meditation

         My eyes are closed
                                 
                                           I turn my gaze inward
           
                    I see...darkness

  My leg starts to itch                
                                    I shift my weight

I hear a car passing by
       
          I peak out the window
   
                                                                        Its no one

I close my eyes again
 
                                            Gaze inward...again

           "What am I doing?"

                          "No...be quiet"

"What time is it?"

                                   "What am I going to teach today?"

                                                                   another car...I open my eyes, but I don't look

                      I close my eyes

                                                       Silence        
Silence  
                                       Silence

Darkness welcomes me, envelopes  me

                            Silence
                                                                           Silence
                                                   Silence
 
                                                                         The world begins to open up...trees...gardens

                                        Silence
                                                                                                    Silence
                                                                         Silence

                 Relax into some soft warm grass

Warm Sun on my skin
                                           
                                                             My apartment has vanished into another space

                               another time

                                                           Silence
        Silence
                                       Silence

                     I reach deeper

Woods appear the sweet smell of moss and damp forest surround me

                                                                     Silence
                                                                                                Silence
                                                   Silence

          There my dear friend awaits me
                             
                                                                   Welcomes me and sits with me

                         Silence
                                                          My meditation
                                                Silence
               Is my prayer            
                                     
                                                                         Silence
                                             Is my healer

                                                                                         

Body Image

I am 25 and I have only been slightly overweight one time in my life, right after puberty. Being 25 I haven't had much time to fluctuate, I also work out and eat organic homemade food, but those things mean nothing after you have had a baby.  At first I couldn't believe how skinny I looked, which is really not hard after having a baby in you belly then no baby, but then that disbelief wore off and I started to notice the stretch marks. I mean gaining weight is one thing at least you have the opportunity to work it off, but stretch marks? No you are stuck with those the rest of your life and I am not talking about a few here or there, they are everywhere! This was my first pregnancy and I can tell you that I was not quite prepared for the aftermath. I have a tattoo on my side and one down by my hipbone, I was prepared to sacrifice those, I was prepared to wear long shirts and in the summer wear tankini. I did not get stretch marks on my belly though, I got them on my thighs and my boobs, yes my boobs. Nobody had ever even told me that you could get stretch marks on your boobs, but there they were, bold red cracks running across my boobs. Stretch marks isn't even a good word for them they honestly look like tears, small little red canyons all over your body.  Of course the color fades and eventually they are pretty hard to see, but by the time they had faded, I really began to notice my lack of weight loss. I got down to a certain weight and here I sit.  I work out I eat healthy, I watch what I eat, but it doesn't seem to matter my weight stubbornly persists.  These things have slowly wore me down and now I look in the mirror and ashamed at what I see. My clothes barely fit and I have bought mostly new ones anyways because I couldn't keep wearing the same 3 outfits that actually fit.  I want to cry and sometimes do. I am happy I had my sweet little boy and I am happy to have sacrificed what I did, but that doesn't make me like the way I look.  I know in my head that I am being ridiculous, my weight isn't at a dangerous level it really is merely my idea of who I was and  how I should look that is the problem.  I try to give myself pep talks and meditate on letting go, but it just keeps coming back to the same thing, I am overweight and I hate the way I look.  As most women, and I know men too, know this is not an easy thing to remedy. We are fighting a whole culture of expectations about what women "should" look like.  I would like to say that this is no big deal to me that I am somehow above this, but I am not. I am right there with everyone else thinking" I should like that women" or "I used to look like that girl." I am not able to love myself for who I am right now. I think this is why I cannot lose the weight because this is an important lesson to learn. If I cannot love myself in my imperfections then how can I love others in theirs? How am I supposed to support and care for those around me when I will be judging them with the same standards I judge myself.  If I think overweight, but still very healthy is a problem then I am going to project that onto everyone else. I think that if I was able to truly love who I am right now in this moment whether it be about my weight, my success, my anger, my mistakes, or whatever I am lacking at the moment,  that the weight would slowly but surely melt away. Even if it didn't at least I would be happy with who I AM.


We must forgive ourselves for being human. We must forgive ourselves for being imperfect. Because when we judge ourselves we automatically judge others. And what we do to others, we also do to ourselves. The world is a mirror of our internal selves. When we can accept ourselves, and forgive ourselves, we automatically accept and forgive others.
-Debbie Ford, Dark Side of the Light Chasers

house hunting

To make improv work there is this rule that whoever is up on stage has to say yes to everything that is presented to them. If you don't the scene will come to a very awkward stop, however if the actors do accept everything that happens, most often, the scene is allowed to unfold into a hilarious end.  On stage I can improve very well, but in daily life I am the person that stops the scene and looks like an ass-hole. I am controlling, maybe not of those around me, but definitely of myself and my plans, which means that I might get a bit out of sorts if my husband drives a different way than I thought he should.  I am trying to learn to yes to whatever happens and allowing myself to be carried by the flow around me.  This is a whole new way of living for me because I like to plan, research and calculate constantly. It's not that I want to disown planning or calculating, but rather adjust my plans when things don't turn out the way I thought they would or should. Life is not only more fun, but everything seems to come together the way it is supposed to even though it's not how I imagined it would.  Looking for a house, for instance, can be trying, as I'm sure anyone who has bought a house can attest to, and it has brought out my crazy planning self more than most things. I try to go in knowing that it doesn't matter how much I like a house it might have major problems, or as so often seems to happen, someone has already made an offer while I am still waiting for my landlord and AT&T to send me the papers I asked for so we can get pre-approved. Even though I try to prepare myself I am disappointed each time, however, I am ok with being disappointed because that is part of saying yes to how the scene is playing out.  I am realizing that for each house that disappears there is another little gem about to be put on the market and perhaps there are forces bigger than me doing something better than the small plans I have devised in my head. Maybe I do not know everything and even though that house looked perfect for me, I can actually trust that God also has plans for me, and just maybe His plans are better than mine.

Bands from high school

 I used to listen to this band when I was in High School, especially during my senior year. At the time I was doing pretty bad, I was depressed again and in a very unhealthy relationship. Although this was my favorite band at the time I eventually had to stop listening to it because I found it so negative, it only reminded me of all the nights I spent crying on the phone with my ex-boyfriend and how awful I felt at that time in my life. The farther I got away from my senior year the less I could listen to this band. I would try to listen to one album then another and every time I would end up turning it off thinking, "How could I ever have idolized this band so much?"   I know up to this point I may have sounded like some poor sad hippy, which I kind of am, but I am also a bit of a bad ass, some may even say bitch and that part of me was pretty much running the show for a while. So part of my finding "peace" was not just balancing out my depression, but my anger as well.  So back to the music, I recently decided to try and listen to this band again, thinking that if I found them just as depressing and whiny I would turn it off, however, to my surprise I found it completely uplifting.  I couldn't understand why I had ever found this band depressing. I felt like I had never actually listened to this band before, like my hearing had been all wrong.  I realize now that it was not the band, but me that was the problem. I saw the world as depressing, overwhelming and out of my control, so that is how I heard my favorite band. Now I see the world as exciting and beautiful, I think we are all working together for each other, even when we are angry or hate each other, we are all teachers and we are all student's.  So when I listen to this band now all I hear are the good lines and the uplifting tempo, I realize now the only problem was my view of life. If I think life is beautiful and precious then my experiences will reflect that, If I see the world as sad and angry then sadness and anger are constantly going to be reflected back at me. No matter what is happening around me I will experience it through my own lens, whether that is good or bad is up to me.

Somalia

When I got in my car after work the radio was playing WPR's Here On Earth, I don't really like Jean Feraca, but sometimes I like her guest's so I will listen to the show anyways. Tonight was about the world food program, but they were specifically talking about what was happening in Somalia right now. Ms Feraca's guest, Bettina Luescher, was speaking about how the famine could have been prevented Ms Lueshcer started speaking about how women were having to walk long distances carrying their children and many of the children died. Since having my baby I can break into tears at a moments notice, but especially when it comes to children. My heart was breaking as I was listening to her speak, these images I had seen on the internet were popping into my mind, I was getting so upset just thinking of these women and children. I can't imagine holding my baby in my arms and knowing that there was good chance my child would die before I could get help and there was nothing I could do about it. This is wrong. There is no reason in today's world this should be happening.  Ms Feraca echoed this sort of frustration and mentioned a game that a guy named John Breen created and donated to the world food program, the game is a series of questions and the more you get right the more rice is donated. This game has fed million's of people, that is crazy! This means that millions of people got rice who may not have because of one person.  It made me wonder what would happen in the world if we all were able to step into our full potential and offer our gifts to the world. Marianne Williamson says in A Return to Love "It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually who are you not to be? You are a child of God, your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people wont feel insecure around you. You were born to manifest the glory of God that is within you."  Reading this quote feels nice, it makes one get excited and think how great we all are, but to actually live out of this quote is completely different. We run into fear, shame, guilt, discomfort, basically things that we don't like and we shrink right back into our own shadows. Why though? Why when we are capable of such greatness do we hind behind masks? How could we let such small things stand in the way of every amazing thing we could accomplish if only we were willing to stand in our brilliance.

as we are so is the universe

When I was in 8th grade or somewhere around that time, I started to feel rather overwhelmed with life. I had nothing to feel overwhelmed about, everything in my life was generally fine, however I found myself coming home from school crawling into bed and crying for what seemed to be no reason at all. This was the first time I remember feeling this way, but this state of being would continue to come and go for many more years. I was depressed and not like oh a boy doesn't like me or I have no friends or I hate school, I mean I felt as if my soul had left me and I was the walking dead. I couldn't take this feeling very long before I talked to my parents. They sent me to a counselor and I decided to go on some medication, with the counselor understanding this was to be a stepping stone not a way of life. After about 3 months I decided to go off the medication and never went on it again.  However, I continued to have bouts of depression and get out of control with my anger till just recently.  I just wanted to be happy or experience some general peace in my life. To achieve this I thought I needed to have more control of myself or change who I was because I had come to believe that there were parts of me that needed to simply be removed. I believed there were things so wrong with me that peace would only come when I had completely disowned the parts of me that were causing me pain.  After years of disappointing myself and those around me I have finally realized that what I needed was to be honest with myself. I wanted to find someone or something else inside of me, I thought I could change myself enough to get to the places I wanted. Really, though, I needed to see myself for who I really was and accept not change who I was. As Debbie Ford says in Dark Side of The Light Chasers " Each aspect within us needs understanding and compassion. If we are unwilling to give it to ourselves how can we expect the world to give it to us? As we are, so is the universe."

Buddha

There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.
Buddha