I've decided that the purpose of your 30's is dealing with the karmic repercussions of all the decisions and mistakes you made in your 20's.

It's the "grow the hell up" decade.

I filed for bankruptcy a couple months ago and had my hearing with the federal trustee this morning. I got there early to watch a few cases so I would have an idea of how my own hearing would go. There are so many lessons I've learned from the whole situation; I can't even begin to start listing them.

There's the obvious lessons I learned just from the last few years of scrimping, saving, phone calls from creditors, struggling, stressing, etc.:

1. Don't use credit cards for household goods, clothes, food, etc. If you don't actually have the money to pay cash or write a check for it, don't buy it until you do. And perhaps by the time you actually have the money, you'll have also had the time to think about whether or not you really want it.
2. Make a budget and stick with it. Make sure that budget includes things you might not think to include, such as cleaning supplies, cable bills, clothing maintenance, kitchen goods (saran wrap and sandwich bags cost money!), and SAVINGS.
3. Learn to tell the difference between a Want and a Need. I would LIKE new shoes, but I already have fifteen pair of perfectly servicable shoes, so I don't actually NEED new shoes.
4. Save, save, save, save. It's better to be able to handle minor emergencies like car repairs by diving into savings than it is to charge to a credit card.

I could go on and on ad nauseum, but I won't. There's nothing profound that I learned. It's just common sense things that I didn't have the common sense to learn until AFTER I'd screwed my life up pretty good.

But there were some not-so-obvious and completely cynical things that occurred to me as I sat listening to all these stories in bankruptcy court (and by listening to the horror stories of my friends' divorces and breakups):

1. Don't get married!
2. Don't start a business (and especially don't start MULTIPLE businesses).
3. Don't own joint property with anyone.
4. Don't have joing accounts or credit with anyone.

From which my cynical little commitment-phobic brain draws the following conclusion: Always leave yourself an out!

My 20's were the decade of exhuberant over-extension.

My 30's are the decade of cynical life-course correction.

Does that mean I'll finally lighten up in my 40's?

So here goes:

1) What makes you feel strong and confident?
I'd have to say that my meditation practice helps me feel centered, strong, and confident.  I can really tell when I haven't practiced consistently.  I feel out of touch with myself, I get distracted easily, I can't focus, and my emotions just rage out of control.  It's one of those things that you have to practice every day, otherwise the skill isn't there when you need it.  And unfortunately, I have not been good about practicing daily lately.

2) Whose strength do you admire?
If, by the end of my life, I have even a quarter of the strength and love that my grandmother had, I will have led a good life.  It wasn't until after she had died that it really hit me how strong, capable, and independent she was, how much her presence had kept us together as a family, how much her heart had helped people through hard times, and how much I wish I'd been a little less "too busy" to really learn more from her when I still had the chance.  And I see elements of that strength still living on in her descendents.

3) Who keeps you going when times are tough?
My friends are a constant reminder that things are never as bad as they might seem, that every situation in life is only temporary and the only constant is that everything changes, that there's a different perspective for each situation if you only open up enough to see it, and they're also not afraid to call "bullshit" on me (whether I want to hear it or not).  It doesn't matter if we're interacting in person or electronically, just their very existence helps redirect my focus outwardly.  And most importantly of all, they just remind me to breathe and the rest will take care of itself.

4)What creative activities do you enjoy?
Playing the piano and guitar, singing, dancing around like a loony-tune when I'm alone in my house with my mp3 player, doing yoga, writing, and knitting.  I need to do ALL these things a lot more frequently than I have been in order to stay more grounded.

5) Do you have a special name for that inner spark? If not, what's a word or two that it makes you think of?
People call it all kinds of things, but they're all just different words that mean the same thing, so I would use a different word for it, depending on who I was talking to.  God, light, strength, grace, divine spark, source, faith, beauty, soul, holy spirit, the infinite divine, the Force.  :)  Call it what you will. 

The point of love between lovers is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good relationship is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky. -- Rainier Maria Rilke

Love.

My experience of love is that it is purely conditional and can be revoked at any time without notice over the tiniest infraction.  My experience of love is that the being who gave me life frequently wishes she hadn't.

What I guess I am trying to say is that I really don't know what love is.  Everything I thought was love has always been tainted by this strong underlying sense of complete terror.  I've always grasped at those tiny threads of pseudo-love, grasped so hard, but the grasping itself always pushes what I want just out of reach.

Intellectually I understand that what I was grasping at is, in fact, not love.  That grasping feeling is actually control, manipulation. 

I know what love is NOT.

But I do not know what love is.

So the development of self-love is quite a challenge when one does not understand what love is.

Thich Nhat Hahn says, "If you do not understand a person, you do not love.  Love is made of something called understanding.   And understanding is the outcome of your looking deeply. You look, you see, you understand, and now you can love."

So from that, I take away that in order to have self-love, it has to come from self-observation, self-understanding, self-acceptance, and then there is love.

I learned to cook when I was 12 years old.  Not just mac and cheese or spaghetti.  Full-blown dinners for six.  My mom had gone back to college and didn't "have time" to make dinner.  So I learned to cook for our family of six.

Cooking for six is not something that is easy to unlearn.  Twenty years later and I still find myself shopping for six, cooking for six, and exhausted.  The last thing I feel like doing after a long day at work is coming home to cook.  For six.  And then eating the same damn thing for lunch and dinner for the next three days.

So for the last few years, instead of cooking at home, I've been eating out.  I really shouldn't be shocked at the effect this has had on my health.  Not only do fast food places serve ridiculously oversized portions of "food-like substances", but they don't exactly cater to those with Celiac disease.  Even the corn hard taco shells and salad dressings have traces of wheat in them and little nutritional value.

I've been getting really sick for the last few years.  Most of it is related to vitamin deficiencies caused by several related illnesses and drug side-effects.  And it all seems to be interconnected, each new illness exacerbating the previous.

1) Hypothyroid Disease - hormone imbalance that can block ability to absorb nutrients.  Symptoms I've experienced include hair loss, chills/hot flashes, mood swings, dry skin, exhaustion, dizziness, poor concentration, etc.

2) Celiac Disease (gluten-intolerance) - digestive disease that damages the small intestine and interferes with absorption of nutrients from food. Symptoms experienced include severe stomach pain, exhaustion, dangerously low levels of B12, Iron, and Folate. 

On top of just a general feeling of "not being well" (which I initially characterized as a "chronic sense of impending doom"), I'm really starting to notice the ways in which these things interact with each other and exacerbate the problems.  For example, low levels of Folate can lead to symptoms of depression or anger, anxiety, paranoia, etc. 

Okay, so basically what I'm saying is that I haven't been doing myself any favors with my diet and am, in fact, seriously harming myself because I feel "too tired" to cook, never seem to have the right ingredients in the fridge, don't plan ahead, and only know how to cook mass quantities of "farm food" (meat and potatoes, mostly).

That's bloody nuts!

So tonight I am on a mission.  I am going to go to the bookstore to find a recipe book about cooking for one (and if I fail tonight, I have bookmarked a couple books on Amazon that could be here in a matter of days). 

I'm going to have to start planning meals in advance(ish) so that I can grocery shop in such a way as to have everything I need.  Maybe group dishes that require similar ingredients.  Because cooking for one can be extremely wasteful.  I don't know how many times I've tossed out wilty produce because I bought them for a specific dish, but only used a handful.

I'm sure any cookbook on cooking for one will probably have some tips for grouping meals by ingredient so that nothing goes bad and also tips for storage.  Because buying one chicken breast at a time is more expensive than buying a whole chicken....but I don't know what to do with a whole chicken, other than to roast it in the way I would roast a chicken for a family of six! 

Because I'm tired of feeling sick.  And quite frankly, some of the physical symptoms cause me to feel a little crazy....the hormone imbalances, the fuzzy logic, forgetfulness, etc.  And when I feel like this, I don't feel emotionally equipped to deal with life in general.   

This was really disturbing me, actually.  I've been on edge at work, irritable with everyone, distracted, exhausted.  I talked to my therapist about it because I did not feel very sane.  She suggested having folate levels tested.  As soon as she said it, it all made sense.  My last bloodwork with my primary care physician showed extremely low levels of folate, iron, and B12.  Aha!  Not crazy, just slowly starving to death.

Off to the bookstore!!

 

Here's a preview of the accomplishments I expect you to complete in the next four weeks. Number of karmic debts paid off and canceled: 1. Number of bad habits replaced with good habits: 2. Number of holes blasted in your theory about why you can't do more of what you love to do: 300. Number of "necessities" lost that turn out not to be necessities: 1. Number of psychic wounds successfully medicated: 1. Number of confusing messes that evolve into interesting opportunities: 2. Number of romantic obstructions eliminated: 1 and a half.

======================

One year ago, on the Wednesday after Father's Day, that's when he pulled the rug out from under me and terminated our relationship. 

Ah, anniversary triggers.  They're lovely, aren't they?  One minute you're blythely skipping along in your life and the next you find yourself falling apart for inexplicable reasons and then....oh yes...now I remember.

Last year, the Wednesday after Father's Day was June 19th.  It fell on a Saturday this year.  I didn't consciously register June 19th though because it's eternally etched in my memory as "the Wednesday after Father's Day".   And I woke up the morning of Saturday the 19th to dreams that his evil twin was trying to murder me.  

Evil twin.  Potentially signifying duplicity or a subconscious attempt to resolve the difference between the person I thought he was and the person he now seems to be.

I felt ill at ease the entire day and then spent the entire rest of the weekend sleeping.  It was easier to sleep than to deal with the anxiety and anger that kept welling up for reasons that I couldn't quite put my finger on.

I fully expected to have a rough day today, the day that I consciously register as being exactly one year later.  I suspect I will have a hard time tonight.  It's been extremely difficult for me to pick myself up and move on. 

It's not like I let people get that close to me very easily.  Once I let somebody into my inner circle, I can't bear the thought of them ever leaving it and it is crushing to discover that I should never have allowed them into the circle in the first place.  And it's a very small circle, the residents of which could be counted on one hand.

One of the hardest things to let go of has been the feeling that we've been through this before in previous lifetimes.  The immediate familiarity of his presence in my life was so comforting.  I've had so many flashes of us together in previous lives.  I interpreted that, perhaps mistakenly, as an indication that he was my twin flame. 

Twins again?  There's an interesting idea.  I thought he was my twin flame. Perhaps he is my evil twin.

Last fall, I came across an article in the Shambala Sun about karmic debts carrying over from previous lifetimes and a big lightbulb went off in my head.  Aha!  That is it.  Something unresolved keeps us coming back to this place, repeating this pattern.  It's why he broke my heart, came back, and broke it again.  Who can say who wronged whom in previous lifetimes, but whatever IT is, that big karmic debt that keeps us stuck here, it keeps repeating until we figure out how to let it go.

Last night before bed, I was reading my Free Will Astrology by Rob Brezsny.  I made it as far as the second sentence before I started to cry.  A karmic debt paid off and cancelled?  It was a relief.  Now how do I ensure it comes true?

Thursday night meditation was a little different than normal. Usually, it’s a half-hour of silent meditation. We practice in the vipassana tradition, so that means we focus on the sensations of the breath for the duration of the meditation. But recently we began reading Sharon Salzburg’s book on Loving-Kindness.

So before ringing the singing bowl to begin the meditation period, Chris suggested that we all try two of the meditation techniques outlined in this week’s chapter. First, we would focus on the things in our lives that we do that make us feel good about ourselves. Not focusing on the specifics, but focusing on the actual feeling of wellbeing that those things engender. Then, we would spend the remaining time practicing metta meditation toward only on ourselves, not progressing through the various stages.

Oh, sure. No problem. Sounds easy. But in practice, it sometimes feels next to impossible.

Take the first meditation – things that make you feel good about yourself. Here’s the catch – they are things that make you feel good completely independent of others approval or influence.

Things that do NOT work include remembering the feelings of wellbeing and happiness that result from memories of the start of the last relationship. I can hang on to the good feeling for a full five seconds before remembering how it ended. Aw, crap. Anything I could come up with that had any connection with the external influence of the Other (anyone – parents, siblings, lovers, friends) had the same taint to it because it’s kind of feeling of separation.

Things that DID work include recollections of the movement meditation of yoga or walking, laying in the grass in the sunshine, watching clouds, listening to beautiful music, feeling the wind blowing across my skin. These are sensations I can hold on to that are completely untainted by errant memories. These are sensations from a time when I did not feel separate from all that is…times when I felt like I WAS the wind, I WAS the clouds. And while it was easier to maintain these sensations for much longer periods of time than the feelings that resulted from memories related to Other, it’s still difficult. 

Similarly for the second meditation – performing metta only for yourself. Metta meditations consist of a series of statements/well-wishes that you send out to the object of your focus (wishes for health, happiness, peace, love, joy, etc.). First, you must start with yourself, then a friend or benefactor, then a neutral person, then a difficult person, and then a group or to the entire planet. The idea is that you move from easiest to hardest. But what do you do when the object of your focus which should theoretically be the easiest is, in all actuality, the hardest?

What is it about us Westerners? I can’t remember if it was the Dalai Lama or Thich Nhat Hahn who made an observation about the difference between Eastern and Western perceptions of self-worth and how difficult it is for us to perform metta for ourselves. Why is it so hard for us to show ourselves the same love and concern that we show for anyone (and everyone) else?

Traditionally, a teacher will “test” a metta student with the following question: If you are on a highway with the five objects of your metta meditation and a marauder comes along and tells you that one of you will have to die and you have to choose who it will be, who do you pick? The “right” answer would be “Nobody.” Why? Because all people have equal value and worth and therefore you cannot choose who is the least worthy of life.

But what are the most common answers that pop into our heads at that question? The easiest answers, the ones that seem to come most naturally, are either your difficult person or yourself. Why? You don’t like them anyway, right? So off with their heads! Or yourself because you’re just not as good as these other people anyway…because hey, you don’t like yourself either.

Theoretically, with time and practice, we’re supposed to be able to see that each of the five stages of metta are really all one in the same, that when I wish happiness for you, I am wishing happiness for me as well because we’re all part of the whole. But it’s hard to get past that first step of realizing that you are every bit as worthy of your own love as anyone else is. This is because our society tells us that it’s WRONG to love ourselves and that it’s SELFISH to treat ourselves every bit as well as we treat others.

And there is the crux of it all.

I have bent myself into all sorts of personally unrecognizable shapes trying to gain somebody else’s conditional love and approval, trying to prove I’m “good enough”. I hold myself back in fear, waiting for somebody else to bolster up my courage enough so I can move forward into the life that I really want, waiting for them to reassure me that what I want is the “right” thing. And I’ve severely inhibited my ability to feel genuine loving-kindness and gentle friendliness toward other people because I can’t quite seem to feel it for myself. It taints good feelings with a little bit of envy and a whole lot of insecurity.

And things are not going to get any better, I will not be able to have the life that I want, until I am able to get myself to a point where I feel like I deserve everything I want.

So it’s time to hit the mat with some metta. :)

Warning - this blog is mostly negative and more than a little indignant. So if you're having a good day, you might not want to keep reading.

Warnings aside, here goes nothing:

I am tired of Cootie Monster Man Whores.

Tired.

When I look around at the kind of men in my life, it makes me want to throw up.

Last Friday, I was sitting at a bar with my male co-workers/friends, just talking. And the subject of sex comes up (as it always invariably does). Not a single one of them has been tested for STD's in the last five years. They're just passively depending on their ex-partners to self-report, and not taking any precautions in the meantime.

And I started thinking about the kinds of behaviors I've observed them engaging in, namely rampant, committment-free, random partner, casual sex. This is a fairly small town, and I know for a fact that several of them have been with the same girls.

It's like watching a train wreck. It's fascinating and repulsive. I know the back-story of WHY these particular guys act like this at this point in their lives. A couple of them had been married for years and have recently been divorced. It's like a second teenage rebellion. Wahoo, nobody to tell me I can't sleep around, so I'm going to stick it in anything that moves and is willing!

But understanding the WHY doesn't make it any less sickening. I know my friends are hurting. I can feel compassion for that. But their actions hurt other people. Sometimes very deeply. They can't see beyond their own emptiness and pain.

Then I started thinking about the one guy in this group that I've been with. Because I too am suceptible to fits of hormone-induced stupidity. I blame it on my raging 30+ year old hormones. I'm coming into my sexual prime. But I'm also old enough to know better. We've been friends for eight years. In that time, when I wasn't seeing somebody and he wasn't seeing somebody (which has only happened three times), we've "hooked up".

The first time around was a mess. It lasted two months and was aided greatly by the consumption of mass quantities of alchohol. To add to the mess, I had actually had feelings for him which weren't reciprocated. He repeatedly used the phrase, "I'm totally just using you for sex." And our mutual friends knew about the situation. When I finally put a stop to it, we didn't speak for almost a year...not until I was involved in a relationship with The Boy.

Fast forward to Big Breakup # 1 with The Boy. I was in a horrible mental state, knowing that My Boy was travelling all over the Pacific Northwest, putting his wiener in all sorts of holes, making people fall in love with him and then hurting them, all the while lying to me about it. Mere days after having a horrible dream that The Boy's cell phone accidentally called me (I believe that's called a "cell phone butt dial") while he was having sex with somebody else, his phone actually DID accidentally call me. While he was out on a date with somebody. I could hear them laughing. It felt like they were laughing AT me...and suspected he might have dialed on purpose to hurt me.

In a fit of anger, I called my friend. I said something to the effect of, "Come over. I still hate you, but I hate him more and I need to get him out of my system, so this is totally just angry spite sex." And of course he came over.

One week later, The Boy and I got back together.

Fast forward to five months after Big Breakup # 2. Same scenario. Traveling ex-boyfriend sleeping around and lying about it. I placed another phone call to the effect of, "I need some attention, you're not dating anyone, I still barely like you as a person but you have an appendage that I'd like to utilize."

The second time around it lasted five months, with a promise that none of our mutual friends would ever find out. And though I tried to keep my emotions out of it, two weeks ago I almost blurted out the words, "I love you." Granted, people blurt out all sorts of ridiculous things while they are fucking, but it kind of freaked me out.

Here's why it freaks me out: He's an asshole. And a Scorpio. When I think about the duration of our "friendship", it mostly consists of him telling me that I'm not logical enough, him telling me what to do, him criticizing everything about me, him putting me down. And me completely ignoring everything he says. We fight all the time. Which makes sense. Scorpio and Aquarius. Fire + Air = Kaboom. Or if you look at it from a psychological angle, an INTJ (him) with an INFP (me). Any book on Kiersey temperments will tell you TJ's with FP's is a disaster waiting to happen. Our "friendship" is actually emotionally abusive and dysfunctional. So the idea that I almost said, "I love you" to him is just another warning sign.

After the first time around, when I was really messed up in the head, he immediately started dating my best friend, who is no longer my best friend. To this day, he still tells me that he'd rather be in a relationship with her or with my other best friend, making it quite clear that he never had and never will have any interest in me as a potential permanent partner. Tells me how hot and how great they are. Constantly flaunts other girls in my face.

Hmmm, where have I experienced this before? Oh, let's see, this sounds frighteningly similar to my last two boyfriends.

So, I was sitting at the bar, looking around the table at my guy friends. Listening to the way they were talking about girls, about sex, about committment, swapping stories about who's easy (with Cootie Monster Man Whore # 2 sitting across from me, winking at me when he thinks nobody is watching). And asking myself why I'm engaging in activities with this man that could be adverse to my bodily health, mental health, and could ultimately result in the creation of life.

And I almost threw up.

Because this is the kind of man I've been attracting into my life for the last five years. This is the kind of male influence I've been surrounding myself with. Two boyfriends, one secret "fuck buddy", and six guy-friends who do not value women as anything but objects.

Except for me, of course. I'm "different", because I'm "just one of the guys."

It's funny. They listened to me all through the breakups with The Boy. They responded appropriately with, "What an asshole," "You deserve better than that," "He's not worth your time," and "Want me to go kick his ass?" But I think that they were secretly taking notes as to how The Boy was able to do all these things for quite a while before they ultimately blew up in his face.

I may have inadvertently unleashed on the world a little pack of Cootie Monster Man Whores. :(

I hope not. I have hope for a couple of the guys. They're coming from a really hurt and angry place right now, which I understand because obviously I am coming from a really hurt and angry place right now too.

The hard part is to learn to move past it. Which I personally haven't done. I haven't been working with the pain, letting it teach me, letting it move me to a new level. I've just been banging my head against a wall. Ow, that hurts, let me do it again. Yep, it still hurts, let me try that first section of wall again.

Well, I don't know. I do see what I'm doing to myself with quite a bit of objectivity sometimes. When I'm not mired down in it, I watch it like it's happening to somebody else. It's like a train wreck. It's fascinating and repulsive at the same time.

Here's an interesting assignment from Rob Brezsny's Televisionary Oracle:  "Talk about your three most interesting personalities.  Give each one a name and a power animal."

:)  That's the first thing in at least a month that has moved me to want to write.  So here goes...

1. Eco-Warrior Nature Girl.  Her totem is the eagle.  She wears bandanas, cargo pants, tech shirts, and a kick-ass pair of Keen water sandals as she moves through the hills, through the forsts, up mountanis, up streams, up trees.  She feels all of nature surging around her, surging in her, surging through her.  She climbs to the highest places and stands with her arms outstretched, regarding the sky with a vast, open heart.  She sees the clouds, she feels the sun's rays, she IS the the wind.  Then she puts down her hands and moves into the sky.

2.  Super-Sexy Venus-Freak Hoochie-Mama.  Her totem is any animal soft and silky and cuddly...a sable, a bunny, baby mamals.  She is curvy.  She is confident of those curves.  She knows what she wants and it comes to her effortlessly, freely given by those in awe of her voluptuous femininity.  She has a voracious appetite for all sensual pleasures.  She is soft and silky, giving and receptive, without fear or shame of her appeites.  She can be slow and gentle, wild and ferocious, always exhuberant, but all her actions are tempered by a great open love and respect.

3. The Seeker.  Her totem is a lone coyote.  She is on her own path, having forsaken the stifling comfort and familiarity of her pack of origin.  From time to time, she encounters a new pack and learns from them new ideas and new ways of being.  Each new pack builds upon the wealth of knowledge gained from the previous pack encouner.  But ultimately, she will once again feel stifled by some new dogma and trots off again into the wilderness on her own.  But she is also a coyote....a prankster.  She doesn't take herself, her journey, or anyone else too seriously most of the time and keeps her eyes open for the Great Cosmic Ha-Ha.

Okay, so there you have it.  My three most interesting personalities.  That was pretty fun.

So, what are yours?  If you choose to complete this assignment, leave me a comment and a link to your list.  :) 

For all my beautiful, perfect, divine goddesses!!!

"May 6th is International No Diet Day, a celebration of the diversity of body shapes and types. It is an occasion to honour the victims of eating disorders and weight discrimination, and affirm everyone’s right to self-esteem, respect and physical and emotional well-being."

So go ahead and celebrate your beautiful, bootylicious self, knowing that you are perfect just the way you are, no matter what shape you happen to be! The only thing that matters is feeling good, feeling healthy, feeling strong, and being happy!

And don't forget to share the message of positive body image to every woman and every little girl you know!

How to celebrate No Diet Day
http://www.divine.ca/en/fitness-and-nutrition/articles/c_11_i_3299/celebrating-international-1.html

What Is No Diet Day?
http://www.diet-blog.com/archives/2008/05/06/what_is_no_diet_day.php


DID YOU KNOW? (from www.care2.com)

If mannequins were real women, they'd be too thin to menstruate.

There are 3 billion women who don't look like supermodels and only eight who do.

Marilyn Monroe wore a size 14.

If Barbie was a real woman, she'd have to walk on all fours due to her proportions.

The average American woman weighs 144 lbs and wears between a size 12 and 14.

One out of every four college-aged women has an eating disorder.

Models in the magazines ARE AIRBRUSHED - they are NOT perfect.

A psychological study in 1995 found that three minutes spent looking at models in a fashion magazine caused 70% of women to feel depressed, guilty, and shameful.

Models twenty years ago weighed 8% less than the average woman. Today, they weigh 23% less than the average woman.