Sunday, March 24, 2024

Acceptance

 I had a brief but poignant exchange with someone who was recommended to me. He made the comment that if we were to work together for a limited time, the work would center around Acceptance.

I mulled this over several days; one of those statements that confirms my own feelings but brought those feelings more into present moment awareness.

Today, I searched for times in this online journal when I might have written about acceptance, and I see that over the years I have had the thought on my mind a number of times to the extent that I wanted to journal those feelings.

Acceptance, to my mind, isn't about giving up, about giving up hope for something better, but it is about facing the reality of the situation you find yourself confronted with. As much as one might find the phrase 'it is what it is' a bit glib, there's so much truth to it.

I know someone who likes to think he can adjust the natural order of things if he only puts his mind to it. Why suffer with all those levels - anger, sadness, denial and so forth - before you get to acceptance? Why not just jump them all and go straight to Acceptance? Perhaps that's possible, but I don't think it is.

When I was younger, much younger, I had an abundance of positivity. I was convinced I lived in 'the lucky country' (still do) and more personally, I was convinced that I was protected by a 'guardian angel'. In terms of the guardian angel, I think this protected me, at the same time as it did not allow me to see what was right in front of me, which, for a small and vulnerable child, was probably a blessing, and a rather smart thing to believe.

When my husband told me he had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, I definitely didn't go straight to acceptance. I do wonder if the more invincible someone seems, the least likely one is to accept such a thing. In the months that followed I was sometimes sad, sometimes angry, sometimes disbelieving. Like, are you sure they know what they are talking about?  I didn't so much disbelieve what I was told as I figured we'd solve it, like we solve everything. 

The mind can be mad, and I remember saying to him one day, 'I can't believe you are even considering leaving me with all this mess to clean up. Where will I even start?' It was a poor me thing, a cry for help, disbelief, overwhelm, and a call to action.

It's several months later since that day, and I find respite in similar ways to those I began to use many years ago now. I meditate in a way, in a space and place where 'the problem never existed in the first place'; complete lack of ego; complete nothingness; no mind.

I explain it to my husband in the hope he will join me in this space, but he repeatedly says that he is too stressed with too much to do to take the time. I say, but it in those times that you must visit that space. Your mind and body need a break.

There's a huge benefit to getting to acceptance of a situation as fast as humanly possible. It avoids a great deal of personal pain, for starters. It's an acknowledgement that you are part of the human experience, and that suffering comes to us all. You're not special after all, there is no guardian angel and bad stuff happens to good people.

Once you hit acceptance - this really is happening - then you can see ahead of you all sort of things to assist the situation; ways to make things better. You can dig deep to polish up your empathy skills, and you find ways to nurture yourself, to accept that this is hard and you need to take care of yourself too, so you are there for your loved ones. Always put on your own oxygen mask first.

I follow a few very special people around the world who fuel me with their wisdom and kindness. High on the list is Henry Shukman and I offer you here, to those who might benefit from his beautiful heart, the  final words of his poem, Resistance:


'...do nothing, be still,

stay just where we are,

sit right here,

on the very fence,

exactly on the blade

of reluctance itself,

just here, where we least

want to be, where it seems

it must hurt the most.

But it's here that the blade

already knows

what it needs to do.

And if we could just let it, then finally it could do

what it was always meant to.

And we would fall open,

until there's nothing left

in the middle

except a silent space

which everything is free to fill,

and the whole world can pour

into that one blessed gap.'


Tuesday, February 13, 2024

Portals

 I listen frequently to a meditation inspired by the work of Joe Dispenza. Joe likes to take the person to a sense of being in space, of surrendering all the past hurts and negative emotions, the pain, the disease to what is sometimes called Source. It's a place where all identity and personality are stripped away. You are nothing, nobody, nowhere.

You surrender all the tightness, stiffness, rigidity, worry and in return you receive a sense of calm, equanimity, harmony. I found my mind this morning landing on the word 'harmony'. Isn't it such a lovely word!

It's been an interesting process lately as my mind has been letting go of unfulfilled expectations. I didn't will this to happen, couldn't have done that if I tried. I am simply noticing what is happening - the falling away of expectations of certain outcomes. Maybe one could call it being very present. I really do think the meditation is having a very soothing effect on me.

It can be a bit of a tightrope experience, life, doing one's best to achieve best outcomes, not just for oneself but those we love...and then accepting that we only have so much control over our experiences.

And, maybe that's a good thing, in a way, part of the journey on this planet, to cede to the mystery.

It's an interesting phenomenon to cede to the mystery, at the same time as recognizing the messages of our bodies. Maybe the ego wants this, but the spirit wants that. Who are you going to listen to? There's definitely more than one voice in our heads, as you would know if you sat and listened for a while - competing voices at that.

In the midst of the above meditation, there's a whole lot of nothingness, which is truly divine (and why I love good masterful sex). Within that nothingness there's an openness too - mystery tinged with curiosity. It's like the slight opening of an unknown portal; a new experience of You.


Sunday, February 11, 2024

Dom training

 It seems to be official, according to those in the know, that it's the women wanting to express their submission to a man (in a heterosexual relationship). It's the women expressing their intense frustration that they can't find a (good) man to submit to. It's the women who are ready, willing and waiting.

This is why I can't understand why there are people at the ready to train the submissive, but oh so few people who take it upon themselves to train the Dom.

I wrote these notes from something that Om wrote.

"A Dom snatches control. He has to want for her more than she wants for herself. He has to have the desire and the caliber to take her into the depths of her chaos, to hold her there no matters what happens and then he needs to have the skill, strength and stamina to bring her back and land her safely from her chaos and restore her to form."

Now, that takes some work and practice, doesn't it? Not necessarily innate?

It's no shame to get trained to perform this magic. They didn't call it 'the dark arts' for no reason.

Friday, February 2, 2024

Fear

 Although I do feel into the sense of my body during yoga experiences, I am aware I am not good at visually creating new worlds inside my head. However, if you don't try, you can't improve, and so I tried it this morning whilst I was waking up. 

An image flashed up of a deep forest, that is one tall, relatively thin tree beside another tall, relatively thin tree, there being thousands of such tall and thin trees. I was somewhere in the middle of it. A well-known phrase popped in - can't see the forest for the trees.

I purposefully made myself see some more detail. Not surprisingly for me, I looked for danger. Was there a poisonous snake in a tree, or some four-legged dangerous animal hiding just out of view? I detected nothing. It seemed to be me and the forest, nothing more.

Then, I noticed that the sun was casting light into the forest, almost like a sign, a signpost. I may be thick in the forest and unsure what to do, but the sun was shining; light; hope.

As I think about it now, it reminds me of an experience long ago when I had my first child. Thinking that there would be oodles of free time, I signed myself up for a Graduate Diploma of Education. Whilst the baby slept one afternoon I prepared for a multiple-choice exam on 'Education Psychology', but I suspect I felt unprepared on the day; you know, nervous. (Folks, if you haven't figured it out yet, I'm a nervous Nelly.) 

When I turned the paper over, it looked like gobbledygook. I took a breath and told myself I must remember something from the study and bit by bit I realized that I knew pretty much all the answers. It was like a light coming on, at first dim and then getting brighter and brighter until I could see crystal clear.

That's how it was in the forest; at first totally intimidating, but as my courage grew, I started to form a plan. I started to sense that I had the inward strength to get myself out of this situation safely.

There's another part of me, though, that enjoys a little fear; that inner knowing that I have to push myself out of my comfort zone; to be willing to take more chances.

Now, what might a psychologist say about this? Obvious. Fear of failure. Maybe doubting one's own abilities to deal with the unknown; to face danger square in the eye and say, 'I am not afraid'.

It's an interesting thing that as you sit with a sense of danger, feel into it, the intense discomfort of it in a bodily sense, the feeling starts to dissipate; becomes more distant. You can walk yourself out of the forest, which is what I did.

P.S. I went looking to see if I wrote about fear before and look at this from 2011: Vesta's submission: Fear (vestassubmission.blogspot.com) 

Friday, January 26, 2024

Me

Could I be clearer in the way I express myself? Is there something about the way I express myself open to interpretation? I don't have a flowery or poetic way of writing sentences, so I just don't understand how I could be misunderstood. 

Here's the deal:

- I am a one-man woman. I have always been so. My lifelong fantasy which I wished to make my reality was to be loved by ONE man and for me to love him.

- I am not into and wish for myself NO swingers parties, NO group sex with men or women. 

- By this definition, I am NOT a SLAVE. If an Owner asked me to do these things, I would try, but it would be so against the natural order of my brain and soul that I think I would ultimately be forced to leave the union.

- I am a conventional, old-fashioned sort of gal. I just want MY man all to myself. I want to be in a D/s dynamic with him. I want to know to the core of my being, regularly, minute by minute, that I am HIS and he is MINE.

- I am happy to work hard. Hard work never bothered me, and I actually like it because I just like getting stuff done, transforming spaces, making the world a little bit better in all sorts of ways.

- But, I need play time; time to see the world; enough financial security for both of us to feel free. I am happy to work hard to achieve this; happy to play my part.

I have held down my deep and profound dismay of suggestions that I would find myself at a swingers party with my owner holding my leash whilst I licked some unknown man's anus. No judgment here; each to his own, and that includes me. That's not me.

Tell me, if you have read a smidgeon of my words here, does that sound like me?

I thought not.

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

Love

 This will be short. I don't mention it here too much or in my life generally, with the children or extended family or friends. I guess we are both being stoic, he and I.

However, I am the spouse of a man who has been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, and for some reason today I want to say that, to myself.

I want to acknowledge that I may lose, earlier than we ever anticipated, my husband whom I married 43 years ago.

One's brain does everything to save the Self pain and my brain is no different. I can assure myself my husband will beat the odds and be totally healed. It actually is possible.

The facts are thus: I would be devastated to lose him. I have loved him, and he has loved me for nearly 50 years.

I have the rather unenviable ability to imagine the future, of walking into our holiday home, a place he loves, when he is gone, and that moment fills me with intense sadness. 

It makes me realize how very much I love him.

A note to self: to cherish each day.

Tuesday, January 23, 2024

Containment

 Please do forgive me if you are tired of hearing about Om. He is just so impressive and it's not just me. I send my husband episodes of his podcast that stand out to me, and he agrees, he has an important message to offer.

So, Om, as you might have already read here, speaks a lot about containment. He was asked in interview what that word means to him. I can't remember all his words, but the gist of the thing is that men and women have certain expectations of each other that is the same no matter in which era we live. Women want to be able to be supported by a man; to have a man settle them. It's up to the man, Om says, for his women to be contained by his masculine energy.

I would like to offer an example from my little orbit. My third child is quiet most of the time, until he decides to talk, in which case he has a lot to offer on a particular subject. Girls have been an important component in his life but it's this recent one, the one to whom he is engaged that has made for a very happy relationship.

He hasn't changed all that much over time, but the other girls were definitely codependent on him. He was, and this is his mother talking, far too good to them. The one before this one was a nice girl but she didn't have respect for him. His grandmother acutely observed the situation and assessed that "she has to go". Their whining and demands definitely got him down, and without space for himself, he took to becoming quite animated and excruciatingly frustrated. Her OCD was a factor here. I gently encouraged him of the view that he didn't owe her anything. He had to think of his own happiness.

This led to S, a charming, respectful and tender girl. At first, she seemed to have no issues, totally put together, until she started to reveal some of her childhood upbringing when it became clear that the anxiety we were seeing now that we had got to know her and love her was coming from those difficult situations.

This is where the containment comes in. She is a worrier. The boss at work is totally into himself. What if they can't find a house? What about her brother? She shares these worries with my son, and he has a way of containing the worry. 'Don't worry about the boss. When you are ready, there are plenty of jobs.' 'We will sort out your brother's situation together.' Or, he'll just be silly and make her giggle. He brings light to her dark and she greatly appreciates being offered the range of possibilities.

Sometimes, I have gone to my husband looking for containment, but he, being a bigger worrier than me, hasn't been able to contain me with his masculine energy. I think he is learning through these podcasts how important this skill is. I remember distinctly certain times when he was able to contain me; reassure me, and this means the world to me. 

This occurred quite recently when he assured me that the financial situation could be sorted; that we would work on it together. There's room to grow in the sensory realm. Words are good, strong hugs are equally important.

I'm not suggesting this is always easy for a man who may desire to dissolve into being contained by their woman. It's what their mothers did for them and no doubt it felt good. A woman is capable of this, for a time, of course. No-one is at their best all of their time.

As Om says, there is a place for that, but pretty much forget eros at those times.

Of course, when we endeavor to contain a situation, it doesn't necessarily work out and there are family folklore stories around this. We burst a tire one summer, on the way to the ferry that would take us to Block Island. Those tickets are bought months in advance, so the situation wasn't good. My husband said at one point, 'We aren't going to make it.' The children in the back no doubt were watching their holiday evaporate and I got a tap on the shoulder and a whisper in my ear, 

'Mum, are we going to make it?'

'Sure. We'll make it', I whispered back.

Well, we arrived, they called us onto the ferry, we drove on, they pulled up the barrier and we sailed off. We made it, by about five seconds.

A man (in this scenario, yes, it's a man) can't know what is to come, but most men will do anything and everything to make it right, safe, for their women and children. 

I think this is what a woman wants to tap into, time and time again. In spite of all her talents, ability to look after herself and so on, this is what she craves. I, like Om, tend to think this is hard wired.