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Archive for the ‘Healing’ Category

You can have the milk, but you can’t buy the cow

06 Apr

This particular post is about my commitment issues, but something funny happened while I was looking for a graphic to go with it that I’d like to address before I get to the meat of the matter.  I kept running across the two main stereotypes of commitment-phobes.  I can’t really speak for the male commitment issues since I do not have the equipment to qualify as such, but I can speak for the women.

It’s not that we “made” a commitment to you, General Male Population, and had some kind of intention to bail on it or kept some reservation about it (though, admittedly, some of us did – we have that whole “trying to please” thing going on).  It’s that we tried to enter into the relationship honestly, and then when we got there and you realized that you had us, you stopped trying.  We didn’t get bored with you:  you became boring.*

See, part of the excellence of being a human is that you continue to grow and change as time goes on – and the personal evolutionary process is not meant as the means to the end of finding a romantic, life-long commitment.  You’re supposed to keep changing after that, not becoming stagnant or crawling under a rock or resigning yourself from humanity because you believe that the presence of a “little lady” at home validates all you have been or ever will be.

Now, on to the other thing I was going to talk about…

I was chit-chatting with a new friend the other day, and he said, “So, let me get this straight: you can work on cars, you do your own household repairs, you’re a fantastic cook, you’re smart, you’re funny, you’re cute as hell, you aren’t shy about your sexuality… and you’re still single?!?  How the hell does that make sense?”

I said, “I have commitment issues.”

Admittedly, I was really just trying to be a little funny, but I realized as soon as I said it that it was true.  It’s all true.  Oh, gods, I’ve turned into one of those people…

Really, though?  I realized in that moment – flash-fast brain and all that – that while I technically do have commitment issues, I’ve earned every last one of them.

My history speaks for itself in this regard.  My first marriage was an eight-year relationship of alcoholism (even the dry kind), abuse, manic-depressive cycles, emotional manipulation, emotional hostaging, and a wide variety of other offenses.  In a perfect world, I never would have fallen for the bait, but I was young and needed the gold pieces.  My second marriage was an ongoing “dog problem” where we kept using the same words and thinking we were talking about the same thing, but in the end, it turns out that “forever” and “love” and “honor” and “respect” just didn’t mean the same things to each of us.  (At least, that’s my current assessment of it.)

In both cases, I think I’ve more than earned my right to be a little cautious of any kind of long-term commitment, but that’s not why I’m poly.  (Wait, what?)  Seriously.  I’m not polyamorous because I’m afraid of commitment, I’m polyamorous because I don’t want to limit myself to a single commitment, and I want to have the leeway and freedom to explore different possibilities before committing to any person or persons out there.

But, the process of recognizing a problem is to analyze it and find the core of fear, and then to resolve said core of fear.

When it comes to commitments (and relationships in general), what am I afraid of?

I’m afraid of being lied to again, or to take it from a more “personal responsibility” stance, I’m afraid of believing in something that turns out to be false.

I’m afraid of wasting more time, committing myself to a situation that is presented as long-term and stable but winds up being terminally incompatible.

I’m afraid of being neglected and left wanting in one or more areas, even after repeated attempts to communicate my needs and wants in a variety of different ways.

I’m afraid of the fallout of shame and guilt that comes from loving someone so much that I want to share them with my kids/family, and then ending up having to explain the exit of said person due to whatever circumstances.

I’m afraid that my work to get past my abused past and communication quirks has been insufficient, and that I’ll continue experiencing the same problem again and again, as though there’s some kind of key to understanding that I just can’t seem to grasp.

More than anything, I’m afraid of trusting enough that I rely on another human being again, and then being so hideously disappointed – and also financially or economically or emotionally screwed – that it takes a few more years to regain my footing.

I suppose to a certain degree, embracing my poly-ness more completely than I have in the past is something of a symptom of these fears because by declaring only secondary relationships and never primaries, I have plenty of room to explore the other people and compare and contrast their pros and cons before considering anyone for the Exalted Role.  I have found, though, that I’m trending more towards people who are also not terribly interested in primary relationships, people who would have the luxury of throwing themselves into the enjoyment of each other without having to worry about the pesky “next week issues”, and maybe that is a symptom of the fear.

Or maybe it’s just a way for me to seek out having my needs met without having the fear overriding my emotions, causing me to second-guess every level.  I love playing with certain types of people whom I would never introduce to my kids, and I love being able to explore those connections without feeling like that introduction has to be part of the relationship.  It leaves me open to indulge myself in deeper arenas, if that makes sense.

I’d meant for this to be funnier, I think, but really… outside of the stereotypical jokes and jabs, there’s not a lot about it that is funny.  It’s a terrible place to be, to have to tell someone who thinks you’re wonderful (so far) that, no, you’re not going to escalate.  You can have the milk, but you can’t buy the cow.

______________________________________________________

* Yes, I know it’s not like that all the time, but it’s like that often enough that it warrants a conditionally generalized statement.

 
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Posted in Dating, Healing, Personal Life

 

The tragedy of patriarchy

16 Mar

I touched on this briefly day before last in the post I shared from the Facebook smack-down, and I wanted to clarify my observation a bit.

I said that the tragedy of patriarchal societies is that men are possibly victimized by it more than women. When you think about who truly gets the short end of the stick, it seems to me that men are the unwitting recipients in every worst way.

First, I need to define what I mean by “patriarchal society”. It’s not completely accurate to say “a society dominated by men”, because that doesn’t really describe it. In practice, it’s more like “a society dominated by an impression of what masculine-driven power desires should be”. From an evolutionary perspective, men are charged with providing food, shelter, protection for the tribe, and keeping the histories. Women are charged with care-giving, food preparation, healing, and keeping the mysteries. Together, they create a whole social structure that functions well in relatively small groups – and even in our current version of civilization with massive cities and sprawling uninterrupted population, we tend to create our “tribes” through friends and business arrangements. When a society becomes patriarchal, the tasks of the men are considered to be more important – more valuable – than the tasks of women.

While the origins of the shift might be based in a momentary need to rally against an enemy or to feed a sudden expansion in population, the failure to return to balance creates a dangerous climate the likes of which we are suffering through right now.

But it is not the collective decision of all men to create this imbalance. It is the work of a relatively small handful of people (mostly men) who make the decision and then, tasting the illusion of power, fall into the trap of greed, believing that to keep all of the power to themselves, they will continue to be “more”.

The illusion of power and the structure that emerges is supported by and propagated by sowing distrust between the genders. The “temptation of Eve” and the stories of succubi are classic examples. The preposterous notion that women are the properties of their husbands or male relatives is further evidence. (And who would think to truly control someone less powerful? There is no need – unless the secret truth is that women were acknowledged from the very beginning as being at least if not more powerful than their male.counterparts.)

Men in the general population are taught to distrust women, and men often feel “distrust” as very similar to “threat”, and how do men traditionally deal with feeling threatened? They intimidate and present violence. This puts women, in turn, in a place to distrust men – and, even worse, to distrust themselves if they have bought into the religious and mythological foundations of the distrust.

Here’s where the wound happens: Women do not share the mysteries with the men. They do not feel safe speaking the same language or talking about private things, and men are left feeling isolated from their women, knowing on some intuitive level that they are not receiving full communications.

And so more distrust is sown.

Women, however, know the nature of secret things, and they support each other well through unspoken rituals that men do not have. Even under extreme repression, women will mostly tend to find ways to keep their true power separate and sacred as much as possible. Because they did not teach the men the nature of mystery, men do not have this. (Men, likewise, do not tend to teach women the ways of force and power, which seems at first glance an appreciable trade-off, but it’s not.)

Women find comfort in each others company in a far more intimate way than men do between themselves, but intimacy is a human need, not gender based. Men feel the lacking, like a craving for a food they can’t identify, and they must force themselves out of a mode of existence defined by a refusal of intimacy (the norm) if they will have any kind of lasting happiness at all.

This is why I insist that gender equality is a human rights issue, not a “battle of the sexes”. It hurts everyone within that society, and repressing one part, no matter how seemingly small, robs the whole of what should be inalienable rights.

I personally want to share that real power and intimacy with a male counterpart as I do with my women-friends, but that cannot happen without trust, and even the most well-mannered male raised in a patriarchal society will be suspect.

 
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Posted in Healing, News, Personal Life

 

Expecting miracles

08 Jan

Some time ago, I picked up a little ebook Rebecca Messenger (previously Marina) called “30 Angel Steps”.  It’s a thirty-day journaling exercise that helps you clear out old energy, focus on what you want in life, foster gratitude, etc.  I’ve started it a couple of times, but I haven’t finished out a full round of it.  The last time, I just got distracted somewhere around day eight or nine.  This time, I’m giving myself permission to skip a few days at a time since my schedule has changed so drastically.

If you want to give it a shot yourself, you can download it here.  Her actual website is here, and when you subscribe, you get a ton more free stuff.

I’m up to Day Seven right now, and I thought maybe I’d use this as my space to do it.  (Mostly, it’s in my blue book, but I’m inspired to do it here today.  I’m not sure why.)

Here’s the angel message for today:

Dear Angels,

May I ask you about your relationship to our Heavenly Mother? Why does mankind not speak of her?

Centuries have passed and the glory of our Divine Mother, the Divine Feminine, has been hidden. Her glory and honor were stolen away by those in authority who found only the masculine served their purposes. Man always has been a creature of free will and chose long ago to turn his back on God, the Mother.

This has upset the balance of male-female relationships on every level. There is a great resurgence of the female energy in the Universe today. Not just in your world, but in many other worlds as well. The orphaned child cries for Mother and can no longer be denied.

This is truth. Raphael, Gabriel, Michael and Uriel

 

In my rapid-fire mind, this almost becomes a point of past concern, but at the same time, it’s very, very immediate.  As we sit and examine and consider just what the heck is causing this insanity in our world – economic depression, financial crisis, interpersonal warfare – the imbalance between the masculine (objective, power-striving, see-only) and the feminine (subjective, comfort-striving, feel-only) is definitely a prime culprit.  Of course, as I often state, correlation is not causation, so I have to ask myself, is the world in the shitter right now because of the imbalance between Shakti and Shekinah, or is has this imbalance between Shakti and Shekinah been created by something else that has then thrown the world into the shitter?

I know I have a hard time balancing the male-female aspects of myself sometimes, too, but more and more evidence suggests that that’s just the Aspie speaking.  I’m the queerest straight woman I know, which is saying something, but I’d rather be queer-yet-straight than be unnecessarily girlie and uncomfortable with both my appearance and the potential sexual response of others.  (But that’s a whole other story.)  A major part of me somewhat regrets the passage of attraction to women in general, but that could also just be because I haven’t met the right one.  ;-)

Digression, much?

Back to the angel days process…

One thing I appreciate about myself is: my willingness to state and defend my boundaries.  I was not always able to do this, and I’ve been bloody terrible about it in the past, but now, there’s a moment of freezing anxiety right before the words “No, thank you” come out, and then it’s gone.

One thing I appreciate about Joe is his willingness to be flexible and accommodating to his boys’ changing emotional needs.

I intend TO DO one thing at a time:

Morning: Check my comics, read PostSecret, drink some coffee

Afternoon:  Take Diana shopping so that she can have fabulous work clothes.

Evening: Snuggle the boys, make dinner, get everyone bathed, do some work, work some more.

“To Do” list for the Angels:

Dear Angels, While I am busy working or playing today, could you please do these things for me?  Thanks for all your help!  I love you!

  1. Clear up the traffic so that we can get where we’re going safely.
  2. Work on greasing the wheels for that project.
  3. Bring in that windfall in a timely and helpful manner.

Today, I intend to thank…  Well, now, I can’t tell you this part, internet, because that would give some of it away.

I Am statements.  I am filled with gratitude and love with the potential of the next few months.  I am delighted with my healthy financial status.  I am so appreciative of the bountiful resources in my home and life.

**********

There’s a whole other section that you do before bed as well.  You make an “I forgive myself for” statement, an “I intend to forgive X for” statement, then a “What I loved about today” statement, and finally, this:

“Dear Creative Mind, I know you never sleep, so while I am resting, could you please work on …. ”

And these are the internal things you’d like to accomplish, such as receiving inspiration for your latest project or releasing old guilt, shame, or anger, or whatever.

**********

I find I can pull myself out of a funk more easily when I’m doing exercises like this.  I can pick up on when I’m feeling down “naturally” or when there’s something bothering me, and that’s not always easy for me.  More importantly, though (and I noticed this when I was doing these angel pages before), awesome little bits of opportunity and serendipity just pop up out of nowhere.  Avenues that I didn’t even realize existed appear and often make the going a little easier for any number of projects or intentions.  It’s kinda neat that way.

I’m not sure I want to get into the “what is an angel” discussion just yet, though.  Suffice it to say, I don’t think your idea of an angel matches my idea of an angel, because I am definitely not thinking of a bunch of fluffy-bunny flying hippies wandering around with harps and halos.

But, that’s another story.

 
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On the nature of Santa Claus

05 Jan

A friend asked me if my kids still believed in Santa Claus.  I said, “Well, of course!  Don’t you?”

There’s been a wisdom for years, especially in my family, that Santa Claus is the modern “spirit” of a sense of giving and joy, especially for children, during the winter solstice celebration time.  We kinda go along with the cultural norms since it’s difficult to explain that we don’t mind working on Christmas but could we please have the 21st and 22nd off instead (experience has shown this), although this year (and possibly in years to come), we deferred “the Santa Spell” for a week and had our “Christmas morning” on January 1st.

The Santa Spell is the formal name for the process of acquiring and wrapping and tagging all of the presents for the family, putting up the final festive decorations, and preparing the family feast.  It’s a little bit of childhood magic, but it’s just as important as any other mythological figure.  For us, it invokes a kind of energy that just manifests things, sometimes seemingly out of thin air, that enable us to always have a kindly time of the holidays.  Some friends have gotten visited by the Turkey Fairy on an occasion or two, some have had their entire Christmas process provided spontaneously by charitable folks (myself included), and possibly more often, some kind of circumstance will pop up out of nowhere that will just make everything come together.

Perhaps my view of this is skewed somewhat by my deep love for Terry Pratchett’s “Hogfather”.  That is our annual Xmas Eve watching tradition, and the end of it makes a vital and important point:  Regardless of what kind of scrifical blood ritual may have started the mythology of Santa Claus (or the Hogfather, as the case may be), it is our innocent faith in the ideas of them that is the important point.  Traditions are grown one yaer at a time, and it only takes two generations to make something seem like it’s been there forever.  When we’re talking about mythological beings, there’s often a deeper foundation to it that adds an additional type of magic, and that’s why we aught to give ourselves permission to believe.

At the end of “Hogfather”, Susan asks Death what the purpose was for all of their efforts of the evening (you’ll have to watch to find out, I won’t spoil it here), and he says something to the effect that believing in things like the Hogather, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, et al, prepare the innocent child-mind to believe in things without physical material proof.  In the adult years, it’s the ideas of things like justice and mercy and compassion.  There is no particle or atom or element that can be isolated to identify these ideas, nothing that can be synthesized or produced to increase them (despite what the pharmaceutical companies would want you to think), and yet, we know they exist because we see the evidence of them every day.

The foundation of truth that Pratchett is trying to illustrate is that our power of faith, of daring to believe in the ideas, gives them power.  This ties in with another profound truth that “the way you think creates the reality in which you live.”  When you bring yourself to a place to encourage positive thoughts, positive things happen to you, and the same attraction of same-ness happens if you put yourself in a negative mindset.

Consider, then, that the magic of youth is a kind of exercise to build up our muscles of faith, of realizing that we have the power to choose what we believe and how strongly.  If we can let ourselves believe that a fat man in the red suit might possess our parents and imbue them with a kind of conjuring magic, then we can believe that people are mostly inherently good, that we are worthy by our existence far before our actions, and that love is an inalienable right of all humans.  Without that magic, we are easily torn down by the evidence that suggests the dark and cruel nature of the universe, and by that, we end up giving more power to that darkness.

So, you see, belief in something like Santa Claus or the Great Pumpkin or the Soul Cake Duck is really about arming yourself in the battle of light versus darkness.  You are giving yourself the power to be armored and defended against the onslaught of unpleasantness – outside of yourself and within – and that is the most powerful force one can conjure at all.

Especially when you’ve been taught that positivity leads to gratitude.

 
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Posted in Healing, Law of Attraction, Non-Fiction, Personal Life

 

Learning from Solitaire

02 Jan

I’d thought about titling this, “Everything I need to know about life I learned from Solitaire”, but almost as soon as I thought it, I realized how silly that is.  There’s nothing – no matter how glorious – that teaches you everything about life.  It’s all a culminate experience from moment to moment.

Still, there are a number of things that I’ve learned about how life works as I play game after game of that simple Klondike-style pastime.

1. No matter what you’re dealt to begin with, success is mostly determined by that which you cannot see.

2. Even the best equation of potentiation cannot take into account the unknown variables.  (Or, to put it another way, any assessment of potentiation is impacted infinitely by the factors of probability until all variables are defined.)

3. Even when you know all the variables, success is not guaranteed.

4. If you don’t like the hand that is dealt, reshuffle and try again.

5. Sometimes the way forward is the way back.

6. Always count your cards.  Sometimes you have to sacrifice making an easy move in order to get to the good move.

7. No matter how silly it seems, your attitude does more to impact your success than any range of chance.  Keep a good outlook and a positive expectation, and even the disappointments will be not so bad.

8. Figure out where your aces (foundational materials) are first, and then worry about the Kings.  Without the former, having the latter won’t matter a hill of beans.

9. At some point, it’s time to hang it up and and try again later.  Relentlessly attempting a win streak will only lead to sleepless nights and intense frustration.

10. Solitaire is great, but sometimes, you just need to play cards with other people – especially if you want to raise the stakes.

11. When faced with two possible moves of seemingly equal value, opt for the one that will show you something new.

12. There’s an undo button for a reason, but don’t go too far forward before going back or you might forget where you were trying to go.

13. Overall, the best algorithm will offer you a 20% chance to win.  That’s one in five, averaged out.  That’s pretty close to real life experience, too, so if you’ve had a bad streak, know that a good one is coming – life has just been saving it up.

 

 
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Posted in Healing, Non-Fiction

 
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