May 2012

I decided to stop writing 'self-help' crap and get on with it, instead : B. 

(I'm liking how that B looks like my front teeth. A little large and a tad skew,or is it just me? must be getting late...)

So without further 'hunna hunna', here's what I'm working on this week:

Naive landscapes. I'm still captivated by the endless rolling stretches of boring virgin fynbos. I seem to have found a way to see delicious colour where there shouldn't be anything but green and muddy brown.

I see texture. I see pattern.... and  little thingy wingy's that live in it all. And the sweetest little birds.

Loving it BIG time. I pass this mysterious contradiction on my trips to the beaches I haunt with my dogs. It's all I had for two years while living on the west coast farm.

I had to eventually S-E-E it or die in a swamp of muddy oil paint...

ANYWAY.

My e-book ' How Dreamers Get Things Done' is nearly DONE. Illustrations are being completed. Hahahahaha!   Ok, NOT. They are in the ether of my creative brain awaiting landing instructions. They are there, I do promise that, hovering about my virtual TO DO list in the sky. The one that I ACTUALLY respond to. They glow and entice me with possibilities till I CANNOT resist any longer and I fall to madly scribbling and painting and eating tons of raw choc mousse again with vigor and gratitude.

BTW I have rethought my previous post on LISTS. 

Something worth adding: Lists that SHOW you something. That LEAD to a new PERSPECTIVE, are the only lists worth making on paper. Wishful thinking, pain-inducing, 'I-Know-I-Really-Should-Do-This-Guck-Thing' lists, Shopping lists and 'Who's-Actually-Really-Coming-To-My-Party' etc lists? Please make them on your electronic media of choice.  So they can be just as easily DELETED, discarded and forgotten.

The therapy, the sheer MAGIC of writing out in long hand,  is to be kept for lists of the TRANSFORMATIONAL ilk.

ANNOUNCEMENT:

Things are about to change in a BIG way.

And that's a good thing.

For me: 

We move house (yet again!!) I have moved house approximately every 1.5 yrs since my birth.

Even when going to the same school as a kid - my mom moved to 5 different homes in the same TOWN!!

My 21 yr old son leaves the country for foreign shores. *be still my beating heart*

My 8 yr old goes to school for the first time this year.

I launch a few GOOD MILESTONE things.

For YOU too; Things are going to CHANGE. You just don't know it yet. Or maybe you do.

That's LIFE my lovely You-kins...

We can choose to resist it or flow with it. But CHANGE it will.

Why not just go with it? 

(oh dear, I feel a 'self-help crap' attack coming on! I can't help it!!)

Resistance and Non-resistance:

I was thinking about this in relation to an AWFUL experience I once had with someone.

I felt I could have responded in a far better way than I had.

My reaction was ‘normal’ considering the situation – but I know that I know better!

And I want to LIVE according to what I know.

I know intellectually that resisting something only makes it stronger.

That resistance to life is fear of losing control.

I know that I only have control over my own attitude: my thoughts and emotions about a thing.

When I am aligned with Life – it feels good. When I resist – it feels bad.

I thought about the incident I had experienced. A verbal attack, that seemed to me totally illogical and totally unexpected. I was in shock afterwards. I could feel a part of me trying to stay calm, even though I was shaking. 

I withdrew before I could say anything too damaging back, in defense of my ego, that I might regret. 

I went for a walk to calm down... thinking over and over about what had been said. How it had been said. Countering everything in my head with words I hadn’t spoken. Saying worse things to the person in my mind, than I could ever have said aloud. Then I stopped.

I recognized that I was heading down a spiral of anger and negativity that was not going to end up in a good place for me.

I looked around at nature in all it’s simple beautiful neutral honesty.

The sky, so open, eternal and serene.

The trees, so calm and dependable.

The birds, so optimistic and busy.

I imagined the situation as it could have been, had I been aligned with my true INNER nature. We are that essence we feel in NATURE, just in human form, after all. 

I concluded that how I had reacted was -

DIRECTLY related to my self image and my fear of how my self image would be affected...

I replayed the whole scene in my mind, but this time with me coming from this ETERNAL state of being. How would I have responded if I hadn't felt threatened, defensive and angry? 

I sat under a tree and allowed myself to really feel what it would be like to move through the same situation again, but as an observer. It was hard at first, because the first thing I want to do when something unpleasant has happened, is to forget it as quickly as possible.

I reminded myself that we are all souls.  When I imagine that this is what we really are - beyond the trappings of the body - I am immediately filled with love and connectedness to everyone else.

I feel safe and limitless and indestructible.

I saw myself listening to the other person with this feeling in my whole being.

Instantly, it was as if I saw their vulnerability for a change. I could feel their insecurity and feel their sadness. It didn't matter WHY. It didn't matter WHAT. It just was.

I felt myself soften inside. My heart was melting. I could see no need to defend myself. Instead I saw the need for love and compassion.

It felt as if I had actually made peace with that person already.

This change in me stopped my mind from rehashing the words that had been spoken and I quietened down inside.

Miraculously, this seemed to affect the other person too. When I saw them a few hours later, the aggression had dissipated like mist in the sunlight.

Neither of us felt the need to 'save face' or 'punish' the other for the incident. You know, all that twisted stuff we do to one another...yes, no matter how lovely we think we are, WE ALL DO SOME TWISTED STUFF in the name of righteous self-preservation. Vomit.

Lovely sunshine sister and brother, I tell you something TRUE; It was Not So in this case. It was all gone.

I just felt glad to be passed it.

And strangely, so did they.

Love to YOU  : B