Broken Heart

I recently had an experience where someone whom I trusted and opened up to totally deceived me and then abandoned me.  It wasn't easy to take.  My EGO is furious.  My EGO wants revenge.  My EGO wants to cry all the time.  My heart feels soft and wounded.  I am scared to ever try and open up again for fear of being hurt again.  It seems that I repeatedly fall into the same trap over and over again.  See Coyote post.

What sets this experience apart from others is this: he was both the "safe, adoring suitor" and the "possible rejection".  For most of my life I've had a lot of the "either-or".  When I was young, I mostly had a lot of dangerous, risk, rejection, abandoning, ridiculing, you name it.... people were not always that nice to me when I was young.  As far as I can remember, the only person I could trust was my big brother.

As I grew older I experienced a lot of safe love, but love that was deceptively safe.  They'd be there alright, but somehow withhold their affection, reject me for some flaw or hold me accountable to some mysterious standard that they even had hard times defending.  My big brother was long gone at this point, with his own adult life.  I was alone.

When I met my son's father, I had felt I had had enough of the games, the ridicule, the rejection.... I was ready for a commitment.  He seemed utterly desperate for stability.  I thought I could provide it.

Needless to say, that didn't work out very well.

As I try and wrap my mind around what happened to me in this latest love debacle, my heart keeps screaming, "Jill!!!  Wake up!!  Don't you see that YOU are the key to your own happiness???"  Sure.  I see it.  But, still, it would be really nice to share this happiness with someone that I loved and respected and that loved and respected me.

I see so many people in unhappy relationships.  I see so many odd couples.  I see my ex-husband, who, by many standards is challenging and is in a year-long relationship.  Who is this woman to put up with his aloofness?  The chaos?  His self-centered-ness?  Is she really that self-aware that she can handle it?  OMGS!?  When I say that I feel like a total loser and that I will never find someone to love me.

I really struggle with this self-love stuff.  I mean, honestly, I take good care of my self, I am pretty, athletic and I am hygienic.  I am an awesome mother.  I am better off than a great deal more of the population I see on a day to day basis, yet I struggle to find someone to treat me with respect.

Do I deserve this?  Am I destined to live this out for my entire conscious life this round?  When will I find solace in being me? And when will others see the same?  Is this my angelic story, as Neal Donald Walsh would suggest?

The weird part is that I was feeling a lot of self love at the time this man appeared into my life.  I was being totally honest with myself and I didn't yearn for love and poof! this guy appears from nowhere and pursues me hard.  I was 'going with the flow of the Universe', trusting in the goodness I had wanted.... He said things I had longed to hear.  He did things I dreamed of doing for so long.  I thought I no longer had it in me.... yet he awakened something in me I thought I had lost.  Then, as quickly as he appeared, he disappeared.  My soul seems to have been awakened from a long sleep and is a little groggy and isn't quite aware of what is going on.  Now, the absence of the admiration seems to indicate that it never happened in the first place.  The not knowing seems harder to handle.

Maybe it was only a dream.  Maybe I should look at it as if it were only a dream?

The sense of urgency to "find someone" before I am too old seems to override the sensible idea of being happy with what I have.  I then fear that I will lose what I have because I am so focused otherwise.  All this self awareness seems to only confuse my life rather than infuse it.  I wish I were ignorant, simple-minded and small.  Then maybe it wouldn't hurt as much.

I heard Indigo Girls sing once, that that "we are sculpted from youth, the chipping away makes me weary.  And as for the truth, seems like we just pick a theory..."    And I guess I thought I was changing myself with all of this self help stuff, but I think I am the same as I ever was.  Makes me think that I can't possibly surrender to the nature of it all.  Maybe I need to finally decide to let events occur without my involvement or influence and surrender to some kind of "Joan of Arc" experience.  Are those even available in this day and age?  And if so, do I really want that?

This idea of surrendering to a higher power seem to sound like defeat.  Maybe it's grace.  I am not sure.  But, honestly, I have not much fight left in me.  Today, I feel like sharing that I am lost and confused.  I am sad and angry.  I am falling apart.  And I am ok with it.  Because I have no other choice.  You know, it hit me as I was writing this; I am not going to change.  No one changes.  It's rather our perception of the world that changes.   And that, somehow, in some small, quiet space inside of me, is reassuring.

And that makes me remember the either-or thing.... one instructor recently said that Ego believes in Either-Or while Spirit believes in And-Both.  I like that sort of thinking.  So, while for now I feel like I am stuck with either being alone and happy or with someone and sad; maybe Spirit is awakening me to a new reality of being in love with myself and being wholly loved as myself too!

Roots Final Conclusions

I have been humbled in a recent life event that has left me questioning, why?  Why me?  What did I do to deserve this?  How did I manifest this?  And it’s got me kind of fearful to even think at all because I am terrified of what will happen next.  During the last ten weeks I’ve been faced with a few chaotic occurrences which leave me questioning my faith.  I read or heard somewhere recently that chaos heralds major shifts or changes.  I remain fearful insomuch that such change will fail to result in “goodness” rather than more struggle.  It’s like I’m ducking and hunching over in fear, aching with expectation of more bludgeoning, more loss, more rejection, more abandonment, more stress.   I’ve lost sight of reality.  The shadows on the wall appear grotesquely huge, inhuman and otherworldly.  I am surely suffering a panic attack because the Ego lost out over what it so desired.  My vanity is exposed.  My vulnerable soft-under belly is sore and calloused with past hurts. My story repetitiously replays in my head, numbing any sensation of truth.  Where do I go from here?

Onward.  Into my Castle.  For here in this worldly realm, our greatest challenge lies in accepting that there is no evil, no matter, no absence of life, substance or intelligence.  There is nothing to hate.  There is no sin, sickness or death.  Undressing in the deep chambers of my Soul, I become humbled and humiliated in my vanity.  All there is for me to see and know is the truth that I certainly do not know anything other than “knowing all things and doing all things, I am independent of all things.  I am absolutely free.”  I am the observer of that which I am and yet, I experience and embody this moment fully in my being.  Choosing to suffer and replay old tragedies does me no good other than to keep me mired in self-pity and self righteousness.  This is not spirituality.  This is narcissism.

I find it illuminating how close self-awareness and spirituality come towards the edge of narcissism.  One quick slip of the wrist, the thought, the mind, the heart and poof! You have gone off the map of your good into the choppy waters of self-indulgent thinking that can overpower the ideas of unity and oneness and become a vicious vice for addiction and self-deprecation.

So, I believe I can say with purity of spirit, that I understand I cannot will outcomes on the “patient nor against evil, nor for Good.  I may only tell the truth about God.  The Truth is its own will.”  Surrendering to the power and presence of God within and all around me is a humbling experience.  One that my Ego certainly resists with great fervor.   My imperfection is my perfection.  My humanness is my innocence.  My struggle is my freedom (when I finally lay down my arms and bear witness to the fact that it is I that I am fighting).

So, yearning for possessions, for romance, for peace, for truth, for understanding, for partnership, recognition, safety, love; these are all things that I can find inside of my soul.  As Rumi said, “Friend, our closeness is this.  Anywhere you put your foot feel me in the firmness under you.  How is it with this love, I see your world and not you?”  Seeing passed the yearnings and looking beyond the veil, the truth lies in wait.  Do I have the courage to claim it?

Dolly Parton said, "Storms make trees take stronger roots." I remember in one class I used the analogy of a tree in our discussion to make a case that trees don't fret about when to flush their leaves or when to bloom.  They just do it.  And as I weather the storms of life, I seek to find an equilibrium where the highs and lows, the light and the dark, the high winds and the calm silence become my norm.

I have these words floating around my head: vanity, vulnerability and rejection and I find it appealing that each definition brings me closer to the shift that was inevitable to unfold.  Vanity's definition starts with excessive pride and ends with worthlessness.  Vulnerability is defined as  being susceptible to physical or emotional injury.  And finally, rejection is the turning away from... and I just find pure irony in that in order to heal the pain I feel, I must turn away from that which isn't the truth.

As I move forward on my journey, I recognize my divinity.  I realize my truth.  I accept this truth as the truth of ALL.  I am grateful for my life.  I surrender these words to the magical, mystery of the LAW.  And so it is.