Shadows and Light
I’m doing the Deepak Chopra/Oprah 21 day free meditation “Become what you Believe”. They offer these 21 day free meditations about 3 times a year, and I’ve done them all, I think. They are invaluable. The insight I get is generally very enlightening.
Today’s meditation was about the shadows, our darker, hidden beliefs about ourselves that, when brought to the light, lose their power. I think I’ve had a few, lol, that have led me to not learning the lessons and so repeating them.
With my ex…when we met, and in the early years of our relationship, he was a different man. He was a nationally ranked swimmer. He had what appeared to be a big close family, and his father ran a very successful business. The family exuded success. I was dazzled by the accumulation of wealth, and what seemed to be a close intact family. It took me years to see the underlying dysfunction. He and his older brother dislike each other immensely. His father had a foul temper, and could lace into people, my ex and his wife, and anyone in his way, at any time. He knew it…he always said, “I will knock people down, but I then give them a hand back up.” Well yes, he did. He gave them a hand when they were bloody and beaten and their brain scrambled, because then one was the most vulnerable to do what he wanted, to listen out of fear of being beat up again. When my ex was young, it wasn’t just verbal, it was physical too, until my ex got too big and could and would have fought back. The brothers hated each other because one of them had to be at fault for anything that happened bad, and they learned to point the finger at each other from the time they were babies. The mother, stood by and watched, and allowed it all, in the interest of “backing up her husband.’ Which was really just inability to face the fear of life alone.
So there was the dysfunction. It was all about power and control, it was a gift from my father-in-laws own alcoholic father, passed down through the generations, to my ex. I hope to have broken the cycle by getting my son away from it, and working with him, to help him understand his own shadows.
But I digress. The point is, the dysfunction. S also had a family of origin that was dysfunctional. More dysfunctional? I don’t know but small bits and pieces, because I never met them. But in neither family was there unconditional love. In both families the mother allowed the father to run rampant over the family. That I am sure of.
So, my own shadows. When I realized this about my ex, gradually over the years, I began to consider leaving him, which would have been the best thing to do. But I didn’t. Fear mostly. Of many things. Finally, the universe put in front of me something that was just unacceptable on all levels, and I was able to gather the strength to overcome all my fears, and I left him, and began a long battle to reclaim my life, and my son’s. Leaving earlier would have been the right thing to do for my spiritual evolution. With S, it didn’t take me as long. Last summer, when I realized all he wanted was a physical relationship, I tried to leave him so many times, but again…I chose the easier path, and allowed myself to be pulled back in. The universe actually helped me out, bringing Betty Boop back, because I needed something drastic to happen in order to get away from him for my own evolution. I needed to regard myself with more value, more worth, and to stop believing obvious untruths that soothed my ego, but hurt my soul.
I chose the easy path too long with both. And even after Betty Boop came back, and he chose her for his own reasons, (choosing the easy path, perhaps? It’s way easier to repeat the lesson, than to rumble through it. But that’s his business, not mine.) I continued to talk to him, to want to find an easy path to stay in his life, but thank God, I loved myself enough then, to not take the one he offered.
I now need to learn that I DO deserve a healthy relationship. I went from one so controlling I couldn’t breathe, to one so uncaring that it ripped me open. I gave both men my full heart, I tried with both to make it work, no matter what it took. And it took me…it took pieces of my soul in both cases. It took me giving myself away. I reclaimed myself from my ex, but then, I hadn’t learned the lesson, along came a different wolf in different sheep’s clothing, and I gave myself away again.
I think I am learning the lesson now. I think I get it. I am reclaiming myself from S. I woke this morning feeling ownership of my life again. I haven’t even checked the phone to see if he tried to leave a voicemail. I am hoping he’s finally leaving me alone, and has stopped trying to keep me on the periphery of his life.
Back to beliefs. I really believe now that dysfunction does not have to be my lot. I want, and will find a loving passionate relationship, or not. But I’ll never settle for one that is again dysfunctional. My eyes are open, I don’t want to repeat this lesson. I don’t need another teacher. LOL. I see the shadow, and now, it’s in the light. I will always have compassion for those like my ex, and S, who have been buried in dysfunction all their lives. They have the choice to change it or not. It’s not my job. I can shine the light, it’s all I can do. Its their choice, to stay in the darkness, and repeat the lessons, or bring their own shadows to the light.
As for me…Onward, as Liz Gilbert says. Onward.
Tuesday Night Rumble with the Chaos
This morning I was laying in bed at 4:45 AM. Awake. I realized, laying there, that while I was awake, I could not identify the exact moment I woke up. Like when you gradually turn on the lights that have a dimmer, not knowing or recognizing when they are fully on. It was kind of odd…..To find myself awake and not know when I had achieved the state of wakefulness.
When I finally looked at the time and saw it was so early, I tried to go back to sleep. No go. I finally got up at 5:10.
So, that’s kind of what happens when you fall in love, well sometimes. I mean, I’m sure there are times people know the exact moment they fell in love. But I think more often, it’s a gradual process. Holding back less and less, through time, until you’re not holding back at all. It’s not always a conscious thought or decision.
I wish it was, because I would not have chosen to love someone who couldn’t love me back. I will be more conscious in the future. I am being more conscious.
A wants me to come visit him when I am off between Christmas and New Years. I would like to see him, at times I’d love to see him. But I don’t want to rush into it, I am still healing. Not grieving anymore, but healing. And I don’t want to hurt A again, I did that once because S drew me in, away from A, I think just to prove he could. Once, I just disappeared, again for S, but not at his request, so I could focus on that relationship with no distraction.
I promised A I would not disappear again. I would love to snuggle up with him. I would love to feel his love, his warmth, He treats me like gold. He loves me…..I love him but he’s always way ahead of me. I love him, as a man, as a person. He has stood by me, and never let me down. But I want passion….maybe it’s possible, but I don’t feel it now.
Still healing. Still walking that thin line. But strong in my conviction not to talk, or contact, or allow contact. That’s just a waste of time. I need to focus on what makes me attracted to men like S and my ex. Totally afraid to put themselves out there. Just full of fear, so they close the door, they hide themselves so they can’t be seen. Why men like this, when I am so willing to get into the arena, and be seen? Why not A, who is available, sweet, loving, kind, so willing to put himself out there, and let me see him. He tells me every day he loves me, and shows me…. I need to lean into the discomfort, and “rumble” with what’s going on with me, as Brene Brown says.
I am reading a book by Rebecca Rosen for book club, “Awaken the Spirit Within.” She is a medium, well known. Two books. She said that 1000’s of spirits, in her work as a medium, have told her the same thing. That we contract with the universe for the lessons we are coming here to learn for our soul’s spiritual evolution. She says that the people who give us the hardest emotional time, are our teachers. She says if we contract to learn these lessons, but instead of doing the work to learn them, and understand them, choose the easy way out, and don’t learn them, we will have to, at some point come back and have another go at it.
This idea floored me, but I can see it’s validity. I learned so much through the experience with my ex. The one with S, I am still rumbling with…I still have a load of pain from the hurt he delivered to work through. It’s not that I want him anymore, far from it. I would have to be stupid to want to go back there. But the hurt of the betrayal, the dismissal, being thrown out like the trash….will take some time to heal over. I think I’m looking or exterior validation that I didn’t deserve it. I’m guessing therein is at least part of my lesson, once I can work through that. Many questions surrounding that hurt…and all of them point to me, for allowing it to happen, for opening the door to it. And also, the healing has to come from within. S was my teacher for this lesson, because he’s the one who was in the relationship with me that caused so much pain. His soul is the one teaching me to love myself, because not everyone else can or will. He’s learning his own lessons, whatever they are. (This also tied in to my belief that we knew each other before we were born. I felt like I knew him before we even met, strongly.) He told me every woman in his life has screwed him over. I don’t think, when all is said and done, he can include me in that equation. I gave him more than he wanted, but I didn’t screw him over. Though he may see it differently, I don’t know, and don’t really care. Just sayin’, I try not to do that to people. But..the two men I have loved the most in my life, have screwed me over.
Rebecca Rosen says if we don’t learn the lesson, it will just keep repeating itself until we do. So…I didn’t fully learn it from my ex, so enter S…. I am determined to discover, uncover, and deal with the lesson this time. Truth be told, with my ex, I rumbled with it. I didn’t take the easy way, I rumbled with him and won my freedom and my son’s, and my life. I saw it through to the end.
Then again, maybe there are 2 different, but related lessons. I have always thought that with my ex, the lesson was the power of unconditional love. I still believe that. I believed it so much, that I was fearless about loving S that way. I just believed in the end, that it was irresistible. Apparently it’s not, lol.
I haven’t been able to rumble with the discomfort from S for more than a few days at a time. I feel different now, I’m sure I can, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. It means I’m determined to value myself, and my life, enough not to slip back into something that would only bring me more pain, and cause me to dislike myself, and disrespect myself.
Poor S, doesn’t understand how I can love him and miss him but not want to ever see him again. Because he compartmentalized his relationships, my relationship with him should be unaffected by his relationship with another woman. That’s his journey, his lesson to to figure out. Maybe. Not my problem, I have enough of my own. I digress anyway. The passion I had for him is dying, in relation to him. Because I love the passion and the love, though, I’m going to find out the answers, and open the door to the real thing. A loving passionate relationship for the 3rd act of my life.
Rambling. Tuesday night rambling, looking for answers, and lessons.
Insanity
I’m with you, Mr. Poe. 
The Transormation of the Leaves
In my morning meditation today, I saw my relationship with S like a tree in autumn. One by one the leaves, the things that made it special, fell off the tree, onto the ground. The tree is now bare. The leaves, the things that made it special, lay on the ground, transforming.
Energy can’t be created or destroyed. What was appears to be no more. But it exists, in another form. It becomes something new. New growth from old decay. I look for the signs of freshness, having let go of the old dead leaves. I seek the tenderness of a new bud of love somewhere, that can grow within me and someone else.
I can’t harbor hate and anger, I can’t even feel bad about what was, what has ended. I can only wish love and light to the old life, and the hope that the transformation is a beautiful thing for all involved. It will be what it is, it will fit each of us as we allow it, as our level of consciousness allows.
While the leaves of that relationship have been decaying, the buds of another have been forming, deep within another tree, waiting for a new season of the heart to be seen. It may be that those leaf buds, new and fresh, begin to open, slowly, gracefully, hopefully, as the last dead leaves fall off the old tree. I think transformation has begun for me.
Namaste. Namaste.
Growing Pains
Today was kinda rough. But there is no growth without pain, is there?
After texting with S yesterday, which never comes to any good end, I just cut it off, and thought that I’d not hear from him for a few days, but I heard from him today on his lunch break. And again, to no good end. Yesterday I cut it off when it started to get ugly, today, it got ugly, and I blocked him, for good. I have no desire to argue with him, and that was the only point. To argue over nothing, as if it mattered how it turned out. It didn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, and I’m sick of it. Why argue when you have no relationship? What’s the point? I don’t want anything from him, except to be left alone by him. It’s over and done.
As in the Rumi quote, watch my rising.
There is no need for ugliness. The love doesn’t disappear, it just transforms, into something else, a different kind of caring, that doesn’t leave your heart aching and your stomach upset. It wasn’t my choice then, now it’s a choice I agree with. It’s a choice I want, I want to be free of the old encumbrance, I want nothing to hold me back from finding that which I want. I don’t want to ruin what are good memories with any more bad ones. It’s like my dysfunctional marriage, I still can remember many good times, even though the ending was ugly, but I want no more ugly memories to add to it. And the same with S. No more memories at all, just let it be done.
As it should have been ages ago, way before Betty Boop came back. Long ago. With the prison whore probably. Or when the first signs of withdrawal showed after his friend died.
But whatever, it’s over now. I don’t want a text, a voice mail, an email. I don’t want one more minute of it. The longing is turning into something that I don’t want to feel, the missing him is starting to feel ridiculous. Missing what? I don’t know. Nothing that I can’t live without. Nothing that I haven’t lived without for a long time, and nothing that I don’t feel better without now.
He has his “one, the one”. My opinions about that are none of his business, nor is how I feel about him or see him. Whether or not I can still unconditionally love him, is none of his business. I hope he quits thinking about it, and tries to make something work in his life. With her. And leave me alone.
He said he wanted to find a way to keep me in his life. There is no way. I don’t want to be in it. I get to make that choice, and I made it, irrevocably today. Too much ugliness. I’m just done with it.
Lessons, there are always lessons. Even the ones you think are hard, and you hated learning them, raise you to a place you’d not been before, if you choose to learn them. Watch me rise….watch the experience lift me into a smarter, wiser, more tender, more loving place. Every experience can lift you or knock you down. Trust always, that what happened was supposed to happen, and glean from it what you can that will help you grow.
That is my intention. To grow, to be better than I was.
Still Breathing
Watch
Learning the Lessons
I was walking with my cousin yesterday. We take these long 5 mile walks and talk incessantly. We both have our issues, and we talk and listen without judgement. She’s actually my ex’s cousin, lol, and the only member of that family with whom I am still close.
We were talking, finally, yesterday about the lessons we have learned or are learning from our current situations. She and her family have some serious issues they are dealing with. I suggested what I thought my lesson was this time, but she has not been able to see a bigger picture with hers. Though, hers is fresh, and the wounds are still bleeding, she is still reeling from it’s presence in her life. She was blindsided by it, as was I by mine. We both believe there is always a lesson we are supposed to learn from every difficult situation.
She expressed a wish that she could just stop for awhile, learning lessons. And me too. We both could take a stretch of easy, instead of so difficult.
I said though, “You know there is no growth without pain. Perhaps as our soul evolves spiritually, the lessons become harder to learn because they are more important.”
I first learned the power of unconditional love when my son lived with my ex, about which I have written a blog, and won’t go into the specifics again. Let me say though, that that lesson came easily, even though the situation was harder and scarier than anything I’ve ever lived through. The lesson, to just unconditionally love him, came naturally. I can’t take credit for even thinking of it consciously. It was just a natural reaction, of a mother for her child, and only after all was resolved did I realize that it was the power of that unconditional love that brought about positive change.
Now, the lesson seems to be a deepening of that lesson, for me. But I’ve had to acknowledge in the last month that there are people who will reject that kind of love. People who absolutely don’t trust it, or believe in it. I am committed to it, regardless. But I think there will be no reward in the end as there was with my son. So…while this lesson has been devastating to me, in my personal life, it was not as hard as knowing my son was in danger every minute. But the lesson is harder to stay with.
One might ask, why would I continue to love someone unconditionally who absolutely will hurt me without cause, will betray and disrespect me? Why would I unconditionally love someone who is incapable of that same emotion?
I suppose that is the lesson for me, to answer those questions. My only reasoning now is, unconditional doesn’t allow us to pick or choose who we love. It has to be, unconditional – without limit, without reason, beyond thought or judgement. As so often has been said, the people who seem least deserving are the ones who need it the most.
So….I will continue to love this way. My door will be open, not to the hurt, but to extending the love. If I am true to myself, and what I absolutely believe to be true, in fact, KNOW to be true, that love is the most powerful energy in the universe, then I have no choice. It doesn’t mean I will expose myself to danger or hurt. It means I will love. Always love.
If I ask the person I’m directing it to at the moment, hard questions…it is because I want them to see that there is another way to think, to live, that being fearful of love, and alone doesn’t have to be the way it is. Wanting connection, love and belonging is the natural human condition. To pretend it is not, is just pretending.
There are other ramifications, if this is the path I choose….because as it trickles down into the cracks and crevices of my life, I have to change myself to fully be that person. My anger, which can be self-righteous and flare on a short term basis, has to be tempered with the knowledge that what was done to me by anyone was done by someone doing the best they could with the tools they have been given, with their level of consciousness at the time. And that perhaps over time, someone loving them regardless of their actions, might help them to evolve too.
There are those more highly evolved than me, who say we contract before we are born to learn the lessons that face us here. We even contract with other souls to join us in the journey. And if we take this life time and don’t learn them, then we will come back again to learn the same lesson. That’s karma. It’s not what goes around comes around. It’s whether or not we open our hearts to learn the hard lessons that allow us to evolve.
Who knows? The world is a mystical, incredible place, and our journeys are also. I will go with what has been put in front of me, and find a way. Live like water…..
Everywhere
I have climbed the snow-capped mountains,
And seen your beautiful face in the valley.
I have crossed the river
And seen your twinkling eyes in the slow moving water.
I have run through the meadow
And heard your name whispered on the breeze.
I have lifted my face to the gentle spring rain
and smelled the sweet scent of you as it filled my heart.
I have stood in the white full moonlight
And heard your voice call to me.
I have teetered on the brink of the abyss
And felt your hand reassure mine.
I have sailed on the vast blue ocean
And seen your soul dance in the waves.
And you still have no idea
How amazing you can be.
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