The Guy in This Photo

We are Compelled to Help those in need, namely and specifically when it seems like there is no help for them. Sometimes, where it is that we think we know who would do this…helping…thing…we know nothing. Tattoos and a foul mouth are not indicators of the depth of Unconditional Love.

The large human being with that small animal is a member of the heavy metal rock band Slayer. MANY people who are (ahem) “spiritual leaders” in our midst happen to believe that the people like the man in this picture are somehow not good humans, enough so that the God to whom those judgmental people kneel to will end up, by reason of the idea that someone like this person in this picture is not “saved” or “born again,” that guys like this guy are going to, regardless of how much good they do in this world, burn in this…hell…that most of us were raised being terrified with, by well-meaning parents, and of, because until we stepped out of our self-imposed comfort zones, we had no idea that if a person looks like the guy in this picture, it means that he is a bad person who will not help others. He has tattoos and he plays loud rock music and I am betting he is even an expert at the colloquial use of profanity.

That this is likely all the truth is one thing, but, that there are people who will judge this gentle giant for his appearance alone is the reason that this blog is being written today.

You see, I have a certain affinity for people who outwardly appear as this gentleman in this photo with this small animal does, because for the most part, these sort are the very sort who are willing to do the very most for those who can truly do nothing for themselves, who have no ability for words, who cannot, on their own, let the world know, regardless if animal or human, know that they are in need.

We humans seem to believe, at least a whole lot of us do, that the way a person presents themselves in terms of their outward appearance is the only thing that matters. This is a really sad, really ignorant energy in our world – we are still, a whole lot of us, allowing what another person’s store-bought appearance tells us and we are more inclined to think in the manner that is our always being in charge, namely if that is what we actually are (“in charge”), and we carry out that thought to these types of people who are actually very lovely people.

I know this.

For sure.

I am one of these sorts of people, and the only people, for the most part, that tend to gravitate toward me are these sort.

They are tatted out.

They play very loud music.

They are profane in more ways than one.

I am, as well.

What they also are is loving in an unconditional way, are gratuitous in many more ways than only one, are creative, not only in their manner of employ, but more, in their manner of life, period. They are typically artistic, meaning that they are also highly intuitive and able to tap into the grander energy of the All That Is and able, too, to be very, very empathetic towards those who they know…(ahem) “WE” know…cannot, for whatever reason, speak for themselves, meaning that in a certain way, they also cannot do things for themselves.

And the ugliest part of all of this beautiful Unconditional Love given to the world by anyone at all is that there is a segment of society which is not only religious, but there are also those within that segment (who actually are NOT religious) who seem to think that it is not this moment that matters, this moment when someone like the guy in the photo who is expressing love to a creature that absolutely thrives on it, and more, that what this gentle giant is doing right in this moment in this snapshot.

And we are all meant to do this thing that this man in this photo is doing. Yet, there are some on this planet for whom the past, for whom the outer appearance of a person, for whom everything that can no longer be changed, because it is in the past, means more than does what anyone would be doing, for themselves or for others, because in that past, there is one thing that no one thinks about and that one thing is control.

And really, to try to have control over someone else because of what we assume that they’d done, perhaps a very long time ago, still matters now in terms of who that one person became to this point only tells me that the person who is judging these do gooders, these people whose outward appearance, whose lives are a bit chaotic through no energy of their own that could have been avoided – yeah…these people who need that control and who need someone to be better than are the very people who dearly need to read this post. I don’t usually like calling others out, namely not in the writings that are meant to shed light on things, namely not when I am writing about healers and how it is that healers come into our lives in all sorts of different ways and in all sorts of different outer appearances. They come into our lives as those who are as broken as we are, and they show us their real selves through the actions that they take on behalf of those who The Christ defined as being “the least of us.”

This did not and does not mean that what Christ was talking about in using that phrase that he was telling us all that those we think are beneath us, we are required to assist. What he meant was that those who are not as fortunate as a whole lot of us do not realize we are – those are the beings with whom we share the air that need us to do things for them in the most unconditional manner that we can. When we are helping others, the most joyful thing that we can do is to do it all willingly, without expectation that we will be rewarded for the things that we were born to do in this lifetime, which is simply be the example of Love, of being one giant global family, of making certain that we know we need to be there when no one else is able to be.

 

Judge Not…unless you are willing to be judged the same way and with the same harsh energies

Now…NOW I am going to let people who deserve it, have it.

I do not know why it is that people are judged primarily on things like (of course) the past (namely because that keeps those people who are no longer those past-people), or what they look like, or really, most of all, what it is that we do not want to let ourselves see as being the truth NOW. Now is the most important thing of all, in terms of helping others or our needing help from others. When we are in need, and we are already hurting, and we are already feeling like we are at the very bottom of the barrel in terms of having to listen, one more time, to others (and it is usually those who we have known for the majority of our lives) the last thing that anyone wants to hear is that somehow, we are not worthy to be helped, and we are not trusted because of something that we have yet to have been forgiven for and that happened a very long time ago.

When we are not willing to help others without our conditions being met, we are not helping – we are judging. It is not our place in life to judge why it is that anyone else will need help from us. We are meant to help them, period. We are not meant to be the one who plays God in our own universe and we are not meant to expect that people in need will just conform to our ideals of who they feel like they need us to be. Things that are supposed to help, at that point, become a noose for those who are already in a state of mind where one more little thing that damages their emotional selves will be the one thing that also makes them turn on someone else. By this I do not mean they will turn on someone else in a violent manner. I mean that they will turn away from us, and for the most part, if those who judge rather than care and those who condemn even as they know the things we go through are not that great could place themselves in the soul-space of others, just for one short moment, and become empathetic towards them and stop judging them, we might be able to heal ourselves lots faster than we do already.

The Ego-Self Does NOT Rank Higher than the Soul (And it never will, no matter who thinks what)

Think what you will, but the truth is that we are not this body, are not this experience in this body but that for sure, we are the Soul.

I know…the ego-self is part of the soul, and is the part that can be referred to as being our “game face,” and the unfortunate part of this is that the majority of us live from the ego-self and truly, it is time for the Soul to come out and have its place in the Sun. As much as we want to be seen as what we think we are, who we are for real comes through very prominently and who we are is not this…darkness…of the Soul that a lot of us wants to believe that we are. We cannot continue on with the idea that we have in our heads that who and what we are is somehow the only game in town because it is not.

We think we know others well enough to get them to a point where what it is that we do not know and are merely guessing about will matter the most, but nothing that hurts matters at all if all it does and all it is meant for is to hurt someone else without the idea that maybe they do not need to hurt more. They need to heal. The truth of the matter is that when we seek to do harm to others, no matter how small we might think it is, the reality is that we are not harming them, but rather and only harming ourselves. Sure, there is hurt on either side, but the hurt that lasts the longest is the hurt that was meant to hurt someone else. NO one escapes it when it is meant.

This is how Karma works.

This is how Life from the Soul, out, also works.

This is, no matter who wants to believe what, how we end up with what we have in our lives or, is how we have brought to others the things that we wanted to see them go through, good or bad. When it is bad, we have to look out for the things that we are not thinking are going to happen – to them OR to us, and we also have to watch ourselves in terms of what we think WILL happen, so that we do not give too much energy to those things and more, so those things will not happen if they do not need to happen.

This is why balance in our lives is so important. This is why when we see people who look like the guy in the photo, we have to stop ourselves from the thoughts that are always there and prominent in terms of peoples’ outer appearance, and also, why it is that we have to learn to forgive at least ourselves. The reason that we need to forgive ourselves is so that we can also know how to forgive others and so that we do not have to live in the heaviness that is not ours to carry.

The reason that I think we are hard to forgive others is because we are so busy being angry at ourselves for not having been aware enough to see the lesson coming that when it came to us, we were slapped hard with what was the truth, even if it was not our own truth, and that is when it sucks the most -because people are glued to old ways and patterns and are not giving themselves or anyone else the chance to grow out of that. That we do this is one thing, but that we do it to other people shows me and ought to show anyone else where it is that we should be focusing our own healing measures on until we are able to get ourselves to that point where we can let go of the things that hurt us.

The guy in the photo is a beautiful human being, no matter who wants to judge otherwise.

In fact, the only time that a human being is not this lovely is when said human being cannot allow themselves to rise above the slings and arrows that others have shot into them over the years. Most of the time, when someone judges us and we know it is not the truth, it is because THEY have to maintain that level that they keep anyone else on or else if anyone else rises above it, those who judge HAVE TO figure out how to either rise to the level that they now deem these others as being at, or, (this is the one they hate the very most) they have to accept what is the actual truth.

Accepting the truths of others, truths that are good ones and that we did not create, for a whole lot of us, is a difficult thing and is so because then what must happen is that those who want to believe the not-so-great stuff have to learn to accept it that way. Lots of time, they never do, rather and only preferring to stay “safe” in the ugliness that they have created in their own heads about perfectly lovely and Unconditionally Loving people.

The only thing that I can say about those who judge is…go for it…judge others harshly…

As per usual…it will be your loss…

I said it, so deal with it…

I Love You All !

ROX

#LosAngelesKahuna  #TheCrabAndTheFish  #PuckingIrishGuyRockShop 

 

The Spiral

Things are happening in the manner that we would rather that they not. Believe it when I state that we are all going through this same sort of thing – this thing that sucks and hurts and makes us not want to complete the lesson we are each and all currently learning

I do not have the right to tell anyone else how to feel. I never have. The only thing that I can say to anyone who is, at this moment, feeling like I am (which is not that great in terms of things happening around me) is that it is not going to last forever, this bullshit that we are all going through and the very same said bullshit that seems like at every turn that more bullshit is just heaped onto the pile and we are left helpless to what appears as being the whims of the Universe (or something otherworldly with bad intentions).

And for the most part, I am “outing” myself, specifically for a few people who I share a seriously real soul-bond with, because I am finding out that we are all going through something that is similar in nature, and not one of us feels like we are able to get through this without our trying hard to do things that ultimately would bring harm to us each, even if what we don’t realize that we are truly desiring is just an end to all of this bullshit.

I must also state, as well, that, whether anyone sees it, believes it, knows it…I, too, am going through a whole lot right now, and not one bit of it has a thing to do with people within my soul-tribe and all of it has to do with me and how I feel about anything at all, namely those who are right there with me, in spirit, going through all of this shit, the each of us on our own, but not one of us believing that we have to do this by ourselves.

For the last couple of weeks, we have all gone through this terribly emotional energy, and all of it sucks, with exception to the things that we know are the very truth of us and that are shared with others. In my case, it is the terror of being abandoned, one more time, and my not being able to survive it as well as I thought I have to this point. I have serious abandonment issues. It seems when my own chips are down, so are everyone else’s, and because of my line of work, it is an automatic thing for me to put aside what it is that I need, mostly need to say, that is, and try to help anyone else make sense of anything that they, themselves, are going through. If I stopped my emotional self for a moment and look at things in the manner that the patterns have come into fruition, I would see there, for sure, that the things that are coming out of my mouth and the things that I want to see happen are right in line with each other, even as it may well feel otherwise.

The thing that I know I am feeling is called “resistance,” and what it can be described as is that thing that causes a knot in our diaphragm and makes us just want to no longer breathe, makes us want to curl up in a ball and not see the light of day for a while. I know this feeling. I am in that energy myself and no matter how many lovely things happen on one day, it seems that no matter what I, myself, do, whatever it is that needs to be addressed at this time will not ever stop rearing its ugly head. No matter what I do to resist the things that I am feeling right now, no matter what it is that I think I am sensing and no matter what I want to believe, this whole bunch of shit is meant for one reason.

Spiritual Awakening on a collective level

I forget, a lot, namely when I am in the throes of what seems to not have the ability to just leave me be, in my life and apart from the one person who means the very most to me that while I am in the position that I am (#LosAngelesKahuna), I find out that not even folks whose work in this lifetime is of a healer’s place in life, I, too, am still in that place where there are still things and facets of myself and my old ego-self which need to be addressed, through Love and Unconditional caring for my own Soul-Self. You see, folks like me (Light Workers, Seekers, Seers, Prophets, Alchemists, Magicians, Etc), we tend to see things from the point of view that is unselfish, all loving, abiding all that is the good within us, and most of the time, we do so with extreme caring and and absolute depth of Love.

When, however, it comes to ourselves, we are more inclined to have an “ego-self” reaction rather than a human response to the question of “Why is this happening to me and why do I feel like I am all alone in it?”

The answer is simple, even though the reality of going through this mess is the hardest thing for us all to do – that answer is that we are being prepared, through this calamity, to get out into the world so that we can be there for others who are going to go through these things. Whether you want to believe me or not, this is the truth. I know this is the truth because lately, and after I told the last suited manchick CEO to take a hike, while I was not better off for the income part of it, I was and remain WAY better off for no longer having to deal with that person OR others like them. In choosing to no longer be thought of as the “friend you (she) can (could) buy,” I chose my freedom from that feeling like that one person made me feel for a very long time. I know that I am a good friend. I also know that I am a good Spiritual Healer. I know, too, that when it comes to the things that are not ably nor easily explained by me to anyone (unless they hold a very real, a very Divinely placed closeness with them and them with me) else, I am being taught a lesson that one day, I will encounter the people for whom it was that I endured what it is that I am currently and have been enduring for too long already.

The You Who Is Currently in Manifest

I repeat myself often with this one, and most of the time it is because I am reminding me of how truly far I have come in what might seem like forever but was not. I could sit here and tell anyone at all that what I have gone through is cause for me to either continue to allow what I don’t show the entire world is my pain, or, I can look at what it is that I am trying to deal with in so desperate a manner at times that I am markedly ashamed of the things that I have said, of the things that I have daydreamed myself doing to one other shameful person, of all of the things that I have thought and believed as put forth by that one person and that I have listened to for a very, very large portion of my life.

When I think about how it is that other people, again, with one person in particular always, and without prompting, says to me, and I think, too, about what the one person who I am manifesting OUT of my life, has manipulated me to believe throughout the majority of my adult life. I could lie and tell anyone at all that I am over it all, but, that would not be giving credit to the idea that what I have gone through and what I am doing FOR myself now is the balance between extremes that not a whole lot of people can tolerate. I have said it, again and again, that the tears I cry (like the ones that are falling from my eyes right now…yes…now…even as I write this…and it is all because I feel so fucking stuck in the miry mess that is my life when I would rather be in the company, always, of that one other person who I refer to as the Maestro) are not for nothing – they are telling me that there is a lot that I have yet to release from me and they are telling me that I am okay to hurt, that I am okay to desire what it is that I now know for sure is in manifest.

That which the Third Eye sees is That which is in Manifest (On the good side of things)

When we daydream, what we are actually doing is called visualization.  Most folks don’t realize that when we actually and truly desire an outcome, while it takes a little bit of time, whatever it is that we both desire and believe usually happen for us. It can be something small that is an immediate fruition (meant to show us our power) or, if it is something big and in your desires there is anyone else with you (and who does not know what it is that you want for and with them in terms of your manifestations), know now that what it is that you are seeking with that one person or those other people will take a little longer. However, what all of all of this strange stuff that I write about, at least in terms of this writing, is that in order to have what we see through our visualizations, and whatever it is that we truly desire, and whatever it is that we also truly believe we will have is exactly what we will end up with.

When I manifest anything, or even set out to do so, the first thing that I do is I say a few words to Spirit, and in those words I (try to) remind myself that what it is that I desire the most is already in manifest. The luck for me in all of this weirdness is that I am a Pisces, and as such, I already believe in the truth of the things in manifest for me, that are good, that will bring me joy (I already proved it to myself back in Feb. 2014…and I indeed got EXACTLY what I desired, more than I desired, because I was right in 1993, like I am right at this time in 2016) and that will be that thing called permanent. Lots of other things have come into my awareness, and even though I am feeling pretty ..bad…right now, and have been for a very long time, it does not mean that I have nothing to look forward to. What it means is that right now, when we are all in this crap together and when it is that we are all believing that this is the end of ourselves, what it actually is is the beginning of our new selves, with these new lives that we have called into being, with these people who, in a very short time, have come to mean the very most to us.

I have been told for years that anything worth having in one’s life is worth the crap that we have to go through in order to see to it happening. I know that there is a lot going on outside of me that carries the potential to make me revert to the old me, and the only reason that this would happen is because that part of me is what aches right now, and it aches for no reason other than that it is now time that I do all I can to part ways with that part of me. It is not that I do not Love every piece of who I am. It is more that I know that with everything happening in my life that are both good as well as not good at all, what is happening when I feel a certain way and that I am not feeling from my other half is another part of me that is begging to be both acknowledged, embraced and released from me, because really, that person needs to not be called back into my awareness because that part of me (“that person”) and her presence is no longer in use. This does not mean that from time to time I will not call her out for help, but, when that happens, even that “old”
part of me will not appear to me like she does now.

Like she does now, while I am sure that she is here and rearing herself to my psyche for a very good reason, right now the only reason that I am sure she is revisiting me is to remind me that she needs to be dismissed, not dissed, but just released into the Universe so that when I need that part of me again (typically when I tell people that I need to “flip the bitch switch”), and when I ask her to rear her frenetic self, she will not be that hard to excuse back to wherever it was that she chose to be during the times that I do not need her, which is a whole lot these days.

Before I go off to write another thing in the other Mana’o Blog

One last, probably drawn out bunch of words…the last thing that any one of us needs to do is more fretting (and no, I am not talking about of the guitar sort). The more that we fret, and the more that we tell ourselves that we can fix things, the more that we will try to and the more that we will try even harder to resist the feelings that we, ourselves, have allowed to crop up.

The way that we get out of this shit is to go headlong into it. There really is no other way. We have to become, myself very much included, braver than we have ever in the past. We have to think of this time in our lives as being the time in our lives that we, ourselves, have called into being, not realizing that when we asked to become more aware, we were also asking that all those things and ways of being that will no longer serve who we are or what we are here for will take us right back through this corn-field maze of confusion and strife and I am positive that none of us wants to go through this shit again. I know that I am not willing to go through the pain that I have gone through for the bulk of my adult life. Because I know this, I have been presented with other, more tolerable pains that I have been presented with for a very long time now. It is hard for me to think apart from how my ego-self feels right now, hard for me to want to sit here and go through more of the same bullshit, even though that I also know that in doing so, I will ultimately no longer have to deal with the particular bullshit that I am currently going through because once I am aware of how I react to it all, and once I have seen to it that I will see things differently, I can also see, very clearly, the end result – and the end result that my mind’s eyes see will pale in comparison to the reality.

Whether you believe it or not, the truth is that the things that we go through that hurt the most are indicative, on the other side of that scathing pain, of the blessings that we are not aware of that are on their way to us, even and at the same time that this bullshit is going on. This is happening because while it is that we are aware of what is hurting us and while it is that we are going through this pain right now, what we are forgetting is that everything that is going on that sucks also has an equal “thing” going on in reciprocation and that thing is the thing that we each and all have been manifesting on the singular level. I have a hard time looking at things through my piscean rose-colored glasses, because really, I am only that rose-colored glasses wearing person when it comes to things that I am manifesting in terms of my working life. Everything else – namely my relationships – are absolutely rock solid. What is NOT rock-solid are the tangibles in my life. The reason that I now absolutely believe that they are like this is because my ego-self would not allow me to see past what did not work for me or work out for me in the past in terms of work.

Then one day I became very clear as to what it was that I wanted to do with all of these words, and all of this schooling, and all of the pain that I have chosen to turn into my own war wounds and pain that became my medicine and  that remind me of not only where I have been in this lifetime, but more, that I made it out of those times that literally could have ended my physical life as I knew it and know it. It is difficult for me to see myself, or at least who I used to be, as the casualty, but I know that that person is indeed the casualty. If it means that I do not get to have things as easy as that person made it all seem to be, then that is what it means, but I know, too, that ease that is permanent is better, as I am sure I am not the only one finding out this one truth. I know, as well, that who I was is no longer the person who I have become. I know that I asked for myself to be more streamlined, and in that process, streamlining is hard to do when I have two sides of my own self tugging at me for more relevance in terms of my life right now.

My life right now, with exception to one part of it, is in flux. All of the right people are in place, and I know that they are the right ones, because in certain areas of all of their lives, they are experiencing things that are anything but easy. Reading this, you might believe that I am making light of all of their plights right now, but I am not. What I am actually doing is reminding every single one of them (and they each know who they are) that we are all in this together, even though we each are fighting, everyday, a very scathing singular battle. None the less, the thing that tells me we are each and all right on track and where we actually need to be in order to learn the thing that we have had presented to us.

The reason why it is that this happens at what seems to be, and usually is, the most inopportune of times is that we are more ready to take it all on than we are to just let it all be. We all want to be the person who came away with all of our selves in full tact but what even I have not addressed is that I did not get to this point on my own, that I will continue to have this dream in my mind because what I know is there and waiting to become is right within our reach. It is right there, guys. These losses and all this pain is meant to teach us, not how to escape it, but, how to use the aches, the pains, the things that are plaguing us all the time, right this moment, to our better advantage.

This really is the truth. I don’t say or write things for the sake of anything other than allowing a bit of Grace to those who mean the very most to me.

Guys…I promise…our day is approaching where all of the beauty that we have seen and that we have been manifesting, even through this bullshit that we are all getting through better than we want to believe we are, is ours.

All we are supposed to do now is make it through this last part of all of this. I never promised to anyone at all that returning to our place as higher beings was going to be easy.

However, I remain steadfast in reminding us all that the pain we each are feeling now will be matched on the other side of that ..and that bliss we are all manifesting right now will be the only thing that we will not only recognize, but also, truly the only thing, through our brilliance and the empowered people who we are, we will recognize as being normal. even though so many of us within the tribe that I call mine are each and all going through some seriously painful stuff.

Remain steadfast…”Onipa’a…” Stand tall….be brave…

We’re almost there

I Love You All

ROX

#LosAngelesKahuna #TheCrabAndTheFish #PuckingIrishGuyRockShop

 

Let it Be…

As humans, we are empathetic towards those who are closest to us. Most of us want to help our loved ones get through the hard times in their lives. Yet, sometimes, we just need to Let it Be and Let them Be, knowing fully that Spirit will carry them through the Storm…

Lots of us are going through a LOT right now, myself included. Along with me, the majority of those within the confines of my Soul Family (My Tribe, as I refer to them…hi guys…I Love You!) and who I share a very dear bond of closeness with are also, at the same time that I am, going through what seems so monumental that to get past it all feels like it will take forever or that we will die from this awareness before all is said and done. I so know what this feels like, because I am in the middle of it, myself. I am not alone in this mess, either, and while it is that I know this, it doesn’t make it feel any different. I still wake up everyday, thinking the same thoughts that I have thought for some time now, and I still wait, patiently even, for the day when this will all be a memory.

There are a few within my inner circle who I want to help, who I regularly reach out to and offer it. There are even fewer who I spend a bit of time with who are going through a whole hell of a lot more than anyone else I know. They feel like they are losing who they are, when in reality, what is happening is that they are being given the opportunity, through all of this crap, to polish, refine, perhaps even create an entirely new version of who they are, if to no one else, to their very selves.

It all feels and is so very daunting, the idea that every time that any one of us wakes up in the morning, that we have to face all of the ugly things that we have been facing, lots of us, for months, and others of us, like me, years…decades, even.

There are times, as I stated in my introduction, that we want to reach out, to be sympathetic, to help and to do something rather than just be there for them. Sometimes, which, I know very well, there are things within that energy that is heavy and awful and living within the bones of our souls that we just have to be with, to learn from and to ache because of, because without it, we have no inner drive, no motivation, no energy to get it gone. I know that there are a few people reading this who are nodding their heads in disagreement, who are thinking that I must be nutty or even in denial, but I am not.

I am not in denial about a thing in terms of us each knowing what is going to help us along on the Path that we are traveling. I am neither in denial in regards to there being times in the lives of those who we share our lives with who really just need us to Be there for them, and let them Be in the energy that is all of this craziness, not for any other reason than that they can, through the mechanism of their soul, fuel their feet to make it the distance they need to go.

You see, not all of us will do things in the manner that others will. 

We are not alike. We have a lot of similarities, and we might have a whole lot in common, but, this does not mean that the way that we handle how we are feeling is going to be alike.

I don’t handle my “stuff” the same way that my other half does. (Of course, it is because of our genders being opposite that this is so…that, and he is who he is, I am who I am, and while the twain do meet, there are going to be things that are not alike – handling how we feel about any given thing is where the fine line is drawn.) I don’t handle my stuff like my best girlfriends do (even though we go to one another to make sense of things). I don’t handle my stuff like anyone else, and no one else handles their stuff like I handle mine.

This simply means that when the chips are down, and we are not feeling like we want to, when there is an issue that only we, ourselves, can tend to, those who constitute as being closest to us typically want to reach out, but sometimes, it is one of those times in our lives when we are learning something. That something is usually a lesson that we are learning, NOT because Spirit hates us, even though that is what it feels like, but rather and only that we are being given the opportunity to shine through the murkiness, given the opportunity to prove to ourselves that we are every bit as awesome as we have been told we are but that perhaps we are not wanting or simply have a big issue with believing.

Sometimes, people need the bullshit, because sometimes, it is the bullshit that is the fuel for inspiration. Sometimes, the bullshit is the medicine that we do not realize is actually making us more bad ass than we will ever recall being, and it is all because we were also bad ass enough to believe that what other people are saying to us is the truth. Today began as a really very good day for me. The moment that I left my last class for the day was when the shit hit the fan. There was a loss in the family. Then came the question that I get asked by the one person who should know better. Then came the idea that the thing that I could not begin to handle at this time in my life was presented to me in a manner that it is always handed to me: on the sly, through someone else, and this time the someone else was a person who calls me “Mom.” The look on her face was that of anger, of fear, of being tired beyond anything else, and really, what I was looking at was my own face.

Tears streamed down both of our faces, and they were not the sort of tears that soothed, but rather and only kept the fire burning, all the way to a rage, to the point where there would be no turning back if what I’d heard becomes real. Rather than think, the person who thought it was a good idea did not think past trying to save someone else, but it would have been at the expense of my sanity. While I know that there is still the risk of this thing that I was presented with happening, when I think about it in another manner, I find that really, it won’t happen – simply and only because it would be the very worst thing to happen in terms of my own well-being. If what I was told happens, it will not be a good thing. I will remain in therapy, and the person who started this madness will not think tha they are a huge part of the reason why I am still there.

And seriously, right this moment, there are only a very few people on this planet who would be able to help in that manner, and they each know who they are. Thing is – each of them are also right in this same energy that I am, and I have no business even thinking that maybe it would be okay to lean on them. It won’t be. I can’t. It isn’t fair to them. So, instead, I simply just return to that place that is uniquely mine.

Within

Within.

We all have a place called “within.”

When we are feeling like nothing will ever change, and when it feels like we have to return to the same vomitous days that continue to repeat themselves, continue to make us nutty with thoughts that we know we would not think if things were not the way that they are now, we can retreat to that place where no one who is not invited there can be. That place is called within.

Within is where we are the safest, and it is the one place where we will find peace and time to think and ponder the things that are happening to us and in our daily lives. Within is that place where we have complete control, where we can go, again and again, not to escape the pain of living, but to embrace it and talk to it and tell it that we have learned what we will from it and then peacefully excuse it from our lives. As easy as it sounds, I know better than to doubt it’s power (Hey, I am still human and I am still going to do things like any other human being would, including have a snit from time to time, cry a whole lot because things happening around me are not that great, rage sometimes because people can be shitty and unthinking more than we give them credit for being), but I also know that it is the only thing that really works sometimes.

When we want to and need to be by ourselves for a few days, and when we know that we are not going to be our best or highest selves, and we cannot run from what is harming us, Within is the place to be. Within allows us to sort through how we really feel. Within is where we can imagine, through visualization, that the things which are invading our lives can be turned into something smaller than our lives make it all feel like it is. And really, there are a whole LOT of things that engulf me, that minimize how I feel about anything at all, minimize who I am, turning me into just another person passing through the lives of people who I have never treated as though they were just here today, and not here tomorrow. Never in my life have I experienced all of the things that I have experienced in a very short time (we’re talkin’ hours here, folks). Not all of it was someone else’s trial and, in fact, the majority of the things that I have to deal with have all been in my life for longer than I could believe that I could deal with it. Some of it for the entirety of my life, such as the thing that I was socked with just a few short hours ago.

Sometimes, we have to not try to help, and just let things be. Humans, as I know them to be, far prefer that those who have our backs also understand that sometimes, the things that we are saying to them, when we think these people do not understand what we are saying are really just trying to figure out, for real, how they can help us. Sometimes, the help will be the hindrance, and even though we have empathy for them because we love them and do not want them to hurt anymore. Believe it or not, for the most part, they are right in line with what they need, and we are right in line with wanting to help.

Sometimes, we just need to let it Be, because in letting it Be, they can Be Who They Are and can rise to their next level of Being.

It doesn’t mean we are bailing on them. It simply means that Spirit has chosen that they tell us that basically, they are doing what we would hope they would to just understand that this is just how we get through some things – on our own, but most certainly not alone.

I Love You All…

…Aloha !

ROX

#TheCrabAndTheFish   #PuckingIrishGuyRockShop #LosAngelesKahuna #MedicineDance

 

On Compassion

Often we wonder if there is any Love in the World. The true answer is always ‘yes,’ and the thing that we lack, by means of how we have been programmed, is called Compassion

Compassion.

There are a few different dictionary definitions of the word “Compassion,” but the one that serves best for this writing is the one that emotion research has coined, which is “the feeling that arises when you are confronted with another’s suffering and feel motivated to help relieve that suffering…” (K. Neff, 2016)

It is not the same as empathy. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person, literally. It is also not altruism, which means that you believe in the practice of being selfless for the sole reason of being able to help others, even if it means that you, yourself, will suffer.

My feeling is that there is way too much suffering going on to begin with, so why would anyone want to martyr themselves that way? Of course, I know we have all been, to an extent, more than one time in each of our lives, altruistic, and also we have each and all been empathetic, and naturally, when it happened upon us (or, unfortunately) when it happened that somehow, our compassion toward someone else would gain us some sort of reward OTHER than knowing that truly, we have helped someone who needed it.

We want for others to really know what we need, but, we have all been raised to be altruistic instead of compassionate, and this is why a whole lot of us feel like we are at a loss. Some of us are in the middle of the harshest times in our lives, and some of us who are experiencing this harshness have become the one person in each of our lives to hate on ourselves, most of the time over things that people told us, and really, the one thing that I teach others the most is how to know what is their deepest truth about themselves.

We do not like our deepest truths, because nestled within them are those good things there that we know are believable, and the reason that we do not like them is because we have been told, all of our lives, that we are essentially “bad.” What we are not told is that we are also essentially good. We are.

We are inherently good

Seriously -we are good, most of us. We are born with the capacity to be good to other people, and we are also born with the ability towards compassionate behavior. You might be wondering why it is that it takes a lot for us to believe this when it is inborn. The answer is very simple – not only have we been raised according to our gender (which is not wrong), but, we have also been raised according to our gender according to the rules of “better society.” In reality, we have been raised to keep men as being unthinking, completely heartless brutes, and women to be the weaker of the two genders, which is wrong, because if it were true, Spirit would never have it that we would have pain in childbirth. I know that no man is ever going to know what it is like, and that is part of why we are powerful when born female – because we literally recreate Life on this planet.

We are inherently good. We are not born into this lifetime to be bad to others. As much, we are also not here to be bad to ourselves. We have been taught, according to what might have been acceptable a lot of years ago, that we have to follow the pack in terms of who is meant to be, and who is not meant to be, compassionate. What no one who was giving us these lessons in who can and cannot give birth thought about is that we were all born as human beings, meaning that we are all given to every emotion that any human being can and does feel. We were not trained or taught to be anything other than our genders.

I cannot say that we were robbed, but will state that we were kept ignorant to the fact that whether you were born male or female doesn’t matter, because we are all meant to feel how we feel, and when we feel bad, we each and all would really like it if someone were there to show us some compassion. Compassion is not someone feeling sorry for us. It is, instead, someone caring enough to understand that we are hurting, that we would really like it if we knew, for sure, that someone would be there for us, not judging us and not making us feel worse than we already do.

Sometimes we don’t want people around, and this is okay, because sometimes, we need to be able to regroup ourselves, get our head together, so that we can face the day again, perhaps not with a smile, but with a goal to end the madness in mind.

Our worst critics, as we all know,  are our very selves. We are horrible to ourselves. We tell ourselves that what everyone else said about us, tell ourselves that what we are thinking other people are thinking of us at any given moment, is the only truth of us. I have written it and said it to a whole lot of people over the years, that those people who have actually said things about us, that we think without knowing anyone at all has said about us, might be telling the truth, but, it is THEIR truth, and it never has to be our own. When we believe these ugly, awful things about ourselves that have been presented to us over and over again throughout the course of our lives, for no other reason will we believe such things other than that they have been repeated by others a lot. That it was repeated a lot is one thing. That anyone would repeat it a lot is an issue they have with themselves. Yet, that we believe this garbage coming from other people is the truth of us is putting them squarely in control of us and well, whatever it is that they have said of you…it does not have to be your truth, even as it can (and will be) theirs (no big – their loss)(just sayin’).

What this means is that this is THEIR issue, NOT yours. It was NEVER yours. It would be nice if we could just believe ourselves regarding this but, it is very difficult, namely since we have never been taught how to think otherwise. And really, it is not the fault of our parents or even our grandparents for not teaching these things to us, because the reality is that this is the sort of thinking that they were given as the truth and the only truth.

The one person who needs to be compassionate towards us IS us.

A Thing Called “Self-Compassion”

Indeed, anyone reading this would obviously know, immediately, that I am trying hard to make it understood that everything in our lives begins with ourselves.

It doesn’t matter who has hurt us or if we were ever able to exact revenge on them. What matters is that we learn from what we have gone through. What we learn from what we have gone through is not just the tangible part of those lessons. What else we are meant to learn is not just how to communicate with others, how to be a more Spiritual person, how to be kind, how to give and to show Love – what else we are meant to learn is a thing called Compassion for ourselves.

We have been taught, for generations, that we have to accept the ugliness that is in our lives and work hard to get out of it. This is all fine and lovely, but, the one thing that we are never beginning to think about working hard at is being kind to ourselves. We are taught from the time that we are in the womb about who the world expects us to be. When we do not turn out to be that person, it is first our closest relatives who will make us know that we are not perfect. Then, it will be those who are our extended relatives, then the people who are our little friends or perhaps their parents, then our school teachers, clergy…I could go on and on, but, I am sure that you see what I am saying when I say that we have, for the bulk of our lives, heard only horrible things about ourselves.

It is little wonder to me why it is that we are not more compassionate to ourselves. What is not of little wonder is the idea that that which has taken its toll on us, seeing as how scientifically, that which is created can also be created to have another form (while still being the thing that it was, initially) is something that we can reverse. Most of us believe that we cannot use more than the 10% of our brain that we have been told our whole lives is all what we are able to use. This is wrong. In fact, this is a lie, and the more that we understand this, the more that we believe this, the more the idea of Self-Compassion becomes something that is a practice for a whole lot of us.

We have compassion for other beings, but we have been under the wrong impression that being compassionate towards ourselves is somehow silently telling the world that we are self-centered and self-important, that we are egotistical and arrogant, and that if we Love ourselves, this means that we are conceited. The opposite is the Truth. How we do know how to Love anyone else if we do not know how to Love ourselves? How is it that we can feel the urge towards kindness to others but not to ourselves? Why do we feel so guilty if we merely take a break from the things that are driving us insane at the moment, just so that we can take care of the one person who we take care of the very least – our very selves?

The Other Day…

The other day I had a thought that made the difference for me. What helped was that I was assigned to do research on mindfulness.

I know whole lot about meditative practices, but, the things that I did not know about mindfulness opened my awareness to something completely new to me – the idea, the very one that I never even imagined could be true, was this thing about having compassion for one’s own weary self. Thinking about this made me think about how very harsh I have been with myself over the years. There are not too many people who are close with me who have not told me, again and again, that they do not know why it is that I do not give myself more credit for the words that I write, or even think to take credit (even though I do say thank you) when someone tells me that I have touched their lives with my words.

It is a lovely thing to hear or to read, but, until I started this research project, I had no real idea that I was missing out on something crucial in terms of healing our Souls – we are, collectively, very unkind to ourselves, and some of us do not want to change this about us. We do not want to stop being so harsh and critical with who we are, simply because too many of us are not eager to have to do the self work that is involved. The self work, even though it is physically effortless, is not that simple, and this is because we have to believe the things that we tell ourselves. After a lifetime’s worth of being told who we are, you can imagine that this sort of self-compassion and this sort of self work would be more difficult than a lot of other things are.

It isn’t.

It is, from my own experience, very, very difficult. The challenge is not that we are trying to just reprogram our thoughts, we are trying hard to believe the real truths about us that we know are the truth but that we do not state, out loud, at least once a day. Once it was that I was keyed into this much, my research went into high gear with me falling asleep in my chair and my head on my keyboard. (It happens a lot). What I learned is that more people are glued to whatever it is that they see as their goal, but, the majority of them, with myself at time included, have no thought in our heads that it will be a process, that there are going to be detours and reroutes and even things that seem like a roadblock. We do not think about how we will get there – we only think that we need to get there, but, we do not believe that on the way there, that there will be things that get in our way and that more than one time, we will have to stop along the way and try to see to the goal in another direction.

When we see that there is this road ahead of us, and we see that there will be difficulties, we don’t plan for them (okay, so I have learned to plan for them…please keep reading…), and more, we do not emotionally plan for the inevitable failures (because plans have to change sometimes – it doesn’t mean that we, ourselves, are a failure. It simply means that we have to seek out another route), do not plan that we might need to be stronger than we have been in our entire lives, and we do not think ahead in the manner which we would if this were an actual road trip. Instead, we only see the goal – not the path to the goal. We see that we want what is on the other side of the thought, and we ruminate about it, again and again in our minds, and we see this perception of ease, and we expect to get there without learning a damned thing.

The goal is the goal, but what we are not aware of, because we are not thinking about it, is that along the way we will be faced with things and events that are unkind. It is at these times when we feel like we are at our very lowest point that we should be thinking about taking care of ourselves in the manner that is Self-Compassion, in the manner that is giving ourselves a break in spite of everything going on around us.

In spite of everything happening around us, we can and should learn that we are worthy of our own goodness, that we deserve to be spoken to as though we are as much a thinking and feeling Being as anyone else is. With people on this planet who still believe the old way of thought is the best, it is high time that we took it upon ourselves to pat ourselves on the back, wrap our own arms around us and told ourselves that yes, everything happening right now hurts like hell, sucks like anything would…but, like all else that sucks and hurts, this too shall pass.

While it takes its time to pass, and while we are going through all of the things that we will, take a little time to remind yourself that you are worthy of the Love that you already receive from those who value you the most, and include yourself in that Love, because indeed, you are very loved, very cherished, and very well worth everything that you want to give to yourself as well as those who you love the very most.

 

Until next time…be kind to you…Live Aloha

I Love You All

ROX

#LosAngelesKahuna

#TheCrabAndTheFish