Letting go and giving in. Owning iT challenge =)

Around my house, there is plenty to do. I live with four guys, three of whom are single, and they all pretty much live the bachelor life. I am....admittedly a compulsive cleaner. These guys give me endless opportunities to exercise this compulsion. Just the other day I was thinking. Wow, these guys are really lucky because they have me here to clean up after them, so they don’t really have to take responsibility for their messes. And then i go.....woah.....MY child is really lucky because they provide an endless distraction for me taking responsibility for myself. I spend all my time taking care of and cleaning up after the public spaces. One of which i use as a general art/office space for myself. And then i have no free time to really care for the pieces I need to get through the day. I spend 20 minutes cleaning in the morning when i could be meditating and setting the energy for my day. By taking the responsibility away from them, I am doing them AND myself a disfavor. I’m expert at cleaning after myself in some areas, but what about that pile in the garage? What about those unfinished projects I have laying about? WHat about the general disarray of my financial budgeting, my schedule, my art, my writing, my time for me? All of that disappears in the face of the distractions in front of me.

I spent almost two weeks in my friend’s apartment while they were on vacation. They have more stuff than they have space for, and yeah, they’re a little messy....as are we all, myself including, Little piles everywhere, That in the past i would have taken upon myself to organize and clean. There’s this internal voice that assumes they will appreciate it. But really i’m just fucking with somebody else’s stuff, getting out of my own business and enforcing my desires upon them. And i’m actually proud of myself, aside from having little to no extra energy to clean this past two weeks, i for the most part left their messes alone. Because there’s one thing I started to realize....yeah their home is a little messy....but they are living life and taking care of their needs, wants, and desires. So in the long run who cares about a little mess? And it’s not MY messes that bother me so much as other people’s messes....so why can’t i back up and just let it be?

I could say i learned from my mother this behavior, and actually all the females on my mothers’ side, my aunt, my grandmother, probably my great grandmother as well but i don’t remember her that much.....there is a legacy where as a woman, we give up what we want to do to keep a clean house. We get so entrenched in the every day mess that we FORGET what it is that we want and desire. I remember growing up my mom would take it so personal that we as kids didn’t clean up after ourselves, and i didn’t understand why. I appropriated the feeling of guilt for making her feel that way. but in reality no one can make anyone feel something. That’s on you. Only you can decide how you are going to feel and how you are going to react to a given situation. Admittedly it is hard when you are entrenched in programming, and an environment that supports said programming to wake up and go.....wait a minute....these aren’t my wants and desires, THIS isn’t my passion.....my passion and my desires are over in the corner gathering dust why i care for the day to day messes of those around me. I’ll come over and dust and organize my passion and make it look neat and tidy without actually activating it and USING it. My soul will continue to yearn and point out things that will activate my desire and passion and I will buy them to add to my pile, my pile of ideas, projects...that just sit there gathering dust. Not to mention I deplete the funds I could be using to free myself of debt, to add to this pile, that grows.......it grows so much that i feel the need to go through it sort and discard the projects that have been sitting in the bottom of the pile for as long as I can remember.

I desire to live a life that is happy. And my happiness does not depend on outside circumstances. my happiness depends on me and how i choose to spend my time. It is an effort of sorts. It means I have to say no to other’s desires and wants. It means that instead of going out to some show or concert or even to dinner, i honor the voice inside me that yearns to create, that is bursting at the seams to play with color and line and paint and fabric and whatever else i can get my hands on. THis creative force inside me is growing and it must be activated and actuated. It is time. That’s what my body has been telling me, ‘let go of all you do for others so you can do for yourself’. All those around me are completely capable of picking up the reins for themselves, and if they don’t ....that’s their choice, that’s their path, it’s also none of my business.

I was reminded last night of the simplicity and purity of getting back to the basics. I’ve been exploring more advanced energy practices and tools....meanwhile i forgot the basics. Ground, be amused, run your energy, look at your own tools.

I’m starting this being happy right now, i’m making this choice, i’m also making the choice to honor my desires and passions, because life is so bland without them.

Day #2 OWN IT challenge 4/15/14

OMG!!!!.....I thought i LOST THIS!!!!....and HERE it IS!!!!! I am no longer in the flow that i was in when i started to write this....but here it IS!!!! BAM!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The assignment I have been given was to go over my life story in 5 year increments. But then today happened and this growth spurt seems much more relevant to be discussed than my story. Though i'm positive that the act of rifling through my early life, events, pain, people stirred up the events and reactions of today.

I have been on a journey. My journey still continues, I am transforming and becoming more and more fully myself, a reflection of my true self, the powerful soul...instead of the programmed reactions and responses that my genetic line, family, and society would have me be.

This is the story of my SOUL. Incarnating into these specific conditions to free myself of karmic ties and obligations so that i can continue going deeper.

On the other side of that I am evolving my human body self. I have spent lifetimes as warriors, goddesses and priestesses, beggars, thieves and murderers, healers and martyrs. these are all roles my sole has taken and at times I FEEL ALL OF THESE. I carry the guilt of doing other people harm, even though i realize it has been part of my path as a soul to awakening to who I am.

This lifetime I find myself in a fully sensitive, capable body, capable of fully actualizing my highest physical potential with all the tools and assistance needed right at my fingertips....and yet.....I am rifled with indecision, with hurt and pain that i have no logical reason to feel from this lifetime.

I remember being aware very early on. I actually remember thinking at the age of 3 or 4 that I never wanted to live by myself because it was scary and I didn't know how to take care of myself...and yet I did. but there was a part of me that was very adult in the realization that i would know when the time came. and yet i was still scared.

And here I am 31 years later. Coming out of the final dredges of childhood. This is not to say that I will ever stop being playful, fun and carefree, nor does this say that I will 'act mature'....I am a huge fan of play. play is growth, play is learning, and play is what makes this all worth it. But what this is saying that in letting go of safety blanket of childhood, I get to stand in my power, and wield it, i get to more deeply explore my body, my sexuality, and my energy In my body. I am sensitive and can feel my energy, but only a few times have i felt my energy supercharged revved up and i felt like my whole body was alive in this river of energy. and even that scared me. It was sooooo coool and yet it scared me......why should something so amazing, that feels so good.....scare me.

Maybe because I have been taught to question what feels good. From a young age sex was taboo (it was never directly said, but being the first child of my parents...neither of them wanted me to grow up...and that meant denial of my sexual nature, because that's what they had been taught from our culture and puritanical foundings.) Any THING that was good, candy, sugar, toys, video games....everything has to be carefully monitored otherwise an overdose was due to happen, which is partially genetic, partially learned behavior, and honestly also a soul thing, when something is good, it's yummy and good and i want to role in the sensation and feeling and pull it along and explore the depth of it until i lose myself. And i lose myself....but you know what I find myself again......somewhere along the line I learned that it was not ok to lose oneself. It definitely was not ok to lose yourself in drugs and alcohol. Growing up with parents who had the occasional party or more, who frequently turned to drugs and alcohol for a release, i grew to really mistrust the energy of those things because i didn't like who my parents became while participating in them. They became younger, and then somehow I found myself in the responsible role. and GAWD-DAMMIT I'M THE KID! YOU'RE THE ADULT!......*tantrum* even though I may be an older soul, coming in with a higher amount of awareness (which...btw, every generation has been coming in with a higher sense of awareness and connectedness to our soul information....so you guys with young'ns think on THAT!) I still wanted to be the child. I wanted to kick and scream and thrown my goddamn tantrum.

Which brings me back to today. I put an intention and focus into my body and into the universe that has more than reflected back to me. I desire female community, females who support each other, don't play games, feed each other/ push each other to be greater, call each other on our shit. I desire to be around grown ass people and have grown ass men, and have grown ass experiences. ..........and to do allll of THAT...................IIIIIIII have to grow the fuck up.
I started years ago by learning a spiritual practice which increases my spiritual knowledge and also helps me reach out and guide people (which i am a natural at). I started more recently by letting go of my childhood digs, sold most my things and traveled. met some awesome people, did self exploration. CAME BACK.....just to delve deeper into the inner child and inner desires i had been ignoring. I got pushed and prodded working with a teacher, got overwhelmed, shut down and tried to stop feeling....only to finally have enough of trying to ignore it and took control of my body again.

SO...I took control of my body. I lost 35 pounds....today I am at my goal weight of 165, down from ~210 three months ago. Now, my focus in life has been coming into play, what do I want to be doing? what does my daily life look like? How do i spend my resources and am i choosing wisely for what my goals are? what ARE my goals?

I have been IGNORING the financial aspect of growing up for years. Everybody has always said, just make a budget and follow it it's easy....but just sitting down to look at it flutterpates my brain and my inner child  comes out kicking and screaming."I DON"T WANT TO!" And that's what I sat down to do today with my partner. sit down to figure out a budget and schedule and get our lives more in line with what we want to be bringing into it. I got a basis set. but my inner child was whining and crying and making a big fuss! my partner said he knows part of it is because of frustration and part of it was because i think it's funny....but the truth is....that was me honestly and truly showing the frustrated inner child. I laugh because i know it's rediculous, but i also can't stop it. I cant shut it down. I no longer WANT to shut it down.

Own it! post #3

this was going to be post number 2....until i realized google blessed blogger saved my mishap i thought i had lost it! huzzah! so this is number three!
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I told myself I was going to write this morning. So after mosying around, distracting myself through facebook and emails….i finally did it. I have many excuses not to, for one I’m being hit pretty hard in the crampy flow department, my head hurts, there are adorable kitties racing around me, there’s a soft comfy bed I can curl up in for an hour before I have to go to work for the day. But I started something.

Monday I started the ‘own it’ challenge. Where I am owning myself. Owning what I feel, and taking complete responsibility for myself. Basically growing up. This past year and a half have been for me a refining of the details before taking complete action in the process of growing up. A year and a half before that I cut the cord of my social bubble by dropping everything and exploring north of here. Oregon and then Washington. That was the beginning of my growing up. I didn’t realize it at the time…I had THOUGHT I was grown up….I mean I was 28. But I was still living with my mother, I had just lost my job a few months prior, I have had debt up the yinyang since I was old enough to get a credit card.

I mean sure, I have grown A LOT since the person I was fresh out of highschool. I started my spiritual journey at the Berkeley Psychic Institute. Found out a but-load about myself, but I still hadn’t really taken hold of the reins of my life. I’m a sensitive, I’m ALSO explorative and creative…and because of this I have many friends in many different interests, and I LOVE ALL of my friends and I truly love spending time with them and celebrating and exploring the many activities they are all involved in….but with all the friends and other activities I was involved in…and then add in having a job. I found myself drifting from one thing to the next. Sorta taking care of myself and keeping a precarious balance in it all through meditation and healing classes.

So this is my story of the last 5/6 years. At the age of 25 (or before) or afterwards, I don’t keep accurate time lines. I was in my last year of college, earning my bachelor of fine arts with a focus on printmaking and painting. I started at San Jose State three ish years prior after having completed the clairvoyant training program at BPI (Berkeley psychic institute). SO the direction of my art was greatly influenced by this newly opened spiritual path. My art, IS my spirit, is my spiritual journey. The last year of college was when I took a class on spiritual art and the uses. I was introduced to the labyrinth more fully in that class and THAT became my focus.

 A labyrinth is a path that you follow, it’s not like a maze that’s designed to get you lost. It’s one path. One path in…the same path out. It twists and turns as you follow this from the outside to the center. Here is where you leave the mundane world and enter a liminal space where we can communicate with our higher selves, with spirit, with….whatever….it opens the doorways. Later on I found that actually a labyrinth is a portal. It is important to set the energy of what you want to experience before walking otherwise you’re going to have the experience of whatever was set before you. It is a personal path.

My artwork became my labyrinths. I started working in layers. And through the process of light washes, and layering I began to find more of myself and my ‘style’. I LOVED working in an environment where everyone was doing their own thing working on their own stuff. Being inspired by other artists’ work is the best thing about art college. And the best thing about working around other artists.

I really started to define my process. That year I also got an awesome job using my hands creating tiny masterpieces for mothers of newborn babies and small children. I was THE studio artist at BYBABY. I was overjoyed. I loved my bosses, I loved working with my hands. And I refined their product to make it better. It was in that job that I really began to realize that I am unique and I have a gift, I have an eye that not everyone has. I have the refinement in some areas that not everyone has. And I have a damn good work ethic. I noticed this when my bosses kept trying to make the process systemized so that anybody could do it. But bringing people in to help us out and training them made me realize that not everyone can do it. You have to have an eye for it.

Many things happened between the age of 25 and the age of 28, I stopped going to BPI, I started taking classes with a different meditation teacher where we worked as a group doing more advanced techniques.

The past 5/6 years have definitely been where I’ve started to re-define what a relationship looks like to me.

 I broke up with my boyfriend, but continued seeing him for a year or so afterwards. I dated my first black guy. And I don’t want to label him as just ‘a black guy’ because he is way more than that. But mainly for me he was different in almost all the things I had gone for in a guy before. Up until this point I had only dated nerds, computer geeks, there’s something about them that I have a lot in common with, they’re softer, less harsh to me than the jock, I could communicate with them because I could use the form of writing to connect, they’re also softer all around.  But with him. He was most definitely a jock. From my softball team. As usual with all the guys I date, I got impatient. I get charged and turned on and the damn guy is still sitting there looking at his feet….WTF? So I made the first move when I was able to….. the first chance I got I jumped his bones. This was RIGHT after I got back from a weekend of high energy work and running my kundalini. And the energy was INTENSE….it was the best sex I’ve had ever. The only thing it was missing was the connection I was used to having with nerdy guys. This guy didn’t communicate as much. I couldn’t figure him out and because he was so different in my world, and I wasn’t getting any feedback (or the kind I was used to) I moved past it. I so so so don’t like to be in this weird limbo in between place where I don’t know. Where I’m not getting any activation from them, or reply or…..whatever. Not getting the reaction I desired coupled with the feeling of it being taboo (highlighted by my mother’s reaction to the relationship), and being in an uncomfortable middle space. I went back to the nerds. I started hanging out with one of my best friends again. He is a hardcore nerdy nerd boy.

I started hanging out with his group of friends. And then started friends with benefits with one of his friends. It was more than just friends with benefits because I genuinely cared for him and I believe him for me in the capacity he was able to. THAT relationship triggered a lot in me. It made me question the whole rule I carried up until that point (you have to be in a relationship to have sex). I’ve carried this rule that the only safe place to explore that space is in a committed relationship. When he had sex with another girl at a party I was at. I was deeply triggered and hurt. It confused him because we had talked about the nature of our relationship. But I wasn’t mad at him because of our conversations. Just hurt. I came over and talked to him about it, he was present, and allowed me to have my emotions. And I didn’t force any of that upon him. They were mine. It was deeply freeing. Just having my emotions observed. Not being made bad for having them is huge.

Going over my earlier years I realized that I have been super aware of not expressing the extent of my emotions. If I’m angry or hurt it always somehow had to be someone else’s “fault”. And that in turn made me feel guilty and I shut it down.

This is the point where I finally started giving myself permission to FEEL these emotions.

I started working out during this time with my friend/personal trainer. So much ANGER started coming out. This was at the same time I started to realize my ability as a teacher as I guided him in accessing his spiritual information, guided him in healing himself. My relationship with him has been nothing but support and growth for me. He’s my first friendship/relationship with a deeply purposeful and aware man. It’s such a different experience that it took me years to get truly comfortable around him. Because of the parts of myself I wasn’t ready to look at.

All of these relationship experiences and growth led to when I was 28, my job dissolved, I helped carry them to their completion in the bay and transfer the company to a wonderful woman in sacramento, who bought their website and process. At the end of june/july of that year I found myself jobless. I worked for a couple of weeks at the alameda county fair.

Then my friend planned a trip to Harbin. Harbin Hot Springs, a clothing optional hot springs on a chunk of land near Calistoga…it is beautiful there. I was hesitant at first about the clothing optional. I went anyways. And once there even though I was uncomfortable I went for it and quickly became comfortable. Because it was the norm, it wasn’t weird. Everybody Is out in their birthday suits. It was the start for me in becoming comfortable in my own skin.

It was such a high energy relaxing healing day for me. That was a Tuesday. By the following Saturday I packed my things and made my way north. The plan was to drive into Oregon. Stopping and camping at castle lake in mt. Shasta for a few days with some friends. That was my first of many visits to the magical castle lake, every time there has been a transformative magical experience, especially those random happenstances with strangers. After that I went into Oregon staying at a friend’s place….and I had no plan…I just went from one friend’s place to the next, using them as a sort of focus point.i worked for a week In Portland when I needed money. Then friends of my dad’s opened up their home to me in Bellingham Washington, I went up there, ended up staying with them for 3 months, I am so grateful for them. To me complete strangers at first, now an addition to my family. I learned so much about my dad.

The whole experience of letting go and trusting the universe was unsettling at first but also so freeing. I just jumped, and I always seemed to land.  People would let me rest, catch me, push me off. It was so loving, it’s where I started cultivating more my sense of worth.

From there I ended up at the Grunewald Guild in Leavenworth, WA. Nestled in the cascade mountains, I was there for a very snowy winter. I stay with them for almost 6 months. I volunteered my time for room and board, use of the art studios. It was there I began to really unravel myself. I had the space to just let go. I realized where I had built defenses up towards other people, and in turn hurt a good deal of people the way I imagined they would hurt me. I realized soooo much of myself during this time in my life.

I came back for my friend’s wedding and my brother’s wedding. Didn’t plan on staying at all. And then I started hanging out with my best friend again. And shortly began dating him. He’s the only reason I stayed. And now I realize it’s because I have more work to do here before leaving again. Joe has been a game changer in my relationship space. His loving presence and ability to just listen and be and total un-judgement has worn away the rest of the defenses I didn’t realize I had. I can completely relax around him, and I can talk to him about anything. And he is so supportive, outside of my parents he has given me so much financial support….with nothing attached, even my parents had something attached, but from him, it was just because he wanted to give to me. He helped show me to claim my worth.

Coming back into the tangled mess of connections and emotions I had left behind hit me hard. By the end of December I was kinda lost, had a low sense of self. And a low sense of worth. Even though I knew I had good to share. Starting in February/march while I was still at the guild I started giving aura readings and healings, giving spiritual counseling as an income to support my livelihood. It was a step into being seen.

Being overwhelmed by emotions, I lost that sense of worth and that sense that I could help people. That was when I was guided to my teacher. I worked with him from January until june. He pushed all my buttons, triggered whatever he could get me to show him. It was rough, I cried …….sooooo much. There was just so…. Much….pain…..deep down inside surrounding everything. And then he built me up…or rather pushed me to build myself up. That’s when I started spreading out grasping what was being brought out to me, and I met Naima with gods in plain clothes. I knew I had to be a part of it but I was also scared. But I put myself in the position without any knowledge or what to do. Then I had to let it go, because there was a point where I could handle just so much emotionally.

Near the end of last year I realized I had gained much weight and I had to make a change. In December I started a friend’s eating plan. I lost all the weight I had gained, and that brings me to where I am today. As I dig deeper into the pain allow it to come to light and as I relax around that pain. I have actually lost more weight. At the end of February I realized I needed to ground my food knowingness in me instead of following a plan from outside of me. Because I realize that until it comes from within, it will not be sustainable. This is still my journey of finding food that energizes and cleans my body and supports me in my growth. I continue to let go of body ideals of what my body ‘should’ look like and relax into who I am in the moment….yeah, I’m skinnier. No I don’t really want to have a super ripped body. I’m really enjoying my softness and my curves.

My other focus has been on growing up. Owning myself, owning my actions/emotions/words/finances/schedule, etc. This week has been growth after growth. And I’m going to keep on going. =)