shelter from the storm

Good Morning Relatives

its an amazing day here in Pipestone  the grass had a thick frost on it when we went out this morning  now the sun is out and everything is all sparkly and wet!  its the day to plant the tomatoes and the basil and the squash I think  

I had the best dream last night   I don't remember much of it LOL but what I do remember is that it was a different kind of dream than I used to have  
you know how dreams can be puzzles  they can be full of stress  fear  negativity or conflict  or like never ending journeys?

sometimes its like life goes on and on in the dreamtime and we never get to the part where we are absolutely sure we are winning    well last nights dream was different than that

yippeee!  I dreamed that I made it   not sure where it is  its only right here right now after all   but I can tell I changed about how I am about me  I know that there have been many times that I have come to an ah-ha moment and shared these with you in the bloggy  and perhaps you as I do am wondering why do I need so many ah-ha moments to make myself kinder to open myself up to love and care to myself (trust me if I cannot do this for me relatives there is no way in hell that I can do it for you , think about it)  so again and again reworking remaking me. uncovering that which is a better fit  kind of like taking an entire life to write the symphony of Mary  LOL  there are many notes and many layers of sound that make up a human being after all  and when most of our music has been written long before we were awake and educated (enlightened) enough to write or rewrite our own notes there is perhaps much to be reworked  and that is ok.

my mental therapy coach asked me this week to pay attention to whether or not I was critical of myself   to pay attention and see if I was being hard on me for not being able to live up to the Normals that float around in my head   come on you know what I mean   we all have them as much as we would like to think we have elevated or enlightened ourselves out of them they are there  in mine for sure   that does not mean that when we stumble across them that we have to dance with them

we can say hello good morning  hmm not interested and then replace those thoughts with something that is unconditional   its important that we replace them you see  not with a different bar, a different measuring stick, but with no stick.  replace them with trust. replace them with compassion.

when I was a kid my folks were at least my dad was super religious  he was a late convert  to chrisitanity and went into it with a vigor  I think he somehow came to believe that he needed something to commit to outside of himself or different than he saw himself to keep himself in check  he didn't feel he could stay in check on his own  what ever that means, it must have meant for him that if left to his own devices he would choose selfishly and in doing so condemn his loved ones to hell.

 for all of his accomplishments he doubted who he was  what he didn't understand was that depending on a form or an outside structure still required that he do the work  that he saddle up and ride the pony that he thought was valuable. No matter what the pony, he still had to ride it.  He had to be disciplined to this set of rules that he saw outside of himself. something that he had to take on that had as it s cornerstone that he was faulty.

but he wasn't faulty, or he couldn't have ridden the pony. you see?  he wasn't faulty or he would not have chosen such a long and distasteful road of self debasement to save himself and those he loved.  he may have had to learn how to go about his life and make choices,  he may have had to come to understand the consequences of his choices, as we all do. He may have had to decide if it was worth it to lie or cheat or not, but the unfortunate thing is that he somehow began to believe that those choices of left or right, good or evil, did not originate with him, they were always simply available.  but he believed that because he could perceive left or right, that he was flawed to begin with and because he was flawed he had to be beaten with a stick to stay on the straight and narrow.

and his own god forgive him he then began to see his children as flawed and began to beat us with that same stick because he saw in us that which he feared the most in himself.  he saw in us that we were born with an intelligent vigor.

and as we grew up he saw that we were born with ideas that did not bow down to the yoke that he had placed around his own neck.  we were free, and he was not.

the only way that a trapped human being can live with a trap that they believe in with all their soul is if all the other humans are also caught in it. but I didn't see life as a trap. I didn't believe in his hell.

The long and short of it is that I was both born with an idea, a conviction of how it seemed to me that things were supposed to go, a willingness to shift myself and everything else to align things to that completeness (which is how I viewed it) and a lack of attachment to the fact that there was a process a transition in unscrambling everything.   however being raised in a home and social structure that saw my birth in to a scrambled mess as wrong, as the result of sin, everything about that transition even to the point of admitting it was needed was seen as bad, as flawed, as an admission of being a sinner meant that if I did not go along with what they believed, then I was a threat to them.  how can a parent deal with a child that not only doesn't see them or itself as bad, but that was born with the wherewithal to question from the get go that crazy reality?

little did I know that all this was going on, not only for myself and my family, but for many many others as well.

 I wasn't bad and neither was anyone else   we weren't born into sin or made of it  we were just born into an unknown that could be rearranged, realigned, put together so that for each and everyone of us those pieces of opportunity made sense and made what we saw and understood to be valuable, to be a beautiful noise.  what an amazing thing to be born into a puzzle that can be so changeable  to malleable to an individual perspective   pretty amazing

I'm not here to pound on my dad or on any religion or idea that is different than my own.  I am not interested in debunking a myth so that right and wrong and blame or fault can be assigned and wrung out for the drops of blood that they would produce

I don't think that matters at all    going back  blaming   but it provides a perspective of how I and perhaps we got here  and how it is that I and perhaps we will recognize that we are not looping back over the trail and falling again into an old idea that like a barn sour horse leads only back to the pastures of judgment

we all have the right to seek comfort even when it means we go back again and again to the shelter that perhaps kept us out of the storm of changeability and opportunity and unknown that the world persists in being  and sometimes we learn in venturing out, and in running back to our old safety, time and again, we finally learn that we can venture out and not be destroyed by the storm that we perceive this life to sometimes be.  once we understand that we can venture out and keep going even when the storm comes around from time to time to rearrange everything so that we can see a new thing after it subsides, at some point we can learn that we are ok  that we can do this thing, we can survive in the wilderness of life's changeability.

then perhaps we can really begin to see who we are   to learn that we can make it in a place where fear lives along side hope, where generosity is neighbor to avarice, where kindness is growing in the shadow of monstrous cruelty.   things exist all around us as they are until they do not  they have value and opportunity in us until they do not

all my life I have wanted to be safe and to freely move about the world making what beautiful things I saw into tangible livable experience   and for most of my life I have lived in fear of this world because I was taught to fear it  I was taught to fear myself  to doubt myself  to believe that divine perfection was the only defense against what I came to believe like my father was inherently faulty in myself   it has only been since my body and my productivity have faltered so horribly that I have truly had to come face to face with whether or not I believe myself to be negative.  To be a sinner, to be bad or dangerous, or cancerous; negative in any way.  

and I find that when I thought about what my mental therapy coach asked me to consider, that I am judging me. silently persistently in the core of my being finding me wanting and thus full of self loathing

then relatives I found that I did, I was doing this thing, and I was suffering for it.

and when I shined my light on this thing that tormented me and thus you relatives   (because how can I treat you other than I treat me)  I found that it was false and saw it as something that could not stand when held to the light of my own self

in the dreamtime I broke through this old shadow and found the me that I have always been waiting for me.  eager to be embraced like a long lost companion who I have finally found in the woods

when I saw this in the dreamtime and embraced me I felt my heart fill with light and joy  I felt my body let go of its negativity  and I rested in the simple trust that I am, however I am, perfectly fine.

my shoulder is not magically strong or healed but it is no longer full of fear and pain,  my house is not magically clean but it is cleanable and no longer a bad house because it has dirt from dog feet and unswept cat hair clinging to chair legs,  my financial footprint is still tiny but it is mine. it is ok.

so many teachings I have not understood   they went in my ear, my head, and bounced off of the stone of fear that was placed like a gravestone in the ground of my childhood.  I don't remember when I gave in to the force that wanted me to see me as negative, as needing to be saved  but I can tell you this relatives I didn't need to be saved until I agreed to acquiesce to the idea that I was unsaveable, unlovable.   and I remember making the choice to swallow that bitter pill so that I could if possible be closer to, be loved by, be valued by those with whom I grew up. those who were my core of safety, my first loves. my family.

I chose to trust them even when the me that knew better did not.  I gave my life first to their fear and judgement so that I could follow their path to forgiveness and somehow along the way be loved by them  

but they could not love me  because they did not love them selves
they could not forgive me when i chose their negativity so that I could be like them and thus be liked because they did and do not forgive themselves

that sucks

so how is it that we are born again?  by throwing off that which was first and always false

and by not teaching our children that they are bad so that we can pay someone or some thing or some system to save them

who introduces bad or wrong or not as an identity?  we do

stop it