Aspie

274: Hot Mama Meditation

| Aspergers Girls
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My famous I-don’t-know-how-to-relax-my-face-SMILE. That sign reads: UNWIND

For years I’ve been searching for ways to unwind. I’ve been to meditation retreats, listened to visualizations on cd, and learned sound therapy and chanting; I’ve read countless books on meditation techniques, from modern to ancient. I’ve listened to gurus and people I consider saints on earth. And still, with all my seeking, I couldn’t unwind and relax.

I figured out recently, as I seem to be figuring out so much as of late, that I don’t have a typical mind for relaxation. HELLO! Kind of an amazing discovery–don’t you think. It’s okay, if you know me, and by know me I mean read my inner most thoughts, perfectly spelled out for you on my blog, or in person, if we meet casually over coffee for the first time, then you know my brain is a non-stop dyno (as in dynamite) nugget of extreme reeling discoveries and energy. I download stuff all day from some vast emptiness of the collective unconscious, listen to my angels “babble,” (they said I could say that/they have great senses of humor), compose poetry, prose, and verse in my head, and constantly make connections, classify, find patterns, all while reminding myself how to live in the present, breathe deeply, and find joy in everyone and everything.

Not an easy task, being me. And definitely not a brain that shuts off easily, even in down-mode.

Heck, in down-mode, I have dreams almost all night, some fantastically wild, and some prophetic. There isn’t peace in my mind. There just isn’t. I know. I searched!

At least there is not PEACE in the traditional sense, but there is peace. I was looking in all the right places, I just forgot to consider whom I was searching for.

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It took me a long time to get him looking at the camera. And I almost forgot to tell you, I watch my goldfish while in the sauna dancing! 🙂 We all be fish.

I forgot, believe it or not, that I’m not a typical fish! I’m just not. I’m atypical, like lots of the coolest people (a.k.a. geeks, dorkpots, angels, aliens, dweebs) stuck on this blue planet. I forgot my brain is SPECIAL. Yes, I said it, I’m special. Gosh darn it! And so are you!

I realized that when I do things I always have three things happening at the exact same time:

1) I am doing for a purpose. There just has to be a clear purpose, something I can physically see and experience, and something I can logically process and understand. And usually, something I can also explain and demonstrate to others. The Teach in me.

2) There has to be a motivation. I don’t care if it’s chocolate, trying to impress a visiting relative, a mad dash to complete a procrastinated task, the want to finally clear out the clutter so I can breathe, or a need to fixate or obsess. There just needs to be some type of motivation. Often this motivation is someone else or an upcoming deadline or event. (Oh…to help someone…I ought to include that to sound more saintly; don’t you think?)

3) There needs to be an audience. I don’t exist as a singular unit. I am not a one. I shall never be a one or feel like a one. I do not feel like I exist unless I can share what I am thinking. Double-that when it comes to doing: I do not feel like I exist if I cannot share something I have done. Whatever I am doing, I imagine explaining my action to someone else or teaching what I’m doing. Indeed, I think I spend my day teaching mini-lessons to an imaginary audience. Yes, even when I’m on the toilet. And if I picked my nose, (which I never ever do), then I’d imagine an audience then, too. This makes life hard sometimes, because I am literally constantly on stage, even when I’m undressing, eating, or showing an extreme emotion. Imagine the pressure, now multiply that by a billion-trillion.

When I tried to mediate, as hard as I tried, it didn’t feel like there was a purpose. Primarily, because I feel tapped into Universal-Energy all day long. I don’t disconnect from source. I just don’t. I’m always trying to be a living, breathing example of the best possible earth-bound soul I can be. I give myself breaks through logical reasoning and statistics, when I seemingly falter, for instance, by remembering great spiritual teachers of our times, and how they were not perfect, how they experienced an extreme of emotions and what could be considered failings.

When I tried to meditate, as hard as I tried, I didn’t feel like I had a teachable moment. I just didn’t know how to explain empty space and not thinking. Or letting thoughts flow and then gently releasing. I didn’t get blank space and just being in the silence. And plus, I was super bored. I can’t even get through a staff meeting without doodling, tapping my neighbor several times, and making goofy offhand comments. Being with myself, alone in a room, in silence, was torture. I could carry on a whole ADHD session with myself in my head. And it wasn’t the least bit of fun.

When I tried to meditate, there wasn’t an audience. There just wasn’t. Who wants to stare at me while I’m sitting there doing nothing…I know, I know…it’s something. I read the books; I told you that already. But really, it looks like nothing. And, yes, I do think watching me put on socks or floss my teeth would be more interesting than watching me sit, and try to get comfortable in a body that isn’t comfortable in one position for very long.

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I have found the best two ways possible to meditate. I can imagine a complete audience; I have a purpose; and I am motivated.

1) I meditate while listening to music in the bathtub while soaking in something nurturing for my body and spirit (bath salts, dead sea salts, essential oils, vitamin C), while conditioning my hair, and stopping occasionally to scrub certain spots to make sure there is no visible dirt on the tub or walls. I do this while blasting music from my I-Pod shuffle. I listen to the random songs and meditate to the music. I sink down low, and let my body be still, and I breathe deep. I feel so relaxed, sometimes as if I am elevated above my body. And I always hear the most perfect songs for the moment. Sometimes a meditation/visualization selection comes on during the music shuffle, and if that’s the case, I go with it. I feel like I am accomplishing so much at one time, that I can RELAX!!!!

2) I get almost naked, turn up my far infared sauna, blast “Dancing Queen” and dance, while seated. See I demonstrate this in the photo above. Aren’t I cute. I imagine an audience watching me, and I imagine teaching this as a sort of class, and I’m detoxing through sweating, and dancing, and laughing all at once. During this 30 minutes of hot mama meditation, I close my eyes and have the most wonderful soul connections. Today I cried tears of joy, over and over, as I could see many of my relatives that have past on and pets all dancing with me. They formed a circle around me and went round and round energizing my chakras and loving me! Then we were all on stage, any age we wanted to be, and my loved ones were lifting me up. They showed me as a baby, and they lifted me high, high, high into the air. And they healed me. They went through different stages of my life, lifted the ME that was during that time, and healed me. I was overcome with delight. I was laughing so deeply and so truly, from the very depths of my spirit, that I felt indeed I resembled a crazy man running down the street in bewildered blow-your-mind away glee. At one point I actually thought: What if I can’t stop being this happy! The tears kept coming. The giggles so very real that they were alive. For the time being I was truly out of my mind, not in the NUTTY ME way, but in the ability to escape my thoughts, my worries, my everything. I was no longer in my body. I was joyous and one with all.

To me this is my meditation. I’m certain there are critics out there who can quote the benefits of the empty, or the still, of the nothing, but at this point my mind does not have that capacity. For me, this is the first step towards bliss; actually both ways, the bath and sauna, are bliss. They are my meditation, my being me and loving me and connecting with me.

I have to laugh, as I just realized I’m either nude or almost naked when I meditate. That totally figures!

What is wonderful, as life is full of coincidences for me lately, is that as soon as I was finished, and started blaring music while showering, this song came on in my I-Pod shuffle. It described my experience in the sauna of being a baby held up in the light of love, perfectly; so much so that I actually pointed to the ceiling and said, “You guys; you guys are too much!” I’m not certain, but I’m fairly sure, my angels smiled!

Wonder

“O, I believe

Fate smiled and destiny

Laughed as she came to my cradle
Know this child will be able
Laughed as my body she lifted
Know this child will be gifted
With love, with patience and with faith
She’ll make her way ”

Here is the magic Hot Mama Meditation. Or Hot Papa Meditation. 🙂 Enjoy. I like the Mamma Mia! version because the energy of that movie is so good.

 

263: The Music of You

| Aspergers Girls

You are like music upon music upon music to me, a figure seemingly out of tune.

At times I think if I could only find your one song, the part that is truly you, then I could play you over and over, and dance, whether alone or together, in endless ecstasy.

Even as I tell myself you are complexity and spiraled wonder, I long to unravel you to thy very core—perhaps as some vegetable with heart or some flower with first petal.

I like to pretend you are easy to find, to see, to paint. For with easiness would come the grace of painting you into the shadowed corner of my existence: a mural to keep me safe, a walking space that requires no effort but touch. One finger slipped onto the wall of me and slid across your slivered silhouette.

For it is in my shadowed times, I cry out for you, for oneness for connection, for acknowledgment that I am as beauty. Only because you are as beauty.

Though it is in my days of sunshine, I too call out from the depths of me, reaching in silent gratitude and shimmering in your brilliance. It is then you are effervescent glory to behold. A gift set amongst a fleet of angels, with the finest and most demur of sails.

I have carved you within my soul light. Sat up constant night awake in my dreary state, counting you as one in youth beholds her sheep. You leap across my chamber ceiling as ghost set free in crimson carriage, bouncing through the valley of my imagination; your face bare except your kaleidoscope eyes. A barren tunnel of absence entering a rainbow of stars. I see there into myself and breathe. My last glance of this world, the beckoning of your substance.

Awoken, the days come, with the joys and woes of worldly possessions explored and dried, withered and left for the illusion of promise they be. Awoken, the days come, with the sorrows and gratitudes, the biting into what was once ripe to find the taste of expiration and abandoned. Still the bell chimes, in memory of laughter, and in preparation for the surprises beneath my pillow. I harbor such secret dreams and cherished gifts. And to share them, I set you upon my shelf of butterflies, and sing only to you, of the time of my happiness.

You are to me the mystery of fantasy, the puppeteer with magical strings of grandeur, capable of contorting a stage of delight or drama of doom. I hone in on what could be called your goodness, and try to trap your substance in my tiny womb, to bathe you in the babe’s cocoon with my essence. Yet, my attempts are futile.

For you are not but one form, not but one song, but an orchestra drawn out into a long and distant parade.  I cannot keep you, as beekeeper keeps bees. And so it is, that even in the ward of captive thought, your honey I cannot taste.

For you are the food to the masses; a delicacy set before the king of kings, royalty in your very blood and bones, built up and made into something I cannot decipher or replicate. You are magnificent splendor set upon the eye of my mind, and I ride you, this child of the merry-go-round world, upon a horse ever-changing.

Together, we are endless circle. Our destiny unreachable. Until spinning top stops, and I am flung out of your land, into the stillness, and made to watch alone, your partner for eternity wavering outside and beyond the mystical music of you.

~ Samantha Craft, November 2012

Day 253: The Sam Machine: Processing

| Aspergers Girls

Processing

Lately, I’ve been processing a lot. The act of processing generally feels like an involuntary action, seemingly out of my control. The emotions are tangled and bundled, and hard to decipher. When I am processing, I do not feel comfortable in any part of my body or mind. It’s all I can do to function and do daily tasks. I might be in bed for the full of the day or might continually write in an attempt to pour some of the discomfort out. Distractions do not work; neither does the company of another, movies, books, or any type of action that might typically pull someone out of their thoughts. I can be having an entire conversation with someone or writing an article about a random topic, and the thoughts involved in processing are still rattling in my brain.

When I visualize processing, I see a lump of muck. This lump is a representation of what I have seen, heard, or read: something, usually a statement or words, or parts of a conversation that are heavy and stuck in the mud in front of me. The feeling of discomfort and confusion comes after I have been altered emotionally by news or information of some sort. It could be one word a friend spoke. Whatever emotive response was triggered inside of me, the response stirs and stirs my mind. All I can do is sit back and become audience to my brain as it sifts, filters, dissects, chops, and dismembers this body of information. Then the body becomes whole again and the process is repeated. The process is very complex and uncomfortable.

Most forms of processing happen so quickly that I don’t recognize what is taking place. Other forms of processing takes a few minutes or part of the hour. Some processing can take a day. An extreme processing can take the better part of a week.

In example, when my son’s teacher called to tell me he was having behavioral issues, after we hung up, I processed the conversation. I reheard the conversation in my mind several times. That was enough. I didn’t feel like I needed to stay in that space and repeat the conversation in my thoughts over and over.

Sometimes I need to press repeat in my mind, and cannot help but, rewind and review, and rewind and review information repeatedly. If a conversation is written in print or on the computer screen, I will go back and reread the sentences in detail, a half-dozen times or more. I will analyze certain words and theorize what was said, the plausible intention, what could have been implied, and what might have been said differently. I do this for both myself and the speaker/writer. I will feel the energy behind the words.

If the words are not written, I will replay the conversation in a similar format, visualizing the words. If the conversation is in person, I will recreate the scene in my mind, and relive the experience over and over. If I am alone and perhaps on the computer when I have communicated, then I will revisit where I was sitting, what I was doing, and visualize the room and everything about the environment at the time. It feels as if I am there again.

This takes place over and over and over, like I am stuck in a rerun of a moment. Processing that takes less of my time happens so fast that the steps and moments breeze by without notice. In the scenerio I mentioned about the teacher phoning to give me information about my son, I would likely repeat the facts in my head, visualize where I was when the person called, logically talk to myself about why I am upset, talk myself down from being upset, try to center myself, and then repeat the process. I would hear an entire verbal conversation in my mind with myself. We would talk each other down. Self and I. Then I would likely write it out or verbally process by calling or writing a friend.

Sometimes the only way to relieve the angst, even if minor, is to phone someone I know immediately and talk. A type of panic sets in, as if I cannot breathe until the thoughts are shared with someone else. This happens in all cases of emotional distress. My thoughts speed up and I feel under attack in all areas of my body and mind. This can also happen when I am excited about good news.

Life doesn’t feel real until I have expressed the interior of my mind with someone else. Or perhaps, I don’t feel real until I get out of my head.

I get trapped  sometimes in my reruns of thoughts and reliving a scene, and the key seems to be making a connection with someone else. This connection may involve repeated actions on my part. The same question over and over: Do you love me? The same worry over and over: Do you think I am a good mother? Or it may simply be me recreating the scenario and explaining to someone aloud or in writing to release what is inside. If there are written words involved, I might share what happened by showing a person the text. All these actions of connecting are an attempt to take out the clutter and pain that is occurring nonstop inside my head.

Another way to visualize my processing is like a huge lit up grid, and I am a small person standing in the middle. I guess this could be visualized like the way synapses fire and travel or like a large blue print used in quantum physics. There are millions of avenues and routes set before me on this grid and my thoughts travel different paths, reverse, recreate and travel new paths again. My thoughts go back and forth, inside out, up and down, and all about. Like a hokey pokey dance of the mind—only it’s not my right foot doing the dance, it’s the whole of me.

I cannot concentrate on anything else at depth until the processing is done. I will have a far away look, and appear depressed, withdrawn and deeply preoccupied to the extent where an observer will ask: What’s wrong?

What’s wrong is something has been said, seen or heard that has triggered an array of uncontrollable thoughts and emotions, and that discomfort will remain until I let the whole of me go through the process of analyzing, dissecting, and piecing back together what has happened. This usually means I get less sleep, and wake up with an urgency to repair or fix the unsettled feelings. This usually means researching of some type, whether through conversations with others about the experience, reviewing my own prior writings, looking up facts and statistics online, or rereading and rereading the conversation that triggered the “episode.” OCD behaviors often set in, such as continually checking the comment section of my blog.

I cannot say it is an easy process. But at the same time it is highly remarkable to be part of the experience; especially when the process is over and the relief comes. Sometimes there is no answer to be found, and I grow exhausted of the thinking and rethinking, and let it go. Sometimes, oftentimes, I find solutions and new ways of viewing the situation or learn valuable information. Sometimes I am able to help other with similar problems as I’ve lived my own problems so acutely.

All in all it is an experience that still baffles and entirely exhausts me, as it runs away with my time, energy, and thoughts. Yet in the end I feel filtered through in all areas: my mind, heart, and spirit. It  is as if I was part of an elaborate, soul-level filter system that located the muck and junk, scooped it out, and left me cleansed and purified. It hurts like the worst kind of hurt. But it’s part of who I am and how I function in this complex world.

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On a side note, my father called me earlier today. We hadn’t spoken since July. He had not seen the letter or my blog it was just random coincidence, some might say. Others would say differently. I was crying still, when he called. This was the first time in my life I cried over my father, and he happened to call. I am ever so thankful. It hurt something terrible, but I spoke my piece and was heard. I’ve done all I can do, and can release now. Thank you and bless you so very much. ~ Sam

Post 252: Dear Father

| Aspergers Girls

I am processing so much, so fast; it is quite overwhelming. Please understand this post is healing for me. I am not reaching out for support or love. In writing this and sharing this truth, I am healing my own self. Your presence and eyes are enough. I do not need or expect words of comfort. I do not need anyone to tell me that I am enough. Innately, I know I am enough, that I am beauty, that I am good. But this little girl needed to be heard, so I could heal further. I am okay. I am better than okay. I am facing my demons head on and surviving. Not only surviving, but smiling through tears. So please know I am okay. I am okay in me and with me. I like me. I love me enough to be who God intended me to be. And I love you enough to trust in your love. ~ Sam

 

Dear Father,

You don’t love me, and you never have. If you do, it’s limiting and conditional. I am made into a person who is judged and evaluated, or worse not seen or spoken to. You have been my everything since I was born. My superman. My rescuer. My hope. The man created to love and hold me, to cherish and lift. And yet you have done none of this.

I am left hollowed from the inside out, a forgotten child, who has had to find her own way, whilst left alone without you. You came out of obligation, if you ever came at all, out of guilt or need. Never out of connection or thought for my betterment. Life has been about you from the start, and continues to be about you: your hobbies, your interests, your wives.

You have said to me once I am beautiful. Only once. On my wedding day, and I hold on to that word as if it were the last sound of my life. How I have longed to be held and told I am lovely and worthy; how I have missed the embrace of a father, and thusly sought out the embrace wherever I could.

Through torment I wept for you. Through miserable relationships and false dreams. I created fantasies and idols with men, in hopes of finding you again.

Yet, still I weep and walk alone. No one is you. No one is my father. Not even you.

You live but you are dead; in the sense of being and not existing. You choose each day to reject or worse forget. Your silence and aloofness my hellfire.

Some child in me still believes I can find you in someone else, find the love and approval. I imagine them as you. I place your face on them. I replay the words over and over, with your voice and your heart. But, still I know this is not you.

I hunt down people in hopes of them being you. Have from the start—a small child searching for her father in playmates and strangers. I have exposed myself to countless hurts, hoping to appease and please a someone who was not you, but that I believed to be you. Every time I am rejected, again by you.

Why? Why can you not see my beauty and love? Why is your view of me not what the world sees? Why do many love me, when the one I need the most to love me, does not? What have I done wrong? What is innately wrong with me that you would refuse the gift I am? Why am I left unopened, still on this shelf of pain waiting to be taken? To be taken and held. To feel a father’s arms around me. A hug. An embrace. To see your eyes. To look in your eyes and see adoration. What is that like? What does it feel like to be held by a father? To be loved by a father? What does it feel like! I need to know. I need to know. Just once, before I die, I need you to hold me.

I have wept for you since my hands were tiny and fragile. I have wept for you endlessly. I walk in silence but the tears cut through my soul. They eat at me and destroy my truth. They huddle me into a corner and persecute me. I cannot be in this world when I know my own creator detests his creation. My own God I set into your mold. And I am left shattered, broken, while still untouched and waiting.

Please love me, so I can stop my search. I am so tired. So weary. So alone without you.

Please see me. Please see my beauty. Please release me from my torment.

I beg for your love. I cry out for your love. Across the universe I reach for you. This child I am.

Post 243: I’m Odd

| Aspergers Girls

I’m odd

And that’s just fine

I talk too much at times

And other times I close myself off to the world

But that’s okay

It’s who I am, and how I function

I worry a lot, too much, likely

But my heart is super huge, like a mountain upon a mountain on the highest peak, it is

I love my weirdness

It’s like yours

It’s quirky and cute and interesting

Never boring

I love me a lot

I’m sweet

Like chocolate, only better

People don’t crave me and overstuff me

They just enjoy

As long as I enjoy me

And that’s good

Beneficial

Perfect

If I let myself shine

If I recognize my beauty

Then people with heart

Will see

The real me

See themselves, in me

The inspiration

And acceptance

And love

And then together

We can think

She’s weird

Really odd

But I like her!