youthful exuberance

I reconnected with an old friend at a wedding this weekend. We first met 16 years ago at La Leche League when our daughters were babies. Turns out her daughter has grown into an amazing musician. I just watched her perform an original composition, Change the World, on YouTube. Goose bump city! This girl WILL change the world, no doubt about it.

more about the wedding later.

a little father's day story for you

stumbled upon this article online today, and found myself getting all teary-eyed while reading it. A teenage brother and sister who are orphaned by their mother's sudden death are adopted by their mom's ex-boyfriend, and he steps up to unexpected fatherhood in every possible way. I just love happy endings.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/personal/06/19/rs.mom.died.boyfriend.adopts/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

riding the storm out

We've had unusually tempestuous weather here in Colorado this spring. Tornados have been touching down all over the place, sometimes almost daily, which is extremely rare for this area. In the twenty years I've lived here, I remember only one tornado before this.

My mind has been unusually stormy lately, too. I spose that's not unusual at my stage of life (perimenopause). Hormones can wreak all sorts of havoc -- mentally and emotionally as well as physically.

Whatever the reason, my head has been a very bizarre place to be lately. There's a friggin' three ring circus going on in there. Stories being made up constantly. Cases worthy of a court of law are being entirely fabricated, and then argued, won, and lost.

And for the first time, I am just a little bit outside of all this action, watching the show. I am aware that the stories are fiction, not fact. This awareness does not stop me from getting caught up in the drama at times, just like I get so wrapped up in a movie that I cry when something beautiful happens to that fictional character who is no more than a projection on a flat white screen.

So last weekend, when I noticed an increasingly nasty mental storm of negativity brewing, I tried to make it blow over fast. I used all my tricks, and nothing made a dent. Weird thoughts of anger, victimization, and disconnection twisted around like tornados, gathering momentum with each whirl as I watched, feeling helpless to stop the impending destruction.

Being an energetic and action-oriented gal, I naturally wanted to act on these thoughts. I wanted to tell people off! I wanted to stand up for myself! I wanted to argue and speak my mind and stuff like that!

Thankfully, 51% of me was witnessing this rather than swirling in it, and so it directed my actions. It told me to get myself out of town immediately - into the mountains where I could sit alone on a big rock and do no harm. It told me to bring my journal, but not my computer or cell phone. No communication with the external world would be allowed from this state of angry agitation, because no good could possibly come from it.

I spent hours and hours in isolation, furiously scribbling my accusations and listing the perceived injustices being inflicted on me by various people and situations, attempting to purge them. A deer came to visit, briefly interrupting my stream of venom, but I got right back to it as soon as she moved on. Then it started to thunder, and I headed back to my car, not wishing to get drenched, thinking all of this must certainly have helped.

I got back to my car just as the first drops started falling, and realized I was STILL pissed off. I sat there for two hours, watching the storm move over me, seeing a rainbow form, and still, that dark cloud in my mind would not go away. Reluctantly I returned home, crossing my fingers that I would not run into anyone I cared about. I came home and went to my room and stayed there until I fell asleep.

In the morning, I woke up feeling normal. Nothing had happened in the outside world to shift my mood. I didn't tell anyone off, I didn't change any situations, I didn't fix any problems. But I was in love with life exactly as it is once more. I was overwhelmed with gratitide for this inescabably visceral awareness that my experience is ALL about my perception.

I imagine there will be many more days like this as I ride this hormonal rollercoaster of feminine midlife. I might be spending a lot of time in the mountains in the next decade! But I am tremendously relieved to know that truly, if I can just wait it out, it will get better all by itself, even if I don't do anything about it.

cleaning the lens

this train of thought chugged through my morning shower today:

If I am perceiving anything other than an expression of love or a request for love from anyone, including my own self, then my inner lens needs to be cleaned.

When bugs get smashed on my car's windshield, I know that the remedy is to use my wipers, not to get out of the car and go try to clean the thing I am looking at through the dirty windshield.

the wipers I've been using lately come from the Hawaiian tradition of H'oponopono. There's an article I like that explains it here: http://www.consciousmindjournal.com/Articles/2008-02-01/Hoponopono.cfm

The short version is this:

I internally repeat four simple phrases in sequence until I feel an inner release of tension. I usually experience the release as a melting feeling in the area of my heart.

I love you.
I'm sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.

These phrases are directed at myself, not at the other person.

I usually start melting the instant I tell myself I love you. It puts me right in touch with my little innocent human self, and how hard I am on it sometimes.

I'm sorry is almost always followed by more when I hear it in my head, but it doesn't have to be. I'm sorry for treating myself this way. I'm sorry for forgetting my innocence. I'm sorry for talking to myself that way. I'm sorry for forgetting who I really am, and what I am doing here. I'm sorry for hurting myself with that thought.

Please forgive me and Thank you normally stand alone for me.

So here's how this might go in real life:

Let's say I'm at the store, and someone says Hurry up, you are in my way!

Through a clean windshield, I see someone in a big hurry, and I simply step aside.

Through a dirty windshield, I might see someone who is full of himself and thinks his pace is more important than mine.

so I activate my wipers:

I love you (and it's perfectly fine for me to walk at whatever pace I like right now).
I'm sorry (for the feeling inside me when I got angry at him).
Please forgive me.
Thank you.

If I don't feel better yet, I run it again.

I love you (and there is nothing wrong with me for feeling this way).
I'm sorry (for taking any of this personally).
Please forgive me.
Thank you.

Rarely do I need to run this through more than twice before my happiness is restored. But I will happily do it for as long as it takes to feel good again.

the article I linked to above goes into more detail.
gotta dash ... I have a daughter with a DVD waiting for me downstairs.

...

I'm back, with a stomach that hurts from laughing so hard at Little Miss Sunshine, to elaborate a bit on the expression/request for love concept. It's rooted in A Course in Miracles (ACIM), which I studied about a decade ago.

The idea, as I recall it, is that verbal and nonverbal communication falls into basically two categories -- affectionate words, compliments, and kindness are expressions of love, whereas insults, complaints, demands, whining, and attacks are simply indirect and unskillful requests for love. When we hear them that way, there's really only one response that feels appropriate -- compassion.

Compassion can show up in many guises. It might be a very loving and gentle NO. It could be that we simply reassure the whiner/complainer that we care about their feelings and their experience (like a well-trained customer service representative who lets you know that your feedback is important, she's sorry for your inconvenience, and she'll do whatever she can to make it right).

Compassion doesn't mean you just lay down and let people walk all over you. It does mean that you don't see them as terrible or evil, but rather as temporarily communicatively impaired. You may choose to remove yourself until they can be more clear, or you may be willing to translate and offer love in response to their request. It doesn't really matter either way. The point is that you don't stew yourself in your own juices while building a case to prove how bad or wrong they are.

I think this quote from http://www.clearmind.com/acim.cfm expresses it pretty well:

ACIM considers all behavior to be either a call for love, or an extension of love. When we can see the “call for love” under difficult behavior, forgiveness naturally occurs, and we are left in a state of compassion rather that locked into anger, fear, or guilt. It is our compassionate mind than can then make proactive decisions which result in a more positive life.