• Being ME!!!!!!!!!

So! The more I travel this road, the more I have to say that a HUGE part of this journey for me is bringing my TRUE SELF out into the light of day! As I sit here, writing this in the "middle of the night" (1:18 a.m.), I feel SO GOOD. I feel like my TRUE SELF can simply exist, uninterrupted, unchallenged, undisturbed, and I can do what I want to do, how I want to do it, without compromising any part of ME.

Alas, if I wish to follow my heart's path in life, then I must ALSO bring the self of mine into the light of day; into the everyday realm of day-to-day "doing" and dancing; of playing and parenting; of working and wrangling.

I have seen examples of people who are unapologetically themselves in the world at large! They ARE who they ARE!! If they say something that offends, it's OK because they MEANT it!There is no wishy-washy worry about pleasing someone else; they are who they ARE!!

I also want to say this about Being Your Best Self -- it's not just about speaking loudly about what you feel or throwing yourself to the masses just to make a point: It's about first *listening* to your true self, to your highest self, so that when you speak or act, you are doing so from your BEST self, from the most effective place of communication and love; from the place that will best serve (and heal) the planet, the people, the universe, the EVERYTHING.


Alrighty, and now that I've gotten that off my chest, I am going to be so bold as to add the fact that I DO KNOW WHO I AM and WHAT I WANT and HOW I WANT and WHOM I WANT. And that it's only my DOUBT that keeps me pussyfooting around and, well, doubting myself.

Duh! OK so this is my Self saying, "Self, Wake Up and Be Your Self Always. Just Do It. Be. Me. Now."

And thus it is so.

'Night all!!!

~  ~  ~  ~  ~

• Clearing and Healing Shame

Clearing. Constantly clearing. Clearing and "cleaning" (aka Ho'oponopono) are normal, daily activities for me now. The more I practice, the better I get.

When emotions arise that I do not like and do not serve my highest good, I work to first listen to the messages they are telling me - whatever it is I need to say or do or be - and then I work to first fully accept and love the emotion; to learn from it if there is a lesson within; and to then clear it. I clear it various ways: sometimes I need to dance it out or run it out while coming into my full power; other times I use EFT (tapping) and positive affirmations; sometimes I journal about it and get more clarity as I write; and still other times I use yoga, meditation or drumming to help me move on.

Whatever the situation is, I consciously work t-h-r-o-u-g-h it now. I don't condemn the emotion, I don't deny it, I don't fear it, I don't chastise it; I accept it, love it, listen to it, clear it, and move on.

Once I am clear, then I can take the action that was the message behind the emotion. But not before I'm clear. Otherwise, I am reacting to the emotion instead of taking action from my true Self -- from my seat of true inner power -- and only a negative result, equal to the negativity of the emotion - can come about. When I clear the emotion first, I then handle the situation from a higher place, and can only get results that serve my (and everyone else's) highest good.

One fine example of clearing came up this past week. I kept noticing a negative feeling around the state of something that, for simplicity's sake, I will label a "messy house." This feeling was nothing new, but was *was* new was my keen observation of it. I separated the feeling from the physical situation that triggered it -- as no situation ever causes an emotion; it only triggers that which you already have within you -- and decided I was going to deal with the emotion. Now. Not later. Now.

I started to write. The more I wrote, the more clarity I got. The more clarity I got, the more I was able to see how this simple emotion - a feeling of shame - has traveled with me along this road of life, attaching itself to various things along the way and expressing itself through unconscious behaviors that my mind then looked at and called "bad" and "shameful."

In a way, I was was shocked. It wasn't until I started working through it all that I realized that a) the feeling I didn't like was clearly "shame"; 2) my mind (a.k.a. ego) was attaching this "shame" to what modern society would label a "messy house" (yet which many happy families would call a "normal house" and what my highest self wouldn't even notice!) and has been attached to this situation for YEARS; and 3) in the past, "shame" was attached to what I can now call disordered eating for many, many years during high school and college.

The "shame" -- the emotion, the negative energy -- took on one form during my teen years, then subsided for a bit, and then stealthily reappeared in another form as an emotion attached to what I like to call "the location of various objects located within my house."

There was no remedy for the physical situation in either case. I could "fix" the physical eating during my high school years, but it would always return because the shame was the real issue, and I could clean my house ten thousand times, but it would always get messy again because, again, the messy house is not the issue, it's the shame.

When I came to this big realization, I did what I've needed to do for years and years and years, and I just started to clear the shame, and to make it fully understood by my heart and mind that this shame in no way needs to come back. The journaling took me to the clarity of understanding it; after that, I started tapping (EFT) and using positive affirmations (this is the EFT youtube video I followed) to allow my body to release it. I cried a lot and journaled some more and listened to music that spoke to me in that moment and helped me wallow IN the shame so that I could FULLY love and accept it, and slowly but surely, the clouds of shame cleared and the light of love was able to come through again.

At that point, I stated my clear intention that this shame would never take over me again. I would remain vigilant about it, and note that if it showed up, I would simply tell it to go away; I would say, "I'm dropping you like a bad habit, shame. Get out of here." In the few days since my clearing, I've done this several times, and every time, it's disappeared before it even had a chance to get its foot firmly in the door.

So now, as it stands, my house still has various objects in various locations all over the place. I don't feel mad or glad about it. It is a non-issue. I know I'd enjoy putting everything in its home because then it's easier to function, it's more fun to be able to find all the pieces to my kids' race cars, for example, when they are all in one place. But it's not necessary for happiness and I do not want it to any longer influence how I feel emotionally.

This is getting long I realize, but there is one more neat event that helped bring this into clarity. Last weekend, I was able to fold and put away about 10 loads of clean laundry that had literally piled up in the living room and had been there for weeks. After I finished, I was absolutely ELATED. I was so proud, so happy, so totally on Cloud 9 -- and yet, I knew something was wrong. Sure, it was nice to be able to have the kids get matching socks out of their sock drawer instead of digging through piles to find a matching pair, but still...why was I SO happy? I wasn't feeling that unconditional Joy of Being -- I was feeling proud of my success; I was giving myself one grand "Good Job!" and a pat on the back. It sounds all dandy, but whenever there is that one-sided ego-related "congrats!" then there is always an opposite side to that coin. In this case, it meant that a pile of laundry in the living room for two months is BAD. Hence, putting the laundry away was GOOD. Both emotions - the good and the bad - I realized, were stemming from that same place: Shame.When I put the laundry away, I buried the shame - but I didn't heal and love and clear it. I just covered it up for a while.

(For an example of this, view my post from January 26. Yes, I cleared myself before I physically cleaned the house, but I don't think I specifically cleared the shame. Or maybe I wasn't as clear as I thought. Perhaps if I were truly clear, the mess and the tidiness wouldn't have been issues at all?!?! Or maybe I *did* clear, but didn't actively work afterward to stay clear?!?! At any rate, the "mess" did return after a couple weeks - and it was almost intentional. I could see myself letting the items reappear about the house, and yet I almost *willed* them to reappear. Like I needed it for something.... Well, I can over-analyze this forever, but let's move on.)

In a way, this whole bit about dealing with the underlying emotion of a physical situation is nothing new. Psychology talks about it all the time. But for me it was a breakthrough in realizing that I don't have to FIX anything or spend years in counseling figuring out "Why do I feel this? What caused it? Who is 'responsible?'"

Truth is, we may never consciously recall who or what made such an impression on us that it programmed a certain emotion and reaction into our being. Instead, we only need to love and clear the emotions that block out the light of unconditional love, and in time, the physical reality will fall in line with the true feelings of Joy.

• A Penny for my Thoughts

It feels like there is SO much I want to write about... I'm hit with inspiration during the day, when my hands are full and my life is on "full speed ahead" mode, but it's not usually till nighttime that I sit down and write, focusing on the thoughts and feelings of earlier in the day or week or month that I want to expand upon.

As of late, I've been focusing on sensing the division between consciousness and thought. My Consciousness is who I Am; if my body were to stop functioning right now, my Consciousness would continue to exist, continue to be ME, continue to do whateva' it wants to do. I'd still be there, I'd still be me, I just wouldn't have a body. I wouldn't have a mind.

This Consciousness, my mind reminds me, is Source. It is God, the All-Knowing, All-Loving, Unconditional Is-Ness that exists through all of time and space and all dimensions in between. It is All That Is and then some. It is eternal, and it can't be comprehended by the mind. It can only be felt by the heart.

All this was racing through my mind and then my heart today as I simply stood at the kitchen sink, doing dishes. It became one of those ordinary-yet-strange moments. I stared down at a collection of soap bubbles gathered together atop a cup of water, and I sensed within myself the God-ness of my consciousness watching all the soap bubbles "from above" and accepting all that is, all that played out on the bubble scene, all bubbles that floated or moved or popped or shimmered as I observed from above. And I practiced unconditional love for each and every bubble, and knew that each bubble was a physical form of something Greater, something timeless and immeasurable and perfect, and something that could do no wrong but could only go about being itself and expanding itself and playing about on the physical level for the fun of it and the experience of it and all the growth that was to be had.

I was playing the role of the God that lives within me, and within each being. It was profound in its own personal, meaningful, meaningless, nominal, enormous way.

My mind could just about wrap itself around the concept of all things being perfect in their own way, of the quiet perfection of the seemingly imperfect, and always incomplete, physical. My mind could sense the space between *it* and my *consciousness.*

I spent more time during the day simply noticing my Consciousness existing, and my Mind interpreting. My Consciousness is like a child who wakes up in the morning, giddy for the experience of life, and impervious to the myriad things that so many adults have labeled as "wrong" or "bad." An innocent child -- and thereby, the Consciousness that is truly who I Am -- does not notice a "messy" house; "bad" weather; or even things as concrete as air "pollution." An untainted child accepts all as it simply is, and, when undisturbed, can go about the day in a perfectly pleasant, content, joyful manner, until an adult comes along and teaches that child to *feel* bad about a so-called messy room or to notice how *icky* the amazing, God-sent rain feels on a damp day. That is where the mind enters the scene and paints the walls of the Consciousness whatever color it's been taught to use. It's the mind's perception on the world - maybe the mind puts on rose-colored glasses or maybe it creates a cloud of darkness that hovers over all - but whatever it is, it's separate from who We Are, from our Consciousness. From our SELF.

My mind is understanding the limits it has, and accepting the simple fact that it has limits to begin with, when compared to Source. When this body dies, the mind cannot go on, but I do. My Self, my Consciousness, my Pure, Joyful, Enthusiastic Love for Life will be wide awake, like a child jumping out of bed in the morning, expectant that all things unfolding will be - and can only be - as exuberant and joyful as the very being that I Am on the true inside. My self. My soul. My heart.

But in the meantime, while I *am* here on this planet, enjoying this physical existence, basking in the physical warmth of the sunshine and enjoying the deliciousness of food and drink, I get to take care of my body, enjoy the existence of other beings incarnated into physical form, ride this rollercoaster that we here call "LIFE" and take it for all it's worth.

We are here to grow, enjoy, learn, love, laugh, heal, help, support, enlighten, bask, stretch, reach, GO. We are here to Do. Let's. Let's do and live and enjoy and never take our minds too seriously. Our mind is here to serve us, not to make us servants.

Let's live from the heart and be Joy. Have fun. Trot about. Do whatever. But most of all, let's never take anything the mind preaches too seriously. It can't give us the meaning of life or the answers to the big questions; all it can offer is food for thought. And REAL life tastes so much better than that.