Awakening - Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

Maxine ~ I am going to start a thread for you in the Living Room. You go there and tell us about yourself please and let us be there for you ok?

 

Hi Maxine, glad you found us. Depression is definitely caused by this disease and many here go through bouts of it. Hang in there because things will improve and there are a bunch of people here who will support you through it.

If you are in a bad place right now please call a crisis center or 911 to get some help. If you are ok and think you can get through, post here on the forum and we will do the best we can to help you through it.

This is a tough disease and the holiday period is tough for many. You are not alone.

 

I found this reading very deep in meaning and I keep reading it over and again.

I really like the significance of being and becoming. The being, our stripped down place of our core, and the becoming, our veils that we wear which continue to cover or mask that being inside. Normally I would think of becoming as a good thing and something to strive for but this really challenges my view on that and makes me consider that the core of who I am is more important than what I strive to become or attain.

 

Oh, I needed to read this today. I've quite HAD IT with the 'becoming' question. Even my well-meaning, free-loving, VW-driving son asked me this week, "Well, what are your goals for 2011? What do you want to become?" I wanted to puke and I wanted to hide. I haven't any 'goals' beyond living. And living has been a full-time goal for three MOST difficult years. Being - yep, just Be. I've a quote on my kitchen chalk board which says, "Let the time unfold as it will, and don't lose sight of the truth." Let the time unfold....what more CAN we do? nothing whatsoever. I tried to open the bud of a mandevilla plant. I was unable to unfold it, even with my most careful artistic fingers, without tears and holes. Even opened, the inside yellow-gold color was dull, not 'ripe' for opening. Let the time unfold as it will.....if I can remember that tomorrow. Hell, if I can remember that in 5 minutes I'll be a better me.!!

 

Beautiful analogy with the mandevilla bud.

I am really glad that you were drawn here today Maxine. I hope it is all you hope it will be.

I am also rethinking the being/becoming thing.

 

When the film is worn through, we have moments of enlightenment, moments of wholeness, moments of satori, as the Zen sages term it, moments of clear living when inner meets outer, moments of full intergity of being, moments of complete Oneness.

I read this to mean epiphany which has happened very few times in my life. It is a feeling of utter oneness within me and nothing interrupts it or comes between it. Too bad it lasts such a short time - it's such a feeling that I can't truly discribe with words...

 

Amazing Holly, thanks for sharing.

 

January 4 - Between Peace and Joy

~We could never have guessed . We were already blessed where we are...~ - James Taylor

This reminds me of a woman who found a folded sponge all dried and compressed, and tucked iside the hardened fold was a message she'd been seeking. She carried the hardened sponge to the sea and, up to her waist in the deep, she watched it unfold and come to life in the water. Magically, the secret of life became visible in the bubbles being released from the sponge, and to her amazement, a small fish, trapped in sleep in the hardened sponge, came alive and swam out to sea. From that day on, no matter where she went, she felt the little fish swimming in the deep, and this - the swimming of the little fish that had for so long been asleep - gave her a satisfaction that was somewhere between peace and joy.

Whatever our path, whatever the color or grain of our days, whatever riddles we must solve to stay alive, the secret of life somehow always has to do with the awakening and freeing of what has been asleep. Like that sponge, our very heart begs to unfold in the waters of our experience, and like that little fish, the soul is a tiny thing that brings us peace and joy when we let it swim.

But everything remains hard and compressed and illegible until, like this woman, waist deep in the ocean, we take our sleeping heart in our hand and plunge it tenderly into the life we are living.

 

Caroline, these Awakenings are amazing! I love them...and I so appreciate you sharing them with all of us.
My resolution for the New Year was to attempt to cultivate an attitude of gratitude and to answer when someone asks how are you?? that I am blessed.
I am grateful for your postings and blessed to have found this neat forum community.

 

Thanks Funshine, I feel so blessed too. I too am trying to live my life with more peace and gratitude.

 

I don't know why but this one has me in tears. I think it's because I still feel like my heart is asleep and I haven't been able to find a way to release it yet. But I have faith that one day my 'little fish' will swim once again.

Thank you Caroline. This one was very touching to me.

 

Ahhh Lulu sweetie... so sad that you were crying... it will be ok.

Give it time and your inner fishie will be swimming.

You know you have the love and support of this forum so hold on to that through the tough moments.

 

Caroline. I like what you are doing here. It is for me like a part of my journey of life.

Bless you and thank you.

Ruth

 

Thanks Ruth... glad you are here with us all to take this journey. ;D

 

I can't express the amazement of 'finding' this group yesterday. I was at home recovering from two very deep vertigo attacks - back to back. And I was feeling the weight of life on my tired (and dizzy) head. It was/is a providential gift to have wandered into this loving place. And to have wandered in while you are all reading these affirmations to LIFE - to let that little fish wake and swim where my broken body cannot go. My soul is heavy with the weight of life. I see that I must let go of the fantasy, and allow days to open as they elect. "Let the time unfold as it will, and don't lose sight of the truth." I can't wait to read what tomorrow's book exerpt might hold for us! THANK YOU.

 

You're welcome Maxine... you were destined to find us and for us to know you.

I can't wait for tomorrows either... it is difficult to not read ahead but I am trying. As soon as I wake I can't wait to go and grab the book and type it in for you all.

 

January 5 - Show Your Hair

~My grandmother told me, "Never hide your green hair-They can see it anyway."~ Angeles Arrien

From the agonies of kindergarten, when we first were teased or made fun of in the midst of all our innocence, we have all struggled in one way or another with hiding what is obvious about us.

No one plans this. It is not a conspiracy, but rather an inevitable and hurtful passage from knowing only ourselves to knowing the world. The tragedy is that many of us never talk about it, or never get told that our "green hair" is beautiful, or that we don't need to hide, no matter what anyone says on the way to lunch. And so, we often conclude that to know the world we must hide ourselves.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. It is an ancient, unspoken fact of being that blackmail is only possible if we believe that we have something to hide. The inner corollary of this is what worthless feelings arise when we believe, however briefly, that who we are is not enough.

 

So true. Thanks for posting these!

 

You're welcome Hank... so glad you are here. ;D

 

January 6 - The Spoked Wheel

~What we reach for may be different, but what makes us reach is the same.~

Imagine that each of us is a spoke in an Infinite Wheel, and, though each spoke is essential in keeping the Wheel whole, no two spokes are the same. The rim of that Wheel is our living sense of community, family, and relationship, but the common hub where all the spokes join is the one center where all souls meet. So, as I move out into the world, I live out my uniqueness, but when I dare to look into my core, I come upon the one common center where all lives begin. In that center, we are one and the same. In this way, we live out the paradox of being both unique and the same. For mysteriously and powerfully, when I look deep enough into you, I find me, and when you dare to hear my fear in the recess of your heart, you recognie it as your secret that you thought no on else knew. And that unexpected wholeness that is more than each of us, but common to all - the moment of unity is the atom of God.

Not surprisingly, like most people, in the first half of my life, I worked very hard to understand and strengthen my uniqueness. I worked hard to secure my place at the rim of the Wheel and so defined and valued myself by how different I was from everyone else. But in the second half of my life, I have been humbly brought to the center of that wheel, and now I marvel at the mysterious oneness of our spirit.

Through cancer and grief and disappointment and unexpected turrns in career - through the very breakdown and rearrangement of the things I have loved - I have come to realize that, as water smoothes stone and enters sand, we become each other. How could I be so slow? What I've always thought set me apart binds me to others.

Never was this more clear to me than when i was sitting in a waiting room at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, staring straight into this Hispanic woman's eyes, she into mine. In that moment, I began to accept that we all see the same wonder, all feel the same agony, though we all speak in a different voice. I know now that each being born, inconceivable as it seems, is another Adam or Eve.