AfterDawn.com: User profiles: Deepskystarlight: Blog archive

meditation

(25 Feb 2006 12:08)

An Oyster's Story

Written by Denise Allen

Sitting on my bed of sand,
life is simple:
Open, close, open, close........
filter water for food,
I have no complaints
Sitting on my bed of sand.

What's this ?!
Something got in my filters-
A tiny grain of earth!
It can be so irritating
Sitting in my bed of sand.

My irritation grows.
I cannot rid myself of that
tiny grain of sand.
Open, close, open..........
Wait!
What if another gets inside?
Close!
Snap!
Never open again!
Okay, so I might starve
cut off from the outside world,
Sitting on my bed of sand.

Time passes,
lonliness my only companion.
That grain of sand?
I'm struggling to ignore it.
I long to be nourished again,
feel water pass over my filters,
But I dare not
expose myself to the pain
of another
grain of sand.
Lonely and alone,
I wait,
Sitting on my bed of sand.

Eventually
I can no longer ignore
that irritating grain of sand.
It's presence calls out,
"Look at me!"
I look.
It has grown much larger
than imaginable,
while I have been
Sitting on my bed of sand.

It is painful to watch it's
story unfold.
I begin to notice
Changes-
not quite so irritating,
rough edges becoming smooth,
color fading to white.
"Open up", it demands.
Oh no!
Not ever again.
For what purpose?
"Let the water wash over me".
What if more sand gets in?
"Let the light shine on me".
What?
I am curious
Sitting on my bed of sand.

It insists nonstop
"Open, open, open........"
Despite my fears,
I have to know.
O
P
E
N
!
The water comes in.
Ahhh!
Cool refreshing water.
The light enters
and
the grain of sand is nowhere
to be found.
In it's place
a pearl.
I am stunned,
overwhelmed,
Sitting on my bed of sand.

No longer afraid to open,
I know I may find another
grain of sand that will
irritate me,
isolate me,
frighten me,
So I may stay closed,
for a while,
remembering I will find
A story of pain
and
wonderful discovery.
A story to share with all
the others
Sitting on my bed of sand.

**********************************

I've been on my own for nearly a year now. When you are in your early 20's and start out with someone the world seems so simple and black and white. Eventually after years, you come to the much more complex reality that it is entirely possible to love and care for someone very much and have grown completely incompatibly wrong for each other. Your continued presence in the same house does nothing but feed the stressful agony. Every conversation is strained, every waking day a reminder of broken dreams and hopes. I'm not talking here about the day to day struggles that befall any relationship. No one sustains a 23 year relationship by giving up the first time you have a disagreement. But it is and was, eventually a much greater act of love to give each other their freedom and let the healing begin, than to try to pretend that what died years ago is still alive.
At this time last year, I was walking around my house, crying my eyes out mourning the loss of the life I was about to leave. Mourning all the hope and dreams I had poured so many years into. Mourning the way my health had deteriorated because of the stress. Scared to death of what the future would hold and having no idea how I could possibly survive it .
This is the most personal heartfelt blog entry I have written for sure. If it can help others, good.
My body was literally crying out and telling what my mind would not accept. I was suffocating. Surgery, medication and all the doctors in the world had not been able to completely help because we were treating the symptoms not the cause. Severe asthma had made every breath a struggle on many days. The steroids to open my lungs had messed with my weight. It limited my ability to work out. It caused other physical problems that led to surgery and a long recovery. I felt like an old lady whose life was over. The surgery was successful in curing the problem it had targeted and that gave me a lot more hope for my life, but going out on my own was still the hardest thing I have ever done and the best.
A year later, he (my ex) and I are friends and wish each other much happiness with whoever may be that person who is right for who we are now. We are grateful for the years we had together that worked, but know it was a destructive, awful thing to try to force what just could not be anymore. My kids are much happier and thriving. This is the way to do it. to be mature enough that even though we had our screaming awful times, to have gotten to the point before I left that we could plan this out together and choose to be friends not enemies.
I have been able to get completely off all my medications since I no longer need them. Within weeks of leaving I was encountering situations that previously would have triggered very bad asthma attacks and having no bad effects at all. I have dropped several sizes of clothing and just gave away a whole other batch this week. After encountering a bit of age discrimination in the job hunt-- yes you can qualify for Mensa, have all the school awards, have the degree and post graduate degree and still be seen as unemployable because you dared stay home and be a mom for a few years-- I had the fortune to get two jobs, both of which I am working right now. And I will have to continue later because it's time to go to one of them now. :-) Courage and love. Dare to dream and do not be afraid of letting go. Better things await those who do. Hugs to all who hurt. I know , it's hard.
to be continued

[ Comments: 1 | Post comments ]

Life, Love and Courage.

(12 Feb 2006 18:52)

Most of us live our lives at the shallowest of levels. It's so much easier to block out the deep things by keeping our minds forever occupied with whatever form of distraction or escapism works for us, whether it be plunging ourselves into workaholism, the futile attempt to control every aspect of someone else's life, the constant abuse of substances or throwing ourselves into the wholehearted pursuit of escapist entertainment of some sort. Many others willingly turn over their minds to the black and white certitudes of religion or political demagoguery. For some of us, that has never been a viable option. However much we may have tried to fit in, we have always known that in silence there are much deeper currents that call to us, depths that will not be content to remain unexplored; things both terrifying and inspiring that demand to be explored. There is, deep within our souls an absolutely undeniable, unstoppable need to live, to grow and to create. It must live, love and connect with its counterpart to be complete and healthy. It is the Anima/Animus which embodies both elements of the feminine and masculine in us all and connects us to things so deep in our humanity that they predate languages and cultures which is why the archetypes of our dreams and mythologies are so universal and so powerful. When we touch it together, we move beyond time and space to realities far deeper. It is not religion, it predates religion. It is the essence of our humanity, our strength and creativity, the wisdom so deep and powerful, men and women have tried to grasp it throughout the ages giving it names of gods, goddesses, magic, spells and myths. Carl Gustav Jung called the wisdom the collective unconscious and the life force libido, a much broader definition of the term than we often employ. Writers like Joseph Campbell have done a very good job of explaining how the themes of our myths, legends and dreams have been used throughout the centuries by people trying to connect to the inner wisdom. Clarissa Pinkola Estes has defined better than anyone else for me what it means to be a deeply creative, intuitive, highly intelligent gifted woman in touch with her inner strengths. Shamen and women, storytellers and artists, mystics and muses are at their best when they bring us closer to these truths. They are at their best when they are able to live and work together nurturing each other�s gifts.

As a society, we have completely lost touch with the immensity of our need for what the artist provides. We have trivialized art as just another commodity, just another entertainment designed not to feed our souls but to distance ourselves from them. We have denied the value of expression to the artist himself, believing that somehow it is only of value if it can be profitable. We infantilize their contributions with the use of words like �play� so we can reassure ourselves that what they are doing is not �real� work. It is not enough for an artist to be labeled as talented. They cannot survive on lip service. One cannot spend years crushing hopes, dreams and self confidence, lacerating what one claims to support, and retain any right to it. It is an indication of just how strong the inner will to live and survive can be that it does at all, much less how powerfully its manifestations can touch those who can still hear it. The courage to go on under such conditions can be incredible. The courage to break free of them, while greater still, is ultimately, the choice between life and death and therefore absolutely non negotiable. It must happen. The will to love and life is too great to deny.

[ Post comments ]

THINK!!!

(09 Feb 2006 21:24)

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
-Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778)

Think!!! Think!!! Think!!! It astounds me that I can go into so many homes and find the tv on constantly. It's generally been a pretty good indicator to me that the more tvs a person thinks they need in their home, the less independent thought I can find coming from them. Someone who has to have the tv on all the time, day and night in every room of the house, even the bedroom is a person who is afraid to face the possibility of a real actual thought occuring to her/himself. You go over to see them and they don't have the decency or manners to give you their full attention. I always taught my children that when another child came over, they had come to play with them, not just to watch tv. If they had wanted to watch tv, they could do it at home. This was a chance to interact with another human being. Sadly, some of those children already did not know how to play with another child. They wanted the tv. I see that with adults, too. I go visit them and the tv is on so loud that my head hurts partly from the volume and very much from the incessant assault on my senses of incredible stupidity. I'm not, despite what it may sound like, anti all tv. I do even enjoy watching a specific show or movie with others when it has been decided that this is something we all want to do. I just find it incredibly sad and rude that so many people do this on such a habitual basis and are so clueless that there is anything wrong with it. I have been a guest in too many homes where this has been the case.
This is also something we need to consider more in our daily lives. A recent study showed that couples with a tv in their bedroom drastically decreased their sex lives by doing so. [ link ] another study showed that kids with tvs in their bedrooms had lower school achievement than kids who did not have tvs there. Duh! what a surprise!!! [ link ] So how does this all fit with my quote at the top? It just seems to me that the lazier we get about using our minds, the easier it is for the Bushes of the world to tell us anything they want us to think and have us believe and support anything they ask for. It would be pretty funny if the real life consequences weren't so disastrous, to watch how pathetic the periodic excuses for keeping us in a frightened frenzy their stories are. Once again, we have a vague story about how those of us in Los Angeles are supposed to be so eternally grateful that we were saved from a horrible attack on our "Liberty tower" and that all this illegal spying has saved us. Only the problem is there is no such place in LA, there is a building that used to be called Library tower, now known as the US Bank Tower. And, of course the basic problem that no, the illegal wiretapping is just plain wrong wrong wrong and has not done a thing but harass innocent people and take away our rights. They just want to scare us into not complaining.

[ Post comments ]

An urgent call for peace read and tell your friends

(07 Feb 2006 18:49)

Women Say NO to War!
We at CODEPINK, together with 200 prominent women from around the globe, have written our own Urgent Peace Plan to end the war in Iraq. From now until March 8, International Women�s Day, we will be gathering signatures to deliver to U.S. embassies worldwide. So join Alice Walker, Susan Sarandon, Margaret Cho, Dolores Huerta, Eve Ensler, Congresswomen Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey, and Cynthia McKinney, Iraqi women from the Organization for Women�s Freedom in Iraq and Women Living Under Muslim Laws, and many more (see initial endorsers) by signing the call today at www.womensaynotowar.org and passing it on to your friends..

[ link ]

Women's Call for Peace: An Urgent Appeal

We, the women of the United States, Iraq and women worldwide, have had enough of the senseless war in Iraq and the cruel attacks on civilians around the world. We've buried too many of our loved ones. We've seen too many lives crippled forever by physical and mental wounds. We've watched in horror as our precious resources are poured into war while our families' basic needs of food, shelter, education and healthcare go unmet. We've had enough of living in constant fear of violence and seeing the growing cancer of hatred and intolerance seep into our homes and communities.

This is not the world we want for ourselves or our children. With fire in our bellies and love in our hearts, we women are rising up - across borders - to unite and demand an end to the bloodshed and the destruction.

We have seen how the foreign occupation of Iraq has fueled an armed movement against it, perpetuating an endless cycle of violence. We are convinced that it is time to shift from a military model to a conflict-resolution model that includes the following elements:

- The withdrawal of all foreign troops and foreign fighters from Iraq;
- Negotiations to reincorporate disenfranchised Iraqis into all aspects of Iraqi society;
- The full representation of women in the peacemaking process and a commitment to women's full equality in the post-war Iraq;
- A commitment to discard plans for any foreign bases in Iraq;
- Iraqi control of its oil and other resources;
- The nullification of privatization and deregulation laws imposed under occupation, allowing Iraqis to shape the trajectory of the post-war economy;
- A massive reconstruction effort that prioritizes Iraqi contractors, and draws upon financial resources of the countries responsible for the invasion and occupation of Iraq;
- Consideration of a temporary international peacekeeping force that is truly multilateral and is not composed of any troops from countries that participated in the occupation.

To move this peace process forward, we are creating a massive movement of women - crossing generations, races, ethnicities, religions, borders and political persuasions. Together, we will pressure our governments, the United Nations, the Arab League, Nobel Peace Prize winners, religious leaders and others in the international community to step forward to help negotiate a political settlement. And in this era of divisive fundamentalisms, we call upon world leaders to join us in spreading the fundamental values of love for the human family and for our precious planet.

[ Comments: 1 | Post comments ]

February 2006

Quote

meditation

Love and Power; Words of Wisdom from C. G. Jung.

Los Angeles at sunset

Life, Love and Courage.

THINK!!!

an update and a question for the tech savvy

An urgent call for peace read and tell your friends

I hate sheep.


		User name	Password

		Not registered yet? Register here. Lost your password? Click here.