Quotalicious

Find a place (inside) where there's joy,
and the joy will burn out the pain.

~ Joseph Campbell



Sphere II by allegra_

It's all good

And positivity, yeah
It is the way for me, yeah
It is truth
It is youth

Love yourself today

Okay?  Okay.

Anger

I’ll admit it.

I’m angry.  Very angry.

I’m angry at the influence the military has had on my life.

There is nothing wrong with the path of the warrior, lived honourably, with respect for himself and his adversary.  With calmness, fairness, justice and propriety.

What is wrong with this military is that it does not pay this basic but essential respect to its own members, and particularly not to their own families.

The result is systematic and systemic disempowerment, and in many cases, damage.

But the man I love possesses free agency.  And if I want him to share my life, this anger is something I need to learn to coexist with, instead of denying.  I need to learn to sit in the room with it, and see it, until it is just something else in the room, but doesn’t fill it.

No apologies

 The trouble with expressing yourself… 

…is that the sad, bad and mad comes out too.

OK, so I’m fully on board with this whole throat chakra thing, and keen to keep pushing energy through this part of my life until it becomes part of my permanent and habitual way of being.

However, there’s a bit of a problem here.  Along with the meaningful and inspired outpourings comes everything else too.  On at three recent and separate occasions, I have found myself "expressing" some of my not-so-nice sentiment.  In fairly spectacular, unexpected and ungracious ways.

You cannot be fully open through a centre of expression whilst simultaneously withholding "some" of your truth.  There’s no room for denial in the blue room.  You’re either expressing or you’re not.

So, I’m not planning on going on a telling-it-like-it-is rampage (complete with swears) any time soon.  But I am going to let go of this notion that what comes out needs to meet anyone else’s idea of "acceptable". 

If you don’t want your toes trodden on, I suggest you tuck them away now.

Untitled by Joana Roja

Intuition vs Science: a revelation

Today I went to see my fabulous GP, but instead of a prescription, I was given a revelation.

I was there to have some paperwork filled out.  The receptionist brought in the records that were transferred from my previous doctor when we moved here from another state.  I asked to look through the notes, because I hadn’t seen them at all since my diagnoses.

I was fascinated to discover that I had complained – repeatedly - about both pain and lumpiness in the outer quadrant of my left breast as far back as Nov 2006.  During visit after visit with my then GP, I brought this up.  I insisted on several rounds of investigation, and the GP begrudgingly ordered scans, more to shut me up than anything else, I suspect.  The ultrasounds were clear each time.

This is because, despite its huge size at diagnosis, the tumour was still invisible on ultrasound.  What was needed was a mammogram and/or a biopsy.  For my concerns to be treated with more than a token response.

I’m a little shocked, to be honest.  I knew I had reported my concerns previously, and been reassured, but I had forgotten how sustained my worry was.  All along my body was telling me something was wrong, and I had heard it loud and clear.

After I was diagnosed I started to doubt my intuition, my psychic sense, my experience as an energetic healer.  What sort of a healer doesn’t spot the growth of an enormous cancer in her own body?  How could I have allowed this disease to manifest so splendidly in my life, completely unawares?

Now, I can’t believe that I doubted myself.  My intuition was fine.  It was science that failed me. 

All along I have asked, Why? What is the meaning of this illness in my life?  Now I’m starting to understand that it might be about learning to express my truth, clearly, even in the face of rational scepticism or the personal biases of other people.  This is the lesson of the throat chakra, and it has everything to do with writing, and healing, and just being myself in the world.  Being. Fully.

Quotalicious

Wanting things to be otherwise is the very essence of suffering.

 ~ Stephen Levine,

in A Gradual Awakening

Mandala Mixed Media Canvas by peregrine blue

Quotalicious

“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have."
~ Eckhart Tolle

Truth or fiction?

"There is only one type of story in the world---your story." ~ Ray Bradbury

Today was my favourite day of the month: writers’ group day.  Each month we write to a particular topic or theme, and then read and comment around the table.  This month’s assignment was to write something biographical or factual – no fiction.   Ironically, I have only ever shared short nonfiction pieces, and had been thinking I should probably produce some fiction for a change!

After hearing me bemoan yet another heavily autobiographical contribution, one of the ladies said something I found very interesting.  She said you need to keep writing it, get it all out, and only then can you start on the fiction.

I’m not sure that I agree with her assertion.  For starters it implies that autobiography involves some kind of progressive catharsis.  And that this expurgation has some sort of finite quality to it.  And that fiction requires a more sophisticated relationship with one’s inner terrain than autobiography does.  I would argue that all writing involves an interior process, regardless of the writer’s depth of awareness of it.  The deep truths that drive autobiographical pieces are the same truths that give life to good fiction.  If you can connect to that place inside yourself before you start writing, it will breathe that same energy and connection into what you’ve written, regardless of whether it’s fictional or not.  Fiction writers may labour under the illusion that the stories they write are “made up”, but it all spills tellingly from somewhere in their psyche. 

This is just a scratch on the surface of the thinking I’m doing about writing and “being a writer” (yes, two separate concepts).  I am being aided and abetted in my explorations by Dennis Palumbo’s exceptional book, Writing from the Inside Out. While I disagree with my friend’s statement, it is true that I’ve got a transformative process going on.  And it has nothing to do with catharsis, but claiming.