The Stillness of Flow

The Stillness of Flow

Do you ever ask yourself, “Why does she go on and on about being present and aware”? Do you ever wonder what the heck I’m talking about when I talk about stillness? Or feeling peaceful?

It’s all about the insides, baby!

My overarching goal is to be present, aware, and basically living my natural life most of the time. Simple. Why am I peaceful? Why do I flow with life? What makes it all so easy?

When I am feeling sad, or scared, or pissed off, I am not present; I am saying “no” to my life. These emotions are all about resisting what is. I am  sad that I lost something I wanted to keep, or gained something I didn’t, fear and anger are also about that; the world not being the way I think it should be. If this is where I am coming from, it will be an endless, unhappy battle I will lose over and over.

When I choose to be present in my life, to allow the flow, I can let things be as they are. I stop fighting what is.

Now, I have some energy. Now, I have some clarity. Now, I am choosing my natural life.

Why am I peaceful? Why am I relaxed? Why am I in harmony with my life?

In this moment, my life is perfect. In this moment, I am perfect. In this moment, I can relax.

There is a huge difference between living in the moment, and for the moment. For the moment tends to be the result of not-so-good choices that can often leave us feeling sick, or heartsick, angry, uncomfortable, apologetic, well, I know you never do this stuff, but, sadly, I still do.

And then I remember that peaceful is always a few thoughts away. Isn’t that amazing? I can be in such a funk, remember to choose peaceful, and often minutes later, I can be back to feeling like my own sweet self.

And I have reconnected with the stillness at my core. And here’s what that does, that connection. It makes me notice that at any given moment, I am doing one thing. I may have ten windows open on my computer, all wanting some kind of attention, but in this moment, all I can do is one thing. Given how much I get done in a day, that is a very nice, comforting thought, one that can send me right to peaceful, still.

When I think of the word stillness, I tend to think of a forest for some reason. Now a forest is a hugely active place. Trees may look like they are just hanging out, but there is a lot happening like making oxygen and circulating sap. There is rotten vegetation full of happy microbes chomping away at stuff, and then the larger life forms all busy doing what they do. Being present in all that, being present in our lives, experiencing the stillness, isn’t about shutting ourselves away in a sensory deprivation tank, but rather about choosing to be present in the middle of our cuckoo lives, flowing with what is, unchoosing our resistance, recognizing that we do one thing at a moment, and so we can do that one thing as best we can, we choose excellence, we choose harmony, we choose accord.

How have I changed from fighting it all to relaxing into the stillness of flow?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 04302014

Why am I relaxed? How do I choose to be present? What makes me feel harmonious?

If you like what you find here, please interact with the page by  +1 a post, commenting, or sharing. You make a difference. How do you know you matter?

Esteem Cleaning

Self-loathing. Do you know anyone who hates themselves? How heartbreaking to hate ourselves, to constantly find fault, to say horrible things to ourselves, to feel like a burden to others, to even wish we were dead, when we are divine and infinite beings of brilliance and light.

How wonderful that so often it is based on mislearning and we can shift it around, because here I am, your slightly dinged, relatively shining example of someone who did just that. And now I have the power of Creative Questions. I can address that horrible characteristic at the source: My mind.

Why could I be okay? How am I acceptable? Why would I like me?

I will tell you truly, I tried affirmations for years, and frankly, they made me feel worse. I was not better and better every day, in every way. When I didn’t feel better, I felt like even more of a failure as a person.

Why can I cope? How do I find my resources? Why could it all be just so easy?

Turns out affirmations work best if you are doing pretty well, but kind of suck when you are trying to make a big change, or are already feeling blue. I mean, why would I want to be lying to me? I was living a very nasty life, and telling myself I was happy and healthy when I wasn’t was like an authority figure nagging at me to shape up, and what the hell’s the matter with you anyway. It made me so sad.

The difference between Creative Questions and affirmations is in how our brains process language. When we make a statement, like an affirmation, our brain takes it and stops, unless it starts to ask questions about the statement. The statement drops like a stone in sand, it can raise a little dust, but not much happens.

When we ask a Creative Question, it goes into our minds and kicks it into high gear. Our unconscious minds LOVE a good question formulated like a Creative Question, like dropping a stone in water, all those ripples start to happen. It starts looking for good answers. To supercharge a Creative Question you are working on, add “else” into the mix.

Why else am I good enough? What else makes me valuable? How else do I know I am a gift?

When we have people telling us for a long time that we suck, we buy it, then we start to believe it and internalize it. Our job as grownups-in-training is to change that belief, start to see our value and internalize that, and let go of the crap we absorbed in the olden days. As we move forward in this, we often find that we can even feel compassion for those sad people who hurt us. Why are we so amazing?

Why do I matter? How am I a wonderful surprise? Why do I own my worth?

Notice how you feel when you are asking these Questions. Notice if your body shifts around. For me, I often find I sit up a bit straighter, and a bit softer. Things relax. And then I know my posture for feeling good, and can put that on when I am asking my Creative Questions for even quicker results.

How have I changed from believing my bad PR to knowing I am a gift?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 04292014

How do you matter? Why else do you know you are good enough? If you have found something valuable, or useful here, please interact with the page by + or sharing. Thanks.

Honor and Integrity

Honor and Integrity

I had one of those weeks, you know the kind, where all of a sudden you have a hundred things to do that you’ve never done before. I think it’s very interesting that months can go by without needing to do a new, big something.

So, as usual, I had a lot of choices for how to hit it. On the one end, I could have flipped out and had a fit and refused. On the other end, I could act as if I knew what I was doing, and dive in.

Why am I strong? Why am I competent? Why am I capable?

Outstanding questions. These are the way out of feeling like a victim, but there is another really important part. You know what I’m talking about.

Why do I trust?

Before I tackled each task, I relaxed. I imagined getting all the help I needed. I imagined enjoying the outcome. I relaxed some more and imagined having fun. And then I opened my heart.

How do I feel when I trust?

Now, learning to trust the universe did not come easily for me. I held onto feelings of betrayal and violation like a drowning woman to a jagged piece of flotsam, tearing at me, wounding me over and over. Half the time I couldn’t even remember what the original wound was, but I sure had the feelings.

At the same time, I trusted untrustworthy people all the time. Ow.

As I resolve my old traumas, I have started making better choices, used better judgment, found trustworthy people to trust.

I am getting better at trusting the Universe. I am trusting me, more, too.

When I make crappy decisions that hurt me, I am violating my trust in myself. It makes my relationship with me wobbly. When I feel like I can’t rely on me, when I don’t trust me to take care of me, I start to clench. When I clench, I often start to act out. That makes trouble for me. It makes things uncomfortable for you.

This relationship, the one with myself, is the most important one I have. Trusting me to take care of me, to choose wisely and well, to be kind and respectful to me, leaves me light, and energized, with all the resources I need to take good care of my loved ones.

As soon as I catch myself in that clenched place, I relax my body, relax my emotions, relax my thoughts. I make amends to myself as I can. I use my good questions. The more I practice, the longer between my own betrayals of my trust, the nicer my life gets. It gets easier to remember to unchoose when I am heading down a painful path. When I am behaving honorably to myself, I am living my natural life. Things are easy. Life is rich and full.

How have I changed from betraying my trust in myself to behaving with integrity to me, and to you?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 04272014

Why do you like what you find here? What makes it useful? How does this help?

If you like what you find, please + and share. Thanks! Why are you amazing?

Disbanding my Kangaroo Court

Disbanding my Kangaroo Court

Innocent is a lovely feeling. Innocent is a feeling I can totally  take for comfy, satisfied, granted. Guilty, on the other hand is really expensive. Innocent is a part of freedom. Guilty demands that we pacify it over and over and over. And over. What a lot of work for a crappy feeling.

And isn’t it interesting that the crappy feelings take a lot of work in general, and the good feelings don’t take any.

Why do I choose? How do I accept? What makes me decide?

For some of us, the guilt we feel is about things we do. I just had someone fail to flimflam me out of some cash. Poor him. That’s something he may feel guilty about, a bad decision to reconsider, and choose not to repeat. Sometimes we take stuff, or do something intentionally to hurt someone, cheat, or make a big lie. We can assuage our guilt for things like this by owning our behavior, making amends, and changing our behavior.

For others of us, the guilt we feel is about being alive. Existential Guilt is the fancy name. That was my favorite kind. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry” is the motto of Existential Guilt. I developed breathing problems because I worried on a deep level that I was using up other people’s air. Seriously. I did all sorts of weird, overcompensating things to try to justify my existence. Oy.

We need to stop resenting ourselves for the first kinds of guilt. We need to make amends where we can, and apologize, and forgive ourselves. That means, if I have done what I can to clean up the situation, I stop beating myself up, And repeat as needed.

Forgiving ourselves for the second kind is a little weird, but we need to do that, too. We are not forgiving ourselves for being alive, we are forgiving ourselves for feeling bad about being alive. We are forgiving ourselves for all the strange things we did to try to make it up to the world for our existence. We trade out our mislearning for a supportive belief, and then we can let it go, and relax.

And relax. And relax. And relax.

One of my dear friends said that his behavior changed when he realized that he would rather not have to be making amends for his nasty smartypants talk, so he learned to hold his tongue, or say neutral things, or kind things, and not have to apologize. Easy. As we choose to grow up, we find all sorts of examples like this, places where we unchoose our old, painful ways, and replace them with new, elegant, easy, joy-inducing ways.

Why do I choose? What makes me respect myself? How do I feel good about me?

As we release our behavioral guilt, and our existential guilt, we often find that we are making better choices, choices that we feel proud of, rather than guilty. We may find ourselves feeling innocent.

How do I feel when I am innocent? Me, I feel uplifted, and open-hearted, relaxed, cheery, and happy. Innocence is part of my natural life, freedom from a bunch of stuff, ease, simplicity, creativity, peace. Ahhh.

How have I changed from doing stuff I feel guilty about to living in innocence?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 04262014

What are some ways you've changed your behavior from guilt-inducing to clean and easy?

If you like what you find here, please + and share. It makes a difference. Why are you awesome?

No More Phony Baloney

No More Phony Baloney

I heard a very interesting comment the other day about how anger is often a victim-response, that is, I may get angry when I feel like a victim. Huh.

That was a very curious discovery.

When I am angry, scared, resentful, and a host of others, I don’t feel like me, I feel like Angry, or Scared, or Resentful, or Tired, or Lonely. Kinda like a whole flock of  black sheep from Snow White’s family.

When I feel like me I feel peaceful, engaged, centered, excited, normal.

Weird.

Discovering that I can unchoose victim has also been curious, and profoundly liberating. Who woulda thought you could unchoose that. I must say, before I did it, it seemed like unchoosing my blue eyes.

What that says to me, being able to decide how I will respond inside and out to abusive behavior, is that I can choose to soar.

What do I want? How do I want to feel? What activities satisfy me?

I’ve been calling it “leveling up” and I like that concept. Leveling up means not only having more grown up  responses to the interesting situations in my life, but also higher level responsibilities, more interesting tasks, and more peace at my core.

Wait, more peace?

How do I live my natural life? What makes me feel serene? How am I an inspiration?

More peace is a natural outgrowth of growing up. It’s like successful leveling up brings me all these bonuses; more joy, more peace, more bliss, more love, more satisfaction, better sleep, higher quality free time, plus a bunch of stuff I can’t even think of right now.

Perhaps the most wonderful bonus of all is feeling like I am who I am, and liking, and loving that being. Heh. Former self is all full of feelings about that. She never thought it could happen, but hoped, and now here we are.

Why do I like me? How do I respect myself? What makes me great?

When I first quit abusing recreational chemicals, I fell in love with the 11th Promise: We will intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle us. I wanted that more than anything. I have it to the point where I am mostly barely aware of managing. I have coping skills. I have resources, I have tools. I have a light heart, and good ideas. I have communities that support and love me, and that appreciate my love and support. For real.

How have I changed from feeling like phony baloney to living my own true life?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 04252014

How do you feel when you are your true self? Can you tell when you are straying?

If you like what you find here, please + or share. Thanks. Why are you terrific?

Broken Record School of Communication

One of my best teachers used to talk about the Broken Record School of Communication. Her point was that when you are trying to get a point across to an audience who is full of buts, and yabuts, even if it is yourself, repeat repeat repeat.

She did it with me all the time.

I do it with me all the time.

We often get deaf when we are listening to ideas that might change our world view. Changing our beliefs is scary, even when what we believe sucks. Repeat repeat repeat.

My happiness comes from within. That was a big one for me to accept. All the shopping/drugs/video games/sex/whatever in the world might distract me, but it didn’t make me happy.

On the other hand, all creation is for my well-being. Opportunities arise for me to learn, grow, celebrate, rejoice.

How do I choose my life? What makes me decide on my attitude? Why do I choose to grow up?

What do I want? How do I want to feel? What are my goals? How does my environment support me?

Broken Record School of Communication.

There are so many places where simply repeating ourselves is more effective than any arguments, and most of the time, it’s more effective than raising our voices in annoyance or anger.

It is also a wonderful tool when we are learning to express ourselves. When we have been saying yes to everything for years, learning to say no is not only challenging for us, but for the people we’ve been people-pleasing for all this time. It teaches us to stick with it, and it eventually will get through to them.

Why do I choose, How do I pick my attitude? What makes me choose to grow up?

When I tap into a Creative Questions that resonates with me, that makes me feel good, where I see how things look up, I need to repeat repeat repeat.

What makes me see the choice? How do I grow up? Why do I take the high road?

Using our Creative Questions will change everything. Sometimes, the change happens instantly. Sometimes we have to chip away at it, playing with our topic, messing with the wording.

I will use words that you may like, or may really not like. My emotionally neutral words may fire you up like the Fourth of July. Find language that suits you. You know what hits you right. Put the lesson from the Broken Record School of Communication and use it when you need it. Remember that all creation is for your well being. And that’s beyond our wildest imaginings.

How have I changed from feeling helpless to recognizing my resources?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 04242014

What are your favorite Creative Questions these days? Do you play with the wording? If you like what you find here, please + or share. It really does make a difference. Why are you amazing?

My Gentle Loving Care

My Gentle Loving Care

This morning I drew the Why am I healthy? card. I have heard from a bunch of you that, because you have a chronic something, this card is upsetting. So let’s talk about stuff.

I had extreme chronic discomfort for decades, from my teens into my 40s. I was frequently bed-ridden for days, which was awful when I lived alone. I lived on aspirin and prescriptions, and when ibuprofen and pseudoephedrine hydrochloride came out on the market I thought I’d gone to heaven. I was thrown by a car when I was in my mid 40s, and the western docs told me that I would be walking with a walker by the time I was 50 and likely in a chair at 55.

I was diagnosed by a very fancy shrink with a couple nasty and incurable mental illnesses when I was 27.

I’m not walking with a walker, I’m dancing with delight. I have mental health. I have joy and delight. I have satisfying relationships, and a lovely life. I have stuff, but it’s all manageable. I love my life.

For me, a lot of my physical stuff fell away as I cleaned up my mental stuff.

My basic rules of physical well being go like this.

If it’s not true for everyone, there are loopholes. I just need to find them.

Once I find a healer whom I find trustworthy, do what they say, and tell them every single relevant thing.

Branch out; healing modalities can be hugely complementary. I have used with good results at various times, in addition to western medicine, traditional Chinese medicine both herbal and acupuncture, chiropractic, reiki, shiatsu, western herbal medicine, homeopathy, flower essence, aromatherapy, color therapy, craniosacral work, hypnosis, and who knows what all else.

Accept and respect my current situation. Allow for room to improve.

My words and thoughts have a huge impact on how I feel. Pain language makes everything much worse. Neutral language makes things better.

Be kind to myself. No beating up, no name calling, no blaming. It is what it is. What are my lessons to be learned from it today?

What kind of help can I accept? How can I get the help I need? Why am I grateful?

How am I strong? How am I healthy? What makes me feel alive? How can I be healthy in my current experience?

Oh ho! What do you think about that last question? It’s not a contradiction. I have many ways to be healthy; body, emotions, mind, spirit.

It has been my experience more times than I can count that my physical experience changes with my thoughts. Finding the right body metaphor, and the right Creative Question has cause serious discomfort to literally disappear in an instant.

I am in a transitional phase right now, things are changing all around me, through me. It has been my experience that going through these phases creates a lot of body experience. Why do I listen to my body’s messages?

How have I changed from feeling physically doomed to respecting my physical experience?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 04232014

Why would I love and respect my body? That's a good one for a lot of us, for a lot of reasons.

If you like what you find here, please + and share.How do you feel when you matter?

The Gratitude Attitude

The Gratitude Attitude

Why do I go on and on about gratitude? Do you have an idea? Or have you experienced it for yourself?

Gratitude is like the Windex of emotions.

When I am feeling resentful, or judged, when I am feeling sorry for myself, or short-changed, annoyed, anxious, or doomed, really going to grateful is like hitting a reset button.

It’s one of the reasons I like to start my day with my list of appreciations, which I write even before coffee. It sets the tone of my day.

On the one hand, I can look at my life and see all the places that need work, all the things I *should* be doing, ways I could be a better person, the places I feel stuck, blah blah blah. Nobody can bring me down quite like I can.

On the other hand,  no matter how crappy my life seems, I know there are a lot of people who would give their right arm for my life.

Gratitude. Why am I grateful? Why do I see the good? How do I find the value? What makes me notice the gift?

One of my goals is to live my natural life most of the time. That means feeling peaceful, blissful, contented, satisfied, soul-happy, prosperous, generous, creative, productive, loving and loved, supportive and supported, connected, engaged, and a host of other nice adjectives. When I go to gratitude, it often takes me to my natural life, my core self.

When I remember that the world is here for me to do with as I will, to take for good or ill, to see as a haven, or hell, I get to choose, and frankly, I make way better choices when I am grateful.

I believe that I am here, among other reasons, to learn some very specific, personal lessons. I believe that the crappy things that happen in my life are often opportunities for me to learn those lessons. I believe that because I would rather think that there is a point to the crap that happens in my life.

Otherwise it just sucks.

When I feel grateful, I look for the silver linings. I look for the lesson. I look for the way through. And I find them. Maybe I just make ‘em up, but I’ll take it.

I mean, I like a good pity-party as much as the next guy, but like drunken bacchanals, they tend to get pretty tedious after the first eight minutes or so.

My point is that going to this-is-how-my-life-rocks instead of this-is-how-my-life-sucks creates more awesomeness. Rehearsing self-pity makes more stuff to feel awful about. Law of Attraction 101.

How have I changed from rehearsing the crap to practicing gratitude?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 04222014

What are you grateful for this very moment? What is something you really value, and take for granted? What is something you love about yourself? If you like what you find here, please interact with the page by + or share. 

Love Love Love

Love Love Love

How do I love my family? Why do I like people? Why do I have best friends?

Our relationships make life sweet. Our relationships can also provide us with lots of learning experiences.

Back in the day, I moved in and out of friendships. I would sometimes have large groups of friends, and sometime barely one. The down times gave me a lot of time to think.

One of the things I realized was that I had a lot of friends I didn’t like. I didn’t like their choices, I didn’t like the stuff they thought was fun, I didn’t like their music/movies/tv shows; you get the idea.

Deciding that I didn’t have to be friends with people I didn’t like was huge for me. I know it sounds really silly, but choosing my friends based on how much I liked them rather than whether they liked me was a minor miracle for me.

Why do I choose my friends? What makes me like people? Why can I choose?

Back in the day, I spent a lot of time with people I didn’t like so I could do my  bad things more easily; drinking and drugs. That was really painful, and made me want to drink and do drugs even more because my life was so gross.

When I made that choice, to stop using mood altering chemicals, I started meeting new people, in therapy groups, in AA meetings, and some of them I really liked. And then I had a feeling that was pretty unusual for me. I found that there were people whom I respected. Wow. That was an amazing feeling.

As a child, all my heroes were fictional, starting with Superman. As a sick kid,  I loved the idea of being invulnerable. But I knew I could never be invulnerable, I could never be Superman. And I was so caught up in my unhappiness that I couldn’t really see anyone else very clearly. What a funny thing that is.

So I started meeting amazing people; kind, interesting to me, working to make their lives better, creating good spaces for others to improve their lives. Respectable. And fun.

As I became friends with them, I had more fun. And suddenly I had role models, people who were living in ways I wanted to live. Inspiring people.

I love that my heros are my friends.

Why do I like people? What makes me choose good friends? Why do I have besties?

Since relationships are not always easy, I try to remember that you cannot disappoint me, only my expectations of you can disappoint me. I try to remember that either everything is personal, or nothing is. I try to assume the relationship, that just because we have a miscommunication doesn’t mean the relationship is over. I try to remember that I feel better when I choose the high road.

How have I changed from thinking that people suck to living in a world of love?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 04212014

If you like what you find, click + or share. It makes a difference. Thanks. How do you feel when you know you are great?

AFOGS

AFOGS

You know how annoying I can be here, throwing out outrageous ideas, shaking up our familiar status quo with radical ideas about radical responsibility and radical acceptance. What you may not know is how diligently I am working on this same stuff myself.

Yesterday I had a nice juicy AFOG, another f*cking opportunity for growth. My choices, with variations in between, were to sink into a big ol’ pity party, feeling like a miserable victim, or take responsibility, process the feelings through, and choose to feel good.

I had a lovely day.

Why am I responsible? Why do I choose? What makes me capable?

One of the things I have learned is that when I allow those kinds of feelings to flow, things will often come up from my shadow side, dark stuff that can be uncomfortable; shame, guilt, anger, fear. Like a toddler, if we don’t pay attention to it right away, it will get louder and more obnoxious until we’ve got a full blown tantrum on our hands, and suddenly we are acting out, or having bad physical stuff, or attracting all sorts of strange stuff. So do I let it flow out and away, or push it down to grow stronger and bite me another day?

The card I drew today was the “Why do I commit?”

This was the big shake-up for me this past year, asking that question, “To what am I committed?” I can tell you, I did not like looking at that. The exercise requires looking at our lives as they are to see what we are committed to.  The way things are shows us our commitments. The longer things have been that way, the deeper the commitment.

As I opened up to really looking at the state of my personal world, I found that there were places where I could make some simple change, topics where it would take a bit more, and some stuff where I really needed some help.

I realized that I have a couple topics where I seem to be committed to staying stuck.

Why can I choose? Why am I supported? Why do I let go?

The more we clean up our stuff, the nicer our lives get. That’s just true. Things get easier, more fun, way more satisfying. Our biggest topics will also have more room to come to the fore. We may feel like we’ve done our work, but those big deep topics still want our attention. And we can look at the recurring themes, the things we get called out on, or the stuff that pisses us off, to see what those topics are.

I have what is probably an unrealistic goal. My goal is to have no unconscious material. That means I have made a commitment to spend some time on that regularly, to address what comes up in meditation, or on walks, or when I am sitting in contemplation on my sweet porch.

Or, like yesterday, when an AFOG dropped into my lap, a gift from the Universe.

When a topic floats up, an uncomfortable memory, or just a feeling during those quiet times, I sit with it. I may cry, or shake, or have big scary feelings, but I stick with it all the way to the end, when it stops by itself.

When an AFOG pops, it takes a different kind of attention, because those happen on the fly, often with others, and while I’m doing something. Keeps me on my toes, I suppose!

How have I changed from avoiding the hard stuff to letting it work its way out all the way to the end?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 04202014

What do you think about that?  Useful, or annoying? If you like what you find here, please + and share. Thanks. How do you know you are amazing?

A Part Of or Apart From?

A Part Of or Apart From?

The card I pulled today was “Why am I wanted?” What an interesting kettle of fish that one is!

You may never have had this issue, but it sure was a ginormous one for me. Feeling valued for my being, rather than my doing, was something I longed for, and very rarely felt.

We all want attention, okay, maybe not northwoods hermits, or other fringe-ers, but for most of us, attention is nice. The wacky thing is that, for many of us, if we can’t get the positive attention we want, we go for negative attention.  Ow.

I will say this over and over and over again until we get it. When we are doing something like going for negative attention, or making awful choices, or being in denial about something, it is NOT OUR FAULT. No blame, no fault. Our behavior is based on our beliefs and mislearnings; we are doing the very best we can in challenging circumstances.

Now, once we get that we are going for negative attention, or making awful choices, or being in denial about something, then we can take responsibility to change our thoughts, examine and replace beliefs that do not support us, and unchoose our mislearnings.

That negative attention one was big for me. I was a past master of negative attention. In addition to feeling like all I got was negative attention, I also felt on the outside. All. The. Time. Excluded with a giant X.

I also felt like a freak. I felt like no one understood me. I felt isolated, and trapped, and forlorn. I will tell you, that had way more to do with my feelings than the world. The Universe loves me, and was just waiting for me to notice.

Why am I wanted? What makes me feel a part of? How am I included?

When I was doing the drugs and alcohol thing, I was surrounded by people most of the time, but always felt apart from, never a part of. It got better when I stopped medicating and went to AA and Alanon. It got way better when I found my best teacher. She was a therapist, and the eighth one I tried. We worked together for twenty years.

Until I feel like I can belong somewhere I want to belong, it simply won’t happen, regardless of how the people in that somewhere feel about me. I might be in that space, but I will feel like an interloper until I choose to feel like I belong.

How do I feel when I belong? What makes me connect? How do I engage?

When I feel like a toxic waste dump, I pretty much am not going to want to connect or engage with anyone who isn’t. I may want them to rescue me. They can’t. They can create a safe space in which I can heal, but no one but me can heal me.

When I have the toxic waste dump going on, I will most likely benefit from finding a trustworthy person to help me get rid of it. There are at least hundreds where you live. It may take you a few tries to find someone you click with, but hang in there. You are so totally worth it. You are worth the effort to create your nice life, you are worth the time.  Your divine and infinite self is waiting patiently, lovingly, with complete acceptance of you.

How have I changed from feeling disconnected to feeling engaged and belonging?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 04192014

Remember, take what you like, and leave the rest. If you have found some value in these contemplations, please + or share. It makes a difference. Why are you so lovable?