02.01.10
Posted in Personal, Spirituality at 10:37 am by Strumpet
So, this month my card is the Queen of Cups…pretty fitting, as I’m challenging myself to take off some of the armor I carry around every day and to soften- to really know myself in all my parts.
Softening is really hard for me. I tend to sit behind my nice little Fence of Sarcasm and Wit, in my castle of I’m Too Cool to Care, in the county of I’m Above All of That. The trouble is, none of that is true. I *do* care. All of these well-crafted pieces of my personality serve to keep me at a distance so I don’t get hurt by those around me, and really? These defenses aren’t serving me anymore. They’re certainly not helping me craft the life I want.
So, how to best go about letting some of this go…well, I first have to remember that I’m strong, and that I don’t need all of this clap-trap to keep me safe. I have to remember what I want to cultivate in the world, what sorts of people I want to draw to me, what kinds of experiences I want to weave into my life. I have suffered to learn, and now it is time to stop suffering to learn. It is time to learn in a new way.
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10.24.09
Posted in Gratitude, Personal, Spirituality at 10:23 am by Strumpet
I woke up this morning feeling pretty darn satisfied. Life is.
Specific thoughts:
1. Last year at this time, I was still waking up most mornings feeling depressed. Porky’s little face greeted me and licked away my tears. Now, I’m still greeted by licks, but I’m smiling. I have a solid sense of my own efficacy.
2. I cleaned my whole apartment yesterday from top to bottom; it really needed it. I’ve noticed that I wasn’t upset or anxious that it was less-than-perfectly-clean for so many weeks. Before, I would have jumped out of my skin before I would have let it get so dusty. I think this means I’m more content with being an imperfect person.
3. There have been some things going on in my personal life that are patently uncool…but while sitting at work on Thursday, I thought of the jellyfish, moving along where the currents go, in a way being an embodiment of letting go and just living what happens…and that made me laugh about my circumstances, which, in truth, are not that big of a deal. I then remembered Pema Chodron’s teachings on “no big deal”…the good, the bad, the challenging, the infuriating, the delightful… all of it really being “no big deal”.
4. In addition, I woke up this morning remembering the advice I got from a pagan friend when I was dithering about leaving my husband. “You’re a Witch. Act like one.” It was exactly what I needed to hear way back then…and exactly what I needed to remember today.
So yeah. Life is…and that is good.
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10.12.09
Posted in Gratitude, Personal, Spirituality, poetry at 10:06 pm by Strumpet
Da Capo
By Jane Hirshfield
Take the used-up heart like a pebble
and throw it far out.
Soon there is nothing left.
Soon the last ripple exhausts itself
in the weeds.
Returning home, slice carrots, onions, celery.
Glaze them in oil before adding
the lentils, water, and herbs.
Then the roasted chestnuts, a little pepper, the salt.
Finish with goat cheese and parsley. Eat.
You may do this, I tell you, it is permitted.
Begin again the story of your life.
As I learn to keep more still, to let life unfold instead of forcing certain happenings, I find myself freaking out every once in a while. Am I going to wake up ten years from now, regretting that I wasn’t more demanding, more inclined to force my way through situations? Is my attitude going to get me into some sort of unforeseen trouble? Will I wake up at 65 wondering what the fuck I did with my life, lamenting that turning point in my late twenties when I decided to stop running?
I guess I’m most concerned that I’ll wake up one day with large regrets…but that’s a worry that’s not really grounded in my own identity; it more closely describes the experiences of my family of origin, particularly my mother’s experiences. *I* don’t really have any regrets thus far, at least none that come blaring into my headspace right now. In my quiet moments, I’m not terribly tense about what the next few years will bring. Because of my upbringing, I relate constant tension to investment, particularly emotional investment. Thus, this lack of tension makes me my gut uneasy, and I wonder if I’m really getting the hang of having a healthy attitude, or if I’m somehow checking out and just not caring as much as I “should”.
I comfort myself with reminders that I’m a person who knows, in her heart, when big decisions need to be made, when life’s little irritations are truly large issues, when there really is a monster under the bed. I remind myself that I’m a girl who is covering a large distance with small steps. Thus far, my comforting statements are true. I think getting acquainted with my fear of the unknown is helping, too. Instead of grasping for something to give the illusion of security, I’m becoming better at just dealing with uncomfortable uncertainty.
So I guess, for me, the difference between this state of patient observation and my previous states of unhealthy settling is a freedom from obsession and attachment to outcomes. As soon as those words hit the page, I can think of at least 100 times in the last week that I was consumed with attachment and obsession… and that elicits a smile.
What fun it is to be a work in progress.
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04.03.09
Posted in Magic, Personal, Spirituality at 8:26 am by Strumpet
On June 5th, I will have spent a year and a day as an independent gal. I can’t believe I made it this far. Pandora was right, though- it has changed me, moved me more toward center, planted my feet firmly on the ground.
The challenge has shifted, though, from one of abstaining through unhealthy desires to abstaining though already pretty damn whole. I would say for at least the first 9 months, my desire for a relationship was a desire to complete my self through another person. That desire was really strong, as it was extremely hard work to birth a solid, substantial me. Now, I feel pretty damn solid, pretty damn substantial…and I still have two more months to go. I feel this work is the capstone- I get to learn the meaning of fulfilling a vow to myself simply because I made it. It is the work of becoming a woman who keeps her word, especially when she’s promised something to herself.
This year has been a form of walking meditation- I am more present to each and every twinge and desire to lose myself in relationship, to build flying buttresses around my house of self, and even the occasional desire to build that self into a fortress instead of a home. The desire to wall myself off has been great, and I’ve had a few missteps, potentially confusing friendly faces with those that are not so friendly, and vice versa. Each triumph and tumble have helped me learn.
Right now, I’m focusing on tending my garden- making it a beautiful place, pulling the weeds, confident that eventually I will feel ready for visitors….but not yet. Not just yet. 
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02.27.09
Posted in Ethics, Spirituality at 8:57 am by Strumpet
Again, another Message from the Universe that makes me irritated:
Actually, the only effective way of changing another person is by changing yourself.
Works every time, guaranteed.
The Universe
Again, I know the point they are trying to get across, but they are saying it in such an ambiguous way that it is, in my humble opinion, irresponsible.I’m probably going to unsubscribe from this email list. Grrr.
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02.19.09
Posted in Ethics, Spirituality at 10:25 am by Strumpet
I receive benign, happy Messages from the Universe in my inbox every weekday from tut.com; normally, they are a bright spot in my day…and then yesterday, I received one that made me so incredibly angry that I knew I’d have to write about it.
The message was this:
When you can look beneath their behavior that hurt you, Lora, and you can see the frightened child - it becomes nearly impossible to be angry and carry a grudge.
And you so can.
ILY,
The Universe
P.S.- Besides, your happiness, abundance, health, and friendships are not dependent on how others behave.
And now, as I am a pagan and I have many friends who are interested in spiritual things and are connected to the Great Cosmic Hoochie Koo, I want to present the following thoughts for discussion:
I take issue with this message from the Universe. Maybe it is just me, maybe what I’m reading into this isn’t present in the message, but it seems that the full statement being made here is this:
If you can see that someone was hurting you from a place of wounded-ness, not only will you not be angry and you won’t carry a grudge, but you’ll realize that you *don’t have a right to be angry*. When you are *this enlightened*, you will be able to continue to be around people even though they hurt you, because hey, they don’t do it for any reason other than their own frightened-child-ness. If someone hurts you from their own wounded-ness, you have less of a right to take issue with their behavior. Being upset and heck, maybe even having standards and boundaries around how others treat you looks suspiciously like depending on others’ behaviors for your own happiness, and we definitely don’t want that.
(/snark)
As a person who is learning a lot through therapy, I have huge issues with this; these ideas may not really be present in this Message from the Universe, but I feel that they have been present in enough New Age spirituality to make me recoil upon reading anything that even alludes to the attitude of “once you are enlightened enough, you should be ok with others no matter how they treat you.” I have internalized this message in such a way that I have stayed too long in relationships that don’t serve me, in relationships that are actually damaging to me, because I tell myself that the person ‘isn’t being a jackass on purpose’ and therefore I feel that I lose some of my ability to take issue with their behavior. It sounds warped, but I’ve thought on more than one occasion that a ‘better’ person, a person with ‘more understanding’ would be able to see hurtful behaviors for what they are (for example, “a frightened child” acting out) and thus would find it “nearly impossible to be angry and carry a grudge.” Being in therapy with a Jewish woman who has said things like “Lora, I’m Jewish! My God is a God of vengeance!” has made me laugh, but has also helped me to see that anger is normal and ok and not something to push away or silence through spirituality.
Maybe this isn’t something others have experienced- I am totally willing to own that I might have misinterpreted something along the way which has led me to hear “once you get there, you will be able to accept everyone with a smile”. Has anyone else thought this, felt this, experienced this?
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04.08.08
Posted in Politics, Spirituality at 1:55 pm by Strumpet
Courtesy of boingboing: Representative Davi orders an atheist to stop testifying:
‘Ill. Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) faced off against Rob Sherman of Buffalo Grove, who objected to the state of Illinois giving $1 million to the Pilgrim Baptist Church, excoriating him for not believing in God and for having the temerity to say that the Church and State should be separate. She told him that she believed it was dangerous for children to know that atheism exists. She ordered him to stop testifying and insisted that in the Land of Lincoln, “people believe in God!” ‘
Here is the link to the Chicago Tribune article, and here is the audio. Take a moment to listen and be reminded of the importance of the First Amendment.
Our First Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Um, Rep. Davi, I think you need to reread your Constitution. It was pretty important to the founding fathers that we separate church and state- so important that it was the topic of the very first amendment to our Constitution. It’s not just some *crazy* notion that the atheists made up.
Seriously, it is this sort of horseshit in our government that makes me want to slap a bitch. I don’t know how these sorts of discussions can keep going on in our government, a government created by people who left other countries seeking religious freedom. I just don’t get it, and I don’t feel like I’m in some sort of privileged position to see this matter clearly.
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