Friday, March 1, 2013

I love myself unconditionally, yea, right

My brain continues to be fogged with tiredness. Yet what I am realizing at a very subterranean level is so important I will try to spit out something that makes sense. The last weeks were grueling to say the least. Now that I am emerging from that hell hole, this is what I KNOW. I know that despite all intents and purpose directed at self love, I was still falling quite short. I say this with simple awareness and hopefully no judgment. Reading my friend Kathleen's post help me clarify where I was missing the mark. There was (and probably still is) a part of me that has felt so lost, so lonely, so broken that she cries piteously and I HAVE HATED HER FOR SO LONG!! She remembers so clearly being from another dimension and she yearns for that sweetness and acceptance  that were part of her every day life. She has mourned that loss of belonging, of tenderness and unity for eons.  This place has felt so harsh to her, so unbearable that she has felt like she can't survive this environment. Yet it feels like she is the one that claws at my legs as I try to climb out of the pit. I feel like my head is just coming above water when she grabs me and pulls me under. I have tried to shove her off of me, smash her face to destroy her, GET HER OFF OF ME!!! Now, not surprisingly, none of that has worked. 
My current realization is how trying to murder her felt absolutely like self defense. It was her or me and I wasn't going down without a fight. I pretend to have compassion for her and sometimes I really did. Yet more of me wanted her destroyed and banished from existence.
Yet she also holds my vulnerability, my tenderness, my compassion, my humiltiy. To destroy her would erase so much that is wonderful about me. A few months ago I woke up to how I wanted to destroy the part of me that had been anxious seemingly forever. I created a doll to represent her and focused on loving her every time anxiety arose instead of trying to decimate her. It has worked quite well so now I intend to do the same with lovely, lonely Lola who represents my loneliness, my lack of belonging. I intend to do a ritual and write her a letter, asking her forgiveness and forging a new bond between us. I will bury this letter under my favorite tree and ask this wise, old tree to help me root myself in this new awareness. I intend to accept and allow this part of me to flourish and breath. Only through embracing Lola do I have any chance for Wholeness. Only through loving Lola can I be free. I see it all so differently now and wonder at my lack of self compassion yet I must report it as it unfolded with the hope that perhaps even one person might find her/his way to self acceptance a moment earlier from having read about my journey.
These last weeks taught me how certain circumstances had been able to move me into a space of profound self rejection. I may forget again and reject some aspect of myself that is uncomfortable. Yet each time the remembrance is a little quicker, the forgetting perhaps not quite as total. Two years ago today was perhaps the most challenging of my life as I danced closest to the edge and for only the second time in my life, toyed with the thought of annihilation. My marriage was ending yet I could not let go until this day when the pain of holding on finally allowed me to let go. It lead me to an unspeakable blessed moment of genuine surrender and a day of truly embodied bliss. Agony and terror danced with moments of such freedom. The torment apparently was the exact amount of torture I needed to finally surrender. Then as now, I seem to be a glutton for punishment until I get it and allow myself to go through the process without grasping at the banks of my existence. I am sending myself postcards from the edge, so that if this scenario ever plays out again, I will remember to love myself, but really, no matter what. No more hemming and hawing, sorting and castigating. Just my whole messy, delicious, lonely, tender delightful self, shadow and all. Ironically, as I do that the whole planet appears different to me. I no longer view it as harsh, unbearable, torture. My projection of that agony is transforming into a reflection of my inner stillness and peace. From my current eyes, the sun is shining brightly, the birds chirp with such abandon. I am tired yet feel an inner harmony that my world is happy to mirror. Which was the accurate picture of the world? Is the world in fact harmonious and peaceful or alienating and harsh. For me, it all depends on my inner reality. Yet my commitment to myself IS TO LOVE MYSELF UNCONDITIONALLY NO MATTER WHAT, WHETHER I FEEL JOY OR ANGUISH!! YEA, THAT IS RIGHT!! I'll just keep putting one foot in front of the other. I read something recently about what it would cost if others had to pay for the love we each share so generously. What would the price be? Although part of that analogy sounds sick to me and so materialistic, the thing that has sunk our society, another part helped me realize how valuable my own love is, how it truly is priceless. So i have begun to be devoted to MYSELF, to blanket myself with my own love, to turn the force of that love that I shower on others, especially on my daughter, on me. Now there's a thought! Try it, it is so delicious!!!

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