One of the things that finally clued me in – aside from denouncing all the popular culture myths of what love is – is Eckhart Tolle’s book, The Power of Now.

It always breaks my heart a little when people get a divorce. Even celebrities. It’s worth mourning.

It occurs to me when others divorce, or when I have considered ending my own marriage, that the people trying to escape are never, ever going to escape. They will find temporary relief from the pain.

They will either live alone and long for someone or they will find someone new with similar issues and problems, who touch on the exact same nerves and sore spots.

Because the issue isn’t with your current spouse. It’s with you. His issue is his issue and yours is yours. You think you’ll escape yours when you leave him, but God/The Universe will hand it right back to you in the shape and form of someone else equally dysfunctional. Because we all are. Dysfunctional, I mean. Until we wake up and get a spiritual clue.

Eckhart Tolle says it like this,

Humaninty is under great pressure to evolve because it is our only chance of survival as a race. This will affect every aspect of your life and close relationships in particular. Never before have relationships been as problematic and conflict ridden as the are now. As you may have noticed, they are not here to make you happy or fulfilled. If you continue to pursue the goal of salvation through a relationship, you will be disillusioned again and again. But if you accept that the relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy, then the relationship will offer you salvation, and you will be aligning yourself with the higher consciousness that wants to be born in this world. For those who hold on to the old patterns, there will be increasing pain, violence, confusion and madness.

Post from: Blisstree

True Love, Right Now

Forget Punxsutawney Phil …

Whether he comes out and rushes back because he’s afraid of his own shadow or not doesn’t tell me much.

A far better indicator of whether spring is on it’s way is the fact that I’ve changed my hairdo, cleaned out the refrigerator, wiped out the microwave, scrubbed down all three bathrooms and looked for the oven cleaner. I’ll probably mop the kitchen.

I have an incredible urge to cover my lawn with grass seed, weed killer and fertilizer.

Yep, Spring is on her way.

Post from: Blisstree

Punxsutawney Sioux

I’ve been reading Eckhart Tolle’s book, The Power of Now.

He introduces the idea of a Pain Body. The Pain Body is also discussed in great detail in his other book A New Earth.

Basically, he says that one part of the human condition is a pain body. We have personal pain bodies that result from things that happen specifically to us. But, we also have collective pain bodies that come from being members of a group – women, for instance.

Tolle says that because of several thousand years of oppression, repression, violence, rape, battery, harassment, slavery and sexism baby girls are born with a collective pain body associated with being female. Carl Jung spoke of a collective consciousness, a similar idea.

PMS and menstruation is when women tend to identify with or lose ourselves in our pain body, Tolle says. This results in physical symptoms like cramps or headaches for some women, but also in bad attitudes, negativity, anger or frustration in many women.

In other words – one explanation of PMS would be psychic pain for all crimes against femininity throughout history – starting with Eve. There’s a great deal to be pissed about.

The degree to which this affects women is determined by how much they identify with the collective pain body of women or being a woman.

Feminists, for example, might identify with the pain body deeper because their identity as women is stronger and they are aware of and focus on crimes against women in general. Feminists identify strongly with “what men have done to us” and the resulting pain.

Likewise, a “submissive wife” would feel a high degree of the feminine pain body as she associates a large part of her identity with “the curse of Eve” and taking care not to step out of her “proper role.”

Both are a version of a “victim identity” and keep women in bondage to the past. But, there is true power and peace available to women in the present moment, says Tolle.

The cure for PMS and identification of the Collective Feminine Pain Body, Tolle says, is to stay present during our PMS or our menstruation cycles and recognize our bad attitudes, cramps, emotional roller-coaster as “just the pain body” and try to dissolve and “transmute” the anger, pain, unforgiveness into forgiveness, love and peace for the crimes against womanhood historically.

Thus transforming our psychic pain into true psychic and spiritual power.

Post from: Blisstree

PMS = Women’s Collective Pain Body

What are we supposed to do about it? I asked him. The story goes into this whole futile effort the United States has been trying to pass more laws. More laws haven’t reduced the number of slaves.

How many people are suffering from infertility and don’t have $20,000 for an expensive adoption?

The story says the human trafficker will give you adoption papers for your $50 if you want to bring them back to the United States. He said it like it wasn’t the first time someone had asked. Which is disturbing if you think about it for too long. How many Americans are keeping secret slaves?

During the Abolitionist Movement of the Unites States didn’t some people buy slaves with the intention of freeing them?

For $50 we could buy the children and bring them back to the United States and raise them as cherished sons and daughters. For $50 you could buy another human being United States Citizenship, liberty, freedom and love.

The only down-side is that if you get busted you lose your own liberty and go to jail.

Post from: Blisstree

Slavery Today

Treat people how you want to be treated.

There is enough evidence to suggest that this may not really be effective. Certainly, I’ve found it lacking when attempting to change another person’s behavior toward me or expecting like-behavior.

But, I have noticed this lately:
People treat others in the same way they treat themselves.

If you see someone harshly judging others, screaming at them, emotionally browbeating them, withholding support, bad-mouthing them, invalidating them.

Its safe to assume they are doing far worse to themselves.
Could this be why the Bible tells us to “Love others – as we love ourselves?” It then follows that if there is no self-respect or self-love it can not flow toward others.

We must love ourselves first.

Otherwise, self-deprecation and self-loathing and whatever other internal tortures we put ourselves through will spill out of us into the world.

Post from: Blisstree

Love Others As Yourself

My cousin got married and I got to go to a really fancy wedding. There were “whispered secrets” about how much this shindig cost.

We had to drive 10 hrs round trip to Houston in the same day. I almost didn’t go to avoid the driving. But, then I went to the bathroom with a book and my kids wouldn’t leave me alone for two lousy seconds and I thought “Hey, I could read for 5 hrs straight without annoying kids screaming at me - I’m in.”

I had two really important goals to accomplish.

I’ve been praying and meditating lately that God heal my mind about money. I think my perspective could use some work. My money attitudes might be more habitual and familial than authentic.

From Marrianne Williamson’s Return to Love, Our judgement of wealth is actually an ego ploy to make sure we never have any.

On the way to the expensive bash I read an article in Real Simple magazine titled Embrace Your Inner Cheapskate and the author reminded my far too much like myself. I don’t subscribe to that magazine, but there it was in the car waiting for me. Thanks for the mirror, God. It was an unflattering reflection, at best.

So I went to the wedding to bless the people who could afford to spend whispered amounts of dough to see their daughter get married.

Perhaps, their attitudes and views on money are healthier than mine since they actually have it. I’m considering the idea that it’s the wrong attitude about money that keeps us from it.

I looked at the shoes and the purses – because I’ve read enough fashion magazines to realize that’s where REAL serious money is invested and I blessed those women and their good taste and their luxerixous ability to buy fine things to decorate themselves and make them feel good and I prayed, “these fine people probably give loads and loads of money to charity and help others and they sure are being generous to throw this party and buy us big fat shrimp and velvety pate and lovely wines. Heck, they must be decent wonderful people or my cousin wouldn’t want to marry into their lives. They must have generous spirits or they wouldn’t be stimulating the local wedding economy, which it surely needs. Bless them Lord. I’m open to this kind of wealth Heavenly Father.”

I felt like it was important inner spiritual work for me to do and it felt good to emanate love rather than morally superior money judgement as I sometimes do.

The other true and vital reason that I went is because of the Wedding Band. I have a Secret God Given Gift. Does everyone?

A single straight girl doesn’t go out every Friday night for many years to a gay disco to meet men. Cause that would be self-defeating.

If that is how you spend your evenings in your single 20s – and it is how I spent my weekends in my single 20s with my friend Violet – it is because you have discovered an aspect of your truest, innermost self and you must let it shine. Meet my Inner Super Hero –

Dancing Queen.

(Why gay and not straight dance clubs? Because I don’t like my Inner Super Hero being fondled and groped by disrespectful straight men – I have far too much respect for her.)

Photos Source: Empowering Girls: So Sioux Me

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Spiritual Money & Dancing Queen

Am I the only one who would like to take a break from outrage and moral indignation?

Yes, there is injustice in the world.

True, George W. Bush is a bad mother-bleeper who needs to go sit on a ranch and think about what he’s done for a while.

Yes, there are still homophobics in California. They love marriage and monogamy so much they don’t want to share it.

There are also gays in California and some of them want to get married so they can have all the legal rights and responsibilities marriage provides.

And yes, there is a crazy group in Colorado who hopes to declare a fertilized egg a legal “person” to trample Roe v. Wade.

Yes, the auto industry needs a bail out though they appear to have “set aside” millions of dollars in “bonuses” for their executives to have a Merry Christmas, even as they didn’t have the foresight to retool their factories for a new generation of environmentally friendly and economical cars. Of course, it defies logic. But, are we that surprised?

Yes, lay-offs are immanent and it might be you (or my husband) this week. It was my cousin last week.

Motrin dares – how dare they – suggest that carrying a baby in a sling or other contraption might actually hurt a mother’s back (hello, Chiropractor, did you say my insurance is pretty much making me pay full price now?)

Yes, health insurance premiums are up and benefits are down and no one can afford to pay full price for healthcare.

Yes, people are going to lose homes they couldn’t afford to buy in the first place and mortgage brokers intentionally sold them those loans knowing they couldn’t afford to pay them and effectively crashed the economy.

Ditto credit card companies and auto makers.

What I find most interesting is that the Obama Celebration only lasted about a week before people found something new to be incensed about. Or they didn’t know how to give up the negative emotional feed they were getting off their moral indignation that people would dare to see things differently in the first place.

Even the people who WON are still furiously incensed – I can’t tell you how livid a friend of mine was that California would dare give gay people the right to marry.

Except, they didn’t, so why aren’t you happy and celebrating your win? Why are you still so angry? I wondered.

All over twitter I’m reading about how loathsome that group in Colorado is for wanted to give personhood rights to the unborn.

Except that the bill lost by 73% of the vote.

We just elected a Pro-Choice President who will support a justice to keep Roe v. Wade safe and sound.

And the Supreme Court would likely overturn a personhood bill that was worded in such extreme language that even Religious Conservatives would defend their right to take the birth control pill and other hormonal contraceptives – so why are you giving this group free publicity?

We just elected a President who promised to address the serious problems with the healthcare industry and insurance issues. The guy has yet to fail, so why aren’t we saying “thank goodness we’ve done what we can about this issue,” as we pay our medical bills now?

Are we now getting an emotional feed off the incensed morally outraged high we’ve all been riding on during the campaigns?

Were we expecting people with opposing views to say, “Oh, you were right. I see that now.” Really?

Sane people, people not acting out of fear of “potential wrong” sigh and remember,

Less than one month ago the majority of legal citizens of the United States of America collectively chose to change the face of the President of the United States, The United States Senate, The United States House of Representatives and likely at least one justice on The United States Supreme Court.

Let’s assume that when our new elected officials do take charge on Jan. 20 of 2009 they will do what we sent them there to do. Sitting ducks can only do so much harm over the next 2 months and little of it will be permanent.

We’re in an economic pickle. It’s not going to be pretty, or comfortable but it will turn out OK. It will.

We did what we could on election day and the work will begin as power peacefully changes hands in January. Now, we’ve got to think of creative ways we can personally stimulate our own economy. If everyone does that we’ll be all right.

Take a deep cleansing breath America.

Post from: Blisstree

Outrage & Moral Indignation Addiction

Watch this for instant goose bumps and empowerment, The Women’s Conference.

I want to speak there someday. My dreams are BIG!

Check out the website, www.californiawomen.org and see what kind of power awaits women in this lifetime.

You can participate in The Women’s Conference on this podcast.

Many of the people at this conference declared that women will be the force of change in this country. I know that to be true.

Unleash your inner power Ladies!

I wish I had been there.

Photo Source: TheWomensConference.org

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Instant Goose Bumps

You know what I find fascinating?

The religious conservatives, by which I mean the specific people in my life, who have always been the biggest influences on my own Internal Mommy Wars are in full, unequivocal support of Sarah Palin and have no doubts that can be both an effective mother and vice president.

Then why do you doubt that I can be both a great mom and fulfill my professional ambitions using the gifts and the calling God gave me? I wondered, as I lay sobbing during one yoga practice last week. If there is some distinction between she and I – and our worthiness for my family’s support – I don’t get it.

My whole motherhood and professional, experience would have been vastly different had these same people in my life been as unquestioningly supportive of me and my abilities to do both as they have been about Sarah Palin.

The economic and emotional toll of my own internal Mommy Wars can be added up to include: poverty and massive amounts of debt including a bankruptcy, unbelievable strain on my marriage almost leading to divorce, addiction to anxiety medication including a hospitalization that incurred yet more debt, severe post partum depression, not to mention the decision to stop having children so I could return to work without debilitating guilt and extreme economic “sacrifice” sooner.

But, at least I was a “good mom,” according to the specific narrow definition my family and cultural influences – religious conservatives, represented by Sarah Palin – have held out as the one virtue I must live up to above all.

Go figure.

They don’t even know her, they’ve never met her, they’ve never seen her with her children, they know very little about her politics even. Yet, they support her without reservation, judgement or criticism. If only I’d been worthy of the same support.

Thank God for Sarah Palin - I’m choosing to make their full support of Sarah Palin apply to ME and all other women. Her mission is no more important than mine, her abilities to both be a good mother and ambitious in her work is no more developed, her values no more sacred, and above all – she is no more entitled than the rest of the working mothers of this nation to respect, equal pay and working hours that adjust to acknowledge the existence of a family.

I’m choosing to let go of their judgement that has so effected my choices. It’s quite liberating really. Its like releasing a burden that has weighed heavily on my soul and tainted my experience of motherhood.

My motherhood experience has been about unnecessary guilt and sacrifice – false choices really. False choices that have made me teeter on a fence between working and motherhood, judgement and approval, fear and love, economic stability and poverty as sacrifice, powerfulness and powerlessness, economic independence and social acceptance - it’s not as though choosing to not work to be a good mom to acquire the currency of their social acceptance and approval came without serious consequences.

Forgive them for they know not what they do. I want to be free of their criticism and judgement, therefore I forgive it.

I don’t think they knew. They didn’t know they would feel this positively and supportive about a working mother character. They may or may not realize the kind of inner-turmoil they’ve caused in my own emotional life. Likely, it is only a reflection of their own inner conflict about themselves – not really about me at all.

I’m going to expect them to feel the same about my abilities as they feel about Sarah Palin’s and if they choose not to, well, this time I’ll perceive that choice as their failure, instead of my own. I’ll figure out a way not to internalize it.

Surely, I had this power all along – lots of other women have done it – but I wasn’t strong enough to apply it. So, I forgive me too.

Thank God for Sarah Palin, she’s liberating me from a social construct and false choices and a deep inner conflict about working and motherhood.

Image source: JohnMcCain.com

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Thank God For Sarah Palin

I hear mothers talk about how sacrifice is “worth it” for their kids. I especially hear this if mother’s have given up something valuable – economic independence, dreams, ambitions, time, goals, careers, autonomy, hobbies, interests, etc.

When did I – as a human being – lose my inherent value? Was it when I stopped being the child so worthy of my mother’s sacrifice? Or was it when I became the mother, expected to sacrifice everything for my children, and then say, “it’s worth it?” Or was it when I turned 18 and stopped being a legal child?

I’m just curious how one human being has elevated value over another – children over mothers specifically – but then somehow they grow out of it?

Post from: Blisstree

Sacrifice, “It’s Worth It”