I Want Your Sex (So…should I advertise?)

When I was growing up, my Mom said, “If you have something to say to someone, say it to their faces or don’t say it at all.” If she had lived long enough to see FB, she’d probably add, “And don’t Facebook it either.”

I’m beginning to wonder if Social Networking sites are not, in part, a breeding ground for passive-aggressive behavior, where one can shout to the world about someone they’re pissed off at, make hints at who it is (that only the offender can understand) and so on…but not actually ever say to them, “Hey, I have a problem. Can I please discuss it with you?”
It goes deeper than that, though, and becomes a bit disturbing. Read on.

It’s evolved into a very strange world. Make no mistake, I’m grateful to be part of it, and I’m as much addicted to these social networking sites as anyone else, but anytime I’m tempted to put up a status message that is meant to vent “at” someone or “about” someone, rather than deal with the issue in a mature, adult manner, I really think twice and I think deeply about it. The reality is, what happens in Vegas might stay in Vegas, but what happens on the internet stays out there for-freakin’-EVER.  (Notice the bold, italicized, and underlined stressor there.) We tend to forget that we’re not dealing with our own little group of friends in an intimate little bar somewhere, where our secrets fall on trusting ears.  It’s very easy to forget that, because we can and do get very close to the groups we “friend.”  It’s easy to forget that the world has access to everything we put online.  Everything.

A year ago I had to “unfriend” a close family member because I noticed that she put up pictures of her little children, told very openly where they lived, where they played, and so on.  These are very beautiful little blond-haired, blue-eyed girls. Bait for molesters and paedophiles, right? To this day, I bet she thinks I was angry at her because I unfriended her, but I did it to protect her and her family. I have nearly 2000 friends.  I don’t know all of them personally.  I hardly ever hear from some of them at all. In truth, some people “friend” us just so that they can plaster their “advertisements” on our walls, to promote a product or service, or try to sell us something. Very often they don’t even bother to say hello before doing it. We’ll get a friend request, accept it and BAM! — an ad lands on our walls.  Do we know them? Do we know enough to say for sure that our kids would be safe with them?  No.  So, through my page, they could easily have gotten info about her kids.  I felt it was best to unfriend her, rather than try to suggest to her that she might be more discerning about what she put out there.  Nobody likes to be told what to do.  Frankly, I have enough of a challenge managing my own life besides trying to manage the lives of others, so I don’t like to go there.

Most of the friends that I have on the Social Networking sites, I don’t know at all.  Many of them, I do know. They show up on my page regularly, and it’s sort of become a watering hole like that bar on the old sitcom, “Cheers.” A wonderful group of people! I can honestly say that I’ve grown very, very close to some of them.  I love them to pieces.  They are usually the first people I turn to when I want to bounce ideas around, get feedback, or just whine that my back is bothering me. Some of them stop by with a “coffee” almost every day because they know I love my cappuccino.  Others tag me in shoe photos because they know I have a shoe fetish.  Others send me private messages that have been going back and forth for a few years. I’ve actually found distant cousins that I never knew about.  So it’s a great place and many of these people are just a really, really fantastic group that I would gladly have in my circle of friends, in “real life.”

But there are others, as I said, that I do not know at all.  I don’t know the first thing about them.  That part is easy to forget when we put up status messages of a personal nature.  But that’s the part that can get us into trouble.  We forget that not only “our group” are reading this stuff.  I Googled myself the other day (because we writers are known to have big egos, and we just do crazy stuff like that now and then to see where we rank!) and I was jolted to read status messages that came up, that I had put out there four years ago.  There they were!  They showed up in a Google search! Not only that, but when I clicked on “Images,” there was the display of small photos, of the people I have on my friends’ list, and information that THEY posted dating back for years.

Besides the dangers that we place ourselves in when we put too much information out there, there is also the factor that I opened this blog post with: Why put up as a status message, what you can’t or won’t say to someone’s face?  If you don’t like a comment someone made, or something they did, why not tell THEM in a private message?

Another thing we see a lot of are these posts where women and men pine over someone they’re involved with, or having an online relationship with.  These are almost coded.  Nobody knows who they’re referring to when we read, “You broke my heart…I miss you..I live and die for you and you forget I’m alive…” and so on.  We, who read these, know what the point is, so I won’t ask, what’s the point? The point is to get the attention of the offender, to perhaps make them feel sorry for what they did, or to win them back with undying love.  It doesn’t work! A thousand people might read those messages but the one person who has decided to take a walk has probably stopped looking at your messages entirely, so those words are viewed by a whole mess of other people who can only shake their heads in dismay because they know it’s pointless, too. They’ve probably “been there, done that, got the t-shirt,” and know it’s a waste of time and energy.  If someone has reeled you into an online relationship and then has decided to disappear, write off your losses and move on, because they certainly have.  It’s a transient world this has become, where involvements happen between people who have never actually met ( which in some cases might be a God’s blessing, because they might very well be closet butchers!)

Yes, it’s a temporary, instant-gratification world but the very basic nature of human beings remains the same.  Hunters hunt.  Fishermen go fishing. Poets write. Marketing mongers deface your cyber-wall with graffiti.  Sleaze-bags are on the prowl. Dogs are sniffing around bitches.  Intertwined in all of that there is a fantastic, good-hearted, sincere population who can very easily become victims to those with less of a moral conscience. So many of these good people trust that if they operate with a certain code of moral ethics, the rest of the world will respect that and return the favor.  It’s not like that.  In Cyber-land, it’s really just too easy to play head-games with someone, reel them in all the way, and then make like a ghost and disappear when they get tired of you or bored with whatever game you’ve been playing with them.

I’m not trying to promote an atmosphere of fear, as much as shine the stark, glaring light of reality onto reality itself, and offer a few pointers, if you’re ready to accept them.  If not, ignore this whole post.  These are the pointers:

1. Be very conscious about what information you’re broadcasting online.  Remember that you’re not only sharing this info with your “close friends,” but with the entire world.

2. Be very choosy and discerning about whom you decide to place your trust in.  Trust isn’t something that automatically “comes with the package.” It is something that must be earned over time – sometimes a very LONG time.  Don’t allow someone to use that old, “don’t you trust me?” line, when they’re trying to bleed information out of you.  You are under no obligation to trust anyone who blew onto your page a few weeks ago, who has been drooling over your profile pictures. Talk to yourself as you would to your own child, and don’t put online what you would not want them to put online.  It applies to you as well.

3. Think twice about giving anyone a “strip tease” on a web cam.  They can record it. There’s a program called “Pamela for Skype” that allows recording, and some cameras also provide that feature built in. Mine does.  If not that, they can capture “stills.” Some may be doing this, “trusting” that their actions are private between them and the other party, and believing that they are in an honest-to-goodness “relationship” with that person.  Let me tell you, if that person does genuinely have feelings for you, they would not pressure you into doing anything you’re not comfortable with. Anyone who presses this issue is only after what?  Yes.  I don’t even have to write it.  But tell me, how would you feel if somewhere down the line, you were surfing the net and a naked picture of you showed up with your face in full view?  What if your children saw this?  Or your childrens’ teachers?  Your boss?  Your Priest, Minister, or the entire congregation became aware of it?  (Yes, church-goers know about this stuff too!)

4. Please revert back (at least in this one case) to the older, more honorable way of handling disagreements.  Deal with it – and them – privately.  Don’t Facebook it.  Why do you think so many people are putting as their status messages, “Why don’t they have a ‘Who-gives-a-rat’s-ass’ button?”

5. Also be very aware that your private messages are not all that private. The administrators of social networking sites have access to them. Hello?  Nothing online is private.  NOTHING.

It’s really very easy to forget that.

Until next time…

Have fun online, but be careful.  There’s only one you and I’d hate to lose you.

Zee.

Piss Or Get Off The Pot

I read a status message about a week ago that said something like, “So many people are promoting the idea that we should surround ourselves with only happy people, but that feels wrong in my heart.  I want to surround myself with people who need uplifting because that’s what Jesus did…” etc.

I can’t remember who wrote that but I want to thank that person anyway, because something about that comment felt wrong in my heart.  It made me stop and think…and think…and think…  Anytime someone can give me that much to ponder, I’m grateful.  It’s another opportunity to grow. So, thank you.

At first I wondered it my discomfort was caused by the fact that I am one of those people who think it’s important to surround ourselves with uplifting, positive people, because I really believe that we become just like the people we hang out with.

Have you noticed that when a couple is married for a very long time, they even start to look like?  Have you notice that some people’s pets even look like their owners? It goes farther than that. Have you noticed that when we befriend someone who is depressed most of the time, or whines most of the time, we start to put a cap on our own sense of joy because we feel bad displaying happiness when those we love are miserable.  We feel selfish about that. So we tone it down and adapt to their misery, because as they say,  “Misery loves company,” and to add to that, misery really doesn’t want you to wreck its moment with a burst of joy. Misery resents that. Because people are very protective of their right to be depressed. Hold onto that word, “right,” for a second.  I’ll come back to it.

I wonder…do they feel guilty for making us feel like shit anytime they show up? Do they do something to lift themselves up to our level of happiness, or try to adapt to that?  Is it that Misery feels entitled??? Is it their “right” to feel miserable and our “privilege” to feel happy?  Hm… (Zee scratches head and nods to herself…something to think about, eh?)  And, while I’m at it, why is it that we cater to misery but not to joy?  Well, you can bet your favorite lunch treat that Misery will find its way to your door every single time it finds an opportunity because there, it can GROW and spread and infect you too.

Now, I’m not talking about friends who get down now and then because of circumstances in their lives.  We all get that way sometimes.  I do, too.  I’m talking about people who LIVE in sorrow and suck it dry for all that it is worth.

Soooo…I thought about that status message again and again, and I have decided that I do NOT feel bad about wanting to surround myself with people who lift me up rather than bring me down, because I’m not on this planet to catch all the misery I can, and promote it, spread it, pass it on, and watch it grow like weeds in my Garden of Eden.   I mean, look at this world around us!  Look at the universe, the amazing cosmos!  At night, I literally stare up at the moon and wonder how it just hangs there, mysteriously, perfectly, without the help of crazy glue or strings. Then I go online and look up images on the NASA site, and I am amazed and thrilled to be here. There is so very much to be joyful about,  so much to gaze in wonder and awe, and to be thankful for.  If you don’t want to go that far, just look at how any simple daisy grows in a field.  So much to be glad about.  But there are some who would rather look at the dogshit stuck to the soles of their boots.  Go figure.

Life is about choices.  Being miserable is a choice, just like happiness is a choice.  That isn’t just some “New Age” concept.  It’s been around since Confucius, who by the way, is also quoted as having said, “Have no friends not equal to yourself.”  The thing is, there are some who don’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of, who are alone, and jobless, and yet some of these people count their blessings.  They woke up this morning.  Blessing! They can walk.  Blessing!  They don’t need an oxygen tank to breathe. Blessing! They have legs and arms.  Blessing!

Oh wait, a fellow I know doesn’t have hands or legs.  His name is Marky Wheels. Marky plays music and chooses to be happy.  He’s one of the most amazing, uplifting people I ever met in my life – bar none!  He has sparkling blue eyes and the most infectious smile.  What a beautiful human being. Marky is able to play his music out on the street corners,  where people toss coins into a hat or jar, so he can scrape out a living…but he’s able to breathe and wake up each morning. Wow, is he ever grateful for that!  Thank God for Marky.

Before you go on, please take a couple of minutes to watch this short video about Marky’s life.  Those few moments will change how you view the choice between misery and joy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIP1cC-R-3c

So I think about Marky and then I think about these other folks who are downtrodden and sorrowful, and who just love to drag you down with them.  Who do you suppose I would rather hang out with for a day? To those who  have made that choice of life-long sorrow,  I will say this: I won’t deprive of you of your right to it, but I will exercise my right to decline in the sharing of it.  Go see Marky for a day!

What a narrow-minded little species we are.  When some guru, like Wayne Dyer, says, “You must love yourself first, or you won’t be able to love anyone else,” those who don’t understand what that really means automatically come to the conclusion that this is an All-access Pass to Selfishness. Then we have the die-hard Christians on the complete other side of the frame that say, “You must care for others first, or you are not a true Christian.”  So, they turn around and deny themselves everything so that others can have, and they walk around displaying their own somberness as if it were a badge of honor…and that mentality is triggered by guilt.

Either of these two mindsets brings us to an all-or-nothing mentality.  Gone are the many colors of humanity, and all of it’s complex psychological states in between.  It reminds me of an old Jewish proverb: “Tell an idiot to go shut the blinds and he runs around shutting all of the blinds in the whole city.”

Even Mother Teresa (now canonized and is Saint Teresa!) knew where to draw the line. When asked  in 1967 to go march against the war in Vietnam, she refused, saying something like, “I won’t march against anything. But when you give me something to march for, I’ll be there.” Am I hearing undertones of positive thinking there??? From Mother Teresa?  Wow.  What a radical concept.

Dudes, we had a living, breathing saint walking among us, and once again, we were too narrow-minded to fully understand where she was coming from.  She didn’t wallow in misery.  She loved her work.  I said, she loved her work.  That means, she did something to effect positive change in the world!  She worked at it!  She never had time to dwell on self pity. She didn’t go banging on my door or yours, looking for someone to pity her and listen to her whining over ten cups of your freshly-brewed coffee and six home-baked, chocolate muffins.  She was out there, doing stuff.

As noted in Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa ) “Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity at the time of her death had 610 missions in 123 countries including hospices and homes for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis, soup kitchens, children’s and family counselling programmes, orphanages and schools. She received numerous awards including the Indian government’s Bharat Ratna in 1980 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.”

Wake up and smell the coffee.  It is a great, honorable thing to want to lift someone out of sorrow.  I do it often and I feel honored to be afforded that blessed opportunity.  I always, always feel wonderful when I can help. As a Life & Career Coach, and Reiki Master, it’s very important to me to heal the planet, one person at a time.  But by the same token, it’s also very important for us to be able to understand that there are just some people who would rather give up ten years of their own lives than give up their bad humor.  We need to be able to identify who it is that we can help, and who only wants to be emotional vampires…and reserve healing for those ready to accept it.  The others will only suck you dry.  It’s that simple.

Until next time, brothers and sisters,
Namaste!
Zee.

Want Some Cheese To Go With That Whine?

How many times have you trampled down your happiness because someone near you was depressed? You felt bad about being happy around someone who was so down so put a lid on your own joy. Now, is this someone depressed often?  Is that their primary state of being?  If so — it might be time to make a new friend. Why? Because we become like the people we hang out with. Even when you try to avoid it, depressing people steal your joy and they often don’t WANT to be happy because they find some “reward” in their depression.

 You might be thinking, Why would anyone want to be depressed? What reward could they possibly get out of it? Stay with me for a second and you’ll see.  Let’s take Sour Sally and put her in a situation where she’s surrounded by co-workers.  Sally goes around shitting on everyone’s Cornflakes.  She’s not a mean person by any means, but on some subliminal level you’ve noticed that every time Sally walks into a room, there could be ten people sitting around the table laughing and having a great ‘ole time, but when she walks in, the room suddenly goes very quiet. Sour Sally quietly pulls up a chair and sits down, and right away, some kind-hearted soul says, “Gee, Sally, what’s got you down this morning?”

Sour Sally launches into her list of all the things that are wrong in her life, or she resorts to the old stand-by of how crappy her marriage is, or her kids, or whatever her favorite sob story is.  Now, she’s got ten quiet people listening and nodding attentively. Ten people who were, only seconds ago, doing great! Eventually, it’s time to go back to work, so everyone gets up and makes their way to their desks, heads down, thinking, Well…I needed that like I needed a hole in the head.

What was Sour Sally’s “reward?” Attention!  For some reason, she’s gotten the idea from somewhere that the best way to get attention (translation: love) is to feel down so that everyone will come to her rescue and try to pull her out of her state of misery.  But no matter how people try, it never works because she wants to be that way. Why? Because to her, when people side in with her and commiserate, that means that she’s loved and cared for.  It’s her way of having someone “take care of her.” I would lay odds that when Sally isn’t depressed, she swings over to being angry and frustrated because she just can’t change things in her life.  And when she’s tired of feeling frustrated and angry, she swings back over to depression again, and then back over to anger, and then back to depression. Even ten people sitting around that table commiserating and giving her the “reward” she wants is not going to change her way of life.  She has to reach a point where she has just had it up to her eyeballs with being sad or depressed, and does something about it.

But that would require CHANGE for Sour Sally, wouldn’t it?  Change.  That is the one word that stands in that great chasm between where most depressed people are, and where they would rather be. Very often you’ll hear people like Sally speculating that they must be afraid of success, because they always manage to do something to block their own forward movement. Not!!! It’s not the fear of success that keeps them from getting ahead. It’s the fear of making the changes necessary to get from here to there.  Change. There’s a monumental separation of thought when some guy who sits on the couch all day long, watching television, wants to become a millionaire.  The two just don’t work together. He’d have go get up off his ass and start working toward something.

Sally would have to stop crying in her soup and start making some changes in her own life to improve things. She won’t do that until she’s finally, truly had enough of where she’s at. Having people commiserate with her will only help to keep her where she is, because in this state of mind, she gets the “love” she’s missing in her life, and she gets it in the form of compassion.  She’s like that kid who goes ripping through a house raising hell because he’s dying for attention.  So he gets a sound whack on the butt, someone to scream at him…but at least he got the attention he wanted.

The bottom line brings us right back to where I started at the beginning of this blog: If the people around you are robbing you of your joy, change the people you hang out with, because even if you are a truly optimistic person, the more you spend time with the Sour Sally’s of this world, the more you will trample your own happiness because it just feels inappropriate to be happy while someone near you is down.

You’ve heard the expression, “I’m getting too old for this shit.”  Right?  Well, I  decided a long time ago that I was getting too old for that shit.  I mean, everyone gets a little down now and then, myself included, and if it’s just a now-and-then kind of thing, sure, I’ll stick around and see what I can do to help.  But if this person is someone who’s perpetually blue, frig that.  They walk in, I get up, smile at them in passing to show no hard feelings, and then I’m outa there.  I’m gone.  I’m just getting too old for this shit, and life is too short to waste it around Sour Sally.

There’s help out there for people like her.  All sorts of resources, self-help books, there are people like Wayne Dyer who put out tons of audios and reading material that can really help.  Gift wrap some of it and hand it to her, but after that, get the hell out because if you don’t…one of these days you’ll be the one walking into a room and it will suddenly get very quiet, and then you’ll spend the next hour telling ten people how lousy your life is.  Misery loves company, and misery is contagious.

Now, I know, I know…there are people out there who suffer from bi-polar disorder, or clinical sadness, or what have you.  There are professionals out there who can help them, but again, they need to want to accept that help.  You can’t force-feed them.  There just comes a time when people have to take responsibility for their own state of mind. I suffer from S.A.D. myself.  Seasonal Affective Disorder.  By around February of ever year, I’m about ready to crawl into a hole and pull the hole in after me.  I could, if I wanted to, start getting depressed in November, in anticipation of  S.A.D.  But I don’t.  Instead, I change my surroundings or something about myself because I know damn well that it’s me I need to change, not everyone else in the world.  I redecorate the living room, paint, change up the color, wear bright-colored clothing that improves my mood, switch my view from the gray skies outside to something on the other side of the room.  I have even hung a miror in front of my desk, so that every time I look up, I can see that miserable, scowly face staring at me.  Believe it or not, this makes me sit up straighter and look alive, and it also makes me laugh at myself.  When it gets really bad I go hunting for funny videos on Youtube, and there are many.  Or I watch a funny movie.  Or I go buy a damn hat.  Or I buy full-spectrum light bulbs that are supposed to help S.A.D. I do something about it!  Because I’ll be damned if I’m going to let the weather or lack of sunlight wreck every single day of my life between November and April!  I mean, really.  There IS help out there.

So, if you’re surrounded by people like Sour Sally, and if your life sucks because of it, know that one of the best and first things a person needs to do to change the quality of their lives is to change who they hang out with. That doesn’t mean to become a snob.  It just means to become more selective about the mindset of those who have an influence on your general state of being.

Until next time…

Hakuna Matata, everyone!
Here’s hoping 2012 brings you prosperity, great health, and great joy!
Zee.

Merry Friggin’ Christmas

Homeless Person

Over Christmas, I was thinking about the kinds of gifts that we can’t put a price tag on, and also, how difficult it is to know what to buy for someone, at times. This was really brought home to me when I watched a video posted by Jimmy Kimbal, featuring a bunch of kids that got presents that the parents knew their kids would hate.  Now, those who know me, know that I love a good laugh, and once you get me going it’s hard to get me to stop. I’m a laugh-a-holic.  But where I expected to get a chuckle from this video, I was repulsed at how ignorant, rude, and spoiled these kids were.  The first few kids were great. Just being kids.  But when you get to about 2:37 into this clip, it goes rapidly downhill, where these kids start behaving like little anti-Christs.  One of them flying into a total tantrum, “I hate you, I hate youuuu!” and then further along, “Well, tell him to suck my balls!”

Here’s the link to the video.  Check it out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hRnhd8VLuqI

Maybe I’m old-fashioned but there were a few things that really bothered me about this video:

1. From about mid-point, it became blatantly clear to me that these were obviously spoiled, North American brats used to getting what they want, when they want it, and how they want it.

2. Since when was it alright for kids to speak to their parents this way?

3. Where is “gratitude” in any of this?

4. Most importantly, are we promoting this attitude of selfishness and greed and rudeness by getting this stuff on tape and calling it funny?

It’s not funny.  I am going to go very seriously politically Incorrect here for a few minutes, and if that is going to bother you, you should stop reading right here.

First we’ve got a child here who is overweight by about fifty pounds before he’s twelve, if that. Obviously, food has been his comfort, and neglect his mode of discipline, from way back, for him to become so dangerously obese and so obnoxiously rude at such a young age.  Take away the Super-sized MacDonald’s and give this kind the kind of attention he needs instead of MORE video games so he can sit in front of the television set and eat himself to death while the parents do whatever the hell they’re doing to allow these things to happen to him. What’s he going to be by the time he’s forty?  A fat, miserable, hateful, demanding son of a bitch, who is in very poor health, that nobody can stand being around. And by then he won’t have a clue why people don’t like him – not even his own parents.  And by then they will be saying, “We gave that man everything he ever wanted, and this is how he treats us?” Wait, no – they’ll be saying that by the time he’s sixteen. That’s the problem, dudes.  You’re giving him everything he wants but none of what he needs.  REAL ATTENTION.  Discipline. Love.  The kind of love that cares about what happens to kids and what they will evolve into! Wake the frig up and smell the coffee.  But the people who watch Jimmy Kimbal got a laugh out of it and this kid got his 15 minutes of fame so I guess that makes all of it alright.  So let’s move on, then.

To this other kid yelling, “Well, tell him he can suck my balls!”  What!?  I mean, are you serious? I don’t even know how to respond to that, other than to get myself into deeper trouble by saying right here for the world to read that if he said that to me, I’d staple his puny little nuts to a tree stump and shove the little bastard backward to show him what happens to kids who speak that way to their parents.

You know what?  I don’t think my folks raised me wrong when I was shown that no matter what is in that present when you tear off the wrap, no matter how horrible it is, no matter how ugly, you friggin’ smile and say, “Thank you, it’s just what I needed.”  FAKE IT!!!  Learn some diplomacy, learn some manners and learn how to be grateful that anyone even thought of you at all.  Things could be one hell of alot worse.

Prisonplanet.com released an article on December 24, 2011 that said, “For millions of American families, there will be no Christmas this year. The sad truth is that an increasing number of families simply do not have money for Christmas presents or any other luxuries right now. The number of Americans that fell into poverty set a new all-time record last year and extreme poverty is at the highest level ever measured in the United States. This Christmas, a lot of American families will be deciding whether to spend the little money that they do have on food, heat or medicine. All over America, the poor are getting poorer and each year the economic pain seems to get even worse…”  Here’s the link to that article if you want to read more:

So we’ve got families out there – millions of them! — who must decide whether to eat OR pay the rent, and here in this video, which is a sad testimony to what some of us are becoming in real life – we have these spoiled brats throwing tantrums because they didn’t like what was in the wrap.  As I said, the first few were fine.  Reactions totally expected and acceptable. But the last few…ugh. Their parents should be sued.  At first you might think, Well, Zee…it’s just a video.  It isn’t just a video.  Look around you and I bet you personally know at least one child who behaves like a brat when (s)he doesn’t get exactly what (s)he wants.

Call me crazy but I think the best gift we could give these spoiled brats would be to:

• Sign them up for an entire year (every single holiday) to volunteer at soup kitchens in the poorest parts of our North American cities to get them up close and personal with how life is like for some who are not as fortunate.
• Take half of what we would have spent on their Christmas presents, and let them go out and use their own money to buy presents that they will donate to kids around the country who won’t have a Christmas at all. Introduce them to poverty, want and despair.
• Bring them to the cancer ward at the nearest children’s hospital and show them that the gift of life itself is more valuable than anything you could put a bow on.

Our priorities are screwed and we’re handing this legacy down to our kids.

Merry Friggin’ Christmas to all of us.  I hope we learned something this year.

Over and out.
Zee.

Men, Women, And The Usual Fuckery

Will the two sexes EVER understand each other???  Why, oh why, do we do this to ourselves?  It’s just not that complicated!

If you spend any time at all on the social networking sites, you’ll probably be quick to notice the “Wall Plaques” and status messages that say things like, “Why cry over some jerk who left you when there’s someone much greater waiting to find you?”  Or, “If you’re stupid enough to leave me, you don’t deserve me.”  I’ll stop there.  You get the idea. The whole point of these messages is to imply or state outright that because someone left them, he or she is a stupid jerk or a crazy bitch.  That’s the underlying message.  It’s sad, really.

 Every time I read these I can’t help but think, if you’re still giving this person free rent space inside your head, and if you’re still posting stuff like this, baby, you ain’t over him/her yet!  OVER someone is when you don’t think about them anymore.  OVER is when you really are so busy enjoying or living your life that you don’t give the ex another thought.  That’s really being OVER somebody.  But what disturbs me even more is the implication that just because someone left you, they are worthless. They don’t deserve anything good.  They are trash.

 Really?  I mean, really?  Are YOU trash?  I mean, at some time in our lives, we all leave someone and usually, we have good reason to.  At least, in our own minds, our reasons are justified and good. That doesn’t make us trash, does it? It makes us human beings (which is what we are) trying our best in this lifetime to find happiness (which we deserve.)  All of us. ALL of us.

 The reasons they leave, we will sometimes never know.  Possibly, if we try to think objectively and ask in an objective fashion rather than ranting, raving and fighting, we would get the answers.  We won’t like them, make no mistake about that.  To the person being left, no reason is a good enough reason to bail out.  But for the one doing the leaving, let’s face it….by the time someone actually works up the nerve to tell you they’re splitting, they’ve already been gone for quite some time, so they’re already emotionally removed. They’d tell you the real reason if they thought you wouldn’t freak out.

I did a survey on this quite some time back.  Now, I only got forty or so responses, but every one of them said that by the time they actually found the nerve to say “good-bye” they were already gone, inside their heads.  It just wasn’t a snap decision, made on the spot.  It had been building up for awhile. All they had to do was pick up their bodies and haul the rest of themselves out the door. They could tell you point blank, without trauma on their parts, why they’re leaving – the real reason – but most of the time they don’t because experience in this sort of thing has taught us all that it’s better to be as vague as possible, as delicate as possible, as illusive as possible…anything but the bare-assed truth, because most people just can’t take it.  Most people will claw, grab, cry, fight, reason with you…anything but just gracefully back off and say, “I was actually thinking the same thing because it hasn’t been going well for us at all, has it?  Now we can both move forward and get on with our lives.”

What a shock to the system that would be,eh?  I bet half of us would do a double take at this point and second-think our decision to leave.  The surprise would floor us if anyone made it that easy.

If you’re curious, one of the primary reasons that people left other people, according to this survey that I did was (and this will not surprise you at all):

‘She changed.  She was really nice when we started out…but then she changed into someone totally different. She’s not the person I fell in love with.”

“He refused to change.  He drinks, he’s rude, he treats me poorly…he just won’t change no matter how much I rant at him.”

Take note here. This is what I concluded:  Men go into relationships hoping a woman won’t change. He committed to her because of who he thought she was.  Women go into relationships hoping men will change.  She doesn’t like this or that about him but she thinks she can fix him.  Now, those are broad, general statements, and of course, there are women out there who don’t try to change a guy, just like there are men out there who do try to change a woman…but I’m talking about a majority of men and women here, not the exception to the rule.

That’s where we go wrong a great deal of the time.  There are a frillion other reasons why people break up but that one up there, that’s a good place to start.

But listen, the jerk who left you is the same jerk you fell in love with – or maybe convinced yourself that you loved for whatever reason.  So now, he’s a jerk who doesn’t deserve good things because he left?  He’s the same guy.  If he was that much of a jerk, what were you doing with him in the first place? Did you think he’d change for you?  Nobody changes for anyone else.  Change comes from within.  So, be more selective next time.  Raise your standards.  Learn from it.

I’ve come to the conclusion that men are simple creatures, really.  No, “simple” doesn’t mean stupid or anything bad.  Not at all.  It means they’re pretty straight-forward. Men are fixer-uppers. They don’t tend to analyze the shit out of relationships.  They just roll with the punches. They’re raised to deal with issues, handle them, get them out of the way and move onto something else.

Women are very different.  Women can take a single sentence and analyze it for weeks on end, wondering what he meant by, “Your sheets are a weird color.”  She thinks, Does he mean my sheets are ugly?  Does he mean they freak him out? Do they turn him off? Crap, should I get different colored sheets??! Why doesn’t he like this color?  My brother likes this color.  All my girlfriends think this color is gorgeous.  What’s wrong with my sheets??? Does he think I have bad taste in decor? I bet he hates my couch too. It’s almost that same shade of green… Why would he hate my friggin’ couch?  We made out on that couch for the first time! It has sentimental value!  What an insensitive jerk! Meanwhile, all he really, really meant was, “You’re sheets are a weird color.”  Period.  Nothing to do with how they affect his sex drive, his appetite for MacDonald’s salads or anything else.  They’re just sheets and they’re a weird color.  He won’t think about them again.  It’s done with. Back to her.  She’s still skimming every site on the Internet trying to learn why that particular shade of green turns some men off, trying to understand the psychology behind his dislike for that shade of green, and other such nonsense.  Again, I say, it’s just not that complicated!

We, as women, like to attach all sorts of complications to men that don’t really exist.  We say things like, “He’s sending me mixed messages.”  Honey, not, he is not sending you mixed messages.  You’re sending mixed messages to yourself.  If he says hi in the hall every day but never asks you out, it’s because he doesn’t want to go out with you badly enough to make the effort. Hi means hi, and nothing else.  The most shy man on the planet will FIND a way to ask you out if he really wants to go out with you. The most attached man on the planet will devise a hundred different schemes to be with you in secret if he really wants to be with you, so the “Oh, he’s married but it’s me he really wants” mentality won’t fly here, either.   Read my lips:  Any man who is in love with a woman will FIND a way to connect with her in ways that she cannot mistake for anything else but attraction.  The buck stops here. That’s how it is, like it or not.  It’s just not that complicated. There are no mixed messages.  Only wishful thinkers.

“Love and a red nose can’t be hid.” Thomas Holcroft.  Think about it.

I’m not really going anywhere with this long dissertation, in case you’re wondering.  There’s no last paragraph to pull all of that nonsense together in a way that will make sense.  Don’t look for it. It ain’t there.  All I’m saying is that men and women are so different.  After all these years of co-existing on the same planet we still can’t get it through out thick heads that we can’t and should not try to make men think like women, or women think like men.  And we still can’t seem to reach a place where we can embrace our differences rather than put each other down over them.

Girls, did you know that a man will do just about anything for you if you just learn to ask him the right way? No bitching, whining, complaining, nagging, guilt-trips or any of that BS.  Men LIKE to be heros.  Let them be heros!  Ask…ask nicely (and if you can do it wearing a bustier and some high heels, it will work that much better!) and ye shall receive!  They like to let their bad boys come out to play now and then too, but that’s a whole ‘nother blog for another day.  Just let me say that if you encourage his dark energy to come out and play with your dark energy now and then, instead of having him let out that dark energy behind your back, you will BOTH be much happier by three AM…if it stops that soon. Get my drift?

Men, did you know that women wouldn’t bitch half as much if men told or showed us more often that we were appreciated and loved?  We might even forgive you for leaving the toilet seat up if you give us a hug and smile with that apology. Wait, let me guess.  You didn’t apologize.  Well, it wasn’t your ass dunked in ice water at 3:00 am.  Was it?  Go apologize. She’s worth it.

What I think, I guess, is that we just need to stop trying to demystify what men are about, and just take ‘em as they are.  Warts and all.  If we did that, maybe they’d quit trying to run for the door.  And if what they are is unacceptable to you, without alternations, then don’t get into a relationship with them in the first place.  It’s not your job to “fix” a guy.  He doesn’t want to be fixed.  Get your dog or your cat fixed but don’t try it on men.  They tend to resent that sort of castration. If they want to change certain things about themselves because they can see that doing so would make you happier, they have to do that on their own. Your nagging won’t enlighten him.  It will only push him away.

But if they want to leave, let ‘em go. You don’t want someone who doesn’t want to be with you anyway, do you? But when they DO leave, I would suggest spending less time hating on the guy and trying to figure out how he could be so stupid…and perhaps, a little more time learning from everything that went wrong in that relationship, so as to avoid the same mistakes in the future.

If it sounds as if I’m blaming the whole thing on women (my own sex!) I’m not.  Believe me, I have met my share of total jerks and even been in relationships with some. There were some that only a mother would love and some that EVEN their own mothers couldn’t love!  And some that didn’t show their nasty sides till well into the relationships, so men can and do change too. But at the end of the day, after I got out of those relationships, I had to look back with honest eyes and an open mind, and admit that I KNEW they were jerks from the start.  I knew it.  But I went ahead and got involved anyway.  I should have listened to my gut feeling.  Live and learn.

The one thing I don’t do and won’t do, is allow myself to spend any time hating on someone or dissing someone after they’re gone.  Why?  It’s a waste of time.  Hating on someone is the same as going up to a Bitterness Station with an empty tank and saying, “Fill me up.  I need some more bitterness to run on, to get through this day.” That won’t make anything better.  It will just prologue your misery. If he really WAS a jerk, then just be glad you finally did get out of that relationship, so you can now be free to find someone more suitable.  But in the process of letting him go, don’t cling to the bitterness.  Let it go, too.  Let it go, so that if you DO meet a really nice, caring man, you won’t be subconsciously making him pay for the horrible way the previous guy treated you.  Fair’s fair. It’s the only way, because if you cling to that crap, it will blink like a neon sign on your forehead, warding off every man within thirty feet of you.  You won’t find a good replacement until you take off that sign, because if there’s one thing men ARE good at, it’s reading bitterness on a woman’s face, in her eyes, in her walk, and in the way she looks at the world.

To receive love – genuine love – one must be able to give it.  You can’t do that as long as you’re hating someone.

Be well and be blessed, brothers and sisters.

Until next time…Namaste.

The Five Principals

The 7 Main Chakras

The Five Principals are based on the theory that if you can do something “just for today,” rather than making a commitment do to anything for a lifetime, it’s more doable. This mode of living is taught in Reiki, but  learning these principals would assist anyone in achieving a healthy balance. These ideals in no way contradict or conflict with Christianity or any other religion. Reiki isn’t a religion.  It’s a way of life.

The ultimate goal is to be able to sit quietly for a few minutes before the start of each day, and remind one’s self of these Five Principals, but if that is too big a bite for you at the start, there’s nothing wrong with picking a different item each day of the week, and setting your goal to do just that one item, for that one day.

 And now…The Five Principals:

1.  Just for today, I will not anger.

2. Just for today, I will not worry.

3. Just for today, I will earn my living honestly.

4. Just for today, I will be kind to all living things.

5. Just for today,  I will be grateful.

 Let’s look at each one, individually, and explore their meanings.

§  Just for today, I will not anger.” §

So much easier said than done, right?  But you can do it just for today. Why would you want to? Well, for starters, anger does nasty things to your health, the least of which is to send your blood pressure through the roof, cause ulcers, send the people you love away from you, and so on. This is not metaphysical nonsense. These are hard, proven facts.

Anger is a fierce reaction and one of the most powerful ones that we can display. Although many people believe that there’s nothing they can do to control it, that is not true. You are in control of your mind and your reactions. If not you, then who is?  It’s not as if your mind is outside of you, and you’re watching it processing stuff on a big screen television, broadcast from a station somewhere in Siberia. Or plugged into the Matrix.

“Wow…there goes an angry thought.  Whoosh  Oh, crap, there goes another one! Where do they keep coming from? Somebody turn off that news scroller across my screen!”

They begin with a single nasty thought and build their own head of steam from there. One angry thought draws another one, which draws another one, and next thing you know, you’ve got yourself so wound up you’re fit to be tied. Take comfort. That isn’t your natural state. The spirit, by its nature, would really love to maintain a healthy balance but since humans tend to react from the heart, and the heart is prone to strong emotion, that emotion often over-rides common sense and the desires of the spirit.  Moreover, the heart is closely linked to ego, because we know that when we challenge or offend someone’s ego, the rage that they display obviously comes from the heart, which is by then pounding with fury. The human heart does not only foster love, as we all know. It’s the breeding ground for a whole myriad of negative feelings as well, like rage, which originates in “ego.”

When we’re in a relationship, romantic or friendship, and that person dumps us, we immediately wonder what’s wrong with us, or what they think is wrong with us. That is ego.  If the ego were tamed and no longer taking the lead, such doubts of your worth would never even cross your mind and therefore, you would not feel anger because you wouldn’t feel threatened or inadequate. Instead, you’d probably think that for whatever reason, they simply chose to move on without you, and the whole incident would be easier to release without so much anguish.  You may still feel sad at the loss, and that’s fine, but you wouldn’t internalize it as anything being wrong with you.

So often we hear people say, “follow your heart.”  Right?  Well, I’m inclined to say, “follow your spirit.”  Your spirit is linked to Divine Intelligence, not the human defense mechanism that automatically kicks in when we feel threatened. Your spirit will teach your heart how to find a balance. An exercise that works for me is to visualize my spirit as being a wise old Sage.  Rather than let anger or other negative emotions get to me, I consult quietly with my Sage and ask her what the deeper reasons for things are, and then I listen quietly for an explanation. When I distance myself that way, I am more able to see both sides of any equation. I can easier understand why someone did what they did, and I can easier prevent myself from running off half-cocked and maybe saying or doing something I’ll regret. In the past I have seriously damaged relationships by jumping the gun, and so I have had to learn to pull back, consult with my inner Sage and allow myself to simmer down before taking any action.

Now, I’m going to show you something else that might encourage you further to learn how to exercise some control over your emotions. This is a video link to Dr. Emoto’s Water Experiments.  At first glance it doesn’t appear to be related to our emotions at all, but it really is, and in a very, very profound way. So here’s the link. Please check it out before going forward.  It’s worth it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAvzsjcBtx8

So, now that you’ve seen how water reacts to words like, “love, gratitude, Mother Teresa,” and “Hitler,” consider this: Since our bodies are made up of at least 60% water, imagine what angry thoughts will do to you. Whether you send those angry thoughts to others or direct them internally, they’re poison to you and to every living thing around you.  Even plants react negatively to anger. Check this out, from the Sun Magazine:

“Sometimes it happens that a person can name the exact moment when his or her life changed irrevocably. For Cleve Backster, it was early in the morning of February 2, 1966, at thirteen minutes, fifty-five seconds into a polygraph test he was administering. Backster, a leading polygraph expert whose Backster Zone Comparison Test is the worldwide standard for lie detection, had at that moment threatened his test subject’s well-being. The subject had responded electrochemically to his threat. The subject was a plant.

Since then, Backster has conducted hundreds of experiments demonstrating not only that plants respond to our emotions and intents, but so do severed leaves, eggs (fertilized or not), yogurt, and human cell samples. He’s found, for example, that white cells taken from a person’s mouth and placed in a test tube still respond electrochemically to the donor’s emotional states, even when the donor is out of the room, out of the building, or out of the state…” Read more by clicking on this link: http://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/259/the_plants_respond

 Anger is often (though not always) born of fear but we don’t realize that because the transitory time that it takes to go from that feeling of fear to the reaction of anger is a split-second.   When one of our children comes in after midnight, and we’ve been walking the floors for hours, worried sick about him, what do we do when (s)he walks in?  The first impulse is to flip our wigs, yell, scream, threaten, and ground.  Anything to stress how important it is not to put themselves in that kind of danger. We’ve spent hours imaging the worse possible things that could have happened to him, maybe even crying.  Again, it was fear that started it, and our reaction to that fear showed up as anger. That’s just one example of how anger is sometimes  more of a reaction than a feeling, and the point of bringing that up at all is to encourage you to get to know yourself better. Rather than giving into that impulse to react in anger, take a breath and ask your Sage why you want to lash out at someone. Try to get to the root of the problem, within yourself. In the end it might very well be that this person is an irritating jerk and you just want him or her out of your hair.  If that’s the case, then there still has to be a more productive way to deal with it than flying off the handle.

Aside from all of that, anger blocks the flow of positive energy within your body. This energy flows through all of your Chakras (your energy centers.) This positive energy needs to be able to circulate freely so as to saturate your internal organs in order to maintain good health. When you mess with that balance by allowing anger to take the lead, you’re asking for health problems.

Now, having said all that, is anger always a bad thing?  No, it isn’t. It was anger that sparked some very great movements to put a stop to abuses of every kind, from PETA to MADD.  Anger comes from the deepest part of you and viewed from that perspective, it’s a very powerful thing. A very personal thing. When you put that much energy behind anything, you’re going to get results.  However, what you do with your anger determines the whether the results will be positive or negative.  Do you want to waste that precious, powerful energy on petty issues and get sick over it, or save it for something more worthwhile?

The point is to learn how to choose your battles.  If the anger you’re feeling at any given time isn’t something that will produce positive results no matter how you try, then it’s better to just let it go, otherwise it will only fester and rot you from the inside out.  Just like the water in Dr. Emoto’s experiment looked like a puddle of human waste when the words, “you are making me sick” were taped to the container, the water in your body will turn to sludge inside of you, if you allow that to happen. It’s certainly worth thinking twice before letting your temper get the best of you, isn’t it?

 If someone in your life is being a total jerk and there’s nothing you can do to stop them, then find a sanctuary that you crawl into, inside your head, whether it’s a song, a pleasant memory, your love for your pets — anything! – it doesn’t matter what you choose, but redirect your thoughts to those that return your sense of tranquility to you, until they realize that their tantrums are not affecting you in the least.  It’s quite a challenge to learn how to do that., but it is well worth the investment of your time, because once you master it, and those around you finally get that they can’t rattle your cage anymore, you might be pleasantly surprised to discover that they either wander off to traumatize someone else, or they stop their abusive behavior entirely when they’re around you.  It does work.  It just takes time to get your message across in a quiet but effective way.

A long time ago, I used to belong to an online message board, and most of the people I met there are still friends today.  Great, great people. One day a new member signed up and seemed to want to make it her mission in life to crap all over everyone, criticize everyone, hate this, hate that.  We all tried to be very nice and patient with her.  Boy did we try! Then she really began to get on our nerves. We asked her to please stop many, many times, which would precipitate another round of hatred from her. We allowed her to get to us for awhile and then we finally decided to “stop feeding the troll.”  A troll will hang out under your bridge as long as you feed it, and usually, if you don’t provide the sparks of hate that they need to feed on, they eventually disappear and go hunting for hate somewhere else. So, anytime somebody seems to be aggravating you just for the sake of aggravating you, it might help to whisper inside your mind, “Don’t feed the trolls.”

So, do try that.  Pick a day of the week and try it, “just for today.”

§   “Just for today, I will not worry.”  §

Worrying is one of the weirdest things that we humans do.  We’re the only living things that worry.  Animals don’t worry.  They stand “on alert” when they sense something bad might happen, but you’ll never see a dog pacing around chewing his nails, worrying about whether or not he’ll have something to eat three days from today. Then again, we’re the only species that kills each other for sport too, so lots of things we do just don’t make one bit of sense.  However, I was one of those people who worried about so many things that I spent about half of my life living in fear of what could happen. I still catch myself doing it now and then, and over the years I’ve wondered why people do this to themselves.  It’s a very tough habit to break.

Consider this, then. If your health is what you worry about, the physical effects of worrying will wear down the body of a healthy person because excessive worrying can precipitate feelings of high anxiety that can be very harmful to the health of someone in great physical shape, so imagine what it will do to someone with a weak immune system?

Worrying can wreck your appetite or cause you to become a compulsive eater – someone who eats to comfort themselves.  It can interfere with your lifestyle in that you avoid doing things that might be fun or even healthy for you. It can wreck relationships because those around you don’t understand your obsession with worrying about what might happen so much that you miss what’s going on now.  Excessive worrying can mess with your sleeping habits, so that you’re exhausted during the day, so the spin-off from that might be poor job performance.

Compulsive worriers are so so fraught with anxiety that they seek distractions in harmful habits like the above-mentioned overeating (or not eating enough,) alcohol and drug abuse, and at times, even wreck your sex life. How?  That’s a no-brainer. If you’re so wired up that you can’t stop your mental wheels from spinning, you’re not exactly tuned in to your partner, are you?

Why do we do this?  Whydo we worry so much?  Is it because we think that by dwelling on something repeatedly, we can will bad things not to happen? We know that doesn’t work, right?  Yet, we just keep on worrying.

Bottom  line:  We worry because we are not in control of a situation.

Another bottom line: We are not in control of everything in this universe!

There are simply things that we have to pry our grubby little fingers off of,

let go, and allow to unfold the way they must.

One way that might help with the worrying issue might be to sit down and make a list of the things that worry you.  I mean, worry you to the point of causing you stress and upsetting your balance.  You know what they are, so write them down. Then go down your list and put a check beside the things you could, even in some small way, control.  Below those things, jot down steps that you can take, to affect the outcome in a more positive way. Then begin to take action.  If you can do something about any of these items, then start doing it! Quit allowing yourself to be a victim to things you can change.

Go down that list again and put an “X” beside the items that you have absolutely no control over, and never will have any control over.  Take those items off of that list and put them on a separate page.  At the top of that page, write, in your own words if that helps, something like this: “Worrying will not add one single moment to my life.  In fact, it will shorten it.  So I am turning these items over to God.”  If you don’t believe in a higher power then you could end that suggestion right at, “…will shorten it,” and it would still make more sense then sweating over things you can’t control.  Take this list of things you can’t control and burn it.  Watch it go up in smoke, metaphorically and (in a sense, physically) and release these things.

Tell yourself how stop trying to micro-manage every little thing and once you steady yourself a little, then work hard to refocus your mind on something pleasant. Go to that inner sanctuary that you crawl into whenever someone pisses you off and you need to get centered.  Stay there till you feel calm again. OR… get up and start doing something you enjoy, whether it’s gardening, dancing, listening to music, reading, surfing the internet, it doesn’t matter. Just DO something to get your mind off of yourself for awhile. Something that works for me is to hunt down funny videos on Youtube and loosen up the mental and emotional knots with some good old belly laughs. My favorites are the cat videos. I also love watching baby animal videos.  But you do whatever works for you. As you might have guessed, I’m alot harder on myself than I am on everyone else.  What I often do is say to myself, “Oh, get over yourself!” That somehow helps me, of all things.  Worrying is a tough habit to break, and even after you break it, it tries to sneak back in and take root again. It’s like that free-loading cousin that keeps showing up at your door twice a year and seems to grow roots right into your sofa. Ugh. As I said, I still battle with it now and then, and the ideas I mentioned above work for me if I use some discipline and carry them through.  They work better if you catch yourself at the onset of a bout of worrying, so try to do that. Try to catch yourself before your mind goes into over-drive.  It’s impossible to stop a Mac truck going at 100 mph unless it hits a brick wall.  I hate when I crash and I’m sure you do, too.  So keep your foot near the breaks so it doesn’t take off on its own.

§   “Just for today, I will earn my living honestly.” §

 Boy, you’re gonna hate me for this one! Let’s start with some questions. I bet that by the time you finish reading them you’ll know inside what needs to be done.

• Do you hate your job?
• Do you get caught up in office gossip?
• Do you take more bathroom breaks than you need?
• Do you sneak out early?
• Do you take sick days when you’re not really sick?
• Do you complain that you don’t get paid enough?

That’s enough for now.  Honesty is a word that is set on building blocks called, “Integrity” and “Honor.”  If you really hate your job, try to think back to the day just before you got that job. Were you desperate for an income? Did the job seem appealing to you when you applied for it?  Then ask yourself, are you getting the income that was agreed upon when you were hired, and are still doing the same tasks that were expected of you when you were hired, that you agreed to do? If the basics are the same and you’re earning the money you were promised for the job you’re doing, then most likely it’s your interaction with the people at this job that turned things sour. It may be that partly you are at fault and it may be that none of it is your fault at all.

Either way, the honest thing to do would be to arrive on time, don’t leave early, and don’t take sick days when you’re not sick.  This is an issue that affects you more than it does your employer if you violate your employment agreement.  In truth, he or she could replace you, and you could find another similar job (because we tend to repeat our job history) and eventually the same issues might resurface because no matter how far you run or where you go, you always take YOU with you.  There is a reason for that.  Part of the way this universe works is that if you’re presented with lessons that you need to learn, you will keep having the same lessons presented to you over and over again until you figure out where you’re going off track, and figure out a way to fix it.

To confuse you even more, the lessons you may need to learn may not be work-related at all, but may be more of a situation where you have problems dealing with certain types of individuals who tend to show up more in that type of environment so boom – that’s where you end up over and over again.  You may need to learn a better way to interact with that type of person in order to fulfill your own greater purpose for being here. As always, any time we have issues with certain types of people, the answer is and will always be the same: Look within yourself because chances are you can’t change them, but you can change how you react to them.

Any way you cut it though, cheating on your time damages your spirit more than it will ever hurt your boss or the people you work with because you violate your own integrity and sense of self-worth every single time you “steal time.”  Stealing time also includes playing around on social networking sites on the company computer, and taking too many unnecessary personal phone calls. Your integrity is a thing of very high value, worth far, far more than the few minutes you’ll swipe here and there, or the day you miss work because you’d rather catch a game on television or some such thing.

If you get caught up in office politics or office gossip, try to disentangle yourself from that mess as politely and kindly as possible, because really, you’re not being paid to gossip, are you?  When we do this, we’re wasting company money and company time, and we’re presenting ourselves in a very poor light as someone who has no qualms about trashing someone else. I don’t know about you, but anytime I’ve been in a group where this nasty behavior starts, I wonder if they talk about me that way when I’m not around. Chances are, they do! Because everyone knows, that is what gossips do.  They gossip.  I won’t belabor this point, but you know what your situation is, and you know if it’s something you need to address.  We’ve all been in situations like that.

In truth, if you can establish your workplace image as someone who has integrity, does your job the best you can, doesn’t steal time, and does not get caught up in office gossip, you will probably advance more in that job and earn a raise in pay and the boss’s respect, because most employers value your kind of person better than the other.

At the other end of the spectrum, if you are an employer, do you treat your workers as if they are valuable to your organization?  If not, why not?  If you sell goods, do you jack up the prices unfairly?  Those too, are about integrity.

Integrity.  Not such a big word.  Only four syllables.  But it is one word that is a must in the workplace as much as it must be in personal relationships. If you have integrity, you will earn your living honestly and you will earn the respect of
everyone you come into contact with.

So that is another one you can try.  Pick your Integrity Day and try to stick with it all day…just for today.

§   “Just for today, I will be kind to all living things.”  §

I’m not going to get into this too deeply because I’m sure you already are kind to all living things, but I’m going to give you a little challenge, so as to connect you with the universe on a level that you might find pretty awesome. There’s absolutely no question in my mind that you will think I have completely lost my mind when you read this, but it’s something that I did myself and this simple experiment opened my eyes in so many ways. So this is it:

Get a snail.  Yes, that is what I said. Get a snail. It doesn’t matter where you get it, but find a snail somewhere and take it home, and make this snail your pet.  If you can’t get a snail then pick another small creature.  Some people buy crickets in tiny cricket cages. But the point is to pick some tiny creature that you normally wouldn’t even notice if you were in a garden or on the street, and might even squash under your foot. Your job is to do some research and find out what this little creature eats, how it lives, and so on, and to make taking good care of it a priority.

Here’s the deal.  You will learn so much about this little thing, and the very act of caring for its welfare, its feeding and so on, will help you to become attached to it in ways you wouldn’t imagine.  I brought my first snail home years ago, and gave it a bath in water that I had let sit at room temperature overnight. I bathed it because touching it creeped me out.  And that’s precisely why I recommend a snail above any other creature. They’re slimy.  But once you bathe it and you know it’s clean, and you know what it eats and where it lives, then you’ll feel okay about touching it.  For the first few days my snail drew back inside its shell anytime I picked it up, but by the end of the first week, it stayed out of its shell and began crawling around my hand. I was impressed.  Mostly with myself. I thought I was pretty Zen-like if I could get that snail to trust me. (Enter: BIG EGO! LOL.)  But not for one second did I think that this thing had a brain bigger than a photon, or that it actually felt anything, other than pain when it got squashed. Or that it had any aspirations of any kind.

Then, the most amazing thing happened. I set it onto the kitchen counter and then bent down to study it at close range. This snail turned, crawled toward me—and raised its tiny head to look at me.  I moved to the other side of the island, and it turned again, crawled toward me, and raised its head again to seek me out. Woah. To make a long story short, in about a month I would make kissing sounds with my lips and this snail would nearly crawl completely out of its shell so as to be able to extend its reach, and it actually brought its mouth up to mine. Now, I couldn’t see its mouth because it was so small, but I knew that it understood what my intent was, and was reciprocating affection.

I know.  “Ewwwwwwwwwww!”  Relax.  As I said.  It was clean.  And some people EAT them.  So I figured I could train one to give kisses. I succeeded. Then I deliberately went out and got a half dozen more snails to do the same thing with to see if it would work.  It did.  Over a six month period I got so attached to my snails that I felt like crap when one of them died.  Today, you would be hard pressed to get me to walk on a snail, ever again. I don’t keep any as pets because their lifespans are too short, but I have a few of them in my garden. When I’m out walking, I watch where I’m putting my feet so that I don’t crush snails, caterpillars, or any other little creature because that little snail of mine taught me that these little beings do feel, and they do respond to kindness.  They belong on this planet as much as we do.

So in your effort to be kind to all living things, pick something really tiny that you would not normally love or touch…and get close to it.  If you can do that, I assure you,  you will not have to even make “being kind to all living things” a priority on your list, or give it a “Be kind to all living things” Day.  It will become so much a part of who you are that any other way of living would be unthinkable. Because of that little snail I started looking at the natural world through different eyes, and I can now appreciate nature much more than I ever did, the whole of it, including the plants.  It’s all there for a reason, and it all belongs.

Now, spiders are a different matter. If I live to be a hundred I will never befriend a spider so that’s where my Zen stops and my paranoia starts. There’s a mammoth spider that builds a web out on the plants in the front of the house each year.  If it’s not her, it’s her offspring.  Either way, she’s enormous. I call her Druscilla.  And she frightens the crap out of me.  She’s so big that I can see her when she’s out working on her web, so I sometimes just stand there and watch her, and even though I’m afraid of her, I won’t kill her. Because she kills flies.  And they irritate the daylights out of me.

Now, the Zen Chick in me wants to believe that spiders and flies exist for a reason. I know that fly larvae (maggots) can be used to treat flesh-eating diseases, but spiders…I don’t know.  If you know, email me and give me a reason to love ‘em because I haven’t found it yet. So you see, I’m not as much of a sandal-wearing, granola-crunching old hippie as you thought. 

I didn’t get into the concept of humans fitting into the category of “all living things” because I assumed you’d include that species in the mix. Very briefly though, part of rising to your higher level of self is being able to rise above petty preferences or dislikes and treating every human being with dignity and respect whether you like them or not. It’s a bigger challenge when they treat you poorly, but compromising on this one isn’t doable.  Even to people who are unkind, we return kindness. If you can’t make that stretch then at least show them a certain level of respect. You may believe that some people don’t deserve your kindness or respect, but keep in mind that you’re not doing it for them.  You’re doing it for yourself.

Pick your “Kindness Day” and try your best. That’s all you can do, is your best.

§   “Just for today…I will be grateful.”  §

I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder.  Regardless how I try to psyche myself out of it, and regardless how “Zen” I am or how much I “evolve,” come February of every year I have so freakin’ had it with the cold, short days, sunlight deprivation, and gray skies that I’m hard pressed to find anything to be grateful for.  I’ve been like that for years and years and I suspect I will always be that way. Two years ago, life was about to teach me a lesson I would never forget.  I had to leave town and go somewhere on business, and for a number of reasons, the only way I could make the trip was by Greyhound Bus. So, as unpleasant as that would be, I took a taxi to the bus depot, bought a ticket and prepared to board the bus.  Well, it had not arrived yet, so I went out front for some air.

Anyway, it was cold, blowing and miserable. Just a real nasty day. I barely noticed a gentleman in a wheelchair struggling to enter the building.  I might have missed him entirely if he hadn’t raised his head to give me the brightest smile and to ask me if I could open the door for him.  A closer look revealed to me that this man had no legs, and very, very short arms.  He was a torso and a head with a couple of short sprouts for arms.  I opened the door and waited while he went inside on his battery-powered wheelchair. I never did notice how he operated the thing, actually.  I was too mesmerized by the effervescent, glowing blueness of his eyes.

Afterward he said thanks and “God bless you.”

“God bless you, too.”  I said.  Meaning it. Because I couldn’t imagine how he went through life that way, so he definitely needed blessings and I had lots of those to give away.  I should wear a sandwich board that says “Free Blessings Here.” I observed as he got into the lineup to purchase his ticket.  The others in the lineup were complaining about to one another about the weather, the gray skies, about so many different things, but this man smiled at everyone and complained about nothing. All I saw coming from him was gratitude to everyone who made way for him to squeeze into the line-up. I continued observing him discreetly from a distance until finally I could no longer stand it, so I went over, introduced myself and said, “Hi, my name is Ziana de Bethune.  Listen, I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but I can see that you’re very handicapped. How do you maintain such a positive disposition with so many odds against you?”

Again, he smiled brightly.  “Hi, I’m Marky.  Marky Wheels. It’s not always easy.  Some days are very hard.  But what’s the alternative?”

“To be miserable all the time.”  I said.

“Right. I choose not to be that way. I’m alive, and that’s a bonus.”

I spent about fifteen minutes talking to him, and by the time I left to board the bus I felt like a selfish bitch.  For all of my feeling sorry for myself over the weather and lack of sunshine, here was a man who had stubs for arms, no legs, and he still managed to see the bright side of things, and to be grateful for what he did have – LIFE. With all of the obstacles in his path, he let nothing stop him from enjoying that life as much as possible.  Now, if you have a minute, please check out this video.  This man, with no legs, and these little stubs for arms, has become quite a very good musician, and supplements his income by playing his music on the street.  Can you say Courage with a capital “C?” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXbfjlyyZRU

 I was ashamed of myself. So I’m not going to say too much more on being grateful, because sometimes there are just lessons that we need to learn for ourselves, the way I had to learn.  However, any time I’m tempted to let the winter blahs or anything else get me down too much, I think of him.

What I would suggest is to pick your “Grateful Day” and use a few minutes of it to make a list of things that you are truly grateful for, no matter how short that list is. Just be sure that when you think of these things, they have real meaning to you. They make you feel good. And yes, it is totally okay to include on that list, “my new Prada shoes” or something materialistic. The point is to find things you’re grateful for.  Nobody’s judging you.  It’s just really important to count our blessings, that’s all this is about. At the very bottom of the page, please add, “I am alive, and as long as there is breath in me, there is hope, and for that I am grateful.”  Each time your Grateful Day comes around, revisit your list and try to add one more item to it.

There are what I call “The 2 G’s” and for me the combination of these two streaming side by side can work wonders in a person’s life. An attitude of (1)gratitude and (2)generosity brings more good things into your life. If I am genuinely grateful for the small things that people do for me, they usually go the extra mile to do bigger things for me. In this way I have met people who would assist me in my job, my personal life, and in all areas.

Also, when I’m able, I will go the extra mile for others even if it will inconvenience me a bit because I really enjoy giving. Some would say this is about the whole Power of Attraction concept.  I say, it’s more about “one good turn deserves another.”  I like to keep it real.

So ends the Five Principals.  I hope you got as much out of learning about them as I did.

 Until next time,

Namaste, brothers and sisters.
Zee.

Freedom In A Cellblock (Part 2, Forgiveness)

Freedom In A Cellblock

(This post is a follow-up to the previous one called, “Cuts Leave Scars,” taken from a book that I wrote called, “Somewhere Between Monk and Madness.”)

There comes a time when it is irrelevant who was right or wrong –  a time when we must have a good, firm chat with this ego of ours, that insists on “being right,” and getting this thing resolved within ourselves.  We are the ones who have to live with ourselves and it is our hearts that are bleeding and festering and burning each and every time we think about these issues that we can’t let go of.

It doesn’t even matter if we will never see this person again.  In many cases we don’t.  But we need to do this for ourselves. So now, the only question that remains is: Are you ready to do that? Are you ready to heal? Are you sincerely, genuinely ready to move forward? If you are, then it is time to start reprogramming the thought processes because it’s our thoughts that keep the fire of vengeance burning. We’d like to blame it on our stubborn hearts but our minds control what we allow to happen to us, internally.

It is time to let go of the need to place or accept blame.

Let’s take a closer look at the “Blame Game,” alright? Many of us have been taught since birth, by the example of others, that somebody has to be wrong for us to be right. The thing very few parents or role models tell their children is that it is absolutely not necessary to be right all of the time, and it’s not necessary to place blame. In some cases our parents unknowingly (through ignorance) actually promote this need to pass judgment by pitting one child against the other so that they can choose who deserves to be punished.  It makes their jobs easier and faster if they can hone in on the “troublemaker” and dole out punishment, rather than sitting down, hearing all sides of the story in a non-judgmental way, and finding a solution based on promoting love and tolerance among siblings. One that breeds understanding rather than strife. Where do you think sibling rivalry comes from?  We are taught this.

As children we may hear our parents arguing between themselves and even while dealing with each other or other adults, they often feel the need to place blame. As little children, we don’t have the experience to rationalize that this isn’t going to solve a thing, or that by focusing on blaming, we are not living in the solution but we are stuck in the problem. We only learn to do what we are taught by example. So quite understandably, we carry this mentality into our adult lives, and anytime a disagreement happens, we look for a place to lay the blame, and our childhood training has taught us quite well that we surely do not want it landing on US, because that would then mean that we should accept the punishment.

Accepting blame = punishment.

Placing blame = passing on the punishment, which in turn = reward.  Being right.

Is that making any sense to you?

So first and foremost, reprogram yourself. Retrain yourself to think that no blame need be placed,  that placing blame is a habit that comes from childhood training, that you wish to leave behind . Even if the other person is indisputably at fault, resist the urge to place blame. If you wish to salvage any relationship so that it can be rebuilt, then there must be an allowance for the other person to have a viewpoint that is different from yours – even if their viewpoint is that you are wrong.  So be it.  It is their opinion.  Allow them the freedom to have it.  Just as you allow yourself the freedom to have yours. If you wish to resolve the problem and salvage the relationship, then retrain yourself to look for solutions rather than getting drowned in the problems.

If you can’t salvage the relationship but wish to heal from a hurt that has been burdening you, it may also be time to finally accept that this person who hurt you is also on his or her own life journey and part of their journey may very well have been to learn not to go around hurting people, by hurting people. Just as part of your journey might be to learn not to hurt others by being hurt. We all learn our lessons in different ways. Sometimes by being the victim, and sometimes by being the attacker, but the end lesson in itself may be very similar, which in this case, is to not hurt others. If you are someone who finds herself getting hurt a lot, then it could be a compound lesson in that part of your journey may also include learning how to forgive.

Make no mistake that someone who goes around hurting others without consideration, will keep on doing it over and over again until it comes back at them, because just as sure as there is a sun and a moon, there will come a time when they will have to face themselves dead-on in the mirror. This is where the “Zen-thinking” comes in, because it is in walking through darkness that we eventually find the light.

If you decide that their accusations about you were right, or even partly right, try to learn from that so that it doesn’t happen again in the future. If you decide that they were completely wrong, that’s alright too. It’s no longer about “being right” but about moving forward, and also realize that just because they say you are bad, that doesn’t make you bad. That’s only their opinion, and that doesn’t make it true. So be it.  The may learn better eventually, but they’re not there yet. Let them have their opinions and let them go.Let them walk their journeys the best way they know how, if they are not yet at the crossroads of change. The road they are on might be a longer one than you are willing to walk and it could take many years for them to get to that place where they reach the understanding that what they did to you (and perhaps others, too) was very wrong. Some people do not arrive at that awareness until they are on their death beds.

Are you prepared to wait that long?

So again I will ask: Why would you want to give anyone free rent space inside your head and your heart for that long? It is in your own best interest to unload that extra baggage so you can move forward.

Going back to reprogramming your thought processes, it’s important to understand that you do have control over your thoughts.  You really do.  I found that when I was hurt by someone, every single morning as soon as I opened my eyes and planted my feet on the floor, that person and what was done to me by that person, was the first thing on my mind. What a crappy way to start the day. As soon as I got that ball rolling it picked up speed as it went downhill, and by the time I made it to the bathroom, I was, inside my head, engaged in a full-blown argument with someone who wasn’t even there. I had to do something.  So I firmly resolved to banish those negative thoughts as soon as one of them popped into my head, whether it was first thing in the morning, during the day, or late at night. I replaced them with thoughts of self-discipline. When I woke up thinking what an inconsiderate jerk this person was, I said to this battling voice inside my head, “Stop right there. I will not do this anymore.”

It was not easy.  Not by a long shot, because I, like anyone else who’s been wounded, really wanted redemption and retaliation. It was very difficult at first, but I then forced myself to think about something else – anything – that made me feel good.  Or if not good, then at least neutral. Good might be a long stretch for some, so in that case, shooting for neutral at the start may be more doable. You can try for good once you can attain neutral with more ease, but sometimes, if you try to jump right across that wide expanse in one leap, you could end up falling between the gap and having to start all over again.

Into each Zen a little logic must fall. Like any other habit that takes about three weeks to a month to make – or break – it might take that long to reprogram yourself into not giving into the negative thought patterns.  So I would suggest incorporating a little mantra into your daily routine, that you can say to yourself each time the temptation to start rehashing old wounds begins.  It can be something like this: “It takes about ta month to make or break any habit, but I can do this because I am ready and willing to let go of this and move forward.” 

You might not want to believe that the words you’re speaking are true at first, but keep repeating them anyway. Behavioral studies have proven that if a person repeats the same thing to himself for about thirty days, he actually starts to believe it, so if you really and truly want to get past this, be doggedly persistent and it will work.

Another thing that worked for me was to listen to audios and watch videos that made me feel good about myself. I’m not talking about New Age fandango that tries to get you to “manifest” your life into the shape you want it.  I’m talking about material that focuses on making you feel good and accepting of the person you are inside, because after taking an emotional beating, you might need to apply salve to your wounds. You can do that for yourself.

In the beginning of this process, it would probably be most helpful if you made a concerted effort not to think of the person who hurt you at all.  Rather, focus on healing YOU, and set them free to live out their own life’s journey without the burden of your constantly cursing them hanging over their heads.  This you would not do as a kindness to them.  This you would do as a kindness to yourself.

Another aspect of forgiveness that is difficult for some to accept because it’s so close to home, is that there have been undoubtedly times in our lives when we have – intentionally or unintentionally – hurt others.  Absolutely nobody on this planet can say with assurance that they have never hurt anyone. Nobody.  It is entirely possible that the person who wounded us so badly was also wounded by us. We may not want to see this aspect of it, because the person may not be the kind to show their feelings.  Many people do not like to wear their hearts on their sleeves. I am one of them.  I often suffer hurts that I do not show, because I am the kind of person who keeps my own counsel.  But just because I do not show others the pain that they cause me, that does not mean that I don’t feel it, and feel it at a soul-deep level.

None of us is perfect, but we all want forgiveness for the mistakes we make and the things that we do wrong.  We may perceive that nothing we did to anyone else was all that bad, but that is only our perception and probably incorrect, because we can’t see inside of other people. An injustice that you may have committed, however insignificant it may seem to you, may cause deep and unending pain in someone else. Or the fact that it was so small and caused such a great kerfuffle may be enough to alert you that there is something very broken or wounded inside of this person that took place long before you arrived on the scene. So to be fair about it, it’s a good idea not to measure the depth of the pain that others say we caused them. It’s their pain.  Only they can measure it.

It’s also only fair that if we wish to be forgiven by those we have hurt, then we should also be prepared to forgive those who hurt us.

In the course of our lifetimes we meet many, many people. Too many to count. Some we get close to and others not so much. Some will be in our lives for a long time and leave no significant memories. Others will zip through in a couple of weeks, never to be seen again and all the same, leave us with great memories we never forget or wounds so deep that they take forever to heal.  It’s not the length of time we know someone that determines how deeply they affect us, but how deep inside of us we allowed them to go. In other cases, the hurt that someone inflicts upon us happened way back in our childhood, so far back and so long ago that there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do to fix our brokenness. So we relive the incident over and over again, wondering why and how they could do this to us, but if they’re not there to answer those questions, or if for some reason it’s best not to approach them about it, then what happens is that we never get answers, so the questioning-without-resolution cycle continues endlessly.

Wouldn’t it make sense to stop asking those questions of someone who is not there, and ask yourself different questions?  Don’t ask them of someone’s ghostly image in your head. Ask them of yourself, about yourself. Questions like, why am I still hanging onto this? What reward do I get out of clinging to this hurt? This may seem like an odd question but nobody hangs onto something unless there is a reward, and for some the reward IS the pain. Understand that for some, this pain has become such a deeply-ingrained part of their realities and persona that to remove it would leave a great big void in them that they wouldn’t know how to fill. It’s become like a best friend that can be relied on to show up anytime he’s called upon.  So they cling to it. After all, bitterness and anger is better than emptiness, right? We’re feeling beings and as such we need to feel, so at times we’ll choose feeling bad over feeling nothing at all.

Ask yourself, What part of what he/she did to me, hurt me the most? And why did that part hurt me the most? The point here is to continue asking yourself questions about YOU (not questions directed to the absent offender, but the effect that his/her actions had and still have on you) until you get answers. If you have a best friend that you can trust, ask your best friend why he or she thinks you’ve been hanging onto this issue for so long, and be sure to tell them that you’re looking for the truth, not pretty lies, because you want to get better and move on. The only condition in this sort of chat though, is that neither of you can bad-mouth the person who hurt you, because if it comes to that then you’re back to square one – lots of bitching and complaining with no resolutions. The whole dialogue, weather it is inner dialogue or one with a trusted friend, has to be about exploring all the possibilities why YOU are hanging onto this issue.

You’ll know when you’ve locked onto something worth exploring further by that “A-huh!” feeling in your gut. Identifying what, exactly, is the reason why you are clinging to this past injury may well be the first step to understanding it enough to start the healing process. But as with anything else having to do with the business of forgiveness, one has to be genuinely ready and willing to let go, rather than enjoy, in some dark self-defeating way, the pleasure of punishing them in our own minds. They don’t feel one bit of that punishment. But we do. So again, it wraps back around to self, and looking inside of self for answers, rather than pointing at the guilty person sitting in the Defender’s box across the court-room of the mind.

Having said all that, there are even times when we think we’re holding a grudge when we’re not. Maybe we’re simply clinging to pain because it serves us in some way.  If working your way through a process like this gets you to a place where you finally understand why you’re clinging to this old hurt, it might very well begin to subside simply because you took it out and exposed it. You may eventually discover that it wasn’t so much that you needed to let go of a grudge after all.  It may well be that you just needed to work your way through the pain.

In summary, forgiveness is not about the erasure of all the pain that you feel because cuts do hurt and they take time to heal. It’s about pardoning the offenders and writing off the debt you may think they owe you, which means that you’re willing to let go of the stubborn resolution to refuse to let them off the hook. It means you’re willing to relieve yourself of that anger and the need to watch them squirm, or the desire to see them suffer.

In the case of a romantic break-up, “holding a grudge” often hides itself behind the mask of “I want him/her back,” but our pride won’t allow us to admit it.  All the hurt and anger are there as well, to compound the pain of perceived rejection, and we’re left to deal with that pain and the rejection too. In such a situation, the best thing we can do for ourselves is to let them go.  Let them go and resort back to mind control and thought reprogramming so that you can eventually reach a place where you’re not obsessing about them 24/7. Believe me, if they ever want to come back into your life, they will be the first to let you know.  But wishing and hoping and moping around won’t bring them back.  If anything, it might keep them farther away because neediness works on humans like insect repellent does on bugs.  So move forward, use whatever self-talk you have to that is focused on you, not them, to stop thinking about them at all. Get on with life and take care of you.

If it helps, visualize them behind bars, picking up that word “Freedom”off the floor, and handing it to you. This time you accept it, and then you walk away, knowing that as you close that door, the prison cell around your offenders will dissolve, freeing them, and freeing YOU. Once that anger is removed from the equation, time itself will heal the pain of your wound and all that you will be left with will be a scar as a reminder. Without the anger, you may then be able to take that big leap and say, “I forgive,” and get on with your life. The scar left behind may not necessarily be a bad thing if, in fact, you learned something from the experience. It might be that you will be more careful about whom you choose to let that deeply inside of yourself in the future.

Like the food we eat and the things we drink, not everything that’s available for consumption is good for us, so we make choices. In all sensibility, it’s wise to be prudent also about whom we entrust with our deepest selves and whom we allow entry into our hearts and souls. Therein may be yet another lesson that the experience of being hurt was meant to teach us.

Many lessons come at the cost of great pain, as it is from pain that we learn.  It’s not so much from the people who agree with everything we say, that we are challenged to grow.  Mostly, it’s from those who challenge and oppose us, and also…from those who hurt us. Although we really love those good times and happy memories, and we need them too, they are not really the experiences that make us grow all that often, because they don’t challenge us to become more than what we were before they happened.

Eventually, you may reach a place where you can look back without pain, and thank the person who hurt you…not for hurting you, but for helping you to grow.  That is the place to be shooting for, and it can take time, but it really is achievable. There was a time when I believed that I would never be able to do that, but these days, I can, and for that, I thank God.  What a gift.  What an amazing gift it is to be free and to not resent or hate one single soul on this planet.

There is astounding freedom in forgiving ourselves and others, and letting go.  It enables us to wipe the slate clean and prepare our souls for a brighter future unhindered by the dark, dismal haunting ghosts of past hurts. As long as there is a huge chunk of your heart occupied by bitterness, that is one huge chunk that is not available to put something more positive and uplifting into.

I’ll repeat once more: If the person you’ve been refusing to forgive is long gone from your life, you are not hurting them by clinging steadfast to your grudge. They don’t see what you hold inside and what you cling to, and they will never have the capability to see and to feel that part of you.  If the person you refuse to forgive is still in your life, it is even worse, because every time you do see them you reinstate your secret vow to continue hating, resenting and punishing, and that poisonous venom thickens in your veins with every passing day.  As much as you want them to know how they have made you suffer, they STILL don’t have the ability to see inside you, feel your pain, or experience it anymore than the person who is far away.  Only you can feel or experience that.  Only you.

Therefore, you are only hurting yourself by allowing hatred to dwell in the sacred place that is your soul – a place that was intended for goodness and light.

Until next time,

Namaste, brothers and sisters.
Be well and be blessed.
Zee.

Cuts Leave Scars

What makes forgiveness so difficult for so many of us, is that we don’t know what forgiveness means. 

We’re constantly told to forgive those who injure us but nobody tells us what that entails, or how to get that job done. We can compare it to someone telling you to build a boat, but they give you no tools to work with, no description of the boat you are to build, no sketch, nothing to work with, except the order that you must build this boat. So you get some “stuff” that you think may do the job and you start building it, using every bit of common sense you can muster to create something that will hold weight in it and float at the same time.  You start with wood because you think it’s the wood that floats, when really a boat floats because the water in which it is floating offsets the downward pull of gravity and pushes it up. But let’s pretend for now that you don’t know that, so you build it, and it turns out that it has a hole in it (because you don’t know what you’re doing) so it fills with water and sinks. You try again, and something else goes wrong.  You try and try for years and you never get it right.

So it is with forgiveness.  We keep on trying to forgive but nobody ever defined what that was, really, so we keep mucking up and having to start over because we know deep inside that we’ll be carrying this stinking weight on our backs until we learn to pry it off. Let’s try to define what forgiveness entails. We’re often led to believe that forgiveness means to abolish the memory of the hurt and the hurt itself that has been inflicted upon us. We hear it all the time. “Forgive and forget.” But even those of us who can forgive cannot forget. Hence the other saying, “I’ll forgive but I can’t forget.”

The reality of it is that cuts leave scars. Cuts leave scars.

Scars don’t hurt. The initial gash, when it first happened and for some time after that, hurts.  It continues hurting until it heals and leaves us with scars.  But the scar itself does not hurt. 

It’s the fact that we have never fully healed that still hurts.

When someone betrays or injures you, it leaves a scar on your heart and maybe even on your soul.  The longer the cut the bigger the scar. The closer you were to the person who injured you,  the deeper that cut will be.  Expecting the scars on your heart – the reminder of the injury – to magically disappear is as unrealistic as expecting a big scar on your physical body to just one day vanish without a trace. 

About “forgive and forget”: We have memories because we need them. We couldn’t function very well without them.  So essentially, when we expect ourselves to “forgive and forget” we’re asking our minds to do something that is virtually impossible to do unless we pay a brain surgeon to physically open up our heads and extract that part of us that holds long-term memory. That’s not an option because we’d lose all of our other long-term memories as well, and some of them we just don’t want to part with.  And we would still be left with a scar that the surgeon left behind, maybe a worse one, because we’ll have lost the good memories along with the bad. So logically, expecting yourself to “forgive and forget” really is an impossibility.

Something else we’re taught is that by forgiving, we’re excusing the offender and erasing the hurt that they caused us as if it never happened. But that isn’t what forgiveness is.  Read this:

“True forgiveness does not minimize the sin or the hurt, nor excuse the sinner. True forgiveness chooses not to hold the sin against the sinner any longer. True forgiveness is pardon.”  ~Dr. Ralph Wilson (Pastor)

In other words, when someone commits a crime and goes to prison, once he’s released he might apply for a “Criminal Pardon,” and be granted one. Does that mean that he never committed the crime? No. It means the crime is still there in his memory, but “on the record” he’s been given a second chance to try to rebuild his life. Does it mean that the person or people he committed the crime against will no longer feel anguish?  No, it does not.  Does it mean that the wounded will ever forget it?  No. 

Expecting yourself to no longer feel the pain of injury is as unrealistic as expecting yourself to totally forget that it ever happened.

What we’re doing when we forgive someone is unburdening ourselves of the grudge we bear, and giving them the chance to improve themselves. Bearing grudges is somewhat of a prison with us on the outside and the offender on the inside, where we think he belongs. In our resentment we initially can’t see that the word “Freedom” is in that cell with him.

We carry these grudges until we finally realize that we’re hurting ourselves, and we want to let them go, and at this point we might finally see that word, “Freedom” in behind those bars along with the prisoner. It’s just out of our reach, and no matter how long we try to extend our arm to reach it, we can’t.  So we keep trying to reach farther without success, forever stuck to the outside of those bars reaching in to grasp something that seems unattainable. When the offender picks up “Freedom” and hands it out to us, we refuse to accept that olive branch out of stubbornness, so he drops it, and we keep on trying to reach it again on our own, for all the good that will do us. We might as well be behind those bars ourselves because we’re just as stuck as the person we condemned.

Now, we have defined what forgiveness is, and what is expected of us when we choose to forgive. The burden on you to accomplish the impossible has been removed, at least in part.  You’re under no moral obligation to magically extract the pain from your heart or forget that you were wounded. 

However, along with that pain comes a great deal of anger toward the person who wounded you. It is that lingering anger  that needs to be dealt with, because it is the anger that refuses to set you free. 

If you can get past the anger, you will be more able to grant a pardon – that is to say, you would choose not to hold the offense against that person any longer.  It does not mean you have forgotten it, or that you will naively expose yourself to that person’s inconsiderate behavior again, but it simply means that you have pardoned them because you have finally arrived at a place where you no longer find it necessary to hold onto the anger.

I’ve been personally very deeply wounded – repeatedly –  by someone near and dear to me over the past couple of years, and the scars from those deep cuts remain. I still hurt when I think of it. I probably always will, because what this person did was horrible.  But I was able to get over the anger, so I was able to pardon (forgive.) t’s a two-step,back-assward process, in that you have to come in through the basement and deal with the lingering anger buried in that dark, abysmal pit, before you can come up to the sunlight shining into the mail level of your spiritual house, so as to achieve the admirable feat of being able to forgive.

Your anger, my anger, and everyone else’s anger is triggered by so many different kinds of stimuli that it would be impossible to list them all, but the description of the rage that we feel inside is pretty much the same for everyone. When I was going to school I was taught that it was grammatically incorrect to say “I’m angry at someone.” Supposedly, “I’m angry with someone” is the correct way to say it, but that always seemed bogus to me, because the person I was angry at certainly wasn’t with me.  He or she was against me.  That’s what we feel when anger flames inside of us.  That someone has done something against us. Anger is often (though not always) the “beer chaser” that we choke on after the hurt has been swallowed. One comes so swiftly after the other sometimes, that they seem to happen simultaneously. It’s almost irrelevant who gets the ball rolling, the end result is usually pretty much the same.  Someone flings an insult or dumps you as a friend, or whatever the case may be, because they accuse you of some wrong doing, or you dump them over a wrong-doing, but in almost all cases, the clash happens because we perceive that someone has done something to us or against us.

Translation:  We’ve been attacked. 

Let’s use the example where a friend, lover or spouse dumps us, because we’re all familiar with that situation.  It doesn’t feel like an attack at first, but once the thought process begins and all of the reasons are assumed as to why “the dump” happened, we usually come to the conclusion that there is something wrong with us. Or, as I will mention in the next segment, that they think something is wrong with us.  We either make those assumptions, or they flat out tell us that there is something wrong with us. What usually follows is we either accept their accusations and own them, which results in depression on top of anger and pain, or we reject those accusations and fight back, defending ourselves so as to redeem ourselves and look good in their eyes again. 

Too often this precipitates a good, long, hearty bout of back-and-forth arguments full of accusations, defenses, counter-accusations and counter-defenses.

Enter:  Ego.
And this is where it gets tough because if we’re going to stop this cycle, we must stop pointing at the other person and start looking
inward. It is totally irrelevant whether we are right or wrong, but all that matters right now is looking inward, because there is no possible way that we can get inside of the other person and change their perceptions of us or anything else in their world.  But this is the defining moment of whether a solution will be found, or a break in the relationship happens.

If the argument continues, this is what we usually get:

I am not what you think I am.  I am a good person. I am an honest person.  I am a loyal person. I do not deserve this treatment.  I am right about this. (Wounded pride)

Or, if we accept their accusations: I am the scum of the earth.  I am a bad person.  I am a dishonest person.  I am disloyal. I deserve to be treated badly.  I am wrong about all this. (Self-depreciation)

Either way, it’s assumed that the blame must fall on someone’s shoulders because someone must be right and someone must be wrong. Or at least, this is what we perceive. In actuality, things are not that black and white. There are many shades of gray in between, and besides that, there are three truths to every argument. Your truth, their truth, and the unbiased truth.

No solution will come from laying blame. None of it will help us arrive at the ultimate goal, which is to forgive or pardon so we can get that rotting, stinking, festering carcass out of the basement so we can breathe again. However, this is usually how the whole mess starts getting really, really sour. With I, I, I, Me, Me, Me.

To recap the process:

• Injury is inflicted

• Hurt is experienced

• Anger follows

• Ego takes a stand.

• Argument of accusation and defence results

• Blame must be assumed by someone, preferably not us.

This is precisely why forgiveness is so very difficult, because there are layers upon layers to work through before this thing called “Understanding” settles in.  We cannot arrive at the place of understanding if anger controls us, instead of us controlling anger. Another reason it’s so difficult to forgive is because we don’t want to let the offender off the hook. We don’t want them to ever forget that they hurt us so badly. We want them to suffer. In most cases, even if the fences are mended and we make up with that person, we will still continue to carry that grudge in our hearts, even if only in secret, never to be spoken of aloud again, because deep inside we will not – we refuse! – to let them off the hook. We absolutely refuse to release them from the bondage of their sin.

Here’s the sad part about that: If we continue the relationship when apologies are superficially extended or not sincerely accepted, that relationship will never be the same again. It will always be fragile and shattered at the foundation.  The whole thing is like a house build out of Popsicle sticks that will collapse at the next subtle wind, which in this case might be any excuse that can be found, so as to pick up the ax and start swinging again. 

If, on the other hand, we can stop accusing long enough to see things from the other person’s perspective, put ourselves in their places, and come to understand why they did what they did, there might be a chance at reconciliation because the exchange will have been genuine, and the forgiveness true. 

If we end the relationship because we decide that what they did was unforgivable, they go on their way and we most likely don’t see them again because we would avoid them. From then on, we don’t know what they are up to, so it’s assumed that they’ve gone on merrily with their lives and never give another thought to the person they hurt. Which adds another layer to the pain, the notion that we are that easy to forget.

Is any of this sounding familiar?

At some point, this has to stop, or it keeps building and the layers to this pain keep mounting, and in the end we are only hurtin ourselves – especially, most especially – if in their estimation we are that easy to forget. If they have forgotten us, then perhaps they are quite happy without us but there we are, so much time later, still hurting…still angry, still carrying that grudge, still replaying those arguments over and over again in our heads, thinking of all the things we could have or should have said, because then, they might have seen how right we were about everything and they might be sorry.

Why on earth would we want to give anyone free rent space inside our heads and our hearts for that long? It is in our own best interest to unload that extra baggage so we can move forward.

COMING IN THE NEXT BLOG…

The next step to forgiveness: “Freedom in a Cellblock.”

(Material in this blog is taken from my ebook, “Somewhere Between Monk and Madness,” available FREE to download in .pdf format at: http://www.zianabethune.com/spirit

Until next time,
Namaste brothers and sisters.
Zee.

Slut Walk? Are You Kidding Me???

I was listening to a television snow last night, in which a group of women began a movement called the Slut Walk, in the wake of a derogatory comment made by an officer in the Toronto Police Dept, “Women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.”  Slut Walk’s link:  http://www.slutwalktoronto.com

While I support their goal to bring an end to the idea that women who dress sensually are begging to be mistreated and/or abused by men, I was floored by some of the notions these women were trying to sell. In my opinion, it seems as if they’re trying to redefine the meaning of that word “slut” by using it against themselves repeatedly, to the point where the word loses it’s power. But in effect, this isn’t a solution because those who use that word are not thinking kind thoughts, and those who think of women that way are not going to change their own internal definition of that word. And women who use it against themselves aren’t doing anything better than desensitizing themselves to hearing it used against them by calling themselves sluts. That isn’t a solution either, anymore than calling yourself a bitch over and over again until it loses its sting, is going to upgrade the word “bitch” to a respectable status. It’s the attitudes of some men we need to work on– men who degrade women.

Notice I said SOME men. Certainly not all men. Most of the men I know wouldn’t do that. But there are some, and to those I would say, it is their job to re-learn how to respect women if they have forgotten how to do that, or to learn how from scratch if they were never taught. Believe me when I tell you that there would be plenty of teachers out there who would come to your rescue if you only asked the questions. Some of them would be other men. Some would be women.  But help IS available. But it is most certainly NOT our jobs to drag ourselves down to accommodate the debasement of men toward us. I can tell you right now that if anyone ever called me a slut, that would probably be the last time I would ever speak to them. I would not hold a grudge, that’s not my way. But I just won’t tolerate that kind of insult. Period. Maybe I’m old fashioned but I have a thirteen year-old daughter, and when I hear kids her age calling each other “bitch” or “slut,” or witness them telling one another to “shut the hell up,” and this kind of thing, I just have to wonder when and how these insults became acceptable ways of addressing one another. It is not okay and it sure as heck is not “cool.”

You are a woman, a precious creation of God, a carrier and giver of life, a lady in the eyes of any man who really loves you and the heart of you and the soul of you, a mother who is a source of comfort and warmth to your children, a pillar of strength to friends who need you, a loving daughter to elderly parents, a nurturer, a doctor who nurses skinned knees and psychologist who mends broken hearts…you are so many things of value. You are anything BUT a bitch or a slut.

This movement to encourage all women to call themselves “sluts” is not on that I would ever join, regardless of the noble underlying intentions of it. Calling yourself a slut repeatedly so as to take the power and sting out of the word is like pouring hot wax on yourself so many times that you develop calluses and don’t feel it so much anymore, and if you took the time to do some research on cases of abused women, you’d see a frightening similarity there. Desensitization – adjusting to the hurt until it hurts less and less. Sorry, Slut Walk gals…count me OUT.

Until next time,
I send you blessings and love.
Zee.

Who Loves You, Baby?

We’re largely delusional in our thinking about this thing called “love.”  Many of us tend to feel a little sorry for ourselves if we’re not in love, or not in the position to have someone fall in love with us.   We can become so preoccupied with this, that we don’t pay nearly enough attention to the other kinds of love that we do receive every day.  The love of our children, friends,supporters, teachers, students, peers.  We often forget the importance of the love that falls into those other categories, and take them for granted.  I think this is, in part, due to the fact that we don’t have to fight so hard to win them, or bang our heads against the walls trying to figure out ways to keep them once we have found them.

 

"Bite Me" cover by Noble Romance Publishing. Author: Adrienne Bishop

Those of us who have lost people that we love dearly, but were not “in” love with, know that those other loves are the ones that are there for us when Mr. or Ms. Temporarily Right forgets to call.  They’re there when we are under the weather,  celebrating a victory, or mourning a loss.  To me, love is when someone says (and means it!) “I’m always there for you.”   It’s not that I’m jaded, or that I don’t believe in romantic love.  I really do, but I’ve also heard the words “I love you” often enough in my lifetime to know that they’re sometimes pretty hallow and when push comes to shove, they were about as lasting as the flavor in Dollar Store bubble gum. In fact, I’ve had gum whose flavor outlasted the sincerity of some “I love you’s,” and even after it went stale it was still there, stuck to the bedpost, waiting for my return.

Don’t wrinkle your nose and say, “Ewwww!”  I know there are others out there who hang onto old gum too.  Lol.

 

I have, scrolled across my heart, the names of those people that I know I can count on.  I don’t call on them most of the time because I tend to carry my loads alone, but those names are there just the same.  I know who they are, and I’m pretty sure they know who they are because when I care about somebody I tell them so (I’m not an advocate of mind-games.) These are the people who never fail to make me feel warm inside, every single time I look at them or think about them.  Some of them have never even said the words, “I love you.”  They show it instead.  We don’t all show our feelings the same way.  Sometimes love is about having the courage to get the hell out of the way and remove yourself from someone’s life because your being in it would hold them back and you know it.  Love — real love — can be ridiculously unselfish that way.

The point is that love comes in many forms but the one common thread running through all of them is this:  Unselfishness.  With genuine love and affection, it’s not about what you can do for me.  It’s about what I can do for you.  But there’s a catch to that last comment.  The unspoken message in there should always be, “what I can do for you…with no strings attached.” No ulterior motives.No expectations.

But, Zee! Some might be thinking, Aren’t you always the one who claims that you have to love yourself before you can love anybody else? Well, I’m glad you asked.  I’d be the first to raise up on my hinds and declare that you MUST love yourself before you can truly love anyone else, and above all, if you think you’ll be incomplete until you’ve found your other half, then you’ll always feel half empty no matter who you’re with.  But I also very strongly believe that there is a huge difference between self-love and narcissism.  They don’t even belong in the same sentence.   The former is to embrace the human being inside of you, to treat this being with dignity and respect, and insist that others do too.  The other is to idolize yourself and believe that there is no one in your life and maybe even on the entire planet who is more beautiful, smarter, richer, shapelier, etc.  That one has little to do with the inner self or with respect or love.  It’s self-glorification.

I think we may need to take another look at this thing called love, and try to redefine it somewhat to reflect the outcome of reality’s darkest moments.  Forget the roses and wine and the “buzz” that we get from a new romance.  That higher-than-a-kite feeling regulates itself once our hormones level out, because taking a pragmatic look at this business of “falling in love,” that is where those feelings originate.  Even though we might swear that the feelings will last forever, they don’t most of the time.  Sometimes, if we’re very lucky, something even better and more eternal will take their places, but often, the high doesn’t last after reality sets in.  We get the same high from eating chocolate, for goodness’ sake, and it only feels great until we gain ten pounds from too much of it.  So look at the bigger picture and look at what matters in the long haul.  Who was there for you?  We seldom complain that nobody was there for us during the good times, but we sure do remember the bad, don’t we?  It’s always the bad times that bring home to us, who’s there and who isn’t.

So, here are some thoughts to ponder if you’re resorting to plucking the petals off of daisies, going,  “He loves me, he loves me not…”    Who was there for you when you needed him or her the most?  Who talked you through your misery that last time someone let you down?  Who sent you that email every day while you were sick, asking how you were doing?  Who showed up at your door with Chinese take-out because they knew how busy you’ve been, and that you hadn’t had time to cook?  Who stayed up all night with you — in person, or even online — when you were distressing over something?  Who went out of their way to research information for you, on a subject you needed to nail for a project?  Who doesn’t give a damn if you’re wearing make up and looking sexy, or slumping in a pair of pajamas?  Who was it that made that call just exactly when you needed to talk to a friend? Who MADE time for you when you needed an ear or a sounding board?  Who can you call and KNOW their feelings for you have not lessened just because you’ve been too busy to connect for awhile? Who doesn’t judge you, but accepts you as you are?  Who do you NOT feel the need to impress?  If you know of anyone in your life who fills those needs, you may be more loved than you realize.Forget this person who hasn’t got the consideration to take care of you a little bit now and then.

Life has many realities and one of them is that we give our time and attention to those things and people in which our true interests are vested.

Those are the things/people at the top of our priority lists. If you have the feeling that you’re not even on someone’s propriety list, take a look at why you feel that way.  Chances are, you’re right.  I have a few friends who call themselves “multi-taskers.”  They’re always working on three or four projects at the same time.  But anytime I call on them, even if only to toss around ideas for something I’m working on, they’re there for me.  They never fail me.  Ever.

When my mother was alive, every year she bought me a flower on Mother’s Day because she was happy to be my Mom.  I gave her a Cherry Blossom candy bar every year for Mother’s Day from the time I was little, because that was all I could afford as a kid…and it eventually became a tradition for us.  The loyalty and love that my cats give me 24/7/365 is not something that I would question for a second.  Anytime I’m sick, they get on the bed with me and they stay there for the duration, forsaking even the opportunity to eat.  They will hold their bladders indefinitely because they won’t leave me.  THAT is love.   I have friends who live hundreds or thousands of miles away from me, who see an item that reminds them of me, so they take the time to dash into a the store, buy it, wrap it, address it and mail it to me, missing out on their lunch breaks to make sure I receive that item. That, is love.

I’m not saying that romantic love won’t give you that.  If you’re very, very lucky it will.  But statistically…it’s not likely to last.  Realistically, romantic relationships only last as long as both parties need them to.  Harsh.  I know.  But that’s life. So please,  try not to feel short-changed if you don‘t happen to be “in love.”  Maybe someday you’ll find it.  And maybe you won’t.  Maybe it will last, when you do.  And maybe it won’t.  It’s almost a crap shoot.  But those other people who are there for you…please don’t forget to let them know that you appreciate them, because if you treat them right, they’ll always be there.

May you glide into the winter of your life with companions at your side long after your libido has given up the ghost.

Namaste!

Zee.