thoughts

342: Joy Sings

| Aspergers Girls

Yesterday, I saw the cover photo
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The brief moment of joy quickly passed to confusion, then sadness, then balance, and then back again to sparks of joy watered-down by questioning.

I was confused by the emotional and spiritual process I went through. I had been published! My words in print. Was this not a vision come true? Was this not a distant dream?

But still, with the news, with the confirmation, I felt a lingering sorrow.

I know I was battling between what is ego and what is self-satisfaction. I wondered if they were indeed the same.

I know I battled with humility. I know for an instant I felt proud or pride, or some related cousin. And I didn’t like the feeling.

At first I thought I was feeling guilty–guilt for feeling good about an accomplishment. I reasoned I was stifling happiness with the guilt of pride and the fear associated with losing humility.

I compared myself to others, and what I “should” be doing; how I should be celebrating. And then I logically debated all the reasons why this publication was not celebration-worthy. I questioned my capacity to feel “good.” I questioned my adequacy as a being. I went round and round in this circle of mixed emotions and deep, complex opposing thoughts. I searched out the caverns of my mind, until exhausted. And then I sank into body submission of fatigue.

Last night I prayed for refinement and serenity. And for much of today, I have found peace. I understand that I do not have low self-esteem—to me this is illusion. I understand that when I am confused about how to feel, it is because I have based my emotions, like much things in life, on a rule-book that I created founded by personal experience filtered through my senses. I realize, too, that yesterday I was no further from the truth than I am now.

It’s not that I had or have low self-esteem. It’s not that I don’t think I am unworthy or worthy. It’s not that I am acting prideful or humble. I am none of those labels or names.

It’s not what I was or who I was. It was where I was. I was lost. I was lost and pulled away from my faith. I was momentarily swept out of the presence and present. I was enticed by outcomes and promises.

I recognize when I am tuned into the collective universe, when I believe in the magic of the world, in the magic of you and me, and in the beautiful infinite possibilities for love, it is then I am whole and complete. The feelings don’t get jumbled and the thoughts don’t get all twisted, when I am clear in my connection to my higher power and higher good.

On reflection today, I spent some two hours reviewing joy and reviewing sorrow.

In my mind I saw the illusions.

Even though one of my visions has been realized (being published), I am not as joy-filled as I had expected, or perhaps as others might have expected. And that is okay.

Today I am recognizing joy’s partner: sorrow.

I couldn’t have completed The Ten Traits without decades of suffering. The words would not have been searched out by others had they not first had cause. My message would not be whole without first being carved out through pain. Both yours and mine.

And thusly, I am left wondering if indeed I do understand joy quite well. That if in fact, I am in a state of continual joy. But only through recognition of the ashes of suffering.

Joy Sings
I am joy.
Squeezing me out of me.
Releasing being like some over-expired lemon.
Disappointed in the bitter sour that remains.
Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.
Some ravenous fowl picking away at barred plumage.
My substance an existential shell of resistance, once labored to create.
Inside whispers: Complete though illusion.
Outside weeps: Unworthy in existence.
Opposites.
Naked, though cloaked in tattered rags, I waver, from one to the other.
Bemused, as sadness quakes, I sleep soundly through unawareness.
Forgotten upon shallow waters.
Until waved onward to deeper grounds.
Still bearing witness to starlit nights.
Though standing erect in dissatisfaction.
Invited by command to denounce self.
The suspicion of being, the suspicion of joy, scoured.
Incomprehensible happiness holding the hand of the lingering voice of no one.
“The obsoleteness of temporary. The absolute of change,” clangs the bell of the imagined captains.
I respond without breath.
And I question.
In accepting misery to circumvent suffering, did I not modestly forbade self-joy?
In rendering joy denied, do I accept misery in completion?
Thusly moves the wheel.
One axle: Seeker of non-truth whom claims found truth righteous.
One axle: Seeker of truth whom believes found truth not-righteous.
Who is this joker? This shadow? This phantom?
This awkward misrepresentation set down.
Left to squander in misgivings.
Where does this joy I am speak?
When not formed in shape and drifting.
Where does this joy live?
When unseen unless trapped.
Captured fleetingly in passing moments when invisible brother is silenced.
When the suspicion is eased. When the noise erased.
There I sing, this joy released to captivity.
Caged amongst the residue of sorrow escaped.

Sam 3-20-13

I found this a day after I wrote this post. Made me feel better. ❤ http://drarorasclinic.wordpress.com/2013/03/02/happiness-tips-13-experts-weigh-in-on-the-pursuit-of-joy/

341: The Mourning

| Aspergers Girls

I haven’t been able to write as of late.

I transitioned through immense amounts last year, especially during the month of November, transitioned through what I hesitate to call “junk,” but that which most certainly felt akin to garbage.

It was rumored, through various channels, that the end of last year would be a period of much availability for release. The key was to freely bring up the past and old aches, to tear open the scars, dig deep, and like magic, much would be healed.

Truth be told, and truth I often tell, this aforementioned rumor was mostly true. In fact, repeatedly I brought up to the surface my unfinished “business,” and repeatedly the thoughts, emotions, body-history, and spiritual “business” rectified itself and was reborn into sudden and freeing understanding, acceptance and forgiveness.

Interestingly, there was little analysis I undertook during this process. In explanation, I offer a contrast: instead of opening a book of an event or events and feeding myself the pages, unlike a reader, or even an observer, in my process of recovery of self, the experience was liken to watching some other part of something open a symbolic window to let the lingering pain in; and within that same instance of the opening, some force beckoned a sweeper, an unexplainable substance, that now entering the space of self, scoured away to dissolve unneeded residue.

A dear friend calls some people “sandpaper” friends. They refine us. They grate on us. In a certain bowing of spirit, we allow them to hurt us. But in the end, we come out better for the experience.

Well with the window open, and the sweeper entering, I felt the sandpaper. I felt the needling rough edges pry open my skin, go asunder, and dig up the muck and guck that had lived and harbored within. I felt the intensity; I felt extreme discomfort. I felt exposed. I felt found, singled-out, even hunted. And then, I gradually felt slaughtered and left to die. Until, in the swirling of sensation, that came rather abruptly and all at once, I was cleansed and left lighter.

Through this all there was no effort on my part. I didn’t try to heal myself. I didn’t even want to heal myself. What I prayed for was love. That and to be a vessel for spirit and light.

This is what I went through most of the winter season. One day after the next of windows opening, and then finding myself in the midst of both trouble and rescue. Until at last, after months on end, I begged for reprieve, for break, and opportunity for rest.

And rest came.

But soon following was a time period of vultures, of name calling, of doubting who I was and my own path. Then with the passing of these trials, after I’d faced more inner frailties and demons, I found a profound inner peace and knowing. I had a clarity and a comfort. I felt blanketed by the divine. I was granted an unbridled passion to create and communicate. And each morning, I experienced intense visions which included powerful visuals, healing words, and much beauty. This too, this rapture of passion coupled with the visions, like the sandpaper and vulture times, became daunting, and I begged too for these to stop. And they did.

Soon the window closed to whatever was entering.

And here I have sat in silence for over a week wondering what my next step is; while all the while I hear a distant whispering of “There is no next step.” A whisper reminding me everything is okay and is occurring in divine timing.

I think I am mourning what I thought I’d found. I think I am mourning this profound peace and understanding I had for several weeks—a traveling period where I saw heart-clouds in the sky and angel shapes everywhere I looked. A time of deep prophetic prose and agonizing, sweet-release through creation. I remember asking for this profoundness to stop, to give me reprieve, but I don’t think I ever thought the experience would truly end.

Yet, as I sit here now, I don’t wish it back; as much as I miss this part of where I have been and the connection I had, I am glad the window has shut. For it is time for me to move along my path further. A time of new mysteries and discoveries, and a time of further refining. I guess what is somewhat discomforting is I know I have made a spiritual vow of learning. I have made this life about growing, despite the personal cost. I have dedicated myself to being the best me I can be. And with this dedication, I understand there is no stagnant place. And there is no final place either. There is just this continued traveling to a new something and new someone.

I think I have been mourning the past selves. The ones who thought they found themselves. The ones who thought they knew so much. I am mourning the possibility of ever knowing again. As there is no knowing, and there is no finding this self I so diligently had searched and longed for. I am here. In all my states, in all my emotions, in all my frailties and fallings, I am here. And this acceptance of self, in all stages and all phases, past, present, and future, is perhaps the most frightening feeling of all. The learning I am enough. I am love. I am light. I am home. Whilst still traveling this road that eventually leads somewhere else.

Sam Craft, March 2013

Beautiful One
I love you. I don’t know why or how. I just do.
You are immeasurably good, immeasurably pure, immeasurably wonderful.
I want to wrap myself in your essence, to bathe in your beauty.
I want to pour my soul into you, my every thought, experience, desire and dream.
I want to harbor my pain there, within your secret chamber.
If only there were a door.
If only I could find a key.
If only you would open.
Instead, I glide past your existence daily; hour upon hour, building my hopes atop the other like a child with wooden blocks, thinking eventually something will tumble, something will crash.
But nothing ever does.
You remain, and I remain.
And I am left dancing around the image that I imagine you to be.
Standing in a threshold, I both created and wished into existence.
And here, in this imagined place outside of you, I have found the enterance to self.
In this endless delight of searching out the possibilities of you, I have found the remarkable possibility of me.
My friend, my entwined beautiful one, in the wanting of your glorious being, I am.
I am. I am.
And I smile from the deepest place of happy soul child.
Smile as I swing upon the healing rainbow of you.
Still searching for the treasure beyond the imaginary door.
Yet, knowing when you are found, when you have at last welcomed me forward, that I will fall in love not with one, not with two, but with the illumination birthed from the reunion of beauty.

340: Phantom Chamber

| Aspergers Girls

In searching I have circled back, some ribbon turned into itself, lost inside a chamber of nothing; the layers and fabric thread red, bleeding the rainbow of colors twisted in perfection, and then spun down into an invisible white of naught.

I am but reflection, brought on by the sunlight that feeds illusion, stood upright in the eternal darkness, amongst the shadow speakers with the absence of ray, interwoven in solidarity into the corridors of nowhere.

I am but the eyes, ears, mouth, and skin revved up in latitude and longitude, the fingers finding me in the stillness, and measuring my righteous substance.

I am liquid amber dripping through the hands of no one—from him whom also stands in the shadows of no place and no being.

What am I least the tethered and labored music to the masses, the scent of the familiar last touched?

I am witness to the sum of my ever-varying parts, the intricate detection of bystander, the wanderers’ stopping point, however brief or meandering.

And though I exist, this ebb and flow made of conclusions and withdraws, of mediocrity placed upward or down in measure, I only exist of what illusion bends and claims real, a lost swimmer forgotten down the tunnel of not knowing what is and not comprehending the vessel that breathes.

And what of this air?

Does he too stand in the shadows mesmerized by his own selfless self; and in so doing suffer the want of recognition?

Am I but a thumbprint upon the eternal quilt of timeless time? Or rather the print inside the print; the molecular structure’s birthing house brought asunder, turned out, and opened for examination?

Where am I? Where am I hiding?

Beg me not to come out and view this self, so casually circumvented round the mysteries of never.

Beg me not to come out and spend my own self to make richer the dollar maker.

How can I be, when all about me there be nothing?

And how can nothing be, when all about nothing I be?

Where is this existence that hovers somewhere between us and them, between this I and this we?

Is we found inside the pupil, the wires that tell the openings to vision what to see?

Is we found inside the olfactory tubes, lined up and waiting to be called upon?

Is this me in this mirror of disillusioned oppression, made opposite to stare back into the light that is never justly exact?

Or am I, too, the sunshine, my ray only pleasing to the touch of those craving warmth?

Do I burn or do I freeze? Do I make-believe and then make the truth come true?

And if truth be still, if truth stop long enough for witness, then what witness sees this truth of truths? Whose truth is thusly so the path to what is and what isn’t?

How can I be so feather-like in the wind of life that to drop me here in this plane would set me adrift, scattered dust swept through the giant’s hammock strings?

What am I?

And in capturing a voice that answers, what ghost enters through this painted threshold into the emptiness of phantom chamber?

337: I Am What I Choose to Create

| Aspergers Girls

Photo on 3-6-13 at 2.49 PM

Here is a painting I shared earlier on this blog. I changed the bear a couple of times, as I didn’t like the “energy” of the bear. I could see images inside the fur that were dark and gloomy, e.g., a person eating at the heart, a boy screaming, a heart breaking. I tried to improve the bear to my liking, but I could not. The energy remained.

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Finally, I took the canvas off the wall and had at it. I erased the bear in totality, (with water and paper towel), and for two hours let the canvas speak.

In the end, the girl’s face, which I adore, remained, and she gained some wings!

I can now rest my eyes on this painting and feel at peace.

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But I missed my bear. I love my bear.

And so I brought him back to life. Not intentionally or on purpose; in the way the process transformed, the bear kind of just showed up!

I painted, (and processed), for five hours last night. So much so that I had zombie blue fingers. (I paint mostly with paper towels and my fingers.) The canvas transformed a dozen times. I erased and erased, painted and painted, and erased again.

Each time I thought I might be done, I knew I wasn’t, because I felt stagnant energy.

I know when my creation is done by the “feeling” I have in my heart and in my gut. Together the heart and gut tell me. I “feel” this freeing of energy, a release, and a recognition of completion.

I experience the same gut-and-heart-level feelings with people, places, events, words, and even the rhythm of words. I get a knowing, and just know.

At first the painting I created last night was a princess in a dress; then a woman dancing; then the image became a woman and two spirits at the river, and then, after several transitions, this lovely bear reappeared. And he was here to stay.

I went through several states of emotion as I painted, too, including envy, jealously, feelings of being caged in, disappointment, and agony. When an emotion surfaced I would paint the pain and then go over the pain with words like “love.” I would then recreate through adding more paint, designs, or through erasing with water.

In my painting I completed of the girl and bear last night, I can only find peaceful and tranquil images in the paint.

Before, with the first bear painting, I could find several dozen images. In this new painting there are only a few images I can detect. Here is one image that I found soothing. I see a lady resting on the bear’s head.

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All of this “energy” and “images” inside of my paintings got me thinking about the water crystal images, and how the crystals transform shapes based on a slip of paper with a written word. I was reminded once again how thoughts and the emotions we hold on to affect our world.

Today I said the word “love” to myself a lot. I kept filling the empty spaces in my mind with the word “love.”

I remembered, that like my painting, my intention, the energy of the person I am holding in thought, my thoughts themselves, the motion I choose, the drafts I recreate, all of these seemingly random things work together to produce my experience and perception.

The new painting with the bear.

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Today I am practicing letting myself observe my self without judgment.
I am letting myself be.
I am letting myself come forward from beneath the chaos of the canvas.
I am transforming and materializing through the swirls of multi-color and seemingly misplaced and random scatterings of occurrence.
I am letting myself become whole and present, free of emotional chains.
In many ways I am much this bear.
And I am this painting.
I am what I choose moment-by-moment to create.

334: I Am The River

| Aspergers Girls

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I am not sure where my head space is. Or where my head is for that matter. I tend to ascribe to the Buddhist teachings that we don’t exist, as we can’t see ourselves in totality… Ever! And so, like the rest of me, my head has mysteriously disappeared.

Lately, some part of “Me” has been noticing I am much more aware of my environment. It seems that for decades, until now, I have skid past life and missed much of what happens around me on a day-to-day basis. Kind of like a first time ice-skater skidding on her butt so fast and so far that when she stands she doesn’t reckon she notices anything, except the full-heated rush of blood to the face, the cold butt, bruises, and torn pants.

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Life seems like that for me, right now. Like I spent some four-decades plus skidding on my butt on the cold ice, only to just now discover that there are bleachers, chairs, and waiting areas, and even snack bars!

Today, everything is more clearer, as if, finally and at last, somehow I figured out I could step off of the ice, and even remove my ice skates. I cannot explain it any better.

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Just recently, I am beginning to notice things I never ever did before. Patterns for starters, like the patterns in puddles, and patterns found in the streaks on the road after it rains, and the patterns in the shapes leaves make after falling. I am starting to notice patterns everywhere. I somehow managed to spend years not recognizing things that are right in front of my face.

I am going through many ah!ha!, look-at-that!-moments; It is similar to how I never understood about how a flower only lasts so long and then dies, even if it is in a pot of soil. I used to think a flower would last forever. It wasn’t until my twenties that I made the connection. While all around me flowers were blooming and dying. I just couldn’t see it or comprehend the process.

I have discovered, that at like faces, I cannot remember scenery. I cannot grasp the completeness of my surroundings. I am in a way in some type of visible matrix, in the center of an ever-changing energetic playing arena.

I cannot remember the order of houses when I drive down streets, the order of streets, the order of trees; I can’t remember where I saw the fire hydrant or where that one street was I once turned down. I just can’t. I have this incredible mind, but it cannot grasp the simple things, or at least not hold onto them.

I am finding great comfort in painting. Well, truthfully comfort isn’t the appropriate word, as the painting process itself is excruciatingly emotionally. So much energy and purging comes up. I go through cycle upon cycle of feeling, and have sensations of intense energy, both beneficial and exhausting. And no matter how hard I concentrate, I do not know what the painting will look like until it, the painting itself, is done.

As I have said early, when I paint, I am waiting for what is inside of the canvas to emerge. I feel this presence there just waiting to be uncovered and discovered.

And that is how I am seeing life now: That behind everything and everyone is this universal light and love waiting to be recognized and recovered, waiting to be held for its beauty alone.

I am much like a young child in so many ways, in so many “good” ways, able to see the same street again and again with new eyes.

Everything is shifting. Like the image of me in the mirror, my world is not stagnant.

Life to me is a river of sorts, and I am carried daily.

Instead of thinking I have fallen and am endlessly sliding on the cold ice, I can see I am very much alive, awake, and full of newness, the same newness that exists everywhere.

Interestingly enough, when I first delved into painting a few months ago, my angels (Holy Spirit) spoke to me and said with a camera I would be able to see images (spirits and souls) in my paintings.

This is truly amazing for me, as I am finding more and more “messages” and “signs” in my paintings. On this post I have shared one of my most recent paintings. It went through hours of transitions.

I love this painting. I see this as a spiritual being, me, in which essence and energy attaches. I am able to look at this and find peace. This painting is how I see the world. What I take in shifts and changes depending on the angle, my mood, the people and events around me, and the energy of the moment.

There is a beautiful energy here.

Gratitude is immeasurable. I am gratitude.

I exist as joy and thankfulness. And I embrace all parts of me, however imperfect or fabulous they are deemed.

I know, that like the images I am creating, in my painting, and through the limited scope of my mind and eyes and senses, that everything is always changing and shifting. There is no need to pitch down a tent upon myself and force, or, better yet, try to force myself to be this way or that way for this purpose or for that purpose; because soon, none of what is now will exist.

I am a river. My life is a river. Silly to try to capture a river.

Blessings and Light,
Sam

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