just hit heavy.

So I never allowed myself to talk about how much this really hurt.  The grief of what has transpired and what hasn’t.  One could argue this is a mindset thing, sure, but it’s an emotional lead balloon at times.  I’m grateful for the time I have, for the life I’ve built, but, using the example I did the other day, it’s more like a shirt that started to fasten on the wrong button.  That’s a lot of sadness and grief to carry.  And I found out in Eastern medicine, the issues with the lungs are indicative of unexpressed grief and an inability to let go.  I’ve always said the things we don’t deal with emotionally can manifest physically and here was the proof of it.  It’s something I know I need to work through because it’s up to me to let it go—and this is proof that sometimes, we know we have to let go and for whatever reason we can’t—and the more we refuse to acknowledge it, the body will force us to deal with what the mind will not.  So there is no choice but to deal with the root cause—those emotions.  I want to share this so we all remember that we aren’t alone.  Whether anxiety, unexpressed grief, physical illness, we aren’t alone in figuring out what we need to deal with—and if we don’t deal with it the body will find a way to make us deal with it.  So take some time to slow down today and ask what’s going on.  Don’t run from it.  In that way, we can heal the source and begin to move on.  I’ll work on healing too, both physically and mentally.  And things will continue to improve from there. 

I’ve had a tenuous relationship with religion at best and found some comfort in spirituality.  Connection and grounding to source made sense to me, but the idea of these rules written in a book that was largely up for interpretation just never sat right with me.  It seemed to me that we didn’t know enough about that divine plan and it seemed like that may be something too personal and specific for us to share the exact same lessons from a deity.  I can’t say that I didn’t see the point in shared practice and communion because that is a beautiful practice, but the idea of every single human on Earth adhering to a specific set of rules to determine the fate of their souls just didn’t seem right.  I can only speak from my religious upbringing, and I will say from the time I was a child, the idea of a punitive savior just didn’t seem right to me.  I never got that inherent feeling that someone who wants our souls to be pure and aligned would expect every single person to conform when we are all blessed with so many different ways to live, such varied creativity.  If each of us has a different purpose and goal, then how can we be expected to be the same in every other way? It didn’t make sense that we would all be created uniquely if the savior was telling us to be the same.  Why would our main goal in life be to fight who we are when we were gifted with difference?

A while back I shared my thoughts/feelings on death and I haven’t changed my stance on it—I still loathe death.  I still do NOT see the purpose of it.  And that, too was another reason for my tenuous relationship with an almighty figure.  When you are exposed to death at an early age where you’re aware enough of what’s happening to understand that person/being isn’t coming back but you don’t understand where they really went or why, it’s traumatic.  Death itself is traumatic no matter the age because it is the definitive cleaving of before and after, the presence and absence all defined in one.  I understand concepts like energy recycles but I do not understand the need for life to end.  That’s something I know I need to work on psychologically as well as spiritually, but I want to clarify that death is another large reason for my tenuous relationship with religion.  I never felt any type of safety from a savior that could take life away indiscriminately and seemingly without cause.  We’ve seen good people die, people important to us die, influential people die.  I still don’t understand how the idea of loss of life is supposed to encourage vitality and when we witness death in such a way (unexpected or not), I don’t see how we find a point in life ending.  There is a whole lot of living to do in this world and it seems cruel that we’d be given a taste for life we can’t experience (like if we can’t afford certain things) to have it end.  Or we’d start a life we thought was right for us to have it cut short.  A teasing taste of the good seems childish, a bit too much like a carrot on a stick.

The concept of our mindset determining our experience on Earth and potentially our experience after physical existence makes sense to me.  And lately I’ve been reminded of all the painful things, the loss, the mistakes, the anger, the frustration, the manipulation, the lies, the constant being shoved down for the sake of others (only to be told I’m selfish for asking for the same attention in return), growing up believing my needs didn’t matter and that my role was to be as small as possible.  Well, I lived small my entire life with some pretty big ideas and that, too seemed cruel—I was given a lot of advantages mentally and academically and I had so little fear until the pattern of judging my appearance took precedence over what I had to contribute.  If the message was so important why were we trained to judge on appearances first?  Sure, I get the whole survival thing and need to make a quick decision but we’ve long evolved past that yet still keep the practice, just applied to different things.  We’re taught that we need people yet our support systems don’t offer that structure.  So it’s this constant contradiction between what is and what we are “supposed” to do that gets me every time.  I do things out of the genuine nature of my heart and soul and people have said that’s all fake.  I am the first to say that I am usually pretty firm on not doing what I don’t want to do—I mean, I’m human, I’m not perfect in the contradiction department either but fighting who we are seems pointless so you can rest assured that if I’m doing something, on some level it’s because I want to.

So human nature in itself has made me suspect toward a higher power.  Seeing people who have succeeded in alternative lifestyles while others don’t, seeing how much effort some people are required to put into their goals while others seem to have to do nothing frustrates me.  It seems if we are all expected to adhere to the same set of rules that we would all be treated the same way.  We aren’t.  Seeing how some of the most intelligent people lose their minds to diseases like dementia or how singers get vocal or lung damage or artists/surgeons get their hands damaged, how we have to see things yet lose our sight or we need to hear them but can’t hear—all of that seems incredibly cruel and unnecessary.  To spend a lifetime giving and being made to feel guilty for ANY modicum of receiving is tortuous.  To fear joy, believing that something horrible must happen for any amount of happiness is disgusting.  And losing those we love, the ones who truly understand and support us merely reminds us of how alone we are—and if we are supposed to feel connected, how is that helpful?  At the end of the day, maybe it really is all just a test.  Maybe these are all different ways and means of discovering who we are and what we are made of, but I can’t help but think there may be an easier way.  I can’t say that because we don’t have an answer that the almighty doesn’t exist but I know my frustration comes from not understanding what that relationship is.  If religion does it for you, that’s great.  I’m still trying to find my connection.  Perhaps one day I will understand it.  Until then I can only hope to release the confusion and anger and fear.