(no subject)
There is something about a rainy day that makes me want to snuggle in and write. It's as if all the things I have to do magically melt away (even though they don't), and my only job is to hunker down and stay inside. And hunkering down and staying inside usually makes me want to write. ;)
I'm at Quin's today, and I didn't bring my computer (I'm on hers), so it's a forced day off. I'm kind of glad, or this urge to write might be at war with the urge to have a day off, and then I'd end up being stressed. I'm working on not getting stressed about things like that, telling myself it's okay to have a day off, that I can watch movies instead of write, but it's in progress.
Anyway, I thought I'd blog. That's different than work-writing. ;)
I've read several bits since the last time I blogged about it, but the one I want to talk about and remind myself of is the bit on change; "The Terror of Change (and the Fruits of Letting Go)." There's a lot of bits in this section I'd like to remember. Hmm.
This bit reminds me of me: "Every time someone says, 'The only thing you can count on is change,' I am secretly horrified: yet I, too, count on change! I seek it out and nurture its existence. When asked, 'What's new?' I could talk for a week."
Earlier she talks about wanting to embrace change (her ideal self doing so!) but actually being alarmed and frightened by it, and that sounds like me, too. I think when I was younger I dealt with change better, and I wonder if everyone has a hard time with things like change and openness and trust as they get older. And yet, the above bit that I quoted is true, too, and it makes me look at it in a slightly different way.
There's change in my life every day; each day isn't exactly like the last, and that's a good thing. I love those changes. It's the big changes that frighten me, but if these little changes are working out well and make me happy, why fear the big ones? In fact, there's never been a big change in my life that ended poorly, even the ones that had rough spots in them. In fact, while I can things of things that broke my heart or were very difficult, they're linked forever with good sides, too. Watching Sam go crippled and die, dealing with him during that last six months where I was pulling 12-14 hour days on top of taking him jogging twice a day and cleaning up massive diarrhea and cooking for him and dealing with anxiety -- that was not a fun few months. Going back to read my LJ during that time is heart breaking, and yet I wouldn't cut that out of my life if I could. That was hard change, and during it I didn't want it, but looking back it made my life richer.
The change in my emotional stability/brain chemicals/whatever that made the last winter in Canada so very depressing was hard. I remember days where I did nothing but lay on the couch all day and cry because my SAD was so awful, but it was a change I needed in order to make an even bigger change -- breaking up with Bry and coming back to SoCal. And that change was hard as hell, too, to move back into my parents house and continue to be unhappy until I was able to move out -- that was a huge change, and a really difficult change, but I think it was for the best.
So, really, why am I so afraid of change? Evolution makes us fear change because something worse can happen, because the unknown could hold famine or something of the sort. But I know that in my world today that won't be the case. Even still, as I get older change gets harder. I think it helps me to remember that change happens every day, and my life has proven that change is good (even when it sucks).
Also, this bit:
"I think it is very seductive to form a picture in your mind of how it will be, how you would like it to be, and then frantically try to apply that picture what is actually happening."
This reminds me of Byron Katie, whom I've spoken of before (with whom I partially agree and learned good things, even if I don't totally agree). She talks about arguing with reality, how our stress comes from railing against what already is and wishing it were different. She says we can let go of stress when we stop arguing with what we wish reality were, and accept it as it is. Eckhart Tolle says something similar, that before we can affect change in our lives or find peace, we have to accept the world as it is. (You can't change something if you're in denial of it...) To apply this to my life, I can see that I need to stop running so much. To do that, I need to cut back on the fun things I'm doing.
I don't want to. There's my argument with reality: I want there to be another way to cut back on my running. As long as I'm arguing this and continuing to do all the fun things, I'm not cutting back. And if I'm not cutting back, I'm not getting the rest I need. No change, and it's stressing me out. On top of that, my own argument is stressing me out: I don't want to be running all the time, and that desire to not-run is at war with both my state of running and my desire not to cut back on fun things, so I'm doubly stressed. I have a picture in my mind of how I want it to be: doing all my fun things, and still magically having money and time without working. While I frantically try to apply that picture, I'm in denial of reality.
Eckhart would tell me to accept reality: that I need to realize that to cut back, I have to cut back my fun time. Byron would say to accept my current state of running, instead of wishing I were calmer (and then to accept my state of cutting back on fun stuff, instead of wishing I could do more). Either or both of these would put me in a better state of peace.
Actually, I came to all these conclusions while I was home, talking to my dad. I'm working on putting them into practice; doing fun things without wearing myself out.
This is all change that I'd like, that I can control. SARK also talks about change you can't control:
"I still have difficulty trusting in the 'Divine Plan.' What if the Divine is misguided?
The 'Fruits of letting go' come when I can truly see that I am not in charge, and that I can trust in the divinity and process of change."
I think I have a hard time trusting in the divinity of change. That little line -- what if it's misguided? -- is very much how I feel! And at the same time, I do believe if I let go and let my higher power deal with it, things will be better. It's just hard remembering to trust! But the sad fact is, I'm not in charge! I can either believe everything is chance now that's a scary thought! or I can believe something else is helping me out. I find solace in the latter, and I do believe that, so I have to remind myself of that. No matter what happens, it's all for the good -- even if I can't see it right now. (Even if my mortal self things it SUCKS. My higher soul isn't going to let me fail! ...Not failing might be crashing and burning as us humans see it so I can learn something really important on a soul level, but somehow this brings me comfort, anyway.)
Finally, this bit:
"...ultimately to trust in the utter simplicity of change as actual life."
What a thought! Change is life. Ergo, change is good. I like that thought. :D
That last bit, with the Divine stuff, is making me consider my spirituality, too. My concepts of spirituality, and any sort of Divine, are always evolving. I take what feels 'right' to me from other beliefs, religions, experiences, and sort of mush them together into my personal beliefs. It makes for a messy system, with all sorts of gaps in my beliefs that I'm always trying to patch, and beliefs that are contrary to each other. More and more, though, I find myself thinking of spirituality as layered. At the top there's the Divine, which, truly, I don't think is aware of me as an individual any more than I'm aware of the cells in my body as individuals. Sure, I know they're there, and I want the best for every cell in my body, and I'm going to eat right and exercise to make that happen and support my immune system to keep everything running smoothly... but I haven't named every cell, nor can I even find every cell. They're there, and I love them, but I'm not in direct contact with them!
However, all those cells are me. I make all those cells; each one is a bit of me. Likewise, I feel like everything in existence is made up of the Divine; my dogs, this blanket, the couch, the rain, even the pollution. So as I go through my mental layers, all the things I discuss are part of the Divine, even if they're all somewhat separate, too. My toe doesn't know what my brain is up to, but it's still part of me. I believe we're all trying to get back there, and someday we might. We all go up the layers of my spiritual beliefs; when I die I'll come back again and again and again until my little soul has evolved and I can skip up a step. I'm not sure what that 'up' step is; maybe guiding spirits and teachers, maybe it's a Christian-esque heaven or Buddhist Nirvana.
I do think that not far from us, the next layer up or so, there are spirit guides and teachers. Angels, in common lore, guides and teachers to use my mom's phrase (though in my mind, 'guides and teachers' can include all SORTS of things), demi gods or fairies in other lore. Our spirits are somewhere between the two, when we die: Sam's soul may have been reincarnated already, but if not then it's resting or helping out, not maybe at the level of an angel, but certainly more able than I, in my fleshy human body, at seeing the bigger picture and influencing things.
There's other details, too, and the more I learn the more I adjust things. I have a difficult time with people who say they're psychic, even though I believe it's possible. I have strong beliefs about that, too, that we all have the ability to be highly intuitive to a psychic extent, but that it goes away when we're emotionally involved in the outcome. I can't see Lily's future, because I want it to be a certain thing. This is where my love/hate relationship comes in with family stuff, because if my mom says she can tell my future, or that my peeps (my angelic guides and teachers, sort of) are telling her something, it just annoys me. Is that my human side not wanting to deal? My cynical side being frustrated? My ego refusing to here something I'm not ready to hear? Or my human side (our soul side -- our god bits -- don't get annoyed, though what I think of as my human side is also a god-bit, just confined to this world and this life and the more mortal task of living, surviving, and judging. *grins*) being correct, but annoyed too? On the other hand, I can't deny there's something there.
A friend of my mom's recently called her and mentioned she was going on a trip to see her family. My mom told her not to expect to stay the whole week; her father-in-law was dying, and would probably go in the next four days. The friend said, "...well, he's been unwell, but they figure he has at least six months and more like a year." My mom told her, with some asperity, "Well, they may say that, but he's got four days. Maybe a week, but I don't think so." (It should be noted that my mother has never met this man; he lives in another state.)
The next day the friend called and said her father-in-law's doctor had called; sudden turn for the worse, hospitalized, get down here now. She flew down. He has since died; my mom told me, "I was off by a day." It took him five days, not four. Given how often my mom does stuff like that, I certainly can't say I don't believe it's possible... but at the same time, the human-cynical part of me gets mentally snarky any time people start doing things like that. I think part of that is being annoyed at people who are holier-than-thou when they do it. "I'm special because I can read the Divine!" I want to slap them. (My mom doesn't do that. Generally, though I'm sure that's where I got the annoyance.)
Anyway. Any time someone claims to be getting messages from higher beings, I get suddenly suspicious, though I can't deny I believe it. Heck, I've had enough weird happenings in my own life and psyche that I know I have that bent, myself -- though more in strong intuition than reading futures or anything.
Meh, I don't know.
And then there's other periphery beliefs, and I don't know where they fit, either. I sort of believe that we can influence our lives and futures, for instance. My grandparents all died from things they were terrified of, spoke about, and said they never wanted to die from. Is that them drawing it to themselves? Or did they somehow know? Or is it just a weird coincidence? Do I even believe you can draw something to yourself? This is a current belief I'm re-examining. I used to believe it, but I'm not so sure. I used to believe our animals carried issues for us, but now believe they're dealing with their own lessons to learn. I think I'm discarding the drawing-things-to-us belief, because it's more harmful than anything. There's too much self-blame. If I'm in a car crash, did I draw it to myself? If I get sick or hurt, did I draw it to myself? Too easy for self-recriminations, there. For me, that's a harmful belief, so I'm letting it go for my peace of mind. (Funny, that I can do that, though it takes time. Some part of me says that letting go of beliefs just because they make you crazy isn't good; that that's no basis for believing it's not true. Lots of crazy things are true; not liking it isn't a basis for discarding it as 'wrong.' And yet... I suppose my core belief, that the Divine wants me to be happy, is behind the idea that if something is making me miserable, I can let that belief go.)
Ahhh, and there's an important core belief, too. I think, more and more, I'm starting to believe that what we believe is true, for each of us. That the Divine creates lots of spiritual laws, creates whatever we need for our optimal spiritual growth. Or rather, they're all already there, and the ones we believe flock to us to help us out in the way in which we'll accept.
Maybe that's why I needed to be writing this, today. Maybe I needed to realize that core spiritual belief, put it on paper (as it were), and see that it's okay for my beliefs to shift and change, and it's okay for everyone to believe something different -- that I can take the lessons from something I don't quite believe, and not have to believe all of it just because it's presented in a package, but I also don't have to believe the people who do believe it are crazy. For them, it's true. For me, it's not.
Yes, this feels good. I love it when my subconscious gets me writing so I can hash out some mental issue I didn't even know I had, or find a solution to a problem I wasn't entirely aware of. Yay. :)
J
I'm at Quin's today, and I didn't bring my computer (I'm on hers), so it's a forced day off. I'm kind of glad, or this urge to write might be at war with the urge to have a day off, and then I'd end up being stressed. I'm working on not getting stressed about things like that, telling myself it's okay to have a day off, that I can watch movies instead of write, but it's in progress.
Anyway, I thought I'd blog. That's different than work-writing. ;)
I've read several bits since the last time I blogged about it, but the one I want to talk about and remind myself of is the bit on change; "The Terror of Change (and the Fruits of Letting Go)." There's a lot of bits in this section I'd like to remember. Hmm.
This bit reminds me of me: "Every time someone says, 'The only thing you can count on is change,' I am secretly horrified: yet I, too, count on change! I seek it out and nurture its existence. When asked, 'What's new?' I could talk for a week."
Earlier she talks about wanting to embrace change (her ideal self doing so!) but actually being alarmed and frightened by it, and that sounds like me, too. I think when I was younger I dealt with change better, and I wonder if everyone has a hard time with things like change and openness and trust as they get older. And yet, the above bit that I quoted is true, too, and it makes me look at it in a slightly different way.
There's change in my life every day; each day isn't exactly like the last, and that's a good thing. I love those changes. It's the big changes that frighten me, but if these little changes are working out well and make me happy, why fear the big ones? In fact, there's never been a big change in my life that ended poorly, even the ones that had rough spots in them. In fact, while I can things of things that broke my heart or were very difficult, they're linked forever with good sides, too. Watching Sam go crippled and die, dealing with him during that last six months where I was pulling 12-14 hour days on top of taking him jogging twice a day and cleaning up massive diarrhea and cooking for him and dealing with anxiety -- that was not a fun few months. Going back to read my LJ during that time is heart breaking, and yet I wouldn't cut that out of my life if I could. That was hard change, and during it I didn't want it, but looking back it made my life richer.
The change in my emotional stability/brain chemicals/whatever that made the last winter in Canada so very depressing was hard. I remember days where I did nothing but lay on the couch all day and cry because my SAD was so awful, but it was a change I needed in order to make an even bigger change -- breaking up with Bry and coming back to SoCal. And that change was hard as hell, too, to move back into my parents house and continue to be unhappy until I was able to move out -- that was a huge change, and a really difficult change, but I think it was for the best.
So, really, why am I so afraid of change? Evolution makes us fear change because something worse can happen, because the unknown could hold famine or something of the sort. But I know that in my world today that won't be the case. Even still, as I get older change gets harder. I think it helps me to remember that change happens every day, and my life has proven that change is good (even when it sucks).
Also, this bit:
"I think it is very seductive to form a picture in your mind of how it will be, how you would like it to be, and then frantically try to apply that picture what is actually happening."
This reminds me of Byron Katie, whom I've spoken of before (with whom I partially agree and learned good things, even if I don't totally agree). She talks about arguing with reality, how our stress comes from railing against what already is and wishing it were different. She says we can let go of stress when we stop arguing with what we wish reality were, and accept it as it is. Eckhart Tolle says something similar, that before we can affect change in our lives or find peace, we have to accept the world as it is. (You can't change something if you're in denial of it...) To apply this to my life, I can see that I need to stop running so much. To do that, I need to cut back on the fun things I'm doing.
I don't want to. There's my argument with reality: I want there to be another way to cut back on my running. As long as I'm arguing this and continuing to do all the fun things, I'm not cutting back. And if I'm not cutting back, I'm not getting the rest I need. No change, and it's stressing me out. On top of that, my own argument is stressing me out: I don't want to be running all the time, and that desire to not-run is at war with both my state of running and my desire not to cut back on fun things, so I'm doubly stressed. I have a picture in my mind of how I want it to be: doing all my fun things, and still magically having money and time without working. While I frantically try to apply that picture, I'm in denial of reality.
Eckhart would tell me to accept reality: that I need to realize that to cut back, I have to cut back my fun time. Byron would say to accept my current state of running, instead of wishing I were calmer (and then to accept my state of cutting back on fun stuff, instead of wishing I could do more). Either or both of these would put me in a better state of peace.
Actually, I came to all these conclusions while I was home, talking to my dad. I'm working on putting them into practice; doing fun things without wearing myself out.
This is all change that I'd like, that I can control. SARK also talks about change you can't control:
"I still have difficulty trusting in the 'Divine Plan.' What if the Divine is misguided?
The 'Fruits of letting go' come when I can truly see that I am not in charge, and that I can trust in the divinity and process of change."
I think I have a hard time trusting in the divinity of change. That little line -- what if it's misguided? -- is very much how I feel! And at the same time, I do believe if I let go and let my higher power deal with it, things will be better. It's just hard remembering to trust! But the sad fact is, I'm not in charge! I can either believe everything is chance now that's a scary thought! or I can believe something else is helping me out. I find solace in the latter, and I do believe that, so I have to remind myself of that. No matter what happens, it's all for the good -- even if I can't see it right now. (Even if my mortal self things it SUCKS. My higher soul isn't going to let me fail! ...Not failing might be crashing and burning as us humans see it so I can learn something really important on a soul level, but somehow this brings me comfort, anyway.)
Finally, this bit:
"...ultimately to trust in the utter simplicity of change as actual life."
What a thought! Change is life. Ergo, change is good. I like that thought. :D
That last bit, with the Divine stuff, is making me consider my spirituality, too. My concepts of spirituality, and any sort of Divine, are always evolving. I take what feels 'right' to me from other beliefs, religions, experiences, and sort of mush them together into my personal beliefs. It makes for a messy system, with all sorts of gaps in my beliefs that I'm always trying to patch, and beliefs that are contrary to each other. More and more, though, I find myself thinking of spirituality as layered. At the top there's the Divine, which, truly, I don't think is aware of me as an individual any more than I'm aware of the cells in my body as individuals. Sure, I know they're there, and I want the best for every cell in my body, and I'm going to eat right and exercise to make that happen and support my immune system to keep everything running smoothly... but I haven't named every cell, nor can I even find every cell. They're there, and I love them, but I'm not in direct contact with them!
However, all those cells are me. I make all those cells; each one is a bit of me. Likewise, I feel like everything in existence is made up of the Divine; my dogs, this blanket, the couch, the rain, even the pollution. So as I go through my mental layers, all the things I discuss are part of the Divine, even if they're all somewhat separate, too. My toe doesn't know what my brain is up to, but it's still part of me. I believe we're all trying to get back there, and someday we might. We all go up the layers of my spiritual beliefs; when I die I'll come back again and again and again until my little soul has evolved and I can skip up a step. I'm not sure what that 'up' step is; maybe guiding spirits and teachers, maybe it's a Christian-esque heaven or Buddhist Nirvana.
I do think that not far from us, the next layer up or so, there are spirit guides and teachers. Angels, in common lore, guides and teachers to use my mom's phrase (though in my mind, 'guides and teachers' can include all SORTS of things), demi gods or fairies in other lore. Our spirits are somewhere between the two, when we die: Sam's soul may have been reincarnated already, but if not then it's resting or helping out, not maybe at the level of an angel, but certainly more able than I, in my fleshy human body, at seeing the bigger picture and influencing things.
There's other details, too, and the more I learn the more I adjust things. I have a difficult time with people who say they're psychic, even though I believe it's possible. I have strong beliefs about that, too, that we all have the ability to be highly intuitive to a psychic extent, but that it goes away when we're emotionally involved in the outcome. I can't see Lily's future, because I want it to be a certain thing. This is where my love/hate relationship comes in with family stuff, because if my mom says she can tell my future, or that my peeps (my angelic guides and teachers, sort of) are telling her something, it just annoys me. Is that my human side not wanting to deal? My cynical side being frustrated? My ego refusing to here something I'm not ready to hear? Or my human side (our soul side -- our god bits -- don't get annoyed, though what I think of as my human side is also a god-bit, just confined to this world and this life and the more mortal task of living, surviving, and judging. *grins*) being correct, but annoyed too? On the other hand, I can't deny there's something there.
A friend of my mom's recently called her and mentioned she was going on a trip to see her family. My mom told her not to expect to stay the whole week; her father-in-law was dying, and would probably go in the next four days. The friend said, "...well, he's been unwell, but they figure he has at least six months and more like a year." My mom told her, with some asperity, "Well, they may say that, but he's got four days. Maybe a week, but I don't think so." (It should be noted that my mother has never met this man; he lives in another state.)
The next day the friend called and said her father-in-law's doctor had called; sudden turn for the worse, hospitalized, get down here now. She flew down. He has since died; my mom told me, "I was off by a day." It took him five days, not four. Given how often my mom does stuff like that, I certainly can't say I don't believe it's possible... but at the same time, the human-cynical part of me gets mentally snarky any time people start doing things like that. I think part of that is being annoyed at people who are holier-than-thou when they do it. "I'm special because I can read the Divine!" I want to slap them. (My mom doesn't do that. Generally, though I'm sure that's where I got the annoyance.)
Anyway. Any time someone claims to be getting messages from higher beings, I get suddenly suspicious, though I can't deny I believe it. Heck, I've had enough weird happenings in my own life and psyche that I know I have that bent, myself -- though more in strong intuition than reading futures or anything.
Meh, I don't know.
And then there's other periphery beliefs, and I don't know where they fit, either. I sort of believe that we can influence our lives and futures, for instance. My grandparents all died from things they were terrified of, spoke about, and said they never wanted to die from. Is that them drawing it to themselves? Or did they somehow know? Or is it just a weird coincidence? Do I even believe you can draw something to yourself? This is a current belief I'm re-examining. I used to believe it, but I'm not so sure. I used to believe our animals carried issues for us, but now believe they're dealing with their own lessons to learn. I think I'm discarding the drawing-things-to-us belief, because it's more harmful than anything. There's too much self-blame. If I'm in a car crash, did I draw it to myself? If I get sick or hurt, did I draw it to myself? Too easy for self-recriminations, there. For me, that's a harmful belief, so I'm letting it go for my peace of mind. (Funny, that I can do that, though it takes time. Some part of me says that letting go of beliefs just because they make you crazy isn't good; that that's no basis for believing it's not true. Lots of crazy things are true; not liking it isn't a basis for discarding it as 'wrong.' And yet... I suppose my core belief, that the Divine wants me to be happy, is behind the idea that if something is making me miserable, I can let that belief go.)
Ahhh, and there's an important core belief, too. I think, more and more, I'm starting to believe that what we believe is true, for each of us. That the Divine creates lots of spiritual laws, creates whatever we need for our optimal spiritual growth. Or rather, they're all already there, and the ones we believe flock to us to help us out in the way in which we'll accept.
Maybe that's why I needed to be writing this, today. Maybe I needed to realize that core spiritual belief, put it on paper (as it were), and see that it's okay for my beliefs to shift and change, and it's okay for everyone to believe something different -- that I can take the lessons from something I don't quite believe, and not have to believe all of it just because it's presented in a package, but I also don't have to believe the people who do believe it are crazy. For them, it's true. For me, it's not.
Yes, this feels good. I love it when my subconscious gets me writing so I can hash out some mental issue I didn't even know I had, or find a solution to a problem I wasn't entirely aware of. Yay. :)
J