the mask of fear

I got a message from The Universe today:  (http://www.tut.com/resources/notes/)

“Nice, isn’t it, Nina? How you can always see the little girl or little boy in another, if you but look. And then how you can see that the mask they sometimes wear isn’t to inspire your fear, but to hide their own.

Nina, I can’t help falling in love with you.”

Ahhhhhhh- The Universe”

I remember an old aha like this quote: – that the expression you notice on “grumpy” people is not who they are – it is the burden they carry this incarnation.

And oh my how that calls on my right-minded compassion. This compassion allows me to see that I, too, seem to carry burdens of fear, anger, jealousy, pettiness – and as I allow “them” to be there and welcome them, I become aware of that Loving Space it all floats in. It happens not so rarely that when this recognition comes to me,  both “the grumpy-one” and I turn to each other at the same moment and smile.

seeing beauty

Todays lesson:

Above all else I want to see things differently.

I love this lesson – and I mean it each time i say it. Today, after showering, looking in the mirror, I noticed the white plastic-cord of the electric toothbrush reflected behind the vapor on the mirror – and the beauty of it filled me with ecstasy. At the same time, arising was an ego- knowledge that if I allowed myself to truly experience that beauty, I would die.  Since I am still here, you know what I chose –

and still, the memory of that beauty seen with eyes of Love is still here – and I remember I knew that every need I ever had, would be extinguished if I could allow myself to live in that space of Seeing

inside Jesus

Dream: I am visiting my “surrogate mother” Anne ( she was my “mother” for about 15 years, but dead many years ago.) In her holiday-hut by the sea, I see a big “statue” or “form of Jesus – it looks a little like Russian dolls – and it is made by papmaché – the material that is mostly used for making puppets. But this “Jesus-puppet is different: “He” can be opened from the side. I am looking into a hollow room – and inside it is a mixture of my daughter 8 years, or Anne’s daughter 8 years –  or myself 8 years. And the hollow space is filled with water – and I see that the girl inside it can breathe, even if she is submerged in the water. She is looking at me, wondering how I will react. I think it looks peaceful, but this Jesus is only a puppet…the girl inside, though, feels completely safe.

When I wake up, I think about amniotic fluid – the hollowed Jesus is like a womb…and I realize that the dream could be about myself, being in the womb of my mother – lots of terror there, and heavy guilt – the amniotic fluid had been affected chemically from that for sure – and the Anne-thing…suddenly I see that my “surrogate mother” Anne also could be a reminder of Anna, the mother of Jesus: – I have had the awesome experience twice of being in her Presence, and have felt her love and my connection to her.

And I realize how I belittle these experiences – and the knowledge that Anna is available for me, just as Jesus is available to me at my request (if i show up) – but I think about this night, going to bed, I will call for her and visualize myself lying close to her, being held or just touched lightly.

Sensing this closeness and intimacy, a strong sense of dissociation comes and almost wipes me out. I hear a suggestion – to just notice it, and not disappearing into it. I can do that. I must be very close to Love – AND it must be chosen

suffering? it’s up to me

I love Gangaji’s happiness – she knows she has a choice –

letting go of control

I was about to take my new medication at night – I needed sleep so much – (I thought) and got a thought: why don’t I just lay down in bed and open to the possibility that everything I feel is perfect, and that God is in charge. I don’t need to change anything – but I need to pay attention to what is in my mind, and just notice it with kindness. And I am willing to do that the whole night and not sleep, if that is what is needed and happens. No more controlling whatever seem to be part of the “sleeplessness.”

I was awarded with a gentle warmth in my belly – something let me know that I could relax into everything that was there and not be responsible for it (but to it.)

I don’t know if I have slept or not – I think I must have – but I have been in this gentle place where I notice – I like the word better than look (or watch) –

and somewhere in this process, I was noticing that all of this happened without the slightest twinge of judgment. I sensed something like big chunks of stuck energy releasing itself from my spine – it just happened. I knew that “I” was not doing this – the only thing “I” did, was being willing to notice whatever.

I noticed that any  negativity that I named -” foul, putrid, hateful” – when I let go of the labels, and included it, it just was. – And the feelings of  “me” and “my story” – these were just feelings too – and would I be willing to notice that these feelings were played out on a screen that was unchanged of any projections at all, and eternally there?

yes

*

I got my new tax-papers two days ago – much higher tax. I usually don’t enjoy talking to the consultants in the tax-department – but I called anyway after breakfast.I loved the guy from his first hello, and felt completely at peace. He told me that this very morning he had gotten a new paper from the Finance Department – he scanned it quickly -and found that my new tax was to be corrected – I am going to have even lower tax that last year. He expressed his joy of being able to be helpful –

puppets

Saw an American group of performers called Wakka Wakka – they did a show called Baby Universe. The players who manipulated the puppets – the decision makers 🙂 – were wearing gray costumes and masks looking like gas masks – this was the time that Stephen Hawking was describing, the last years before we all would die – and so the  humans in the play made new universes. very strange and funny – and I really enjoyed seeing how the puppeteers made the puppets play – and how the puppets played like they were autonomous. And in this way of playing, the puppeteers were visible all the time, manipulating the puppets heads and mouths and hands. Wonderful symbols to invite into my night dreams: we really think we are talking and moving and deciding, but the puppeteers are really doing that.

Oh how I love puppet theater. The exploding Sun was played by an actor on stilts inside the 3 meter high puppet – and there were other puppets who were only 10 centimeters. I have difficulties finding words today – I feel very “childish”, about 8 years or so – great difficulties sleeping – reptile brain going into freeze as soon as I lay down. I am seeing this night if I can with the help of Jesus and my right choice somehow change this – if not, new medication tomorrow.

Oh yes it seems to me that I am this screwed up puppet, commanded by my brain. Wrong. Above all I want to see.

He leadeth me and knows the way

ACIM:  “Whenever you are in doubt what you should do, think of His Presence in you, and tell yourself this, and only this:

He leadeth me and knows the way, which I know not.
Yet He will never keep from me what He would have me learn.
And so I trust Him to communicate to me all that He knows for me.

Then let Him teach you quietly how to perceive your guiltlessness, which is already there.

T-14.III.19.

the elegance of the hedgehog

This is a translation of the title of a French wonderful movie I saw yesterday with my daughter. I hope it is available in English-speaking countries too: it is b e a u t i f u l   beyond measure  – a jewel. A little while inside the movie,my daughter and I turned to each other in exact the same moment, and sighed: “It is perfect.”

I offer you a trailer here. The English translation is not good in one place in the trailer: it is a quote from “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy: “All happy families are alike – but each unhappy family is unhappy in it’s own way.” Interestingly, the  English translation  states that ” each unhappy family is unique” – which seems like  ego glorifying pain.

 

the true problem

The true problem is the decision for guilt

freeing the white reindeer

In the night, I am thinking of my therapist that I am going to see in the morning, and I am thinking about her talking, and how I felt invisible and crushed last time…I allowed the feeling to take me back to my father’s talking. It was a talking that came out of a big need to control and project his feeling of smallness on the others. Being in that moment now, a wave of murder lust and hatred flows through me – hidden from my awareness at that time. My heart-area is hurting very bad now, my throat is sore, I feel crushed in that area. I am aware now of all the stories I have made up about my father and I – the “me” and the “him” – me, the innocent victim, he the crazy violator and steamroller. Blue is nudging me to look into my wise-word-book lying by my bed. I open it at random and this is what I get:

“Keep going deeper inside to reach that loving space. Each bad feeling you find as you go in is just another ego story. See it, identify that, and throw it out because it was only made up to keep the love away. Go down another layer, the most loving space is there. Cursing your fate is denying your teacher the chance to use it. Bring it back to your mind and think about someone else’s need. This is the opposite of the ego making it about you. See the ego thought, don’t defend or repress, just recognize it as a defense against love. It is a voice against your strength, arguing for a shabby image of yourself.” Ken Wapnick in  one of the q and a’s.

In this moment, I have a revelation. I believe in what Jamie and Ken tells us: that I am not traumatized and hurt and violated by my past: I am hurting because I have chosen to push love away – and I use all these stories to do it.

The whole elaborate system of the ten archetypes constituting the psyche of a person who is either abused or is an abuser, that I describe in detail in my manuscript “When Fear Comes Home to Love” is valid and true within the dream – but outside the dream, where I really am, I can choose again. And where I am now, I know I have no use for these maneuvers any longer, and I will dive down in the layer below, to that most loving space.

The shift in my consciousness is delightful, as soon as I stop looking at my past as a therapist, and leave that way of thinking – I am just here in this moment, knowing that everything I have ever experienced has come through me.

I fall into a sweet sleep. I dream about a collective of young women. I visit their house. In the middle, it is raised a white tent made of light, almost transparent fabric – inside are soft mattresses and pillows. It exudes a sacred and joyful vibration. Inside, the 5 young women are making love – and this love is very different from what we use to call sex. There is no lust, no desire – but a sweet dear longing for the moment when one reaches the summit of ecstasy, where the two melts into One. I am a witness to this.

Then young boys are inside the house. I try to chase them out, seeing them as invaders. Impossible. Then adult men are coming in. Now I threaten with police – they just pass me quietly.

In the next moment I am back into the tent, peeking out . and the men are placed against the wall, drinking tea. They are not aroused in any way – just being positioned against the walls, as witnesses. They are supposed to just be there.

When I wake up, I register with great astonishment that this is the first time I have experienced men who have related to sex in this way. I realize that a big shift is happening in  my mind. There is a break in the dream – I am walking up the long steep road from my childhood house on my way to the train. It is winter, and deep snow. Right in front of me on the right side of the road, lies a snow-white reindeer. When I look at it, I sense waves of sacredness coming from it. It looks at me with deep love and pain – its back part is inside a big concrete boulder. I embrace it and stroke it and tell it that I love it deeply. Somehow I will help it.

(In my culture, a white reindeer is equivalent to the White Buffalo  in American Indian Tradition.)

At the shrink’s  office, I am sharing how being special because of my past and how I have managed to deal with it, has played a big deal. After studying the Course, I realize HOW important specialness is to maintain an ego. I also see that feeling this specialness – “I save my father from going mad” was the only comfort the little girl could get – it saved her from going mad, and gave her a super important job. I don’t blame her at all – but oh what a blessing it is to feel that I can start to let go of the stories – and starting to let go of having to understand – just reminding myself that at this moment, I can push love away – or fall into that deep loving space below the pain and fear.