For a long time I had this silly notion that the more sorry someone felt for me, the more they 'loved me.' I realize equating pity with love is ridiculous. But, I had a friend who got boyfriends that way, and it never worked for me. I am legally blind, but guys never feel sorry for me, and I am not sure if they do not want to 'rescue me' or if I just never let them. Maybe I do not need to be rescued. I shared this at my old Course in Miracles class down in Surfside Beach which I miss. I said it right out loud.
"I have a friend who has always gotten the guys to feel sorry for her, even cry and thus fall in love with her. No one I ever date ever feels sorry for me, no matter how sad I make my life sound."
My teacher said, "I like your guys better. They sound healthier." Everyone laughed, and I am laughing right now, just remembering this. I have always been a bit outspoken and overly candid, but people like that about me. I mean, some do. I am sure some find me extremely annoying.
In fact I have been wanting to tell all my fb friends and blog readers, "I love and appreciate you, for staying my friends even when I have been a badly behaved, not very nice person sometimes." I almost feel like even though I do not know a lot of you, you have some sort of unconditional love for me, or maybe I am kidding myself. You may just be tolerant of me, but I have said hurtful things, and I am sorry. I realize some people are probably technically friends, but blocking anything I post, but I will not dwell on negativity or who does not like me on a rare day like this when I actually feel happy and a sense of well being without alcohol, a false sense of well being like it says on the warning on prescription medications. I always thought that was funny. Warning: this drug may cause a false sense of well being, use caution when operating heavy machinery, etc.. OMG! God forbid, I have a false sense of well being. It's false! I cannot possibly be OK!
Back to the pity thing. I really did believe that. I wanted to be felt sorry for. That is stupid, I know. Now I see it is ridiculous.
Many are having hard times, and there is a lot of uncertainty for the future of many Americans. I have decided to pull myself up by my bootstraps, rather than how depressed I have been feeling about politics and bad possibilities, going around with a sense of sorrow and feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders, sorrow for every nonhumanitarian event in history and every tragedy, thinking that I will be an unwanted burden and feeling like everyone is looking at me like "why are even here?..." I know, silly, self-pity. Truthfully I am concerned about society and our country and many many people who I do not want to suffer.
So, I no longer watch the news, but I have some good ideas for making a dollar stretch and maintaining a fairly comfortable lifestyle.
One thing is utilities, saving on the water bill by taking shorter showers, although I know the therapeutic value a long hot shower and washing one's hair and body can have, so there are other alternatives to saving water which is also good for the planet. You can run less water when washing dishes, put more clothing in the washing machine, and do not buy bottled water, but filter it in a water filtering pitcher.
Another thing to save on is the electric bill or what good ole' country folk call the light bill. Light hurts my eyes, so for me it is not a problem to have less lights on. No, I am goth sometimes in my attitude but not a vampire thank you very much, it is just the retinitis pigmentosa. I also find it not necessary to keep one's home really cold, perhaps 79degrees is cool enough and 65 in winter.
OK, this may be a bit goofy, but I am having fun. You can buy stuff at Goodwill and just wash it really well. I do. I admit I like nice clothes and kitchen, housewares, etc, but I have decided to only treat myself to one nice thing a month. Also, I will only buy where I can find the cheapest. For example, I have to use really expensive over the counter eye drops, but I found the kind I am supposed to use, or close anyway, for much cheaper at Dollar General.
Now, food is a big important thing. We all have to eat and get nutrition. I find that if I shop for fresh fruits and vegetables very carefully in terms of price, that I can economize. I also buy the least expensive coffee, etc, and now I eat very little meat, just soy milk, free range cage free eggs if on sale and yogurt, sometimes cottage cheese. I buy the cheapest healthy bread I can find that has the least amount of wheat because I have become gluten and dairy intolerant for the most part, but not totally.
I usually buy the cheapest toilet paper and paper towels. As far as hygiene and house cleaning products, I like them to be the least toxic, the ones not antibacterial, because those are bad for the ecosystem and water, and also bad for your natural immunity. Sometimes if a product is really better and only a dollar or so more I think it is worth it.
When I have to use caustic substances, as we all do from time to time, I wear a mask and gloves, and of course my glasses cover my eyes.
When I had cats, I had to buy decent cat food, because the neutered males have sensitive urinary systems, and good cat litter is important. The dog in the picture is Coco Puffs a friend's dog. Sometimes I take care of Ruben, my mother's dog, and dog food is another necessity for dog owners. You pretty much have to buy the kind they will eat.
I guess I have basically covered it. Of course, if you drive, you have to look for cheaper gas, but I do not drive so that is one thing I do not have to worry about.
Well, I guess that covers it. One last thing, just because something is torn or messed up, the art of mending things and darning socks still exists. LOL
Although we do not own our children, and when they grow up and make their own decisions, obtain their own goals, find their own relationships as they have all along, as well as build their own talents strengths and abilities, we often feel a normal strong attachment and bond. Still, we eventually have to be more detached. As a parent, it may be OK to advise but not to control, perhaps not even advise.
It is interesting how the personality forms itself, and we are only a small influence in some ways. The human being we witness is full of surprises. You know how when your kids are little and they say outrageous things, and people say "out of the mouths of babes," because there is often truth in what they say.
I sang my son The Wedding Song, the one by Paul from Peter, Paul and Mary, that used to be so popular. I sang it for a girlfriend from work long ago at her wedding, during the ceremony. I like that song, beautiful words and melody, "wherever two or more of you are gathered in his name, there is love..." He is engaged, so that is why I wanted him to hear the song.
As a Reiki Master, I realize there is controversy as to whether or not the symbols should be seen or not. I researched it, and different Reiki practitioners had different opinions. I had purchased a pendant which I wear always for protection with the symbol for protection, one of the symbols used before a treatment.
I find that I feel better when I wear it. One morning I was in conflict with people, one of whom I felt was attacking me verbally and began to feel extremely nauseated and just sick to my stomach. I removed my pendant from its green velvet pouch and put it on. The sick feeling faded away.
Another way I deal with bad vibes and sickening feelings of attack, is I do yoga and meditate. Sometimes I say a workbook lesson from a Course in Miracles like, "God is the light in which I see," "Love holds no grievances," "I am the light of the world," or other mantras like Om Mane Pad Me Hum, the Tibetan chant meaning "the lotus is beautiful. Listen to the silence." Sometimes I just say Shanti, shanti, shant, meaning peace, peace, peace. Then if I have time, I close my eyes and breath, thinking of nothing, so that my mind is void and empty as a slate. Sometimes I look at a burning candle and stare at the flame, unless everyone has stolen my only lighter. I do not smoke, but I have sons who smoke cigarettes outside, and sometimes one of them, the older one, does not buy his own lighter. So much for lighters. I do not burn incense, because of chronic eye infections, which are under control now, a byproduct of my eye disease.
Another good thing to do is make a little shrine in your home for meditation with things you hold dear and beautiful to inspire a spiritual experience.
Today I was at the supermarket with my mother, and they were selling orchids in white, lavender and fuscia I think, the prettiest. Orchids are like an art form to grow. They are very classy. The smell is gorgeous too, like roses and cinnamon combined. I could smell them all day. They are like the martini of flowers.
Well this is all I have today. Much love. Namaste.
I recently read a book called Women Food, and God, and I cannot recall the author's name, only that her father said to her after a talk she gave, "you have charisma, but so did Hitler." And, her father's family died in the gas chambers. My point is many of us women, just have not been encouraged enough at one point or another to feel good about ourselves.
Some of us are overachievers and think we have to have the perfect figure or have the perfect house or perfect family or give the perfect birthday party for our kids. Some use food as a drug of choice and others have other vices, but we all want to be beautiful and loved. The truth is that we are God, not I am God, but God is within us and no matter what we can appreciate and accept as well as respect ourselves.
Food is not a drug for me. It never has been, but I have in my life felt that I was imperfect in many ways, and have been told so all too much.
We are also, many of us, caught up in our stories. For example, here is mine: I was beautiful, young, smart, a good addition to the business for my talent with numbers and administrative secretarial skill, but my husband stopped loving me, and left me, and found a woman younger, even though as crazy as it sounds he was already quite a bit older than me. I never really understood it, except to accept that he just did not like or want me, who I was, and it was OK for her to be whoever she was because she was in essence the kind of woman he wanted.
Truthfully, after he left I found someone too, and that relationship went on for four years, but I ended up having to support the person I was with. I think I just liked him because he was good lucking and a musician, a good one, but he was not what you would call really nice to tell the truth, but I am sure he might be to someone. He eventually wanted to marry me too little too late, and by then I just could not bring myself to do it. Too much had gone down.
In the meantime, I lost my house, my savings, was working but eventually got sick and had to quit working, had to get assistance from the government. Then when I started getting better, I started going blind.
Recently I read an article about how some of us are just not really matched with anyone correctly in our karma in this life and that is OK. No woman in her forties or fifty like me or even older should feel like a loser because she is on her own in terms of relationship status. I know women and men as well, in their sixties, seventies, even eighties who would like to find someone, but know how to be on their own and be self-contained. Being in a relationship or marriage does not define one, although it can be a blessing and a wonderful, beautiful thing to be celebrated, like The Wedding Song, "wherever two or more of you are gathered in his name there is love, there is love..." , and if it does define one and one cannot survive without the relationship, then one is codependent. Maybe I am wrong and it is more like Romeo and Juliet, where they could not live without each other. I know couples sometimes die in short distance from one another. I would not know. My parents were such duel but separate entities, entwined by Meher Baba even in name, but headstrong in their own right, both of them.
I used to be told by a married friend who depended on her husband for everything financially, did not even know how to pay a bill, that I did not need a man. Truthfully, I do not, but coming from this person, it was ridicules. How can a woman who does not even have any idea how much her water bill is and has to ask her husband for money to do anything, say to an independent self-sufficient woman who takes care of a house, a family, kids, animals, bills and is blind, that she does not need a man? Theoretically true, yes but entirely hypocritical even if well meaning. I suppose at the time I wanted to be with someone or was perhaps struggling with a relationship already. No matter, not all of us have to be in a relationship or be married, but those of us who are independent and unafraid to be alone because we have already faced ourselves, do not need to be lectured by those who have never walked in our shoes before.
Sometimes one can feel a sense of self doubt. Well, maybe not everyone, but some like myself, sometimes feel unsure of ourselves. I am not unsure of my belief system, strengths, talents, etc., but of my very essence at times. A feeling of less than will emerge, and it is not a good feeling. I push through it and hold my head high.
Recently my mother said to me, "so you want to do a solo act." I felt bad, because it is not really that I want to, just that I have not found the right person to share my life with, and I have my grown children and friends. Also I do like being alone. I would rather be alone than be with someone who does not treat me right. I know my mother meant well as usual, and of course I said nothing. I will not play into the fear and insecurity that present themselves in these statements because I know they were meant with love, and I am projecting my fear and insecurity as well as judgment on to the statement, while she is also projecting hers of some sort into the statement, so as the Course in Miracles would teach, I choose to see this differently, correct my perception. That is the true essence of forgiveness of any kind, not that this innocent statement of my mom's requires forgiveness, because as I said she said it with good intentions.
I know when I do feel inferior in any way that it will pass as will any feeling of superiority. These are merely movie screen projections onto the movie screen I call my life. That is how ACIM would explain it.
The key I think is to love myself and accept myself as a child of God and a sister in Christ. I accept every other person as my brother or sister in Christ.
Also, I am not always Shakti, but sometimes Kali with the blood dripping tongue. I embrace the bad with the good and all aspects of myself, as Jung said "the shadow." When I feel bad I embrace that darkness in myself as well, and I take my darkness to the light.
When I feel bad, I push on with exercise, good food, yoga and meditation. I go to yoga classes whenever and where ever I can. This helps a lot.
I would like to quote a few words from a song I wrote called Lately: "So I take to Him my darkness, into infinite knowledge and brightness, this suffering is bliss." Infinite knowledge - Paramatma.
Before I went on vacation, one of my issues was mostly just self doubt. I did not doubt my talents or my blog or my intelligence. I did not doubt my level of education or my ability to stand on my own belief systems although I know many or a couple at least of my views are conservative and not very popular beliefs among my bleeding heart liberal ironically, friends. Although I am not judging anyone, really I am not, one is my pro-life point of view except in rape and incest as whatever the individual feels about it being the only two exceptions, and always no matter what in the late months. My only other conservative view, is that I strongly believe in the second amendment to The Constitution of the United States of America and all other amendments at that.
Now I will get back to my subject. I was feeling doubtful of myself as a woman, and I was a little bit afraid of the world and how they were to perceive me as a visually impaired person. I was feeling bad about not being able to apply eye makeup, but my mother who is supposed to think you are beautiful said my eyes were beautiful and that I did not need makeup on them. This helped.
I used to be a wearer of eye makeup and contact lenses until I became more and more blind and contacts did not help and my eyes were chronically infected with or without them. So, now I wear lipstick sometimes, especially when I have no lip balm and powder when my skin is shiny from the heat.
The yoga class I attended helped me a lot, in Charleston this past weekend. I realized that I am OK to be who I am, that I did not have to mold into any individual, self or society dictate. And, not egotistically, but in a more inner spiritual sense, I felt whole again and therefore I felt beautiful again. What truly matters is one's inner beauty, without which the content of, there is nothing. I also let go of desires, expectations and the need to be seen, heard and thought or not thought of in any particular way. I also found compassion, feeling with by definition, for my self rather than constant self judgment and condemnation. If others judge me or condemn me, it is not my problem. I felt free, OK with who I am and that, my friend, is a beautiful feeling. It is extremely liberating. I am not saying I will not have other bad days or cry some more, but for now I am OK with all that is however it is.
