Yesterday, for several hours, I regressed back to being a person who believes in the conventional paradigm, that tired old shared dream. What a trip! I learned a lot! I’m not sure why I clung to normalcy for as long as I did, but I’m deeply grateful I’m off that path now (more and more each day). Man, normalcy is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live…oh wait, it’s not even really that great to visit. 
Glad to be back! Smoooooooooch!!!!
I watched the Matrix yesterday, first time I’ve watched it in a few years. It’s still a damn good movie!
While watching it, I realized that all my career interests rotate around the same goal: piercing and eventually deconstructing the shared dream.
I used to think this was the question:
What is real and what is not?
But now, I’m asking different kinds of questions:
Who creates our shared reality?
Who benefits?
How do humans learn what is real, and how is this process disturbed or enhanced?
How does the shared dream enhance or limit the quality of our individual and community lives?
How can we deconstruct our perceptions of and stories about “the way the world is” in a way that will empower individuals and enhance our communities?
How can alternate views be introduced?
Here’s how it came together in my head:
The media (as well as art, literature, etc) we consume informs our understanding of culture, relationships, and even the nature of how life works. This is why the arts are so important! And, with most of popular media being controlled by major corporations, our culture is being strangled. Ideas that are controversial or revolutionary, that challenge the status quo are silenced by mainstream media. People are consumed by the latest celebrity scandals, reality tv shows and national politics that they are absent from their own lives and are zombies in their own communities. The media tells us who we are, how the world works, and in return we get to “relax” by zoning out in front of the TV, a risk-free way to “live,” (after all, your TV won’t reject you, David Letterman smiles at you, you won’t look stupid in front of anyone).
National Television creates a cultural homogeneity that not only guarentees big profit for big businesses, but also quells civic activism. People are treated as consumers not citizens and act suchly, thereby enforcing the profit margin. Maybe we are not really living in little glass pods like the fields in the Matrix, but is it really so different? Corporations are making lots and lots of money off us as our local communities fall apart. Because we are so “plugged in,” we only become more and more alienated from each other. Less invested in our community and our families, everyone ultimately suffers.
I have always been fascinated by the way that people create the structures of their realities. Having dealt with severe mental illness in my early twenties, I’ve spent almost my entire adulthood deconstructing and rebuilding the way my brain works. I have nearly completely rebuilt my personal paradigm from scratch. So, I’m in a pretty unique position to examine the process of paradigm shifting. Also, I’ve learned a lot by watching my daughter, Joy, learn about the world. If you want to understand your brain, read some child development books!
So, I can almost hear the more practical of you asking, “what do you even mean by ‘reality?’”
Great question! So, I’ll ask you some questions in return! The answers are not right or wrong, but each your answers demonstrate a bit of your reality. Your reality (or I guess your beliefs about reality) generally shape your actions.
How can a person be successful in life?
Can anyone be successful?
What is success?
Is there such a thing as luck?
Is there such a thing as Karma?
What kind of other influences affect the outcomes in your life?
How important is independance?
How much interdependance is healthy?
What impact does your life have on other people?
How does your affluence (or lack thereof) effect other people?
How does your life effect the environment?
Do you feel (emotionally/energetically) connected with other people?
What is your responsibility to the people in your community?
What is your community’s responsibility to you?
So, why do I want to deconstruct the shared dream? Because I believe our culture needs to become self-aware if we are to avoid total self-destruction. I really believe that our country and culture has been hijacked by big corporations, and we need to take back our power. A few days ago, I asked how do we do that? This is my answer.
Here’s where my interests come in:
Media Literacy Education:
Teaching critical thinking skills around media messages
Filmmaking:
Through creative storytelling, challenging cultural constructs and offering alternatives (especially the alternative idea that reality is malleable, and every individual has more power than they know
Activism:
Challenging existing structures to improve
Mysticism:
Continuing to explore, through trance, meditation, ritual and other experiences of the divine, the nature of reality itself. Continue self-exploration to clear beliefs or perceptions that are destructive or limiting.
girlchasingfrogs.com:
Continue to document and explore my explorations into the nature of reality, perceptions of reality, and processes of change-making
Hope you stay tuned! I’d love to hear your thoughts about any/all of this!
Blessed Be!
First… a recommendation. lindawhitedove.com
I invite you to check out this site. Linda White Dove is amazing. On this site, you will find mind-blowing writing, free sample energy attunements, and information about attunements available for purchase.
I am currently doing attunements with Linda. The process, for me, has been one of clearing old energy baggage which had been cluttering my energy body. In addition, my core energy has become more aligned and I feel greater clarity, drive, peace and passion. I am more fully in my body and fully present in each moment.
However, the last few days I have been struggling a lot. I’d have an amazing moment of clarity and insight, closely followed by despair and grief. I’d see some amazing brilliant truth about myself, and then crash again. My sanity was beginning to ebb from all the up and down when I e-mailed Linda to vent.
Later that night, I realized what was going on. I was experiencing turbulance because of one major energy block I’ve carried a long time.
See, I’ve always believed I was cursed. My childhood was chaotic, painful and unpredictable for the most part. Everything seemed to always fall apart around me, and I took it very personally. I thought that there was some essential aspect of me that made bad things happen. I didn’t think it was something I did, but something about who I was. This belief was being pushed against by my newly expanding energy.
Last night, I also received my weekly newsletter from Rob Brezny (freewillastrology.com). He suggested a homework assignment for us: write your life story in 50 words or less. I did it, and it was worth all the time it took to boil it down:
Born magical, I remembered my divinity into childhood. It took my parents 18 years to abuse away the memory, until I only had a memory of the memory. I spent my twenties clearing rubble. At 30, in despair, I released the memory of the memory, then cracked open and remembered.
Writing this last sentance was a revelatory act. I realized this was my despair, letting go of the memory of the memory of my divinity. I have clung to it so long, but it has come to a time that holding onto it is keeping me from experiencing it completely now. With it, I clung to the pain of so many things going wrong in my childhood.
So, I embrace cracking open!
This morning, Linda sent me some extra energy to cope with everything I was feeling. She also recommended I try an exercise on her site called, “Beyond Emotional Intensity into Ease and Flow” to help release my belief (or really, to release my attachment to it. This exercise is not totally new to me, I’ve done similar exersizes for years, and Buddism describes ways of doing this as well. I like Linda’s way of explaining it, though.
So, today, whenever I felt this belief (and the energy and thoughts that go with it), rise up, I allowed it. I kept open my awareness of my infinite self (as much as is possible while running around with a toddler), and I allowed the sensations of the energy to flow through me. However, although I stated open to it, I didn’t buy into it. I accepted the presence of the feelings, but did not didn’t latch onto the messages about myself or my life. I acknowledged the negative thoughts, but just let them drift through and dissolve away. It felt really good, and for the first time in my life today, I saw that I was really going to make it, that freedom was really a reality!
I’m going to keep doing this exercise in the coming days, and I’m excited to be at this most pivotal moment in my personal growth. This, right here, is what I spent my twenties working toward! : )
Insights and revelations continue to flow and trickle through me as I crack wider and wider open. I’m not going to even attempt to write them all down, but I may try to get the highlights.
Here’s a few zingers:
It’s not the negative belief itself that blocks me, it’s my avoidance of facing or resolving it.
Even though I feel like I’m a victim of this belief, I’m keeping it going myself.
(any negative internal pattern has a payoff, so in investigating my payoffs, I found): I like to believe that I’m cursed because it makes me feel special (you know, a nice dose of the epic!)
With my 30th birthday approaching, I’m appraising how I spent the last decade of my life. First of all, I did have a lot of good times. I knew a lot of great people (some of which I still am in contact with, some not), I had a lot of crazy adventures, I made art and TV and I became myself (not a small feat!). I also spent a great deal of time healing. I’d say healing was my primary focus for the last 10 years. Sometimes I feel like I spent the first 20 years of my life accumulating trauma, and the next 10 mourning the first twenty. I’m feeling really ready to move on. I want to declare an end to my mourning. I want to really live in the NOW, not the past!
“Forgiveness” is the word that keeps on floating around my head these days. Forgiveness of those I feel have hurt me, and forgiveness of myself for the mistakes I’ve made, opportunities I’ve missed and people I’ve hurt. In the past, my attitude towards forgiveness is that it’s a great thing that should arrive spontaneously, and should never be forced. When I forgave my stepmom, it came in a flash of light, and a burst of Jesus energy and love. Since then, I’ve just waited for more of that for everyone else I needed to forgive.
I’ve decided I’m tired of waiting. These old resentments and hurts weigh me down. I feel like I’m not going to learn how to live fully until I learn how to let go. I’m not actually sure I know how to let go, but I’m ready to learn!
Yesterday, I talked about how I was going to try out Wayne Dyer’s concept of Receptivity, and enter into all situations with an attitude of openness and wanting to give something to everyone I come across. I thought it might help me feel good in my life, create some nice synchronicity, and maybe even help me manifest some miracles in my life.
Well, the first part works, anyway! I noticed that when it’s me and Joy at home, this technique is kind of already how I’m operating. At least, I’m generally in a state of giving to her. Although, because I was trying to focus on the here and now instead of wishing certain things were different, I did feel more centered in each activity we shared.
But, when I left the house today, just for a little while, I noticed a bigger difference. Everyone I came across, I tried to be open-hearted towards, and it felt really good! Instead of draining me, which I feared, I felt really energized by the experience. And, possibly, a little synchronicity, too. The cute security guard at Walgreen’s accidently walked into me, which was funny, although he felt bad. Then, while I was being rung up, there was a delay because I had grabbed the wrong item, and in the meantime I got to chat with the guard a bit. I’m pretty sure he’s had a crush on me for a while, and even though I’m not going to pursue this, I think it’s interesting the encounter happened today.
I really felt like this new attitude did a lot of good for the energy I’m putting out, and getting back. Even just a little trip out of the house with an attitude of receptivity felt really nice, and I feel like it kicked my synchronicity up just a notch!
The adventure continues…
Yesterday was a tough day for me. Joy was crying or fussing for most of the day, and I felt like I was close to losing it. It’s been a crazy week altogether, starting with our day in Springfield, which was followed by Joy developing a wheeze, and both of us staying at Kari’s for 2 1/2 days while we waited for my landlord to pull out bad carpet. Friday night we came back home, and yesterday Joy was fussy (although breathing clear) all day long. She was working on one more tooth (#8, which came through last night), and it was giving her a really tough time. I was tired, worn out and frustrated that I couldn’t seem to do anything to make her feel better.
Yesterday evening, when I felt like I was really close to my breaking point, I decided I needed a distraction. I hauled the TV up from the basement, and turned it on, hoping to find anything that would provide a little respite.
What I found was Wayne Dyer’s Power of Intention on PBS. I just caught the tail end of it, but what I heard is exactly what I needed (yay, Synchronicity!) He was talking about “receptivity,” which he defines as a state of being open to whatever is happening in your life at the moment, and to whoever crosses your path. He talked about wanting to give of yourself to everyone you come across, no matter who they are, and how that opens you up more to your life. I understood it as being really open to whatever your life presents to you, instead of focusing on how your life doesn’t match what you want your life to be. By doing that, you live more positively, create a higher, lighter energy in your life, and feel better. Also, because you are creating this better energy, you draw more things in your life that also have good energy.
This was exactly what I needed to hear yesterday (and today, too). When I’m feeling unhappy about things in my life, I have a tendency to close off some. I’m less open to people and to the events in my life. I focus instead on my feelings of unhappiness, and I sort of seal off from the energy of the world. Of course this just makes me feel worse!!! Makes perfect sense! Instead of going into self-pity and shutting down, I need to just open up further to everything and everyone in my life!
This is related to abundance-thinking too. I think my problem has been that when things are going badly, I want to conserve my energy because I feel like I don’t have enough energy to cope with the bad things that are happening. But, of course that just shuts down the flow and makes things even worse! I need to practice abundance-thinking as it comes to my own internal resources. Instead of thinking that I need to conserve energy, I need to focus on being really open to giving and receiving lots of energy, and keeping the flow going.
The timing of watching this show was really perfect in another way, too! While I was in the middle of handling this wheezing crisis, I was actually doing a really good job of staying in the flow. I just focused on doing whatever needed to be done in any given moment, and tried not to worry about running out of energy. I tried to be open to whatever events my situation offered, and to everyone who was around me. As a result, I handled the situation with “grace and composure” according to Kari (and I agree). Because I just let myself flow with things, I didn’t run out of energy, and I was able to maintain a peaceful state of mind, and do whatever I needed to do in the moment. It’s great that I have such a recent example of receptivity to draw from now that the idea is in my head!
So, receptivity is going to be my focus in the coming days. I think I’m on the verge of another adventure! Stay tuned!
Okay, here is a tool that you hear about a lot these days. While I have felt it’s effects in my life, I still struggle sometimes with this one. Sometimes, I struggle with skepticism, and even when I do believe in it, I sometimes struggle with the practice of it.
I had a nice chat yesterday with my friend Megan about this. She tries really hard to think and talk positively, and I admire her for that. I asked her how I could get better at this, especially in situations that seemed actually quite negative. How can I be optimistic about things when they are seeming not good? Put another way, how can I use my words to create positive manifestation (and good mental health) in my life without “stuffing” my negative feelings or ignoring the less than positive details?
She had a great idea… put a middle step in between the all-out-negative thought and the all-out positive thought. So, example: I was talking about how I need to find myself a good doctor so that I can refill a prescription in a couple weeks. I was saying that I didn’t think I’d be able to find a good one, because I have had a lot of bad experiences with doctors who are kind of bullies and I didn’t want my new doctor changing my prescription, because I think it’s about right. However, because I don’t have health insurance, I felt like I didn’t have any good options for places to look. She pointed out that instead of jumping from “I’m not going to find any good doctors,” to “I will find a good doctor,” I could start by stating my negative feeling “I’m scared I won’t find any good doctors.” By doing this, the leap to positive thinking would be a little bit easier because I would have first removed my feeling from my prediction of the outcome. I have my emotions, and I can acknowledge them without thinking they are the truth about the world.
It’s interesting that sometimes I am good at doing this. I moved to Chicago when I was very pregnant, and I went to more than one health care provider before I found one I liked. Even though I didn’t feel like I had a lot of options back then, either, I felt like I would somehow find something that was perfect for me. I did, too! I just kept on thinking positive thoughts about it, and I kept on searching.
Another example of positive thinking: months and months ago, my van got a flat tire in the garage. The tire that was flat had not been the tire in the worst shape previously, so I decided it would be unsafe to drive even with one new tire, because they were all ready to blow. I was being realistic, because soon thereafter another one went flat. But, instead of getting all glum about it, I decided to try to make it into a big adventure. The day of the first flat, I took the bus to a friends house and had a very lovely afternoon and evening. After that, I learned and became comfortable with the public transportation system in Chicago (which is lovely), and my life got a whole lot easier. My positive thinking didn’t change the fact my tires were flat, but it did keep me enjoying the freedom of life.
I’m going to do this (although I feel it may take some practice). I’m going to work on consistently speaking in the positive. Even when things are messy, I’ll try to make the best out of it, while still being as realistic as I can. I do think that it’s possible to manifest good things in life when you are positive (by calling forth synchronicity), and I also think it’s just a good move mental-health wise. So, I’m gonna do it! : )