soul ramblings

Tonight, the moon will enter Taurus around 9pm Eastern. I think that's a good time to do some money work.

Once again, I remembered that I want to learn more about Sacred Geometry. I visited my friend's store, yesterday, and she has a sacred geometry book and card set for sale. She says the book is fantastic and since I need to work on adding Earth to my Air, I'm going to buy the set so I can work with the cards. Adding the dimension of touch really helps me when it comes to connecting the world to my spirituality. That is what tarot has taught me.

All in all, my life is going extremely well. I start a job tomorrow evening and money has been flowing to me pretty effortlessly this past month or so. I am grateful for that and wish myself continued success along that line.

Last night, I rearranged my bedroom. I have two altars in it and they needed softening and integrating. I put a runner on top of my dresser (where I keep one small offering altar) and a triangular, embroidered scarf on top of the bookcase (where I keep my Yemoja/mother energy altar). Those minor touches added exactly the sort of energy I was looking for: mystery combined with gentleness. I am pleased.

Next on my list of things to do is figure out what to do with the blank, white space above my bed. I was thinking of getting a headboard, but...I really don't want a headboard. I like having my bed flush with the wall and sitting on the floor. I find bed frames a bit pretentious. My bedroom isn't that sort of room.

I came across a large corkboard that I'd picked up months ago and still haven't used. I think it's the perfect size for above my bed, although I'm not sure what I'd put on it for decoration. I want that area to represent the Feminine, so...lots of flowers, lace, ribbons, and things like that. I want, too, for it to be spiritually functional. I would like it to combine majick and love. Ooooh! I just got a bit of a tingle. LOL Maybe I can incorporate sacred geometry with it...

I guess that's my new project. I'll figure something out. I'm excited!

Life is good, man. Life is good.

reach out and touch one's self

Spirituality is an active noun. That's what I'm remembering. I can not be passive and still reap the benefits of spirituality. I must actively endeavor toward spiritual things. I must persist.

That is not always something I feel like doing. The appeal of going to church once or twice a week and reading someone else's ideas about God and life is great at times. I suppose, in those moments, the force is weak within me.

For the last couple of weeks, I've been erecting a makeshift altar on my bedroom floor, lighting a candle and arranging some rocks on it, and thinking. Maybe it's more meditation than thought, but it starts out with thinking. I sit and I ask someone (anyone) to help me understand whatever it is that I need to understand. And, it works. I gain clarity and calm.

But, I can't say that it's someone else talking to me. No. What I've come to fully comprehend is that the goddess in me is fully active in my psyche, as long as I talk to her. And, she knows everything. And, she's willing to share that knowledge. I just have to ask.

In order to ask, one must be active, not passive.

This is what I need to remember.

The saying goes: Living well is its own reward.

It gets thrown around when capitalistically wealthy people are talking about being capitalistically wealthy. However, it's never sounded like a money quote to me.

During my short, thirty-odd years on the planet, "living well" has always implied authenticity and happiness to me. When I was in high school, my parents were chastising me about something and they asked me, "What do you want?" in the exasperated tone they seemed to preserve for our interactions. I replied, "I want to be happy." My father quipped, "Everybody wants that, but it's not possible." My mother agreed.

Yay for my parents. Adding the pressure of misery to another soul.

That moment was one of my life-altering moments, though. In that moment, I saw that I could not look to them for an example of how to live. In that moment, I understood that I was alone in this world. In that moment, I began to live with purpose.

People say that everyone needs Haters. Haters help motivate you, keep you pushing for success. I don't like that mentality, but I understand it.

My parents are the force that keep me striving. I look upon my memories of them and vow to never turn out like them: miserable, sad, faithless. Because that's all it takes--faith. A little goes a long, long way. I used to say that the fact that I am forever hopeful and have a ton of faith is my only weakness. Now, I recognize that having faith and hope are signs of strength so great, even water couldn't wear it away. And, water's some powerful stuff.

I live well.

I'm not monetarily well-endowed, but I'm rich. Every day, I get up and decide to be the best me I can be. And, I succeed, because even when I'm in my Shadow Self, I am great. It takes a lot of authenticity and skill to be the meanest broad on Earth. I do it with pride.

I live well.

I don't always know exactly what to say, but I'm honest. And, when I speak, I speak from my heart. I speak with the intention of the purest sort of communication. Hear me and I hear you and we listen and grow. Together.

I live well.

I'm scarred, but scars are just proof that you've been alive. Life happens to us sometimes and that's nothing to be afraid of. Scar me, tear me up, rip me open. Just know that I'll keep breathing and striving and living. Even when you see me in the open casket...don't count me out. The life and faith and hope within me is too strong to succumb to Death.

I live well.

Because that's the only way I know how.

in the Now

I remember when I constantly lived in Fear, but it seems lifetimes ago. I remember when it was so easy for me to conjure feelings of anger and resentment. I remember it much in the same way I remember being an infant; I know it happened, but I can't really tell you what it was like.

Every day, I practice being truer to myself than I was in the past. I don't frame it that way in my mind, but that's obviously what I'm doing. I'm improving and improving and improving and due to the improvements, I've improved.

I've become someone I really admire and like. This is very helpful when I have my more insecure and sad thoughts, because I'm able to relinquish the more negative self-talk quickly due to the fact that I know those thoughts aren't my prevailing reality. As a result, I haven't been truly depressed this year. Maybe that doesn't seem like long, but when you've struggled with depression for 20 years or so, going six-seven months without a serious bout of it feels triumphant. Yes, I've felt sadness. Waves of it that lasted for a few days. But, no depression.

I try not to think too much about the Past. After all, it's over. At the end of each day of my life (around bedtime), I usually mentally go thru the day and make sure I've extracted the lessons I feel I would expect myself to have learned. If there is anything I need to think more on, I put it at the fore of my mind and resolve to think more about it later. I fall asleep thinking about why I'm unsettled by whatever it is I need to think about further and conversing with whomever it is that converses with me in those moments, shedding light on things and not allowing me a moment's self-deception.

Rarely, I'll awaken agitated. But, when I do, I know I need to do more introspection, more forgiveness, more putting-down-of-fear. And, it feels good to go thru this. Perhaps my mother was right: I'm a masochist.

But, this is how I know how to live in the Now. This is how I know how to take the Past, learn from it, and leave it in the Past, where it belongs. There was a time when I could not figure out how to separate the Past and the Now. There was a time when I lived for the Future, because the Past/Now felt so overwhelming.

No more.

I have to be firm with myself. When a thought pops up that may lead to sadness and delusion, I have to tell it to get out. When it won't leave, I have to practice Pranayama, recite mudras, reverberate Om throughout my head. This has not simply happened to me, this ability to stay in the Now and hence, the lack of depression. I work at it constantly. It is my job. My life depends upon it and I treat it as such.

There are really only two things I give this level of commitment to: living in the Now and Motherhood. I look at everything as Practice and there are some things I haven't practiced, yet, because I have found it more difficult to stay in the Now and do them at the same time (like be in an intimate, sexual relationship). Since staying in the Now takes priority at this point in my life, I've consciously released opportunities to practice those things. Over the weekend, I began an attempt at holding that against me, but then I remembered that I will have many more opportunities for that Practice. I'm in no rush.

I think. I mull. I analyze. Those are my constants, and so, every opportunity for Practice that I pass up is used as an opportunity to rehearse what that opportunity will look like in the Future. This helps build my confidence as I'm the sort of person who feels most comfortable when she can see the Past, Present, and Future simultaneously.

All of this happens in the Now. There is no other time for it to happen. And, because every Now is another moment's Past and another moment's Future, I am able to keep a wonderfully forgiving perspective on Life. Mine, in particular.

Sometimes, it amazes me how even the Past and Future are happening in the Now.

I'm cleaning my attic.

I don't know how it happened, but my attic got really cluttered. I guess I wasn't aware that I was storing so much up there. I thought I was doing a good job at keeping most of my stuff stored in my heart area, but nope. The attic is getting more than its fair share and is now in need of a good cleanse.

Thank goodness for mudras and meditation and prayer beads.

Thank goodness for love and forgiveness and inquiry.

Thank goodness I don't keep too much stuff in my heart, because I'm starting to question if it's easier to clean the heart or the head and I'm answering, "Head."

My attic is a good place to store stuff because it has windows. If there's too much junk up there, I can open the windows and toss the rubbish out. Where is the heart's opening? In all these years, I haven't found one. It seems that the heart has more of a pore situation going on. Things seep into it and things can drain out of it, but there's no opening up one, huge hole and just tossing stuff in or grabbing things to toss out. The heart is trickier to handle.

If I don't want to think about something, I can simply think of something else, go somewhere else, look at something else, listen to something else, etc. If I don't want to feel something...well, I haven't figured out how to stop feeling things. Not the Heart Things, like Love and... What else is a Heart Thing? Now, that I'm thinking about it, I think that's the only one.

It's funny to me how the heart (or what we call the heart) Loves and all other emotions stem from choices. I've been testing this theory out and reading about it for years, and it seems to be true. The nature of Self is to Love...everything else is a choice. And, what is the Heart if not the Self? So many words for the same thing. I get exhausted trying to differentiate them.

I used to think that when someone's heart felt heavy, that meant s/he was sad or somehow emotionally compromised. Now, I realize that a heavy heart is a heart full of Love. A heart literally full of Love...so much so that it feels like it's about to burst. These moments don't only occur when we're feeling happy, because sadness is just Love With a Twist. As is anger. As is fear.

I have to go, now. My heart is heavy.

time

Time is an interesting subject. We tell ourselves all sorts of stories about it, many of them untrue. The way we think of time is fascinating because it's an unreal thing we like to assign real qualities to. I mean, sure we have the day and the night, but what does that really mean when we've got billions of them? People like to speak about when the end of the world comes, but what does that really mean "the end of the world"? It'd be more honest to talk about the end of our desire to be part of the world. And, one or 5,000 can't make that decision for all of us, so why do we even think about it?

There are so many layers when you start talking about time.

I've been friends with this one chick for about 2 years. Our friendship started b/c she was in my math class and she sat down next to me and gave me all her contact information and her medical background. She wanted me to contact her with assignments, etc. if she was ever absent and she wanted me to know all the various reasons why she'd ever be absent. I never called her with assignments when she was absent. I'm not sure why...I just never thought about her unless she was there. She wanted to be my friend, anyway. I liked that she was single and available to go out and party with me.

During our time together, I have cut her off twice. She's annoying and needy and desperate. I like her, but she's cloying. She needs more than I feel comfortable offering. I've always felt guilty about cutting her off, tho. I felt uncomfortable with the decision. Recently, I cut her off, again. This time permanently, b/c I've been half-listening (maybe even quarter-listening) to everything she tells me and I've come to realize that I truly don't care about her, anymore. I don't care about her love problems or her health problems or her family problems or anything. And, I don't want to be in her sphere.

There is no guilt.

Up until now, I'd mostly been thinking about myself with regard to her. I'd been thinking about how I wouldn't want a friend who did (), I would feel badly if (), I would like (). But, this time, I was thinking of her. Funny how being more considerate of someone else's feelings can lead you to do something that will likely hurt those very same feelings. I figure she deserves better than what I'm prepared to offer her. We can't be lifelong friends if I want her to shut up every time she opens her mouth. She deserves someone who truly cares about her health and her relationship with her boyfriend.

I'm simply not good enough for her. And, I'm okay with that. I don't want to be good enough for her. I feel like I've given her two years to show who she truly is and what she's given me is not something I want to subscribe to.

It's awfully selfish, yet wonderfully compassionate. I know she notices my disinterest. She'll ask me several times during a single conversation if I'm still there. She's the sort of person who is willing to overlook such things. And, up until the other day, I was the sort of person who was willing to dish it out. I feel a little dirty admitting it. How utterly pathetic of me. And, yet...we're humans, after all. This is what we do sometimes.

Time is such an interesting concept. Two years with her, 8 months with someone else, 6 months with what's passed for the Love of 2008. And, now...all gone. One day, it will be five years without her, 20 months without someone else, 6 years since the Love of 2008. And, what does it mean?

They say time waits for no man. Today, that feels like the most wonderful promise.

I know a woman who has two children and feels guilty because she wants a third. She feels guilty because she lives in the world of academia and thinks she is being too primitive or something in wanting to simply mother children as opposed to being a capitalistic force with which to reckon.

I know a woman who has five children and feels her place is in the home. Her husband likes to spend more money than they have, so she recently became an employee at a place she likes. She doesn't feel her children are getting the care and attention they deserve and so she and her husband argue.

I know a woman who has four children. She thinks it's disgusting for an older woman with children to get into a relationship with a younger man. She says she'd be extremely angry if one of her sons "raised some other man's kids." All of her children were born out of wedlock. Her lover is the father of her youngest child and they've been together almost 20 years now...since her sons were toddlers.

I know a woman who had two children, got divorced, then remarried. She often seemed to wish she didn't have the children from the first marriage. She often seemed to wish she could have started over without all the baggage. She sometimes said things to the oldest child that implied the child should be grateful she was allowed to stay with the "good" husband.

I know a woman. She lives with unnecessary pain. And, some say, "What is life without suffering?" And, I say, "Suffering is a choice and it seems you've chosen to allow us as many opportunities to suffer as possible."

I just want to cut down on the opportunities. That's all.