Past and Future Me's

Ferreting through my box of old writings today (such a lovely rainy-Sunday activity) I unearthed this. I must have written it twenty-five years ago, as I refer to 'my children' as if I might have some - I never did. I remember even as a teenager having this strong feeling of connection with future "me's", that my life was all happening all at once, but I forgot it in my thirties, to be re-awakened to it in my mid-forties. It was partly this reconnection between past and future "me's" that helped to heal me of my depression. I have a "family of me's" all ready to support each other.

I'm glad I kept everything I ever wrote. Ink is more durable than memory.


Now I know what Sam Clements meant. [Who? Did I mean Samuel Clemens - Mark Twain? If I did, I can only have read a little of his stuff - he put forward so many viewpoints across his life.] Everything is ordained, he insisted, mapped out, planned; our lives stretching before us as well as behind; the book has been written, read, and closed long before we take our first breath.


Sometimes it can seem so. But still, I have the choice to lay down my pen and walk out of the room, I could scream, put out my cigarette, cry for lost lovers - I don't, but I have the feeling that I could. Perhaps the feeling is just part of the detailed passage about my life, my thoughts.


Certainly it seems that we cannot choose who we love. We fall, always the word used, in love with this person or that - by chance? Or does some superpower, some force, some cosmic intelligence, cause a shift in the infrastructure of space and time which presents us with this person to love? Here she is, here he is. Here I am. I stand before you, it is ordained that you love me. You cannot resist. Indeed, trying to resist is only part of the play, written, edited and finalised long ago.


I am young, but I feel old. There is no difference. Age is a definition with no meaning. I am thirteen, twenty, thirty-two, sixty, all at once. I am unborn, I am dead. This moment is one viewpoint in my life, I remember all that has happened, from being born to dying. Lovers in succession, marching, trampling over me, trampling each other, feeling my hard boot on their faces. Yes, all is love and beauty, all is heartache, apathy, grey.


Yes, my children are all dead. Their children are dead. That is the only certainty. If ever they lived at all.


Who sees fit to control me in this way? What huge game is this? Why am I not aware of what is in store for me? Where is the cosmic library holding life-stories about each of us? Could I not read the passage about me, and thus relieve myself of painful decision-making, if the decision is already made?


I don't believe it! I can and will take control. I will rule me, no-one else can get near.


Why do I hear such a peal of cosmic laughter?

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Allowing Emotions

This morning I woke in the pale grey with an idea I believed to be an inspiration. I propped myself on one elbow, switched on the light and made quick notes. I felt happy because I believed I was in the flow, allowing inspiration to flow through me. I felt good, sure that I was being inspired along the lines of my life purpose. I had the intention of acting on that inspiration today and putting my idea into practice.

A little later an innocent comment from someone triggered a reaction in me, a constriction and painful surge of emotions that felt like my big happy bubble had just burst. I suddenly thought that my idea would be seen as silly, ridiculous even. I felt in advance feelings of humiliation and shame. I imagined others' judgements of me, being associated with such a silly idea. I started to think that no-one else would want to be associated with my idea. My whole core felt hurt and diminished.

I tried very hard not to let the person who made the remark know what was happening inside me (we were on the phone, but even so, you can hear a lot in tone, or silence), because I knew immediately that this huge reaction was all about my own stuff, and not about his. After the phone call I allowed the emotions to wash over me, feeling awful, but trying at the same time to observe and learn.

Eventually, after a stream of gloomy thoughts, I began to pick myself up again. I thought, 'OK, perhaps I have to change the idea a little. But I don't have to abandon it altogether.'

Then I checked into Facebook. I've heard a lot about synchronicity. It's amazing, and funny, once this stuff starts to flow. Now I'm really getting it! I love the way Facebook allows the Universe to make seemingly random events happen right on the button.

This quote came up from Tao of the Giraffe, one of my favourite Facebook feeds:

"What other people think of you is none of your business."

And a little later, this video popped up from We Can All Be Heroes :



I very much enjoyed the whole scene, and the commentary, but especially the narrator's summing up at the end.


I'm beginning to access a detachment that allows me to feel the emotions as they occur, but not to be swamped by them or act on them in a way that will just cause more pain. It's not easy, but I'm motivated because it's better than being a slave to my painful emotions. I was helped very much in this regard by listening to Gary Zukav and Linda Francis yesterday evening in an interview in the Healing with the Masters series, and watching little videos on their website Seat of the Soul Institute. Another case of good timing? It would certainly seem so.

I'm laughing at myself now. I hope soon I'll be able to laugh even as I observe myself going through another bubble-bursting episode, sure that it will give me the opportunity to reduce the power that the painful emotions have over me. Or will that make people think I'm crazy? Ha ha, I don't care!

And the idea … ? Well, I'm still feeling a little shy about it, but I'm definitely working on it.

Chocolate porridge

I am definitely going to listen more to my Higher Self.  Chocolate porridge is truly awesome.

recipe

I made it myself from porridge oats, a good quality hot chocolate mix (basically cocoa and sugar) and yes, I topped it off with a little cream.

Not one for every day, but such a treat!  Yum!  

I am a Woman Healing Myself

This is an excerpt from "I am a Woman Finding My Voice", my new favourite beautiful book, by Janet F Quinn. Each short section tackles an area of life like "Believing in Myself" or "Allowing Others to Be Right" or "Having a Daring Adventure". The language is gorgeous, urging self-acceptance while motivating gentle self-improvement.


Janet writes:

The word heal comes from the Anglo-Saxon haelan, which means to be or to become whole. To be a woman healing myself is to be a woman becoming whole; giving myself the time and the space I need for the journey. No one grows up without wounds - emotional wounds; spiritual wounds; psychological wounds. I may want to forget how I have been hurt, bury it and just move on, but sometimes my wounds keep me from becoming all that I want to be, and so I need to pay attention to them. 
[…] 
Healing is discovering all the secret places inside of me, especially the ones I feel ashamed of or frightened by, and befriending them. Healing is the process I am engaged in and not a specific outcome. I fill my life with people and things that nourish and feed me and I try to avoid anything that is not healing for me and anyone who does violence to my unfolding. I do not know what the outcome of this process will be, what my healing will look like, or feel like, even to myself, because healing is always creative. Yet I have come to trust that, no matter what it looks like, feels like, or sounds like, no matter how long it is taking, or how foreign the territory, I am a woman healing myself. 

Janet F Quinn

I came across Janet Quinn on the Shift In Action website, a treasure house of interviews with fascinating individuals. You can listen online or download the recording, or read the transcript. "The Way of the Healer: You are the medicine and you are enough" is a great introduction to Janet's philosophy and wealth of practical experience.

She also has a website: Haelan Works

and her book is available from Amazon

in the UK: I Am a Woman Finding My Voice: Celebrating the Extraordinary Blessings of Being a Woman

and in the US via Janet's website.

Inspirational women

I have spent a wonderfully cloistered summer in my little flat, listening to some incredibly inspiring women.  I am profoundly grateful to Katherine Woodward Thomas and Claire Zammit for their Women on the Edge of Evolution teleseminar series.

Katherine Woodward Thomas

Claire Zammit

They're based in the US but people can dial in from anywhere in the world, or download the recorded conversations afterwards.  That's what I do, as I live in the UK.  I listen to them when I'm driving, or washing up, or when I just want to make myself relax for a while.

Two favourite new heroines for me are Diane Hamilton, who expresses a delicious feminine strength and loving acceptance, and Barbara Marx Hubbard, a leading light on conscious evolution with a fabulous sense of humour and extraordinary vitality at eighty.

Diane Hamilton

Barbara Marx Hubbard

There are many, many more marvellous women in conversation with Katherine and Claire.  By sharing their stories with us, they're demonstrating that we can all step into a new way of being.  Rather than feeling trapped, frustrated and helpless, by nurturing ourselves first and then operating from a position of inner strength, we can begin a joyful engagement with our modern problems.  They're demonstrating just how much demand there is now for feminine strength, feminine ways of thinking, even nurturing ways of doing business.  They're demonstrating that by stepping into her beautiful individuality, a woman is capable of incredible things. They're saying: "I am you.  Any of us can do this.  Start with a new kind of special care for yourself."  I feel very much more optimistic about the next few years for people and planet since I've been listening to these dialogues.

They're also saying: "We are the ones we've been waiting for."  That's exciting!

Women on the Edge of Evolution is easy to register for and it's totally free.

Becoming the new you

My butterfly friend has posted a chant on her blog very like one I used to great effect a year or so ago when I needed to make a big change in my life.  It's very simple and it may even seem a little silly at first glance, but the nursery rhyme rhythms get you nicely into your free child; you can imagine skipping along in the sunshine while you half sing it. You can play it through your head if it's not safe to say it, but I recommend saying it out loud whenever you can.

Once you accept that you can change and that it's beneficial to expect always to be changing, it's much easier to let go of patterns of thought and behaviour that are not serving you.  Accept how you were before and let it go.  "That's how I was yesterday, but that's not how I am today."  You can be endlessly, excitedly, becoming the new you.

And once this new way of thinking about yourself as eternally renewing becomes your belief about yourself, you also start to see that you are not trapped by your life's circumstances.  Once you change yourself, your circumstances change. 

Begin and see.  So exciting!
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Blogging and the dawn chorus

One bird singing can be fascinating and sound quite pretty.  If it's a wren or a robin, so sweet it might bring tears.  If a blackbird or a nightingale, inspirational. 

Not everyone can be a nightingale.  Most birds make a simple tune which they keep repeating.  Some, like the sparrow, produce just a single note.

BUT when you hear all of the different birds at once - hundreds singing together - it's beautiful, uplifting, superb.

It doesn't matter if the separate songs are not great requiems.  It doesn't matter if they're endlessly repeated.  And it doesn't matter if the singers are motivated by self-interest.

What matters is that together they sound glorious, like nature's hymn of praise for life itself.

Well, it strikes me that we bloggers, between us, are celebrating all that it means to be unique human beings.  Our individual experiences, and our particular thoughts about them, are endlessly repeating and reshaping the creative expression of humanity.  Individuality, expressed en masse.

So blog away fellow songbirds.  I sing the song of my life and you sing yours.  Our songs, added together, are giving form to a fresh kind of music.  We are singing at the dawn of a new and astonishing age.

Yay!

Bon Courage!

One of the things I have to keep reminding myself - but is well worth the effort! - is the importance of being me. Of digging deep and finding the courage to celebrate what is particular about me, with all my faults and flaws. What is the point of wasting this precious life trying to be someone else?

Photo by David Cappaert, Michigan State University, (Bugwood.org), www.insectimages.org

We each have a unique make-up, beautifully formed from our DNA to our most influential relationships, and from all our life experiences in-between. I firmly believe we are here to explore that to the full, not to try to conform to any imposed norm.

I draw courage and inspiration from those who meet much greater challenges than me, and yet seem to approach life as a joyous adventure. When someone with physical or mental challenges above the average is filled with gratitude at being alive, at having this fabulous opportunity, it is both humbling and motivational.

I'd like to share some of my favourites here:

Peggy O'Neill

Peggy O'Neill - the tiny speaker who empowers you to walk tall! Peggy is 3'8", vibrant, amazing.
http://yopeggy.com/index.php?page=bio&family=meetpeggy

"Get back up" - Nick Vujicic. Born with no limbs, now inspiring others never to give up. What a guiding light.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MslbhDZoniY
http://www.lifewithoutlimbs.org/

Robert Pio Hajjar, a man who does not let his Down syndrome hold him back. He founded IDEAL-WAY.ca to help all of us see ability rather than disability in others.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROWbyKVLYr8&feature=player_embedded
http://www.ideal-way.ca/Ideal/Default.aspx

Jill Bolte Taylor "got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions -- motion, speech, self-awareness -- shut down one by one. An astonishing story." Now she shares her story with everyone.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html
http://drjilltaylor.com/

Dr Jill Bolte Taylor (photo Kip May)

There is a wonderful book, by Art Berg, called "The Impossible Just Takes a Little Longer". He says: "Dreams are never destroyed by circumstances. They are born in the heart and the mind and only there can they ever die. For while the difficult takes time, the impossible just takes a little longer."
http://www.artberg.com/

He also says: "Your vision for yourself is what you know you need to make your life significant."

I'm thinking: just by being you, your life is significant. You don't have to do something that hits the headlines. But the more 'you' that you allow yourself to be, the happier and more fulfilled you're going to feel.

So, are you ready to jump into this joyous adventure, being you?

If we all jump at once, we'll make a mighty big splash in Space-Time. Fantastic!