Good Grief

"Any feeling of bleakness gives you the chance to look (even if starkly) at what is real in our lives. What do you value? What do you hold dear? Are your actions reflecting those values? And what can you do to make it so?"


What do I value and how are my actions reflecting those values? I am not sure really...


I find myself in this place of grief attached to the life I had. One that was the only one I planned for, all of my values were centered around this commitment, my belief, values, identity, reality and daily tasks. I grieve for the relationship that was less than I needed intimately but satisfying in the most complete way. As I try to seperate I find there is a duality with me. The one with my former life and the one I am living. A new one being born on the inside of me while the old one carries on all around me. This sounds like a painting.


"Look for the openings, the cracks, that will lead you to a new and even more fantastic way of being, because that is what this change is really all about. Life is intended to bring and show you joy."





confirmEtymology:
Middle English, from Anglo-French cunfermer, from Latin confirmare, from com- + firmare to make firm, from firmus firm.
Date: 13th century
1 : to give approval to : ratify 2 : to make firm or firmer : strengthen 3 : to administer the rite of confirmation to 4 : to give new assurance of the validity of : remove doubt about by authoritative act or indisputable fact synonyms confirm , corroborate , substantiate , verify , authenticate , validate mean to attest to the truth or validity of something. confirm implies the removing of doubts by an authoritative statement or indisputable fact.

Ruminating

I walk astride a path of choice
while trying not
to step
in quicksand or into the light.
And blythely straddle across
the casm of pain
squeeze past loss
stepping over hope
in between hate
desparation
conviction
love
and abject derision.
I choose not to decide.

Mid-life Soul

...it is a time to incorporate the opposite polarity, whatever that might be. ~Carl Jung

The word 'crisis' is derived from the Greek word krino and means "to decide".

In Jungian terms, this urge to break from old routines is really an outward expression of the "separation from the youthful persona". This is the shift from a persona-orientation to a Self-orientation, and according to Stein, is "critical for the individuation process as a whole, because it is the change by which a person sheds layers of familial and cultural influence and attains to some degree of uniqueness in his [her] appropriation of internal and external facts and influences". This can only be done if one is prepared to let go of one's youthful identity.

Those are good chaos words... So I'm taking a walk today, and realize I've unleashed myself from everything except my children who I hold somewhat at bay so as not to taint their tender minds. I have left my marriage of 18 years, my faith of more thatn 20 years, and many good friends in this change. Having cast off all of those defining anchors I am left to drink, unceremoniously of course, and I walk in this avid loss. So I walk and decide to just listen to the sounds around me which are crickets and frogs and various other bugs which brings rest momentarily to my thought riddled mind. I wonder about how long this transitoriness will go on? But then I stop thinking and just breathe for a moment.

Grasshopper

I walked out to my car last week to go to lunch and noticed a very large grasshopper on the ground near my car tire. It's body was a soft greenish grey. It's legs were covered in moss green and grey stripes. A very worthy grasshopper. I tried to nudge it away from my tire so as not to squish it when leaving then I noticed a second grasshopper! Twice as lovely as the first and even larger. This one was soft grey with grey and dusty pink stripes on it's legs, something I had not seen before. So I stooped and looked at these two delicate creatures for a brief time and wondered at their visiting me.

Needing all the optomism I can get these days I looked up the symbolic meanings for grasshopper to enliven meaning this day. God Bless this meaning.

Among the Chinese, the grasshopper came to symbolize flourishing descendants and hence abundance as well.

In ancient Greece, the nobility wore golden grasshoppers in their hair, possibly because the grasshopper's fertility made it a symbol of abundance. The grasshopper's song during the day and its silence during the night made it an attribute of Apollo the sun god and the kind of friend or helper who makes a lot of noise but disappears when help is needed. In China, the grasshopper paired with a chrysanthemum indicated high office. For Christians, the locust became another symbol of Christ's resurrection or rebirth because it sheds its carapace. St. John the Baptist came eating locusts and wild honey as was permitted by Levitical law (Lev 11:22; Mt 3:4; Mk 1:6).

Joseph Campbell said, We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

The Flaming Grasshopper, a blog for the Chelsea Green publishing company (specializing in sustainable living), describes the grasshopper as representing potent life energy contained in a small “insignificant” exoskeletal package, capable of covering great distances in a single leap. It is also an ancient symbol of good luck.

This website was the best part of my find.


Renee'

Belief

The soul of the tree appeared plainly.

It felt like I was looking through three dimensions: my own, through that of the nights and the physical manifestation of the tree in its divine force. I came upon it unexpectedly. I have never granted nature a "spirit" but rather a vigorous inanimate life force with instinctive rythms and cycles. The funny thing is I had the honest sense that the tree hadn't anticipated my seeing soul and was laughing and howling in the night wind before me. I saw it's face.

I sat in my car briefly upon shutting it off, wanting to listen a while longer to a song on the radio, when my eyes came to rest on this roaring movement. It might have been the wind, it might have been the light, it might have been what MY mind can see through my eyes, but, the moment I identified the fact I was looking at the soul of this tree it was as if it instantly retracted itself up from eyes and seeing heart, as if it felt the whisper of my words and reduced the appearance of it's energy back to that of only natural elements. I sat waiting quietly looking at the tree for some time, for the roaring laughter, but did not see again the display of life I had seen just minutes before. Last night the soul of a tree appeared plainly.

Father’s Day Poem
6/15/08

Father

Some of your teeth still scare me
like glass in sand
that cannot be seen until
piercing flesh and sole
in jagged line

The sand is extraordinary still
light and heat bubbling up
I extend my foot in stride
to push with heals exposed
my weight into the ground
and bear with prick of pain and blood
each step
with swollen sole and smile

With soft eyes and flowing mane
you conceal the teeth of old age
your opinions like stone
some large and some like pebbles
they drive scrape and heal
pit and tousle too

I love you like the summer
And seek you like the sun
Your words they sometimes scare me
Like running on the beach playing
finding glass in sand

"Breathe Some More"

Last night I saw a man. Someone I knew and didn't know all together. There was this psychic awareness throughout the encounter unlike I've ever known prior to or engaged in so cognitively. I was having this heightened awareness and was wondering if it was occurring within him simultaneously. My soul was fully surfaced in full dialogue. There was no fear or aversion or expectation, only contact, only presence. I observed, I listened and challenged his thought and spoke my truth too. There was this amazing dynamic and crystal clear perception of every moment, like having an existential experience while in meditation but in a bar in the city at 1:00 a.m. I felt like I was inside of his person. I could understand his expression as he spoke like it was coming from me and I was able equally to divide the truth. As I sat there saturated in the awareness of him I experienced for the first time as a grown woman my psychic ability. I realized that this was a rare glimpse into my gift, one I had known as a child. For that short time I was psychically connected, in perfect perception and fully open. Tonight I am in bed writing this experience down for you.

Renee'

Dividing the Truth

Descent...

Wild honey...

Drought is a time when old tensions surface and chronic afflictions feel worse. It is a time to redress the balance between the people and their place in the world through communion with the unseen beings of the Otherworld, -"Maya Cosmos"

Paradox
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin paradoxum, from Greek paradoxon, from neuter of paradoxos contrary to expectation, from para- + dokein to think, seem — more at decent
Date: 1540

I Breathe

I saw a shaman on television this morning. I have been drawn to these people with awe and suspicion for many years being raised within a fundamental western faith. This morning was much like luck, being prepared when the opportunity presents itself and all of my thoughts came into alignment. My faith, the things I have come to believe as real, my sense of understanding of the world and the evidence of my higher awareness seeking what I need were all activated at once as I stood in my underwear sipping coffee. I watched as a small native man used his voice as medicine and creating energy vibrations. He used words to affect varying levels of consciousness He moved his hands over the afflicted woman's body in order to adjust her energy and he collected and disposed of that unwanted matter which he had used the palm of his hands to draw out. There is no doubt belief in the existence of a higher power being exercised within indigenous tribes, which for me is the existence of God, in which he exercised faith. I saw the shaman combining many applications of energy healing I have come to be aware of. What I saw him do I realized is keenly ours. Our innate ability to heal and therefore transform and exorcise what's ill, in mind, body and soul. I have been seeking this an answer for years about how to accept what is shamanic. These are acts of healing through faith. Manipulating energy, biorhythms, circulation, breath and thought. They do this "because" they believe even without all the scientific evidence we have at hand. Their mind and spirit knows.

How then, therefore, can we judge what course of treatment is more highly esteemed when seeking to be healed? The exercise of consciousness and a non-judgemental approach is needed. Is it not the quest for life that drives all down paths of healing?

Supplant

I still wonder if I my choice was in vain. I remember myself thinking so many times my own rules for indecision. One was if I couldn't make a decision then the answer is no. If I can't decide, it's no for now. Another was to flip a coin. I never could do it regarding one certain roadblock of indecision, I was sure the coin would come up heads if I had said heads and I'd have to return to what I had fled from. I was sure it would tell me go home. So why wouldn't I exercise my simple personal guidelines. I couldn't decide to leave and I didn't want to go back. I didn't want to flip the coin and see it say hey see, here's what you wanted to know, here you go, now move back home. I would not again receive the bridle.

Everyday I flash to a little something here or there about my choice. Today it was about the fact that I had given up the relationship I know could have succeeded in remaining married until death. I know this without a shadow of a doubt. It was never boring it was present. We were always yanking at each other, yammering, poking fun and rubbing each other the wrong way. Mostly me getting rubbed the wrong way. My spouse doing all the yanking, yammering and poking.

So what is this supplanting, what am I supplanting. A different way. A fuller expression of me for the cornered static bound one. IT IS SOOOOO, SOOOOOO, VERY PAINFUL! As I see more clearly, I recognize the fact that I have created a position of absolute opposition to the way I had agreed and been promised too.

I did flip the coin. It was 5 months after the divorce and it did come up heads like I said but maybe I finally willed it to do that with all my own anguish. I guess I did make the decision because I did leave and now am akin to the persuasion of my own mind to rest and wait.

SupplantFunction: verb
Text: to take the place of — see replace 1

Didactic

"Infidel" by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

In the book "Infidel" Ayaan Hirsi Ali confronts the reality of her own experience as a Muslim woman. She is faced with the unequal treatment of women and the "absolute" didactic in the teachings of the Quran. In her book she states, "Humans themselves are the source of good and evil... We must think for ourselves; we are responsible for our own morality. I arrived at the conclusion that I couldn't be honest with others unless I was honest with myself. I wanted to comply with the goals of religion, which are to be a better and more generous person, without suppressing my will and forcing it to obey inhuman rules. I would no longer lie, to myself or others. I had enough of lying. I was no longer afraid of the Hereafter." Quite a brazen statement for any kind of believer.

It stopped me in my tracks! "I would no longer lie, to myself or others." I find I am choosing this same thing, starting with myself. It is unleashing both fear and a new sense of reality. I haven't fully reached the layer of others because I am not yet sure of how I believe or what I believe like being in the middle of a lake treading water. I don't have too intense a fear or guilt about this anymore but this change of faith has created a lot of unrest in me, some loss but gain in all as experience creates growth. I think and choose for myself now. I make peace.

She illustrates further how Muslim women are still walking about veiled even though they were living in Holland and how "Islam was like a mental cage". She gives a painful illustration and writes, "At first, when you open the door, the caged bird stays inside: it is frightened. It has internalized its imprisonment. It takes time for the bird to escape, even after someone has opened the doors to its cage." I find this to be true for a great many things, this kind of internalized imprisonment. We choose beliefs of all kinds to live by thereby creating a system of thoughts to live by and then ultimately embody. Is it not then very, very important to review what you believe about yourself and God?

When I say stuff like this I get scared because of "what" I am questioning because of my upbringing. The scared part is the indefinition of things now, where I have made room for "my" self, at the expense of my belief.

I stepped away from God because I couldn't believe anymore in what I was saying, or my role as a christian wife, so I stopped. I started unwrapping the anger I contained inside after saying all those things to myself, all those years, so to be what I thought correct. God was never unloving, it was just that I found life on this earth to be less than sacrosanct so began acting on what I felt rather than what I thought. It really wasn't Gods fault I had no more faith to believe or to pray. I just didn't believe things were ever going to be any different than they were in certain area's of my relationship and I still don't. People are who they are and some things just never change. Sometimes things don't turn out the way you think...

So after my separation I faced the question of unlawful sex!! After being sexually active in marriage for 16 years was I to wait to be married again in order not to be immoral? Did I have to get married to qualify for the right to have sex? What if I didn't want to get married again? Was I never to have sex again? Most of this I've pondered on my own occasionally asking questions of God but finding no answers because the questions seemed inappropriate. So I figured I could have sex or go to hell so I decided for sex and against hell. I can hardly believe what I'm saying. And why do I think so much?!? Mmmm... This is part of my mental cage. I still think of Jesus and haven't quiet decided how I fit into that picture. He's been a great teacher of mine.

Didactic

Etymology: Greek didaktikos, from didaskein to teach
Date: 1658
1 a: designed or intended to teach b: intended to convey instruction and information as well as pleasure and entertainment 2: making moral observations.

Itinerant

Itinerant
Etymology:
Late Latin itinerant-, itinerans, present participle of itinerari to journey, from Latin itiner-, iter journey, way; akin to Hittite itar way, Latin ire to go — more at issue

: traveling from place to place; especially : covering a circuit
Date:
circa 1576

This word so describes me on so many levels. Physically, mentally, spiritually, romantically, everything is enroute to another destination. If it were any more swift or grueling I would have to decline. It's meaning and timbre is completely unfamiliar, uncommon to my people, my family, myself. My chaplain/counselor helps me to understand that this is a place I did not ask for but arrived at. Life has brought these questions to me. Their candor uncovers and embarrasses me in this present place. How could I be so unhappy and call it the truth simultaneously. I reflect some years back to a family camp we attended with our church. SSSOOOOO UNhappy was me. I remember at that time being under so much personal marital duress I was grasping and clawing at anything just to find peace. I remember finding some narrow space between mind and life encounters were I wasn't thinking. It was in this narrow spiritual place I thought if only I can stay in this narrow space, between my pain and what I am and what Christianity tells me to be I will be able to maintain my marriage. I produced a painting illustrating this called "The Narrow Gate." I tried to make the title mean more than what I felt to be aspiring to Christianity. The title somehow mimicked some scripture in order to further validate the concept but all it really was, was the space in which I could find a place of peace in my marriage as a christian that was nearly impossible to reach or sustain. It was sheer mental space between my ears. Quiet space. As I expressed it further at a public gathering at family camp I described it as having hope because I knew that someday it would be over and I would be away and in heaven. I was shunned for having wept opennly exposing my grief and told to get anti-depressants. My husband was embarrassed. Maybe I was going to lose it anyway.

What the F. I find it maddening and all sort of weird and programmed the further away I go. In principal it's good but distorted in reality. Huminahumina...

Still sad in some way not sure why from day to day so many issues have erupted for me. Things I have to identify and show respect for within myself in order to regain my livelyhood. What does it matter anyway. I left out of respect for you and I left out of respect for me. Now I have to sort and reapproach what I think about these things I have chosen and left.

Renee'

All the Miles

I had a small life exonerating personal revealation yesterday. I was driving my car down the long stretch of road to work yesterday and said, "How about you quit blaming yourself for everything you did." After all there was more than just me in the relationship. There's "you and me", there's the us in we. This really lifted a huge weight off my shoulders. I have been trampling myself for months now. It sort of set me free.



As I continued in this frame of thought today I reviewed my accomplishments rather than this grand looming failure, and realized I've satisfied alot of my desires and dreams as an individual. The relationship is a 20 year success in acceptance, motivation, committment, redemption and love. The fact that I left the relationship is it's own piece, not meant to reflect upon and tarnish all those years of committment. It's a part of my life.

Reform

When considering my overridding guilt about leaving my spouse; my inability to qualify myself in making this decision, the word "reform" rises up in me. I/my mind needs reform. My soul has closed to the intimate union. ...I lament the loss of our unity & our adventures at the cost of my inherent need to be known.

Carried in my role, every moment I was keeping
but in it was aware there was something sad and sleeping.
My yellow hair kept tied in a ribbon 'neath a bow
and all the whilst was running from derision to and fro.
My cumbersome desires growing deeper by the minute
I untied the vile habit drawing colors from my closet.
He chided my emmisions, belittled all my fears,
colored me with choices drawing nothing from my ears.
With wings extended wide the words were driven home,
there aren't any pennies in the river on the moon.
My mind it's smile abating, being driven by the scorn
was itself a tethered horse 'neath the leather all was torn.

Quiet eyes. Quiet will. Quiet ways I know you.
No words convey your meaning to his mind sullied by his thought.
Chilly transmission no measures no timbre.
I give up. I am covered in night.
I die waking basking in the deep.

Measured somber half sleep waiting, laying beside cool waters...
Tell me something I say my heart like a stone,
"Lone cold crime drowned deep mourning slather".
I am alone in this chasm of thought, while echoes hollow deep.
I find no answers here but know I cannot return from where I have been.
There are no road posts, only space as I stare into this pain...
Why must I choose, your life or mine.





sully

: to make soiled or tarnished : defile



abating

1 a: to put an end to b: nullify 1 2 a: to reduce in degree or intensity : moderate b: to reduce in value or amount : make less especially by way of relief 3: deduct, omit 4 a: to beat down or cut away so as to leave a figure in relief obsolete : blunt5: deprive 2intransitive verb1: to decrease in force or intensity2 a: to become defeated or become null or void b: to decrease in amount or value
— abat·er noun



derision

1 a: the use of ridicule or scorn to show contempt b: a state of being derided2: an object of ridicule or scorn



reform

1 a: to put or change into an improved form or condition

b: to amend or improve by change of form or removal of faults or abuses

2: to put an end to (an evil) by enforcing or introducing a better method or course of action

3: to induce or cause to abandon evil ways

4 a: to subject (hydrocarbons) to cracking b: to produce (as gasoline or gas) by crackingintransitive verb: to become changed for the better

Waiting...

lonely, strangled,
imbedded in you
cajoling, laughing, covered in love
color, sinter, bloody at times
ginger, splendor and all the while waiting
for the slumber of winter and mourning to end
the waiting and wandering 'round you babe.

death

Death chose itself today for me to springboard from and I am a strong believer in intuition and the interconnectedness of things, so I accepted death. In accepting and stepping in, I allow space for emissions. Being such a frightening word I could make a personal selection that is more subtle; more settled and acceptable. But this proposition for communications is from an other source. Here is the interconnection. Ordinarily we refer to these emanations as extrasensory or as signs; feelings or infractions of a larger thing. This is just the beginning, the ordinary, the initiation of purpose and meaning. This in reality is a few steps back from the threshold of interconnection. What is required is for the mind of an individual to let go and let the being enter the idea or sensation walk further on to where things undefined begin. One must be willing to engage the half sleep, underworld, where the light is dim, the air has taste and the body glows as in the illumination of a dream. La Duende. When you go below the surface it requires death. A death to your topical, tactile, tenacious application of life because the things you will hear in this underworld will change the things you have been told to believe.

The prose written here following was a reflection on the annoyance of excessive talkativeness
where the incremental details of the surface become foolishness and boisterous full of triviality and coyishness.

One fragment of thought I strain for while drowning your words.

Interesting in the most dismissing way are you unto yourself.

Largely in love and in 'look' with your life in all your flattering charm.
Not remotely interested in me you speak only of yourself.

'Who are you?' you never ask, your self engagement is so high.

I press my thought over your mouth with force simply to breathe for a moment
whatever it is of mine of yours I might share.

You pluck it away again lickety split, speaking only of yourself.
and all the while flirting you go on and on and on.

I grow weary while deflecting all of your speaking and push again
my soul into your words to share a bit of air in the exchange.

When you finally listen your eyes open wide
and your mouth finally shuts because the things I say are not only words
but have meaning.

And my words won't lie to you.


Just past the heart, go beyond the eyes, round the corner of faith to the interior dark hall where you were left naked. The place of disillusionment, torment, bad smells, hind quarters. The last place that you lived and died. Identify terror wrap your arms around it and lie no more. You must never lie about who you are. You need not tell the secret but you will never lie about the truth. Deeper you must go, deeper still to retrieve the lost... and what has been lost.

I guess I'm writing to say I love you to the silence. Hello to dark corners and why are the corners so dark and the upper world so bright. These words are the light that come to dark places; to thoughts under ridden, places no one smells, when sometimes I wonder where to go.

Just past the heart, go beyond the eyes, round the corner of belief into the dark hall where I breathe and rest in peace.

reticent

Merriam Websters thesaurus writes this about being reticent;

1-given to keeping one's activities hidden from public observation or knowledge — see secretive 2 tending not to speak frequently (as by habit or inclination) — see silent 2

This word enters my mind today as I continue to wrestle with all of the things I've decided to change and all of the things that have decided to change me. I keep faltering, never thinking I am in the right place wondering what is going to happen to keep me from being happy next because of my decisions.

Fear is the motivating force. Fear is a negative factor not a positive. One to be recognized for sure but not to be driven by. I let it creep into my conciousness and hide my day from belief.

In the word reticent I read the reference to secretive. This word is uncomfortable.

I have chosen to leave my husband. A belief I did not hold until the day I decided to leave. Like a twister that came and tore off the top of my shed; or my head and blew everything out into a pile to sort through. Funny this choice of words should come fleeting, meandering crost my mind. This theme for me, this twister.

Once I visualized my pain, the circumstances of my separation and I saw myself walking across a landscape. At some point I came to the edge of this place I was walking, then stepped off. I fell for many, many feet to the ground that seized up to meet me. There buried in the soil in my vision I saw myself emerging, my body glowing from the inside out. I emerged anew. But the twister kept spinning on my shoulder and kept me pinned to the ground. I couldn't move. What is this image; what keeps me pinned in place? Why am I still living?

Why do I not celebrate this departure and agree with my heart and mind . Why do I reject and doubt the thing I pushed myself into knowing and the thing I forced myself to do, knowing it was immenent to my survival? Reticent; why am I reticent about the thing I now know and believe to be true? It is fear that keeps me inert. I am in fear of my own truth.

Honesty is a hard companion but a satisfying lover. Another page.

Renee'

Every days daze...

It's my first blog and I love to write. Can hardly wait to get this thing rolling.
I'm so far outside of mylife right now I'm trying to ride up along side myself and see if I need anything. Not so far, getting up along side myself that is. Maybe it's better if I don't. What I really want to do is go to bed for one long night sleep. More for me tomorrow. Ciao!