438: Brushed Thoughts

pin it my friend

This is a photo of a photo recently taken. It is the first one in years that I feel like captures me.
This is a photo of a photo recently taken. It is the first one in years that I feel captures me.

I have these type of thoughts all day long, even in my dream-state. They just come. Whisper to me. I see them as a visual concept I cannot describe. It’s not an image, but it is tangible and malleable, like invisible clay, the shadow left behind after the clay is gone. I can play with it and feel the vibration shifting and meandering and pulsating through me. When the words come, they paint themselves onto the blankness where the shadow plays. I watch as they unfold, and then work together to rearrange the words into the same frequency that I feel. I feel the pulse behind each letter, and the life force behind the formation of each segmented part. The rhythm, the punctuation, the formation and pattern of each word and sentence, all carry a vibration. I can feel if the structure I choose resonates with the initial visual concept and sensation. This is a sense I do not understand completely, a line connecting into something that is soothing, very real, and very much filled with light. I go here, with a pure heart and mind, open to whatever pours through. It isn’t easy and it isn’t hard; it just is. And I try my best to take no ego there. Instead I feel as a child-heart, over-flowed with joy in discovering a present left prepared and ready for opening. A gift to be savored and shared. And then I wait, for the others to see the unwrapped present, to hold it and honor its existence. In this place, with the words alive, I can breathe, for I have done my part, for a purpose beyond self.

I spent the last couple days, just clearing my mind and writing what came out. It generally takes me a few minutes to piece together my heart-mind intention. I made these into many posters that you can find on my like-page listed in the left-hand column.

Brushed Thoughts

* Let’s meet in the middle of the discombobulated space of energy where my truth does not match your truth, and sit there, hand in hand, embracing one another, teacher to teacher, soul to soul.

* A person’s intention is reflected in an energetic vibration. When words are created from a foundation of ego-desires, the receiver will feel a discrepancy in energy between what is spoken and what is felt. This response is not judgment. It is heart-mind discernment—the spirit discerning the truth beyond the words.

* The new conformity is to dislodge parts of self that are ‘negative.’ We are bombarded with: focus on the positive, speak of good, share only if it’s constructive. An obvious error arises through analysis of the restricted perimeters; for who is this one to decide the definition of negative, bad, and destructive? Whose doctrine, dogma, or philosophy is the dictator? And what of the infinite variables between right and wrong? Your suffering is my suffering. Your silence only perpetuates our condition. I want to know all of you, not the preconditioned ghost of you.

* Sometimes when you say, “I love you,” I feel a space of emptiness; not because I fear losing your adoration but because I know I can never demonstrate through actions or words how beautiful you are to me.

pinit conditional

* Anyone who attempts to fix, bend, or break you, is merely attempting to slip his reality into yours, in effort to make sense of his illusion of self. You aren’t responsible for what anyone thinks about you, only about what you think about others. When we learn to love everyone in completion, the truth is evident, our brothers and sisters solicit pain whilst in need of love.

* I love my authentic vulnerability, my inability to be anything less or more than I am, the constant way I come back to the core essence of self, in having Asperger’s I have been gifted the intuitiveness to know self, to embrace self, and to accept self. In so doing, I can love you unconditionally. There is no greater ability.

* I do not understand the motivation behind game-playing, manipulation, trickery, ill-will, and cruelty. I wasn’t born with the genes. And I am better for it.

pin soul to soul

437: Things the world has tried to teach me

Things the world has tried to teach me.

1. I am odd.
2. I am not perfect.
3. I am not normal.
4. I am not enough.
5. I talk too much.
6. I don’t listen well.
7. I over-share.
8. I don’t fit in.
9. I must pretend in order to fit in.
10. I must conform to receive attention.
11. Attention is love.
12. Acceptance is love.
13. Sex is love.
14. Love is conditional.
15. Beauty on the outside is what is important.
16. Aging is to be avoided.
17. People can’t be trusted.
18. I can’t be trusted.
19. I fixate.
20. I obsess.
21. If I search hard enough, I will find a remedy for myself.
22. If I pay enough money, I will find solutions for my pain.
23. Someone who has a title is important.
24. Someone who has money is important.
25. It’s not enough to be ordinary.
26. If I am not outstanding, I shall be forgotten.
27. If I manipulate, I can have what I want.
28. If I lie, I can get what I want.
29. Material goods, money, and things are what matter.
30. Love things, more than people.
31. I don’t know what I want, but other people can show me.
32. I am flawed and in need of fixing.
33. There is a right way and a wrong way.
34. Rules are real.
35. Laws are real.
36. Time is real.
37. Follow the leader.
38. Don’t question authority.
39. Don’t ask why.
40. Follow blindly.
41. Change my thoughts.
42. Change my outlook.
43. Change my state of being.
44. Change.
45. Be something I am not.

Luckily, I flunked.

pin stepping out

436: Lessons Learned: What Ails Me

pinit super power

I have been depleted for two weeks, utterly exhausted, in pain, and unable to do much of anything, beyond a few simple errands. But that’s okay.

My life is a process. I am a process. And I firmly believe, despite my intense moments of pure panic and doomsday fear of my singular obliteration, that all is unfolding as it is meant to be.

I have had a lot of time to think, and over-think.

The thing is, with so much time to think, my mind tends to go into overdrive. I try to find all types of creative ways to preoccupy my brain, but it does its thing regardless. I sketched, I wrote poetry, I wrote a post or two (I think), I discovered how to make posters with my original photography and quotes, I watched a bunch of movies, or at least the first thirty-minutes of a lot of movies. I had a hard time focusing. My body wanted to move—to walk, to get out, to accomplish something, part of my body at least.

I got rather forlorn and lost in myself. Biologically this is caused, I gather, from the fluctuating hormones from PMDD. Physically, I hurt from what is most likely the result of my childish (as in spanking it) short term memory, in which I forget I have various muscle ‘conditions’ and quite frankly act like a dang super athletic hero, when I ought be seriously sitting on the sidelines.

I tend to forget I have limitations. Seems to be my area of expertise: overlooking limitations.

And… when it comes to my body, it’s not advantageous to overlook feasible limitations.

I have to learn to listen to this part of me, and I am finding I am a wee bit stubborn.

I keep thinking something will change. That if I just look hard enough, try hard enough, and just BE hard enough, (in that place of letting-go-zen-di-ness), that I will transform. That this physical pain will dismiss itself, and I can run and leap and charge forward like a little girl reborn, without repercussions.

The truth is: It’s time to let go of who I want to be and time to embrace who I am.

I am disabled.

I have had free parking (courtesy of the blue handicap plaque) for four years now. I have been unable to work more than part time for 12 years now. I have scoured literature on every disease, affliction, and illness known to man, and though I have developed practical theories on why I am the way I am, in regards to my pain ailments, I have not solved anything. Today, after thousands and thousands of research hours, and attempts at various regiments, restrictions, and so on, I am no closer to discovering an avenue of reprieve, than I was over a decade ago.

Deep breath.

I am coming to grips with this today. I am mourning. I am realizing that it is really time to throw in the towel. I can choose to spend my next decade focusing on a cure and an explanation, or I can choose to focus on the life I do have. I am not giving in. Not in the least. And I can’t promise I am giving the search up, but I do know that I am shedding attachment. And discarding of some lie I have enchanted my spirit with that preaches: I am not enough.

I am enough. I am not my pain. I am not my condition. I am not anything that has a name or label. I can’t be defined. And I am not inadequate, flawed, made wrong, or damaged. I just AM. I want to drill that into me. I want to tell myself again and again I just AM.

I have had enough. Enough tears. Enough struggles. Enough puzzle solving. In all my efforts, that I know aren’t wasted, but definitely over-drawn, I have collected more and more diagnosis, theories, and questions than a singular being ever needs in one life time. And all for what? To find out I am at square one, back on the couch, unable to proceed with a ‘normal’ life.

This is my normal.

I need to digest that like chocolate. I need to let it melt into my mouth—melt into me.

I need to hear it. I need to accept that I am okay with where I am at and to stop fighting. I have fought my entire life over one thing or another, trying to make better, to find the escape, to find the peace, to find the remedy.

My sickness, or ailment, of phantom quest, whatever I choose to call it, is a symbolic representation of my spiritual hunger, that need I have for answers and truth.

I thought I had let go enough to accept the flow of life, to be that stream. I know I have in many areas. But my health seems to have taken over my brain-processing like a singular-minded dictator. Getting better is pretty much all I can think about. It’s all I can do. I am over powered by this innate drive to fix and solve.

And I am rebelling. It is time.

This is as good as it gets. Right now, at this very moment, for you and for me. And if I can’t be happy exactly where I am sitting, whatever my circumstances be, then life will continue to be a rollercoaster.

Oh, how I want to blame the fixers of the world. Try this. Try that. Do this, it helped me. Have you done this?

Oh, how I want to blame the complainers of the world. Always me. Poor me. That’s me, too. It’s so terrible. I wish I was dead.

Oh, how I want to blame the proclaimers of the world. Just change your energetic vibration. Just visualize your reality. Create yourself in wholeness. Illness is illusion.

Oh, how I want to blame the coaches of the world. Just be strong. Life could be so much harder. You have so much to be thankful for. It’s not that bad. Toughen up, girly.

Oh, how I want to blame God. Why did you do this to me, Lord? Why me? Should I be better? Should I try harder? Is this punishment? Is this my fault?

Oh, how I want to blame the past me. Karma. It must be karma. Come to kick me in the butt. I must have done something right. I mean I have had a lot of accomplishments and love in life. But man, I must have really screwed up somewhere.

Oh, how I want to blame the concept of normal. Why can’t I be like her? Does she understand how hard this is? She takes her health for granted? She has no idea what suffering is?

Oh, how I want to blame the invisibility. No one can see this pain. No one can understand. I am so alone and isolated, forlorn, forgotten, un-important and lost.

Oh, how I want to blame everything and everyone, but me.

I have a choice today. I can join anyone I am blaming. I can blame them or become them (minus God) or I can start to be ME.

I can start relishing life for what I can do, and not blaming life for what I cannot do.

I can begin by pointing the finger at self, and then softly point the finger away to a space of emptiness. For no one and nothing is to blame. And just as there is no blame, there is no hidden promise of discovery to what ails me. What ails me cannot be relieved through attachment. Just as in my spiritual quest, I understand what ails me can only be relieved through letting go.

So today, I am letting go.

I am releasing this clinging-need to make myself whole and healed. I am accepting I already am whole and healed. I am accepting that the latest advice, tip, or cure isn’t for me. Nothing is out there. And if it is, this nothing, this something morphed from nothing, will find me when I am ready. I have to trust in the higher plan. In the course. In the miracle. I have to believe that this is as good as it gets, and be happy in this moment. For life is only this moment.

sam's hair

434: In This Way I Be

sam in glasses

It’s hard to find the center of me. I tend to swing from one extreme to the next. Sometimes becoming my own captain and other times my own martyr. I can be undeniably strong and passionate in one moment, and the next, fallen, some lost child too ashamed to face the world.

I am hard on myself. I push myself. I know no other way of being. On the days I seem to blend in, another ghost in the world, not making my mark, or mistakes, or anything beyond normalcy, are the days I have drawn out of my reserves. I have taken out from somewhere the stockpile of self-esteem, self-worth, and self-love, bottled from the days of reprieve, and, in attempt to function, drenched myself in the overflow of me. I can walk in the world that way: as a form of former self, reclaimed and reopened.

If I do not, if I cannot find the reserves, I simply cannot be, and I must sink away into another world of creation, imagination, and slumber. I can sit aimlessly this way, repeating the same tasks, haunted by the same thoughts, and wondering where I am. In these moments, I am frightened into stillness, because the part of me I thought I was is no longer.

In some ways, every few hours, I seem to awaken to a new self, the other discarded and bottled, filed in the stream of somewhere else. And in many ways, I have to find the pieces I was to make sense of what I have become. I sit as a fisherman, hooked by my own hook, flaying about in search of something gone, something broken. It is me, I find, again and again, but no one I recognize. And I fail myself in this way, turning about trying to bring back myself from where I went and what I’ve done.

There are so many of me at times, it seems the universe is alive within, and I am but the essence of what has already happened. I am my past and barely my present. My future unattainable. I cannot explain the dynamics more than to say I am awake and aware of the process, but rendered entirely helpless. For some reason I have escaped again from something I know not what of, to become someone I do not recognize, and to sit in wonderment of where I am.

To exist in a state outside my own isolation requires the assembly of a massive team of onlookers. Not the people or the public, by the interior eyes on the walls inside of me. There is a team there of limitless resource; each expert a supporter of thought, and each thought an assembly line to the experts. I move and breathe in awareness of the inside of my own self. I question and conquer my surroundings and my very existence.

I am in a heightened state of being and, thusly so, in a physically exhausted state from the bombardment of awareness. I take in everything and everyone, beyond the surface, dividing and multiplying conclusions and theories. I take in even the process of the taking, analyzing the way in which my mind works, as it’s churning. Slipping beyond just being to being within the within.

The energy required to merely exist, outside the elements of rest and retreat, is the same energy required to fuel a giant battleship. I can float well enough, at the mercy of the elements, and definitely sink without assistance, but to move and continue to move, I must tap into the reservoir of self. I must find a section, a team, a group meandering about me, and rein them in, to teach them to teach me the ways. To remind me of how to move and what to contribute. To remind me of what not to say, and how to save myself, when what is spoken has gone too far.

I watch me, and I want to tell the others, outside of me, that this is not me. That on another day I will be entirely different. That each day I live I am renewed and born again. That what is seen is not me and what I see is not them.

Yet, I am made to believe all is real and all is as is, and that what I am, in my limited projection filtered through a limited perception, is me in totality. Nothing is further from the truth. I am not as the world makes me to be. And neither is the stranger before me.

And so I walk awake and exhausted, pretending to move through a game in which there is no end, with a limited fuel burning its way to empty. In this way I am made to bleed. Drip by drip, losing all I have collected in hopes of survival. Until the next day, when I find myself unable to move, unable to begin to navigate the ways, to begin to have the strength to even look for the start. It is then I retreat and fold into myself, wanting to stop all the signs that point in various directions to various phantom truths.

It is then I feel the loneliness, in my awaking, in the knowing of only belonging for a short while, without even being there fully, without even knowing how to be there. It is then I feel the loneliness of knowing the pendulum has moved again. The part of me once filled with eagerness and anticipation, with the desire to try and triumph, left at the sidelines forgotten. I can’t explain where I go or why I go. I only know I go. And in this way I am made. In this way I be.

433: Five Ways

marcelle in lightFive Ways

1. I recognize that I am okay in who I am and where I am. I recognize I am okay in where I am going. That everything is unfolding as it should. There is no rush. There is no destination. Only now. This moment. This breath. I breathe in the essence of the world. Taking in the ingredients of millions of breathers before me. I am one with the universe and the world is safe.

2. I recognize I am changing every moment. Each thought, each stimulation, each person, each encounter, affects me at a molecular and spiritual level. I am no longer who I am within a second that passes. Beyond change, I am nothing. I am that which transforms and rejuvenates. The entirety of me working together to live and breathe. I am enough in that I am like the all. Interconnected in my being. I exist. And in my existence, I strive. Not for goal or need; yet simply as an intricate and important part of the whole. I am completely renewed each moment I am.

3. I allow myself to experience emotions. As the observer, I step back and watch. I move in recognition. I speak in recognition. I think in recognition. But I do not attempt to control, counter, or interrupt. I allow myself to be as the river, flowing in a natural state along the stream of consciousness. I remove all judgment and unchain the bondage of should, could, and what if. I release the pain and suffering, and breathe in the constant joy. In my silence, I rejuvenate. In my stillness, I grow. In my grief, I embrace opportunity. No emotion is punished. And likewise, I am not chastised for simply being. I am aware. I am continuing to prosper in awareness and recognition. The rest is unnecessary. In awareness all avenues are opened, all veins of love moving at full capacity. I am all that I am and nothing less or more. Nothing is in need of repair or evaluation. All that I am is already enough.

4. I allow myself to feel attached. I am attached to substances, to dreams, to places, to goals. I am attached to others’ evaluations, opinions, emotions, and energy. I am attached to beliefs and perceptions. I am part of the whole, and in being so, I am part of everything. I am attached, yet I do not need to cling to the attachment. In recognizing the attachment, I can watch, as I move in the motion of need and want. I can watch as I cling, and watch as I attempt to let go. I can see myself in tears, in struggle, and in the illusion of triumph. I can glimpse the happiness attached to substance and the sorrow attached to absence. I let the joy move past the now and into eternity. I am neither an empty vessel nor a net that traps. I can hold nothing, as I am already over-filled with love. Everything I am is plenitude and freedom. There is nothing outside of my own understanding of self that can satisfy me. Everything and everyone is fleeting. All that I need is already within. The light of me is serenity, peace, and gratitude. The light of me is complete love.

5. I release fear. Emotions are a part of my being. All emotions are okay. Fear is okay. Fear is my teacher and at times a protector. Fear reminds me of who I am and where I have been. Fear instructs me of the inner workings of my mind. There is a mutual relationship between what I feel as fear and what my body communicates to the whole. Each part of me responds to anxiety and discomfort. Sometimes I sit in pain. Sometimes I rise out of pain. In everything there is release. I am like the seasons, the tides, and the nature of the living world. I bloom and I wither. It is natural and expected. When fear comes I approach him without caution or dread. When fear comes I answer his calling. I welcome his company. I let him move through me, to penetrate my being, to whisper to the rest of what he seeks. And then, in union we release. Together, hand-in-hand, we walk out of the shadow. In the darkness I have learned, and in the light we are formed as one. My friend. My darling companion. In loving him. In loving all in completion, all turns to light.