for anyone who may be reading this throughout the course of this project, i must apologize now. i'm using the 215800 project as a stream of consciousness writing exercise. instead of writing in my journal, i'm going to put my through stream into the blog. who knows what may come of it?
they say that 800 words a day for 21 days (long enough to start a habit incidentally), will average out to about 67 pages. there could be poetry, a short story and countless essays that evolve from this experience. i'm also hopeful this will be a great jumpstart to get my lazy behind back into a yoga practice.
The new job is progressing well and I’m really starting to feel settled in. got over my first real hurdle and am progressing onto the other things I’ve been tasked with. There is still some uncertainty as it is a long-term contract position, but there is every indication and promise that it will convert to a permanent position at the end of the contract. So, instead of worrying, and causing myself more anxiety, I’m just going to let it go and deal with the positivity of knowing that I’m damned good at what I do.
Had a great conversation with my Director today and know that I’m bringing value to my team, and in a different manner from how they’ve had value added in the past. Some of the things she is asking of me are very exciting and I’m looking forward to meeting the challenge.
Having real issues with trust today. Recent events, and several long term ones are making it difficult for me to really let go and trust others. Especially when their behaviors continually show me that I’m correct in not trusting their words… and often their deeds, too. It’s continually frustrating to know that adults (who should know better) continually and routinely talk out of both sides of their mouth just to look good. If you don’t mean it, why do you say it? And if you continually fail at an intention that you set, wouldn’t you just change the intention or do you keep making the same mistake, over and over and over?
To me, that’s just insanity. Doing the same thing, over and over and over, expecting different results. Sometimes, we even get pissed when there aren’t different results. But we continually repeat the incorrect/routinely failing behavior ….and then expect something to change?
It’s like continually allowing that person in your life, or that person to have true traction in your life if they keep screwing you over. How smart is that? If you know what their tendencies are, and they prove it over and over and over (and over) again, who’s fault is it really when they inevitably screw you over again?
I’m not saying that there isn’t a place for compassion, because there most certainly is a place for it. However, being compassionate most certainly does not mean that you have to be a pushover. In fact, I think being compassionate to those that screw you over may be a form a tough love. You’re being compassionate to their long term lives by letting them know that they aren’t going to fuck you over any more. Or that you aren’t going to allow them that traction in ‘x’ area because you can see that they aren’t changing and you aren’t willing to play the victim in their particular drama.
As a friend told me recently… some people just perpetuate their own drama and they like it. What? Seriously? Who likes drama? The thought of dealing with that kind of crap, intentionally, or stirring it up to put yourself in the middle of attention… that’s just twisted.
Why would anyone in their right mind do that?!?! I guess that’s it though. They more than likely are not in their right mind, due to self-esteem or insecurity issues. And while most of us have those issues, I just don’t see the thinking behind pushing those issues off on other people who have had nothing to do with causing those issues.
It seems like, more often than not, (or, in my case) it’s the unsuspecting that wind up getting hurt more than the ones who caused the damage.
I know that I try, very diligently, to apply the lessons of my past relationships, whether they are friendships, family or romantic, to my current life. I don’t want to cause anyone, not the least concerned being myself, any amount of pain or anguish. Not intentionally. So when someone who says they care about me, or they are ‘here for’ me, and then they trample on me…it shows a level of callousness that makes me not want to have those people in my life at all. If you care so little as to cause hurt after hurt after hurt, never considering the consequences… really, you don’t deserve that kind of traction in my life.
(827 words - 28 min)
08 June, 2010
01 June, 2010
laughing today, instead of tears
i choose laughter today, instead of tears...
to purposefully fill my life with joy, instead of honoring the void
that was.
that is
i choose to delight in the sun, and honor the embrace of the moon,
to sing with the petals of the flowers and to dance with the boughs of the trees.
i resonate with the whipporwhill as she sings
melancholy
and joyful
duality is
the chord
i strike as i skip
stones across the
water
the resulting wake
reveals
to purposefully fill my life with joy, instead of honoring the void
that was.
that is
i choose to delight in the sun, and honor the embrace of the moon,
to sing with the petals of the flowers and to dance with the boughs of the trees.
i resonate with the whipporwhill as she sings
melancholy
and joyful
duality is
the chord
i strike as i skip
stones across the
water
the resulting wake
reveals
08 May, 2010
Karmic Debt
As the blazing fire reduces wood to ashes, similarly, the fire of Self-knowledge reduces all Karma to ashes. ~Bhagavad-Gita
No boundaries.
Isn’t that how we most want to live? The way we want to approach the world without any real limitations on ourselves? I don’t mean lawlessness or unchecked anarchy. I mean living a real life without limitations on your person, being able to be who you truly are?
Liberating thought, isn’t it?
We live in a world that both celebrates and stifles creativity and personal freedom. All too often we find that we’ve ‘sold out’ our truer selves in order to meet the cause of going concern, or that the nagging doubts of conscience over actions taken, or not taken, affect the bedrock of who we thought we were.
At point does the ‘who-we-thought-we-were’ merge and come into alignment with who we really are? And, at the point, how do you handle the Karmic debt you’ve acquired by being the person you didn’t think you were?
By most standards, Karma isn’t easy to define. The best way for me to describe my interpretation of it is this… Karma isn’t about punishment. It is the process of cause and effect. Karma is about your experience and the subsequent fulfillment of that purpose. If you do A, B will happen. It is important to note, though, that most scholars feel Karma works both in the immediate and the long term (and by long term, I mean the course of your reincarnation cycle, sometimes hundreds of lifetimes). There are occasions where your actions yield an immediate and noticeable Karmic return, and other times where decades may pass before you reap the Karmic bounty for a past action, whether you consider it positive or negative.
My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand. ~Thich Nhat Hanh
Universe/Spirit/Goddess/God doesn’t see it as a positive or negative occurrence. It is merely viewed, and delivered, as the result of your previous action.
The results delivered to you as the end Karmic product of your actions should make you think. Are the results your receiving more of what you would consider to be positive or negative? If you feel you are receiving negative Karmic returns from Universe/Spirit/Goddess/God, how do you address that? In the turning of those negatives into positives and making the boundaries you’ve created for yourself into stepping stones that we find true growth and manifestational potential. Even if you may, momentarily, see something as a negative return, how do you turn that into a positive?
In order to help me get a grasp on my own Karmic debt, I had to section it off into Karma sub-categories. Taking from the old adage that it’s easier to eat an elephant a bite at a time, rather than the whole thing at one time, I decided that I needed to address significant sections of my life, and the associated Karma, and slowly start working towards the karmic theme of this particular incarnation.
One of the first sub-categories I had to address was relationships. I mean all relationships: children, friends, family, and lovers. By not being the best person I could be to all these people, they in turn, were not giving me the best of themselves. Why should they? If I was short-tempered, callous, dismissive or inattentive to them, why the hell would they bother to give me the time of day?
If you want to have better relationships with those in your life, it pays to take a true accounting of your part in the relationship dynamic and/or dysfunction.
Give more of what you want to get back. If you’ve caused a hurt, rectify it.
Another sub-category I created was work. Yes, I felt I had negative work Karma. I was working so far below my potential, and at the same time allowing others to treat me in a demeaning manner. I found that the more I ‘bought’ into that ridiculousness, the more power I gave it and the longer that mindset was going to hang around. I did ‘A’, and I got ‘B’.
If you practice sub-par, you get sub-par. If you give others permission to give you less than what you deserve, they certainly will.
When you manage to stay connected to your Energy stream, you always win. And you know what; somebody else doesn't have to lose for you to win. There is always enough. ~ Abraham
Financial was the last Karmic sub-category I used to assist my Karmic debt sorting. Most of us have had the pleasure of making sometimes rash, and oftentimes negative financial decisions. Have you ever stopped to think about the long term ramifications of those decisions, past the overdraft fee or late charge or increased interest rate? Looking back over my financial life, I can (now) clearly pinpoint major mistakes that either hurt me or other people and how those mistakes are kicking me in the butt today.
What I learned about myself after my self-inventory was not what I wanted to see. I was not the person I thought I was. I was embarrassed at some of my actions (whether others knew of them or not) and hurt by the pain I had knowingly caused myself and others.
Through a lot of study, self-study and meditation, I’ve found my key for honoring (and subsequently negating) my karmic debt. The formula was the same for each of my sub-categories, and was deceptively simple. Actual patterns of approach and execution may differ, but the formula is the same.
FACE UP TO IT.
Sounds simple, doesn’t it? For me, it really wasn’t.
It took years of agonizing fights with myself to even begin the process, much less the horrifying idea of facing up to all my faults. Even before I really had a firm intellectual grasp of what Karma was, I knew that something was off kilter in my life. I knew, in my most primal instincts, that I wasn’t living to ‘my’ highest best potential. Not anyone else’s idea of my potential, but my own.
When you start making changes to live towards your highest best self, it isn’t easy, or at least it wasn’t for me. To successfully do so, I had to embrace the wrongs I’d done myself and others, the hard lessons I had learned, and my ownership in all those scenarios. At the same time, I had to fully accept the future I wanted to create for myself, the ideal of the person I most wanted to be.
In looking at the past, and my place and actions in the past, I had to really study not only the negatives, but the underlying meaning and motivations behind the negatives. I needed to understand the ‘why’s’ behind the things I did, or didn’t do.
Facing up to these things, finding out the my ‘why’s’ helped me to change the underlying manifestational intentions so as to not make the same mistakes again, was valuable pain. If you don’t change the intentions… if the actions continue in a manner you’re subconsciously unhappy with, the results will remain the same. Until you learn the lessons, Karma will continue to deliver the expected ‘B’ results of your ‘A’ actions.
As she has planted, so does she harvest; such is the field of karma. ~Sri Guru Granth Sahib
Sometimes the growth (read: pain) comes whether you are consciously ready for it or not. I think the pain feeds the growth. I believe that Universe/Spirit/Goddess/God works under the premise that the path of least resistance is the best way to deliver what you need to you. This manifestational gift works (relatively) painlessly if you are flowing with the Karmic intent for this incarnation. If you aren’t already flowing in conjunction with your Karmic theme for this life, the Universal path of least resistance can get pretty bumpy.
Clearing your Karmic debt isn’t easy… but once you start down that path, it makes your living your life easier. Clearing your Karmic debt can also help the longer term of you reincarnation cycle by clearing something out for your next life. There is likelihood that a recurring problem you address now may positively affect your Karma in the next life. The boundaries you may have encountered before simply do not exist any longer. Things somehow ‘fall into place’ just when you need them to do so.
People pay for what they do, and still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it simply: by the lives they lead. ~Edith Wharton
No boundaries.
Isn’t that how we most want to live? The way we want to approach the world without any real limitations on ourselves? I don’t mean lawlessness or unchecked anarchy. I mean living a real life without limitations on your person, being able to be who you truly are?
Liberating thought, isn’t it?
We live in a world that both celebrates and stifles creativity and personal freedom. All too often we find that we’ve ‘sold out’ our truer selves in order to meet the cause of going concern, or that the nagging doubts of conscience over actions taken, or not taken, affect the bedrock of who we thought we were.
At point does the ‘who-we-thought-we-were’ merge and come into alignment with who we really are? And, at the point, how do you handle the Karmic debt you’ve acquired by being the person you didn’t think you were?
By most standards, Karma isn’t easy to define. The best way for me to describe my interpretation of it is this… Karma isn’t about punishment. It is the process of cause and effect. Karma is about your experience and the subsequent fulfillment of that purpose. If you do A, B will happen. It is important to note, though, that most scholars feel Karma works both in the immediate and the long term (and by long term, I mean the course of your reincarnation cycle, sometimes hundreds of lifetimes). There are occasions where your actions yield an immediate and noticeable Karmic return, and other times where decades may pass before you reap the Karmic bounty for a past action, whether you consider it positive or negative.
My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand. ~Thich Nhat Hanh
Universe/Spirit/Goddess/God doesn’t see it as a positive or negative occurrence. It is merely viewed, and delivered, as the result of your previous action.
The results delivered to you as the end Karmic product of your actions should make you think. Are the results your receiving more of what you would consider to be positive or negative? If you feel you are receiving negative Karmic returns from Universe/Spirit/Goddess/God, how do you address that? In the turning of those negatives into positives and making the boundaries you’ve created for yourself into stepping stones that we find true growth and manifestational potential. Even if you may, momentarily, see something as a negative return, how do you turn that into a positive?
In order to help me get a grasp on my own Karmic debt, I had to section it off into Karma sub-categories. Taking from the old adage that it’s easier to eat an elephant a bite at a time, rather than the whole thing at one time, I decided that I needed to address significant sections of my life, and the associated Karma, and slowly start working towards the karmic theme of this particular incarnation.
One of the first sub-categories I had to address was relationships. I mean all relationships: children, friends, family, and lovers. By not being the best person I could be to all these people, they in turn, were not giving me the best of themselves. Why should they? If I was short-tempered, callous, dismissive or inattentive to them, why the hell would they bother to give me the time of day?
If you want to have better relationships with those in your life, it pays to take a true accounting of your part in the relationship dynamic and/or dysfunction.
Give more of what you want to get back. If you’ve caused a hurt, rectify it.
Another sub-category I created was work. Yes, I felt I had negative work Karma. I was working so far below my potential, and at the same time allowing others to treat me in a demeaning manner. I found that the more I ‘bought’ into that ridiculousness, the more power I gave it and the longer that mindset was going to hang around. I did ‘A’, and I got ‘B’.
If you practice sub-par, you get sub-par. If you give others permission to give you less than what you deserve, they certainly will.
When you manage to stay connected to your Energy stream, you always win. And you know what; somebody else doesn't have to lose for you to win. There is always enough. ~ Abraham
Financial was the last Karmic sub-category I used to assist my Karmic debt sorting. Most of us have had the pleasure of making sometimes rash, and oftentimes negative financial decisions. Have you ever stopped to think about the long term ramifications of those decisions, past the overdraft fee or late charge or increased interest rate? Looking back over my financial life, I can (now) clearly pinpoint major mistakes that either hurt me or other people and how those mistakes are kicking me in the butt today.
What I learned about myself after my self-inventory was not what I wanted to see. I was not the person I thought I was. I was embarrassed at some of my actions (whether others knew of them or not) and hurt by the pain I had knowingly caused myself and others.
Through a lot of study, self-study and meditation, I’ve found my key for honoring (and subsequently negating) my karmic debt. The formula was the same for each of my sub-categories, and was deceptively simple. Actual patterns of approach and execution may differ, but the formula is the same.
FACE UP TO IT.
Sounds simple, doesn’t it? For me, it really wasn’t.
It took years of agonizing fights with myself to even begin the process, much less the horrifying idea of facing up to all my faults. Even before I really had a firm intellectual grasp of what Karma was, I knew that something was off kilter in my life. I knew, in my most primal instincts, that I wasn’t living to ‘my’ highest best potential. Not anyone else’s idea of my potential, but my own.
When you start making changes to live towards your highest best self, it isn’t easy, or at least it wasn’t for me. To successfully do so, I had to embrace the wrongs I’d done myself and others, the hard lessons I had learned, and my ownership in all those scenarios. At the same time, I had to fully accept the future I wanted to create for myself, the ideal of the person I most wanted to be.
In looking at the past, and my place and actions in the past, I had to really study not only the negatives, but the underlying meaning and motivations behind the negatives. I needed to understand the ‘why’s’ behind the things I did, or didn’t do.
Facing up to these things, finding out the my ‘why’s’ helped me to change the underlying manifestational intentions so as to not make the same mistakes again, was valuable pain. If you don’t change the intentions… if the actions continue in a manner you’re subconsciously unhappy with, the results will remain the same. Until you learn the lessons, Karma will continue to deliver the expected ‘B’ results of your ‘A’ actions.
As she has planted, so does she harvest; such is the field of karma. ~Sri Guru Granth Sahib
Sometimes the growth (read: pain) comes whether you are consciously ready for it or not. I think the pain feeds the growth. I believe that Universe/Spirit/Goddess/God works under the premise that the path of least resistance is the best way to deliver what you need to you. This manifestational gift works (relatively) painlessly if you are flowing with the Karmic intent for this incarnation. If you aren’t already flowing in conjunction with your Karmic theme for this life, the Universal path of least resistance can get pretty bumpy.
Clearing your Karmic debt isn’t easy… but once you start down that path, it makes your living your life easier. Clearing your Karmic debt can also help the longer term of you reincarnation cycle by clearing something out for your next life. There is likelihood that a recurring problem you address now may positively affect your Karma in the next life. The boundaries you may have encountered before simply do not exist any longer. Things somehow ‘fall into place’ just when you need them to do so.
People pay for what they do, and still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it simply: by the lives they lead. ~Edith Wharton
11 April, 2010
08 April, 2010
05 April, 2010
02 February, 2010
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