This is a writing meant to get a point across to those who fancy themselves "the chosen few."
There is never anything more insulting to someone who lives their life intending not to harm others, to bring peace to their own community, whose only goal is to spread Love and the light of the Aloha Spirit, than to tell that person that because I do not follow any certain religion that this would make me somehow not close to God. If it is the intent of those who attend regular church services to do so only to get their 'get out of hell free' card, I have news for you - God doesn't like it when we judge others, or when we take it upon ourselves to go out into the world, and instead of being kind, of seeking truth as it applies to others, of becoming somewhat (gulp) tolerant to the idea that no matter what you call your belief, what religion you follow - no matter what!! - God is God, no matter what name God goes by for us each, singly and collectively.
You need to read that holy text again, in its entirety, and learn from it
Instead of getting up on to your proverbial soapbox, vilifying me in public, telling me, a person you know only because we share memories of a similar neighborhood and zipcode, perhaps it is a better idea that you take that book that you swore you would shove down my throat to save my soul, open it up and read the damned thing. You see, you have this air about you that deems you as being acceptable to better society, but I know the real you. I know you better than you know your damned self, and I say this because I used to be just like you. Then one day, I saw the light. I saw that my words, my accusations, my interpretation of that book you wield like a newbie gangster does a gat - not very well at ALL ! It doesn't bother me at all that you are on fire for your religion, but, my friend, you need to be on fire with Spirit - NOT with facts that scream your truth for you.
You would not know the truth because you are blind to it. That book you like to wield commands that you do unto others as you would have them do to you, and you seem to think that the only way, the only truth, the only light is your very own interpretation of it. I am no stranger to the ecumenical writings which you can recite word for word, but it seems as though you are oblivious to the real meanings behind those words which you feel are the ones which will save the entire world. This, my friend, is not the truth. In fact, it is so far from the truth that it makes sense to me that you would hang on to them as though they were meant for everyone and according to your interpretation of them.
It is fine that you are as devout as you think you are, but this does not make it ok to f*ck with people just because they believe otherwise
You may not take your truth and try to shove it down someone else's throat, at all, ever, because lots of people are not like I am. I will get my words in edgewise this way, and I am doing it this way because you are so enamored of reading that I figured you would see this and know for real why it is that I basically said nothing. I am not one to make a scene, at least not a scene that was started by an ignorant and small minded person who cannot bring herself to see that there are other people on the planet, people who have different beliefs, and people who have respect for the beliefs of others.
You may think that when we parted ways and that I had nothing to say to you was my way of raising the white flag, but I must defer to the fact that you know me well enough to know that it ain't gonna happen that way- not now, not ever, and that when you told me that my silence was the thing that would open a can of worms, I let it be known by you now that it was not a can of worms, but rather, and unfortunately for you, Pandora's box.
You see, there are a lot of things in that book that you hide behind that have to be read as being a lesson, and the only thing that you have been taught at that building you meet in every Sunday is only a building. Yes, it represents the House of God, but if you were as smart as you pretend to be, you would know for sure that the actual House of God is each of us, all us humans, and man, you need to clean up your house, like, now. What I thought would be a pleasant exchange of niceties turned out to be my being lambasted, and for what?
Because I am not afraid to be who I am, and you know what? GOD LIKES IT THAT WAY..dumb ass!
Judge not lest first ye shall be judged...
I knew you when we were in high school, and back then I thought you were sort of strange, but that is the reason that I liked you. I am drawn to strange and unique things and people. How peculiar it is, the way that time brings us to these places where we stand upon high, looking down at the world beneath our feet, and how odd it is to me that my perception of things are not quite the same as yours, and they can't be, because the world is too beautiful, life too wonderful, even with all of its ugliness, for me to voluntarily become blind to it all.
How on earth do you suppose you might be able to see into my future, when you can barely see straight ahead of you? Your truth is not my truth - it never was, it never will be, and you need to deal with the idea that you cannot now nor ever save the entire world from that version of the afterlife that is set aside for Hitler and Charles Manson, not at all. You must be able to balance your faith with a belief that others can be trusted with what they believe in without your being there to damn us all to hell.
Oh, by the way- that's a sin, and it is not your call, neither your pastors' to decide who is golden enough to waltz through those pearly gates. If what you joined your church and became saved for was so that you can continue to walk the crust of the earth damning us all to hell...well, it's gonna be pretty crowded there.
But, don't worry, we will save a seat for you!!!
ROXANNE
Monday, February 28, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Stripes
You cannot change who you are, so deal with it
Most folks try hard to fit themselves into a place in life that they are not meant for. How sad a testament it is to the future of humanity when we cannot accept who we are.
Really sad
I will admit to having had bouts with who I really Am. I mean, how can all of us, at the same time, have the notion that somehow God screwed up?
We can't, or at least we shouldn't, because even those who are considered as being the best of humanity have had their own bouts with self doubt, of not knowing who they really are, and yep, they've even been publicly outed for it, Case in point? Ummmm....Tiger Woods? Ben Roethlisberger? Michael Vick?
All these guys, and more who are just as rich, just as famous, just as above the rules that the rest of us are not. Sure, they have money and fame and whatever else it is that compels us all to think that somehow, they simply are just above the rest of us, but really, they are not. They just are in a different income bracket is all, and Tiger Woods, as much as I love what the guy has done for the game of golf, is not above the rest of us when it comes to monumental screw ups of the worst kind !!
My point in this is that we can go about bragging to the rest of the world that we are this, or that we are that, or that we are working on becoming this or that, but the truth is that unless we have each decided that we are who we are because God has the ultimate plan laid out for us, we have no clue of who we are. You can be that person who is rebuilding their lives from scratch, and whatever it is that you do to get where it is that you think you have to be in life to be who you really are, NONE of that matters unless and until you decide here and now that who you are at the moment is good enough. You can chase money and beauty, and you can "have it all," but until you have decided that who you are and who you are just exactly as you are is good enough, not only for the rest of the world but also for yourself, you will inevitably just be setting yourself up for the same shit you have already been through, and that is no fun at all when you think about it.
A tiger cannot change his stripes, nor a Jaguar her spots
Someone else's life always seems like it is the ideal life, namely when it seems that life has puked all over your kegger. Your life is messy and hard while their life seems as though it is a cake walk in comparison. You want for what they have, but what you really seek is the peace that it seems comes to them effortlessly, and if it is that you seek peace but continually find tumult, then, my friend, what is happening is that God is trying hard to show you your own way, but you keep on bucking against it, and well, God is kind of a Big Guy, and you can buck all you want to. The fact remains that you will have to deal with the fact that you are not your neighbor, are not that person who seems to have it all, and in fact, you may very well be living the life that the person of whom you are envious wants to live.
To them your life might seem like a dream come true. No bills that they have, no boss that seems to endlessly harangue you, nothing in your life that is stressing you out to no end. This is the reality of these sorts of things. The problem is not in the idea that we want for the things that others have, but that we are not grateful for what we already have, no matter how big or small that may seem to any one of us. I will admit right now to pining for something more than only what I have at the moment, but the truth is that I have what I need, and eventually that which I pine for, which I manifest and intend to have, no matter what or who that is, is already Being - I just have things that must be worked through first before they enter my own life.
This is the tricky part of manifesting - accepting our circumstances, and that includes accepting who we are and learning to love who we are.
We are who we are for a reason
There are a whole lot of reasons as to why it is that some folks have to deal with what they have to deal with, and right now that one person in my life is my old man. He is hard headed, egotistical and arrogant. On the other side of all those things that seem to be the determinant in success in business versus success in life is that he is ill - very ill, probably doesn't have too much time left, and no matter how many times he tries to bargain with God, he is forgetting that he has to first accept what he has made of his life thus far. But that is not my bag to carry, not my pu'olo, and as soon as I have accepted that even as we have been soldered to one another through means of marriage certificate and twenty plus years, and more - as soon as I accept that there is really nothing that I can do for his physical state, I will then be able to accept that yes, there are people on the planet sharing space with us all who have no appreciation for life until it is far too late.
But again - that is not what I care to write about. In fact, I will not bother to rehash what is my life, what has become of my life over the last three years. It is too painful and there is just way too much to deal with. I, however, will tell you that at the onset of all the madness that has become my life, I have learned that I am far stronger than I thought I was, far more intelligent than I have been giving myself credit for, and the best part of that is you are also allowed to pat yourself on the back for the strides that you have made in these last tumultuous three years of life. We have all lost a lot - of money, of things and sadly, of people. And we have done so in a manner which is not befitting of any of us. We have gone from a nation of tough guys and bad asses to a nation almost of beggars and wussies, and I hate to throw it at you like this, but we caused it, and we caused by adapting to being something and someone who we are not. We were not all ever supposed to feed at the trough of greed, of being sneaky and of taking until there was nothing left to take, and we all did it in our own sneaky way, and now, whether we all want to believe it or not, we are all paying our Karmic debt, some of us more than others.
We are not these lazy, egotistical, arrogant idiots who are ignorant to the fact that indeed, what goes around comes around. We are not these pathetic people who have no hope, no dreams and no plans for the future at all. People have simply just given up and decided that since there are doomsday predictions for 2012, they might as well just jump on into the fire and die, so to speak, because we are all on the same ship where the band is playing and just accept that we have to go down with the ship.
Well, folks, I say no...in fact I say HELL no! We do not have to go down with the ship. Don't y'all realize that the band for this particular ship is not even anything CLOSE to violins and is instead METALLICA and those guys AIN'T goin' down like this - no way.
And no, my friends, neither shall we!
Are you a weak ass?
Only a weak ass will stand up and say shit about what he or she does not like, but they will never, ever come to the table with a possible solution, ever. They will continue to make sure that we are all as miserable as they are, never becoming able to see through the crap that life has served them up and NEVER for one moment ever try to think of a way that even as it may hurt for a minute, will be just the thing we all needed. You see, we never know the impact of our actions until those actions have been made, and until we get up the balls enough to try to exact change, we will never, not now nor later either, know what the hell it is that we are capable of. We can try to be what we are not, but that just eventually pisses us off and we end up wondering why it is that things are not turning out the way we want them to.
Well, dumb ass, things won't ever be right until you learn to do things from the Self and instead of trying hard to buy your way out of a problem, try dealing with it instead and learn something from the work that you put into your own life. You might be happily surprised at the outcome.
Now, go thee out into the world, banging your head, screaming and yelling like a madman, because if that is who you really are, that is who we all really want to know. No one likes a phony, and no one likes being lied to.
So, go out there, into the great big world, and be yourself - lampshade, pink pants that light up, and blue lipstick, because baby - if that is who you are, that is who you will always be, no matter what.
And THAT is who we all really want to know!
I LOVE YOU ALL!
...Roxanne...
Most folks try hard to fit themselves into a place in life that they are not meant for. How sad a testament it is to the future of humanity when we cannot accept who we are.
Really sad
I will admit to having had bouts with who I really Am. I mean, how can all of us, at the same time, have the notion that somehow God screwed up?
We can't, or at least we shouldn't, because even those who are considered as being the best of humanity have had their own bouts with self doubt, of not knowing who they really are, and yep, they've even been publicly outed for it, Case in point? Ummmm....Tiger Woods? Ben Roethlisberger? Michael Vick?
All these guys, and more who are just as rich, just as famous, just as above the rules that the rest of us are not. Sure, they have money and fame and whatever else it is that compels us all to think that somehow, they simply are just above the rest of us, but really, they are not. They just are in a different income bracket is all, and Tiger Woods, as much as I love what the guy has done for the game of golf, is not above the rest of us when it comes to monumental screw ups of the worst kind !!
My point in this is that we can go about bragging to the rest of the world that we are this, or that we are that, or that we are working on becoming this or that, but the truth is that unless we have each decided that we are who we are because God has the ultimate plan laid out for us, we have no clue of who we are. You can be that person who is rebuilding their lives from scratch, and whatever it is that you do to get where it is that you think you have to be in life to be who you really are, NONE of that matters unless and until you decide here and now that who you are at the moment is good enough. You can chase money and beauty, and you can "have it all," but until you have decided that who you are and who you are just exactly as you are is good enough, not only for the rest of the world but also for yourself, you will inevitably just be setting yourself up for the same shit you have already been through, and that is no fun at all when you think about it.
A tiger cannot change his stripes, nor a Jaguar her spots
Someone else's life always seems like it is the ideal life, namely when it seems that life has puked all over your kegger. Your life is messy and hard while their life seems as though it is a cake walk in comparison. You want for what they have, but what you really seek is the peace that it seems comes to them effortlessly, and if it is that you seek peace but continually find tumult, then, my friend, what is happening is that God is trying hard to show you your own way, but you keep on bucking against it, and well, God is kind of a Big Guy, and you can buck all you want to. The fact remains that you will have to deal with the fact that you are not your neighbor, are not that person who seems to have it all, and in fact, you may very well be living the life that the person of whom you are envious wants to live.
To them your life might seem like a dream come true. No bills that they have, no boss that seems to endlessly harangue you, nothing in your life that is stressing you out to no end. This is the reality of these sorts of things. The problem is not in the idea that we want for the things that others have, but that we are not grateful for what we already have, no matter how big or small that may seem to any one of us. I will admit right now to pining for something more than only what I have at the moment, but the truth is that I have what I need, and eventually that which I pine for, which I manifest and intend to have, no matter what or who that is, is already Being - I just have things that must be worked through first before they enter my own life.
This is the tricky part of manifesting - accepting our circumstances, and that includes accepting who we are and learning to love who we are.
We are who we are for a reason
There are a whole lot of reasons as to why it is that some folks have to deal with what they have to deal with, and right now that one person in my life is my old man. He is hard headed, egotistical and arrogant. On the other side of all those things that seem to be the determinant in success in business versus success in life is that he is ill - very ill, probably doesn't have too much time left, and no matter how many times he tries to bargain with God, he is forgetting that he has to first accept what he has made of his life thus far. But that is not my bag to carry, not my pu'olo, and as soon as I have accepted that even as we have been soldered to one another through means of marriage certificate and twenty plus years, and more - as soon as I accept that there is really nothing that I can do for his physical state, I will then be able to accept that yes, there are people on the planet sharing space with us all who have no appreciation for life until it is far too late.
But again - that is not what I care to write about. In fact, I will not bother to rehash what is my life, what has become of my life over the last three years. It is too painful and there is just way too much to deal with. I, however, will tell you that at the onset of all the madness that has become my life, I have learned that I am far stronger than I thought I was, far more intelligent than I have been giving myself credit for, and the best part of that is you are also allowed to pat yourself on the back for the strides that you have made in these last tumultuous three years of life. We have all lost a lot - of money, of things and sadly, of people. And we have done so in a manner which is not befitting of any of us. We have gone from a nation of tough guys and bad asses to a nation almost of beggars and wussies, and I hate to throw it at you like this, but we caused it, and we caused by adapting to being something and someone who we are not. We were not all ever supposed to feed at the trough of greed, of being sneaky and of taking until there was nothing left to take, and we all did it in our own sneaky way, and now, whether we all want to believe it or not, we are all paying our Karmic debt, some of us more than others.
We are not these lazy, egotistical, arrogant idiots who are ignorant to the fact that indeed, what goes around comes around. We are not these pathetic people who have no hope, no dreams and no plans for the future at all. People have simply just given up and decided that since there are doomsday predictions for 2012, they might as well just jump on into the fire and die, so to speak, because we are all on the same ship where the band is playing and just accept that we have to go down with the ship.
Well, folks, I say no...in fact I say HELL no! We do not have to go down with the ship. Don't y'all realize that the band for this particular ship is not even anything CLOSE to violins and is instead METALLICA and those guys AIN'T goin' down like this - no way.
And no, my friends, neither shall we!
Are you a weak ass?
Only a weak ass will stand up and say shit about what he or she does not like, but they will never, ever come to the table with a possible solution, ever. They will continue to make sure that we are all as miserable as they are, never becoming able to see through the crap that life has served them up and NEVER for one moment ever try to think of a way that even as it may hurt for a minute, will be just the thing we all needed. You see, we never know the impact of our actions until those actions have been made, and until we get up the balls enough to try to exact change, we will never, not now nor later either, know what the hell it is that we are capable of. We can try to be what we are not, but that just eventually pisses us off and we end up wondering why it is that things are not turning out the way we want them to.
Well, dumb ass, things won't ever be right until you learn to do things from the Self and instead of trying hard to buy your way out of a problem, try dealing with it instead and learn something from the work that you put into your own life. You might be happily surprised at the outcome.
Now, go thee out into the world, banging your head, screaming and yelling like a madman, because if that is who you really are, that is who we all really want to know. No one likes a phony, and no one likes being lied to.
So, go out there, into the great big world, and be yourself - lampshade, pink pants that light up, and blue lipstick, because baby - if that is who you are, that is who you will always be, no matter what.
And THAT is who we all really want to know!
I LOVE YOU ALL!
...Roxanne...
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Are you SURE that is what Jesus would do?
I have a bone to pick with the religious haters of the world
Yes, in fact I AM talking to all of you who believe that the thing you believe as your truth is the only ballgame in town.
You have no right to sit there, smugly, staring at people who believe in a different way, but certainly who are not communing with a different God. It is all the SAME Spirit - all of it, and no matter what it is that you say to any one of those of us who refuse to be bound by the restrictions and the confines of organized religion, one thing remains the truth - You are not taking that big ol' book of yours that you like to cruise the face of the earth with, thumpin' along as though because you have your own beliefs in writing, so to speak, you somehow have become the bastion of truth and light.
Good gravy, folks...apparently you did not pay attention to what it was that you were reading, to what it was that your pentecostal preacher man was telling you when he was telling you what it was that he needed to tell you.
The Ten Commandments are also applicable to you, stupid
There are a lot of people who want to thump anyone over the head with that book they use against everyone who is not like they are, and when I say use that book, yes, I do mean as a weapon and a weapon on so many levels that I can't begin to count them all.
Recognize right now that I am not saying that every single person who believes in their religion and what said religion holds for them is somehow evil, because it isn't - I am a BIG believer in people having any kind of belief in something - ANYTHING, just as long as they believe. Belief is a touchy subject, just like politics, and to step on people over something that is as personal and paradoxically, trivial, as one's own beliefs in the context where said beliefs are "versus" another's should not now nor ever be compared to anyone else's.
I was raised on the Ten Commandments, on the Golden Rule, and the fact that above all, the greatest of ALL is Love. How, then, is it possible that since we know that these are the facets of that one book that makes that one book so Universal in its message, we can also skew that message and twist it so that it excuses us for being violent, judgmental, and punitive, all in the name of God? I mean really, think about it and ask yourself if this is the way that the God you pray to and believe in would want you to be to others.
When the good book tells us that we "shall have no other gods before me," I find it very hard to believe that there are people on the planet who still, to this day, believe that there is any other God to be before the one and only Almighty. JUST because people call the One to Whom they direct their heart's desires and their heart's brokenness something OTHER than "God Almighty," it does not - NOT mean that said person is praying to Any other God. There is only One Spirit, One Love, and once it is that we ALL can manage to get past the ego's big gimundo tug of war with the rest of the people on the planet, we will literally know what it means to be of One Heart and of One Mind. And please, where it says that God is a jealous God, don't you think that is sort of an old school way of being told, albeit through another human being's words and writings, that we need to pick a God, or a name for God, and follow that truth that we believe as our own, without imposing that truth on someone else, because that someone else probably has their own version of the same commandment that is not in all this rigid bookish language?
No? Well, that's awful for you, because that, according to my own interpretation of these Ten Rules for Living, is what these commandments are all about - the ability to live and to let others live without the prying eyes or assumptions of the rest of the world.
I mean, basically, these things are just the same damned things that your mama told you. Your mama (or your auntie or your nana...whichever person it was who raised you, duh) told you that you have to believe in something outside of your self, that you have to believe what it is that you are out 'in the wilderness' telling others about (in other words, you have to believe your own bullshit if you expect others to take you seriously about it), you have to pick a God, any God, and stick to that one God and live by the sword which you wield.
You have to not damn the name of the God to Whom you pray, because that takes away from that God's power in your life. You have to realize that the sins you commit will have the trickle down effect and will most assuredly be felt for generations afterwards (Karma IS indeed a bitch, namely when you use God as your sword to hurt others without also knowing that which you sow, so also shall you reap), and that yes, if you should so choose to go the other way and show Love in the name of your personal God, so, too, shall you reap the harvest of Divinity. God doesn't want us to become a bunch of burn outs, so he is telling us all that we need to take a day off so that we can rest because a life constantly switched to "go!" is a life that will be lived always half asleep. We are expected to respect our parents, are expected not to kill other people, not to cheat on our spouses, to be good to our friends and our siblings and complete strangers, not to steal, not to lie or to gossip, and we are expected not to hate on people and be jealous.
These things are not rocket science, and they are also not the weapons of mass intrusion that they so seem to have been for many generations.
What would Jesus do, and are you SURE that this is what he would do?
You know, we hear a whole lot about Christ Consciousness, but there are a lot of people on the planet who have NO CLUE about what that means, and I know this because I have asked people what they think it is, and the answers I get are ridiculous. I mean, ok, if you do not know better then no one can fault you for not knowing, but ignorance of things is not a permanent thing - we were created by God to be able to seek out those things and those bits and pieces of information which will enlighten us to the truth of not only our own selves, but also that of the Spirit.
You would be amazed at all the dirty looks, all the hateful and biting words - both in writing and verbally, all the crap that I hear and have heard about the way that I define my own beliefs, and my own foolishness, at least back then, prompted me to explain myself to people who are horribly unenlightened about what it truly means to live fully and spiritually. There are a lot of folks who look down on people like me, the refugees of a staunchly, rigidly religious upbringing, because I know that I ain't the only first-born of a Preacher who still follows God but follows God on a Path that was meant for me and not for all of mankind.
I get judged, harangued, threatened and told that I am going to burn in hell, all because I refuse to give a label to my own Spiritual beliefs. I am not sure what to call them other than blessed by that same God Who I keep on being told hates me because I do not give my beliefs a name that the rest of the world can understand. Well, that's just too damned bad. Just like finding work right now is a bitch, it, too, is a bitch trying to believe in one's own way because too many people fear that which is not able to fit into a category that makes people feel comfy-cozy and safely within the confines of what is acceptable to the rest of society.
Now, I ask you, seriously, what would Jesus do? What would Jesus say to you if He were standing right there in your face asking you why it is that you can only see what you want to see and not what it is that is truly there. It is not that anyone should believe only one way, but that people should believe in anything at all. We cannot judge other people if we are not willing to be seen the way that we see others, and if how you see people like me is through the lens of judgment, well, then I have to tell you that THAT is SO NOT what Jesus would DO- EVER! Please, kindly get over yourself before you trip on that thing that is sticking out of your ass called the telephone pole you missed whilst pointing at the splinter in mine. Yeesh!
Might I remind you...
It might be noteworthy to you haters of the religious world to not forget that there was one Guy in the Bible Who was scorned, Who was told that He would be scorned, would be thought of as a quack, would be reviled because He chose to stand up for Who He was and what it was that He was here to do. And what He was here to do was NOT conform. Jesus was talked shit about, told He was a heretic, was accused of performing magick, was hated for the way that He believed, was mocked as the Son of God. And for the life of me I cannot figure out what it is that makes these crazy and irrational people truly believe that what their God wants them to do is to go out into the wilderness of the world at large and tell people that they are going to burn in hell, that God hates them, that they are not the chosen ones, that there is no place in Heaven for people who do not name their Spiritual beliefs. I do not get how it is that people who believe that their way is the best somehow also feel that their best way needs to be defended.
If what you believe is so great, and if what you believe is totally the only and truest Truth, then why is it that when someone else comes and tells you that they do not believe your way that you may automatically go into total snit mode because someone on the planet doesn't believe the same way that you do? Why is it that if it is that the truth you call your own is the only truth that you feel a need to defend it? Are you that worried about what other people think of your beliefs? Thousands of people around the world every single day die for their beliefs, and somehow I have a feeling that people who defend their beliefs like they do here in the states are not defending the belief they say they love so much, but more so, their egos. If it needs to be defended, namely against strangers, how much do you really believe what you are saying you believe in? How can it be as great as you say it is if you have to constantly defend what it is that you keep telling the rest of the world is the greatest?
The greatest never needs an explanation, never needs defending, because its own greatness will speak volumes more than anyone with a waning ego and a shaky belief in what they follow as their own God and their own Truth. If you are following a belief because that is what you grew up with, that's all good, but if you believe it and have always, there is no need for you to defend it, no need for you to explain things to people like me who probably know intimately the details of what it is that can be called the contents of your heart, in fact, so much so that perhaps we may know them better even than your own Clergy. How sad is that? You can preach it, but you can't quote it unless it is to do the Biblical dirty dozens with other people (You know, "yo' mama so fat that Jonah was not eaten by the whale but was hiding there because he was afraid yo' mama would eat him"...the dirty dozens...always a fun learning experience)
Go ahead, drive the nail in my hand
You can say anything you want to, but it won't make me angry, won't make me fearful, won't do all those things that you think words and threats of a hereafter that is dark and cold even as it is hosted in the lake of fire. You can say whatever it is that you feel is needed so that you feel better, but in the end the only thing that is going to happen is that you will have hurt someone and pissed them off enough so that they would not want to bother with you or your kind again, and frankly, it is enough that there are plenty of folks who are this judgmental that they would take out their own misunderstandings about their own beliefs on complete strangers.
Let me tell you something - I have been referred to as a dirty hippie, a radical, a witch, a sorceress, an atheist, a nonbeliever, and these are the nicer words that have been used to define me - the rest are too dirty for even me to write about, at least right now, that is. I have been crucified, over and over again, by well meaning individuals who, at the onset of their rants with me about religion (by the way- you should really NOT come to a battle of wit unarmed...seriously), tell me that they "don't want to hurt" me, which tells me right away that they are going to say something hurtful. I am not hurt by the idea that you do not believe the same way that I do, but I am bothered endlessly by the way that, once you have figured out that I am not going to change my beliefs for yours, you get very disrespectful, telling me that no matter how good a person I am in this life I will NEVER meet God because I am going straight to hell.
Here's some news for ya, genius - I don't have to wait to meet God, because I meet God every single day of my life. I wake up in the morning and see that the sun is there, and even if it is raining I know that the sun is there. All day long I hear the birds, see the flowers, watch the clouds roll on by, and I know that God is there, that I have met God and that I have known God for many, many lifetimes (I said 'lifetimes'...I said it- NOW DEAL WITH IT!). I know that God is real because I hear it in the voices of my children, see it in the life that abounds in my dog, know it when I realize how much bigger I am than the tiniest bugs on the tiniest flowers, and knowing that there are things which I am dwarfed by, just as I dwarf the bugs.
Who the hell do you think you are, coming up in my face - in anyone's face - telling us that what and how we believe is wrong according to you and that smirking bad boy of the cloth up front there who can't seem to keep his eyes off of the cleavage that sits up in the front row, right next to his wife and his girlfriend? Why is it odd to you that when I stand up in front of a crowd and deliver what may be one of the finest presentations of the facets of Love, you are the only one whose face is in a scowl whilst the rest of the congregation is clapping and making it known that what I speak of I speak passionately of because what I am passionate about is what I believe as my very own personal Truth? Why is it so hard for you to simply respect that I may not call myself by any label, but that I have a deep, personal. lifetime long Knowing of God, of Divine Light and of Unconditional Love? Who do you think you are to question what it is that I know versus what it is that you think you know?
Yeesh !!
That there book you like to throw at people...
You know, the one that you like to thump around the crust of the earth with, using it as your shield from people who would tell you that what is right for you might not be right for everyone? Yeah, well, why don't you take some time and read the part where it says "judge not lest ye first be judged," and realize that "that which you sow, so shall you reap," and that "the sins of the father will be visited upon the son" (meaning that you will pay your Karmic debt somehow - no, really, you will...sins of the person who you were -the father - being paid for by the person who was birthed by that old ideal - the son....duh...).
Why don't you stop giving people like me grief, and why don't you get into that book and read it FOR REAL??
Learn something, dammit...
I LOVE YOU ALL!!
Yes, in fact I AM talking to all of you who believe that the thing you believe as your truth is the only ballgame in town.
You have no right to sit there, smugly, staring at people who believe in a different way, but certainly who are not communing with a different God. It is all the SAME Spirit - all of it, and no matter what it is that you say to any one of those of us who refuse to be bound by the restrictions and the confines of organized religion, one thing remains the truth - You are not taking that big ol' book of yours that you like to cruise the face of the earth with, thumpin' along as though because you have your own beliefs in writing, so to speak, you somehow have become the bastion of truth and light.
Good gravy, folks...apparently you did not pay attention to what it was that you were reading, to what it was that your pentecostal preacher man was telling you when he was telling you what it was that he needed to tell you.
The Ten Commandments are also applicable to you, stupid
There are a lot of people who want to thump anyone over the head with that book they use against everyone who is not like they are, and when I say use that book, yes, I do mean as a weapon and a weapon on so many levels that I can't begin to count them all.
Recognize right now that I am not saying that every single person who believes in their religion and what said religion holds for them is somehow evil, because it isn't - I am a BIG believer in people having any kind of belief in something - ANYTHING, just as long as they believe. Belief is a touchy subject, just like politics, and to step on people over something that is as personal and paradoxically, trivial, as one's own beliefs in the context where said beliefs are "versus" another's should not now nor ever be compared to anyone else's.
I was raised on the Ten Commandments, on the Golden Rule, and the fact that above all, the greatest of ALL is Love. How, then, is it possible that since we know that these are the facets of that one book that makes that one book so Universal in its message, we can also skew that message and twist it so that it excuses us for being violent, judgmental, and punitive, all in the name of God? I mean really, think about it and ask yourself if this is the way that the God you pray to and believe in would want you to be to others.
When the good book tells us that we "shall have no other gods before me," I find it very hard to believe that there are people on the planet who still, to this day, believe that there is any other God to be before the one and only Almighty. JUST because people call the One to Whom they direct their heart's desires and their heart's brokenness something OTHER than "God Almighty," it does not - NOT mean that said person is praying to Any other God. There is only One Spirit, One Love, and once it is that we ALL can manage to get past the ego's big gimundo tug of war with the rest of the people on the planet, we will literally know what it means to be of One Heart and of One Mind. And please, where it says that God is a jealous God, don't you think that is sort of an old school way of being told, albeit through another human being's words and writings, that we need to pick a God, or a name for God, and follow that truth that we believe as our own, without imposing that truth on someone else, because that someone else probably has their own version of the same commandment that is not in all this rigid bookish language?
No? Well, that's awful for you, because that, according to my own interpretation of these Ten Rules for Living, is what these commandments are all about - the ability to live and to let others live without the prying eyes or assumptions of the rest of the world.
I mean, basically, these things are just the same damned things that your mama told you. Your mama (or your auntie or your nana...whichever person it was who raised you, duh) told you that you have to believe in something outside of your self, that you have to believe what it is that you are out 'in the wilderness' telling others about (in other words, you have to believe your own bullshit if you expect others to take you seriously about it), you have to pick a God, any God, and stick to that one God and live by the sword which you wield.
You have to not damn the name of the God to Whom you pray, because that takes away from that God's power in your life. You have to realize that the sins you commit will have the trickle down effect and will most assuredly be felt for generations afterwards (Karma IS indeed a bitch, namely when you use God as your sword to hurt others without also knowing that which you sow, so also shall you reap), and that yes, if you should so choose to go the other way and show Love in the name of your personal God, so, too, shall you reap the harvest of Divinity. God doesn't want us to become a bunch of burn outs, so he is telling us all that we need to take a day off so that we can rest because a life constantly switched to "go!" is a life that will be lived always half asleep. We are expected to respect our parents, are expected not to kill other people, not to cheat on our spouses, to be good to our friends and our siblings and complete strangers, not to steal, not to lie or to gossip, and we are expected not to hate on people and be jealous.
These things are not rocket science, and they are also not the weapons of mass intrusion that they so seem to have been for many generations.
What would Jesus do, and are you SURE that this is what he would do?
You know, we hear a whole lot about Christ Consciousness, but there are a lot of people on the planet who have NO CLUE about what that means, and I know this because I have asked people what they think it is, and the answers I get are ridiculous. I mean, ok, if you do not know better then no one can fault you for not knowing, but ignorance of things is not a permanent thing - we were created by God to be able to seek out those things and those bits and pieces of information which will enlighten us to the truth of not only our own selves, but also that of the Spirit.
You would be amazed at all the dirty looks, all the hateful and biting words - both in writing and verbally, all the crap that I hear and have heard about the way that I define my own beliefs, and my own foolishness, at least back then, prompted me to explain myself to people who are horribly unenlightened about what it truly means to live fully and spiritually. There are a lot of folks who look down on people like me, the refugees of a staunchly, rigidly religious upbringing, because I know that I ain't the only first-born of a Preacher who still follows God but follows God on a Path that was meant for me and not for all of mankind.
I get judged, harangued, threatened and told that I am going to burn in hell, all because I refuse to give a label to my own Spiritual beliefs. I am not sure what to call them other than blessed by that same God Who I keep on being told hates me because I do not give my beliefs a name that the rest of the world can understand. Well, that's just too damned bad. Just like finding work right now is a bitch, it, too, is a bitch trying to believe in one's own way because too many people fear that which is not able to fit into a category that makes people feel comfy-cozy and safely within the confines of what is acceptable to the rest of society.
Now, I ask you, seriously, what would Jesus do? What would Jesus say to you if He were standing right there in your face asking you why it is that you can only see what you want to see and not what it is that is truly there. It is not that anyone should believe only one way, but that people should believe in anything at all. We cannot judge other people if we are not willing to be seen the way that we see others, and if how you see people like me is through the lens of judgment, well, then I have to tell you that THAT is SO NOT what Jesus would DO- EVER! Please, kindly get over yourself before you trip on that thing that is sticking out of your ass called the telephone pole you missed whilst pointing at the splinter in mine. Yeesh!
Might I remind you...
It might be noteworthy to you haters of the religious world to not forget that there was one Guy in the Bible Who was scorned, Who was told that He would be scorned, would be thought of as a quack, would be reviled because He chose to stand up for Who He was and what it was that He was here to do. And what He was here to do was NOT conform. Jesus was talked shit about, told He was a heretic, was accused of performing magick, was hated for the way that He believed, was mocked as the Son of God. And for the life of me I cannot figure out what it is that makes these crazy and irrational people truly believe that what their God wants them to do is to go out into the wilderness of the world at large and tell people that they are going to burn in hell, that God hates them, that they are not the chosen ones, that there is no place in Heaven for people who do not name their Spiritual beliefs. I do not get how it is that people who believe that their way is the best somehow also feel that their best way needs to be defended.
If what you believe is so great, and if what you believe is totally the only and truest Truth, then why is it that when someone else comes and tells you that they do not believe your way that you may automatically go into total snit mode because someone on the planet doesn't believe the same way that you do? Why is it that if it is that the truth you call your own is the only truth that you feel a need to defend it? Are you that worried about what other people think of your beliefs? Thousands of people around the world every single day die for their beliefs, and somehow I have a feeling that people who defend their beliefs like they do here in the states are not defending the belief they say they love so much, but more so, their egos. If it needs to be defended, namely against strangers, how much do you really believe what you are saying you believe in? How can it be as great as you say it is if you have to constantly defend what it is that you keep telling the rest of the world is the greatest?
The greatest never needs an explanation, never needs defending, because its own greatness will speak volumes more than anyone with a waning ego and a shaky belief in what they follow as their own God and their own Truth. If you are following a belief because that is what you grew up with, that's all good, but if you believe it and have always, there is no need for you to defend it, no need for you to explain things to people like me who probably know intimately the details of what it is that can be called the contents of your heart, in fact, so much so that perhaps we may know them better even than your own Clergy. How sad is that? You can preach it, but you can't quote it unless it is to do the Biblical dirty dozens with other people (You know, "yo' mama so fat that Jonah was not eaten by the whale but was hiding there because he was afraid yo' mama would eat him"...the dirty dozens...always a fun learning experience)
Go ahead, drive the nail in my hand
You can say anything you want to, but it won't make me angry, won't make me fearful, won't do all those things that you think words and threats of a hereafter that is dark and cold even as it is hosted in the lake of fire. You can say whatever it is that you feel is needed so that you feel better, but in the end the only thing that is going to happen is that you will have hurt someone and pissed them off enough so that they would not want to bother with you or your kind again, and frankly, it is enough that there are plenty of folks who are this judgmental that they would take out their own misunderstandings about their own beliefs on complete strangers.
Let me tell you something - I have been referred to as a dirty hippie, a radical, a witch, a sorceress, an atheist, a nonbeliever, and these are the nicer words that have been used to define me - the rest are too dirty for even me to write about, at least right now, that is. I have been crucified, over and over again, by well meaning individuals who, at the onset of their rants with me about religion (by the way- you should really NOT come to a battle of wit unarmed...seriously), tell me that they "don't want to hurt" me, which tells me right away that they are going to say something hurtful. I am not hurt by the idea that you do not believe the same way that I do, but I am bothered endlessly by the way that, once you have figured out that I am not going to change my beliefs for yours, you get very disrespectful, telling me that no matter how good a person I am in this life I will NEVER meet God because I am going straight to hell.
Here's some news for ya, genius - I don't have to wait to meet God, because I meet God every single day of my life. I wake up in the morning and see that the sun is there, and even if it is raining I know that the sun is there. All day long I hear the birds, see the flowers, watch the clouds roll on by, and I know that God is there, that I have met God and that I have known God for many, many lifetimes (I said 'lifetimes'...I said it- NOW DEAL WITH IT!). I know that God is real because I hear it in the voices of my children, see it in the life that abounds in my dog, know it when I realize how much bigger I am than the tiniest bugs on the tiniest flowers, and knowing that there are things which I am dwarfed by, just as I dwarf the bugs.
Who the hell do you think you are, coming up in my face - in anyone's face - telling us that what and how we believe is wrong according to you and that smirking bad boy of the cloth up front there who can't seem to keep his eyes off of the cleavage that sits up in the front row, right next to his wife and his girlfriend? Why is it odd to you that when I stand up in front of a crowd and deliver what may be one of the finest presentations of the facets of Love, you are the only one whose face is in a scowl whilst the rest of the congregation is clapping and making it known that what I speak of I speak passionately of because what I am passionate about is what I believe as my very own personal Truth? Why is it so hard for you to simply respect that I may not call myself by any label, but that I have a deep, personal. lifetime long Knowing of God, of Divine Light and of Unconditional Love? Who do you think you are to question what it is that I know versus what it is that you think you know?
Yeesh !!
That there book you like to throw at people...
You know, the one that you like to thump around the crust of the earth with, using it as your shield from people who would tell you that what is right for you might not be right for everyone? Yeah, well, why don't you take some time and read the part where it says "judge not lest ye first be judged," and realize that "that which you sow, so shall you reap," and that "the sins of the father will be visited upon the son" (meaning that you will pay your Karmic debt somehow - no, really, you will...sins of the person who you were -the father - being paid for by the person who was birthed by that old ideal - the son....duh...).
Why don't you stop giving people like me grief, and why don't you get into that book and read it FOR REAL??
Learn something, dammit...
I LOVE YOU ALL!!
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
It is not now nor has it ever been your responsibility...
...and vice- versa
It is no one else's responsibility to carry the weight of the burden of someone else's issues. If they have issues, it is not for you to deal with, and vice-versa.
You have enough crap to deal with without adding someone else's to your own pile
Peoples' lives tend to, once or twice in a lifetime, turn into large and tightly coiled piles of crap littered on the living room floor of life. It is impossible to escape one's own Karma. We create the lives we live, and because we humans are great at forgetting this we also forget how much it sucks being expected to 'get it' when someone else's burdensome issues that have nothing to do with you are suddenly very much a part of your life. (It also sucks when we inadvertently or purposely do this to someone else.)
Yes, it is wonderful to know that we are wanted, that our company is enjoyed, that what we think affects other people in a positive way, but just as all this really good feeling stuff can happen, so, too, can it all backfire. We can end up allowing ourselves to shoulder a burden which was not our own but certainly feels as though it is once we have decided that we will 'love' another person. I have talked much about Love in past writings, and the same thing that held true then holds true now - Love does not bind us to something that makes our brain itch and our innards feel like they will drop right out the ass end of us. There is nothing burdensome about Love. Love in all of its forms, whether it is familial, romantic, brotherly, Agape is NEVER a feeling that will cause us to feel like we are obligated to explain ourselves to someone else. We are not obligated to make sure that what we see as the truth of Love measuring up to what another person's standards are, ever, and if it is that we find ourselves in a situation which brings back to us those same feelings of resentment, of anger, of being stuck, then we are not paying attention and it is time to proverbially put the pipe down and enjoy the high instead of trying to get more and more red and glassy eyed with what we are told is Love, but is, in actuality, just another form of darkness that was never ours to begin with.
One is green and beautiful, while the other is off-white and addictive, and like Love you can really like them both but can only be addicted to one of them. (Of course, I only know of the One Love and not the other.) Yet that is taking things out of context in what is probably the worst way possible to describe it, but I gotta be me...so deal with it. Love and Control are cut from the same cloth, and one is addictive while the other is meant only to grow and be shared with those within our inner circle. We can pine for it, but we would not kill or rob for it. The other we become fixated on it as though our very last breath depends on if whether or not we breathe tomorrow. Watching someone who is addicted is hard enough, but watching someone who is addicted can be hell if they continue to try to convince us that even as the two are out of that same area of life this means that the two are the same thing, when in fact, no, they are so, so NOT !!
We cannot fix someone else's insecurities
Every mother knows how heartbreaking it is to hear her child crying no matter why they cry. Just as we are all made to hurt from time to time, we must also allow others to hurt, because they are in the middle of something they need to learn, and obviously if what it is that they are going through keeps on coming back to them, again and again, it means that they have yet to learn what it is that they are to learn. This was something that I had to deal with, over and over again, that I still deal with, and unless I learn what I am supposed to, unless any one of us learns what we are supposed to, we will, time and time again, continue to go through what it is that we go through until we learn the lesson at hand.
There are a million and one ways each day that we are given clues, and sometimes we are shown blatantly through the words and the experiences of someone else, as to the thing that we are just not learning, and one of those things that we HAVE TO learn is that we cannot save anyone else, and that sometimes, we cannot even save ourselves from the monsters that come back to our lives again and again. We want so badly to make sure that no one in our inner circle hurts that we are willing to hurt ourselves on their behalf.
You gotta ask yourself if they would be willing to do the same for you. I mean, yeah, I can think of a few who would for me, but the rest of them ?
Probably not.
But that doesn't hurt me, not even a little bit, because I respect that other people need to be able to live their lives without the drama that someone else can and will bring to it. Needy people are not like roaches. It's worse than that! They are like bed bugs, hiding in the nooks and crannies of our heart and soul, coming out into the darkness and doing what they will when we are not able to see what is at hand with the light of Love instead of the darkness brought with the intention of making someone else feel like something is owed. The only thing that is owed is respect, and even that is only until that familiar feeling that brought yet one more person to us who is needy enough to make us want to crawl out of our skin and jump in their face over something that was never ours to begin with.
Claim your own, but let everyone else carry theirs
My mother is fond of saying that when shit hits the fan, "we all have our own pu'olo to carry," meaning that when things get rough, we have to shoulder our own burden, carry our own bag, so to speak, and we cannot expect anyone else to carry it for us.
A good example of this carrying of the bag by others is when someone who is very sick tells his story to as many people are willing to listen. I know someone like this, and a lot of you reading this now know who it is that I am talking about. No matter how much we want someone else to relate to our pain, unless they have been in the same predicament, there is no way that another person can relate, and if you see yourself doing this and can recall that you have done this then you need to stop being creepy and needy and just deal with the cards that you have been dealt. Yes, that was harsh, but when it comes to learning your own lessons, I am not one to mince words. I am guilty of the sin of throwing my own pity party and am guilty of wanting others to share my burden with me. It is wrong, and at the time I did it I was looking for understanding but what I got instead was pity.
None of us needs to be pitied, because we are not pitiful beings. We are made in the light of Divine Love. We are created in the image of the Almighty Creator and being so means that we also have to live up to that Light, that Love, without the idea that we need someone else to help us carry our burdens. Yes, it is ok to vent, to spill it, to let it all out, but once it is vented, outed, let loose, then it is time to begin to heal, and beginning to heal means that we are also willing and going to begin healing instead of continuing the madness that is wanting pity when what we need is not pity but instead a swift kick in the ass.
I say swift kick in the ass because making others feel sorry for us only puts us in a place where the only thing anyone else can do for us is pity us, because we are intending that to be, and well, you know, when we intend, we get what we want and what we don't want.
Let your own shoulders sag for a bit, ok?
I have never been a big fan of hurting. It is the reason that I used to love to drink and the reason that I used to love to hit things with my fists, and those things that I would hit did include other people and other peoples' things. It took me a while to understand that people do not like being hurt and that people do not want me to hurt but that they would no longer care that I hurt if I continued to make them hurt and did nothing about my own hurting.
This was a hard lesson to learn, and one that came at a gigantic price, because once it is that you have pissed enough people off, you begin to start losing your own things, and when you lose your own things, you also begin to feel your soul slip right out of your Self and then one day ...
...you begin again...but...
...begin to what? Rebuild? Not quite, because just as old casinos on the Vegas strip need to come down and stop being an eyesore, so, too, do our old and outdated ways of thinking and being need to be demolished so that newer ways of being can come into our lives and teach us how to Love again, how to be at peace with whatever comes our way and mostly, to have a measure of empathy so that we try hard not to give others the burdens of our own lives. If we can only bother to make sure that other people only know that we hurt, that we are having difficulties, that we are feeling sorry for our sorry ass selves, then that is all we will EVER get out of life - the idea that we need other people to pity us, to feel sorry for us, ultimately manipulating them into feeling like they have to feel that way for us.
Pity is not Love - it is pity!! Pity rhymes with....no, not smitty...ok, yes it rhymes....yeesh !! LOL
Pitied Vs. Empowered
I grew up in a family where, on one side, women are revered, and on the other side, had to fight like hell with a cantankerous old man for a grandfather who, in the end, we all knew we loved and knew loved us. He used to tell me that he felt sorry for my father because my dad didn't "get it right," when I was born, meaning that my dad screwed up by not having a son first. The old fart used to make me and my girl cousins cry by saying hurtful things to us, by laughing at our tears and scorning our heartaches that he was the cause of. I swore that one day I would make him pay, and I did, but it is not something that I am too proud of and do not care to rehash. I regret few things that I have done, and yes, to my own knowledge the old fart deserved my vitriol, but it was not my rancor that he deserved, but my pity.
For the bulk of my life I feared this man who was my grandfather, and I am positive now that it was not a fear of what he would say or do or even of who he was, but more that I feared his words might be true. When I got older and saw him lying there on his deathbed, it was a mixture of relief and sadness, but the sadness was for my grandmother whose love for that cantankerous old prick was true and real. The fear, I learned, was not for anything more than that he might be right! I might have been useless, I might have been only made for the enjoyment of a man whose only goal in life was to own me, and I might have been any number of things he thought, but the thing is that I learned then what I know for sure now - I was meant as a blessing, not a burden, and that it is not my obligation and never was my obligation to live to be that thing my grandfather assumed, not only of me, but of women in general.
I learned that humans are a sorry lot and being in a sorry position is not a bad thing, no matter what, and that it is only thought of as bad because when bad things happen, well, life sucks !! Life sucks because we do not see the things that we are supposed to be seeing, only that it sucks, and we don't like it when life sucks, not at all.
The bitch of it all
OK ok ok...we know that we cannot expect others to do for us what we will not do for ourselves, and we know that anytime we are in the middle of a sucky life situation, there is no other way out of it but to learn from it. This is the bitch of it all - even if we have learned, we might be also part of and in the middle of a lesson of the person who we hurt, or hurt us, or who we are pitying, and there ain't a damned thing that we can do about it other than LEARN FROM IT !!
My good friends, Lana, Noreen, and my cousin Waipuna, and yep, my mama, all say the same thing, that we have to be willing to learn in order to grow, and if that means that what we have to learn SUCKS, then we have to learn that lesson. We learn that things suck until they don't. We learn that we are here to learn, to teach and to serve, and there is nothing more forgiving than knowing that to everything, even things that suck, there is a reason.
Ha ha!!! Yeah, that's life for ya...ain't that about a bitch? It's like salt in a stab wound...150 proof poured directly onto surgical wounds...but learn, we do, because if there is anything that will teach a person to not whine but to scream it out to the Universe at large, it is Jack Daniels poured directly into an open wound.(Long story of teenage drunkeness and an unfinished wall at a friend's house back in 1987...don't ask lol).
Think of things that suck as Spirit pouring JD into the open and gaping wounds of your soul and then pouring the remainder of the bottle down your throat. Guarantees are that you will not go back to the thing that caused you to bleed from the middle of the soul and that, too, you will learn to not like the taste of whisky to make you whine but in utter and joyful celebration of healing instead...
I LOVE YOU ALL!!!
...Roxanne...
It is no one else's responsibility to carry the weight of the burden of someone else's issues. If they have issues, it is not for you to deal with, and vice-versa.
You have enough crap to deal with without adding someone else's to your own pile
Peoples' lives tend to, once or twice in a lifetime, turn into large and tightly coiled piles of crap littered on the living room floor of life. It is impossible to escape one's own Karma. We create the lives we live, and because we humans are great at forgetting this we also forget how much it sucks being expected to 'get it' when someone else's burdensome issues that have nothing to do with you are suddenly very much a part of your life. (It also sucks when we inadvertently or purposely do this to someone else.)
Yes, it is wonderful to know that we are wanted, that our company is enjoyed, that what we think affects other people in a positive way, but just as all this really good feeling stuff can happen, so, too, can it all backfire. We can end up allowing ourselves to shoulder a burden which was not our own but certainly feels as though it is once we have decided that we will 'love' another person. I have talked much about Love in past writings, and the same thing that held true then holds true now - Love does not bind us to something that makes our brain itch and our innards feel like they will drop right out the ass end of us. There is nothing burdensome about Love. Love in all of its forms, whether it is familial, romantic, brotherly, Agape is NEVER a feeling that will cause us to feel like we are obligated to explain ourselves to someone else. We are not obligated to make sure that what we see as the truth of Love measuring up to what another person's standards are, ever, and if it is that we find ourselves in a situation which brings back to us those same feelings of resentment, of anger, of being stuck, then we are not paying attention and it is time to proverbially put the pipe down and enjoy the high instead of trying to get more and more red and glassy eyed with what we are told is Love, but is, in actuality, just another form of darkness that was never ours to begin with.
One is green and beautiful, while the other is off-white and addictive, and like Love you can really like them both but can only be addicted to one of them. (Of course, I only know of the One Love and not the other.) Yet that is taking things out of context in what is probably the worst way possible to describe it, but I gotta be me...so deal with it. Love and Control are cut from the same cloth, and one is addictive while the other is meant only to grow and be shared with those within our inner circle. We can pine for it, but we would not kill or rob for it. The other we become fixated on it as though our very last breath depends on if whether or not we breathe tomorrow. Watching someone who is addicted is hard enough, but watching someone who is addicted can be hell if they continue to try to convince us that even as the two are out of that same area of life this means that the two are the same thing, when in fact, no, they are so, so NOT !!
We cannot fix someone else's insecurities
Every mother knows how heartbreaking it is to hear her child crying no matter why they cry. Just as we are all made to hurt from time to time, we must also allow others to hurt, because they are in the middle of something they need to learn, and obviously if what it is that they are going through keeps on coming back to them, again and again, it means that they have yet to learn what it is that they are to learn. This was something that I had to deal with, over and over again, that I still deal with, and unless I learn what I am supposed to, unless any one of us learns what we are supposed to, we will, time and time again, continue to go through what it is that we go through until we learn the lesson at hand.
There are a million and one ways each day that we are given clues, and sometimes we are shown blatantly through the words and the experiences of someone else, as to the thing that we are just not learning, and one of those things that we HAVE TO learn is that we cannot save anyone else, and that sometimes, we cannot even save ourselves from the monsters that come back to our lives again and again. We want so badly to make sure that no one in our inner circle hurts that we are willing to hurt ourselves on their behalf.
You gotta ask yourself if they would be willing to do the same for you. I mean, yeah, I can think of a few who would for me, but the rest of them ?
Probably not.
But that doesn't hurt me, not even a little bit, because I respect that other people need to be able to live their lives without the drama that someone else can and will bring to it. Needy people are not like roaches. It's worse than that! They are like bed bugs, hiding in the nooks and crannies of our heart and soul, coming out into the darkness and doing what they will when we are not able to see what is at hand with the light of Love instead of the darkness brought with the intention of making someone else feel like something is owed. The only thing that is owed is respect, and even that is only until that familiar feeling that brought yet one more person to us who is needy enough to make us want to crawl out of our skin and jump in their face over something that was never ours to begin with.
Claim your own, but let everyone else carry theirs
My mother is fond of saying that when shit hits the fan, "we all have our own pu'olo to carry," meaning that when things get rough, we have to shoulder our own burden, carry our own bag, so to speak, and we cannot expect anyone else to carry it for us.
A good example of this carrying of the bag by others is when someone who is very sick tells his story to as many people are willing to listen. I know someone like this, and a lot of you reading this now know who it is that I am talking about. No matter how much we want someone else to relate to our pain, unless they have been in the same predicament, there is no way that another person can relate, and if you see yourself doing this and can recall that you have done this then you need to stop being creepy and needy and just deal with the cards that you have been dealt. Yes, that was harsh, but when it comes to learning your own lessons, I am not one to mince words. I am guilty of the sin of throwing my own pity party and am guilty of wanting others to share my burden with me. It is wrong, and at the time I did it I was looking for understanding but what I got instead was pity.
None of us needs to be pitied, because we are not pitiful beings. We are made in the light of Divine Love. We are created in the image of the Almighty Creator and being so means that we also have to live up to that Light, that Love, without the idea that we need someone else to help us carry our burdens. Yes, it is ok to vent, to spill it, to let it all out, but once it is vented, outed, let loose, then it is time to begin to heal, and beginning to heal means that we are also willing and going to begin healing instead of continuing the madness that is wanting pity when what we need is not pity but instead a swift kick in the ass.
I say swift kick in the ass because making others feel sorry for us only puts us in a place where the only thing anyone else can do for us is pity us, because we are intending that to be, and well, you know, when we intend, we get what we want and what we don't want.
Let your own shoulders sag for a bit, ok?
I have never been a big fan of hurting. It is the reason that I used to love to drink and the reason that I used to love to hit things with my fists, and those things that I would hit did include other people and other peoples' things. It took me a while to understand that people do not like being hurt and that people do not want me to hurt but that they would no longer care that I hurt if I continued to make them hurt and did nothing about my own hurting.
This was a hard lesson to learn, and one that came at a gigantic price, because once it is that you have pissed enough people off, you begin to start losing your own things, and when you lose your own things, you also begin to feel your soul slip right out of your Self and then one day ...
...you begin again...but...
...begin to what? Rebuild? Not quite, because just as old casinos on the Vegas strip need to come down and stop being an eyesore, so, too, do our old and outdated ways of thinking and being need to be demolished so that newer ways of being can come into our lives and teach us how to Love again, how to be at peace with whatever comes our way and mostly, to have a measure of empathy so that we try hard not to give others the burdens of our own lives. If we can only bother to make sure that other people only know that we hurt, that we are having difficulties, that we are feeling sorry for our sorry ass selves, then that is all we will EVER get out of life - the idea that we need other people to pity us, to feel sorry for us, ultimately manipulating them into feeling like they have to feel that way for us.
Pity is not Love - it is pity!! Pity rhymes with....no, not smitty...ok, yes it rhymes....yeesh !! LOL
Pitied Vs. Empowered
I grew up in a family where, on one side, women are revered, and on the other side, had to fight like hell with a cantankerous old man for a grandfather who, in the end, we all knew we loved and knew loved us. He used to tell me that he felt sorry for my father because my dad didn't "get it right," when I was born, meaning that my dad screwed up by not having a son first. The old fart used to make me and my girl cousins cry by saying hurtful things to us, by laughing at our tears and scorning our heartaches that he was the cause of. I swore that one day I would make him pay, and I did, but it is not something that I am too proud of and do not care to rehash. I regret few things that I have done, and yes, to my own knowledge the old fart deserved my vitriol, but it was not my rancor that he deserved, but my pity.
For the bulk of my life I feared this man who was my grandfather, and I am positive now that it was not a fear of what he would say or do or even of who he was, but more that I feared his words might be true. When I got older and saw him lying there on his deathbed, it was a mixture of relief and sadness, but the sadness was for my grandmother whose love for that cantankerous old prick was true and real. The fear, I learned, was not for anything more than that he might be right! I might have been useless, I might have been only made for the enjoyment of a man whose only goal in life was to own me, and I might have been any number of things he thought, but the thing is that I learned then what I know for sure now - I was meant as a blessing, not a burden, and that it is not my obligation and never was my obligation to live to be that thing my grandfather assumed, not only of me, but of women in general.
I learned that humans are a sorry lot and being in a sorry position is not a bad thing, no matter what, and that it is only thought of as bad because when bad things happen, well, life sucks !! Life sucks because we do not see the things that we are supposed to be seeing, only that it sucks, and we don't like it when life sucks, not at all.
The bitch of it all
OK ok ok...we know that we cannot expect others to do for us what we will not do for ourselves, and we know that anytime we are in the middle of a sucky life situation, there is no other way out of it but to learn from it. This is the bitch of it all - even if we have learned, we might be also part of and in the middle of a lesson of the person who we hurt, or hurt us, or who we are pitying, and there ain't a damned thing that we can do about it other than LEARN FROM IT !!
My good friends, Lana, Noreen, and my cousin Waipuna, and yep, my mama, all say the same thing, that we have to be willing to learn in order to grow, and if that means that what we have to learn SUCKS, then we have to learn that lesson. We learn that things suck until they don't. We learn that we are here to learn, to teach and to serve, and there is nothing more forgiving than knowing that to everything, even things that suck, there is a reason.
Ha ha!!! Yeah, that's life for ya...ain't that about a bitch? It's like salt in a stab wound...150 proof poured directly onto surgical wounds...but learn, we do, because if there is anything that will teach a person to not whine but to scream it out to the Universe at large, it is Jack Daniels poured directly into an open wound.(Long story of teenage drunkeness and an unfinished wall at a friend's house back in 1987...don't ask lol).
Think of things that suck as Spirit pouring JD into the open and gaping wounds of your soul and then pouring the remainder of the bottle down your throat. Guarantees are that you will not go back to the thing that caused you to bleed from the middle of the soul and that, too, you will learn to not like the taste of whisky to make you whine but in utter and joyful celebration of healing instead...
I LOVE YOU ALL!!!
...Roxanne...
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Decide without fear
It is the permanence that scares us all
Most people have a hard time making up there minds about what it is that they really want to do with their lives. It took me a little while to do it, but I did it, and so can you. Earlier this week there was a bunch of things that I wanted to do regarding this one thing that I have dreamed about since childhood, but when it came down to it, I really had no idea what it was that I wanted to do with this idea. It was a close friend who reminded me that I have to make a decision and that I should take care to decide upon the one thing that I want to happen. It was not that hard to do, really, but it was daunting as there were, or at least I thought, many things that I wanted, but none more than the chance to give the people of my town - Pomona, California - a reason to dance, a reason to be, a reason to be joyful.
When it came right down to it, I knew then what I have known for so long that if I could have managed to, I would have kicked my own ass for taking so long to decide upon one thing. At first I thought I wanted it to be big and far reaching, and it will be, but the things that I was thinking were just preposterous. They were doable, but in the long run. It was never that I would not be doing all those things that I had sitting in my mind, but that I wanted them all right now. I had to decide to decide, and so decide I did.
It was really not that hard to do, and, in fact, took a lot of weight off of my shoulders. My demeanor is not what it was for months, and my thoughts were no longer muddled with confusion about where to start or even how to start. After I'd decided upon one singular thing it seemed as though my thought about that one important thing began to live and breathe on their own, just like they are supposed to. I was suffocating my own dreams, taking away from the core thing that I am trying to get out into my community.
The decision was not as hard as I thought it was going to be. In fact, it was very liberating, and even now it has a life of its own.
It is not that difficult, but is truly life altering
For months I have been ruminating about what it is that I want to do with my life. None of us really knows what each of our singular purpose in life is, and neither are many of us too interested in finding out what that is. There is, though, an entire segment of the populace who knows what they want. The problem is not not knowing what we want, but deciding when it is that we will pursue it.
I won't lie to you - I am terrible at making decisions, because a lot of times I have made decisions that have altered my life in ways that I cannot even explain, and normally it was because someone else planted the idea in my head that I should do this, or that, or something else. And all the while that I contemplate these suggestions I have that uneasiness in my stomach - the gut reaction - that I should heed. Lots of times I do, but when it comes to making gigantic, evolutionary decisions, I am a chicken shit. I don't want to fail, and I don't want to feel like I am being forced by someone else's ideals. When I make any decision, I want it to be all my own.
Don't be a big ol' chicken turd
It was earlier this week when I was smacked with the hot spatula of truth, and even though it bugged a little bit, the truth was that I needed to decide, to be clear on my intentions, because for a long while now, I have been anything but clear. I have been sitting in between fear and indecision. One day I wanted this, the next I wanted that, and at the very end of it all, neither were the answer because deep within me there was this fear that told me that my idea was going to fail, that what I so badly want to do is not what everyone else is going to want to do also. I had to release the fear of failure. I had to let go of the 'what if' and embrace the 'what if you don't..." and it was not an easy thing to do at all, releasing the fear.
I had to really look at what it was that I want to do and I had to think about it deeper and longer than I had in months, but when it came down to it, I knew that the thing that was left, the only thing left, in fact, was the decision to act and forget about the 'what if.' I had to think "what if I don't go for it? I will never know what it is that I am capable of." There is always going to be that fear of failing, that thought in my head, your head, everyone's heads that make us crazy with fear, with the idea that we are nothing more than here to fail so as to learn.
I had to face up to the fact that I was talking about doing and not doing. I had to swallow the reality that I have great ideas, but until they are acted upon and until they are no longer feared, they were never going to be anything more than only great ideas, and great ideas that stay only great ideas are only thoughts that will never be anything but thoughts.
Do not fear the failure that has not been yet
Many times people forgo their dreams and never truly find out what they are capable of, and this is really sad because the world is losing out on what could be but what will never be, and it is because we are all scared to make a decision. Think about the last time you were in a Las Vegas buffet line and how all those people decide what they want to eat. I mean, there are a plethora of choices, and it shouldn't be that difficult, but it is.
We all do it - we wonder what takes so long when trying to see a dream to fruition, but then we take our time to make a solid decision.
We cannot continue to make making decisions for our lives and toward our purpose the thing that cripples us. If any one of us took a minute to stop and really ponder our surroundings, we would be able to see the indecisive nature of humanity. We are so afraid to make a decision that is not the right one that we will decide to not decide. We will sooner save ourselves the hassle of being wrong, stay stuck in the interim between 'yes' and 'no,' between being afraid and being fearless, and we are so busy feeling and staying with that feeling of 'what if' that we become paralyzed by the thought that what we want will come out perceivably wrong.
We can no longer depend on the good opinions of other people
At the end of the day, while each of us lay awake in our beds, and while we think about all the things that can go wrong, we should each take that time to stop ourselves and ask why it is that we are shooting ourselves out of the sky before we even take the leap of faith and try something that might make the difference in our lives between living and surviving. Surviving is something that critters do, but surviving with style is something that human beings are supposed to do, but we are so worried about what other people think of us that we cannot bear the idea, inherently, not only that we will not live up to their expectations of us, but more, that we will have to deal with our own thoughts should we fail.
Many times in life we have stopped ourselves short of having what we want because we are so worried about what other people will think. I have been guilty of this lately, and it is because I cannot bear the idea of not bringing my dreams to fruition in completion the way that I visualize them all, and they are some pretty big dreams, I tell you what.
Yet, they are not dreams which are not able to come into reality
You should go for it, really
Whatever it is that you were intended for in this life you will end up doing no matter what. How you get there is yours, and that is where we all falter. If we can daydream, we can certainly see to it that what it is that we want to do in contribution to the world has meaning enough for us to want to at least decide to do it.
You should go for it, really, because there is no one else in the universe who is supposed to do it and you know that there is no one on the planet who is able to do it the way that you can.
Now, if I can just find someone who can give me use of a building, another person to lay a wooden dance floor on which my students can release their own fears on, and one more person to put up mirrors on the walls, and one to install the lighting, another to install a sound booth and recording studio, and yet another to ...
...ahhhh....fear feels good when it is sliding off of you like water off of a duck's back!
...Roxanne...
Most people have a hard time making up there minds about what it is that they really want to do with their lives. It took me a little while to do it, but I did it, and so can you. Earlier this week there was a bunch of things that I wanted to do regarding this one thing that I have dreamed about since childhood, but when it came down to it, I really had no idea what it was that I wanted to do with this idea. It was a close friend who reminded me that I have to make a decision and that I should take care to decide upon the one thing that I want to happen. It was not that hard to do, really, but it was daunting as there were, or at least I thought, many things that I wanted, but none more than the chance to give the people of my town - Pomona, California - a reason to dance, a reason to be, a reason to be joyful.
When it came right down to it, I knew then what I have known for so long that if I could have managed to, I would have kicked my own ass for taking so long to decide upon one thing. At first I thought I wanted it to be big and far reaching, and it will be, but the things that I was thinking were just preposterous. They were doable, but in the long run. It was never that I would not be doing all those things that I had sitting in my mind, but that I wanted them all right now. I had to decide to decide, and so decide I did.
It was really not that hard to do, and, in fact, took a lot of weight off of my shoulders. My demeanor is not what it was for months, and my thoughts were no longer muddled with confusion about where to start or even how to start. After I'd decided upon one singular thing it seemed as though my thought about that one important thing began to live and breathe on their own, just like they are supposed to. I was suffocating my own dreams, taking away from the core thing that I am trying to get out into my community.
The decision was not as hard as I thought it was going to be. In fact, it was very liberating, and even now it has a life of its own.
It is not that difficult, but is truly life altering
For months I have been ruminating about what it is that I want to do with my life. None of us really knows what each of our singular purpose in life is, and neither are many of us too interested in finding out what that is. There is, though, an entire segment of the populace who knows what they want. The problem is not not knowing what we want, but deciding when it is that we will pursue it.
I won't lie to you - I am terrible at making decisions, because a lot of times I have made decisions that have altered my life in ways that I cannot even explain, and normally it was because someone else planted the idea in my head that I should do this, or that, or something else. And all the while that I contemplate these suggestions I have that uneasiness in my stomach - the gut reaction - that I should heed. Lots of times I do, but when it comes to making gigantic, evolutionary decisions, I am a chicken shit. I don't want to fail, and I don't want to feel like I am being forced by someone else's ideals. When I make any decision, I want it to be all my own.
Don't be a big ol' chicken turd
It was earlier this week when I was smacked with the hot spatula of truth, and even though it bugged a little bit, the truth was that I needed to decide, to be clear on my intentions, because for a long while now, I have been anything but clear. I have been sitting in between fear and indecision. One day I wanted this, the next I wanted that, and at the very end of it all, neither were the answer because deep within me there was this fear that told me that my idea was going to fail, that what I so badly want to do is not what everyone else is going to want to do also. I had to release the fear of failure. I had to let go of the 'what if' and embrace the 'what if you don't..." and it was not an easy thing to do at all, releasing the fear.
I had to really look at what it was that I want to do and I had to think about it deeper and longer than I had in months, but when it came down to it, I knew that the thing that was left, the only thing left, in fact, was the decision to act and forget about the 'what if.' I had to think "what if I don't go for it? I will never know what it is that I am capable of." There is always going to be that fear of failing, that thought in my head, your head, everyone's heads that make us crazy with fear, with the idea that we are nothing more than here to fail so as to learn.
I had to face up to the fact that I was talking about doing and not doing. I had to swallow the reality that I have great ideas, but until they are acted upon and until they are no longer feared, they were never going to be anything more than only great ideas, and great ideas that stay only great ideas are only thoughts that will never be anything but thoughts.
Do not fear the failure that has not been yet
Many times people forgo their dreams and never truly find out what they are capable of, and this is really sad because the world is losing out on what could be but what will never be, and it is because we are all scared to make a decision. Think about the last time you were in a Las Vegas buffet line and how all those people decide what they want to eat. I mean, there are a plethora of choices, and it shouldn't be that difficult, but it is.
We all do it - we wonder what takes so long when trying to see a dream to fruition, but then we take our time to make a solid decision.
We cannot continue to make making decisions for our lives and toward our purpose the thing that cripples us. If any one of us took a minute to stop and really ponder our surroundings, we would be able to see the indecisive nature of humanity. We are so afraid to make a decision that is not the right one that we will decide to not decide. We will sooner save ourselves the hassle of being wrong, stay stuck in the interim between 'yes' and 'no,' between being afraid and being fearless, and we are so busy feeling and staying with that feeling of 'what if' that we become paralyzed by the thought that what we want will come out perceivably wrong.
We can no longer depend on the good opinions of other people
At the end of the day, while each of us lay awake in our beds, and while we think about all the things that can go wrong, we should each take that time to stop ourselves and ask why it is that we are shooting ourselves out of the sky before we even take the leap of faith and try something that might make the difference in our lives between living and surviving. Surviving is something that critters do, but surviving with style is something that human beings are supposed to do, but we are so worried about what other people think of us that we cannot bear the idea, inherently, not only that we will not live up to their expectations of us, but more, that we will have to deal with our own thoughts should we fail.
Many times in life we have stopped ourselves short of having what we want because we are so worried about what other people will think. I have been guilty of this lately, and it is because I cannot bear the idea of not bringing my dreams to fruition in completion the way that I visualize them all, and they are some pretty big dreams, I tell you what.
Yet, they are not dreams which are not able to come into reality
You should go for it, really
Whatever it is that you were intended for in this life you will end up doing no matter what. How you get there is yours, and that is where we all falter. If we can daydream, we can certainly see to it that what it is that we want to do in contribution to the world has meaning enough for us to want to at least decide to do it.
You should go for it, really, because there is no one else in the universe who is supposed to do it and you know that there is no one on the planet who is able to do it the way that you can.
Now, if I can just find someone who can give me use of a building, another person to lay a wooden dance floor on which my students can release their own fears on, and one more person to put up mirrors on the walls, and one to install the lighting, another to install a sound booth and recording studio, and yet another to ...
...ahhhh....fear feels good when it is sliding off of you like water off of a duck's back!
...Roxanne...
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