lengthening

Hi friends, I know it’s been awhile and I’ve missed you.  No guarentees that I am back.  However, for the month of November, I am participating in NaNoWriMo, and the following is inspired by some writing that I did this morning.  My hope from this experience is that I will get more blog posts from it.

I have spent much of my life in resistance. I have made a career of working with a population who are so sick that their illness is a manifestation or resisting. In the past few years, I have come to diagnose myself (as only a therapist can) with a resistance disease.  I am not a go with the flow kind of girl, I want everything to be a certain way.  A few people in my lifetime have used the word “control freak” to describe me.  Almost since I can remember, I have spent my days in should-land, spending incredible amounts of energy and time with this word of “should:”

• I should be married by now
• I should have had my first kid
• I should be beloved by my cat
• I should be rich
• I should be liked by every person I meet
• I should be honored by everyone around me
• I should be skinny and beautiful
• I should be the smartest person I know
• I should be perfect in every way possible

Every single one of these shoulds (and this is only the tip of the iceberg) make me feel bad about myself.  Since they almost all come from a place of a need to be perfect, these shoulds keep me frozen.  The cause me to stop trying (and in some cases stop caring) because doing so might lead to failure, or heaven forbid non-perfection. This would lead to a catastrophic let down the “Should Queen” leader of the 8th dimensional world of Should.   This is an evil place to live. I believe that these shoulds are created outside of ourselves. They come from a place looking to entrap us. My clients call it “Their disease,” some have called it the “mafia mind,*”  I call it the devil.

In the Biblical Book of Genesis, in the beginning of time while running around naked in paradise, the devil tempted Eve to eat fruit forbidden by God, because she should be smart and intelligent. God, for some reason, was holding out on her. This devil played on the small seed of vulnerability within her. He showed her that her vulnerability made her bad and that it was her job to fix it. Even if it went against everything that she had known in life to be and it went against the Truth that she knew in her heart. She took a bite and didn’t need to bend her husband’s arm either for him to take a bite.  The rest, they say is history, and the reason we need drugs to get through childbirth.

But also, this action of fighting her current reality led to further shame. Soon after, Adam and Eve take one look at their bodies and say, “Oh I don’t think so!”  Even though God had earlier declared their human forms good, they decided there bodies were not perfect and needed to be concealed and censored pronto.  (Side bar, last night when I was catching up on my Desperate Housewives of New Jersey, we saw this same behavior from Jacqueline who didn’t want to be seen anywhere near Melissa and Theresa who were flaunting their socially acceptable bodies despite her girlfriends praising her for her own beautiful DD boobies, but I digress).

Shoulds lead to resistance and that resistance leads to shame. This shame creates more shoulds in our soul and the never ending cycle begins. This is not a life that I want for myself. I want a life filled with joy and peace. I want those I love to have lives filled with joy and peace.

How do you be open? How do you accept where you are in this current moment?

The funny thing is that we are already open. We already have inside of ourselves the skills for being open and going with the flow. We are open  to the very diseases, devil and shoulds trying to take us down. There was once a small tiny voice inside of ourselves that said, “You should…” and we agreed with it and we went with it. That is what openness is, agreement and then going with the flow, like floating downstream*.

For many of us, floating downstream looked like going with all of the shoulds in life, and swimming against the current was fighting to align ourselves with the shoulds. What if we transform that script? What if we say, I will listen to the still small voice and go with it? The one that says, “Call your friend,” “Write that story,” or “Be vulnerable.”  We are already being open.

We simply choose what we are open to. We can choose to pay attention to the 8^th dimensional plane of the should world, or we can listen to that other voice. If we’ve ignored it for a long time, then our ears are not attuned to it and it will sound almost inaudible, like a faint whisper. We are so in tuned and alligned with should and shame that it is sounds like it is on the highest possible volume straight into our ear canals. That is simple deception. It sounds as if it is blaring only because we are so finely tuned into its frequency. Once you practice turning the dial to that voice of love and “IS” (or “I AM”), the script will flip. The shoulds while always there will sound fainter and further away.

What do you want to listen to?

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*I did not come up with this metaphor and have to give credit where credit is due–Terri Cole, psychotherapist came up with the phrase, “Flip over and Float.”   She also coined “Mafia Mind.” I attended her workshop with Kris Carr last February at Kripalu and loved every minute of it (and got a pretty freaking funny story out of it), please check out Terri’s website at:  http://terricole.com/ 

When I was a child, my mother once confessed that she had a miscarriage . For years, I was obsessed with this notion, and was utterly convinced that it had been a girl. While I’m lucky beyond words, to have an amazing brother and friend, I could never swap clothes, or talk about boys, or try on make.  Well, I could but usually he put up a fight…usually.

As a child, I pined for a sister, and asked God over and over for her.  Surely, I would never fight with her.  Surely, she would think I’m the most amazing person on the planet and play with and she would want to do my nails and wait on me hand and foot.  I think my desire reflected a deeper yearning, and don’t call me Shirley.  But authentic motivation or not, pray I did for many of my young years.

And yet, God has answered my childhood prayers.  He has blessed me beyond measure with sisters of the soul, sista from anotha motha.  It creeped into my life at first, and God has faithfully and consistently added sisters into my life since middle school (where we would hide in the Church bathroom and share our utmost 12-year-old secrets).  Two weeks ago at five in the morning as the sun began to enter existence, four girls laid on a bed and retold and analyzed the night’s events.  It had been ages since any of us cornering 30 year olds had seen past midnight (except for the doctor, but when you see after midnight in a hospital, that doesn’t count), we shared our delusions with each other, the truths below those delusions, giggles and yes, even clothes.  And yet, God didn’t stop at College, he has given me neighbors, co-workers, roommates, and rekindled friendships who have entered my heart and will always be a part of it, no matter how often we might talk on the phone.  It was in those wee hours, that I realized that my childhood prayers had not only come true, but had come true in so much more abundance that being served tea by a mini-me would have ever filled.  This surely give me hope for my more adult prayers.

And don’t call me Shirley.

And since its been in your head this whole time: