there is no free will

birthing: allowing Life to move through, trusting it

Skyping with Kit.

I am exploring the consequences of needing others  to praise  me/my work, and using their praise, or lack thereof, to judge my value as an artist – or human being. It is such a diamond-clear example of the ego strategy of seeing lack and trying to support the lack with praise or fame or glory.

I am exploring this need to be rated (favorably of course) – and the feelings of doom and gloom that arise when my work does not get what I want. I actually believe I need them to supply me with something I deny I have: my inner knowingness that I am still as God created me: this value can not be rated.

Instead I am grabbing the guilt-bag: I know there is something with me that “they” have discovered – my sinfulness seeps through everything – and now the guilt start bubbling up: did you ever believe you was worth anything? More than a little shit?

I want in this session to dwell in the body, allowing myself to be HERE and not in the mind. The body gets instantly ice-cold and very painful – you know the feeling you get when you put your hand in ice-water and keep it there. This is the pain we feel – before we have numbed and frozen it enough to be split off.

I am aware of a frantic frightened voice that tells me that the body is not trustworthy, cannot be controlled, like the thoughts can be. This thought believes in one thing: pressure to perform – or else!

I remember this pattern from my father – he believed he had to “help me” with school home-work, and the help consisted of his telling me with loud voice and red face that I had to understand this, or was a stupid?! Just try a bit harder, stupid!

I fully see his fear under this – and fully understand that he thought he was helping me – probably the way he had been “taught” too.

But what happened at that point, was that I made a false identity: “I need to be pressured.”

By believing in that thought, I have certainly made it real in my life.

How terrified  my father ( who was a projection from my mind) was to just rest with something that was not yet defined.

I am turning mentally to the terrified pressure-part and tell it that I notice how terrified it is – no judgment – and return simultaneously to my right thigh, where the pain has hidden behind a shield of ice. For the first time, I am willing to just hang out with the pain, without having to have something happened or understood ( = controlled.)

Kit and I discussed powerful metaphors of midwives earlier in the session ( in our language, it is called “earth-mother” )- that as therapists, we cannot birth our patients’ pain – we cannot do it FOR them – but we can be there as a birth-helper. Each time we are merging with a patient’s pain and we are trying to get rid of it and giving advise, we are in reality telling the patient that she is not capable of birthing herself, and is dependent on us and our skills and knowledge. We agree that this is not how we love to do therapy: we are there to give space for a healing process to take place, and that that process ultimately comes from the patient’s essence – the place which is still as God created us.

Now, I want to be with the frozen pain as a midwife and trusting  the wisdom of Love to let it take the steps It wants to.

The pain is just witnessed neutrally -just looked at with Jesus. No shoulds. I feel the pain of the birther – to believe she has to push something out when she is not ready yet. To understand or know something before she is  ready to. I witness the terrified pressure-voice and allow it to be included in Love. BOTH are here – included in awareness: fear- voice/resistance to pain  -AND frozen pain.

The freedom lies in not expecting anything to change with this pain – just resting.

I am also aware that I am willing to give this up to Love – and I take a mental step back and allow Him to lead here.

For all this to work, I have to believe it is possible – and TRUE.

My old belief “I need to be pressured” came to fulfillment when I gave birth to my daughter. I had no belief that I had everything inside I needed to give birth: I gave that responsibility to the midwives. They both pushed down on my belly to “help” the baby out. Afterwards, the placenta did not loosen – and so they pushed as hard as they could to get it out – they literally lay on top of me with all their weight. And I got to be right: I needed pressure.

If I had believed that I had it in me to give a natural birth, I am convinced the placenta would have loosened by itself. This is such a wonderful example of how beliefs shape our lives.

P.S. Right after writing this I made myself a cup of Yogi tea. On the label I read:

“Fast running does not guarantee meeting the destination.”

asking real questions

LESSON 269. My sight goes forth to look upon Christ’s face.

W-pII.269.1.5 Today I choose to see a world forgiven, in which everyone shows me the face of Christ, and teaches me that what I look upon belongs to me; that nothing is, except Your holy Son .

W-pII.269.2. Today our sight is blessed indeed. 2 We share one vision, as we look upon the face of Him Whose Self is ours. 3 We are one because of Him Who is the Son of God; of Him Who is our own Identity.

Some days the Course seems to live me. Today has been such one. No stressing to do the lesson – but my eyes have only seen beauty and beautiful, kind and helpful people all day long. Even sounds have been beautiful.

I went to an art&design shop and bought a porcelain teapot with two white exquisite shimmering egg-shell thin teacups. In the bottom were two faint spirals. The man in the shop was an artist, he is 95 ( I asked) and his wife had made the tea-set. I paid and asked him to bubble-wrap it and keep it until I returned after the movie. I told him he did not have to pack it in  a fancy way at all – it was just to me.

I then went and saw “Le Havre” by Aki Kaurismaki. Each second was an exquisite pleasure. The movie-frames were a symphony of perfect colors in perfect compositions – just like “the tree of life” I just saw. I felt like being on an exhibitions of paintings. I started to wonder if this could be my perception – or maybe both these films had so much beauty in them?

The story was brimming with love. Even the “bad cop” was really a good one. And there was a miracle too.

In the art-shop, the old owner had packed my parcels with colored paper and two kinds of ribbon. I told him that was very sweet of him and he was all smiles.

The people in the full bus were all angel-looking. They all felt like old friends.

I even slept last night with interesting dreams.

decision to let go

This night, I found myself in a clear minded space where I calmly could look at the ego thought-system and not attaching a me to it. I saw the whole attacker/victim pattern, and how I, when having made a choice for ego, had willingly attached to the victim-role, in order to avoid the role of the attacker. There was a tremendous clarity around me that I believe was the decision-maker, just realizing “I did this, and it does not serve me any more.” I found a new way to let go: I saw the story as an image at a word-page, and clicked the delete-button. It felt delicious to answer YES to the question, “Do you really want to do this?” and see the page go blank.

There were no emotional fuss about anything: just this delicious awareness that I was not the content of awareness AT ALL, and it was so not serious.

After having looked with H.S. for quite a while, I drifted into a very peaceful state of mind. Twice within this mindset, I experienced a  strong shock through the nervous system – it felt like the consequence of my release-decision earlier.

I am so grateful that I don’t need to know what it was.

I am not the thinker of my thoughts

fall solstice

0330am

Fall solstice – change in season, change in mind

Those contemptuous eyes – that disgusted mien – the way she abhorred what I offered, “that alternative stuff you do”

Who would believe that it gives me, in these minutes, a great healing?

Remembering: she is the Holy Son of God, and I am only seeing my projection of my own mind’s hatred and disgust – always judged as bad, now allowed.

I don’t need it to change: it is a nothing that is unveiled by my acceptance. Ken’s words come to mind – something like, “we revel in the misery and the pain: that’s what proves to us that we succeeded in separating from God – that is what makes us a “somebody. And we do it because we fear Love.”

So for the first time the judgment of hatred and disgust and contempt is quietly watched. It feels like being in a cess-pool of poison, and as layers are released, the feelings get clearer: “this is how angry I am.”

Still an “I” connected to the anger.

The more I sit with it and look, the more this “I” is seen as a construct – a non-existing thing –

Now it is allowed – not judged – and the nothingness of it is slowly flowing upwards toward Love.

Just an old story – the story of believing in separation and wanting to keep it to keep the me…

shivering with release writing that

allowing

The patterns are becoming clearer.

The mental resistance of falling asleep and becoming “food for astral levels” (meaning fear.)  Praying for help for hours, accepting as much as possible. Falling asleep at 6 in the morning, dreaming of something that is extreme terror, waking up from the terror, while it still is ravaging the nervous system.

Doing Sedona with Mary. Noticing the well-known polarities in my mind: the control-wish – and the wish to dissolve it.

As both were allowed to be there, the image of the need to be right, to be a me, to have a story grew to huge proportions.  It felt so sweet to be able to just witness this “something” and allowing myself to fully take in how strong “it” wanted to exist.

I sat with that – just this need to be a “someone” – and allowed it to be embraced by Love.

I realized that I did not need to change it at all – it was so minuscule compared to the Space who watched it. In the moment when that realization came, it changed: a strong rush of electricity in my body happened, like something leaving.

I do not need to change it as long as I – Presence – see that it is nothing at all – and not serious.

Getting to this point consisted of allowing everything to be there.

Tree of life

Saw The Tree of Life yesterday. Mustavebeen the beautifullest film I ever saw. I wanted to freeze each image. Thank God for DVD’s.
That Hunter Mac Cracken…Oscar deserving.
Last night, I was awake and cocooned in the right mind. Everything was OK just the way it was, peace streaming through each little detail. I think I was in the same no-space that Winnie may be disappeared into. I was laying and observing my hand-movements – they moved in the same delicate way as the leading lady, Jessica Chastain. With each moment she created Beauty and life….ah, the way she touched other people – complete Presence.
And the way young Jack showed 5 emotions layered – never saw anything like it. How extraordinary illuminating it is to truly SEE the emotional being of people and not judge anything, just feeling gratitude.

half life

Half Life

We walk through half our life
as if it were a fever dream

barely touching the ground

our eyes half open
our heart half closed.

Not half knowing who we are
we watch the ghost of us drift
from room to room
through friends and lovers
never quite as real as advertised.

Not saying half we mean
or meaning half we say
we dream ourselves
from birth to birth
seeking some true self.

Until the fever breaks
and the heart can not abide
a moment longer
as the rest of us awakens,
summoned from the dream,
not half caring for anything but love.

~ Stephen Levine ~

(Breaking the Drought)