Let It Go

November 21, 2021, Shower Meditation

While washing my hair, I saw the image of the high priestess I knew who shaved her head for holy reasons. I thought about the trauma she had endured which propelled her in developing psychic abilities. 

I thought about the trauma Christ in the book The Nine Faces of Christ endured as tests of his resilience and spiritual evolvement. 

I thought about the trauma Teal Swan had endured that propelled her into the life she lives now, teaching others how to overcome theirs.

All three of them developed high levels of intuition and psychic abilities.

Since I began these shower meditations, I have incorporated letting it all go. I often see the air filled with dead skin dust - and suddenly realized my body knows how to let it go. I watch the water and dust go down the drain and visualize letting it all go. I thought about digestion - I eat, my body digests what I eat, and then eliminates the rest - it lets it go. 

Allow all of it in, digest it, and eliminate it. 

What if I could see the trauma I endured as a gift that propelled ME to open to the spiritual realm? What if I could let all the past trauma stories go?

I thought about earth trauma - volcanoes, earthquakes - followed by the renewal of soil and trees, etc. 

Mother nature knows how to let it go. She does it every fall, shedding leaves from her trees. 

The sky knows how to let it go, releasing emotional streams of tears.

I thought about tribal torture ceremonies, like the Sundance of the Sioux tribe. They know how to let the pain go knowing what the result on the other side will be. They don't hold onto it.

I thought about emptying my backpack of stones - and let them go.

Snippets of an interview with Michael Singer I recently listened to: 

“You’re doing one of two things all the time. You’re either clinging to what you think will make you feel better or you’re resisting what you think will make you feel worse. ... because you’re not okay, you build this concept inside your mind of how the moments in front of you need to be for you to be okay, and how they need to not be so you won’t be worse. Which moments? The ones that God made, or the ones that came out of the quantum field for 13.8 billion years? So, it doesn’t matter. ... You let go of that garbage that you’re building inside of you that’s saying things need to be a certain way for me to be okay.

“You can honor and respect every single experience that you have. There are no good and bad experiences. There are just experiences. And if you’re open to them, you grow from them. You learn from them. And that’s the meaning of your life. ... That when you leave, you are a higher being than who came down, period. ... Earth is a place where souls are sent to evolve. 

You said, “I don’t want it to have happened. It should not have happened. And I’m not going to experience this.” And you suppressed it. You pushed it away inside and it got stuck inside of you. ...What got stuck? The energy of the experience, the whole pattern, the colors..., the taste, the feelings, everything. ... “Well, so what? At least I didn’t have to experience it.” You did experience it. You just didn’t let it go. Now it stays inside of you. Now, when something outside reminds you of it, even though it isn’t happening, you feel bad. You feel scared.

But it’s not comfortable when it comes up. “Of course, it’s not, it wasn’t comfortable when you stored it. It’s not going to be comfortable when it comes up, but you can handle it. Practice, practice, practice, practice letting go, practice handling things. And as you do, the bigger stuff will come up, you let it go. And then bigger stuff will come up, you let it go. And all of a sudden, you’re going to find out that you’re much happier than you used to be. You’re not carrying all the garbage inside of you and being afraid that it’ll get hit.”

More about Michael Singer's work:

https://www.projectmonkeymind.com/2020/03/michael-singer-quotes-surrender-experiment-untethered-soul/#Michael_Singer_on_Why_We_Are_Afraid_of_Change

Waterfall

Gorman Falls

November 13, 2021, Shower Meditation

I closed my eyes to meditate this morning and immediately saw a rushing river… which led to the edge of a waterfall… cascading over the edge to plummet into the depths below. I opened my eyes.

What is the message?

And that one little vision expanded into all the rest of this.

I had been feeling pressured by time. It was just January, and now it is November. I just turned another year older even though it just feels like a number.

There are days when my river of tasks is slow - when I focus on getting through five minutes at a time as addictive busyness had taken a toll on my ability to being okay with doing nothing.

And there are days when time is much faster - when suddenly I realize I need to shut everything down and get ready for bed.

Where'd the day go? Did I do what really matters in the long run? Will my accomplishments of today matter a year from now? If not, what do I want to do differently tomorrow?

There are the life lessons that say to flow with the current vs. struggling to swim or row against the current.

Am I flowing or resisting?

Am I allowing bouts of fatigue and being completely caught up on my writing and volunteer work to remind me to take breaks?

Am I holding on to thoughts and experiences like they are rocks along the river or leaving them behind and flowing around them?

And the question I sometimes ask myself - if my time on earth expires today, am I doing what really matters?

What does really matter?

Relationships.

It's the only thing I can take with me when I leave earth.

I find myself resisting taking the initiative to make the first move - the first leap over the edge of the waterfall - to connect with my granddaughter. My memories and conclusions about these memories are the rocks I grab during the journey out of fear that I might drown. What exactly am I afraid of? Rejection?

She'll be 9 in January. I've only seen her in person twice, the last time five years ago. I've been waiting for the day she is old enough to call me on her own or even ask her parents to call so she can talk to me. Or longer… the day she is old enough to visit me. And when she is, will she?

What if she is as self-conscious as I am when talking to a stranger? She only knows me by name. I sense her bashfulness when her father occasionally video calls me while she is sitting on his lap. I reminisce about my preference to have words on paper I can reread again in the future vs. relying on memory to hold onto the content of conversations.

I reminisce about my friends who spend time with their children and grandchildren without a second thought. Why is my situation different?

I'm even self-conscious about calling her father - the son I gave birth to in 1983. Somehow, time got away from us. We have both gone through a metamorphosis, and it seems like we are strangers to each other. He's not one to write emails or letters. He's not one to start a chat via text except on a rare occasion. He's in love with his daughter and fatherhood, apparently consumed by every available moment when he is not at work to be with her. I understand. I did that once, too. It doesn't change the yearning I have to talk to him or get a note from him. For the most part, it's his amazing, beautiful wife who nudges him when it's my birthday or Mother's Day. And if she didn't post snippets on Instagram Story, I wouldn't see glimpses of their lives.

Thus, in the theme of the waterfall, watching time rush by, I paused to write my granddaughter a letter asking questions I hope she will write answers to - one I mailed to her with a postage stamp on it. I usually just mail cards and gifts on birthdays and holidays. 

Once upon a time, I had an aunt (one of my maternal grandmother's sisters) for a pen pal. Maybe we can become pen pals, too. 

I also wrote another digital letter in the document I plan to share with her when she is either 16 or 18.

The pool at the bottom of the waterfall is beautiful. But in order to experience it, I must let go and travel over the waterfall. Right?

Unless… there is a back way that I can hike in… something my niece discovered she could do one day.

Cell Awareness

While I laid in bed doing Word Puzzles, I began to have a conversation with myself about the pain in my body and all the emotions it stirred up. I got interesting responses. (Do you ever talk to yourself?)

Years ago when I was sick, I felt isolated and unwanted. There was no Facebook back then to get connected with the outside world.

While having this conversation with myself, I realized I was empathizing with the virus itself. I DIDN'T WANT IT. A lot of my frustration was because of this. GO AWAY!

Upon further research, I learned that viruses and bacteria have energetic vibrations with emotions.

Viruses have the energy of unworthiness.

In my much younger years when I contracted the virus (Mono/Epstein Barr), I had low self-worth. I found it interesting that I made this connection.

I also recently began trying a new meditation which puts me right to sleep at night... most of the time.

I keep hearing/reading that we need to go inside our bodies and pay attention to all its signals. I already know I spend too much time in my mind. (Meanwhile, I am reading A New Earth).

I 'climb' inside and visualize a Universe of cells floating in empty space, intelligently and intuitively knowing exactly what to do. It's pretty amazing to see billions of cells compared to a solid body and comprehend how amazing you are... regardless of chronic illness and/or pain.

I then pay attention to a pain spot (one of many techniques I learned) -- what color, shape, etc. is it?

Before I can complete the process, a new pain in a different body part makes itself known. What began in the hip, is now in the foot, etc.

Thus, I learned something new. Well, maybe not so new. I've read it and heard it said numerous times. Pain is energy and moves around. Pain is moving around in my body where before it seemed to be in one place.

This pain that is moving around in my body... this energy... what exactly is it? If I can manage to focus on it long enough... instead of falling into sleep... will I be able to see it?

It is still challenging for me to comprehend my body as ENERGY and empty space... but then I look out into the sky and photos/videos of stars, planets, Universes, black holes... we, too, are star stuff.

The Many Faces of Resilience

The topic of resilience has been on my mind for the past week, urging me to write about it. My thoughts are often inspired by other thoughts and today I received the new issue of Pain-Free Living, formerly, Arthritis Self-Management magazine. (The editors decided to change their name after receiving the results of a survey.)

One of the articles is on Being Mindful about Pain, by Nicola Davies, which includes five different ways of accomplishing this. Nicola "began to see pain as something that visited her body, not something that defined who she was." I included a quote in my book Love, Life, & God: Getting Past the Pain, page 46, "Fibromyalgia is what I have, it's not who I am," so I was seeing the message again.

I've been feeling an increased amount of tension in my neck and shoulders, trying to figure out where in my life I am feeling tense or apprehensive. Perhaps I am trying to do too much, a very old habit I don’t know if I will ever relinquish. However, I know from past experience where this can lead. I was so proud of myself when I didn’t need to wear my TENS unit every day anymore and hadn't needed to use it for almost six months. I’ll be right back while I go put it on.

O.K., I'm back. There are so many more stories and books I have started to write and want to finish. I just finished another little one titled: Miracles Sandwiched Between The Challenges: Making It Through The Roller Coasters Of My Life (With The Help Of My Guardian Angels). You can find it HERE.

It is so easy for me to lose hours in reading every interesting thing I find on Facebook or when I Google specific topics (like resilience), so I am either immersed in writing or immersed in reading. I wrote many things about setting a timer to remind me to take breaks, and I am guilty of ignoring my own advice. Someday, I hope to get a portable biofeedback device to attach to my shoulders that will alert me to when I begin tensing before it gets to a point of shutting me down. I've been reminding myself that I don't HAVE to do any of this, I am CHOOSING to. I need to stop tensing up every time I realize another hour has gone by.

While I was searching for content on resilience, I discovered I had already posted a number of links on this topic on my Articles and Websites & Blogs pages, but I hadn't actually written a blog post about it. My memory can be somewhat foggy, a 'symptom' of being a creative writer. At least that is all it is now. When I was in my 20’s I dealt with episodes of severe ‘fibro fog'. (One day I kept driving by my home but kept zoning out and missing it. I had to call my mother and ask her to come get me.) I am so very grateful I recovered from years of chronic fatigue syndrome. I am grateful the residual fibromyalgia is all I deal with now.

Resilience. The definition of resilience in Webster's dictionary is: "the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress." I'd like to add to this "a strained mind." Over the course of six months, I've managed to get into 'shape' exercising at Curves. The mind can take a lot longer to recover after a stressful situation as it is impossible to be 'Mindful' of every thought that finds its way into the vast infinity of 'Mind Space.'

One of the things I've learned over the years is fibromyalgia is a collection of uncomfortable symptoms that manifests, usually as a result of stress vs. an actual disease. Stress can be physical, emotional, or mental. The more stress you deal with, the more out of ease your body will become, thus dis-eased. Right now as I write this, I am listening to one of many healing sound meditations I've found on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=2567&v=KynbN4Om12E

There are many aspects to address such as the amount of stress you have endured, how you have coped with this stress, how resilient you are, what you tell yourself about what is going on in your life, how stress can manifest into physical symptoms, the stress due to malnutrition or dehydration, or a gut that has lost its ability to assimilate food. Then there are the ill effects of excessive sugar, fat, smoking, drinking, etc. There is no simple solution. I am certain that any day now, we will be able to put electrodes on our bodies and generate a full report on our home computers (or smartphones) on the status of all our bodily functions as well as what our mental/emotional state is. Any day now...

On fibromyalgiasymptoms.org I found, "One of the precursors to fibromyalgia is stress. Although we say that stress can be a good thing, the fact for fibromyalgia sufferers is that stress is a trigger for the disorder. Muscle pain can be triggered by stress, as can headaches, nausea, and depression. The hormones that are released with stress interfere with pain receptors and end up causing serious grief." Our challenge is to find balance, so stress hormones don't rule our lives.

http://www.fibromyalgia-symptoms.org/how-stress-affects-fibromyalgia-symptoms.html

On Psychology Today, I found: "Resilience is that ineffable quality that allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back stronger than ever. Rather than letting failure overcome them and drain their resolve, they find a way to rise from the ashes. Psychologists have identified some of the factors that make someone resilient, among them a positive attitude, optimism, the ability to regulate emotions, and the ability to see failure as a form of helpful feedback. Even after misfortune, resilient people are blessed with such an outlook that they are able to change course and soldier on."

https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/resilience.

I believe many of us are providing Psychologists with a lucrative living, second only to medical doctors, although I did many years of SELF-analysis because I didn't have access to the real thing.

In Becoming Resilient: What You Can Do, Lisa Lorden Myers wrote: "Those who deal best with difficulty and adversity in life have a quality that neuroscientists, psychologists, and business experts alike call “resilience.” It is a particularly important concept for those who live with CFS/FM—or the life-changing challenges of any chronic illness—on a daily basis. Frederic Flach, M.D., author of Resilience: Discovering a New Strength at Times of Stress, points out that since a person’s level of resilience is not a static ingredient in personality, it can fluctuate over time. Understanding our natural strengths and limitations can help us focus on factors that can enhance our resilience."

http://livingwithcfs.com/becoming-resilient-what-you-can-do/

The Road to Resilience on the 'American Psychology Association' website includes:

"Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress — such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems or workplace and financial stressors. It means "bouncing back" from difficult experiences. Being resilient does not mean that a person doesn't experience difficulty or distress. Emotional pain and sadness are common in people who have suffered major adversity or trauma in their lives. In fact, the road to resilience is likely to involve considerable emotional distress. Resilience is not a trait that people either have or do not have. It involves behaviors, thoughts, and actions that can be learned and developed in anyone."

I'm sure that anyone includes me, which is why I am researching the subject. There are also 10 ways to build resilience on this site.

http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/road-resilience.aspx

Last but not least, on the National Fibromyalgia and Chronic Pain Association Website, I found a beautiful letter written by a woman to her younger self. I have also been thinking of writing advice to my younger self as well. I wish her name was posted on the article, but it isn't. I'd friend her on Facebook. Her letter begins with:

"Dear Friend,

In the coming months, you will be walking a unique and unfamiliar path. Nothing in life so far has prepared you for the changes your body and spirit will endure.

Take heart, because others will reach out and encourage you to trust your intuition. Be still and listen carefully despite the searing, stabbing, and throbbing pains. Quiet your mind when the world spins madly around you with a confusion of sound and light. And when you feel your life force slipping away, gently evaluate why. Have a touchstone to stay grounded when nothing makes sense and mixed-up words roll off your lips. You’ll be okay.

After enduring the brain-seizing pains and life-altering symptoms, you still have two big, hard things to do. Eliminating both toxic relationships and grieving over “what could have been” will improve your health. Connect your mind and body and spirit. Learn to love yourself."

Self-love and acceptance is indeed the key. The rest of the letter can be found here:

http://www.fmcpaware.org/fundraising/185-resilience.html

Now that you’ve read about resilience, do you know anyone who displays examples of this trait? Someone you admire and look up to? Are you one of the not so resilient people? Did you know this is a trait you can learn? Please leave a comment below to start a conversation!