spiritual

421: The Center

| Aspergers Girls

“I trust and accept where I am in this moment. I refuse to be my own judge and jury. I love me in all of my emotions. I respect my journey and trust in my own inner strength. I believe in a purpose, a power and a guiding light within and beyond me. I am enough. We are enough. And in both my joy and in my sadness, I shall choose to shine. Not hoping for a better future or to resurface my current existence; but surrendering to the process, while moving through the seasons, within and about these cyclic moments of rebirth; a willing presence to be that both ripens me into the fullness of now and forges a grand adoration of self and all.” ~ Sam

bridge

I am a bit confused. I have been visualizing a diagram in my mind, similar to the cardinal directions of the compass: the compass points of north, south, east, and west. On the right I see obsession, on the left fixation, to the top the future, down the bottom the past. In the center is a circle, indicating the present.

Where in I spent much of my life in one direction or another, now I am practicing living in the center circle. Here is my refuge. Only I don’t know what to think about.

I find what seems to be relief in glimpsing the future of hope; but I know too well even glimpses of the future eventually cause me grief. A suffering of sorts. I find what seems to be release in sparring with the past; yet, I know too, the past is done now, and often is marred in my own disillusion of reality.

I used to naturally, almost instinctually, grasp onto a project or special interest, and here I would leap into a state of retreat. The world around me seemingly vanishing as I rose into a protective cloud of focus and revenue, reaping the sum of the parts I had envisioned in mind, and watching as the product of my creation came to life.

I used to unwillingly dance in the cyclic burden of obsessive thought, tiring myself up much within the first hours of the day with either wishful thinking or dreaded fear of illness and death. Now, this too has simmered in my mind. The tragic demise of self tango I forged through daily, hour upon hour, and wrapped myself in, with ribbons of torture, is missed. Not missed for the pain and agony I felt in doing this to self, but for the routine, the normalcy I created for escape.

The dreaming of the ways it could be and what could be, who could be—there I still slip into the easiest—a psychological and spiritual combination of desire, want, lust, love and yearning all tied into the knot of future that shall not be.

I am searching, without actively searching, for a way to be that requires nothing but the center moment.

A journey that is absent of requiring, in essence, and fills me with completion of self. However, I live in a world of constant wants and needs and unfulfilled dreams. Everywhere I look, everywhere I travel, is a someone reaching or inquiring, searching or instigating. People planning, constantly, for the next moment. People reliving, continually, the past hauntings of life they seem to think are real. And all around I am surrounded by this wild charge of inhabitants who are grasping my hand in an attempt to connect; whilst all about I feel entirely alone and isolated.

There is this burning longing in me, so tender, and at the same time so ravenous in its want, that destruction seems inevitable. I have this glow within that aches and burns and turns me to the direction of naught, repeatedly; this growing passionate flame I want someone to see, to hold, to recognize, to soothe. And still, there is no one.

This is an isolation new to me. A finding of self and of purpose, and a recognition of love of being singularly countered with the unyielding desire to be joined as no longer one.

I think of the moments. Of how to live in the moment, without wandering in any direction.

Though, I do wander.

In so doing, I recognize my humanness again and again. Something that is neither a frailty nor curse. Something that simply is. I recognize my confusion equally. Struggling in the freedom of travel. In the choices of now. In the ache of deep carved out awareness. And as I struggle with the need to connect, I also struggle with the need to protect, to hide in a delicate corner and retreat into self for rescue and reprieve. I hover in this in between space of wanting to reach out and find the connective bridge of recognition and longing to remain untouched and unmoved.

Each encounter in which I am present, I am equally vulnerable and exposed. In some ways, I feel as if a boulder is momentarily slid across to expose the cavernous depths of self. And in so being exposed, I am excavated and explored and evaluated. Then, without effort the boulder is placed back. And upon my return to being, I am neither beneath in the unseen dark nor above observing the gigantic barrier. I am equally not the boulder itself. I am nothing.

I am this searching that doesn’t search. I am this wandering that doesn’t wander. Like the circulating air I feel. Only with a voice that whispers: Find me. Hold me. Love me.

And I am left in the center. In the circle of creation, waiting for the bell to chime. To ring of both completion and beginning. To signal my unification with all and bring me to the someone with open arms who in my presence alone is home.

***
After reading this I was led back to this post: Day forty-two: On Leadership. The words helped greatly to ease my mind. ❤

The introduction to this youtube is wonderful as well.

418: Carved Out

| Aspergers Girls

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To read about this image, visit my other blog Belly of a Star.

A spiral of question upon question. Answers seeping out and morphing into more queries. Butterflies that burst, each birthing from a singular, a thousand more flutters; and my mind, this tiny hook to stringed-wing, traveling into a symphony of thoughts.

How I long to be understood. To be held under the stars, in a world, where as hard as I try, I cannot connect. In a world where to be loved fully, is to lose my sense of self in the process.

To live in anguish of ever-present disappointment, pleasure turned agony, and extreme isolation or to give up this sense of self, love the All, and dedicate my life to service.

There appears no middle road.

Abandoned, let down onto myself, and then lifted up above myself. Loving bliss or extreme suffering; while the rest, in form or belief, seem to sleep in a twisted agony of their own.

The one dedicating herself to help the other, when her own self remains in dismal suffering. The one dedicating himself to a cause, when his own ability to feel and be is sacrificed.

If I am not a ‘self,’ then why would I want to be what I am not? And if I am not, then what am I to be?

The souls thinking themselves following or leading; thinking too, the sign shall come. Stepping untied alone into an illusion of nowhere, hoping to find the no one.

To sacrifice my very humanness, the quest dismissed, for universal peace. To circumvent my hollowed out self of sadness and fill it with a layering of illusion undone. Poured into the divine, into God and Goddess form, and perpetually served, sacrificed. All desire dissipated for the All.

Momentarily safe, momentarily comforted, momentarily brought out of self and back through self, and afforded the moments to blend in with the universe. The trees alive. Angel kisses. As walking ghost, carved, in this mystery undone and hidden before the finish.

I am a foreshadowing of future chapters. The ones in which I turn the pages to discover I am back on some island onto myself; victim of nothingness, grander within the nothingness of am, than the world appears in the everything of naught.

Lost in the exact canvas of eternity created through the concept and thoughts of eternity. No self creating no self, until self emerges and claims self again. Spinning in recognition of circle, defined within circle. Parts dismissed and whole returned, and whole dissected into pieces.

Onto my self, I awaken as the dreamer, and then fall asleep twice over, to awaken to the un-free one; cycling through.

Longing for the flesh and flesh alone, the timeless one to fill me complete in his coming. Longing for the one star that can see me.

To bring another one to the one I am not.

Split and made. Two becoming the unified. Split into the two again. The one splattered across the other; neither satisfied and both smothered.

How I long for rescue, as two lay clasped and connected, gasping for the breath of wisdom.

How I long for a hand to be the hand. How I long to know, to no longer be in this me. To hear the whispers behind another soul, a very spirit split open and dispersed and fed to me. No pretty fool. No ugly beast, yet secretly tucked away in between the points of eternity.

To move is to cause the other to shift. To sit is to risk falling, again and again, into the deep of nowhere.

To suffer in this humanness perchance to create the one hand I reach for that is reaching for me.

To suffer in the aftermath of bliss to connect in the river of pain.

Or to bleed out every last sense of me, and become blended in the peace of nothingness.

416: How I would free my spectrum daughter

| Aspergers Girls

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Sophia

How I would free my daughter with Aspergers

1. I would learn everything I could about the spectrum conditions through reputable, well-honored sources; and then readily forget everything I knew and recognize my daughter is a unique individual with exact perfection and a glorious light.

2. I would acknowledge each and every way my daughter’s actions reflect a behavior that in some way makes me believe that I am affected. What is it that she is doing that is causing discomfort to me, would be a question I would demolish, and whole-heartedly embrace the conclusion that I am the only one choosing to be in a state of discomfort based on someone else’s reactions and actions. And in truth my reactions have a direct effect on everyone about me. My ‘job’ as a parent, if I were to assign an exact ‘role’ and ‘duty,’ would be to reflect back to my daughter her beauty and nothing more.

3. I would concentrate on the definitions of imperfection, flawed, wrong, and normal. I’d understand all words are manmade and invented, that even the deepest of spiritual beliefs and psychology have been spoon-fed from man to man, and thusly infected and created into something man-based. With man comes fear. I would readily announce the fear in me, and the fear related to my daughter’s ‘condition.’ I would see that all my discomfort is based primarily on two things: Fear and not living in the present.

4. In seeing I am nothing but the present moment, and that my daughter is thusly only in the present, I would establish a way in which I could practice moment-by-moment being there in a state of grace for my daughter and the rest of family, friends, and society. I would grow, as a role model for my daughter, a person of inner-security, unconditional love and acceptance. I would discard robes of non-authenticity, fear-based projection of self onto others, the selfish feeding that society dictates from mass media, big business, politics, and dogma-based religion. I would embrace the light of my child as my divine teacher and establisher of the breaking of norms to set my own soul free.

5. I would ask her to teach me what she knows, and try to experience the world through her eyes and senses, while recognizing her way is not right or wrong, and just is. I would understand she needs no fixing or alterations, and that in healing my own spirit and aches and longings, and by being in a state of centeredness and balance, she, as I to her, can grow into a reflection of me.

6. I would stop taking her to professionals who are not heart-mind centered and well-established in their own inner-awareness, growth, love and beauty. I would expose her to people that resonate at a high-vibration of acceptance. I would break up with all relations that fed off of her energy, ‘goodness,’ innocence and purity. Recognizing, she, like me, is born in beauty in perfection, I would establish an environment in which she could be the best of who she is: authentic in all ways and degrees.

7. If I ever felt embarrassed or ashamed, I would recognize I have bought into the illusion of normalcy and the ‘right’ way to be. I would declare there is no ‘right’ way to myself and to my child, and celebrate not what is good in her—for to do so would be to automatically judge and establish bad. Instead I would celebrate her in completion, for the gift of her in my life, for the way she has helped me to transition and grow as a person.

8. I would immerse her in her pleasures and passions; knowing her interest are the only means of escaping the chaos of a delusional world that breeds off of profit, greed, lies, and game-playing. I would understand that she sees through the veil of illusion, and is entirely awoken to the process transpiring before her. That to her the world is scary because the people are scary in their attempts to be loved through fear and imaginings. I would recognize until I see the world as safe, she will perceive the world as danger. In order to heal my own wounds, I would dive deep within and embrace my authentic being, risking like I never have and dying a thousand upon a thousand deaths. And through my own dark night of the soul, reestablished in my own profound light and knowing of All, I would return the light upon my daughter. Her established and well-pruned light of goodness. I would return not what was taken, but smothered by my own misjudgment and yearnings. I would thank her repeatedly for her gift of self.

9. I would expose her to life. I would teach her all is okay. But I would not take her where she chose not to go. If she was demolished in spirit in a social environment, I would not expose her over and over again. She is not lacking in her ability to associate with others and be in ‘public’ places. She knows the rules, she knows the game. What she is ‘lacking’ is the blindfold to pretend she is someone she is not in order to be falsely accepted by others pretending to be someone they are not. She recognizes the soul-eyes of the ones weeping and the bleeding pierced hearts. The sorrow is everywhere, and the heart-songs are locked away in over-burdened spirits, so lost upon self their suffering seizes the very encasement of my seeing daughter. And here she is rocked in so much confusion and pain, she longs for escape and safety. Returning her again and again to a place of non-awareness and imaginary games does nothing to lift her or gather her from one skill-level to another; it only reminds her, the over-exposure to the ways of the world, how very different, lost and alone she feels.

10. I would connect her to all awakened souls, so deemed awakened by her, more so than me. Whether this be the towering trees, the preacher on the street, the homeless man, the priest, or the Buddhist on the corner, or the birds in the garden, I would take her there. I would take her into the deep philosophical teachings of ancient scriptures of all denominations and let her find the interwoven connections. I would teach her through example to love all unconditionally, to accept all unconditionally, to erase dogma and the illusion of how things have to be. I would teach her through my very being that she is such a joy and gift to the world and that to let her fly through the removal of my own blinders is to me my own greatest gift to all. I would recognize I can never accept my daughter until I accept the completeness of my self, and in turn, accept the completion in her. Once accepted, my own perception of the world shall grant my daughter the freedom she brought upon me. The release of the self-afflicted self to the service of all. Here I would teach her, through my own being, that her gift shall serve the world, and in so serving the world, she shall be eternally free.

409: Unconditional and Conditional Love

| Aspergers Girls

( I am writing more because a lot is going on with our extended family. I process to find relief. If you don’t see me around for a bit, I might take a break. Hugs and love ~ Sam)

I have had the opportunity to experience a variety of friendships. In so doing, I have learned a lot about myself and love. For the majority of my life I felt a false-love from others and gave out false-love. Even though I felt the false-love, I didn’t recognize the falsehood for what it was. I was an active participant in the illusion. Most of these friendships were based on need. This desire was masked as possible fulfillment and completion. I know now no one can complete me.

I still hold all of these people in love and light. All of my friends continue to be some of my greatest teachers. I don’t choose to see any wrong in where I have traveled, and hold no one in my life responsible, not even my self. I have forgiven me and all. I place no judgment on any of my past or current friends either. I see them as lovely lights and filled with goodness. I don’t see them based on their actions but based on their hearts.

I was a player in the game of false-love, particularly in relation to men. Most of this telling is based on reflecting back to my behavior in pre-marriage years. I think if I had read what I have written below in my twenties, I never would have seen the ‘truth’ of it, and gone on living in denial. Maybe I even would have been spiteful and angry. I think if I had read this prose in my thirties, I would have thought I already loved unconditionally, and this was a waste of my time. I would have thought the person was preaching or trying to teach what I knew. If I read this last month, I would have thought, interesting, but I know this already. But it wasn’t clear to me until recently. Dynamically clear.

For now when someone claims to love me with a conditional type of love, I don’t feel love from them. I don’t know why, but all falsehoods affect me to a great degree. I don’t even know how I see this false-love, but I do. That’s not to say that people who proclaim to love me don’t love me. I believe they do. I believe a part of them does. But I believe a greater part is in constant battle with an unmasked, unnamed, and unforgiving fear. I believe this fear constantly transforms who I am when interpreted by another. I become what another projects from fear. In rare cases I become the light of love. This, and only this, is when fear is eradicated from its shell of illusion.

There is a struggle for people to find love and claim love, because they haven’t yet found the love inside themselves.

This false-love scares me momentarily, until I dismiss the fear.

It scares me because when another feels the illusion of fear, I feel the separation.

I have those in my life now that love me unconditionally. There is much freedom in this, to be me and be loved for me. I am not loved based on my outcomes or what I do or do not do. But even I, in my relationships with others, slip back into conditional love; this is very evident in my marriage and with my children. I continue to release judgment on self and others, and to learn. I am fortunate to have such experiences available.

When I am loved unconditionally I feel fed and nurtured. When I am loved by someone with conditions, I feel caged and judged. I am learning to not feel caged and judged, and to see this as illusion too, but it is taking some practice.

Lately, I am becoming more of a projection of what another choses to see in me. I can feel this in my depths. I become what another believes he or she sees. I become, in essence what they hold within. I have heard of this happening to other people, as well. So I am not alone in this experience. It is interesting to watch as I transform based on another’s deep level. I do not at this time think I am choosing to still see “fear.” I recognize the beauty and light in all, and see the fear only as illusion, nothing more. I can’t see beyond the beauty into fear, because there is no fear at the foundation.

I know I am still learning and growing.

I no longer choose to buy into another’s pain; especially when their pain is projected onto me, as if I did something or didn’t do something to cause the hurt. I do not have the power to knock down or to build up a person. Only source and a person’s own self can affect the spirit. I do have the power to love, and in this love to bring wholeness to self. Everyone has a choice to accept what he or she thinks I am saying or to reject it. To take in what he or she interprets as my truth or to decline. To say thank you and receive or say thank you, but no thanks. In this way, ultimately it is the receiver’s choice to determine what he or she takes in. I choose to take in all as truth and none as truth. I choose not to pick and choose. Unless someone is speaking from a place of fear, then I typically, when aware, politely decline. I prefer not to take on another’s fear-projection.

I believe there are only two roots: Love or Fear. All truth grows from there. Take a fruit off of the branch and examine it for what the fruit is. Rotten equals Fear. Ripe equals Love. One can tell much from the end product. Take the final outcome and drive backwards to the root. Where there is pain, there was fear to begin with manifested in false-love—illusion. Where there is mutual healing, there is love—the only existence.

Again this is my temporary truth.

My personal interpretation that assists me:

What true friendship is: Unconditional love.

What unconditional love is: Love without want, need, perimeters and/or expectations.

What want and needs are: Self-based, ego-centered desires that one thinks will make him or her happy. Also known as illusions and/or the path to suffering.

What perimeters are: Rigidness and separation; the judge emerging to decide if another has been deemed sufficient in their actions.

What unconditional loving friendship isn’t: All relations not based on unconditional love; in other words, all relations based on conditional, false-love, aka fear.

What unconditional love is not: False-love, also known as fear.

What fear is: An illusion often manifested in various actions and/or emotions that aren’t stemmed from love.

All false-love breeds fear and pain; all true love breeds more love. This true love can lead to spontaneous awakening and healing.

When one does not feel unconditional love, either the giver is loving with false-love or the receiver is misinterpreting the gift of genuine love.

This is not love: Expectations, martyrdom, fear-based desire, giving to receive, condition based giving, imagined selfless-giving, self-projection, owning, self-based desire, deeming one special or above the rest, caring more about self than other or caring more about other than self, blame, self-loathing in the name of love, fearing the future, needs based on outcome.

In love there is no hurt. All pain is self-inflicted.

Indicators of false-love:

Look at what a giving, loving, caring person I am, why can’t you love me like I love you?

I sacrifice for you, why can’t you sacrifice for me?

I am not good enough to be your friend.

You aren’t enough.

You should do this…

You disappointed me.

You won’t/don’t love me.

If you loved me, you would….

If you do this it will all be better.

You are the best person in the world.

You are hurting me.

People can have a mutual loving relationship based on unconditional love with moments of neediness and pain; unconditional love can fluctuate just like the seasons. No one is expected to be a perfect anything. Especially not a perfect lover or perfect friend. To suggest so, would be automatic judgment and separation. However healing happens when one starts to recognize his or her actions based on fear. Then self-healing can begin to take place in the one. After the one self has begun the healing process, the other in the friendship, noting the changes in his/her friend, will either continue in a state of fear, fight the change before also seeking self-understanding, or naturally seek out the friendship to heal in a way reflected in the healed or healing friend. In this way conditional love can bring both parties to pure love based on unconditional love.

If both partners are not ready, strong, and compassionate about growth and self-awareness, blame and jealousy quickly arises and the friendship may end. Yet, being this was a friendship based on false-love the illusion is what ends, not the friendship. This enables both to be free. One to go on to further unconditional love and the other to decide to remain in denial, suffering, and repeated pain or to seek out self-love. No one is right or wrong, better or worse; they are where they are.

In some cases someone who has learned self-love will be in a friendship with someone with conditional-based love. In this instant the person who continues to love unconditionally, despite the other’s projections, demands, and needs, can reflect back the ideal form of love and in this way transform the other trapped in a pain cycle.

True love heals when one capable of unconditional love simply is.

Again my temporary truth.

Strong indicators of conditional false-love:

No desire to celebrate a friend’s successes.

Not wanting to share the friendship with anyone else.

Thinking you are the best and/or only person for that person.

Changing actions or making decisions in an attempt to gain attention.

Obsessing about the person.

Thinking you are responsible for a friend’s growth, success, triumph, or accomplishments.

Thinking you are a person’s savior, teacher, protector, or safety.

Giving self-credit for another’s joy.

Thinking you have the answers another seeks and needs.

Thinking you were used, abused, or mistreated.

Jealousy of other people in the friend’s life.

Judging and putting down a friend’s friends.

Evaluating a friend’s choices, behaviors, mannerisms, and way of being.

Feeling the need to set a friend straight, so he can see your way.

Secretly or overtly harboring feelings of hurt and a sense of abandonment about the relationship.

Talking to someone about a friendship using harmful words about the friend.

How friendship appears:

A reflection of the love a person holds about his or her inner self.

What unconditional love-based friendship feels like:
Coming Home

407: The Echo

| Aspergers Girls

“Don’t tell me to smile. Don’t tell me to be happy. Don’t tell me what thoughts I should have and what thoughts I should not have. Don’t give me a list of ten ways to be better, to know better, to live better. Don’t point me to the right or left. To the star or to the saint. Just love me. Better yet, love yourself. All I need is a heart, eyes that are awake, and a place to rest the ways of the world that are not me. I am not taken in by who I am supposed to be in someone else’s eyes. I am taken in by the beauty that is me. I am already everything and All. If everyone could see they are too, there would be nothing of truths to tell.” ~ Everyday Aspergers

The Echo

A me that slips behind the scene knew this would be…

He watches with calm interest as I make my way down the river, less driftwood than pioneer on a raft with beating paddle.

I can see him, this undone one of none, the way he stands back and lets me be, watches as this illusioned I meanders from this truth to another; his kindly grin in the bleakest moments of darkness; his hands strong.

A cradle awaits.

Still this determination that bleeds out righteousness.

This will momentarily unbearable in its strength and stellar.

A hankering, this lingering, this potent folly of not being able to shake self from self.

To describe would do injustice, and to not describe would cause further agonizing despair.

For how to tell what I am, through I am, seems to produce jeopardy—two battled two, then four, and then more.

Swordsmen swift, many in count, each timber for the maker, each wood to be chopped, each, once tree, now distant edges merging into their own shadow.

A labyrinth of the huntsman, the hunter and the hunted same;

Each a mirror staring down a mirror, and each unnerved and brought up for game.

I is sliced and rendered empty.

Slaughtered and sacrificed.

And still this ever present, ever changing presence remains.

The one cannot help but think I am illusion.

How could I be anything else?

And even illusion, being something, is transformed into the thought of nothing, by the floating mind that reasons further in invisible plundering.

To move in such a distinct rhythm of naught.

Being here, then being gone, then being here much changed.

Tinkering toys of this world, and smile, the child’s smile— teeth wide and unburdened, stomach growing, fed upon canary two-fold.

To eat away at this place I thinks I is.

To eat away at what I think be sight.

To make morsel out of fantasy.

To understand the doctrines inside the explicit words of absence.

And bite into the existence of others’ thoughts, when their thoughts are built upon the ponds of nothing.

How and where to find the start of truth is ceasing to appear explicitly lost before found.

The maker dead before rendering wholeness.

The absoluteness evaporated before finalized.

All these trumpeting warriors blended into the background of reclaiming selves before first step is made on a path where footsteps are not held.

A witness to the soldiers before these carved eyes, in their bleakness and plight, screaming out for the way that never comes, through shadows of soul-bled sorrow.

How can so many exist and still further emerge, and where do they walk if not upon some very beating spirit?

I know not what I do or who I am, and this is insignificant compared to the ghosts I watch, to the empty places I thought were one, to the solidness dissipating, and to the rules clinging to the mass of nothing, as choking vine.

Only to be dismissed by the thousand witnesses birthed.

Still she comes, this form, this lost victimless one of none.

For no victim remains when foe is banished.

Yet, she cries holding the thousands of deaths in full arms, the one after the other burdened and unquenchable.

The captain in charge of the mourning, of the dissipation of one phantom begotten onto another.

Goodbye, she whispers, her hand gauntly and appetite diminished, her mind wavering between a place of no thought and every thought.

Her emptiness dismissed by her want and need for explanation, in a land that whispers without voice and forethought: there exists no need.

But if all that she is be need, then what is she?

Again she dies upon self, self-inflicted no more, pierced by the echo of evergreen.

How can she be this ghost of unraveling;

Her death made known to no one and no thing?

Her heart pierced by what ifs and circumstance that never need rise, since all is fallen.

She walks in the forest, a demon twisted into raven, a plastered wall onto herself, lost between the space leading from one room to another.

Until all rooms explode and the house is hovering in the existence of space.

And still the house crumbles and woman bled dry remains, withered and emptied of soul.

And here she wavers, a distant shell.

The only passerby another illusioned being that hears the self’s whisper of ocean wave gone.

A distant calling centered at the dolphin’s heart—he too swimming in a pool of imaginings.

He too wondering where the trees have gone.