emptied. filled up.

•February 14, 2013 • 1 Comment

On this date, ten years ago, my last Significant Other relationship ended. There have been none since.

Cry not “foul!” -  for I do not:  The simple “I can’t” that came in the face of my great need, hope and expectation was, I know now, the most honest… uh, something.  Yes, with colossally poor timing and, no, I did not take it gracefully at all. For days, in fact.  (Do not bet against me in a “top this!” contest. You will not win.)  Still – most honest thing. Even if it would be nearly a decade before I’d see that truth.

For the first few years after there were occasional hopeful flirtations that never led to anything, punctuated by flare-ups of culturally embedded self-doubt (ohmygod-I’maSPINSTER!) and bouts of loneliness that came naturally because I still believed so deeply in The One True Love.

Then came ever-longer periods of just being on my own, and a quiet realization of being okay with that.

Really, truly okay.

Because, here’s what happened:  the vast, empty space filled up.

Filled up with noticing fine little threads of connection between myself and every other being I have a relationship with. Relate to. And that’s more than one:  It is, realistically, hundreds of beings.

Filled up with the experience of subtle, powerful, real details that make up a friendship – indeed, that make up a friend. 

Filled up with the wisdom-that-has-no-words that lives in the spaces between me and each member of my family -  for shared DNA or history or both are what tether us in place, when we would otherwise run (far, far away!) from the truest understanding we could ever get of our own selves.  They are me, I am them.  When I grokked this.. Oh, wow.  Forgiveness came in a massive wave and then released, and an instant later there was no longer anything to forgive. All was always exactly as it ever should have been.

Filled up with the deep loving sweetness that every animal on this planet simply IS, and is here to share with us. (Two such creatures are with me now, and another is in the next room. I can feel her sleeping. Peace.)

Filled up with me.  No longer only the me-as-others-see-me;  the me-as-I-see-me.  (I can’t quite explain how cool it is to let go of liking things just because someone else does, so they will like me, too.  Every single day I find something new to like, and it matters not if it is only a club of one.)

Somewhere around the midpoint of these past ten years I stopped dismissing anything that didn’t fit my old version of one-true-love and started seeing. All my attention, all my energy, had been for so long focused at any given time on one single person outside of myself  that I could not begin to fathom the truth of what was waiting.  (What waits, indeed, for every living being who thinks there’s only one way to have  luuuuvvvv.)

So, today, on Valentine’s Day, after ten years away from relationship-with-a-capital-R in any of its forms – after all that -  you know?  I still believe in the One True Love.

Because “one true love” is:

LOVE, itself.

Posted in revelations of the Self
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the only way to fix the world is:

•October 19, 2012 • 3 Comments

.. to stop trying to fix the world.

Tell me if this rings a bell: most of my life, especially during my growing-up years, I knew an insatiable need to fix others’ hurts, stop their pain, and generally make it all better. The closer they were to me, the more I felt their pain and thought it my duty – my purpose on earth! – to relieve them of it.

I was certainly right about the part where I “felt their pain” because – I know now – I was taking something onboard that didn’t belong to me. I was feeling their pain, without any of the rich detail of their context, their experience, their life-view. Just, the pain.

The part I never understood: once I took it into myself, it wasn’t their pain anymore. It was mine, and I’d feed it like I’d found a starving stray animal… and by feeding the pain, I was flowing all my attention to it – insolently forgetting that whatever we give our attention to is amplified. Still, I’d think this existential discomfort was theirs. And I’d try to make it all better, y’know, for them.

So there they were, having their own experience and getting whatever they needed to get out of it – being in their own business, doin’ their thang. Perhaps having some major life-crisis or mid-level growing pain, or (most often) the little misunderstandings between people who love, but do not understand, each other.

Well.
I was. not. okay. with. that. Here I’d come, watch what was happening, and put myself in their place and imagine how painful it must be. How painful it would be for me.

Then I’d assign myself the duty of – fixing it! (Hear that bell ringing again? welcome, friend!)

The simple truth: the real reason I’d try to fix someone else’s pain was to alleviate my own discomfort.

(I cringe, thinking of it. Even the memories sting. But stinging truth always feels better in the long run than cushy lies.)

I caught myself doing this again a few days ago with someone I’ve danced this particular dance with for a very very long time. (Details are their biz and not important here. Which I get. now.)

The great kindness of experience is that it shortens the frequency and duration of visits to our old hells, and when we remember to breathe back into calm and simply observe ourselves, it’s possible to See. With a measure of compassion.

So when my old hell returned as a new fresh one, I could See, first, that the level of pain I was experiencing “on someone else’s behalf” was completely under my control.

[interesting aside, here: in this case, observing myself, I noticed that the more I tried to "solve the problem" and mentally referee for the players involved, the more actual physical pain I felt. "I'll be the diplomat, though you never asked, though you don't even know I know what's going on, and get a skull-splitting headache in the process." Now, THAT got my attention!]

I’d put myself into their business, after all. I could take myself out! (and, lordylordy – they could .. have their own experience! how nice for them!)

And. and.

By letting them have their own experience, and refusing to take their pain and make it mine, I stopped hurting… and gave them space to do the same.

Instantly, and once and for all, I saw it: I’d been increasing their pain, and my own pain, by pouring the fuel of my attention on it.

The very opposite of my heart’s kindest wish.

Now I know. And when I perceive a dear one’s pain or struggle or discomfort and feel the old tug to insert myself, to “fix” it, I ask myself this question: is my desire to help born of discomfort?

Or compassion?
…………

love to hear your thoughts on this… please share in the comments, or private message me. thanks for being here! Kathleen.

Posted in old habits and new ways, revelation
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no more “survival badges.”

•July 30, 2012 • Leave a Comment

So much value is ascribed to being able to “out-survive” others – and ourselves:
“oh, you lived through that?
Well, I can live through.. THIS!”
We award big points for getting through it, ’cause life can be just so damn hard.

And then, because life is – in fact – ridiculously accomodating and convenient here in the 21st century, we have to create or attract or construct the very “just so damn hard” scenarios we are to overcome.

Is this way of doing things a throwback from times when war and deprivation were front and center, and people-still-living-now cultivated tough skills for tough times?

Perhaps it’s leftover, outdated cultural programming from the 80′s and 90′s, when “pushing ourselves” (read: “punishing ourselves”) as far as we could go – 168-hour workweeks, no sleep, and little use for subtle or simple joys – would win the badges of honor.

Or, maybe this a newer competiton, pervasive in our reality-TV culture, where snark, shame, and “there-is-one-winner-only” are the new norm (“it gets viewers!”) and calm, reflective stability is just not considered good television at all.

What if..?
What if we are now living through the time when the primal, reptilian brain that exists in all of us – the amygdala on constant Defcon-1 alarm – is sensing that its time of being center stage and running our shows through fear is coming to an end?

Could it be that the current collective need to out-angst, out-pain, and “out-survive” each other (and ourselves) is evidence that this way of doing things is making its final death-throes gasp for – survival? (ooh, chills!)

Imagine a new time – and I do feel it coming – when we set aside the need to collect “survival” badges –

and, instead, collect the rewards for simply living.. well, and with kindness.

I can imagine that.

Posted in old habits and new ways
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Your Own Way: how to get out of it.

•July 22, 2012 • Leave a Comment

[first in a series of Your Own Way.]

Your Own Way: How to Get Out of It, Step One.

Back when I was a green-newbie at the whole “doing intuitive work for other people” thing, [*cough* twentyoddsomethingyears ago] my mother told me something I now know would be one of the most useful instructions I would ever receive in my life:

“… just remember to get out of – stay out of – your own way.”

    Instinctively, I got it:

I had already had the felt experience of being compelled to say certain things whenever I was working with someone, when I’d known from a place of calm what wanted to be said (though often it made little sense to me, personally!) When I followed that “compelled to say” feeling, it was always right on the mark. Made perfect sense to them. Bingo!

Always.

    Intellectually, though, I’d mess it up:

At times I’d feel “compelled to say” something, then hesitate a beat too long – and those logical left-brain know-it-alls (dear things!) would rush in to edit, to make it “sound better.” And.. it would go flat, and the simple and patient bit of truth that was finding its way to flow in would, instead, flow on by. (“bye-bye!”)

To be sure, I had a perfect classroom of sorts. Nothing like immediate feedback from another person to show me – over and over again- that the calm/knowing feeling that accompanied some odd-sounding ideas was the wanted feeling. The helpful, useful, right feeling. Delicioso.

And that feedback showed me, too, that the impulse to override or think I “knew better” from a place of intellect was, while not necessarily being a wrong feeling, was tinged with urgency and reactiveness and not even a bit delicious.

As I learned to notice these two distinct states – calm/knowing vs. reactive impulse – as they occurred, I realized I could choose which way to go each time. Toward “delicious,” of course!

Making the choice to follow calm/knowing is us, staying out of our own way.

Next, Step Two: when you’re the only one you have to practice on, how do you get feedback?

Posted in Uncategorized
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L-ve, then share.

•March 23, 2012 • Leave a Comment

    dreams? I got ‘em.

I’m talking about the while-sleeping kind. I know I have plenty – I can hear the chattering as I wake up – but, do I remember my dreams? Hear their insightful messages? Not so much.

Truth is, I just feel like I need rest afterward.

The other night, I tried presenting my weary brain with an intention: I asked before going to sleep to receive a message through a dream, and asked for the ability to WAKE UP so I could record it. Even made it easy by putting pen, paper and my glasses by the bed, too.

I distinctly recall the smile I had on my face a few hours later as I drifted from semi-consciousness back into deep sleep.. it had worked! A fully formed vision, captured in a few key words, would be waiting for me to work some intuitive magic on it in the morning! (hooray!)

    “drink your Ovaltine.”

When I woke again, I got another quick impression. (bonus material? sweet!) Two women, newly-met members of my own real life ‘elder tribe,’ were standing a short distance away and observing me while I received a message of three words: “Love, then share.”

hmm.. okay. Don’t quite get it, it’s pretty vague.. it’ll probably make more sense when I add it to the first dream I wrote down.

Which was .. not there. At all. Blankness. I had dreamed that I’d had a dream and captured it on paper.

For a moment I felt like Peter Billingsley in A Christmas Story, after his decoder ring unveils the super-secret message “Drink Your Ovaltine.” Wha? that’s IT!? “love, then share”? All I had left was that cryptic three-word phrase, and two wise women standing way over there… sayin’ nothing.

    thank you, auto-correct.

My Great Message lacked crass commercialism, true – but it also lacked any direction whatsoever. To me, “love” denotes a state of being, rather than a thing to be done or an action to be taken. (Yeah, yeah, I know, but this is my metaphor, ok?) So, “then share” would come after.. what?

I dropped it. Experiment failed, intention un-intended. “It’s okay.” I’d try again tomorrow.

My renewed interest in Facebook distracted me for a while, and I got happily carried away on the bubbling post-Martha Beck Coaches’ Summit energy of my tribemates. Read, read, like-like-like, comment, friend, join stuff, accept friend, read some more, LIKE!

Suddenly, there it was. (again.) Another person commenting on how every time they’d tried to write the word “love” in a post after returning from the summit, their auto-correct would change it to “live.” “LIVE.”

    not ready to be ready.

For a loonnng time in my life, I let my mind swim in a constant stream of helpy motivational thoughts: “put yourself Out There!” and, “go big or go home!” and, a personal fave, “who are you, to withhold your gifts from the world?” Not surprisingly, my mind also swam with a constant vague sense of unease, as I was not aligning with these directives at all. Then, on an early June morning last year, a new directive stated itself so clearly in my head I thought I’d heard it out loud: “I’m Not Ready To Be Ready. and that is okay.” Everything else fell silent.

ah, Revelation. Relief. I don’t have to share, yet. I can go on with this path, this learning.
Rest. Be a beginner, again.

Oh!

“LIVE, THEN SHARE.”

(My elder-tribe ladies nod slightly, and smile.)

I’m still not quite ready to be ready.. but, almost. There’s still a lot of new I want to catch. I can “live” now – then, share.

and, “love” ?
always.

Posted in old habits and new ways, revelation
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over here, in the next room.

•January 12, 2011 • Leave a Comment

Funny how, when your vision clears and you start moving in the direction of your life, necessary and über-helpful side trips appear and become logical Next Steps.

In that spirit, jujuhelpdesk is over in the metaphorical next room, busy doing the work that comes before the work of removing the wallpaper…

You can check it out here:

the eleven minute project.
finding yourself. eleven minutes. each day.

If the jujuhelpdesk blog is the philosophical, contemplative big-picture view, the eleven minute project is her “right here – right now” sister blog where we take small actions and see big effects on our energy and our lives.

Join us, and do stay tuned.. we are getting that ugly wallpaper down, a piece at a time!

Posted in old habits and new ways
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are you ready to strip it off?

•November 16, 2010 • 6 Comments

"Is there something sneaking up behind me?" "No, dear, just keep smiling!"

Has it been a while since you’ve loved what you’ve done with the place?

Consider this photo, if you will. Allow me to mention how accomplished and capable these individuals are: two physicists, and a famous actress! At an honors ceremony, at the Smithsonian!

But the first thing I noticed (and, I’m betting, the first thing you saw, too) was not the intended subject of the picture.

It was that wallpaper.

Eye-jarring and painful to look at. Distracting. And these fine people seem not to even notice it’s there.

Have you stopped seeing the ugly wallpaper on the walls in your life?

Have you become numb to something that just no longer works for you? Are there grungy, outdated spots in the house of your Self that you just don’t notice anymore?

When you chose that pattern it was a better idea – clean, fresh, new. In fashion. Perhaps when you started doing things “a certain way,” or relating to people, or yourself, in that particular setting, it made sense. It was right for who you were, at that time.

Wallpaper’s hard to take down once it’s up, though. When our lives or tastes or needs change, that stuff is still hanging there, getting dingy and peeling off. Getting less-than-fresh. It may seem easy to just paper over it, or paint it. Easy, but definitely not a good idea in the long run.

So, we just stop seeing the ugly wallpaper altogether.

Occasionally it’ll give us a bit of a twinge and we even consider doing some of the heavy work that’s gonna be necessary to have a calm, clear and inviting space again. A space that we feel good about sharing with others.

But we’re not ready for the heavy work, so we decide to live exist with it and say “it’s not that bad.” We stop living in that room. We stop letting others into that room.

Why?

Because we go into others’ spaces and see their ugly wallpaper, quite clearly: “holy velvet-flocked poke-in-the-eye, what were you thinking?!?” (hey, I was a kid in the 70′s – and I Have Seen It.) We know, instinctively, that if we are so distracted by the ugly stuff that we can’t see the lovely people, then… our ugly stuff is probably keeping other people from seeing the lovely us, too.

Are you trying harder and harder to get someone to see your loveliness – and can’t understand why they don’t?

Is it time to think about stripping off some wallpaper?

Yes? (“Yes.”)

That wasn’t easy, I know: my own history of “don’t go in there!!” wallpapers would’ve filled a sample book. Saying “yes” – admitting that you really do see that Something-Ugly-Right-There-Hangs – means acknowledging that there will be heavy work to come and maybe a bit of a mess during the remodeling.

Saying “yes” also does this wonderful and unexpected thing: it draws people’s eyes away from the walls. And back to lovely You.

They know that you know, and that allows you a little space to breathe. And to – gently, at your right pace – consider what comes next.

[next in this series: Should it Stay or Should It Go, Now?]

Posted in allowing your truth, old habits and new ways, revelation
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