Ever feel like the man in the picture above?
I have lost track of how often those around me who I dearly love have raised their hand saying yes, yes, yes while I was forced by my conscience to say, wait just a minute. I am not sure…and ultimately at this time, I don’t think so.
It is interesting to see who wants to learn to think for themselves and who is happy to just live by what is fed from the existing party lines they found when they arrived on the planet. When we allow something outside ourselves to tell us how to think, live, do and be without questioning, it is amazing what can happen in the world. This is true even when the external message is perceived as a “good” one as it still takes our personal discernment muscles off line. Drinking even nourishing cool aide 😉 without thinking about what we are doing, ultimately hurts us all.
I have an old friend who still finds me in my dreams from time to time. Every few years he will pop in and be featured several nights on the run. It is someone who connected with my family when I was about age 12. In the past over the years we would email back and forth from time to time. However, after watching this beloved man repeatedly beat a retreat back into the comfort of our shared known past to avoid a jump into the deep end of even looking at the unknown now, I have stopped initiating writing to him.
It had been rather a painful thing to watch such a brilliant mind dig in and defend old territory. Paralysis and defensiveness in the face of communicating about new potentials is a very disheartening thing to witness. I also think that I finally have realized that offering unsolicited perspectives does not ever help growth. Judge not least ye be judged is all about a warning for trapping yourself. I have NEVER seen true growth born from condemnation and judgement and pledging of blind allegiance to an externally sourced power which is static in the past. AND I write this also acknowledging that any pain felt only ever comes from my own lingering expectations attached to relationships. He disappointed me. I disappoint him. He no longer disappoints me, but does not choose to engage. Ok. I finally have done my own growth on this. 🙂
You see, I was raised within a very powerful belief construct offered up by the Christian based religion of Mormonism. This is a religion where you are asked to publicly raise your hand to say that you sustain and support men as the mouthpieces for God on Earth today. Most people I knew from my childhood, including this friend, still participate and create their lives from within this system. And as far as externalized systems go, it is one that does create rather fruitful and contented human lives.
I honestly can say with hand on heart that I am so grateful that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was my starting point upon hitting Earth school as it was a belief construct that helped me avoid some pretty big pitfalls until I was ready to take responsibility for knowing myself. I was handed some pretty large pain very early in life and that belief system helped me not to end up dealing with it by becoming a crack addicted prostitute. I am not really joking about that last sentence. However, I also can now see how living dishonestly (which can be supported in this belief system) also caused most of the pain to begin with. Don’t you love those catch 22’s ?!
For those in my life who do still religiously attend this church and live it’s teachings from a deep love, after soul searching their hearts and finding that their own personal answers for living still completely aligning within it’s teachings, I completely support and adore engaging with you. If you are finding joy and peace and lasting comfort, keep doing whatever it is that you are doing there. However, for those who ignore their inner niggles, become defensive on questioning and repeatedly just spout back the party line without being able to say it is your truth, I will continue to love them from a distance no matter how many times they appear asleep in my dreams. Nothing is ever gained when we attempt to communicate from a place anywhere other than our own authentic voices in respect from love.
I am so grateful to be able to engage here with those who actually show up authentically in the living of their lives, and thereby can make contact with those same areas in mine. Oh the gratitude for those precious souls who who find their way to my front door, who have taken responsibility for their own thinking and the beliefs this creates for constructing the living of their lives! This means that even when they see something they do not agree with on whatever level in mine, they keep the door open for communication and they do so with a share in love and compassion at my ignorance.
I do not publicize this blog and I do not usually use my writing to indirectly send messages to anyone in particular (only doing so today after vivid dreams several nights on the run). I do not care how many followers I have or how many likes there are or what the wordpress stat counters say about how many people are reading what. I write these words here as a place to reflect… seeing and sharing the M of past, present and future as we remember together.
If you found your way to this blog because I directly told you that I write it, I most likely did this because I thought you might be interested in joining the conversation. Thanks for reading. Thanks for doing enough of your own work that you see me and that you can join in what I am doing here…and thanks for engaging when you feel inspired to do so.
And if not interested, as many of my family and friends are, they are not reading this anyway. (Many of my closest family and friends are not really interested in knowing and engaging with the M of now. They are not reading these words and it is ok). I am sure I will meet up with them in those sound asleep places again if and when we need to. If we can help each other in any way, I know we will. If not, we will each dream on.
Follow me—it just takes a harder hit.
Suddenly, you will see farther down.
You didn’t know you could you do this on your own.
::
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DB,
I have been dreaming about you again. But, this time I am not going to email you out of the blue. You know about this blog and will see this if you are interested in contact.
Do you still hate to visit San Francisco or have you learned to be the same man who stands there as the one who can stand in the temple feeling love(d)? The true temple is the one on wheels inside ourselves and the one in Provo, in my opinion, is all about teaching us to remember this. I think I might just go and enjoy a Slurpee in your honor. I love you so.
-x.M
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With the header picture, I in no way am wanting to compare the LDS church to the Nazi party. Take any cult inventory identification test and then we will speak from a deep place of honor and love for our shared spiritual roots. 🙂
The flowering of Mormonism in the world CAN be a beautiful thing to live. And on a bad judgement day for my religious family who do read here, just remember that this means that I must not have gotten my own personal testimony of the church as true yet. Thank you for honoring the fact that I will not live lying to any religious leader about my ability to raise my hand in good faith to sustain an authority outside myself anymore. I have prayed and in my heart, I feel peace about not participating with organized religion at this time. Should the day come that the answer to my ongoing prayers changes, my behavior will change again, too. If I ever feel impressed to return to attending church, I will be the first to join you on the pew.
For those who are interested at at deeper peek at Mormonism and the raising of hands for sustaining authority people are asked to do:
Being a child of God, I listened to the prophet’s voice until I could hear and listen to the same still small voice (or for those hardliners, found the light of Christ) inside myself. This does not mean that I do not think these are good and in some cases great men still in the church(es) doing amazing things on this planet. However, the success of living from this listening on my own is seen in the peace and presence that surrounds the living of my day to day life, not just on Sundays. I extend the invitation to come and to visit me in my home any day of the week and see what I spend my time focusing on living. Please feel free to see if you find holiness or not. Observe away, just take care not to make any final judgements as I am only ever claiming to be a work in progress. 🙂
seeingM 
just a smile 🙂 of recognition … although my church has disappeared in this country — leaving a lot of people with a feeling of having been abandoned while many others who stopped going because of all the logical falacies got stuck in their own falacies — and became just as hardheaded as the thing they rejected.
Oh Bert, yes those theological pitfalls that we then replace with different thinking that has the same effect! I LOVE IT! Religion can be such a thorny thing to navigate.
I love my church going friends, even the ones who do not love me in return as I have stopped being comfortable to be around in joining them in the same way at the shared well. I am always interested in seeing who preaches and who can actually practice what they preach. Those who want me “back in the fold” always engage with me from a place of such love because they are sharing with me what brings them joy and what they themselves have already questioned. Those who cut me out I always sense do so because what I represent challenges their ability to drink without questioning anymore. Thanks for the thoughts shared. Thanks for showing up B! 🙂 -x.M
Thank you for making all these ineteresting posts 🙂
So glad you enjoy B. -x.M
A strong woman versus a woman of strength! You’re doing great M! Onwards we go through life! One day at the time! P x
Oh Ms Pina, are you there ? Are you there? lol YES YOU ARE!!!!!! Thank you for showing up. You are loved today right now by me. -x.M
I relate deeply to two of your statements:
‘I was handed some pretty large pain very early in life and that belief system helped me not to end up dealing with it by becoming a crack addicted prostitute.’
I have said many times about myself, if not for my belief in traditional Christian values growing up, I would be heavily addicted to some hard drugs, or dead.
and
‘Being a child of God, I listened to the prophet’s voice until I could hear and listen to the same still small voice (or for those hardliners, found the light of Christ) inside myself.’
I love that. I really love that. I would not have thought of saying it that way, but I feel the same way. I’ve come a long way to be able to look back over so many years of (the way it feels to me know) ‘disempowering belief’ with the same kind of gratitude. I am truly grateful for the boundaries that it held for me when I wasn’t listening to my own voice. Now it is a sweet knowing, and gentle compassion that I feel for those who still hold dearly to those beliefs, even as they weep and pray for my ‘lost’ soul.
Thank you for sharing 🙂
Amanda,
THANK YOU FOR SHOWING UP 🙂 ! I am glad that my words can bring you home to the experiences you have had inside yourself as well. For me, something really interesting happened when I fasted and prayed about an important decision and the answer that came back went against what the standard party line of my church would have said to do. Gracious. I was in a bit of a crisis. The same feeling of divine inspiration that I always felt was coming in loud and clear. What to do? What to do? I prayed and fasted again…and again…and again. Same results on inspiration to follow my heart away from the party line.
So, I then did what all good people of my religion did. I sought out the counsel of the leaders of my local congregation. They could tell that I was earnestly wanting to know what to do and that my heart was coming from a pure place… I had as James 1:5 said: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him”. Within their own inspiration they asked for on my behalf, they were able to tell me to follow my answer as they too could feel my authentic path developing. I ended leaving my tradition feeling their continued support and blessing as they knew the desire for living a “Christ like” life has never once left my sights.
How many times in the past had I too prayed for that “lost” soul??…checkmate and mote to the beam in my own eye. lol -x.M
Amanda captured what I couldn’t say, verbatim! I am touched by the overlap in early walks here, that I am hearing my words through the mouth of others. I’ll just add one tiny thing, beyond the helpful boundaries of those belief systems, there was a beginning of a heart’s longing stirring toward the only path seemingly available toward the mystery – and those longings were being heard on a loud speaker, I think sometimes, for the circumstances to arrive to break me free from there! Beautiful creation from the stirring up of dreams, M. xo!
Testing one two three, testing. Is this thing on? (Farris Bueller’s day off just flashed in my mind at the loudspeaker junction). It is usually those darn isms that get us in all this trouble.
Still licking the palms and taking as many days off as I can.
Keep shaking it up lady and I will twist and shout with you 🙂 .
-x.M
Re: your inclusion of video #2 in the article.
I wish I could be so subtle in my use of irony.
Hariod ❤
Ahhhh…eagle eye H strikes again! Yes the irony available within religion is replete. I think about my religious upbringing as the most beautiful set of training wheels available. There is deep and wise juju afoot within religion, one must just learn to get past the fluffy window dressing and the downright dangerous controls that construct churches which claim to hold certain keys. Church and gospel in Christianity (or really religion in general) are two very different things to me.
I grew up in SLC, UT USA which is like the equivalent of living inside the Vatican. I had two different actual prophets who had grown children who were in my very small congregation called a “ward” so I was personally around them very often. I know for a fact that they are good men. I know they are men who have a focus on the good of humanity…being in service and sacrificing things in the world (careers, time etc.) to carry that service out. I do think that they have a connection to the divine (offering guidelines) which is available for people to borrow UNTIL one learns to foster and develop their own. I left the world of organized religion with my very own signal on line, but using it, I do not pretend to receive inspiration and instructions for anyone but myself. I have seen no burning bushes calling me to preach about what I have found with anyone else. I just share what I have found and let others make up their own minds.
If some experience I share on this blog helps another see more clearly in their own life with something similar, great. I am heart happy that it does. If it does not or seems completely off the mark to another, that is ok as well. Those folks I enjoy getting a shifted perspective from and growing stronger in reflection whether we agree or not. If someone does not like at all what they read here, I say that they are free to move on. I have nothing to defend no territory to protect at the end of the day.
Thanks for showing up Hariod and for sharing the eye you have developed with the world. You bring much to the table to be enjoyed. -x.M
It’s good to read something of your past M, for just so long as you don’t cast me into exile for my awkward contrariness, then I would like to be a congregant here.
May I ask, were your days in SLC those when the church affirmed the Curse of Ham, or post ’78 when God changed her mind?
H,
I must away to attend to a few chores today…away from the coast here in Oregon where I currently live (this does include another visit here today so don’t feel too badly for me and my to do list 😉 : https://seeingm.wordpress.com/2012/08/04/field-trip/ I always go THE DAY BEFORE their festival to avoid the crowds).
I look forward to addressing your question with more thought and more time available later. For now I will send this (as my little piggy heads off to the market) by sharing this bit of color filled background about my family: https://seeingm.wordpress.com/2013/08/03/clearing-the-floor/ . The quick answer is that I was born in Provo, Utah in 1970 and grew up on the Avenues overlooking SLC until age 17 when I the left home to attend Brigham Young University back in Provo. So yes, I ate the bacon before and after she made that particular sandwich. More to come 🙂 . -x.M
O.K. H. ❤
The Curse of Ham…well I was born into that one and if it had not been subject to “new revelation” in my childhood, I think it would have cause an earlier, deeper questioning of the religion when I was old enough to start doing so. I remember attending church the first Sunday after they made the change. At the time we had my “Uncle” Michael living with my family. He is an adopted uncle in the physical form of a beautiful man of African-American decent who was fresh back from the Vietnam war and living with my family whilst reorganizing himself on the transition back to civilian life. He had joined the LDS church while living in Hawaii and then moved to Utah to be closer to the hub of the church. I remember the first time he was allowed to pass sacrament at a church service (for those who do not know this similar to Catholic communion, but officiated by any “worthy” lay male members of the congregation over the age of 12 holding the priesthood). Most adults had tears streaming down their faces as I think this desired change was a long time coming for them…for me at age 8, I was just happy just to see a beloved family member be able to serve our congregation in a way that he had already unofficially been doing in his heart.
I often wonder how long it will take for “her” 🙂 to offer another new revelation and to give new direction with an addition to the spiritual lunch menu on the inclusion of monogamous gay people welcomed with open arms and full participation as well?! 🙂 (I energetically get the wisdom of abstinence until in a meaningful relationship, but I do not think God cares one wit who we choose to share our physical bits with as long as once we are awake enough, it is always done from a place of respect for the temple that they are part of and in a relationship focused on growth/ love). (Not just aimed at you H, but left on the trail for anyone reading who is interested: https://seeingm.wordpress.com/2013/06/08/sleeping-around-last-post-continued/ )
Women having access to officiate with “priesthood” power already came and went once in the history of the Mormon church. In Joseph Smith’s time, they had it and now they don’t. This never bothered me however as I looked around as a young girl and saw that the men seemed to need it to feel included, important and ok and I did not. lol I also was blessed to have a father who understood that it was not a power to be used to control, but rather a call to service and formal responsibility for developing a working relationship living with unconditional love in your life (which the women who surrounded him in his youth seemed to naturally have a bit more in abundance anyway. 🙂 ).
It seems you have done your homework or have had someone knock on your home front door with a message from Christ…knowledge of curse of Ham as the Mormon’s served it up at the buffet is fun to find. I have not yet had time to dive into your writing and story offered at your little electronic sanctuary of a blog, but I very much am looking forward to connecting as much or as little as you choose. My time available to engage here ebbs and flows as what is found on my table requiring time and focus shifts radically.
Please know that this blog is a pretty good judgement free zone and that I encourage others to question and speak their mind and disagree. Participation is never required, but always appreciated. Welcome to whatever reflections of home you find H 🙂 .
Thanks for directing the conversation deeper. -x.M
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for those who may not know:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrament_%28LDS_Church%29 -worthy males 12 or older can serve, 16 or older can bless it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priesthood_%28LDS_Church%29
It all sounds pretty decent from what you say M. Despite initial appearances, I’m not anti-theistic, and find the recent trend in that direction somewhat tedious, pointless, and in fact, damaging. There is quite enough polarity in the world without setting in-chain yet more – cultural wars, ‘clash of civilisations’ etc. Still, I think the American system of teaching creationism in public schools needs addressing as anachronistic and so the late Chris Hitchens served your nation well in that regard as a contrarian Englishman.
I’ve never been part of any religious affiliation; though I had a pretty intense engagement with a Buddhist monastery for 20 or so years in mid-life. That was all about seated practices though, not religious cosmology, which has never interested me. [I have far too wicked a past to be able to entertain such ideas. 😮 ] I do however, love to attend evensong at nearby Wells Cathedral on occasion; the choral music is world class there, and yet there are often only a handful of us in the intimate section known as the ‘Quire’ during the service.
As for Mormon’s who come knocking at my door, then I just tell them I’m Jewish (I’m not), and they vanish in a finger snap – this is a top tip for anyone who might be reading this.
And as for my own little blog M, I may as well say to you now that I really don’t think it’s going to be your cup of tea; and so there’s no need to express an interest or pound out some comments there as some sort of trade exchange – really, I have quite enough on my plate already in that regard. And just so as you know, I’m not into ingratiating myself into any little WordPress circles so that isn’t why I’m here. Even if that were to be my motivation, I would very soon end up being barred for my oh-so-English, and oh-so-uncontrollable contrarianism.
Right, what are you going to post in your next article? 😈
Just ‘avin a larf M. H. ❤
Appearances are always, all ways filtered through the eye that is seeing them, so I work hard to let love be the filter for what I see. The only wordpress circle that is important is the one that is shared in my next post…that of the unicycle of weird-oneness as it gathers together parts that were never really separate playing out in the field. I see your oh-so-uncontrollable English contrarianism 😉 and raise you a Darth Vader riding in my old neighborhood here in America. Loves, M
NExT pOsT: https://seeingm.wordpress.com/2014/07/19/awakening-on-my-airplane/
My brothers and I were frequently sent to our grandmother’s house far from our home in Puerto Rico for long stays…..never knew why, but looking back multiple attempts at rehab for the parental units is a likely explanation (they are dead now so I can’t ask them). My grandmother was a very strict pillar of the community, wife of the man who owned and ran the newspaper in a small West Virginia town. Every Sunday we were marched off to the utterly uninspiring and very white Presbyterian church service. One day when I was about 13, my conservative conformist grandmother told me I was now old enough to choose whether I wanted to continue with church or not. I chose to stay home that Sunday and all subsequent Sundays, much to the annoyance of my younger brother. That impacted and empowered me profoundly and I remember it clearly and gratefully all these years later.
Gracious the wisdom of choice! You are blessed to have had such a woman in your life. My grandmothers were both very strong women, but they never played enough of a role in my life to offer such guidance…this was partly because of my mother. My father’s mother was scared of my barracuda of a mum and her own mother and she clashed like oil and water so we did not see them that often growing up.
I will say this however, the only time I was ever homesick for my own home in my entire life was after visiting my mother’s mother once for two weeks in the summer. This grandma was not a bad woman at all, just not happy. I think her whole life she carried the torch for another man, but stayed with my grandpa feeling depressed and unfulfilled. In turn, my mother just imploded her marriage with my father to be with the man she carried a torch for (yes I am the one who found the secret letters between them hidden up on top of the cupboards in the laundry room!). Me, I just lovingly ended my first marriage before I started to look for the light of a place to share true love elsewhere. Traceable PROGRESS in the generations 🙂 . It ends this time with me and the cat though. If there is forced reincarnation, I am hopeful that I have a great niece or nephew somewhere in the future who crazy Aunt Mim (that would be me) has a bit of an impact on so there is a running start to come back in through if I find we must return 🙂 . -x.M
I much enjoyed the glimpses into your desert-wandering, M, both in the post and in the follow-ups. I think it is pretty amazing how you cultivated your inner voice and that the “elders” you met with were open enough to encourage you to follow it. That seems really great… at least from here.
Our starting points set us in motion, don’t they!? In the eighth grade after as many years of education in a Catholic school, I received the sacrament of confirmation in the Catholic church. My dad had the fortitude to ask me if it was something I really wanted, and despite perhaps wanting it for me at the time, seemed as though he felt it was a weightier decision than I might have been ready for… I decided inside of my self with my own little inadequate voice that it was a commitment to God, and not to an organization. My aunt, who is a nun, was my sponsor. Gulp. Ha!
In a funny way though I haven’t been to church in decades and my concepts of God and self and creation have all undergone revolutions as big as those that science underwent in the previous century, I don’t really feel inside that I have walked away from the promise that was made in the heart. And like the sentiments you offered at the outset, nor am I upset about the starting point I was given.
Life is beautiful.
Michael
I WANTED THE CATHOLIC CONFESSIONAL BEHIND THE SCREEN!!!!! Jealous 🙂 . We had to do it face to face (not a regularly scheduled thing, only for the “big” transgressions).
I also love the history of the Cathedrals in Europe. Such incredible architecture. I can sit for hours and hours in them and really feel the intent of hundreds of years of humans seeking to connect with the divine in those spaces (YES YES YES past the control and hype of the organization(s)!). I had an almost out of body experience sitting and listening to the organ in the Bath Abbey in England (now Protestant, but originally Catholic when built in 1500’s!!!). However, I have only ever had two panic attacks in my life. One on the high street in Glastonbury, England near the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey and the other was climbing to the roof at Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. If there is such a thing as past lives, I was not treated well by the Catholics at some point!
I completely agree about the promise of our hearts…still seeking to use the living of my life as the “hands” available for Christ like love and living as we bumble along together.
Yes, life is overwhelmingly beautiful.
-x.M
PS…blessings on your Aunt’s head. There is not a nun option in Mormonism, but I have had dreams about Marga and I trying to contain giggles across the dinner table from each other in a room made of grey stone in a silent cloistered setting of some type 🙂 …I think I was a bee keeper there in that dream world). I would adore the contemplative time and the rhythm of living with the liturgy of the hours to mark the passing of time with as a nun (now I do it with light in the rooms I am in rather than clocks 🙂 ). However, I like men too much for that to ever have really worked out on a long term basis xxx lol
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For those who have not ever been to Bath, here is a little taste. The acoustics of the space are amazing as your whole body vibrates when you sit and listen and then you look up to find “God” and see a stone ceiling that looks like the most delicate lace. Human beings and our creativity are amazing. I think of the peasants living in little stone huts and the feeling they must have had entering into a space like this in the 1500’s and having the sound of an organ blow them away. You can see how the church held such power for so long. I still think that God can be found in these places when “he” is remembered and comes back in the hearts of those who now enter through the doors 🙂 . (Ceiling shown at about 7 min in the video…if you have been there M, please feel free to skip, but I still am going to link for any others reading who would enjoy a little added visual/auditory layer!)
Bath Abbey is just a few miles from where I live. I had one of the most wonderful evenings of my life there experiencing a complete performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion – as you doubtless know, one of the most sublime musical works of Western Art. What made it all the more dramatic, was that a lady in the audience died during the interval; she just slumped to her death right there on the pew across the aisle from me. What a great way to go – I should be so lucky.
Lovely lady, I got chills running through my whole body while reading this share. I had seen somewhere that you listed yourself as living in Glastonbury. I spent almost three weeks with your beautiful area as my home base for exploring the English countryside from in 2009. I picked up a car at Heathrow and immediately headed to Somerset (the visions of tying up roses in the garden to save them from the wind in the movie “Room With A View” had stayed with me 🙂 )
Fun factoid: I have only had two panic attacks ever in my life and one of them began on the sidewalk right around Burns The Bread 🙂 on the high street there and culminated in HAVING TO SIT DOWN on a bench outside the Glastonbury Abbey to steady myself and to focus on the ability to continue breathing.
My visit to your area was also during the time that a “Goddess” conference was on in the town (which I did not attend other than to join in a group gathering where they vocalized a rainstorm together using hands and voices and to join the participants in a parade up the high street to the Chalice Well and then on to the Tor). A few days before all this I had met my husband for the first time face to face in a crop circle that had appeared the morning after he arrived on the farm of a B & B he was staying at in Ogbourne Saint Andrew. Now the second time I was to met him, it was as he was standing watching me climb up to meet him at the Tor. I adore the tradition to help with the gate up for the person behind you as you give them a kiss on the cheek and I COULD LIVE IN THE GARDEN AT THE WELL AND NEVER LEAVE!!!!!!!!
You will find that I can very much entertain and dance with the woo woo of this world, but I am at the end of the day no new age space bunny. For example, one of my favorite people of British ilk is physicist Peter Russell…his thoughts on light make my heart sing: https://seeingm.wordpress.com/2013/01/26/last-post-too-woo-woo/ (Post the day before this???—YES BACH 🙂 https://seeingm.wordpress.com/2013/01/26/composing-me-outside-in-today/ ) I consider myself a grounded woo woo dancer 🙂 …I attempt to leave at least a toe in the game on terra-firma at all times.
I will close this brief, yet more detailed introduction to M, with a picture taken from the secret special M spot I found in Glastonbury near where I was staying (just north west of the high street). Each night I would hike out into the fields by a little stream (I love the way you climb over the fences on a little step through maze/ladder) and watch the sunset. You live in a magic and special spot on this planet. — I could go on and on about my love for your neck of the woods…like the first place N (my husband Neil) and I stayed under the same roof together (separate rooms of course as all proper English gentlemen will insist on 🙂 ) being in Bradford Upon Avon at Teasel Cottage… good gracious I need to quit before I bore you to death.
-x.M
Well…I will give you a deeper peek at my hubby and part of our story of meeting face to face. Is told beginning at 1 hr 32 minutes in. Please DO NOT feel obligated to watch. Just leaving layers of the trail. Probably should actually write a post about this at some point from my perspective…inspiration to do so I give gratitude to you for, H!
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Ok and just for fun…
Wonderful women…lots of color, but little substance seen on the surface. However, who can judge harshly those who enjoy a good reason to dress up and put flowers in their hair? It is my experience that the deep meat always stays quietly away from speaking up at conferences 🙂 Goddess Conference in the garden for the well:
🙂 Yes yes yes H…a spectacular death indeed.
Finding it hard but fascinating keeping up with you M; my ancient brain currently being challenged from all quarters of the world (new to the blogging thing – so totally bloody clueless).
Have followed your various links and watched the suggested 40 mins. of hubbies’ conference. I love that neck of the woods – the Marlborough Downs – and always feel very . . . er . . . something(!), when I’m there. I also know Bradford on Avon extremely well and all but lived there for several years.
What caused the panic attack outside Burns the Bread? Was it the price of their pasties? You ACTUALLY HAD TO SIT DOWN to get over it? Seriously though, those panic attacks are no fun; a friend of mine had them for 3 or 4 years before he shook them off. What are they about – is it a chemical imbalance or something that’s caused by certain thoughts? I must look into it later.
The Goddess conference always lends the town a particular kind of buzz; all those wonder-women wafting airily around the place in their parachutes-cum-dresses! And the people at the Chalice Well are lovely indeed – very generous and open I’ve found. If you do something for them they insist on repaying you twofold in some way or other.
I watched a few minutes of the Peter Russell video and realised I’d seen it before elsewhere so I guess somehow or other I’d got from it a little piece of his message previously; though I confess I can’t recall quite what it was. Thank you for the reminder in any case M.
Good of you to post the video of the St. Matthew Passion – I have just pushed ‘play’ as I write now, and as ever, my throat constricts and tears are welling-up in my eyes at this very moment. How can human beings do this – I mean the performance? And how can a single human being create this? There are no answers; just wonder. Just had to stop . . . 8 mins. in and still in tears . . .
H, or if that’s too familiar, just ‘A-itch’ ❤
Your panic attack question can be answered on many different levels and really could take a whole post in itself to explain in relation to my experience and understanding. Before becoming a flight attendant, for 15 years I worked as a clinical therapist so I got to take a look at this particular human experience up close and personal in many different lives.
In my cases, I think my body was releasing repressed and unconscious trauma of our shared humanity. Have you ever walked into a room where people have been arguing and immediately can feel tension related to what has just gone on in the space even though you did not witness it in the moment of it happening? I think in my two experiences (the other one happened when I was climbing the stairs to the roof at St Peter’s Basilica in Rome with my dad on my first visit to the Vatican) were like that just not as linked to the passing of immediate linear time. I have not ever been physically/sexually abused in my conscious memory as M, but I had witnessed it and I do not consider myself to be actively seeking to develop any specific psychic/extrasensory abilities (which btw I think are naturally occurring and available to any human being), but something about what had happened to me at the Challis Well and walking to the Tor and having spent weeks and weeks on that ancient land in England had activated some collective human psychic memory which overwhelmed my physical system. My husband Neil had just left after our second face to face meeting and it was like having half of my physical cells go on strike at his newly found physical proximity moving away, combined with being on a land that holds so much history of human life and loss. This is when a heart attack feeling and inability to breathe hit me again out of the blue. If I had not sat down and put my head between my hands and my hands down on my knees, I would have passed out there on the street. The Rome experience was 19 years ago and that was 5 years ago now and it has not happened since.
Other times with on going run of the mill panic attacks, I think individuals are having an overload of what Eckhart Tolle describes in his work as their personal pain body coming home to their conscious awareness. ANY time we live unauthentically it takes a tremendous toll on the physical body to support the daily doing of the actions we are creating to keep a false story going with. Anxiety builds and stress accumulates as a result, and just like spontaneously physically throwing up when our system detects an ingested poison, panic attacks are a way for the psyche to get our attention and physiologically do a mind/body purge of sorts. Something we are doing in the living of our lives is not in alignment and our “spirit” “soul” “higher awareness” “unconscious” is trying to press the eject button for those behaviors with the forcing of a dramatic physical pause. The human body cannot lie. It is doing what it is doing. It is in the meanings we assign to our living in these physical bodies that is where the disconnections take place. The body is just trying to get our attention with the only “voice” it has available for communicating about it’s desire for our change/growth. In severe cases where this disavowal has been going on for a long time, medication can help return the body to create a neutral space for starting of a life reboot. However long term usage to manage the symptoms is such a shame because it is muting the body’s request for our change at the root causal levels.
Bit simplistic these explanations, but it is a starting point for conversation.
So happy also to have given you a layer of sound to stir emotion and be the accompaniment for “A-itch” to be scratched 🙂 . -x.M
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Not offered as “the” answers, but things to consider for any who are interested in diving deeper:
http://www.traumahealing.com/somatic-experiencing/
Wow! What great stories and connections emerging here. I am honored to be in attendance here amidst this swirl of beauty. Hariod’s story gave me goose bumps, and it was a treat to see N in action and glimpse his authenticity in action.
You may be bemused to know most confessions I made during my time as a practicing Catholic did not involve screens… 😦 Desks and chairs mostly, as the churches my family attended were often young parishes that gathered for mass in rented office buildings or newly constructed (on a budget) churches.
My mother, too, spent a few of her younger years in a convent, but that obviously didn’t last. It was, in part, a way out of a difficult situation. I think when you look at religion without any pre-conceptions or judgment, it has played a unique role in each who has contacted it, like everything we experience. No matter the context, our experiences strike me as rungs on a ladder, and it takes profound mastery to recognize the ladder is almost never leading to the places it seems based upon the immediate context. It’s like the immediate context is important, but somehow Spirit is able to organize our every move into a far greater whole than we are able to envision at the time.
Much brotherly love,
Michael
Such wise and eloquent reminding words. This is a quick share from a small online archive of travel pics (purged my life and hard drive of most pictorial archives to focus on living in the present, but these are the dregs leftover from a now defunked forum I used to participate on). The front of Bath Abbey:
Climbing JACOBS LADDER featured prominently on the facade. I LOVE IT! -x.M
OMG!!! It’s so good Maren that I read your posts more then once!!! We have walked already some pars t of the same path on the road! Glanstonbury, Bradford upon Avon, the well, etc!!! Lief (aka Cloud) – imagen my amazement of your next post/photo, – and I been there too! Ciao Sista!!! Isn’t that amazing? P x
Amazing and at the same time not as we are broadcasting the same songs of living and are gathering to the concert and to ourselves our deeper kin and family afoot upon the planet at this time. Of course you have been to all the “hot spots” you hottie you P! -x.M
This is a very Irish reply 🙂 . “You’re not to bad yourself, girl”! (replying to the last part ) LOL…It’s true we are similar birds of the same specie! 🙂 Keep singing wonderful M…Still gadda read your last 3 songs…I’m on me wey…( is my favorite Irish phrase ) Love P x